Free How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden Page A

breathless, with his melting-eyes smile, and I could see why women might like him. He was crude with us, but to a working-class female, used to the strenuous style of the neighborhood guys, Vince might come off as flatteringly extrasensory, with his absurd language of love and his father fantasy. My brother Jim was no different in the long run: and Jim made out like a bandit.
    I didn’t give J. the slightest chance of restructuring Vince’s sex life with a homosexual episode. I know the sound a hetero makes when trying to intellectualize his grunting, and Vince, for my money, was straight. Yes, there was all that suspiciously fond stuff about Red Backhaus. But remember the two construction workers I spoke of in the Introduction? That’s testosterone jostling, loving but not flesh -loving. The pair could fuck and it still wouldn’t be gay. They could even kiss. But let one comment on the quality of the other’s skin tone and you have 60–40 crossover.
    After our Vince-meeting dinner came cappuccino, from our own cappuccino maker, another of Cosgrove’s prides. * He also treated us to his prize car-chase and talk-show fight clips, which Vince particularly responded to. I risked a few fifi remarks. Fleabiscuit came out a few times to romp and hide. We got a high on, especially Vince, who was chain-guzzling his beer. With me at the piano, J. and Cosgrove reprised their old cabaret act, improvisationally updating their version of “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” with
    You say ‘ Cauc ă sus ,’ and I say ‘ Cauc ā sus ’;
    You like the Blur boys, but I like Oasis.
    I thought that was brilliant, and so did Vince, who had no idea what the Caucasus, Blur, or Oasis might be. J. and Cosgrove, so long divided, embraced and kissed; Vince looked on unmoved. Not pretending it didn’t exist: uninterested in it. So what did all this mean?
    J. left with Vince. At the door, Vince told Cosgrove and me, “You guys should be in show business.”
    And Cosgrove said, “We are.”

2
    T HERE A RE O NLY T HREE K INDS OF L OVE
    T HERE ARE IN FACT many kinds of love, almost as many kinds as there are people. There’s blind love, summertime love, desperation love, love on the rebound, least-horrible-available-partner love, imaginary love, academic love, weekend love, puppy love, career-move love, voodoo love, love for revenge.
    Nevertheless, three kinds in particular seem to me essential to gay life: Hungry Love, Buddy Love, and True Love. Some gays taste of them all, over and over. Others specialize. A goodly number of gays may never know the roaring, frustrated ecstasy of hungry love, preferring the spacious intimacy of buddy love. And who among us has penetrated true love in all its baffling contours? With this chapter, I hope to solve some small mysteries and at length flirt with a few of love’s conundrums as they pertain to gay life. Now back to our story:
    It was that spring of 1997, when something like thirty-five Broadway musicals opened within a single week, and Peter thought we could pursue the introduction of Lars Erich Blücher to our circle with one of those theatre evenings. The chosen show was Titanic, then still in its troubled previews; and a friend of Lars Erich’s, not in the actual theatre party, was to host an after-theatre dinner.
    “Someone’s not welcome at the entertainment but invited to prepare the reception?” Dennis Savage asked me.
    “Peter says it’s this odd thing,” I replied while fastening Cosgrove’s tie, which bore the ghoulish figure of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. He’d found it at the Museum of Modern Art Shop, the one that used to be on Fifth Avenue. “Lars Erich’s friends are apparently so devoted to him that they supply whatever is wanted. Money, trips to where, parties.”
    “This guy must really be something, huh?”
    “Too much so, in a way,” I said, combing Cosgrove’s hair. “I’ve known lookers who were smart and interesting, but has there ever been someone so