Where The Boys Are by William J. Mann Read Free Book Online

myself up on my toes and kiss him hard, taking Shane by surprise. After a couple of seconds, he responds wholeheartedly, kissing me back with lots of tongue and moans and interjections of just how lucky he is to have found someone as stunning as me.
    It turns out to be the very best sex I’ve ever had.

Somewhere in the Night
    Lloyd
    S o what’s your impression of all of us so far? Think we’re pretty fucked up? Or just like everybody else, trying to untangle all the karmas and dramas and unexpected twists of our lives?
    Let me tell you a little story. I talked to my parents earlier tonight. I called them on my cell phone when I first got into the city, wanting to wish them a happy New Year. And my mother says, two minutes into the conversation, “Lloyd, you’re thirty-five years old. It’s time you settled down.” I hadn’t yet told her about the guest house, and now there was no way I was bringing it up. She and my father had finally accepted that I was gay and making a life with Jeff when I suddenly up and left him—a move they’re still puzzling over. Telling them about the guest house would only further muddy the waters. I just said, like I always say, “I don’t believe in settling down.”
    Parents are always telling their kids to “settle down,” no matter how old we are. They start when we’re just three or four, whenever we laugh too hard or get a little too rough with our toys. “Settle down,” they scold. Then we’re fifteen and we bring home a few Cs on our report cards and they say, “You need to settle down and get to work.” They’ve got us scared to move.
    Jeff used to be big into “settling down.” He was the one who got all cozy and domestic when we lived together. It was perhaps inevitable that I left, because we had gotten too “settled down”—too exactly what my parents had always told me to be.
    Now I find our positions switched. I’m talking with Eva about the colors we’ll paint the living room and picking out matching wallpaper while Jeff is out there, still exploring, still partying, still as far from settled down as one can be. I’m certain that it took no more than forty-five seconds, tops, for Jeff to set his sights on somebody else after I left the bar. I know him so well.
    There’s not much I don’t know about Jeff O’Brien. He can be the most self-absorbed asshole and the most compassionate friend you’ll ever meet. He can spend all day rolling around in the mud with his five-year-old nephew, not caring who sees, but he also has the inseam of every pair of jeans specially tailored to make his butt look more perky. I mean, can you think of anything more self-indulgent? Yet when I’m feeling sick, it’s Jeff I want to take care of me. There’s nobody better at bringing in soup, tucking in blankets, changing cold cloths, and just generally being warm and nurturing and comforting than Jeff.
    But Jeff’s changed. I know deep down he’s still the same guy I fell in love with over a decade ago, but our old friends don’t seem to recognize him anymore. He heads off to Seattle and Cincinnati and Toronto and even Sydney, Australia, for every party, every dance, every whitewater rafting trip, and every gay ski weekend he can find. He doesn’t see much of these old friends anymore, the ones who were with us through the whole long process of Javitz’s dying. Instead, he’s surrounded himself with new friends, most of whom I don’t care for. I like Henry, but the others seem merely accessories, pretty boys with designer drugs and designer muscles who don’t challenge, don’t provoke, don’t confront.
    And Jeff is not going to admit why he prefers them. He’s not going to talk about Javitz, no matter how hard you push, so I guess it’s up to me yet again. You do need to know about Javitz to understand everything else. So ... where do I start?
    We once had a friend named David Mark Javitz. Everybody always called him by his last name. He died of AIDS. Do you