Free Where The Boys Are by William J. Mann Page B

found another way to live. I’ve become more aware of the sun and the stars and the wind than ever before in my life, reveling in the light that’s like nowhere else on earth.
    “We still haven’t decided what we’ll name our house,” I say quietly.
    “Nirvana,” she announces, suddenly looking up at me with wide, eager eyes.
    “Wow.”
    “It just came to me. What do you think?”
    I consider it. It feels a bit extreme, but I trust moments like these.
    “Nirvana,” I say, smiling. “Nirvana it will be.”

New Year’s Day, Chelsea
    Jeff
    “T his way, boys.”
    Our waiter is a harried queen covered in glitter. Whatever he touches, like my shoulder, is left graced with a sprinkling of red and silver and green. A throng of gay men stands waiting for their tables, their eyes puffy, their cheeks shadowed with morning stubble. We pass through them, getting a whiff of the cold January air that still clings to their leather jackets and wool scarves. The poor waiter looks exhausted; he’s probably been showing people to tables ever since the restaurant opened at six A.M. Now it’s three-thirty in the afternoon, and we’re all still looking for breakfast.
    “Here you go.” The waiter hands us each a menu and gestures toward a table near the kitchen. The smell of bacon snaps through the air. “I’ll be back for your order in a minute.” Glitter sprinkles onto the table as he flits off to seat the next people in line.
    I take the seat next to the wall. Anthony sits opposite me, transfixed by the residue of glitter on the table. He presses his forefinger onto it, lifting his hand to show me. “Like sparkly snowflakes,” he says, grinning like a little kid.
    In the past twelve hours, I’ve discovered he’s filled with a wonder rare among gay men, usually so worshipful of irony and cynicism. Anthony gets excited by little, ordinary things, like the way the exhaust fan in the bathroom quickly evaporates the steam on the mirror, or the sight of kids with a puppy on a leash. With undisguised glee he gazed into store windows, ginning at their moving Santas and elves. He laughed without affectation at the antics of a street vendor and his pet monkey. He caught snowflakes on his tongue, something I would never, ever consider doing on the sidewalks of Manhattan.
    Looking across the table at him now, I observe the deep dimples that indent his cheeks when he smites—a precious little detail I’d failed to notice in the darkness of the night before. I can’t help but smile myself as I watch him study his menu, his forehead scrunched up and his lips pursed in thought, as if choosing between eggs and pancakes were a life-or-death decision.
    “So what’s your last name, Anthony?” I ask, breaking the silence.
    He replies something like “Sobby,” without lifting his eyes from the menu.
    “What?” I ask. “What ethnicity is that?”
    His blue eyes peak over his menu. A few specks of glitter sparkle in his dirty-blond hair. “I think it’s some kind of Middle Eastern,” he says.
    “Middle Eastern? You don’t look very Middle Eastern to me. How do you spell it?”
    “S-A-B-E.”
    “I see.” I frown. “So are you adopted?”
    “No. I don’t think so, anyway. Why do you ask?”
    I shrug. “It’s just that... well, never mind.”
    Anthony sets his menu down, folding his hands on top of it. “Blueberry pancakes,” he announces. “That sounds awesome. Do you think they use real blueberries?”
    “Well, I imagine they might be frozen this time of year.”
    “Still.” He beams like a kid at an ice-cream shop. “So what do you do?”
    Now, it might strike you as unusual that it’s taken us this long to finally get around to exchanging such trivia as last names and occupations. But hey, we’ve been busy. Dancing, kissing, then going back to the apartment on Nineteenth Street where Anthony was crashing with a friend. I figured that was the best choice: the way Henry had been dancing with the Windex queen, it