Where the Boys Are, page 2
Then he hit the personal ads. He’d never explored them before. Why bother? There were a billion guys just like him in The City these days. Having a SoMa condo, tech stock options, and a degree from Brown once got a guy laid at places like the infamous meat market bar Elroy’s. That place was long gone, the stock options now worthless, and the degree meaningless until attached to a paycheck. At twenty-five, was he supposed to feel so washed up?
He turned to the Casual Encounters section of the web site: no strings attached sexual experiences for men and women. Maybe that would make him feel better. He hadn’t had sex since Lisa, and that was nearly a year ago. He’d been on only one date since then, and she only wanted to cuddle. For hours Raphe read the listings, amazed at what people had the nerve to advertise. Three ways. Erotic massages. K-9?
A few times he answered the tamer ads, using a Hotmail account he created to obscure his identity. To his surprise, many people answered back. But when they asked for a photograph he chickened out. Are there really women who like to do these things? Or are they just collecting photographs of idiots stupid enough to respond to their postings? He imagined girls huddled around a cubicle in an office somewhere giggling over which dorks had dared to send in the most revealing shots of themselves.
Then he found a listing with remarkably simple copy. The message contained just one word. “BART.” He knew that stood for Bay Area Rapid Transit, the commuter train service that connected The City to the suburbs. What “casual encounter” could possibly happen in such a public place?
The word “BART” was tinted blue, making it a hyperlink. With a click, Raphe found himself transported into a Yahoo group called BARTM4M. M4M—men for men. A gay site. He quickly closed down the browser, ashamed that somewhere in his computer’s memory would be a record that he visited such a web site.
As he closed the laptop, a sensation hit—that he was being watched. He looked up toward the front window, catching sight of the woman with red hair from upstairs. Raphe threw an animated smile in her direction, but she had already turned and the moment was lost. Had she been looking at him? If so, for how long? Is it possible she saw him looking at that web site? No, he chided himself. She wouldn’t be able to see the screen from there. He was just being paranoid. Raphe continued to stare at the red-haired woman as she faded into the distance. How beautiful she was, even while walking away. She was wearing that pastel green pullover again, the one that showed off her athletic build. He loved that top. He knew it would be in her clothing rotation at least once a month.
Dammit. He wasn’t gay. What was so bad about looking at that web site? It made no sense for someone completely straight to feel threatened by such things. Besides, maybe he’d find material for his book. There was certainly nothing wrong with being curious. He’d never be a real writer if he didn’t start to stretch his mind. BART was as good a place to start as any.
Raphe smiled to himself. She was checking him out—the red-haired woman from upstairs! He’d caught her. At least he thought he had.
Back on the web site, Raphe learned BARTM4M was a gathering place for men who enjoyed a specific sexual fetish, one intrinsically linked to the daily commute. At first, he wondered if it was a joke. But Yahoo counted more than three thousand registered members, leading Raphe to think it had to be real or one of the most elaborately staged hoaxes of all time.
If it was true, then it would make for a great story—a real shocker. The only way to find out would be to take the journey himself.
Raphe got into the underground BART station at the Embarcadero stop, uneasily walking past the loud homeless contingent that sat on the park benches next to the entrance. He’d heard that people from the offices nearby cruelly referred to each of the decrepit men as a “Solitaire,” since they never seemed to see each other, instead shouting non-stop at invisible demons who tormented them. Still, Raphe liked coming downtown to soak up the energy, and wondered why he didn’t visit more often. After all, he lived only a few blocks away in SoMa. He could see the steel and glass monetary monuments from the windows of his high-rise condo, sometimes musing about the busy lives of the swarms inside those business hives. After his meltdown in dot-com, he figured he was never built for the life of a corporate drone, but envied the simplicity and camaraderie of it.
The BARTM4M web site said the trip from The City to the East Bay took seven minutes. Seven minutes under the floor of the bay. An amazing engineering feat, Raphe thought. Whoever figured this out were geniuses. Surely, they’d be stunned to learn their invention was now nicknamed “the tunnel of love.”
The last BART train. Not the last of the day, but the final cabin at the tail end of any of the dozens of trains that made the trip. In another era it might have been called the caboose.
To get on the last car, Raphe waited at the far west end of the platform. As he stood, he sized up the man with the vacne. He was definitely in the right spot for the BARTM4M fetish, and he was clearly straight—and not just because of the telltale pimples. The way he walked. He was a handsome ruggedly built Latino, somewhere around thirty, and devoid of any fey mannerisms. There was no way he was gay.
A train bound for the town of Fremont pulled up. Raphe got in and walked all the way to the back. It was the three-thirty train. Rush hour had yet to start. There was hardly a soul in the compartment.
Raphe sat in the final row, facing forward. He kept his sunglasses on, even though he wouldn’t be seeing any sunlight for at least seven minutes. He felt more comfortable as an observer if it was impossible for others to see his eyes.
There were four benches in the back, each made to seat two passengers. They faced forward, two benches per row with an aisle down the center. The brown industrial fabric of the seats looked worn, and the matching carpet was faded and ripped in places. Still, Raphe thought it remarkably clean, seeing no trash or sordid stains. He noted how all the advertising on the walls had to do with AIDS. “HIV changed my life,” proclaimed Magic Johnson, “but it doesn’t keep me from living.” Another poster pushed the next AIDS bike ride to Los Angeles charity fundraiser. Raphe saw them as warning signs and felt a slight twinge in his stomach. Maybe the managers of BART knew what goes on back here.
No one else sat in the entire back half of the compartment. The Latino with the vacne must have gotten on a different train. The doors closed and with a few hesitant nudges the train pulled away into the tunnel. Shortly after it picked up speed, a man from the far front rows walked to the back. Without ever looking at Raphe, he sat on the bench across the aisle. He immediately lifted a folded copy of the front section of the San Francisco Chronicle to his face.
Raphe felt an unexpected burst of flush. Did the man notice? He didn’t seem to. He just sat in his nicely pressed khaki pants with open-necked blue dress shirt and stared straight into the day’s headlines. Works in an office, Raphe figured. A brokerage, perhaps. Guys in that field really had to keep up with the news. So why was this guy glued to the front page of the morning newspaper? The man held that one article too close to his face. He must be vision-impaired, or the slowest reader in the world. Why didn’t he turn a page? Or flip it around?
Then Raphe noticed the man’s other hand. In the moments since he’d sat down, the man had discreetly cupped himself. His legs were spread apart unnaturally wide. It was a position that could easily be interpreted as the body language of a slob. No, it could be more than that. Maybe this was the first signal for something to start.
Raphe repositioned himself, mimicking the same slouch. He scratched below his fly.
The man did the same.
Fascinated, Raphe pulled the front of his pants.
Instantly, the man repeated the motion. His eyes never seemed to leave the text of the newsprint, and yet somehow the man saw everything.
Suddenly it hit Raphe. The newspaper was just a clever prop to obscure the truth—a trick not revealed on the web site. The man had really been watching the entire time through the reflections of the windows. Once the train had entered the dark tunnel, the black of the outside turned the interior glass into a mirror, allowing for an unobstructed view into the row. One could see everything without directly looking.
Still, it was just spreading, scratching and pulling—not enough for Raphe to be convinced there was anything more going on than a couple of guys just coincidentally being guys. He needed a more concrete signal. Something to tell him it was safe to go further.
Without taking off his sunglasses or saying a word, Raphe offered the one gesture he figured would be interpreted as a sign that it was okay to proceed. He turned toward the man…and smiled.
The man smiled back, again without ever losing sight of the paper. With his free hand, he unzipped his fly. In a matter of seconds, he reached inside and tugged until he revealed himself.
The sight rattled Raphe more than he anticipated, a rush surged up his entire body. Would the man reach across the aisle and touch him?
No. Raphe knew that much from the web site. This was all about “showing off.” Many of the men who told their tales on the site actually claimed to be straight. They just enjoyed “getting off with buddies.” The web site said full circle jerks sometimes broke out, with as many as ten guys pretending to be strap hangers but really forming a wall to prevent anyone forward from knowing what was happening in the back. There was even a listing that said a woman often frequented those final rows, hiking her skirt to expose and please herself. She was a regular, accepted by the pack, even if some of the guys would rather have each other.
Except for the possibility of being arrested by the BART police, it was the ultimate in safe sex.
Raphe hesitantly undid his own pants and fumbled to bring himself to the surface. It was much harder to do sitting than he’d figured, and he needed both hands. The man with the paper was so skilled he never lost the pretense that he was just a guy in the back reading a newspaper.
Finally the newspaper came down, and the man looked over to Raphe. Blue eyes and boyishly handsome with mousy blond curls, slightly receding. Just as Raphe made eye contact, the man squinted, his face contorted as if someone had sneaked up behind and pinched him. But no one was there. Instead, there was a white splash onto the opened front page of the waiting newspaper. The splattered headline: BUSH A CROWD PLEASER.
In moments, the man composed himself and packaged everything back into his khakis. As if nothing had occurred, he got up and returned to the front of the compartment. Raphe frantically put himself in order, which was nearly impossible since he was still fully aroused. He wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Seconds later the train emerged from the dark into dreary Port Oakland, past acres of empty cargo containers, stranded from the economic collapse. Going nowhere, Raphe thought. Just like me.
He couldn’t get off at the first stop, his excitement refusing to subside in time to stand up. He waited until the train reached Lake Merritt, where he crossed the platform to the far end to again seek the final rows of the next inbound line. As he walked, he looked down at the ground, trying to avoid being seen. A familiar feeling of guilt hit, something that always happened whenever he experienced any type of sex—a shame that went back to the time when he was thirteen and reading a copy of Penthouse with his best friend Scott. The explicit photos and graphic stories had aroused both boys into pleasing themselves. Scott’s father walked into the room, catching them with their pants down. He ordered them to get dressed and sent Raphe home.
For days Raphe feared his parents’ phone would ring and he would be destroyed. Both his mother and father were strict and managed their emotions tightly around Raphe. Their lives revolved around the many committees they served on at the local Methodist church, setting a standard of behavior for the family that bordered on pious. No son of theirs could be caught with pornography. Worse, Scott’s family attended the same church, making his sin possible fodder for the entire congregation. Not just for reading pornography, but he was sure there would be an accusation that he and Scott were caught having sex, though they’d never even touched each other.
The devastating phone call from Scott’s father never came. Instead, there was something much worse. Silence. A sword of impending doom dangled over Raphe’s head for the rest of his years in his hometown, worried each time he saw Scott’s father that his vice would be exposed to all. Sometimes he craved to have it brought out in the open and accept his punishment, just to rid himself of the anxiety of waiting. Raphe was too young to understand the New England tradition of burying feelings and secrets in order to avoid confrontation at all cost. An emotional scene would never erupt. Scott’s father simply and sternly told his son that he was never to be alone again with Raphe. Ever.
As he got back on BART at the Lake Merritt station for the return trip to The City, Raphe’s heart raced. Guilty feelings aside, he would take the trip again. On the next journey out to the suburbs the train was sure to be packed, with rush hour hitting full swing. He wondered how that would change what the BARTM4M followers did.
Raphe plunked down into the last section, this time on the aisle, and shut his eyes. Just relax, he told himself. On the reverse commute, the train would be empty, so he’d spend the time making mental notes of what had already happened and commit them to memory—for the sake of his novel, of course.
It really would make a great story—a real shocker.
He heard steps coming toward him. Don’t look. He felt the slight breeze of someone pass, and peeked in time to catch the glimpse of a man in dark clothes get into the window seat. The doors closed, and the train made its initial nudge. The man turned, looked over to Raphe and grinned. They knew each other. The familiar pin stripe suit. Those rugged Latino good looks. The same dark hair, with just a bit of gel, and that same mouth, surrounded by the same telltale trail of vacne.
“Are you following me?” Raphe stammered.
“Would you let me?” the man asked.
MY EVIL TWIN
Sam J. Miller
S
olomon
Some churches have showers, but I don’t like using them. They all have weird schedules—hard to keep track of and always changing. Even worse, they never have a safe place for you to put your stuff, you just throw it in a big pile in a corner of the room, and absolutely everyone has access to it. I’ll be damned if I’m leaving my backpack and my only set of clothes in a big heap where every guy and girl can get to it.
Anyway I’ve really perfected the whole public bathroom sink bath. My head holds a complicated sketch of the city, sort of like the subway station maps, but based on public restrooms: parks, train stations, restaurants, movie theaters you can get into without too much trouble. Which ones have cherry soap, or bars of Ivory, or that weird useless antiseptic foaming spray. Gross. I hate the ones that have air dryers instead of paper towel dispensers, but paper towels are getting rarer and rarer.
Generally I try to wash up late at night, since there’re fewer attendants to catch you and call security. In Grand Central last week, long after midnight, a cute guy came out of the stall and caught me rubbing hand soap into my armpit. He gave me a look, like, gotcha, but I just smiled and winked. He’s the one who ought to be uncomfortable. He’s just a tourist, after all.
Simon
Grand Central feels so opulent, with its high ceiling of turquoise and gold; when you step off the train you feel like it’s all for you. I stalk toward the subway, feeling totally in control, and I swear to myself: I’m not leaving this city until I get a blow job. That resolve makes me proud: I’ve evolved, my shame is gone, I’m going after what I want, the future is mine. The high windows let in so much sun I could be riding the escalator up to heaven, and I’m glad to see there’re no homeless people sleeping on newspaper on the steps and against the walls like when I came here as a kid in the ’80s.
Solomon
On a newsstand I never noticed before there’s a notice pinned up, from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, about an investigation of possible tainted heroin. Male user reported intense and steadily increasing pain upon injection. Furthermore, he reported not experiencing his customary euphoria upon injection. There’s no number to call to report anyone, so I guess it’s just a heads-up to the neighborhood junkies.
I keep moving, feeling like a ghost, uptown, downtown, as the day gets darker. A little girl outside a hotel screams like a seagull. Christmas songs blare outside a toy store. At Fifty-third Street, under an underpass, I watch water churned by the wind. Roosevelt Island’s lights glint on the oily surface. A newer building, right on its edge, has huge condo-style windows in every apartment. They show ample views of the scene inside, but it’s very bland: no sex I can see, just people washing dishes, watching television, mopping. Somewhere behind me, against one of the pillars that holds up the FDR, a guy getting a blow job comes with loud panting cries.
And then I’m on the train platform, waiting for the F, heading for Delancey Street, because it’s Saturday afternoon, and there’s always a punk-hardcore matinee at ABC No Rio. There’s a woman on a pay phone, saying: “Your girlfriend is fucking lucky, because she was—I was drunk, and I had people in the car with me, and she would not be breathing right now.”
Back at street level, feeling a little out of it for want of sleep, I come up to myself in the mirrored glass wall of a bank. I stop with a kind of shock, like bumping into a lost friend or some handsome stranger you’re struck by and then realize is not a stranger at all. Who is this handsome devil? What is his life like? Where did he sleep last night?
Simon
When you walk in the door two things hit you: the sound of drumming and the smell of boy underarms. The building is old and rickety and the noise from the main room might shake it down. A staircase leading up looks like it will crumble under your weight, even if you’re one of these super-skinny skateboard punks, but halfway up it two boys of totally reasonable girth stand talking, staring down at me with haughty looks that see clearly what a hick I am. The upper floors are dark and I can just barely make out a couple of rooms. I picture them as dank filthy spots perfect for random trysts, and I’m convinced the two boys standing so close on the narrow stair are plotting a bout of wanton sex up there. Overall the place has the feel of a small-scale tenement taken over by hooligans, the old ladies and immigrants all ejected and the space declared an autonomous state. The taller of the two boys catches me staring, and smiles, which turns him from bland to gorgeous. His teeth are perfect, his face is stubbled, he’s got a sort of confidence I’m a million years from. It takes quite a mental effort to tear myself away from the sight of them and the thought of what they’re going to do—although of course I know that they’re probably just plotting their band’s first show, or telling tall tales about a girl they both know.
