The Trouble Boy, page 19
He started to cry. “If I have it, I don’t want to know. I want at least two months not to have it.”
“Jamie, I’m sure you don’t have it!”
“I don’t know about that. I talked about it with this new doctor. Did you know that the week after the party, I came down with a terrible fever? I was in bed for two days with the flu and exhausted for a week. They say that happens sometimes right after you get it.”
“Maybe, but you had also partied pretty hard and could have caught something else.”
“I party all the time and I don’t get the flu.”
I tried to change the subject. “Why don’t you look on the Internet about alternative therapies, what kind of drugs and stuff are out there?”
“You think I have it already, don’t you?”
“No, I just think it’s better to be informed.”
“I can’t do that. Have you ever looked at that information? It’s so depressing! Weight loss, for example. If I weighed any less, I’d fall through the cracks in the sidewalk! And did you know that people with AIDS can lose their hearing? No, I’m assuming I don’t have it. That’s the only way I can deal with this.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid,” I said.
“Oh, I’m not allowed to do anything stupid, while you’re off fucking with Xander?”
“Fucking safely. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, but what do you know about him? Nothing. You met him in a bar. He could be positive.”
“You’re right,” I said. “He could be.”
“And the only difference is, you don’t know it.”
He was torturing me, as if he knew about the condom already, the condom I didn’t give him. But there was no way he could know, and I wasn’t sure if I should tell him. I knew I would have to eventually, but I wanted to put it off as long as possible.
Xander contacted me at work four days later. He thanked me for the ticket to the premiere, which I appreciated, even though he was four days late. So much for Southern graciousness.
“When can I see you?” I asked, hoping it would be soon.
“Actually, I’m going away this weekend.”
“Really, where?” Maybe he was going to visit friends in Boston.
“I’m going down to Florida for a retreat. It’s called New Life Directions for Men. You get in touch with yourself through meditation, drum circles, stuff like that.”
Drum circles?
“Is it gay?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “A friend from work invited me.” Why hadn’t he invited me? I would have gone.
I told him to call me when he got back.
I did a Web search for “New Life Directions,” and found the institute’s site. “New Life Directions for Men is a holistic healing center,” it read, and listed the activities and workshops offered. At the bottom, it said, “All activities are clothing optional.”
I looked closer at the pictures on the site. The men in the pictures were draped in towels or skimpy loincloths, though I suspected this modesty was for the sake of promotion. I looked closely at one of the photos: there was a guy in the background who was fully naked—
“Are you looking at porn?” Cameron said, suddenly right behind me.
I turned around, blushing. “Actually, I don’t know what I’m looking at,” I said. “Xander is going on this retreat, and I just found out it’s clothing optional.”
“I have a friend who went on that,” Cameron said. “It’s supposed to be one big orgy.”
“I thought it was about spiritual awakening,” I said.
“Right,” Cameron said: “I think it’s about awakening your cock.”
I conferred with Donovan and Jamie and they agreed.
“I don’t know, Toby,” Jamie said. “It could be real, or it could be a big fuck fest. I think it’s weird, though, that he didn’t mention the ‘clothing optional’ part.”
“There’s something strange about him,” Donovan said. “Are you sure he’s the right person for you?”
I was sure Donovan was jealous. He had been unresponsive to me for all these months, choosing random hookups instead, and now that I was dating someone, it annoyed him.
The retreat made me uneasy, but I had faith in Xander. Why would he try to jeopardize our burgeoning relationship? I was a great boyfriend who could offer him perks like movie premieres, we had been having fun together, and we were even having good sex. What more could he want? Why would he want to sleep with anyone else?
I had been monitoring Jamie like a hawk, as I felt like I was responsible for his well-being. Having failed him before, I wasn’t going to disappoint him again.
When we went out, he would often beg off early, pleading exhaustion. I thought he was trying to conserve his energy, until I learned he had been going to the Cock, the bar Donovan sometimes frequented, and picking up guys. He even told Donovan he had been hanging out in the backroom, a den of iniquity where men would stand around jerking or sucking, their pants around their ankles, lit only by a single red bulb. It was like something out of the pre-AIDS era, except this was twenty years later, and these men just wanted to forget.
I decided to confront him on Saturday night over drinks at Wonder Bar. It was the weekend that Xander was on his retreat.
“I need to talk to you,” I told Jamie.
“Yeah?” he said. He was tipsy, and I knew where he would be headed after this.
“I’ve heard you’ve been slutting around, and I, I just feel like I can’t let you do that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why do you care?”
“Jamie, you know exactly why I care. Besides, what about those other people? Do you want to accidentally give it to someone? Or get infected with something else? I mean, you don’t even know if you have it, but what if you do?”
“Toby, it’s none of your business. Maybe this is how I’m getting through all this.”
“You have so much time. It’s not like these are the last two months of your life.”
“You don’t understand how it is. You’ll never be able to understand.”
“Please, Jamie,” I said. “I’ll do anything for you.”
“Anything?” He sounded interested.
“You and I can hook up. Safely. We can jerk off together.” I couldn’t believe I was saying this. It was crazy. There was no way I could follow through. But perhaps it would be my penance for what I had done.
“No,” he said. “That wouldn’t be right.”
Though I was relieved he had said no, I was also embarrassed that I had just been rejected by Jamie.
He paused for a moment and then looked at me. “Why are you talking like this after all these months?”
“I feel like ... I feel like the whole thing is my fault.”
“Your fault? I’m the one who got fucked. It was my stupid decision.”
I had to tell him. I didn’t know how Jamie would react, but I needed to come clean. I was afraid he would be angry, but that was a risk I would have to take.
I took a deep breath. “There’s something you don’t know about that night.”
“There’s a lot I don’t know about that night.” He stared down into his drink.
“No, I mean, there’s something I did—”
He looked at me in confusion.
“Rico asked me for a condom and I didn’t give him one,” I said. “I didn’t want you two to—I didn’t know he was going to do it anyway. And in the closet, of all places.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said.
“So are you mad at me? I mean, this has been bugging me for months. I feel like if you get AIDS—” I realized I was shouting, and I needed to keep it down. “If you get sick, it will be my fault.”
“Fuck you, Toby. First you treat me like I’m some charity sex case, then you want me to make you feel better about your role that night?”
“Hey—it’s not my fault you didn’t use a condom. I just feel bad that I could have provided one and I didn’t.”
I was annoyed, but I knew he was right. He was the one who was sick, and I was just being selfish, thinking only of how it affected me, whether or not my guilt could be absolved.
“I guess you’re right,” Jamie said. “I got myself into it. It’s not your responsibility to be handing out condoms at your party, at least not at a party in a one-bedroom apartment. I still can’t believe it happened. Every time I think about it, I can’t believe that was me.”
I looked at Jamie as he sat with me in the dim light of the bar. Part of me couldn’t believe this was me, either.
Xander was supposed to return from Florida on Sunday night, but I didn’t hear from him until Wednesday. I had also started to worry about some of the little hints he had been dropping. He told me he had a group of friends from home, and they were all really close, just like the boys and I were close here in New York. The difference was that whenever they were together, they would all sleep together, swapping beds like a game of sexual musical chairs.
“We do that whenever they come into town,” he said, and I wondered whether this practice would be precluded by our being together.
When he finally called me on Wednesday, he said he was booked until Saturday with “friends from out of town.” He didn’t say if they were the same friends. I wanted to meet them, to assert my presence, but he didn’t invite me, and I wasn’t going to ask.
On Thursday, Cameron told me he remembered where he had seen Xander. “He works at the Polo store on Madison Avenue. I was shopping there last month. I think he works in linens.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “He’s an architect. He works in Union Square.” Did he work in Union Square? I had never seen his office. Whenever I called him on his cell phone during the day, he would say he was at work, and I would imagine him sitting among drafting tables and blueprints.
“No, I’m pretty sure it was him.”
“Maybe he was just shopping,” I said. “He loves Polo.” I knew I was trying to save face with my boss. It was important to me that Cameron thought I had a hot architect boyfriend. It was the one area in my life in which I could be viewed as a success.
On my lunch hour, I took the train up to the Polo store. Housed in the old Rhinelander mansion, it was the perfect example of fabricated WASPiness; it was not hard to imagine Xander working amidst the auction-bought antiques, oil paintings, and Oriental rugs. It was artificial history for people who didn’t like the past they had.
I went up to the linens department and hid behind a giant armoire, pretending to examine some throw pillows.
I looked around the corner, and there he was.
There was something so prissy about linens, working with pillow shams and dust ruffles and thread counts. He was talking to a well-known socialite who was buying sheets for her house in the Hamptons. His voice was artificially honey-sweet, the male version of a Southern belle. I imagined he was quite good at what he did.
All the pieces fit together: he had bought his clothes with an employee discount; his impeccable sense of grooming was gleaned from working in a place with so many mirrors.
A Brazilian salesclerk approached me. “Can I help you with something?”
“No,” I whispered. “I’m just looking.”
He looked at me strangely.
“Sore throat,” I said, putting my hand on my Adam’s apple.
He scurried away, afraid he might catch something.
After the socialite left with her purchases, Xander began neatly folding up the linens he had been showing her. I wanted to run away, but he looked up and saw me.
I should have said something clever, like, “I need something for a queen,” or “Do you have any shams in this department?” but instead all that came out was, “Hi.”
“Oh,” he said. “Hi.”
“So . . .” I said. “Career change?”
“I’m sorry, I should have explained—I never should have told you that—”
“That you weren’t an architect?”
“Right,” he said. “But you seemed so excited about it, I didn’t know how I could let you down.”
“And you didn’t go to Harvard,” I said. This would explain why he had always changed the subject when I brought up his college experience. It had been fine with me, since I rarely felt like talking about my time at college either.
“If I’d gone to Harvard, do you think I’d be working here?”
I frowned. “Why did you lie to me about all that?”
“Would you have dated me if I had told you the truth?”
I thought back to that night at Rocket. “Yes,” I said, “I would have. And I would have respected you more, too.”
But he had a point. Would I have? A small part of me felt sorry for him, for the fact that he felt he needed to lie about his background.
“Well,” I said, “it was nice knowing you.”
I headed towards the exit and then turned around. “You know something else? You don’t even dress well.”
He had an amused look on his face. It was a pathetic exit line, and we both knew it.
I walked down the stairs of the Polo mansion, my chest hot and my legs shaking. I had wanted things to work with Xander, but that wasn’t what was making me angry. More than anything, it was that once again, as soon as there was something in my life that made me happy, it was taken away from me.
I met Jamie and Donovan for dinner that night at Odeon. Jamie had picked it because it was close to work and he could expense it. I suspected, too, that it thrilled him to hang out among the neo-yuppie crowd.
Strangely, they weren’t surprised about what had happened with Xander.
“There was something weird about him,” Jamie said. “I asked him about a few people I knew from Harvard, and he didn’t know anyone.”
“He had a Harvard key chain,” I said, though I knew this meant nothing.
Donovan laughed, which annoyed me. “Any idiot can buy a Harvard key chain,” he said. “He’s probably been dining out on this story all year!”
“You could have said something to me,” I said.
“We wanted to,” Donovan said, and I detected a slight sneer in his voice. “You probably didn’t know he was cheating on you either, right?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Jamie said.
“What?” I could feel my face getting flushed.
“Whenever we went out, he was always grabbing us. He stuck his hand down my pants, he grabbed Jamie’s ass.”
“I hope you guys told him to stop.”
“We did. Actually, we told him if he kept it up, we would have to tell you.”
“And kick his ass,” Jamie said, though the idea of Jamie kicking anyone’s ass was laughable.
“And that night when he told you he had to work? We saw him later at G.”
Donovan delivered this last piece of evidence so triumphantly that I wanted to wring his neck. It was as if he was pleased my dating success had turned into a massive, crashing failure.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I asked.
“We were going to,” Jamie said. “But you seemed so happy with him, we didn’t want to ruin it for you. We thought by telling him to keep his hands to himself, he might get the message. He said he wasn’t going to do it anymore, but you know how people like that are.”
I had believed that Xander was an architect, that he had graduated from Harvard, that he would be faithful to me. I wanted to believe Xander’s fantasy so much, I had helped him create it.
My relationship with Xander, if I could even call it a relationship, had lasted a total of three weeks and four days, but it had left me emotionally exhausted. I dragged myself into the office on Friday morning, resolved that I wasn’t going to believe just anyone when they told me about their job or credentials. It wasn’t even that I wanted someone with an elaborate pedigree. Mostly I just wanted someone who was honest.
Cameron must have noticed that I seemed depressed, because he came into my cubicle right before lunch.
“How are you doing, Toby? You look a little down.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Broke up with my boyfriend.”
“Really? Did he work at Polo, or was that just my imagination?”
“He did,” I said. “He lied to me about it.”
Cameron patted my shoulder. “Hey, buddy, don’t worry about it. It’s happened to all of us. A guy I dated just out of college said he was an advertising exec and turned out to be a waiter.”
“Did you dump him when you found out?”
“No, but we ended up breaking up anyway a few weeks later.” He looked around my cubicle as if he had never seen it before. “So you’ve got some pitches, right? I’ve been thinking about some development people you should meet.”
“That would be great,” I said, brightening.
“I’ll set something up,” he said. “We’ll get you a deal somewhere.”
The possibility excited me, especially since I had recently started writing another screenplay. After the Lola project had been terminated, I looked over the other screenplays I had started in college; each was about fifty pages, plus an outline. In reviewing them, however, I decided they were trite, inconsequential. I wanted to write a story that mattered. I started working on a semiautobiographical story about a young guy who moves to New York after college. I didn’t know yet how it was going to end.
11
A few weeks later, Donovan and I were at Hell, a bar in the meatpacking district, when we met a guy who was a twenty-one-year-old industrial design student at Pratt. He would be graduating in May and already had a paid apprenticeship lined up at a firm that designed housewares, the kind sold at the MoMA design shop.
He had definite potential.
“It’s nice to meet some normal people here,” he said, leaning his lanky frame against the bar. “Last time I was here, this guy came up to me and asked me if I was interested in modeling. I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ He gave me his card, and it turned out he was a porn producer.”
