The Best Little Boy in the World (18 page)

Also, what difference whether you have the stigma of being a homosexual or the stigma of being a promiscuous homosexual? If you're going to be stigmatized, the least you can do is enjoy it.

What I could never figure out in college, hornier than a rhinoceros, was why my friends didn't have sex every night. And in between classes. Why didn't a straight guy, when he saw a chick he dug on the street, simply say, "Wanna do it?" And why wouldn't she, if she dug him, say, "You betcha sweet ass"? Naturally, I was more than a little grateful for this prudishness, which protected me from impossible tests of my normality, but I just couldn't understand it.

In college I didn't know sex wasn't always the blissful, wildly pleasurable experience it was cracked up to be. That with the wrong person it could even get boring or distasteful. That there were other things in life. I
had
the other things, so I knew their limitations. I didn't have the sex. It was only toward the end of that first summer in Boston that I began to understand and that my desire to be done by someone every night diminished (somewhat). It was only then that I began to form some strong relationships, to become
emotionally
involved. Then sex became more than simply physical.

I didn't become awfully emotionally involved with Eric, but a little. He lived right up the street from me. I was doing nothing for the summer. He, I'm sorry to say, promises to do nothing for the rest of his life. So we were naturals. At his party, Eric introduced me to a lot of his friends, but we talked mainly with each other. It turned out that he had gotten an economics degree from Boston College a couple of years earlier, so we had some common areas of interest. One reason I liked Eric was that he didn't go to the bar much. Instead, he was an organizer of Boston's Student Homophile League, which met at Boston University once a week, and he would organize gay touch football games on the Esplanade by the Hatch Shell, where he managed to reassure the hesitant ballplayers, like me, that we were all equally inept. Of course, we were not all equally inept, but everyone felt comfortable.

I got so I could talk intimately with Eric. I told him kissing made me feel awkward—"Cowboys don't kiss," I told him—and I told him how in my family, we didn't even put Goliath's spoon in my mouth—so how could I allow a strange tongue? Or worse? I told him about Hilda Goldbaum's French kisses with their Italian dressing. Just telling him these things helped relax me. He didn't get impatient or make me feel I was weird; he just thought I was funny—ha-ha likable funny, that is. Because I could relax with Eric, because I liked him and wanted to show it, and because the inside of his mouth always tasted like peppermint candy, I managed to lose some of my distaste for kissing. Today, if I'm with someone I really like and I am so stoned and into it that I don't think about what I'm doing, I guess I even can like to kiss. Who knows where I'll be in ten years?

As Eric was the first gay person I had ever spent much time talking with, he was the first one who made me formulate verbal expressions for what I had always felt. One common thing gay people do is to give each other girls' names—Eric would be Erica—and to call them "she" and "her" instead of "he" and "him." Among other things this subculture habit helps avoid being found out: If your gay conversations are overheard, it is better to be saying you love "her" than "him." Whenever Eric referred to someone that way, I would punch him in the arm and tell him to talk right. So he only did it when he wanted to get a rise out of me. He knew I didn't like those of his friends who were noticeably feminine. He knew I didn't like it when any of his friends, including some of the most masculine, "camped it up," falsetto, where the
s
's sounded like a radio that wasn't tuned in quite right: "Oh, my
dear,
how nicce your shirt looksss! I found one jusst like it in my grandmother'ss attic!"

When people did that around me, I turned icy. But why? One day Eric wanted to get a real rise out of me—I think I was falling asleep too soon—and he called me Trixie. He got a rise, all right, and I told him,
Look, God damn it: if femininity were what turned me on, I would be straight. I like masculinity, so cut it out.

Well, that was one way to put it, I suppose—and I have since put it that way on several occasions. But what I think I was really saying was: "Look, God damn it, I don't think I'm feminine myself, even though I like guys. Yet that's the stereotype—that deep down all faggots really want to be girls. Well, there is no way I ever want to look or act feminine. When you call me Trixie, you are threatening, even insulting. I have to demonstrate my masculinity by objecting. I am not willing to relax or to admit I am not just the tiniest bit superior, anyway, to all you queers who give in to looking and talking and acting a little queer, even if it's only in private among yourselves." My public relations department took all that and made it tough and simple-sounding: If I liked femininity, I wouldn't be gay. By now I have gotten used to my friends' camping. I just never participate. Not yet anyway.

Eric took me a lot of places as part of my continuing education. He showed me "the block." The block is in a fashionable area, right by Boston Common, where a single guy leaning against a car, thumbing a ride, or just walking slowly is probably looking for you. Or he may be out earning a little spending money after school. If so, he may not even be gay, as such. Today's high school kids are a lot more sophisticated than they were just a few years ago. Many of them—the ones who drive cross country in VW campers and have long hair and smoke dope—simply are not inhibited by the traditional social taboos. If a guy wants to pay $5 or $25 to blow him—why not? It feels good, the guy is grateful, and it's bread.

Naturally, that reasoning would sit uneasily with most older folks. But if that is all the significance the boy places on the experience, what's wrong with his logic? Not every kid is going to grow up to be President or a doctor or lawyer. So if he has a good body and likes to get blown and plans a career as an auto mechanic—and thank God for auto mechanics—why not? Is the FBI going to investigate his early years before they give him a license to fix your Mustang?

Eric and I leaned against a parked car and watched circling cars slow down as they went by. He explained that most cities have "blocks" or similar cruisy places. He said you could either find the places by flying over the city in a helicopter just after the bars close and looking for the only traffic jam in town or by asking any gay resident of the city. There are no signs, but everyone knows.

While we were on the subject of finding places, Eric told me I ought to buy a copy of the
International Guild Guide,
available at your neighborhood pornographic bookstore. It lists the gay bars, restaurants, steam baths, and outdoor cruising spots, all over the world. I have found the book comes in handy. And since then, an aboveground guide,
The Gay Insider/USA,
has been mass marketed by Dell. (At $3.95 and 630 pages versus $5 and 208 pages, it is by far the better buy.) Most bars (not Sporters) come and go so fast that even a fresh edition of any guide is outdated, but at the very least you get phone numbers of several places which, though they may no longer be "in" spots, can easily direct you to the kind of place you are looking for. Leafing through my book, I see 2 places in Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1 in Alexandria, Louisiana, 4 in Blackpool, England, 6 in Tampa, 18 in Atlantic City, 72 in Paris, 2 in Varna, Bulgaria, 4 in Butte, Montana, and 125 in San Francisco. Generally, even in a large city, there are only a few popular places at any given time. In Washington, for example, which has about 30 listings in the book, almost all the young people at the time of this writing go to the Lost and Found or to Pier 9. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is. The in spots shift frequently because everyone tends to be dissatisfied with everyone else and to think the grass just might be greener across town. (And because the police periodically bust gay bars, for one reason or another.) I would guess that the four bars in Butte, Montana, or even the one that is popular today, are not likely to be much to shout about, even on Saturday night. Still, if they are listed, there must be something going on. The same holds for those places the guide lists and labels "mixed." Granted,
any
place I have ever been has been "mixed," just by virtue of my gay presence. However, these mixed places would presumably not be listed if there weren't a fair amount of gay activity.

Eric and I didn't go to Sporters much. He knew that the more often I went, the faster I would find someone else. But we did go to a couple of other bars, just to see what they would be like.

Bars vary over at least three dimensions, the first being popularity. Next is age. No one stands at the door of younger bars turning away the over-thirty-five set (except in California, where they have some "under-twenty-one" bars); but few older men want to go where they will feel unwelcome. And then there is what you might call a bar's "degree of masculinity."

Eric and I went to the opening night of 1270, a new bar in town with a dance floor. Most gay people dance, but Sporters doesn't have a dance floor. Either the management wants to keep the bar conservative, or else there is a limit to what the city will tolerate within a few hundred yards of the Statehouse. The new bar was jammed. Everyone wanted to see what kind of person would go there, what kind of bar it would turn out to be. That, of course, distorted things for a while. Really, 1270 could have taken on any of a number of personalities.

The new bar developed into a young, unpopular-except-on-weekends, largely black dancing bar. And nellie. Most of the clientele tend to be effeminate, to wear unbelievable costumes, and to dance extremely well. You would notice the people walking toward that bar. (Later the bar was remodeled and expanded, and its character changed.)

Sporters is in the middle on the masculinity scale, attracting, with many exceptions, the kind of people you wouldn't be likely to notice on the street as they walked by in jeans and flannel sport shirts.

Eric and I also took a look into the Shed, a leather bar in a rough section of town, at the other end of the masculinity scale. The Shed caters to the sadomasochistic client who arrives in a black leather jacket, stomping boots, maybe a white T-shirt stretched over too many muscles, a chain or two or some spikes on the wide leather belt—all this revving up to the bar on the biggest, loudest bike you have ever seen and, like as not, dying to find someone even tougher who will do the honors of rolling him over on his stomach and (all this back home, in privacy, of course) fucking him. With a mace, maybe.

I am drawing a caricature, I suppose. Few of the Shed's customers are so noticeable. For that you have to go to one of the leather bars in New York. New York has everything every other city has, squared. Except Los Angeles, which has it all cubed. At one of these bars on the New York waterfront, with fake skeletons hanging from the ceiling and other cheery appurtenances, there is a sign on the door that says: "No Sneakers, Sandals, Slacks, Coats or Ties. Leather or Denim Only."

Neither Eric nor I liked the largely older, largely unhappy-looking crowd of motorcyclists and cowboys at the Shed.
Were
they unhappy-looking, or did I just think they should be? Or am I just putting them down because I am embarrassed to acknowledge the part of me that likes this kind of rough scene? Hmmm? Actually, I guess it's just difficult to look happy and tough at the same time.

We went over to one other bar, the Other Side, which is run by the kind of people you wouldn't want to double-cross. (Sporters is not.) Most cities make it difficult for gay bars and baths to get licenses and to stay in business. In Boston you can't even open a place of worship, let alone a gay bar, without bribing officials up and down the line. But for the mob, they could be persuaded to make a little exception, maybe. How many licenses would you like? Fire inspections? Well, we would rather you didn't smoke in bed, sir.

Eric showed me around. We didn't go to "the baths," because Boston's gay life is too conservative to have good baths. There are two baths, but everyone knows that the good people don't ever go to them—so no one goes. Not only that, the idea of walking around in a towel looking for someone to have sex with takes more than a little getting used to, and in five years, Eric had not gotten used to it. That was fine by me.

Eric told me about lubricants, about crabs and the clap and syphilis; he told me, I hate to put it this way, many of the things I had always wanted to know about sex but had been afraid to ask. I say I hate to put it that way, because I recently read the putrid chapter on homosexuality in that book, and I am thinking of filing a class-action suit on behalf of 5,000,000 or 10,000,000 homosexuals against Dr. Reuben, the author, who could not possibly have painted a more unfortunate, distorted and condescending picture.

Eric could have written a far more sensitive, accurate, helpful chapter. The only problem was, Eric was somehow devoid of any ambition and could barely move himself to turn over the phonograph record, let alone write a chapter on homosexuality. He was suffering from chronic unemployment, one symptom of which is lack of desire for a cure. Frankly, I was beginning to get a little bored by that. I liked him, but I thought he should give himself a kick in the pants and
do
something. He was twenty-three, a college graduate, and, when he really needed money, an occasional waiter. Where would he be in thirty years? His father,

I was interested to learn, had dropped out of the University of Chicago with one semester to go during the Depression because he could not pay the tuition. His father got a job waiting on tables, intending to finish school when he could afford it—and is still waiting on tables in Chicago. I can just see my mother reading a paragraph like that and scribbling, "Let that be a lesson to us all!" over the top of it and sending it to her son. But apparently it was no lesson to Eric.

Eric could sense that I was beginning to get bored, that I was going out on my own more often, even though I still liked him a lot. We decided to spend a weekend in Provincetown, which, from what I had heard of it, promised to be anything but boring. Though unspoken, I think Eric and I both saw this as a nice way to end "our thing." In gay parlance, we hadn't been lovers those weeks; we had been "doing a thing."