My aversion to pride and self-satisfaction is life-long. In college, I had an incredible hatred of the Greek system, the world of fraternities and sororities on my campus. I complained about how disgusting it was that people became friends on the basis that they had wealthy parents, how they all dressed alike and talked alike and projected an air of superiority even though they seemed to everyone else to be such complete assholes. What bothered me most was that, even if they had been able to grasp how they appeared to the rest of the campus, they wouldn’t have cared. What mattered to them was their insular club of moneyed, privileged kids born into something luckier even than a big dick or a nice chest. They felt proud of themselves for nothing.
It was the same for all sorts of pride. American pride, pride in your college team, pride in our soldiers, black pride, gay pride. Being from Texas, I heard a lot about being a proud Texan. Everywhere I saw bumper stickers boasting “Native Texan.” But how can this type of pride be explained? It’s not as if they sat surveying the options and chose to be born in the United States or Ireland or Afghanistan or Belize, so how could anyone be proud to be from those places? You could just as easily have been born anywhere as anyone. I’ve always felt repelled by those people who discover with such satisfaction that their bloodlines can be traced to the American Revolution or the Mayflower. It’s like being proud of a roll of the dice. Not even a roll you made yourself. A roll someone else made hundreds or thousands of years ago.
The Apologizing Man was the counter archetype to the Big Dicks. “I’m sorry about my stomach,” the Apologizing Man would say glumly. “I’m working on it, believe it or not.” God, I found them endearing. They appeared not to know that there were men on the internet making videos of just their stomachs, rubbing them, and feeding themselves constantly to make them continue to grow so that their fans would continue to watch. The guys in those videos—“gainers” they call them — could be seen stuffing themselves, eating enormous meals, entire pizzas, downing three liter bottles of soda, stroking their enormous, engorged guts, which look as if they have somehow become impregnated, their owners saying over and over again to the invisible viewing audience, “You like that? You like that?”
You heard that a lot from the non-apologizers. You like that? Usually they were asking because they could tell you did like it, whatever it was. That hairy ass. Those incredible pectorals. The way they kissed or blew you or wore a pair of cowboy boots.
Other Apologizing Men were guys with small dicks. There is such insane variety within the world of male genitalia, I hardly remember, looking back, which belonged to who. Most of them were perfectly terrific, frankly, smallest to largest. Given the choice, I’d rather date a guy with a small dick than a very large one. Though of course I’d rather have a very large one myself.
Men are never ashamed about the things they should be ashamed of. If any man asking forgiveness for his little dick or potbelly had extended the invitation, I probably could have prepared a lengthy list of things he should have worried about instead.
Bad breath, for instance, was not merely an occasional problem. At the booths, where one was more apt to notice, it was an epidemic that thwarted many a fun sexual encounter. Escapades I thought were done deals fell apart as soon as I got close enough to smell or taste the foulness of another man’s mouth. One wondered how they failed to taste it themselves and feel tortured by it.
I was astonished at how often it was a problem, at how often it was the problem that prevented things from moving forward. It made me so compulsively self-conscious about my own breath I could only wonder why everyone else in the place didn’t adopt a similar stance, why breath spray and mints weren’t sold at the counter next to the condoms and lube.
It happened once at the arcade that before I realized my partner was thusly afflicted, he began going down on me. The smell rose to my nostrils as the spit accumulated, forming not just a lubricant, but a multi-layered stench on my privates. I broke from him in a state of dizzy repulsion and left the booth as quickly as I could put myself away. I wandered the halls for a minute or two, unsure what to do next, though I knew I couldn’t remove myself from my pants in the presence of anyone else. Finally, I pushed through the heavy exit door and into the night. I sped home and ran to the shower, stripping and standing beneath the spray without even waiting for it to warm up.
63
MALCOLM’S TIME IN BOSTON, WHICH HAD BEGUN AS A three-month stint, kept getting extended. I think he was bored talking about the cop and the kid after all those weeks and months. Or maybe it was because I had told him about the arcade and the Cyclops that he took me into his confidence.
“I’ve been fucking one of the bellboys,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” A little spurt of jealousy entered my bloodstream.
“Yeah. For a few weeks now.”
“You’ve been keeping secrets.”
“Well, he’s young. Which I know is a trigger for you.”
“Don’t be silly.” My face was hot. “Of course he’s young. Bellboys are young, right? That’s why they’re boys. He’s not twelve or something, is he?”
“He’s twenty-two.”
“Oh, nice. Just under half your age.
“We’re not in love or anything like that. It’s just…he’s got this accent. This Boston accent, like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.”
“I guess I can see how that would be appealing.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but it really is.”
“Are you supposed to be doing that? I mean, are you allowed to have sex with your employees?”
“No, Sam, I’m not.”
“So it’s a secret. Like you can’t get caught, right?
“Right.”
“Those are the best.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely. He sneaks into your room at night, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You touch him surreptitiously when the two of you pass in the hallway.”
“We’ve done that maybe once.”
“When you’re alone together and someone walks in, you act like everything is normal and pretend like you’re in the middle of an innocent conversation.”
“That’s never happened.”
“But it’s the spirit of the thing, Malcolm. When it’s a secret, it’s like this little egg that the two of you protect together.”
“Maybe. I don’t think that’s why it’s fun though. Or if it is, that’s just a small part of it.”
“So what’s fun about it then?”
“I don’t know. Just being attracted to one another. Having fun sex. Making out with someone new. The whole thing.”
“Does Ron know?”
“No. Although I assume he’s fooling around with people while I’m gone. Which is fine.”
“Are you in love with Ron?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you like having sex with the kid more than you like having sex with Ron?”
“Let’s not start calling him ‘the kid,’ okay?”
“The bellboy then.”
“That’s better, but he has a name. It’s Ethan.”
“I think I’d rather just call him the bellboy.”
“Having sex with Ronald is completely different than having sex with Ethan. And I wouldn’t say that one is substantially better than the other. Just that they’re different.”