Chapter Forty-Two
Forty-Two
I was sitting on my bed with a dozen or more pamphlets spread out around me.
When Good Gay Men Go Straight
Curbing Your Cravings for Vagina
How to Stay Strictly Dickly: The Pussy-Free Diet
I’d been up all night perusing the dos and don’ts of homosexual living.
One expert advised, “Try to keep your male-female friend ratio balanced. Never have too many female friends around you for more than six hours at a time. A woman’s energy is very powerful, especially when she has her period.
Men (hetero as well as homo) are greatly affected during this time, and the hetero instinct that is built inside us is heightened so much that a homosexual male will begin to fantasize about having sex with females, and a weaker one will actually act on it. ”
I guess I’m a weaker one.
Another expert explained: “While still in our mother’s womb we are female until the second trimester, when our sexual organs begin to fully develop and our bodies reveal if we are to be born male or female.
Because we are female first, and most females are closet lesbians, we retain that primal desire first instilled in us while we are still in our mother’s womb, and so at times the homosexual male will find himself attracted to or desiring to be with women.
It is a natural repercussion of being human; but we as homosexual men must fight to suppress it! ”
The meeting took place in the garden-level apartment owned by “Bob,” who was exactly how I’d imagined him. Tall, thin, neat, and pale. So pale that he was almost translucent.
“Welcome,” he said when he opened the door. A Barbra Streisand tune sailed out from behind him. “Are you here for the meeting?” he asked through his thin pink lips.
“Yes.”
“And your name?”
“Noa—I mean Wayne.”
“Welcome, Wayne.”
The space was tight, but Bob had managed to make it homey. There was a small overstuffed floral love seat and an old steamer trunk being used as a sofa table. Two ivory-colored wing chairs sat on either side of the trunk.
A bamboo ceiling fan whirled lazily above our heads, and in three corners of the room there were towering potted broad-leaf banana plants, giving the space a Havana-like feel.
Beyond the living room was a small hallway that led to a minuscule kitchen, and what I assumed to be the bedroom and bathroom lay beyond that.
“Please sit down,” Bob said.
“Thank you.” I took one of the wing chairs.
“Can I get you some iced tea, lemonade, or water?”
“Iced tea, please,” I said as I crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap.
Bob came back with a blue glass filled with iced tea and a coaster with daffodils across its face.
I sipped some, smiled, and then thought I should say something. “Nice place,” I croaked.
“Thank you,” Bob said as he scurried down the hallway and disappeared. On his return he carried three folding chairs.
“Can I help you with that?”
“No, no, I have it,” he said as he expertly flipped the chairs open and set them out.
Afterward he looked at his watch, sighed, and then placed his hands on his hips and looked directly at me. “I’ll take your payment now.”
Was it fair to have to pay for a service before you were even serviced?
Suppose no one showed? Suppose everyone showed and all we did was sit around playing backgammon and singing Broadway show tunes?
“Okay,” I said, standing up and pulling my wallet from my back pocket.
By seven fifteen, there were twelve of us, including Bob. After the introductions, the meeting got under way and I was astonished by the stories I heard.
“I’ve been having sex with women for three years now,” a large, burly-looking white man named “Jerry,” with a thick mustache and mouselike voice, confessed.
“It all started when my lover and I went to South Beach on vacation. He can’t really take the sun, you know,” he said, and then his voice dropped down to a whisper.
“Skin cancer runs in his family.” The group moaned and nodded their heads.
“Anyway, he left me on the beach because he had a massage appointment, and that’s when it happened.
I mean, I have always been able to admire a woman without wanting to sleep with her—you know what I mean? ”
The men nodded.
“But those women down there, I mean, what the hell do they put in the water? They’re just too beautiful for words, and their shapes, my Lord, it’s like a cartoonist drew them!”
“It’s all of those Cubans!” one man cried out.
“And don’t forget the Haitians!” another one said, using his hands to make the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle.
“Well, by the time my lover’s massage was over and he was tapping me on the shoulder to come to lunch, I had a full-fledged boner and there was no hiding that from him.” Jerry breathed and then turned to the man closest to him, placed a finger on his knee, and said, “I’m very well endowed.”
The man next to him, “George,” I think his name was, pressed his index and middle fingers against his lips to conceal his smile.
“And just like that,” Jerry said with a snap of his fingers, “I was lusting after women. I spent the better part of that vacation avoiding my lover’s advances while I tried to get some booty from our chambermaid.”
The men gasped.
Another story of female addiction was told by “Norman,” a slight Hispanic man with sleek black hair and a long thin nose. He was tall and very good-looking. He reminded me of one of the Abercrombie & Fitch models I’d seen splattered across the fashion magazines.
“I have been gay since I was eight,” he started. His accent was heavenly and very, very Central American. “I had been with a woman once, when I was just twelve—she was my nanny.”
The men leaned back and grabbed their chests in horror.
“Although I remember the experience to have been a pleasurable one, I had already had relations with the twenty-year-old son of the gardener, so I knew what it was I wanted, and that was a man!”
A cheer went up.
“But last year, while I was traveling to Rome,” Norman started, and his eyes swept the group, “first class, of course…”
“But of course,” someone interjected.
“How else would you go?” another person said.
Norman continued, “I found myself sitting next to a stunning woman. Dark-haired, with green eyes. Sicilian.”
“Ah, yes,” someone moaned.
“Her name was—”
“Uh-uh,” Bob abruptly chimed in, waving a chastising finger at Norman. “No names. Everyone deserves anonymity, even the shrews that got us into this situation.”
Norman bowed his head. “Forgive me,” he said. “While her name is not important, the power she exerted over me is.”
Norman picked up his glass of iced tea and took a sip before continuing.
“She was a goddess and smelled like Elysian Fields after a light rain. Her hair was as soft as spun silk. She was perfection.”
He took another sip.
“Three hours in, she shared her heartbreaking story of love and loss. Some scoundrel had broken her heart and slept with her sister.”
The men shook their heads in dismay.
“She cried on my shoulder and then fell asleep in my arms. Breasts like fresh-baked bread rose and fell beneath her V-neck blouse, and I found myself aroused by the nearness of her.”
The men knew the feeling and moaned at the thought of it.
“Later, when the movie was playing and the cabin was dark, her hand found my knee and then climbed my thigh and grabbed a hold of my, my—”
Norman got choked up for a minute.
“You can do it,” someone murmured.
“Don’t be ashamed, tell it. Release yourself!” another shouted.
“We’re here to listen, not to judge!” someone else yelled.
Norman recovered, wiped at his eyes, and then took another sip of his iced tea.
“Her hand found my manhood, massaging it as it had never been massaged before.”
I looked at the group, and they were all on the edge of their seats.
“Before I knew it, her head was in my lap and she was giving me the best blow job I’d ever received. I had to bite the pillow to keep from screaming.
“And then she climbed over me and went to the bathroom. I wasn’t going to follow—I swear I wasn’t—but I couldn’t help myself.”
Norman dropped his head and began to weep. Bob came over and gave him a hug. “Go on, finish it—purge yourself,” he urged.
“I—I slipped into the bathroom with her, and in one fell swoop I became a member of the mile-high club!” Norman blubbered and then crumbled into a weeping mess of a man.
“Women are evil!” someone screamed.
After Norman had composed himself, Bob turned to me. “Wayne, would you like to share your story?” he asked.
I looked down at my hands and then up at the faces that waited expectantly before I quietly confessed, “Beyoncé was the beginning of my homosexual end.”
Our assignment was to revisit, if we could, the places that we had had our first homosexual experiences.
To relive the joy and then record it in our rainbow-colored journals.
“Gay porn is fine,” Bob said, “but try to get out to the gay strip clubs. You need to smell the flesh, not just watch it on cable or DVD.”
I left that meeting feeling charged and renewed. It was uplifting to know that I wasn’t going to have to go through this alone. I would work this program and prayed to God that it would work for me.