Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle Read Online Free PDF Page A

brunch just to watch them! Okay, I let down the sexual revolution. I wanted something . . .”
    “Something stable?” I asked.
    “Something more than cum,” he said. “We flash forward. Tom has money and power, and we have remained in touch. He opens Weasel’s. Remember? Down near where the Triangle used to be? It was the first dance club after the Tenth Floor. Big. Rich. Hot. Right?”
    Carlo and I nodded.
    “Spartan decor. The usual menorah lighting and waiters to die—the Tom Driggers waiters, homo straights. God, he had an eye for that type. Tattoos and no underwear and ‘C’mon, I’ll
pay
ya next week!’ What are we supposed to derive from that? Tell me.”
    We couldn’t.
    “Look, I like it hot, same as anyone. But what I always wanted was somewhere there would be a door that I could walk through, any day of the week, and the person in the room behind the door would know how I felt just by the face I had on. On the back side of the door would be all the assholes and schmucks and idiots who fuck your day up. But on
this
side I’d get a human being instead of an android.
    “That’s all those beauties turn out to be, after a good long while. Fabulous androids. Blond boy in black T-shirt and khaki shorts. Or dark hair, jaw for years, sculpted soft mouth that gives out with irresistible ‘Yeah.’ Classic gym hunk dancing in a tank top, arching his back by the water cooler. You want it, they have it. Order now—they do everything. Except feel. Put your arms around them sometime, try them for warmth. There’s nothing
in
them!
    “So. Enter Little Virgil. I know he seems unaware, but it may be that all his amateur theatricals are his defense against what he sees. It’s not that he doesn’t know what’s real: It’s that he
does
. He and Cosgrove have reduced the cosmos to nice and mean. ‘Please be nice’ means Affirm me. ‘You’re being mean’ means You won’t give me what I need. Virgil has his job and Cosgrove has his chores, followed by endless playtime. Life is a weekend. So they makevideotapes, they cook, they sing, they giggle, and every now and then, when no one’s looking, they fuck each other.”
    He extended a hand in the air as if balancing, weighing something. “You thought I didn’t know, right? What am I, the gay King Arthur? So what? This is how I wanted it, behind the door in the room. I don’t need to startle myself with drive-by icons. I thought I did, once—I was wrong. There’s nothing better than high-concept sex except a high-concept lover. That’s what I wanted. Someone . . .”
    “A fruit of worth,” I put in.
    “I’m wandering. . . . Weasel’s. Oh. That night . . . Yes. I was in an awful mood, something like the tenth night in a row of a very heavy case of no-lover blues. The last place in the world I wanted to go to was a disco. But I’m not going to improve the quality of my social-romantic life in an empty room, am I? And Tom had been nagging me to come down there. He intimated that he’d set me up with one of his people. Terrific, but I wanted a
person
for once. I’d
had
people. Had them up to . . . Don’t you ever offer your guests coffee or something?”
    “Who wants what?” I said, heading for the kitchen.
    “Tangerines all round,” said Carlo.
    “I want black coffee,” Dennis Savage grumped.
    As I ground the beans, I said, “Cosgrove calls this ‘fresh-squoze style.’ ”
    “Well, isn’t he the phrasemaker.”
    “Why be snide about it? You used to find them endlessly amusing.”
    “Having one little rascal on hand is amusing. Having two of them, ganging up on you and calling you strange names and conspiring and spooking, is not amusing. That’s Dien Bien Phu for life.”
    Carlo said, “I truly think those two are getting sweeter and more secret every day.”
    “Why secret?” I asked.
    “I’m not all the way sure. But I believe it has to do with how guys who don’t know them just see two tasty morsels there while we see something