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

our pomposity. How we enjoyed hearing the sound of our voices in the stillness of a Provincetown night. But that’s who we were. A family—audacious, maybe, but constant, a fact that nourished me.
    The images are there, at the flick of a switch in my mind. Javitz on the back of a motorcycle, riding sidesaddle, being dropped off at seven A.M. by a trick on his way to work. “Who do you think you are,” I had scolded him only half-mockingly, “worrying us all night?”
    Javitz simply shook his long black hair, his curly ringlets still wet from a shower at the biker’s house. “I’ve never ridden on the back of a motorcycle before,” he gushed. “I felt like Nancy Sinatra in The Wild Angels. ”
    “Who is this man?” more than one trick asked both Jeff and me, as they woke up to be greeted by a thin, long-haired older man with a platter of raspberry croissants and coffee. We didn’t even try to explain. How could we try? There were no words. No way to adequately describe who Javitz was to us. Friend, lover, family. We broke the rules, the three of us.
    And then there were two.
    He died just as the hurricane roared up Cape Cod. I was with him. Jeff wasn’t. See, that’s a large part of the reason why he can’t talk about Javitz. He carries some guilt about that, I know. I’d called him around ten o’clock the night before to say that I thought he ought come to Provincetown, that Javitz was fading fast. But the weather forecast was ominous; we were all bracing for the strongest hurricane to hit the Cape in years. Jeff considered it and told me he’d leave first thing in the morning—but by morning, of course, Javitz was dead.
    In truth, it wasn’t Javitz’s literal death that was the hardest thing to deal with. You see, Javitz had died with dementia, and in some ways, I had as little opportunity as Jeff to say good-bye. Dementia had been Javitz’s worst nightmare, the one thing he prayed he’d never get. “Give me pneumocystis; make me go blind; cover me with lesions; just don’t give me dementia.” His intellect had been his most treasured attribute. People sought Javitz out for his wisdom. They came to him when their lives were a mess or they stood at some crossroads, unsure of which way to go. Javitz always knew what to advise. He could see through bullshit. And he died unable to counsel, unable to impart any last words or offer any insight into what was happening, to him or to us. He was just a docile little boy confined to his bed, eating his chocolate bars, smudging them all over his face and hands.
    It was only after his death that I realized why, on a karmic level, Javitz had died with dementia. Javitz, who’d spent his life taking care of others, who’d grown up with a cold, distant mother, was at long last the child surrounded by love. Finally it was our turn to give back as unconditionally to him as he’d given to us.
    And his intellect, his mind—it was the one thing he had to learn to surrender, the last attachment to this life that he had to give up, just as he had given up his faith in the old ways and gone on to chart a whole new course. By letting go of his mind, which had held him so firmly rooted to this plane of existence, he could at last take that one final leap into the unknown.
    I like to believe that Javitz died with all of his karma fulfilled. It’s selfish of me to wish he were still here, to help me through mine.
    But I do.
    Jeff
    Okay, so I suppose Lloyd has told you some stuff about Javitz. That should do you for a while. Don’t expect me to follow suit, getting all introspective and touchy-feely, with all that talk about karma and the wounds of the despised gay tribe. I’ve got other things to attend to. Chief among them is what’s-his-name, R. C. Boy, and his skin is just about the sweetest thing I’ve tasted in ages.
    Still, I’m fuming. Like I should have expected anything different from Lloyd, Mr. I-can-talk-a-good-game-but-I-won’t-walk-the-walk. He’s still