Monkey Suits Read online

At fourteen Marcos was forced to become the ‘man of the family.’ His parents had raised a good Catholic crop of kids in the Latino barrio of Philadelphia. He’d had his share of schoolyard fights, but gained a reputation for being smooth with the girls. None of the other boys knew his secret; he just liked to do their hair and share old Supremes records.

  His mamma had scolded him to be more of a man. He knew what a man was. He wanted to be one. He also wanted one, and didn’t see anything wrong with that. It was everybody else’s problem.

  Especially his papi, a tall lean Puerto Rican man who was free with a good smack when the kids or his wife got out of line. He was also free with his liquor. As the years drew on, his father spent less time at home, until one day, his mamma took him aside and told him papi may not ever come back, “and if he does, he is not the man of the house no more. You are.”

  Marcos Antonio Tierra did not relish his new position, but knew that if he stayed home and worked, his mamma would help him get to college, with the help of a few scholarships. They both knew what that meant. Escape. An education meant getting a job and getting out. Marcos knew little about the world out there, but what he’d seen looked good.

  “Found ya.” Lee, silhouetted by the floodlight, appeared as Marcos tossed his cigarette.

  “Hey.”

  “Had enough?”

  “They never stop.”

  “How long does this go on?” Lee asked.

  “Longer than those WASPy affairs in town. Makes you appreciate Fabulous’ efficiency. Had enough of refolding used napkins?”

  “Really. What do they want next, for us to wipe their little mouths and butts, too?”

  “It’s so much easier with the upper crust. It’s like a dance and they know their parts. Here, they’re so ... clumsy with their wealth.” Marcos turned away, staring out into the night. Lee had a hard time falling into Marcos’ morose mood. He was still a bit weak in the knees from Rick’s aggressive and quick seduction. The two had been careful not to ejaculate on themselves or each other’s tuxes. But he didn’t feel at all guilty. They had, after all, washed their hands.

  “Tired?” Lee asked.

  “In more ways than imaginable,” Marcos sighed. “That kid, the one they’re throwing the party for. He’s got it good.”

  “Yeah, wish I had a party like this when I was thirteen. I felt lucky just to get a cake shaped like Snoopy.”

  “Yeah, he’s got a truckload of money and some terrific job waiting for him.” Marcos shoved his hands in his pockets. “The envelope, please. Good fucking luck. Take the house. Take the job with Daddy’s firm. Take the girl. Take the car. Take doors number one, two and three.”

  Lee looked out into the dark night with Marcos a few minutes, then patted his shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s go steal some forks.”

  “This tacky silver pattern? Surely you jest.” They headed back in. “Did you make a bet on the ‘La Bamba’ pool?”

  “The what?”

  “The pool. We all put in a dollar and bet on a time when the band’s gonna play ‘La Bamba.’”

  “How do you know they’ll play it?”

  “Oh, you are new, aren’t you?”

  The wheezing fan of the underground Penn Station lobby pushed stale air across the young men’s faces as they returned to Manhattan after one in the morning. One good thing about Bar Mitzvahs; they usually ended early, since the guest of honor was a thirteen-year-old.

  Lee missed winning the “La Bamba” pool by five minutes. He wasn’t upset, since he had spent the train ride home snuggling next to Rick in the rumbling comfort of the L.I.R.R. Yet upon arriving, he felt Rick’s need to separate, as if their escapade in the dark classroom were a mere fender bender.

  “Which way ya headed?” Lee asked, hinting at a possible invitation to his place.

  “Uptown,” Rick said. “You?”

  “Down.”

  “Oh, well, gimme yer number. Maybe we can get together.”

  “Again,” Lee teased.

  “Yeah, right,” Rick smirked. They traded numbers, Lee embarrassingly explaining the 201 area code. “Well, you’ll definitely come over to my place,” Rick said.

  “Sure,” Lee responded with a resigned air.

  “Call me tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” Lee said, then muttered to himself. “If my desire for you doesn’t sour like the champagne in my gut.”

  “What?” asked Marcos.

  “Nothing.”

  As he caught the Number One train with Marcos, got off at Christopher Street and walked toward Hudson, he wondered about the futility of dating such a guy. Maybe he’s not always like that, he thought. Then again, maybe he is. Maybe that’s what I need.

  “Well, I, for one, am exhausted,” Marcos sighed. They stopped at a corner. Someone had plastered a succession of flyers about AIDS over a wooden construction wall.

  “Nice art work.”

  “Thank God we got out of Long Island alive. Yeah, I like the font.”

  “The miracle of Judy-ism.”

  Marcos attempted a chuckle. “Under the river for you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do they run trains to Jersey this late?”

  “Yes, but the sidewalks are rolled up after midnight.”

  “You sure you don’t want to stay over?”

  “We tried that, remember?”

  The pre-dawn song of sparrows chirped from Lee’s kitchen window as he toasted an English muffin and gulped down a glass of orange juice. He had been exhausted when he had arrived home, but neither masturbation nor reading helped him sleep. He merely stared out the window beyond his Dukakis election poster.

  A hundred fifty dollars in cash from the bar mitzvah lay on his dresser, all for eleven hours of his life, including transportation. He imagined the bank accounts of people he’d served increasing as fast as the entire population of Mexico, while his finances accrued as slowly as a wooden scoreboard at an Old Timers softball game. At least he’d gotten a surprise blow job.

  Outside the window the sky shifted from deep purple to dark azure. More birds chirped. A semi truck farted past, chugging a few tons of something somewhere for someone. Another morning he would sleep through. Think tomorrow, Lee told himself. Dawn is not a good time for career reassessment.

  Moving to the carpeted floor, he munched the buttered muffin and tried to scan the Village Voice job listings, but didn’t get past “Environmental Activist” before flipping through his TV to stop at CNN. An interview with a wiry, black-haired man in glasses had just begun. His byline read: Anthony Fauci. “ ... the capacity to replicate the virus ...” Lee went into the kitchen to toast another muffin when the anchor’s words drew him back.

  “Over a thousand AIDS activists demonstrated outside the Food and Drug Administration today, claiming the approval of drugs to combat the disease ...” He raced back to the television in time to see a crowd of young men and women running around a glass-walled building. They screamed and shouted, waving black posters with pink triangles. A similar cloth banner rose up a flagpole. Police dragged people to the ground. A blond man in a leather jacket was shouting with them, his mouth open wide, his angular face red with rage.

  Angel Gabriel wore leather. Kevin Rook.

  Lee stood in his bathrobe, transfixed. “Fuckin’ A.”

  The once docile exuberant hunk that had served tables with him days before had just become the latest instant media moment. The same young man who gracefully poured Chardonnay for corporate CEOs was being dragged off by rubber-gloved policemen in riot gear on national television. For reasons he didn’t understand, Lee felt a sudden surge build up in his stomach, pass through his throat and escape from his eyes in wet droplets.

  The report quickly shifted to more men in suits talking, heads speaking and computer graphics showing charts and bars. He listened, but couldn’t shake the image of Kevin being dragged off. I should have turned on the VCR. He sat down on the floor, overcome with a feeling of the hugeness of events, the instant
potential and inescapable menace of inaction.

  Later, curled up between his sheets and his futon, he thought back to a spark of a memory, when he was ten, maybe eleven, and had watched the footage of the war, the green blurry film images passing by on TV after dinner. He had watched every night until Eric Sevareid’s looming commentary face and hard corn-like teeth told him the show was over.

  He’d become very upset one night when a soldier walked by the screen and made a peace sign. He’d said out loud, “That’s Bobby,” the name of his older cousin who was in the Army at the time. His father, who wasn’t listening at first, looked at the screen from behind his newspaper too late. His father argued that no, it couldn’t have been him. “What do you know?” he had screamed at his father. He’d been sent to his room, yelling defiantly.

  I know who it was, he had said over and over, crying himself to sleep. I know who it was.

  For years, the new war had been outside of him, somewhere else.

  Those days were scrapped.

  9 “Hi. This is Ritchie ...”

  “Brian ...”

  “And Ed. We’re not doing the phone thing right now ...”

  “But leave a message ...”

  “And we’ll call you when we are.”

  BEEEEeeeeep.

  Alex Tilson’s smirk nearly sliced through the wire like a carving knife. “Cute, guys. This is Alex at Fabulous. We have a party at the Seagram Building next Tuesday. We need more guys. This is a four p.m. call. Please get back to me today to confirm whenever you boys are in the mood to–”

  Feedback pierced the machine as Brian picked up the phone and struggled to waken. His hair jutted up from his head like a porcupine’s ass.

  “Hulloh?”

  “Brian?” Alex guessed.

  “Just a sec.” Clawing frantically to turn off Ed’s machine, the naked Brian nearly tumbled to the floor elbow first. Instead, he merely yanked the AC cord from the wall. That seemed to do the job.

  “Sorry ’bout that.” Brian sat up in bed at attention, as if he actually were behind Alex’s cubicled office a bridge away.

  “Napping?” Alex quizzed, as if sleep were beneath him.

  “No,” Brian lied. “I was in the other room.”

  “Well, anyway, I have a lot more calls to make. Are you available?” Brian’s vision was still blurry, his piss hard jutting up in equal confusion.

  Are you available tonight?

  Backtrack. Brian Burns, ten years old, already bored with his new electric toy car Christmas morning, burping up cookie and eggnog giggles in the warm Connecticut home where his needs were always met, usually within minutes. The baby in a family of five with two older brothers, and the prettiest of the lot, he invariably got what he wanted, either through charm, deceit or by simply whining. He spit back their masculine torture in other forms, particularly threats: >

  Upon arrival to New York from the ivied canopies of Bennington, the realization that he was not about to become the next Tom Cruise stung as sour as pretzel mustard. The seeds of resentment took root. He could manipulate friends and acquaintances for favors with a low flame. He learned to charm employers into raises with the never-kept promise of seduction dangling from his lashes.

  Unsure, however, of what he wanted, just that he wanted, his first years in Metropolis amounted to little more than a scattered resumé of odd jobs, including two Off-Off-Broadway appearances, as the cute deaf mute in a Harvey Fierstein one act, and a walk-on as a shirtless guard in a science fiction version of Medea. While pursuing the improvement of his body, he did learn which gyms had the hottest saunas.

  Before making the glorious jump to catering in the spring of ’87, Brian lived in an Upper West Side railroad with a soft-spoken Columbia University grad student who kept to himself. Late one night, while flipping through The Advocate among his growing collection of porn, an ad caught his eye:

  MALE ESCORTS WANTED

  LOOKS, BUILD, SIZE

  HAVE TWO OUT OF THREE? CALL US

  After two nervous attempts to dial all seven digits, he reached a soft deep voice that coaxed out his name and falsified experience, and that he only lacked size. Perhaps the gym hopping had come in handy. He arranged a meeting with the voice, whose name was Tony.

  After two hours pec-pumping at Better Bodies the next day, Brian’s head floated on visions of well-dressed gentlemen wining and dining him in a black and white ’30s night spot. His pretty yet uninformed visions soon disappeared after meeting Tony.

  Admitted into a West 81st Street condo by a seven-foot Jamaican doorman in full coat uniform, Brian was announced and led up to an elevator, which was blanketed to protect the walls while someone moved in. The cubicle resembled a padded cell.

  A short swarthy man who looked like he should be selling pizza on Bleecker Street, if not for the diamond pinkie ring, opened his apartment door as Brian stepped into the twentieth floor hallway.

  “You didn’t brag on the phone.”

  Brian blushed.

  “Come in. Sit down. Have a drink. I won’t be a minute.”

  The windowed view of upper Broadway glistened through the floor-to-ceiling window. A single black leather sofa, glass table and two chairs, and nearby brightly-lit kitchen impressed Brian, stirring his craving for such discreet opulence, although it felt a bit cold.

  While Tony talked on one of two telephones, Brian sat patiently at the other end of the glass table, sipping a soda. The acrid smell of freshly laid carpet filled the room.

  Tony hung up. “Sorry about that. So, why do you want to be an escort?” His dark eyes glowed like a leopard at midnight.

  “Uh, well, I’m an actor. I mean, I wanna be an actor ... an’ I wanna get different experiences.”

  “Well, you may get plenty of experience with different kinds of people. All our clients are very nice gentlemen, very respectable. We have a lot of regular clients.” Tony’s voice was oddly soothing. He proved to be very businesslike, providing suggestions, a package of Trojans, and a small bundle of credit card slips.

  “Do I have to take one of those department store things?”

  Tony smiled. “Oh no, just rub it with a pen. Let me show you.” The escort business proved not to be nearly as glamorous or creative as expected.

  “A rubdown is eighty. You are nude and you massage him and get him off manually, if he likes. Full escort service at one-fifty goes further. It’s always your discretion as to how safe you wanna stay. Most of my clients’ tastes are pretty vanilla. They’re probably just gonna suck you a bit and get the same. Maybe later, we’ll let you do some of the more ... creative assignments. But remember, it’s always up to you. Just be your own pretty self and they’ll feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.”

  “Okay.” Brian glowed with naivete.

  “So, do you wanna use your real name?” Tony sipped his club soda. He leaned his round, beard-stubbled face over the glass table. The phone rang.

  “You mean ... ?”

  “Most of the guys use a different name. Makes things a bit more objective. A nom de plume, as it were.” The other phone rang, a different tone. “Hold on,” Tony purred. “Metropolitan Man, please hold. Campus Man, how may I help you?”

  While he chatted on the phone, Brian reeled through a list of film stars, high school crushes and quick lays. He needed a name that was sexy yet butch. Tony finished his phone conversation and returned his gaze to Brian. “So?”

  “Uh, Mel?”

  “Too trendy. They’ll expect an Australian accent.” Tony slurped his soda, poured an ice cube into his mouth and crunched it out of existence. Brian felt a shiver.

  “Uh, Troy?”

  “We’ve got one.”

  “Chip?” Brian glanced down at the glass table. Two rings of water from his glass overlapped to form a wet infinity symbol. He noticed his own fingerprints and wondered about the possibility of being arrested. Rent boys, a gay friend from London called them. His parents would surely cut off his inheritance if
they ever found out before they died.

  “Chip.” Tony rolled the name, and another ice cube over his tongue. “Yes, very wholesome. Very Leave It to Beaver.”

  Brian was actually thinking of My Three Sons, but he didn’t think it wise to correct his new employer.

  Tony perused his newest prospect. Brian had a face that made men and women stare. Alarmingly handsome with almost black hair, his blue eyes glimmered like cold silver. He had a small sleek nose, pouting lips, not much of a jaw, but his wide shoulders and frame compensated for that and his shortness. But there was something Tony couldn’t place, some sly deceit beneath the clean New England charm.

  “Chip. Yes, that’ll work for now. So, you wanna start off tonight?”

  Brian’s pulse quickened. He immediately considered backing out, then remembered the two-hundred-seventy-three dollars in his Chembank account with four hundred required rent dollars chasing close behind. He also felt pleasantly excited. “Sure.”

  Tony smiled and gave him the address of a Charles in the East Nineties. “He’s nice,” Tony soothed. “A regular. Nothing weird.”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” Brian grinned as he buttoned his coat in the hallway.

  Tony leaned against the open door. “Usually that’s all they need.”

  Brian pressed the elevator button, turning to give his new freelance employer a last glance. Tony had wanted to try the boy out, but he seemed a bit skittish. “By the way,” he said as the elevator chimed and the door slid open. “Where did you get that name, Chip?”

  Brian stepped into the elevator and smiled at Tony. This would be the first of many dramatic exits in his new career.

  “He was my first dog.”

  After a few experiences with “clients,” Brian’s illusions about escorting were cleanly shattered. He failed to realize that most men who choose to pay for sex don’t get it any other way, and are not very handsome, nor especially talented in bed. He did, however, enjoy being admired, and often took pleasure in laying back and letting a nervous out-of-town husband lick his smooth musculature in a fine midtown hotel. Brian also figured out how to get better rates than those provided by Tony. He simply offered clients a bit more fun for a bit more cash. Most of the time, however, it was work; choking unresponsive puds, rubbing sagging bellies and hairy backs of men he’d never look at twice.