“But I’d still be interested,” he said, rather bluntly, almost challengingly.
We left it at that and talked about other things.
When I got back to the house, I mentioned it to Marilyn and Bob.
Marilyn’s comment: “Dave?” Are you kidding?”
Bob just shrugged: “Well, if he wants to, let’s put him out to work.”
I still didn’t think it was a terribly feasible idea.
But a night later, when Dave stopped by again, another call happened to come, this time from one of Bob’s Johns. In the middle of it, Bob said: “… just a second, Matt.” Bob put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Dave: “You wanna make some money tonight?”
Dave frowned. “Me?” He put his hand on his chest. “Doing what?”
“Getting your dick sucked,” Bob said. “That’s what. For twenty bucks.”
“You mean me?” Dave said again. “What else do I have to do?”
“Yeah, I mean you,” Bob said. “Just that — that’s all Matt’s into. Yes or no?”
“Well, who is he?” Dave asked. Marilyn was beginning to find this funny. I guess I was, too.
“I just told you; his name is Matt.” Bob looked a little frustrated. “He’s a nice guy — he’s about thirty-five. He lives over on Greenwich Avenue. I’ve seen him three or four times — but, you know, that last two times he was talkin’ about wantin’ some new stuff. I was thinkin’ about getting Chip to take ’im for me. He’s a cool guy — he gives you a drink when you come in. He don’t take all night. An’ he ain’t gonna hassle you about the dough when you leave. He’s okay.”
“Well, what about you?” Dave asked.
Bob sighed and looked at the phone. “Make up your mind, will you? Look, I been workin’ all day up at that goddamned tool-and-die shop. I don’t wanna go out tonight, anyway. I’m tired. I stink. I ain’t had my dinner. And I wanna stay home and take care of business.”
Dave looked from Marilyn to me. “I guess you have a lot of business to take care of, huh?”
“Dave, I can’t keep the guy hangin’ on the fuckin’ phone.”
“Okay.” Suddenly Dave stood up. “I’ll do it.”
Marilyn raised an eyebrow at me.
Bob put the phone back to his mouth. “Matt, I got another guy here, I can send him over. You said you wanted to try something new … No, not the two of us. Just him. … Yeah, he’s cool. … Twenty-two, dark hair, about six foot, real good looking — Hey?” He called over to Dave. “You gotta big dick …?”
Which made Dave look a little surprised. “Naw — ” Bob said into the phone. “I’m just kiddin’ you both. …” And then to Dave: “He says as long as you’re a nice guy, that’s what counts. I told you, Matt’s pretty cool. …” He went back to the phone. “Uh-huh. Same deal like with me. … Okay, just a second.” Bob put down the phone again, only this time he didn’t cover the mouthpiece. “You goin’ over there now?”
“Yeah,” Dave said. “I guess so.”
“Okay,” Bob said into the phone once more, “he’s on his way.”
“He’s on Greenwich Avenue?” Dave said. “Tell him to expect a real good lookin’ guy on his bicycle in about twenty minutes.”
Bob went back to the phone. “Huh …?” Then he laughed and looked up at Dave. “He heard you.” As Bob hung up, Dave lifted his bicycle over his shoulder and started out the door. Bob went after him to call down the address. “I wonder what that’s gonna be like?” Bob said when he came back.
We went to bed before ten. Then, a little after midnight, I found myself wide awake with something to write in mind. I pulled my arm out from under Marilyn, climbed over Bob’s naked back, got my underwear out of the tangle on the floor, slipped it on (it was chilly in the apartment) and went into the kitchen. I closed the bedroom door, turned on the light, took out my notebook and sat at the round table, writing, thinking. Just before one the buzzer sounded. Frowning, I answered it. The footsteps outside on the stairs a minute later had a familiar heaviness. I looked out the door to see Dave, bicycle on his shoulder, coming up in his shorts and T-shirt. “Hi,” he said. “I figured if you were asleep, you wouldn’t answer.”
“I’m up,” I said. “Where are you coming from?”
“Matt’s.”
“You been there all this time?” I asked, as he came in. “How did it go?”
This was more or less Dave’s report:
“Well, when he buzzed me in, I had to carry my bike to his place on the second floor — you know, I never leave it out on the street. He came to the head of the stairs, so I called up: ‘Yeah, this really is your guy for the evening coming upstairs carrying a bicycle on his shoulder. But that’s because I don’t want to leave it outside — is it okay?’ He said sure, and invited me in. He really was a nice guy. Not like I thought he was going to be at all. He asked me in, and we got started talking — Jesus, we must have been there six hours. Well, I kept asking him questions. After all, I’d never done this before. And he would answer them. At length. Then he’d ask me something, and I’d answer it — as best I could. I figured there wasn’t any point in not being up front with him. I told him it was my first time. He said sure it was. I said, in this case, it wasn’t a line. It went on an awfully long time before we got down to anything. And when we did, I’ll tell you, it wasn’t much. I don’t think I even really got a hard-on. But he said it was okay. And I got my twenty dollars. He really was pretty nice. He said he might even ask me to come over again. He said he liked talking to me. I sure talked a lot, though.”
The next day Marilyn answered the phone. “It’s Matt …” she said, with the mouthpiece covered. Bob looked up. But Marilyn had gone back to talking. Bob and I kind of waited for her to hand Bob the receiver. But, somehow, she’d gotten into some kind of conversation with him. So after about three minutes, we went back to whatever it was we’d been talking about. After fifteen minutes, Marilyn hung up.
“Didn’t he wanna talk to me?” Bob asked.
“No,” she said. “I think he’s got some new numbers from Artie.”
“Oh,” Bob said.
“He was telling me all about Dave.”
Bob’s expression got brighter. “Yeah? How’d he say that worked out?” I’d already given them Dave’s late night report.
Marilyn laughed. “Well — he said Dave was very nice. But he’s not somebody to have over if you’re in any kind of hurry — he really thinks he should be saved for special occasions.”
Which set Bob off laughing.
When I saw Dave again, I asked him: “Are you interested in doing that again?”
Dave tossed his handball up and caught it. Behind him the other players ran, halted, and swerved back across the Tompkins Square court. “I don’t think I’d go looking for it. But if somebody asked me to again — maybe to help you guys out, sometime when you didn’t feel like going.” He tossed the ball once more.
When I conveyed this to Bob, though, sitting in the window beside the plants, he took another swig from his beer bottle and said: “Well, I just don’t think we better ask him again.”
51.8. Of all the incidents and anecdotes that remain with me from the time the three of us spent together, this is the hardest to write.
An account such as mine of Bob, Marilyn, and me begins as various notes, now reordered with an attempt at chronological sequence, now written out in fuller form, now another, new memory taking the writer back to an incident already written to append something insistent or characteristic or — it would be disingenuous not to admit it — wholly invented as far as memory is concerned; yet necessary, because logic insists that it must have been like that. In the course of it, the various incidents achieve certain affects: this one was a pleasure to draft, while another was pure work — or worse, painful. …