Free Men Who Love Men by William J. Mann Page A

looking when I met Gale. He approached me .

    Maybe this is it. Finally.

    But so had Luke approached me, and I hadn’t been looking then, either. And look how that turned out.

    I try not to project anything about Gale. I try to beat back the urge to fantasize, to hope. That’s what always does me in. I start hoping, wishing, praying—and then it falls apart.

    I wonder, for just the briefest of moments, what happened between Jeff and Luke. I skipped the dinner with Eliot and Oscar, even though they’re friends from way back and I haven’t seen them in a year. I just wasn’t in the mood to be chatty tonight—or to see Jeff’s rosy post-coitus glow. Instead, I slipped into my apartment and kept the lights turned off so no one could see that I was home. With the blinds closed I watched All in the Family , the episode where Archie gets locked in the basement. Buoyed by my meeting with Gale, I was able to laugh—and my laughter almost allowed me to resist the urge for a dish of ice cream. Resistance, of course, proved futile, so while the end credits ran, I snuck downstairs to the guesthouse kitchen and absconded with an unopened pint of Cherry Garcia. I ate two thirds of it straight from the carton watching reruns of The Match Game . Gotta love that Charles Nelson Reilly.

    So I remain in the dark about what actually transpired between Jeff and Luke. But I can surmise this much: Jeff’s not the sort to let tricks hang around too long after sex, so I imagine the kid was sent on his way about thirty minutes after both had shot their loads, with maybe a couple of movie posters rolled up in his backpack as consolation prizes. If Luke had been hoping to weasel his way into Jeff’s life in order to jumpstart his own writing career, no doubt he was keenly disappointed. I know Jeff all too well.

    Jeff. Jeffrey Michael O’Brien. I lie here wide awake shaking my head as I think about him. Even as he plans his goddamn wedding, he’s rolling around in bed with boys he picks up off the street.

    Well, at least I had Luke first.

    “Damn,” I say, sitting up in bed.

    I can’t sleep. I punch my pillow, resettle myself on my side. But the silence of the room overwhelms me. The rain has stopped. Gone is the steady, reassuring beat against the glass of the skylights. I find myself thinking, as I do quite often lately when I can’t fall asleep, about Joey’s new boyfriend. Except that he’s not so new, at least not anymore. Surely by now they’ve settled into a routine, with their own set of little code words and habits, like Joey and I used to have. Does Joey still call hair in the shower drain “goopers”? And has the boyfriend figured out the best way to make sure Joey starts his day in a good mood is to get up before him and make sure there are no goopers in the drain?

    The new boyfriend is blond. And a goy. I know, because Jeff saw the two of them in New York at Gay Pride. Until then, I’d been insistent that I didn’t want to know what the boyfriend looked like. But of course, on another level, I was desperate to know. So after feigning disinterest for about a minute and a half, I begged Jeff to tell me.

    “Tall, blond, pretty hunky,” he reported.

    “God damn it,” I muttered.

    “Body’s definitely better than the face,” Jeff assessed. “Kind of a heavy brow, a little Herman Munsterish.”

    “Oh, that’s much better.”

    “But awesome pecs and bis though.”

    I was no longer listening. All that mattered was that Joey’s new boyfriend had a monster face. I now refer to him as Herman. I have no idea what his real name is, and I don’t care to know. Herman suits him just fine.

    My arm is going stiff lying on my side.

    “Fuck.”

    I sit up again, letting out a long sigh. I know now it’s impossible to fall asleep without chemical assistance. I throw off the sheet and place my feet against the hardwood floor. Even before I make it to the bathroom I remember that I’ve used up all my sleeping