Read Online Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden - Free Book Online Page B

always the case with me and Scott. Always. And Scott wanted to spend a fine spring day on his back, going all the way, none of that paranoid safe-sex stuff, over and over and more and again. In between, he took rest breaks to slurp on my joint. You know, to catch his breath. And finally we were lying there all brained out, our bodies slick and our sticks running with cum. After all those terrible aching years of wanting him and wanting him, right up there so close and never, never, never, never, never being allowed to feel that warmth. Well, almost never. Not . . .
really.”
    Here was a flash of the old Bert, the man who needed instead of the man who had.
    “Now I’d felt it. Can you
imagine?
Lying next to him in the darkness, listening to him breathe, knowing what it was like at long last. Leaning over him and watching him smile. I’ve seen plenty of those smiles. But never on him. He was smiling for me today. Scott smiled with
love
for
me
. So he reached up to touch me, and I told him I have AIDS.”
    Glance around the room at such a moment; see what your friends are like. Carlo, calm now, looked like Jean Valjean near the end of
Les Misérables
. Virgil was staggered, trying to figure out why this would happen. Dennis Savage put his hand on my shoulder, which meant, I think, If you want to toss this thing out of yourapartment, let me help. Cosgrove simply took up his koto and diddled out “The Music of the Night.”
    “I told him I have AIDS,” Bert repeated, “because when I have something, I need to share it with my buddy Scott. He always shared with me, didn’t he? I’m talking about years and years of sharing, such terribly
painful
years of that Scott-style sharing, such love-is-punishment sharing and
slavery
sharing, and sharing
hurts
. It
hurts
, dudes!” He turned to me.
“You
know this, right?”
    I said, and this is quotation, “‘Oh, ’tis an earth defiled, whereon we live.’ ”
    “What Scott put me through with his sharing you will never know, with your gang here in your fun-filled apartments. You think books and music saves you? You think they make you special, or is it invulnerable you are? Well, Scott is not invulnerable, so I told him I have AIDS, and now Scott has what Scott wanted.”
    “You said your say,” Carlo told him. “Get the fuck out of my friend’s house.”
    Now Bert, suddenly, was affable and assured, reconstructed again. Bert, the clone of death. He got up and went to the door, smiling—but Virgil followed him and said, “You told him that. But is it
true
?”
    “Don’t spoil the story, sweetheart,” Bert replied. And off he went.
    Exhalations and exclamations ensued. Had we been old biddies, we might have gone in on one great gust of
Well!
Then we put it behind us. We’re home. Dennis Savage returned to studying his new story. Virgil remarked on how angry Carlo had been, and Carlo, who had turned on the television to catch up on
Monday Night Football
, laughed and gave Virgil a pat on the rump. Then the koto kids demonstrated how to get to Carnegie Hall (“Prectice! Prectice!,” as the old joke runs), and I decided to get some retyping done. It sounds noisy—hell, it
is
noisy—but I can work through it.
    When Dennis Savage brought me his latest emendations, he was in a good mood.
    “‘I was pretty,’ ” he sang as my pencil flew. “ ‘I was happy.’ ”
    “I love Cosgrove,” I sang.
    He thought that over and gave it a soigné but sympathetic nod. Surprise. You never thought that I was going to admit it, did you?
    That’s the twist.
    We froat.

THE HUNT FOR
RED OCTOBER

 

    N
o, I
like
Roy,” Dennis Savage was saying. “Look, he’s spirited and friendly and youthful and even smart, and those are useful qualities in a neighbor. I just don’t understand why he’s always going on about cock, and big-hung, and giant meat, and so on.”
    “Ask him yourself,” I said. “He’s coming up for a coffee date in about ten minutes.”
    “Well, haven’t