Free The Best Little Boy in the World by John Reid; Andrew Tobias Page A

beach and lay down in the cold sand to wait until it was late enough for me to go back to my legitimate room. It was a nice place to feel depressed, absolutely still except for some stuffed sleeping bags here and there in the distance; an overturned weatherworn dinghy up on the beach; a little driftwood; a pale moon growing paler as the sun rose. A nice place to feel depressed, but I was in no mood for that. I was feeling sorry for myself.
    I tried to sleep on the beach—I was exhausted—but I couldn't. I just kept thinking. Finally the sun was well up there, perhaps eleven o'clock, but much more likely eight or nine, and I went back to our room. Hank and Gladys were asleep in each other's arms. I lay down on the other bed and kept thinking, waiting for them to wake up. Eventually, hours later, they did. Hank had a slight cold and a hangover; Gladys lit a cigarette. I tried to grin what I thought would look like a satisfied grin and explained that Kathy and I had gone for a walk along the beach and I had taken her back before the hotel people discovered the stolen room. After her cigarette, Gladys went back also.
    Hank smiled. I tried to smile. How was it? I asked. "Good, but I think I caught a cold."
    "As long as you didn't catch anything else," I managed out of my pretend-normal vocabulary of words and expressions I didn't really understand. He smiled.
    "How was it?"
    "Good," I said. Best friends don't have to say more than that. They don't have to impress each other or compete with tales of exploits. Hank treated sex as a meaningful thing (even a drunken one-night stand with Gladys)—he didn't masturbate, remember—so neither of us had to go into details about our private experiences. "Good" was enough. Thank God.
    Strategically, as with the Museum of Natural History debacle, the whole thing had worked out okay. Hank had virtual proof, short of being an eyewitness, that I screwed girls. Not that he ever thought about it either way, I suppose.
    Meanwhile, I was afraid that we might run into Kathy and Gladys again—or that Hank would. Kathy had undoubtedly decided I was queer and had undoubtedly told Gladys. Either Kathy or Gladys would undoubtedly tell Hank. Hank would ask me why I had said, "Good," if I hadn't touched Kathy, and why hadn't I touched Kathy? Then he would leave me the keys to the car, pick up his suitcase, and, sickened by the thought that I had even contrived to sleep in the same double bed with him, rush off to Paris as fast as he could, never to speak to me again.
    The hotel people had apparently figured out about the other room. They asked us to pay for the room and said they were sorry, but they had no more vacancies, we would have to leave.
    Wonderful! Tossa was packed with tourists; all the other hotels were full, too. We had to leave for Paris that morning, and we never saw Kathy or Gladys again.
    When I got back to the States and had to do some heavy normality pretending, I would tell how we were evicted from our hotel in Tossa for raping two English birds.
     
    The dates I had in college were almost always friends of Hank's girlfriends. I had no black book of my own. I got along with them okay. One in particular I saw on and off during a whole year, and she would come to all the mandatory football weekends and college parties. I felt bad about "using" her as a cover, but I needed a cover. Her name was Hillary, and she was Hank's girl's best friend.
    She was not unattractive; she was bright, considerate, and, best of all, something of a prude. Just what the doctor ordered. I could make all kinds of advances, trying to get my arm from around her shoulder (a position that I had mastered and that she allowed) over and around her breast. She would never let me touch her there, or down below, which was a wonderful arrangement. She could go back to Vassar and tell Hank's girlfriend about my advances; Hank's girlfriend would tell Hank; Hank would think I had normal inclinations, if less than normal