for you, Drew,” she said, sitting with me in the window, watching it waft along in the breeze.
“Yeah,” I said. “Good for me.” But I was distracted because I thought I saw someone who looked like Ted emerging from the subway station.
It wasn’t him, of course, and I’ll spare you the suspense and reveal right now that Ted never returned to our apartment. But this story isn’t about me and Ted. Ted is over. Ted is the past. The only reason I’ve written about Ted is to give you some perspective.
This story is about what came after Ted. And that wasn’t very pretty, either.
2
The Hottest Passes in New York…Dude!!
David Carlyle and I had always been friendly in a distant sort of way, but, in the weeks after Ted left me, a stronger bond developed between us. I think a number of factors brought us together, especially the Ted crisis and the fact that, even though I wasn’t exactly climbing the bestseller lists, I was now a twice-published author and therefore slightly closer to belonging in David’s social circle than the average editorial assistant at PMC.
For his part, it soon became apparent to me that David Carlyle needed a real friend. Because once you stripped away his exotic and largely apocryphal tales of weekends with David Geffen, dinners at Gracie Mansion, AIDS benefits with Elizabeth Taylor, and sexual encounters with countless German boys, Filipino boys, Japanese boys, Swedish boys, Mexican boys, Thai boys, Greek boys, Turkish boys, and a particularly deranged threesome with an Israeli boy and a Palestinian boy, the sad reality was that David Carlyle was fifty-five years old, overweight, effeminate, and, for all his money, pretty damned lonely.
So, there we were, a lonely, successful older man and a lonely, less-successful, slightly younger man who had no interest in each other beyond mutual entertainment and passing time. It was kismet; how could we have avoided becoming close friends?
In recognition and acceptance of this fate, we started bonding and doing the kinds of things friends do with each other when they’re gay and platonic. Like shopping and gossiping and eating at trendy restaurants and singing at Greenwich Village piano bars.
In fact, we were on our way to dinner in the Village one day after I finally more or less accepted that Ted was history when David said something that started the course of events that would change my life forever.
“Guess what?” he said. “I’ve just heard about the event of the season!”
“You say that about fifteen times every season.”
“That’s just rhetoric. This time I mean it. There’s a new club opening, and guess which night they’re having a private grand opening party? And guess who snagged a couple of the hottest passes in gay New York?”
“I give up,” I said without even trying to guess.
“Well, I’ve got the passes.” With a flourish, he pulled two black and pink squares out of his pocket.
“I sort of assumed that. So, what night is the party?”
“Halloween!” he squealed. “Don’t you just love it?”
Halloween. A night beloved by people everywhere who want to put on costumes and masks and cloak themselves in anonymity. And, I had to admit, a hell of a good night to open a gay nightclub.
“It’s going to be called Benedick’s,” he continued as we walked down Christopher Street, with the sincere excitement over something as common as a club opening most men his age had lost decades ago. “They’ve got this huge old building over on West Street they’ve been pouring money into. It’ll be fantastic. And, Andrew, there are only five hundred of these passes. This is going to be a very exclusive crowd.”
“Sounds good,” I said noncommittally. I just couldn’t bring myself to join in with David’s overheated enthusiasm. Between us, hadn’t we seen hundreds of nightclubs come and go over our years in the city?
“Good? This is great! I don’t think you realize how exclusive this place is going to be. No riffraff; just the brightest, wittiest, cutest, and studliest.”
The question had to be asked. “Then how come we got invited? Or have we just been notched up in the ‘studliest’ category?”
“You’re doing okay for your age,” he said with a laugh. “A bit too old for me, but you’re not falling apart yet.” He returned to my question. “We got them because I’m on all the best lists. I can’t even begin to tell you how many things I get invited to. Openings, benefits…Most of them are very tiring. I don’t even bother opening half the envelopes that come in the mail.”
“Then why are you inviting me? Aren’t there going to be any eighteen-year-old Armenian sailors in port that night?”
He glared at me unpleasantly. “If you’d rather not go…”
“Sorry.”
He brightened again. “I’m inviting you for three reasons. First, because I’ve come to enjoy your company despite your puzzling habit of biting the hand that feeds you. Second, because I’m hoping that an appearance by the author of Allentown Blues and The Brewster Mall might generate a little interest and publicity and help make both of us some money. And third, because maybe you’ll meet your next lover there.”
“That’s very noble of you.”
“Nobility has nothing to do with it. If you meet a nice upstanding white-collar man, maybe you’ll stop moping and rediscover your muse. Then you can write me a best-seller.”
I realized with a jolt that we were heading toward Ted and Nicky’s love nest, so I gently took hold of David’s arm and guided him around a corner. He never even seemed to notice.
“This place is going to be great!”
“Who owns it? Who’s Benedict?”
“Benedick,” he corrected.
“Oh. Now I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “Benedick. Remember your Shakespeare? Much Ado About Nothing? Although I can’t be sure there’s not an intentional double entendre at work.”
“Classy. There’s nothing like a bunch of Shakespeare-quoting homosexuals in spandex dancing to Madonna to give me hope for the future of our sexuality. And anyway, wasn’t Benedick straight?”
“As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out. Remember, he was a confirmed bachelor in the beginning of Much Ado About Nothing…”
“And almost a married man at the end,” I pointed out.
“Details,” he snorted. “Even Oscar Wilde was a married man. Maybe you’re still too bitter to go out in public.”
We stopped to window-shop in front of an antique dealer’s store and, as we peered in the dusty window, David recited, “ Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more/Men were deceivers ever…’”
“Excuse me?”
“Much Ado About Nothing. I think I recited it correctly, although I’ll be damned if I can remember the context. Do you understand the theme of Benedick’s any better now?”
“If this is known as a gay club with gay patrons, where’s the deceit? This isn’t the Nineteen-fifties.”
He rolled his eyes at my naïveté. “Trust me, Andrew. See who’s there on Halloween, then watch the society columns for the next few weeks and watch them all pop up escorting blue-haired dowagers to weddings and charity balls. I think you’ll see that deceit is still alive and well.”
We continued our walk, admiring the well-preserved town houses lining the eerily quiet streets. And as we walked, I asked David again who was bankrolling Benedick’s.
“I don’t know. I think it’s owned by some corporation they’ve