Free Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden

you noticed? I swear, he can turn any conversation over to his favorite—indeed, dare I suggest?,
only
—topic within three exchanges,
without a single non sequitur
. How does he do it?”
    Roy is one of the new young gay guys who are starting to take over our building. When Dennis Savage and (shortly after) I moved in, sometime before the Spanish-American War, the entire apartment house was straight but for us and the closeted old grouch in 11-1. But during the last few years a striking number of gays have joined us, including a few lookers and one out-and-out hunk who seems to have sparked fantasies in Virgil and Cosgrove. He has become known to them as Presto.
    “Then there’s Roy’s wistful little pal,” Dennis Savage went on. “So polite, so yearning, so resigned. He’s like a scream of agony too well brought up to let itself be heard.”
    “Well, Nicky’s got a case on Roy,” I said, getting out the cheese-and-crackers tray.
    “A
case?
Like Israel had on Eichmann. He’s up to his ears in the love of his life, and Roy doesn’t notice and couldn’t care less.”
    “What happened to all the cheeses I bought?” I called out from the fridge. “There was a Brie, a Gruyère, and a Stilton.”
    “I ate the little pie one,” Cosgrove answered from the living room. “And Bauhaus was starting in on the Stilton.”
    “Who invited Bauhaus down here?” I asked Dennis Savage while examining what was left of the Stilton. “He’s
your
dog.”
    “You’re not going to offer that to Roy, are you?” asked Dennis Savage. “God knows where those jaws have been.”
    “I’ll just trim off the—”
    “Nicky,” said Dennis Savage, shaking his head. “If there was ever someone
born
to doom and gloom.” He followed me and the cheese tray into the living room. “He reminds me of that pathetic little drudge in
Les Mis
, what’s-her-name, who dies in the rain.”
    “Funette,” Cosgrove put in.
    “Yes, Funette. And such an
apt
name, because in fact she . . .” No, that didn’t seem right, did it? “Funette?”
    “I think you mean Eponine,” I said.
    “Of
course
, Eponine!” Dennis Savage whirled on Cosgrove, who was reviewing his CD collection. “So who’s Funette supposed to be?”
    “Now you’ll never be sure,” Cosgrove coolly replied, rearranging the CDs in the wooden display case he insisted I buy him—four feet tall, two feet wide, and I have no idea where we’ll put it. Besides, Cosgrove owns only five CDs as yet—a Skinny Puppy single, the 8½ soundtrack, the Swedish cast of
The Phantom of the Opera
, the Riccardo Muti
Symphonie Fantastique
, and a Kate Bush album that Cosgrove swears he found lying on a sidewalk somewhere. He is very earnest about his CDs. He wants to become an aficionado, to be known for his taste, his energy in unearthing the arcane and wondrous. Having folded himself into my manner of living unquestioningly, he now wants to break out and discover something of his own. So he has refused to let me give him CDs or suggest key titles. He probes my expertise, yes, but mostly he consults reviews and catalogs and spends hours in stores and (his venue of choice) flea markets, examining, weighing, wondering.
    I like this. I am sympathetic to anyone who surrenders his independence in worship of the unjust and vindictive god Demento, who rules over all obsessed collectors. Gods, of course, are the mythological idealization of fathers, and all known mythologies are heterosexually man-made. But Demento has his campy side. He likes to be thought of as dread, yet he’ll materialize in a Sabu take-a-peek loincloth and Rochelle Hudson fuck-me-or-I’ll-scream-the-place-down wedgies. Cosgrove fears and serves him. “Is it
rare
enough?” he worried when he considered buying the Swedish
Phantom
on a visit to the show buff’s specialty shop, Footlight Records. I told him, “It’s outlandishly expensive, it’s incomprehensible, and it’s available in only two places in the entire