There was, after all, again, a girlfriend.
Paul had found this out the same week in which he’d been un-friended by a twink with whom things had begun so well. That boy was a torso, black t-shirt lifted in the practiced-learned-from-porn pose to reveal one hairless nipple and inchoate abs, feathered with barely there happy trail arrowing into the half-inch of visible Fruit of the Loom tighty-whities —
(or whitey-tighties, or dong thongs, or grandma panties, depending on to whom you were speaking; All he knew was that before Mark Wahlberg was known to be an asshole — and not the good kind — and was bulging with vpl — that’s visible penis line, for those who haven’t spent their lives in the gay ghetto — in his MarkyMark Calvin Klein briefs, we called them tighty-whities, and by “we”, I mean the shapers of the zeitgeist and deciders of all trends, we, the gays.) —
— waistband, just below the navel, where the trail got thicker and darker as it made its way to the dick Paul would now, never see. Never, because he, Paul, had never understood, would never understand — the absence of “yes” was, itself, an answer.
And so that same week in which he was unfriended by that twink, too, he was blocked by two long-term regulars. And then, discovered there was, after all, a girlfriend.
Even though he made Blanche DuBois certain to be seen only in flattering lack of light, had he, Paul wondered, played the last scene in which he could claim to be 49? He’d been 39 until he’d turned 55, at which point circumstance and a particularly unpleasant frenemy-with-benefits, Keeth — best to avoid those who change the spelling of their name to absurd concoctions; if they need to resort to paronomasia to consider themselves interesting and unique, they’re likely to be invested in proving how much less interesting than they are you — had said, at a most inopportune time, “So, really, how old are you for real?” Paul had then updated his dishonesty to 49, an age he’d worn so far without challenge, all the way there, where he was, at 61 — a number he still didn’t quite believe, how could he have gotten that old and yet still feel so unifinished? Unstarted, even. But, 61, that week when he was unfriended by that twink, and too, was blocked by two long-term regulars. And discovered there was, after all, a girlfriend.
It was becoming more and more difficult to deny his slide — if not hurtle — into senescence and its deleterious effect on his ability to trick. But that hadn’t stopped him. Quite the opposite. How much time did he have left? And, Paul had read Rechy’s NUMBERS and CITY OF THE NIGHT in mid-puberty, and so when he started to seriously serially trick, anonymity and volume were the goals, with just a soupcon of Jong’s ziplesss fuck-vibe thrown in whenever possible. So, the fact that he could no longer remember names wasn’t a problem; he never offered his own unless asked, at which point he lied, claiming as his the name he used on Gmail and Grindr, Charley Kringas; thus far, not one of his liaisons had said, “Hey, that’s one of the characters in MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.” Which was, in itself, depressing, discovering how little the boys with big dicks knew about anything Paul considered to be essential knowledge. And it wasn’t just that they didn’t know MERRILY or FLAHOOLEY, it was that every single male he had known who’d shared MACK & MABEL-trivia-wisdom was gone.
Paul had, he realized, aged into the kind of loneliness he’d used to pity when it was worn by the men at the bars where he’d spent his youth under mirror balls, and there wasn’t a chorus line long enough of pretty, naked boys that could fill the chasm left by absence of cohort.
Sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he fell into someone with whom he could be Paul, not Charley (or Daddy, or …), someone who was actually interested in what made him the Paul he was. Someone who wanted to hear his stories.
“ I spent a year hot-gluing feathers and sequins and beads onto hatbands when cowboys and western shit was the fad because of Dallas and Urban Cowboy.”
It had been an okay job. In New Jersey. But living arrangements got ugly and it was New Jersey and how long were cowboys going to last? He later heard that the boisterously flamboyant and out there — and, Paul suspected, delusional — owner, Flo, who’d called him their “third person” since he was their only employee and seemingly their only friend, and her husband, whose name he could never remember, had ridden the Western trend into bankruptcy and ended up living in their car in the parking lot of the Jersey strip mall where the hatbands were made.
He hadn’t needed to know that. He hadn’t wanted to know that.
And so, when he started to wonder what he’d missed by not being with someone with whom he could be Paul, with whom he could share Paul stories, he reminded himself that most of those stories ended like Flo and her husband, whatever his name had been: ignominiously.
He was, he thought, in the place he belonged. He wasn’t significant other material. Youthful obsessions with Susan Hayward movies and Jacqueline Susann novels and the eleven o’clock ballads in musicals had early on infected him on a cellular level with the belief he was meant to live a backstreet, heartbroken, tragic end sort of existence.
And he’d learned the hard way — he had no walls. When he’d gone into counseling after the man he’d been in love with, failed to make a life with, couldn’t let go of, had killed himself, his therapist had finally told him when he was again bemoaning someone’s behavior, “You do know, don’t you, that most people are not like you. Most people don’t feel and hear and bleed everyone else’s stuff. You have no walls. You have to learn to protect your heart. Save some empathy for yourself.”
He hadn’t believed her. He’d wanted to. But he’d been so long told he wasn’t special. He couldn’t be. Not by then. And if he had been, well, there would be one less dead man and Paul would have been coupled up with him.
So, that week, in which he’d been un-friended by a twink with whom things had begun so well, and, too, was blocked by two long-term regulars, when he discovered there was, after all, a girlfriend, that week when his teeny-tiny, wee little inkling that he might, just might want to tell this one with whom he’d been hooking up for a year his real name, was dashed when this one said, “We can meet at my girlfriend’s parent’s house. I’m housesitting while they’re all on vacation,” and Paul knew, again, that it was not his turn, that he was, indeed going rather than not going, that life was no fucking cabaret, and so long dearie, and if only he hadn’t walked into Paul’s life, and well, he, Paul, was indeed an eleven o’clock ballad, and not made of the stuff of couple-dom or in-love-ability, but rather, he was then, and always would be, even in the stories he told himself, alone, third person.