Alex would sometimes cry in movies, but I’d look away during sad parts and think of things to take my mind off what I was watching, because I didn’t want to seem faggy.
Alex liked ballet and I hated going with him, even though I liked it too. I’d look around at all the guys there two by two and want to die.
Alex liked to cook, and he grew purple globe basil and Italian parsley on his windowsill. I’d tease him, tell him anyone down in the street could look up and know a fag probably lived there.
That was how we landed up at Adieu, Adieu in the East Sixties last April. We were celebrating Alex’s first speaking role on Broadway.
We’d pooled our money to splurge on a good dinner.
Alex said there were plenty of great gay restaurants we could go to, but I didn’t even want to be seen going into one of those places. So he let me choose.
I read this write-up in The New York Times about this French place hidden away in a little brownstone.
Alex’s dad was a chef. Not just a cook like Mom, but a gourmet, and he’d taught Alex about food. Thanks to Alex, I learned there was a whole world beyond steak and mashed, my favorite meal when I was a kid.
We ordered escargots, which I tried to forget were snails, and we were going to follow that with wild boar stew.
After the waiter took our orders, I told Alex that I’d finally come out to Mom.
“Well, what did she say?”
“She said she’d been waiting for me to show some real interest in girls, and when I didn’t she thought I might just be developing slowly.”
“Like a photograph taken with an old Polaroid.” Alex chuckled.
“Then I began bringing you home.”
“That fairy actor.”
“She likes you.”
“But I blew your scene, right?”
“No. She’d just never known me to be that attached to anyone. It wasn’t anything about you. It was the way I acted around you. She said it was worlds away from how I acted around Brittany.”
“Was she upset?”
“More philosophical than upset. She said it was a hard life.”
“If you’re lucky,” Alex cracked.
“She asked me when I first knew about myself.”
“When did you?”
“I saw some show on TV. Some father telling his son he was gay. I knew that night.”
“I saw that show. But I knew already.”
“I sat in front of the TV shaking.”
“Poor baby. Afraid?”
“Afraid and relieved. I was just a kid: seven, eight? Before that I knew something was wrong with me. It didn’t even have to do with sex.”
Alex grinned. “I know. I was always upstairs in my room dancing around to Hello, Dolly! or Gypsy. The other guys were all off to the ballpark.”
When the waiter brought us our whiskey sours, minus the whiskey, we clinked our glasses together.
“Here’s looking at us!” Alex said.
“To us!”
Alex told me about the first time he’d ever had wild boar. His father had introduced it to him when the family took a trip to France. He said that trip, when he was fifteen, was the last happy family experience he’d had. While he was showering in the hotel room, his twin brother, Peter, read an unfinished letter he’d left on the desk. It was to another boy, telling him how he missed him, saying all he did was wish they could be in Paris together because Paris was filled with lovers. And Alex’s twin had always been envious of him because even as a kid Alex had worked on stage and made some commercials.
He told their mother, so when they got back to the States, she took Alex to see a psychiatrist. His father blamed himself for bringing home so many “nellie chefs”—a lot of his father’s colleagues were closet gays.
“They kept blaming themselves, blaming each other, then blaming my shrink, who said I didn’t seem to have as big a problem with it as they did.”
“And now?” I said.
“You met them. They’re resigned to it, but not delighted. Peter hates it. He’s afraid people will think he’s one of us.”
“Your father never gets my name right. He calls me Lynn.”
We hadn’t been paying much attention to anything going on around us. We were new to each other. We had a lot of catching up to do.
You notice Alex, though. Everywhere we went, people took a second look at him. He’s even taller than I am, and he’s got this great face. He has the kind of looks a Brad Pitt has, or a Jason Priestly.
I finally saw a woman at a center-row table watching us. Not watching us: staring at us. She was with this heavyset loudmouth I figured she was embarrassed by, because you could tell he’d been drinking. He was doing all the talking, and she kept looking our way…at Alex, I thought. And I thought: Eat your heart out! Because I liked having people admire him, liked knowing he was really something…and he was with me.
Maybe the fellow with her was watching us in the mirror. The restaurant walls were all mirrored. Maybe she said something to him.
He was paying the bill, and when the waiter took the money, the guy got up, glanced at us, and snarled something I couldn’t hear.
Alex was a blusher. I saw his face get bright red.
I saw other people turn to look at us.
“What’d he say?” I asked Alex.
“Never mind. Let’s not spoil the evening.”
“But what’d he say, Alex?”
He was lumbering toward the door by then. The waiter was bowing and thanking him, and the
