Money, Part 6– Kept Boys and Toothless Blow-jobs

I’m not really sure how long I lived there with Waverly, as I said before, my alcoholism was now in full swing and the timeline is very wavy. Waverly took me to Ireland and to Russia. Later he would take me to Rome, Paris and London. We’d go to stylish cocktail parties where there were other older rich gay men with young, attractive boys– other versions of me on their arms. I came to understand that this was a practice de regueur in this underground part of Southern society and had probably been so for as long as there was a “South.” The old queens, many of whom were married to women and had children, would show us off like expensive watches to other septuagenarians and I wondered how many of the other young man had found themselves in this situation out of desperation like I had. I didn’t wonder long as I became acutely aware of how unwilling we all were to look each other in the eye.

Once, one of the other old men brought along an Air Force fighter pilot who was so tired (or drunk) he’d passed out on the antique four-poster bed before Waverly and I arrived at the party. J.V. Park, the young man’s “keeper,” was so proud of his most current acquisition, he just had to show him off to us. He opened the bedroom door slowly as if performing an unveiling. “Take a gander at this young buck. What d’ya think of this one?” His voice sounded like too-sweet pipe smoke and every “s” seemed to last for seconds. If you’ve ever heard interviews of Truman Capote, all these men spoke with dialects that were variations on that theme. I came to hate the sound of it.

I also hated feeling like property but I liked– no, I loved– no, I needed the booze and I was so very sick of being broke. All my experience in the “regular” work world had been of working my ass off for very little money and working harder just seemed to just get me farther behind. The post-church crowds at the restaurant had treated me with less regard than the old queens, and trips to Europe and free booze were a hell of a lot better than a dollar on the table at the end of a meal. If I had to put up with a few toothless blow jobs, so be it; I’d just have to get a little drunker to survive it.

On the night that J.V. was showing off his Air Force pilot to the other old biddies, I slipped away from the party at some point and went back to the bedroom where the pilot was passed out. He was sprawled out, face-down wearing only his tighty-whities. He was muscular and hairy, square-jawed and prematurely balding. In my estimation he was the perfect man. I stood there wondering what it would like being with a man like this– and by “with” I don’t just mean having sex although what I wanted to do the most was crawl into that bed with him. No, that’s not true. What I wanted the most was to be walking down a path through the woods with him holding hand. I wanted to share a meal with him that I had cooked. I wanted to make him feel valued beyond the way he looked. I was becoming all-too-familiar with having my worth be placed entirely in how I looked and in my few-seconds’ romantic fantasy standing over the sleeping airman, I wanted more than that for him too. I also wanted more than that for me and all the other “kept boys” like us.  I wondered what it would feel like to have sex with someone I loved. I wondered what it felt like to be in love.

I suppose I’d been gone from the party too long and soon, I heard my name echoing down the hall from the parlor. I quickly slipped back out of the bedroom to rejoin the meat show. I looked back one more time as I left the sleeping prince, hoping to let my mind soak in as much of him as I could retain. The only way I could survive sex with a man who was fifty on the day I was born was to close my eyes and think of someone else. Tonight, when it came time to pay for my liquor and lodging, perhaps in reality I would belong to Waverly but in my mind at least, the airman would be mine.