The Trouble Boy, page 1
Outstanding praise for Tom Dolby and The Trouble Boy
The San Francisco Chronicle bestseller!
A Main Selection of the InsightOut Book Club!
#1 Amazon.com Gay & Lesbian Bestseller!
#1 InsightOut Book Club bestseller!
“Hip and sexy . . . Dolby’s writing is smooth and his flashy scene-setting spot-on . . . [the novel] could win Dolby a solid following.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Tom Dolby’s debut is an entertaining tableau of the lives and loves of struggling freelancer-cum-aspiring screenwriter Toby Griffin and his own vicious (or vacuous) circle . . . they’ll keep you laughing all the way to Sunday brunch.”
—Genre
“The directness of Dolby’s observations have a way of nestling up to the reader . . . Toby’s modest little corner of the center of the world is so accessible, it’s not long before the pages begin to zip along, block by block, like a 5 AM cab ride home through the Village.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
“Tom Dolby has concocted a tart, frothy, and tantalizing novel, one that has the snap, wit, seduction and vitality of a new Bright Lights, Big City. Uproariously funny and unexpectedly poignant, The Trouble Boy is as juicy and delicious as a Manhattan with a twist.”
—Melissa de la Cruz, author of Cat’s Meow
“Tom Dolby’s debut novel The Trouble Boy is an alternately fun, sexy and serious chronicle of life lived on the guest lists of downtown New York . . . Career woes, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, family matters, and social situations provide this gay male version of Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw with enough drama to fill at least one book (but we’re hoping for more). Dolby deftly handles his subject matter, keeping the pages turning and the intrigue stirring.”
—Next Magazine (New York)
“It’s always great fun to watch a character like Toby wrestle with his demons, because you’re never quite sure who’s going to win.”
—Bart Yates, award-winning author of Leave Myself Behind
“An accurate depiction of gay-boy life in the Big Apple... the lesson of the book is that nothing good happens in life until you start living for the present.”
—Out.com
“A racy romp of fabulosity, fierceness, scandal, and enlightenment.”
—Michael Musto, The Village Voice
Please turn the page for more extraordinary reviews for Tom Dolby . . .
More outstanding praise for Tom Dolby and The Trouble Boy
“Like Tom Wolfe’s everlasting satire Bonfire of the Vanities, Dolby’s novel weaves a tale of someone whose moral compass is called into question in the aftermath of an accident—only this book features some hot boy-on-boy action.”
—Instinct
“The Trouble Boy is a gripping debut novel that roars along at a cracking pace, delivering thrills and shocks, as well as poignant moments . . . Smart, sexy, and page-turningly good. . . .”
—Bay Windows (Boston)
“Tom Dolby may have accomplished something very smart here—a book about veneer composed entirely of that veneer, but exposing, in its final moments, a sweetly beating heart.”
—Metro Weekly (Washington, DC)
“Breakout novelist Tom Dolby emerges as the new It Boy of gay literature.”
—The Dallas Voice
“Dolby’s debut novel—about being gay and 22, yearning for love but settling (for now) for sex, and striving for literary and monetary success in the shark pool of contemporary Manhattan—is both frothy and solid, a dandy fusion of hugely entertaining satire and seductively humane sentimentality.”
—In Newsweekly (New England)
“Debuts rarely go this well. Tom Dolby’s The Trouble Boy is a rare example of mature, seamless writing on the first time out. Not too much needless action, not too many quirky plot twists that don’t ever happen to anyone in real life. Just a solid, if flawed, leading man, and a well-written story.”
—OutSmart Magazine (Houston)
“It turns out that hip urban flashiness, when narrated by a slightly bumbling, less-than-glamorous, unlucky hero, is surprisingly fresh and fun.”
—SFGate.com
“Exhilarating ... picture a male version of Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City . . . Tom Dolby does an excellent job depicting the nightlife of a young, handsome, up-and-coming twentysomething, who happens to be gay. His biting and harsh, yet realistic depiction of Toby is commendable . . . Readers, gay or straight, will relate to Toby’s journey.”
—The Nob Hill Gazette, (San Francisco)
THE TROUBLE BOY
a novel
Tom Dolby
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Outstanding praise for Tom Dolby and The Trouble Boy
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
A READING GROUP GUIDE - THE TROUBLE BOY
Copyright Page
for my mother and father
The world is our salvation and our danger.
—Arthur Rimbaud, “Youth”
“I’ve got too many problems. Really, I’m not the
person to get involved with. I’m trouble.”
“Honey, trouble is my middle name.”
—Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, Manhattan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My extreme gratitude to everyone who has supported me on the first novelist’s journey.
Thanks to my agent, Jandy Nelson at Manus & Associates, for her enthusiasm and encouragement, and to my editor, John Scognamiglio, for his vision and patient guidance.
To my first readers: Sarah Kate Levy, who was always willing, from start to finish, to offer notes on a new draft; John Morgan, who provided invaluable editing advice; and Tom Williams, for his insight and perspective.
To my younger brother, David, for his love and understanding.
To all my friends, but especially Laird Adamson, Kevin Arnovitz, Antonia Clark, Katie Davis, Melissa de la Cruz, Alexander Dodge, Stewart Foehl, Tina and Marisa Frank, Dave Friedman, Tina Hay, Mike Karsh, John L’Ecuyer, Marcia and Bill Levy, Joel Michaely, Abdi Nazemian, Pete Nowalk, Charles Ogilvie, Marissa Shipman, Jesse Slansky, Jay Victor, Ed Vincent, and Mary Clare Williams.
To my writing mentors through the years: John Crowley, Patricia Jones, Shelly Lowenkopf, Gina Nahai, John Rechy, Caroline Rody, and Sarah Tames.
Finally, I would like to give loving thanks to the RTB: Juliano Corbetta, Joe Daniszewski, Ken Henderson, Evan Jacobs, Giovanni Lepori, Nir Liberboim, Ryan Pedlow, Adam Plotkin, Ilya Seglin, Ken Sena, Doug Stambaugh, and Andrea Valeri. You make New York the city that it is for me.
1
Two weeks after I moved to New York, I met Jamie Weissman at one of those parties where people don’t talk to anyone they don’t know already. The living room of the Chelsea apartment was packed with girls in headbands and guys with banker butt, a condition that afflicts first-year investment analysts who spend too much time at their desks and too little time at the gym. We were in the gayest neighborhood on earth, but it wasn’t that kind of party.
I knew I had worn the wrong thing when my plaid clam-diggers, perfect for the early September heat, were met with sneers from a group standing in the hallway. Most people were wearing khakis and I looked like I was ready for the beach.
In the kitchen, I poured myself several fingers of vodka and mixed in some off-brand cranberry juice. A guy in a pink Polo shirt and glasses with tortoise shell frames came up to me.
“Ever get the feeling you’re at the wrong party?”
I looked down at him quizzically. His curly chestnut hair was receding, more like a thirty-year-old’s than someone who was probably twenty-two, twenty-three tops.
“Oh, never mind,” he continued. “Sometimes I just say whatever comes into my head. I’m sort of A.D.D. that way. I take Ritalin for it.”
I never understood people who bragged about the meds they were on. I had been taking sixty milligrams of Paxil every day for the past four years to combat my depression, but I didn’t go around telling people about it.
“Hey, can you pour me some of that?” he asked.
I poured him some vodka, and he dropped in a few ice cubes.
“You want a mixer?” I held up a bottle of tonic water. I thought it was obnoxious when people drank booze straight to show off.
“Naw, it’s a taste I acquired at prep school. Gets you drunk faster.”
“Where’d you go?” I asked. I had gone to a small boarding school in Connecticut, the kind whose glossy catalogs were featured in The Preppy Handbook.
“Oh, it was in Jersey. I was a day student. Actually, most people were day students. But we played all the other prep schools.” He sipped his drink. “You’re not part of this Princeton crowd, are you? ’Cause I’ve never seen you before.”
“I went to Yale,” I admitted.
“Ecch, New Haven.”
New Haven was a place where your car would be broken into if you left change on the dashboard, but I still hated snobbery about my college town.
We gulped our
“This is so weird,” he said, “hanging out with so many 924 people. It’s like work.”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, God.” He laughed and wiped a drop of sweat from his bony forehead. “Okay, like the digits on a phone, 429 is G-A-Y, so that backwards is 924, get it?”
“You’re gay?” I should have guessed by the pink shirt; no real men wore preppy pink anymore.
“Yeah. Aren’t you? ’Cause if you aren’t, then I’ve just made a big fucking idiot of myself.”
It could be fun, posing as straight. Should I hold out a little longer?
“No, I am,” I finally said. It must have been my pants that gave me away. “I just didn’t expect to meet anyone—”
“Neither did I! When we got here, I was like, fifteen minutes, that’s it! And then we get into this conversation with this guy, and before I know it, I’ve had four vodkas, and I’m like, shit, where did the night go? Come sit with us, we’re in the bedroom. You can smoke there.” He offered his hand. “I’m Jamie Weissman.”
“Toby Griffin,” I said, shaking his hand in an odd gesture of formality. I followed him through the living room into the bedroom.
I had spent the past four years in New Haven at that venerable university that promised light and truth to those who passed through its portals. What I had found instead was beer and boys. After a sexless four years at boarding school, I was ready to sleep with every available gay undergrad in the tristate area. It was at a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Co-op dance (a mouthful, to be sure—they figured if you could say it, you were really gay) that I got drunk on cheap rum punch and allowed myself to be seduced by Kent Simmons, a sophomore whose room in Davenport College was plastered with advertisements from fashion magazines. I learned from Kent the technique I would use for the next four years: attract, anesthetize, and go in for the kill. It served him well that night, and resulted in a six-week relationship, the first of many during my college years. I had never been able to break that six-week barrier; like divine intervention, something always came between me and the object of my affection.
Now that I was in New York, I was desperate to meet new people. Though a number of friends from college had landed in the city, I didn’t want random play dates, scattered through the city like birdseed. I wanted a package deal, a take-it-all-or-leave-it, one-phone-call-means-dinner-for-six. So when a distant acquaintance had invited me to his housewarming bash, I accepted the invitation, though I hated showing up at parties alone.
The bedroom of the apartment was filled with smoke.
“Here, sit on this side,” Jamie said, moving over on the couch.
“Why?”
“It’s my good side. I’m deaf in my right ear. I had meningitis when I was a baby.”
I sat down on his good side and lit a cigarette.
Jamie introduced me to his friend David. “We work at Pelham Robertson together. Investment banking. What do you do?”
“I’m a freelance writer,” I said. My last professional piece had been published over a year ago, when I interned at Flix, an indie film magazine. Currently, I was gainfully unemployed. That it was already September and I didn’t have a job made me feel like a loser.
“Who do you write for?” Jamie asked.
“Lots of places.” I named a few publications that I had written for in previous summers. I knew, though, that freelancing wasn’t going to keep me in vodka cranberries; a steady editorial position was in order.
“Are you looking for something permanent?” David asked. He had a slight Minnesota accent that reminded me of the hockey players from my high school.
“I know a site that’s hiring,” Jamie offered. “CityStyle.com. I think they’re looking for a nightlife editor.”
Even though I was getting career leads from a couple of investment bankers, I made a mental note to check out the site. The summer before last, while reporting for Downtown File, a glossy monthly, I had become quite adept at balancing a notebook, a drink, and a cigarette all at once. Unfortunately, Downtown File had folded after its publisher was arrested for dealing coke out of his loft.
Jamie launched into a story about his parents, two dermatologists who lived in Upper Montclair. (“The nice part of Jersey,” he explained. “Near where The Sopranos is filmed.”)
“My parents, they don’t understand 429 people. They always refer to it as that ‘disgusting lifestyle.’ I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell them.”
He spoke to me urgently, as if I were a long-lost soul mate he had recently rediscovered.
“This crowd is depressing,” David said. “Let’s get going.”
Jamie invited me to join them for a drink at G, a bar off Seventh Avenue. Before we left, I stopped by the bathroom to check my acne. Everything seemed under control. I always looked better after I’d had a few drinks.
I opened the bathroom door to find two jocks talking in the hall. “Can you believe Jamie Weissman is a fag?” one asked the other.
I stared the two down, disgusted, before leaving the party. Once we were on the street, Jamie looked ridiculously thin, like a rat that had been drenched in water, as he tried to keep pace with the buff David. I later learned that no matter how many protein shakes, late night food deliveries, or sessions he had with his trainer, Jamie was never able to gain any weight. It was like a reverse thyroid condition, one many guys would kill for, though it made Jamie miserable.
David, however, had definite potential. A hulking giant of a guy, he looked like someone who could take care of me. And an investment banker! Finance types had always bored me, but somehow the idea they could be gay had never crossed my mind. It made the prospect of number-crunching just a little more appealing. David, I was sure, was smart and sensitive. I would cook him dinner each night and he would entertain me with tales of adventure in high finance. I would iron his shirts—well, I would send them out to be ironed—and make sure a fresh latte and the paper were waiting for him in the morning....
We arrived at G. A lounge with pulsing disco remixes and sullen boys stirring their frozen Cosmopolitans, it was worlds away from the party around the corner.
“Hey, sexy boys!” shouted a young guy sitting on a leather banquette. He had a South American accent and was a dead ringer for Ricky Martin, if Ricky Martin were twenty and wore deconstructed jeans and Prada sneakers. He gave Jamie a peck on the cheek and David a kiss on the lips. “I was waiting for like two hours at the Big Cup!”
“You wouldn’t have liked the party anyway,” David said.
“I have to keep you out of trouble, you know!” Ricky Martin bounced up and down on the tips of his sneakers.
“There wasn’t any trouble for us to get into,” Jamie said. “But we did meet Toby.” He motioned to me. “Toby, this is David’s boyfriend Alejandro.”
I offered my hand, but Alejandro pulled me closer and kissed me on both cheeks. “I’m from Argentina,” he said. “That’s how we like to do it there.” He looked me over. “Oooh, I love your pants!”
Though my future wedding plans with David were ruined, I was still charmed by this little South American pixie, who explained to me that he was studying menswear design at Parsons. The four of us ordered drinks and sat down, Jamie once again arranging himself so I was on his good side.
“I had this boyfriend senior year,” Jamie said, leaning in towards me. “We met online, and it turned out he was the head of our debate team. Totally closeted. So was I. We used to meet in these random places to have sex—classrooms and whatnot—to keep the secret from our roommates. Now he’s working for a Republican congressman in D.C.”
“Are you still seeing each other?” I asked.
“He dumped me for a freshman who joined the squad.”
