Sleeping as Others

Chapter 7: Most Dads Like Me

It was weird enough Going to Meet the Tonys, I, John, sighed to myself, like it was some ill-conceived television show. Now I was going to have to meet, or actually, re-meet, after several years' absence, one Tony, as another. I could only catch up with one of them today before he took off internationally, and I had to arrange it so I met two of my former beaus, both named Tony, on two consecutive days, yesterday and today. And yesterday's Tony had had his old hold over me all over again, his spell I never used to be able to, and still cannot, resist. And so I hadn't resisted it and here I was, on the fourth Tony's doorstep, while I was wearing, as fate would have it, the third Tony's skin. And that could be a problem, I reflected as I heard the first rumblings on the other side of the door, as the third, yesterday's Tony, had black skin, and the fourth, today's Tony, now squinting at me in the low light of his half-opened door: not so much.

The third Tony, yesterday's man, had leaped back into my life on the merest pretext, the shortest phone call, with the odd truths of the last several weeks of my life only half-apparent to him, and already he was directing me to his house. I'd arrived, not the man, Simon, he'd expected me to be, but he was himself: smiling dimples and skin the color of especially rich, ground coffee. The muscular physique that this search for Tonys was reminding me I liked projected itself onto the blackest screen here, and I mentally checked his appearance against memories of the man I'd met walking past a picnic nearly a decade before. It took the grin, the beam in the eyes against the darkness of the complexion to jibe with the memories, and I'm afraid I kept studying his skin, as if I expected, somehow, the very glow of his musculature to shimmer. The statuesque bald head looked etched, monumental, somehow, the eyebrows left invisible on distinguished dark arches.

Conversation had sparked haltingly yesterday, a strange man on third Tony's couch and Simon's body not knowing how to evoke my, John's memories of Tony, but still seeing, through Simon's eyes, what John had once seen in him. I offered the usual account of backward progress through the Tonys I had known, the places they were supposed to occupy in some quest to understand a changing self, and the fact that none of this was just elaborate metaphor--Tony's head tilted further to the side on this note, as he listened, uncomprehendingly but intently--but it really was my, Simon's, John's, the earlier johns', experience. It all landed in awkward silences and a noisy clock somewhere chimed a discordant hour, as Tony was still not understanding the point, but too polite to kick the white boy out.

The home was new since I had known this Tony, the neighborhood surprising for a new town-home amid the area's dilapidated, decades-old affairs. The place was grand in its high ceilings, huge rooms, glistening chandeliers, but almost unfurnished, looking less than lived-in. Tony had guided a short tour because again, it would have been impolite not to, and we both sensed the conversation dying in that spacious, gapingly empty room. I was trying to summon the intimate details only this Tony would know, but what I remembered came out as half-baked and raunchy cliché, even more naked, it seemed, for the grand décor and Simon's failure to fit within it.

"I've got to decide soon," I'd heard this Tony say with a grand, expansive gesture toward the wide open, interior space, "if this place is all mine, or a house I'm going to share." Not only my, but this Tony's remarks had fallen flat, as the house seemed to emphasize its emptiness in response, to reverberate hollowly through every nearly unfurnished square foot. This grand a place was in fact this Tony's own. I gulped in the silence, abandoning the search for the comforting, familiar details with which I thought we could reconnect. I just sighed, resigned, Oh, well.

Well, maybe not, as, in passing a bedroom with the light switched off, Tony had swept me into the darkness and onto what felt like a divan or loveseat against a distant, shadowed wall. Lips were kissing and clothing was coming off. After dark--I proverbially thought, silhouetted in this room's darkness, but glimpsing the dim light still visible from the open door across the room--after dark, all skin was black. Silky skin slid across my own, a bald head rubbed itself cranially along my chin, shoulders, and chest, made me once again surprised skin invisible in the darkness could feel so silky smooth. Delicate fingertips undid flies of jeans and guided down zippers as he stepped out of denim. Tongues met tongues as mouths opened and forgotten tastes, scents were remembered with sudden contact, sudden familiarity with which one wanted to remember, and to taste, even more. Oh, yes, this Tony, the third one to come into John's life, and the third one on this quest in reverse order through the ordinal Tonys. He tasted like this. He liked when I did that. He wanted me to assume this position. He wanted to be guided into that position, but wanted you to know he didn't need the guiding, and was headed there with his muscles, his frame, his scents and smells, all along. Oh, yes, John as Simon remembered the feeling, though this time it was Simon's, not John's, body feeling it: sex with this Tony, more so than with the others of his name, meant Tony was the virtuoso. John was the violin. Instrument lay in the hands of the player, from my ignited toes to that temple dome of that head.

White Tony's bald head glinted duly in the next day's afternoon light on his doorstep. He wasn't playing and wasn't recognizing me and was this close to throwing this stranger off of his doorstep. While I had once looked up at the fourth Tony from a shorter and much younger perspective, I realized I now looked down into his eyes, loomed large on his front stoop, intimidated and imposed, as Black Tony, as the old John never had. His eyes met mine, Tony's meeting Tony's, with looks he'd never given the old me, something panicked and small behind blue pupils, something narrowing in intimidation, but also quickly looking around, embarrassed at its own plight and trying to hide--I now realize as black Tony meeting white Tony's eyes--the fear in those eyes. I stammer out identifiers of the old John, bring out details only he and I would have known, prescribe my own, old formula for the Tony's I've been meeting so far. It's only when I say I know he's leaving soon on a flight that the eyes change expression, widening, dropping the panic, squinting as he says in a voice that's pitched higher than the white Tony voice I remember, "You called me on the phone and told me you were John?"

White Tony's eyes roam up and down black Tony's body, still not inside fourth Tony's place, though still, indeed, inside third Tony's body. I'd regretting submitting in that lightless bedroom as soon as I'd felt those old feelings, the instrument in the virtuoso's hand, the rubbing of that head on parts of the body not expecting it, the drawing of the bow by the master musician, the deeply resonant vibration through the body in harmony--I'd heard myself, felt myself playing along, as only a virtuoso knew his gifts, as only the tuned, perfected instrument could play. Yo Yo Ma with his best. Clapton with Blackie. Right down to the cigarette burns off the bridge where he's been jamming too intently to flick off the ash, right down to the tiny groove in the Stradivarius, etched by the millionth strum of the bow. I'd made music, I'd been his fiddle, I'd been instrument perfectly timed, tuned, to become one with the player. His hands, body, cock, one rhythm matching mine, metronome and conductor guiding us in sync. Stimulation of penis, prostate, tongue and lips in tidal ebb, orgasmic flow, as regret was my whiny counter melody beneath spontaneous sighs, his fingertips as violinist's bow drawn, strummed, slowly, sensuously guided along bridges, over holes, touching minutely every etched groove of instrument. This Tony was too talented, too selfless in attending to one's lover's rhythms, too synched with one cock, his, sinking inside and with wrapped fingers gliding along the second cock, yours--how could I as his instrument absorb him? How could the played swallow the player in his own selfish ecstasy? If he knows the music ends, knows the rhythms end in oneness, he knows as a singing, enchanted violin that he'll in a moment of ecstasy, stop feeling the player drawing the bow. How can he play, knowing he'll be the player, when the play must end and will end?

I still stammer in white Tony's front room, glad I've made it in this Tony's home, remembering I'd let black Tony deep within my own. He still cast me a mean look, didn't trust me, regretted his decision to let me in on the basis of my knowing about John's, my phone call alone. Affection for John, an old me, shown in those blue eyes, resided somewhere in the forehead, but I could see in the look in those eyes he saw someone different. He glimpsed another Tony whom he hadn't known, wouldn't have gotten to know on his own, and would have thought less of me, of John, for my having known. He displayed conflicted attitudes in those expressions, those unbelieving eyes, discomfort a black man was in his front room, speaking inexplicably of a white man, it seemed, he kept telling himself he held dear.

Black Tony had held me in final throes of passion, experience telling me he'd dissolve in ecstasy at any moment. I'd remembered our times together as I waited for the inevitable release of muscles, as I felt beads of sweat bouncing off of him and only onto me. I'd once walked unknowingly past the city's black gay pride in a park on a late summer afternoon. Looking up in my reverie, I'd seen a beautiful black man with a huge snake on his arms, coiled round his back, hissing in my general direction, slithering, one supposes, pridefully among the gay revelers halfheartedly bumping to disco in a shady city park. We'd made eye contact, I'd looked at the snake, I'd looked back at him. We had a mutual spark. We had a conversation starter. I'd already sensed, how dear his snake, how coiled and cold and tense beneath a rich black smile, a definite dimple, a bald dome on someone who, decidedly, worried not a minute about sunburns. We'd spent the rest of the picnic together, black Tony, snake, and me. Back in his bed, starting to sense he was gone from my arms, I briefly wondered if he still had the snake: was it somewhere here in Black Tony's house? Now that I knew that partners I had slept with and transformed into, reappeared as Brian had done, but memories seemingly swept clean of the affair, would Black Tony at some point retake his place in this procession of ordinal Tonys, none the wiser that the man, Simon, who'd visited him, had in fact been his earlier partner, John? Would the snake coil in the bed or in the cage alone, oblivious that its master was gone for having been absorbed, as a mouse by the snake, into some other predator's skin?

White Tony's house looked overly still, old fashioned, this erstwhile lover one of the only ones I'd had who was two decades older than myself. He wouldn't want to think of me with black guys, and I wasn't surprised he didn't want to think of me as a black guy. Words would come to his lips which wouldn't come to mine as John, which black Tony from yesterday would take as insults, which would forever divide men who had gayness in common into separate camps, separate races, separate existences. White Tony's friends, fiftysomethings, had heard of a peer moving to a distant Southern city and one of them had said the mover could just live there with the n-----rs. I had been amazed they had said that word out loud, evidently not for the first time. Tony, driving, had consigned an inattentive driver in the car ahead to n-----r as well as cocksucker status. I as John had looked at the driver once we'd passed him, not thinking either label applied. Tony in a fit of anger as they'd walked rapidly home from a club at closing time had said he'd not wanted to hear any more about the n----r cabdriver. We'd both looked around the nocturnal block to be certain no one had heard. Tony had told me in confidence a man had strutted, had tensed and flexed his flesh with his roguish, staring eye hinting "come hither." I took a moment to realize the point of Tony's story was that a black gay man had dared to leer at him, had supposed Tony would find black flesh sexy, had thought he would come hither--or at least not run the other way. I had had second thoughts on my own choices to fool around with white Tony in light of what he thought about blacks, in light of what he would say to me, had he known the extent to which I'd played with others. I hadn't grown up at the time in history white Tony had, hadn't watched a high school go from four-percent to ninety-percent black in the space of four years, hadn't been taught by parents to be racist and heterosexual--only to grow up and find one of those promises had not been his to keep.

Black Tony, once in bed post-coitally, years ago, had innocently asked my thoughts once the panting had subsided. I'd said "the whole black-white thing," and I'd turned just in time to see him roll his eyes. I'd said some of the racist thoughts I'd known I'd had, some of the things I'd heard my white friends say, some of the things I'd heard the stereotypes about. While he did have a scent I loved smelling, I didn't associate the aroma with musk or sweat or even difference. While I noted the contrasts in our skin colors, it had been aesthetically, not politically, as though we'd posed in some classical Mapplethorpe still. Neither of our bodies conformed to stereotypes we'd heard about one another, and after all, we'd been naked, when clothes ordinarily sheathed stereotypes' truths.

We'd had a weird and ongoing conversation, whether he'd wanted me to say I liked sucking his big black dick, or should I leave out the black part when I said that? Was it the blackness I inherently liked about it, or was that incidental to the dick I liked sucking? Was it racist to say that about him? Was it racist not to say it about him? Even if it was, or were racist, would he want me to go on saying that about him? He'd smiled, he'd said in compensating terms he'd liked my big, pink Irish dick. I'd laughed, thanked him for big and pink, then said: but I'm not Irish. I'd been aware all along he couldn't very well claim not to be black.

White Tony had called my dick Lars, for the word's proximity to an appropriate word for size, and for his much closer guess than Ireland to my ancestors' point of northern European origin. The dick of a man twenty years white Tony's junior had sprung to action, had shown largess, had rejuvenated white Tony in alabaster paleness, in the sucking as well as in the afterglow. With white Tony, race hadn't come between us. But then, it hadn't come between black Tony and me, either, once we'd worked through the "whole black-white thing." White Tony and I hadn't worked through the racism, even if black Tony and I had worked our way through the race.

All of this worked its way through my thoughts and memories in white Tony's front room, and as white Tony's sets of memories, I probably circulated through his memories and consciousness at the same time. Neither of us voiced these thoughts, as I reflected how much older he looked, as he tried to see any trace of the John he knew in what to him was the foreign face of the man with whom he happened to share a name. He still hadn't invited me in his house past the front halls. I didn't think he was going to. As for the old-time racist truism about leopards not changing spots, black Tony had changed his, and here I was, John as Tony and the former white boy, Simon, now as a black man. White Tony hadn't changed his, confronted, he thought, with a black man, to whom his home remained closed. I wondered for a moment, then abandoned the thought, where does the gay man of either race fit into that truism or cliché? Could he, essentially or existentially, change his spots, complementing or defying the leopards' ways?

White Tony could not. Black Tony could. He could see John without seeing race between them, could honestly not care what John said about him and his big black dick. And yet why had white Tony been paternal toward me when I had been another John? Why had I stayed with a racist partner, when I had also, without telling white Tony, been with another man, even another Tony, of another color? What could I learn about these Tonys, if this Tony wouldn't let me into his house, if the other Tony had now been absorbed, if either of them had any purchase on my origin story as this ever-changing John?

I turned to leave one Tony's hallway, embodying another, who had been let in by one beau to the point of absorption, but kept out by the other to the point of alienation. White Tony and I had had race in common but not age. I'd lain in the bed of a man old enough to be my father. Black Tony and I had looked at one another across racial divides. But neither he nor I had always noted, or always cared about the difference. One made me his daddy's boy, and I, the old John, had gone along with it willingly. The other had never made me his white boy to complement his blackness. I had not not gone along with that, either or neither. Maybe my racism was neither visible nor regarded when I was with the white Tony. My racism was visible but not regarded when I was with the black. Maybe as a kind of chameleon I could appear to share white Tony's racism, but also appear to black Tony to lack it--not that I'm saying I wasn't actually racist in either case. I am, and have been, as we all are, a little bit. Some of my best friends are--letting the white one's front door close softly behind me--Tonys, after all.

They touched, they rubbed, they sparked. They were in sync, in touch, in tune. Two bald men's heads rolled upon one another, bristled with stubble, pressed on one another' jubilant bodies. One moved his crown over chin, over neck, down chest and amid musculature. One felt shaven, sensual skin skidding, skulking along belly, waist, pelvis. The first rubbed cranium against penis, testicles, taint. The second felt ridges against thighs, legs, hips. Laughing and lying stationary a moment, they switched in a kind of bald-head sixty-nining, the lying one now rubbing, the rubbing one now rubbed. The smooth head felt every space and hair and muscle and groove. The rubbed body felt forehead and curve and crown and temple. They kept rubbing heads and forgot hands, kissed only as they passed by lips, gave in to mutual head-rubs, felt they could have sex only from the eyebrows up and not feel either had missed anything. Laughing Buddhas and Tellys Savalis, Misters Clean and Patrick Stewarts, they gloried in shaven pates, bald crowns, distinguished craniums, sensuously naked lobes, uncluttered and hairless canvasses for beaming smiles below. Bald on bald was smooth and shear as insides of silks, as shear, rubbing wrestling singlets, as touched, gloved finger tips that were top of bodies embodied, physiques within gloved fingers instead. Heads were not what they lacked without hair, but were what they were blessed with, an unblemished, naked fullness that stretched back from eyebrows, that placed head to head, that shared beads of sweat between lovers who were not even facing, but were in fact heading, one another.

Among many men in groups in bathhouses, any two of whom could get with one another, the two bald ones always conjoin. Among those cursed with hair, the bald seem a special breed, crowned achievements willing to bare what embarrasses others, willing to let what others protect, do more than just recede. Among satirical shows, the bald have their rituals, their thing, their secret handshakes that are in fact esoteric, secret head shakes. Freemasonries of the mane-free, they are the opposites of Hippie-opera odes to "Hair!" They provoke the late-arrivals to lament they had missed the ritual. They get the most hirsute to envy the cleanly shaved. The grass is always greener, the shave is always closer, the head one mere hair away from bald perfection--not just in and of one man, but in a gay bald pairing, two.

Melville's weird whale metaphors and metonymies have him forging allegories from each whale body part in turn until, in the oddest of them all, man shuts himself up in bishoprick. Vestment made of phallus, man become whale, body become penis, the symbol in a ridiculous whale of book brings us back to baldness: rubbing tips against one another, sensuously heading one another's heads, bald men not only have, but are, their phalluses. Their bodies are sex organs, their penises are themselves, their lives their sex acts, their body contact their mutual frottage. Faces below heads pressed to faces. Arms as extensions embracing phallus bodies. Legs as waists and trunks maneuvering members, heads, toward maximum contact with one another. Soft concussions mean jutted, butted ecstasies. Abutted skulls come as mutually close as unconjoined minds can come.

Cognitive, intellectual, cerebral sex conspires through brain near-contact alone, head on head, self on self, eye to eye, cheek to cheek, lobe to lobe. Sex impulses don't have to travel up spinal cords to brains to signal pleasure centers, but can splay out along craniums, have head-sex, pivot sensuously together, locate G-spots in solar plexes, transmit pleasures right back to hippocampuses just a few short neurons of gray matter away. With the bodies as penises rubbed together, the heads as pleasure centers enabling visceral-cerebral ecstasies, why does one need the non-cephalic body? Why would one want hair? Why would one go back, once one has had bald? Why wouldn't two haired men erotically shave one another? Why must one convince, when bald heads make it self-evident, the naked pate is the sexiest part of a man there is?

Why did he, John, have keep convincing these white guys, he thought, that a black guy wasn't necessarily what they wanted him to be, or what they thought he was going to be? They leered lasciviously. They let their eyes slide down to crotch level. They raised eyebrows in innuendo. They assumed he knew hip hop. They knew he could dance, or thought he could, attributed swivel to angular hips, looked up to a muscled body they assumed could clobber theirs. One could sense the insecurity within the desire in their eyes. One wasn't necessarily a real person in those eyes: one was just a chance for them to break their last unbroken taboo.

Conversations had stopped short. Eyes had quickly darted his way on the brinks of punchlines. Stories had trailed off. He supposed that was his fault: going to bars John had gone to as John or that John had gone to as Simon. He'd been the only black man in the white gay man's bar, and he wasn't really black in any way he currently cared to explain. They were all a bit tighter and more self-conscious with the rhythm and blues on the radio. They rehearsed their knowledge of basketball and football stars, assuming, incorrectly, that he cared about those sports or those players. Being in league with other white gay guys was apparently one thing, he thought, those eyes roaming around another afternoon bar scene (if one could call it that). When that league became interracial--if one black even counted as integrating a crowd--it was something else entirely. Their roaming eyes, darting safely away in their glances from his own, told him even they were wondering what that one thing actually was. The thing was, as their glances when they landed on him seemed to say, in his pants.

That thing, stereotypically sized, he was afraid, amply girthed, even, had had him thinking ever since the inaugural jerk with the new dick--which he'd enjoyed with each new body he'd assumed, but especially black Tony's. Now that it was his, in the possessive, anatomical sense, he rethought his words to its former owner. "I like sucking that big black dick" sounded different as suckee than it had as sucker, as black desired and fellated, than it had sounded as white fellator. It was an objectifying thing to say, even when "the pleasure was all mine" meant it was all that object's pleasure, not all that objectifier's. The girth, the blackness, the connection between the two, pleasured the tonsils and the tongue. The tongue and the pallet pleasured the foreskin and shaft, but it wasn't the pink of the mouth, the white of the lips the dick desired. It wasn't the big, pink Irish dick that black Tony had once generously echoed back. It was the dark of the girth, the heft of the member, the mouth wanted. Tony, now that John was Tony, wouldn't have pushed John as John or John as Simon off of the big black dick. But he would not have wanted to hear it called that, by another fellator or by a former self. It took the whole body to be the dick size and the dick color, as if, like another bishoprick, he was a sex organ, rather than having a sex organ. And that was just as bad as leering at any black man in a bar as if he were a sexual jukebox: anyone with the right deposit, the right combination, could play any tune he wished. But it was never what the jukebox wanted, and he was starting to think it wasn't what the dick wanted, if the dick, as the whole body, thought about it long enough. He liked having the black dick now, and he thought he would like having the dick admired, if he could stay his new self, still. But as for liking to suck black dick, somehow now, the shoe was on the other foot.

On the other seat at the time, though, was a guy with evident problems making himself look away. Too many buttons unbuttoned, hair neatened and combed back a few too many times, he'd studied himself in a mirror too long for a fortysomething before coming to a bar that would be empty anyway. The constancy of the look, the return of the glance, so soon, made John as black Tony wonder if in a way the man were still looking in a mirror. Was he looking for the reflections of attraction in whom he would call a black man--maybe even call a negro man, were his wording out of date? Was he just checking out John to catch signs John was catching him out in turn? What was it in that face's unconscious ligaments, its thoughtless expressions, anyway, that looked borderline familiar--to John, Simon, or perhaps Tony? Glances sidled. Fingers tapped. Toothpicks seesawed, as a man, ill-at-ease, tried too hard to project the feeling of ease.

Easy, John within black Tony wondered if he could mess with him. Could he pull it off? He'd been black, if he even was, a few hours, and he was about to try to swagger his way through messing with an over-confident but ill-at-ease white dude, just because he thought he could. Black Tony buzzed his lips, John sipped gin through them, and a white soul in a black body wondered to himself, where he'd gotten the gall. It was probably racist of white John to assume inside black Tony's body he'd be irresistible to insecure white men. It was probably racist of white John inside black Tony to assume he could read this white man's thoughts about him as a black man, when he wasn't "really" black. John then caught himself, checking himself: yes, this man, whoever he was, really was white. But wait--was the next thought--was that something racist to assume? He hadn't, after all, heard the man say a word. Based just on glances back and forth, which neither man had admitted he'd caught off of the other yet, he'd read the man's whole psychology, as a black man would read a white man, before he reminded himself, yet again, he wasn't really black. Based on that logic, though, he caught himself then thinking, was it racist, too, to assume the other man was really white? What if John Howard Griffin in Black Like Me had met his walking opposite, a black anti-racist, cleverly disguised as white? Why, he would have to, to bear up his own logic, improvise. All shows, even whatever this one was, must--

"Go on." the guy had suddenly said out loud.

Black Tony was still catching up with how eerily the man had completed his thought when he realized the man had not completed it at all, and was not even looking at him or talking to him. He undid all of the mental arithmetic he'd done to arrive at the sum that the man had been leering at him, innuendo on the mind, and wondered briefly if in his own inverted narcissism, he'd projected odd attraction back onto the man in turn. By the time that thought had worked it way back through all of the terrible implications, another man on another barstool had spoken up. "Bisexual."

The man who'd looked familiar, in the too-unbuttoned collar, said a crisp "nope." Other suggestions rang out in the circle of men around them: pansexual. Homosexual. Asexual. It was an enlightened place and there were the tones and timbres of cynical amusement in ironic answers, but the man was still brushing off as wrong all of the suggestions people had made. Wilder guesses seemed to strike him as funny, as the name of the game began to strike Black Tony.

"Heterosexual," the man had said out loud, even as he was meeting John's glance. Was he really proclaiming his straightness in a gay bar in the mid afternoon, all the while leering at Tony as another man, and as the only black man in the place, at that?

Queens jeered back disbelief and told him as much. Predictable questions reigned about why he was here, how he would demonstrate his straightness. A hand went for his back pocket and drew out his wallet as he threatened to show them his kids. "What's that going to prove?" from some wag by the bar, stopped the gesture short.

"What do you mean, what's it going to prove?" And suddenly five voices all informed him of the ostensible queens among them who were in fact fathers. The wallet sank back into the pocket unopened and he stuck with his story: he wanted to see what a gay bar was like. Wanted to know if he would fit in. Wanted to know if he was really so much different from his fellows. Again, the eyes drew back to Black Tony, who had not yet said a word to add to the conversation.

He whet his whistle with another sip, placed the rocks glass back down on the bar and spun around to face him. "So, it's girls over boys for you then," he said to the man, granting him that. "Is it also, though," and jet blacks amid white, white eyes stared him down, "whites over blacks?"

The man rocked back on his barstool. "I've been with black. . . " he started to say.

"Lady? Pussy?" John started to think he was overdoing the Negro macho factor for a life-long white boy, but there had been too much of the ring of "some of my best friends are. . ." in his voice.

"Well, yeah." The man sat there and stared.

"But never," Black Tony said, coming sauntering nearer, "Black cock."

"Never any kind of cock," the man said, but his eyes didn't remain with Tony's, sliding down the clothed torso even as he disclaimed attraction to the sex.

"Never any kind," Tony echoed in a mockingly higher pitch. Listeners in respective peanut galleries appreciated the insinuation. "Not what I asked, man."

He decided to draw himself up to full height, stand what he thought was menacingly in front of the bar stool, trying to telegraph the thought that enough was enough. "I never have and I never will sleep with another guy, white or black."

John as Tony, Tony as John was practically breathing on him now, a finger on the front of the man's button-down shirt, about to take inspiration from long-ago lumberjack's dive down his collar. He lowered the voice in what he thought was his best imitation of Barry White. Over his own internal objections he was carrying this too far, seducing a straight man and a white man at once, he breathed, "that would be just too bad, man."

It took almost a full minute of uneasy silence before he felt it. Trembles rocked the man from the tip of his spine on down. Beads of sweat broke out on a forehead he could barely see in the dimmed bar's afternoon light. The breath had even quickened a little, and if he pressed his finger down on the man's pulse, he was sure it would be racing. He'd caught the man in his cockiness, called his sexual bluff. The man was visibly trembling, reaching out with shaky hands for his drink, eyeing the neon exit sign unfortunately gleaming over Black Tony's shoulder. A glance at the bartender, running dishrags over carafes a few spaces down the bar, netted him a look that said, you're on your own. And yet, he seemed to realize at the same time Black Tony knew the fact for sure: neither had he made any move to draw himself away. In fact they were in some kind of weird sync. He looked more and more familiar. He'd risen to the occasion he was not shaking to resist. He'd come to a gay bar to flirt with homosexuals. He'd baited queens with his supposed heterosexuality. He'd walked right into John's comments about having had black pussy (yeah, right) and wanting black cock--an assertion the man had not yet openly denied.

"It is what you wanted," John made himself continue in the same Barry White voice of projected seduction. His best black friend would probably hate him for this. The real Black Tony, could he know what he was doing with his body, would probably hate him for this. But he thought about his chance to be the virtuoso, with this quaking fool of a man not even knowing how soon and how splendidly, divinely he would be the violin. "It is what you wanted when you walked in here today. It's what you wanted when you started bragging to a bunch of queens about being supposedly straight." He looked around briefly: no one in the peanut gallery was even objecting to being called queens. You could have heard one of their hairpins drop. He decided to risk saying it, though something about black appropriation rang through his head with scolding tones. "It's what you wanted all of your white boy life." He pressed his leg against the man who'd sat back down on the edge of the barstool. Shifting in loose pants pressed his cock against the man's thigh as a thumb roamed to find something in the man commensurately pressing against him in turn--and there it was. A smile lit up Black Tony's face as something akin to fear drew down the man's eyebrows and eyelids. He went back to shaking, but in his fervor, he was visibly trying to convince himself that the shaking could be endured. That the shaking was even a good thing. He had not seen this coming. He was not sure even now he was going to give in to Black Tony and go along with what he wanted--or if he did, if he was going to live through it. But the shaking had its pleasurable elements to it, even to the man with the nerves tight enough and edgy enough to do the shaking. John inside Black Tony decided he could live with that, for it was pleasurable to him as well, to be sure. John inside Black Tony would soon be inside the man and it would be pleasurable, no doubt, for both of them. He practically picked the man up off of the barstool, endured the looks of the queens as they awkwardly left the bar together. He still hadn't, he reflected, his hand on the seat of the man's ass in the parking lot amid the lengthening shadows of the late afternoon--he still hadn't looked at the pictures of his kids.

It, the nose, isn't on anyone's short list of sexy organs. Hooks protrude and schnozzes honker. Nostrils flare and nose hairs grow. Sniffs convey haughtiness, ridges embody the stuck-up, inclinations follow the nose's angle, aspiring or downcast. Apart from its excess or its noted crookedness, noses are never what makes or breaks a face. No one would say someone's nose gave away that someone's soul.

And yet it speaks the language of pheromones. It hears the calling of scents. It feels in its flares oils of essences, notes aromas, even tells you one's lover, or another man, has worn these clothes lately. It breathes the air of musk, patchouli, subtle sweat, the body honed, the sinuses drawing in the scents surrounding, wafting inside and outside the body, as it is on the breeze. It crosses the sense and invokes the deepest memories, even as the sense most often forgotten about--until the need arises, the aroma swells, the body glints its smells and the nose sniffs--not in quick dismissive inhales, but breathing in deeply, pervading, appreciating, dwelling, living in the scents surround.

Dozens had sat on the balcony of a two-floor lobby, as the introductory lecture for jury duty had droned on above, but as a cinnamon bakery shop had gotten set to open for the day below. Rising yeasts, baking cinnamons, warming frosting had taken hold of every imagination, had crowded out thoughts of civic duties, had gotten heats of jurors descending stairs and removing wallets from pockets. Mouths had been watering even among those still seated. Tastes had taken hold on tongues such that bearers had thought they had already begun eating. The litigious and conspiracy minded, licking their lips in spite of themselves, thought the cinnamon bakery must have an unfair advantage with the municipal courts.

The long-term partner knew upon entering their home--he had gone without that day; he had indulged; he had bought a dime bag; he had overdone it; he'd shared all it with guests. It smelled woodsy, pungent, earthy--possibly Nor Cal more than Mexican. It dripped from the walls. It pervaded the atmosphere, gave the lie to yesterday's promises to forgo, set up the arriver's disappointment with he who had wasted his time alone at home. Over time he'd developed the senses, so he no longer had to ask if his partner had used that day; he could smell it. Over time he'd honed the skill, if you could call it one, and no longer had to ask his partner how good it was; he could inhale and tell. His nose had learned the signs. He recognized the stinks. He could guess which dealer his partner had called. To borrow a metaphor, the scent, breathed in deeply, knocked something off a shelf deep in his head. When he went back to find whatever it was, it was his old love for his partner, rotten and wafting, drifting meekly away on the wind.

Men entering a bathhouse in a rougher SF neighborhood long after dark found themselves paying admission, second guessing one's wardrobe, ignoring the whispered instructions before signing the blanks, but then--getting themselves sniffed. Bouncers in full gear smelled them deeply head to toe, not as kink or fetish, but as olfactory inspection before they finally let someone in. Musks, colognes, perfumes, scents from body washes, were enough to get the sniffer to kick out the errantly sniffed, the perfumed, the cleaned--too much so, for an establishment that reveled in raucous body sweat, men's odors, pungencies as turn-ons. The too cleaned were barred as those who were feasts for mouths, who were natural bouquets for noses inhaling, freely, slickly played.

Guilty boys in locker rooms remembered lingering aromas of decades of arrested adolescence, sweaty garments in lockers, shorts and shirts aired out near outside doors letting in hot airs of muggy afternoons. Noses pressed quickly to jocks sniffed savored smells. Rubbed tee shirts yielded sweaty scents concentrated, breathed, remembered, as the mind matched the smell with a taste, remember the body of the source, felt intensely guilty for the sniffing. Minds above noses admitted to themselves, but to no one else, and to no one out loud, black boys did have different scents, did perspire more sweetly, more chemically, in ways that seemed forbidden and foreign, yet pungent and immediate hanging there in the air. One knew one heard awful stereotypes about others' smells, one knew whole ways of thinking were formed, xenophobia riding on a visceral rejection of body smells triggering fearful revulsion, history turning on the potentially conquered smelling, and only then hearing, the invasion of the Mongol hordes, the cuckold sensing mildews and molders as residues of his rival. One knew--John inside his latest host knew--he'd speak aloud to liking sucking, but kept his own counsel, even with Black Tony, of love for black scents, funky musks, bold flavors breathed deeply in adolescent fantasies. The burst of wind could carry the invaders' odors, trigger the body reactions and the pheromone receptors, invoke the race-traitor guilt just as the scents wafted by. The smell could bring forth the memory, could stir the loins, could shake the conscience, all before it had traveled all the way up the sinuses, implanted itself in the front lobes, consciously called forth a lover of old's personality amid the smells, the scents that always trailed, sometimes preceded him. John lay in the beds of the invaders, the conquering, the conquered, guessing a life--a sexlife--from smells, oils, flavors on beds betraying their owners, marking their territory, signaling, as to dogs, the emotions of love, ecstasy, fear. The soul did leave its imprint in its aromas. The nose did, in its way, read its lovers' characters brought forth, then banished on the passing breeze. The inhaling head did soak in the pheromones, know amid its irrational, creature knowledge that one was in fact breathing, one was smelling, one was loving, scents of one's own.

I flipped out my picture--me in the picture, that is, as John of old--halfway into work again the next day and wondered why I bothered. I fretted with the sunscreen on the way in, as well, half-mad at myself for squandering the only days of my life I hadn't needed to apply lotion to whiter-than-white flesh. Then I had to stop the mental thought process at some version of "first world problems": was that all that blackness had meant to me? Was it only the luxury of doing without sunscreen for a few days? I hoped not, but I was uncertain what else it had been. A few days of being John Howard Griffin in a different body in a different era. I cinched up the man's jeans under what I had not realized ahead of time was a budding gut beneath of bushel of chest- and abdominal hair. And look, I kept on thinking as I tried again to button top buttons that kept on falling loose anyway: look at what I've got to show for myself. For himself. For ourselves.

That self, those selves. flashed in reflections of the glass doors at the entrance to the building, John's face in the picture-badge contrasting, I hoped, with the latest, once-again-white John. He was dumpy and hairy and had a body that was used to exuding confidence without knowing it had not earned it. It did not move gracefully and had no sense of eloquence in its rhythms--a clumsiness of body like it was conscious of its own need to move slowly and with concentration, that if it forgot that slow conscientiousness it would trip up, mentally as well as gymnastically, and knew how badly it would fall on its face. Once again it conjured up thoughts for me of where the self or the soul left off within the man's body, and where the corporeality--the corpulence, I'll admit it, in this case--picked up. Somewhere within those folds of stubbly overconfidence, the real John attempted gracious moves, elegant empathy, or at least a sense of earned self-confidence. It was all outside, I'd hoped, the man loped on, shakingly unsure of himself, still twitching as a mysteriously alluring man had drawn near. Still seesawing his toothpick in a false show of ease, I knew the real ease, the repose of John himself, dwelled within. But how--almost tripping on a doorstop, way too far out in the common way of a corridor--to bring it out, to bring him, to bring myself, out again?

Going in had been the easy part. I'd been amazed how quick a supposedly straight white dude had gone for the dick. Had loved it, had reveled in it, had been absolutely shameless in his uninhibited attraction to it. In Black Tony's black room, where I myself had reflected not forty-eight hours earlier that in the dark all skin is one and the same shade, he'd pushed back foreskin. He's lapped up cock tastes. He'd fellated with some of the most skilled men, white, black, and otherwise, I'd ever been with. He'd played along. He'd returned favors. He'd shed his clothes. He had never repeated his boasts, stilled his own shaking, or said another word about his kids. He'd never resolved what I had felt was familiar about him, but my body, Black Tony's body, he'd made familiar inch by inch, region by region, even scent by scent. I'd briefly known the virtuoso, having been the violin. I'd briefly strummed and plucked and played. He'd allowed himself to play along, the quiver of newness animating him, the breaking of taboos shattering his stillness, the spontaneity keeping him effortlessly erect. He'd dropped his inhibitions at Tony's door and totally belied his ever having claimed that he was straight, that he had kids, that he had no desire or need for black cock. He'd liked sucking Black Tony's big black cock every bit as much as I had as John, long ago and the other evening. It was still a pleasure feasting on the man's flesh as he'd feasted on Black Tony's. But it was like he wasn't even straight. It was like I hadn't even been black. It was like he hadn't even been ashamed once the shaking had started. It was like a regular fucking, back when I didn't become the man I'd been fucking, or the man who'd been fucking me, after said fucking had finished. And yet as I'd thrashed around the bed, thrusting mightily and lustily with Black Tony as Black Tony had thrust and thrashed into me, I knew I'd look up, pulse pounding, body orgasming, to Black Tony's empty bed. I'd banished Black Tony, for I didn't know how long, to acquire a body I didn't want. To teach a man a lesson he hadn't wanted ahead of time to learn. They came back, it seemed, weeks later, with no memory of the event, no recollection of being with me, or of being me. But I didn't know, yet, how long, or where they went in the meantime, or if somewhere out there, the Black Tony I had just been, or the man whose body I was now renting in his Jungle-Fever shame, were somewhere, also meditating on having been with, and on having been as, me, as John. The shoe most decidedly was, I'd thought, inching past another errant doorstop, on the other foot.

"Oh, say," said a voice that made me stop, still not to my, John's, old cubicle. "I didn't know you were coming in today."

Luke--an odd expression on his face--eyed me. I realized my picture placard had fallen off somewhere, and glanced back after it. But that was absurd. Luke and I had long since established different Johns would be arriving, all wearing John's badge, but none of their faces in succession matching the appearance or the picture of the original John of old. Since I still hadn't spoken, Luke tried to fill in the gap. "Had you called for an emergency appointment?"

I was stammering out words that would tell him I was John, that he was Luke, that, what did he mean he didn't recognize me, even if it was yet another new me. "No, I hadn't called," was the best I could improvise, I'm afraid, still catching up, still wondering who Luke was taking me for.

"It might actually work," Luke was now saying, sinking into a cubicle chair. I echoed the movement in the chair next to his, which wasn't my usual place--a body ache and a tender twinge as I landed in the chair, reminding me Black Tony's body had recently been in this body in turn--and tried again to stall for time. It appeared after a moment or two of additional pantomime, it--whatever it was--might work, "because he's coming in later today, too."

It would have been several beats behind, and it would have spoiled the effect, to ask who would be coming in. "Oh, he is," I stammered out, still grasping for the placard picture. "I should have checked." Quick attempts at reading Luke's expression weren't giving me anything more to go on.

Luke's expression did, though, in different respects, offer what seemed to be a fascinating read. The head was cocked to an attentive angle that wasn't all business. The voice had left a professional tone behind as he'd kept speaking, looking at me all the while but not always meeting my eyes. He'd hunched over in his chair as if wary of carrying himself and a gleam had come into those eyes. "We seemed on the verge of getting somewhere," he said, still assuming I knew, getting where, verge of what, or who--whom, he meant, were getting there. I could only arch my eyebrows in further mute questioning.

"When John went storming off the other day," he said, a timbre of tenderly confiding coming into his voice, "we had been just about to get somewhere."

I'm sure my eyes as this man's peepers bulged as it dawned on me who Luke meant. They squinted again as John went on. "He'd been telling John--"

"And you were--" I was both prying and stalling for time--"listening in?"

"Yes," he fumbled, closing his own eyes for a moment, as if rehearsing to himself how he would say this. "We often discreetly listen in when we can. Not that"--this with direct, pressing eye contact--"not that we don't trust one another, of course."

Of course. A stifled laugh added to many compounding emotions. We weren't supposed to listen in, nor claim we were, to other clients, but to back one another up as equally capable agents of the same team. Luke, my boss, was blithely breaking that rule to me, whom he was mistaking to be a client awaiting another client, his son, to arrive. And I was still spelling out to myself what the rest of that equation meant. Luke was trying to tell me, whom he didn't recognize as me, that another me had walked out, just when the son of the man whom he was taking me to be had had a breakthrough. That the breakthrough had been of the nature of accusing the father, whom he was now taking me to be, of incest, was left out of this forcibly pleasant conversation and couched as progress, as a breakthrough. Professionally, all of this was hard to take as a member of Luke's team, following Luke's rules.

Personally and not so professionally, though, my head inside this man's head was still spinning. Luke was recognizing me as Matt's dad and assuming Matt's dad was there to speak to Matt with the mediation of their counselor, John. That John was there but couldn't be there had to go without saying. Really, I couldn't now say I was John, if he was taking me to be Matt's dad. Matt's dad, it sank in on me with one hell of a sinking feeling, was the kind of man who said he was straight and then slept with other men, as he had last night with me, and as he would soon again do, as me. And if Matt's dad could say he was straight as one thing and sleep with a guy as the other thing, he could also say he'd never abused his son as one thing, and turn out to have abused him all along, as the hypocrisy this body he'd adopted unknowingly and blithely, apparently had put into practice. So, Matt didn't just want attention in darkly hinting at stories of abuse. So, Matt's parents had been sticking to their usual story in previously denying it. So, Luke had been wrong to throw me, John, off the scent, and now here I was, but not as John or any of John's old iterations. Here I was as the enemy, and I couldn't even say I was sleeping with the enemy. I already had. I had met the enemy. And he was--me.

He was--Luke was--eyeing me even more strangely through what I now realized was a protracted pause. What had he asked me again? Who was he taking me to be? How much of this had dawned on him as it had dawned on me? The eyes blinked with patient weariness, having been through too many mind-bending turns with previous mes to mind an additional twist all that much. But he didn't know this me, was me, and I had not known this me was a man he'd recognize, as the father of an important client, and as the accused that client had been the accuser of. And he wasn't currently giving me an accusing look, just a softly implied conspiracy, as he if would cooperate and strategize who would say what to whom when the son, the accuser, the victim, the victimizer, arrived. I sighed wordlessly, not knowing where to take any of this next.

Luke stayed silent, too, but in our mutual reticence something sparked in an eye that roamed in spite of its owner's concentrations. He couldn't keep his eyes off me. His glance darted to my fingertips, followed up arms and spine, looked quickly away from my reciprocating glance, clung, all the same, to the pants I'd thought had betrayed Matt's dad's dumpy figure. Like a child wading into shallow water he'd looked tentatively back into my eyes, more and more willing, less and less afraid. The reciprocated look then confirmed something, assured one another we agreed, saw something extracurricular in one's another's eyes. Luke was wordlessly confirming to another man he'd also been, as a straight man, with a fellow man. They, Luke seemed to be thinking, shared the guise of straightness. And yet, as he seemed too to imply with that look, both of them could conspire beneath that guise, could get out, could explore, could enjoy one's self and be with a man who enjoyed himself, and creep back under that disguise when needed. Luke knew what Matt had said about Matt's dad's history, and still looked at him that way--not accusing, not understanding, but commiserating, even identifying with whatever it was Luke saw in those eyes, or thought he saw in those eyes. Luke wasn't as straight, in short, as he pretended to be with openly gay me as John, as he was when he was with a man whom he was taking also to be something other than straight, when he could get away with it. It was the subterfuge, the secrecy, in short, more than the sexuality, he felt he had in common with Matt's dad. And he was, I realized in horror, okay with that. And he was, last of all, saying all of this and taking all of this in, in just one glance.

Now, Luke didn't know, and I as Matt's dad did, that in fact John's eyes, too, glanced out at him, and manifested his personality, John's, on some level, too. Luke thought he was performing flexible heterosexuality with a similarly flexible guy. But he might also have unconsciously known he was performing it for a gay guy in a not so gay, but also not entirely straight, disguise. Was this man, Matt's dad, bringing this behavior out of him in ways he, Luke, was aware of? Or was I, John within Matt's dad, coaxing it out of him instead, in ways Luke only unconsciously realized? Where did the heterosexual mask end with him and where did it end in this case? Why would he let it slip with a fellow "straight" man he suspected of wearing disguises of his own? Or, why would he let John inside of Matt's dad see it, see him, if on some unconscious level, too, he knew he was performing straightness for a not-at-all straight guy?

All of which I was wondering in one way or another when it seemed he pivoted his head yet another time, in still a different trajectory, listening intently to me, though I still hadn't said a word. The eyelids slid closed. The head tilted toward me. I will swear, the lips began to pucker. As if, right there in our cubicle, ostensibly straight Luke would make out with ostensibly straight Matt's dad. As if, just because the gay guy, John, was supposedly absent, two straight men could let their guards down. As if, back to speaking professionally again, any of this were the way to act as preparation for a counseling session at which they might prompt Matt to disclose. I sighed in recognition of all of this. I'm sure he felt my exhale on his pucker as his eye slits began to widen again. I was a gay guy in the body of a man who pretended, unsuccessfully, to be straight. I was the employee of a man who also played the straight man, but who let his guard down, but not while in my gay presence, but when he thought he was safely away from my prying gay eyes. I was Matt's dad, when as my commentary here makes painfully aware, I couldn't even remember Matt's dad's first name. I hadn't even bothered to learn Matt's dad's name before I'd slept with Matt's dad. Matt really had all of this to worry about, as he'd been trying to tell me, and had conceivably been sexually abused by the ostensibly straight man whose body I currently wore as a disguise. And yet if I shifted around inside the body I'd unknowingly adopted, I just couldn't feel this body's potential to abuse a little boy--play around with a grown man and a well endowed one, sure. But abuse a child, and a loved child at that--I just couldn't see it, couldn't feel it happening, at the hands of the man I now was, with the hands my body and soul now wore. And, if I finally took out the picture of the man's kids he'd been boasting about in the bar the night before, there I would find, of course, a picture of Matt.

And there he was, walking in with his mouth already open in shock: Matt, here to see me, John. But he was unable to see me, as John, for I'm now the dad, instead, whom he doesn't want to see.

You're here?

I'm . . . here.

After not coming home last night you just plan to come here instead?

No, I . . . didn't.

Didn't what?

I didn't plan to come here. I . . .

What, he dragged you here against your will? He kept you out over night?

No, he didn't do either one. It's all . . . me.

It's all you. So you did plan to come here. You did stay out all night. You did have something to say to me.

I did . . I did have something to say to you?

What do you mean, emphasizing "I"?

I. . . never mind. I'm glad to see you here. I'm glad you're talking to these guys. I heard you made some kind of--break through.

Is that what John said?

No, it's what he said. Luke. But I think John would say so, too.

Oh, would he? How do you know that?

I know. I just do.

Have you been talking to John about me? Have they been telling you what I've been saying?

No, they. They just said they were glad I was here, too, that you'd had some kind of a breakthrough, that I could help if I--if I came here today.

So, they weren't kidding about everything I tell them being confidential. It's funny about that, though, that each one I talk to seems to know what I've told the other automatically.

Yeah, weird, huh. Don't know how they manage that, either.

You really don't? You don't come in and tell them?

No. They know. They're professionals. I know. I'm your--I'm your father.

You say that like you're reassuring yourself of that fact.

Well, I guess I haven't always acted as a father. I guess that might be part of your problem. . . Of my problem, too.

Might be part of the problem? And I'm the one making the break throughs?

You're the one, son. You know it isn't easy for any dad to have . . .

"To have". . . .?

To have a gay son. As his only son. It might even be more difficult for me than it might be for most dads like me.

More difficult, how? Dads that are like you, how? Not sure what you mean.

You're a kid a dad like me is . . . proud of.

O--kay . . .

A kid that a dad like me might think . . . looks and acts a bit too much like myself.

Umm. Yeah?

A kid that a dad like me might . . .

I'm afraid to ask.

That a dad like me might share a few things with.

Lost me. Share what kinds of things?

Well, maybe not things.

Things that maybe aren't things?

Yeah.

So, things that are . . . ?

Habits. States of mind. Tastes.

"Tastes"? What the hell, dad?

Maybe just forget that I said it.

Maybe. . . . I'm the kind of kid that's difficult to understand as gay, because I might not be different enough from you, dad, because I might have more in common with you than dads would be comfortable with. . .

Yeah. That's what I'm trying to say.

You'd be more comfortable if I weren't so much like you?

Yes, I suppose.

You'd be less uncomfortable if I were more foreign to you? You're saying that to your son?

Yeah, I suppose I am. So, I've got a gay son, and I'm--

You're?

Okay with that. But I'm--

You're . . .?

Not gay. So, where did my influence as a dad. . .

--go wrong?

Where did it--leave off.

Ahh. And where did some gay guy step in and finish it off?

Well, no. But, I've got to wonder, right?

I guess you've got to wonder. But you're awfully worried about how you'll look to others as the father of a faggot. More than you're worried for the faggot's welfare.

You've got to use that word, Matt?

It's one you use, isn't it?

Not anymore.

Oh? Since when?

Since . . . well, before last night.

Does that mean something happened last night, or you just stopped using the word?

Let's not get hung up on this. You used the word. I did not. You're such a good kid, you've always acted the way a dad would want a kid to act. We've always been close. I didn't see--

You'd call that close? You didn't see what--? You didn't see this coming?

I didn't see this coming.

"This"? You didn't see having a gay kid coming? Because that way, I'm not enough like you.

Well, because. . .

Because this way, I'm too much like you?

Meaning . . . ?

Meaning, maybe you need me to be more unlike you, than I need to be--

Than you need to be . . .?

Than I need to be unlike you. . . . Or maybe, more than I need to be like you.

Like me, how? Unlike me, how?

Like you in . . .

Yeah?

In neither of us being 100% . . . straight.

Oh, so, I'm not . . . either? Not 100%?

Not. . . no, dad.

What told you that? Where'd you get that?

You got to admit, dad, you've always . . .

I've always . . . ?

You know what you've always . . .

You can't just tell me what I've always?

You know what you've always, right?

No, I guess I don't. I loved your mother, right? I had other girlfriend before her, right?

. . .

No, really, I'm guessing here. I've mentioned them, haven't I?

Well, yeah, you've mentioned them. You don't remember any of them now?

Not important. I loved them, I loved your mom, I was, I mean I have been . . .

Yeah. . . ?

A good, loving dad to you. Haven't I been?

. . .

I guess that silence means I haven't been. I guess I really don't know how I've always been. Tell me.

You've been a good dad. A loving dad. The guys I see, they on some level . . .

. . . Yeah?

They on some level--hard to admit this: The guys I fall in love with remind me of . . .

. . . of me.

Yeah. How did you know that? Was I leading up to it? Did one of these guys tell you that?

No, these guys didn't tell me that. Thank you for telling me that, son. We all, I've heard, look for things in our partners that remind us on some unconscious level of our parents. [mocking a prep-school sing-song:] I want a girl, just like the girl, who married dear old dad. You just want a guy like him instead, and I'm kind of flattered by that. And you just have to live with having admitted it yourself. Most of us block out oedipal stuff so we don't have to think about it. You look at a hot guy and then see some reflection of me in it, and beat yourself up for that.

Yeah, I guess I do. And, funny you should mention the beating up.

Yeah? How so?

Because I think you beat yourself up for it, too.

For having a gay son? No, I've stopped beating myself up for that.

Meaning you once did, huh? But, that isn't what I meant anyway. You beat yourself up for the same things I beat myself up for.

The same thing, son?

The same thing. You won't even admit it now, will you?

. . .

Guess that means you won't. Didn't think so.

Look, if you force it out of me, it's not an admission or a confession, right? It's a torture tactic.

Which means you are admitting it?

No, it just means I'm objecting to your tactics in making me. What if I'd forced you out of the closet before you were ready to come out of it, say, five years ago? It wouldn't have been fair of me, right?

Well, no, but if you're saying it would be wrong of me to force you out of the closet, are you admitting that's where you are?

No, I'm not admitting anything, I'm pointing out a confession under coercion isn't really a confession.

Oh, under coercion, huh? So, if I'm coercing you, you're not admitting to anything.

Because it would have been wrong of me to coerce you, and I didn't.

But you did--

No, I didn't coerce. You've got to admit that.

That's not what I mean. I hadn't finished speaking yet. You didn't coerce me. You didn't force me. You did, though. . .

I did . . .?

Play with me.

. . . Play with you? How do you mean?

Our play, when I was a kid.

Okay.

Our play. What we did when I was a little boy. You remember it, yeah?

I don't know that I do.

How could you not remember?

I'm not sure I can tell you how I don't remember.

How could you forget?

It's not that I've forgotten.

You haven't forgotten, but you can't tell me how it is that you don't remember. Those aren't contradictions?

Those aren't contradictions. Just believe me.

But if you haven't forgotten, and you can't say why you don't remember, are you saying it never happened?

I don't know what "it" is yet. How can I confirm or deny something happened if I don't know what that something is yet?

But you had to know. You had to know how attractive you would have been to a son. How excited the son would get, how excited I did get. How much I admired you at the time.

Me? Really? You admired this man, as much as all that?

Yes. Are you so modest you can't believe that?

No, it's just. Are we looking at the same man here?

Yeah. Well, it was years ago, after all. You were awfully young when you had a kid. You played very rough, very close, very affectionately. You had to know I would . . .

No, I didn't have to know you would. Or that I would. If I even have. Your sexuality wasn't even an open secret then, kid.

So, you do know, you do remember.

No, I'm just saying. None of our dads knew when we were kids which ones of us would turn out to be. And they kept playing with us anyway, and we keep on playing with our own kids anyway, not knowing who will be, and not knowing when going so far will mean going too far.

. . . . "which ones of us"?

Yeah. That's what I said. You got me: who's this "us"?

We gay guys? Us gay guys?

Us guys, who may or may not be. And for little kids, isn't that going to be, or might that just be, everybody? How can we know? How could I have known?

How could you still know, though? How could you still not know?

Umm, how so? Lost me.

If you worried about it then and still played with me, if you felt something yourself then and still played with me.

Those are some big iff's, son.

If you felt something yourself then and still played with me when I was a little kid, did you keep feeling that way and keep playing when I was older? When I was old enough to understand, old enough to . . .

Return the affections?

Yeah. . . . That was some sigh.

You were my son and I didn't know you were gay, and I didn't play with you any more or any less or any more . . . lecherously than any parent plays with any of his kids. I never crossed a line in my affections and I always acted appropriately. How can a straight man know when he's going too far in his gay son's estimation?

So you're back to saying you're a straight man?

So you're back to doubting me?

Yeah, have to say I am. And I have to think you crossed that line again. And that you knew what you were doing. And that you knew in your heart of hearts, what you were doing to me.

What I was doing to you? You were a kid. We were playing, innocently playing. This body isn't really--can't really be. . .

Capable? Like it's all up to the body?

No, just that . . . this body doesn't feel like it could . . . do something like that to a kid.

So you're denying any direct memory of it, and acting like it's somebody else's body, that could or could not do something. . . that you can't remember.

Right. Sounds messed up, but right.

Messed up is right. It's always been your body and you must remember it, right?

Well, no and no.

No and no? It hasn't always been your body? Like you're not the man you once were, and shit like that? You really don't remember, and you are just asking your body if it feels like it remembers something the brain and memory have forgotten?

Just trust me on this one. I bet John could explain it to you.

I'll bet John would say you're just bullshit denying everything, the memories, the responsibility. The understanding, everything.

I--John would say that?

Man, that "I--John" shit.

What about that "I--John" shit?

It's exactly the kind of thing that John's been saying lately.

God, it's hard to stare down that kid's expression, him thinking I'm his dad and catching every nuance of what I say that gives away what I know and don't know about him, about us. As we're speaking, and we're still speaking now, we're making weirdly frustrated eye contact as we're finishing one another's sentences, as we're catching one another trying to look away, as I'm trying to stay one step ahead of him: what do I know and don't I know as John? What do I know and don't I know as John, who slept with his dad, not knowing it was his dad, a few hours ago, that I cannot now give away knowledge of knowing? How do I not break some form of confidentiality for myself, when I'm not myself, not really myself, even though what I'm carrying out in this conversation is my job, John's job, John's real way of earning money, even when he isn't really John anymore? Luke discreetly withdrawing, Matt forcing his hands, palms in, into his jeans pockets, and me left trying to keep conflicting scripts straight, but also, oddly, trying not to laugh at the trap I've managed to get myself, managed to get Matt's dad, managed to get Matt himself, into.

There's sexual tension in those eyes as I look at my, Matt's dad's, son, something reciprocal, something waiting for me to confirm it. I can see him, who I now am, so avidly going down on a man, whom I just was, so avidly for a straight man. And yet it seems they have only had the conversation so far of the son coming out to the dad, and not that long ago. They don't seem to have had the conversation about the dad coming out to the son--as gay, as bi, as pan, as whatever the kid means as he says something about "not 100% straight." I have to act like I understand that, and act like I've anticipated it and can roll with it. What comes out is some mishmash from what I wish the educational, sex ed films would cover--but they never do, or they never did back in the day, because they were always aimed at the straight kids. So, I'm saying in the sincerest tone I can muster, "To have a gay son. As his only son," and God, I don't even know if I'm right about that or I'm forgetting a sibling somewhere they never mentioned. If I can't as John recall Matt's dad's first name, how can I remember whatever other kid he, I, might once have mentioned? "It might even be more difficult for me than it might be for most dads like me," I continue, with a riddle-me-this tone as my desire to stick to some kind of logic doubles back on itself. I'm even giving myself away by admitting to my lack of confidence about things I should have, well, straight. "No, really, I'm guessing here," I'm finding myself, himself, saying about having had a string of former girlfriends. "I've mentioned them, haven't I?," I say, and it comes out rhetorically before the kid screws up his face in feigned disappointment. Matt's dad had been surprisingly homosexual in bed last night, but I still couldn't feel in this new body of mine, of his, a capability to be a former womanizer, even out of some weirdly compensatory bravado or something. I still certainly thought, looking into his, my, son's eyes, this body and this mind--what I, John, could feel of it--didn't seem capable of abusing a kid, even in the most loving of abusing ways.

But, "Our play, when I was a kid," the kid says, making the most meaningful eye contact an ambiguous glance can make. I'm stammering through answering that one, conjectures running through a head that the kid thinks would be flowing with memories--guilty ones at that. He catches me in saying I don't remember, then leaves me no room, of course, to draw the distinction that John can't remember what Matt's dad can. It's like I'm back with Mark again when I first turn up as Jim, and Mark's hurt that I, as Jim, don't remember him. The look in Matt's eyes tells me he wants me, Matt's dad, to remember, but also wants him, me, to deny it vehemently. I'm being prompted to admit, as another man, what I cannot remember, being another man, that man to have done. Even not responding, is taken as responding, and I can see what's at stake in his, in my son's eyes.

I'm eyeing dad too intensely and I try to look away, but I can't not look at him. He's weaseling, lawyer-like, out of saying what he doesn't remember, can't, in Reaganesque ways, recall. And yet it's not lecherous or light flirting, but some half of some conversation we've needed to have with one another for a long time. I've come out to him and dropped some hints about our play together, and he's not followed up. He has to have memories, he has to admit to it, he has to be as uncomfortable about it speaking to me as I was uncomfortable, telling him what he already should have known. Did he, in fact, know it? Was it all, I wonder, searching for sincerity in an expression that was trying its best not to meet my eyes, was it all an act he was trying to keep up--just today, or somehow, always, in our time together as father and son? "You'd be more comfortable," I hit him with, "if I weren't so much like you?" and the reference to comfort seems to throw him off balance, to make him self-consciously aware he cannot possibly look very comfortable right now, as he tries, uncomfortably, to answer a question about comfort. It's like he's doing a mental inventory of his body and his mind in asking himself, "like him," like me, how, exactly? An eyeball roams up and down my body, discerning signs, I guess, of effeminacy, of weakness, of something a son naturally reflects as his father's genetic mirror. I lose patience and hit him again with, "But if you haven't forgotten," a premise borrowed from what had already sounded like shaky logic as he had said it, "and you can't say why you don't remember, are you saying it never happened?" Fallacies of many questions gape widely open beneath us, and I can sense him winding up to say it's an unfair question, a way of asking as the old, misogynist example went, how long has it been since you stopped beating your wife?

He digs himself out of my logic and implants himself in his own, and I'm blotting and concealing tears rising in my eyes. He's sincerely trying to follow through on the conversation, and he has recourse to what most dads would say and do after sons came out to them. But we're not talking about most dads, or about him as an exceptional one, not in the sense he wants to speak about it in. It also deftly intellectualizes the whole thing, as though we're talking about some father and son pair out there, and not about us, and as though we're just generalizing about father-son interactions, and not living through the history of how we played once, once when he did understand, but I wasn't old enough to, understand what we were doing. "How can a straight man know when he's going too far in his gay son's estimation?" he asks, making rare eye contact as he says it. I hate how generalized and depersonalized it is (a straight man, not him, whatever he is), how conjectural (how can he know?), how false in its appeal to common sense (when he's going too far, as if conventional wisdom in the straight family world could have anything to add about the errant, homo son), and how it casts even me (his gay son) in some distant stance. This is what gets kids to stop listening to parents and to logic, when it can be so twisted, it can be used against an opponent, even when stressed sincerity struggles, noticeably, distressingly, in the eyes of the arguer.

The eyes tell me nothing in weird darkness, but somehow my ears are burning all along. I have no idea where I am, and it seems I have temporary amnesia, not knowing how I got here, not knowing how much of what I remember really happened, and how much of it I'm dreaming, making up as I go along. It's all a blank for the last several hours, though the parts of my body that ache rawly tell me dully I've had sex, somehow and with someone, not too terribly long ago. And there's even--something--strange about the sex, but the tricky memory won't tell me what it is. It just flashes visions of my son, like that's supposed to help me understand what--possibly whom--I've done.

And this place seems to be some big warehouse, made into a kind of labyrinth. Music pulses but no one is dancing. Lots of people walk around, but none of them are clothed. There's a whole assortment of people, but none of them are women. It's odd how many dark corridors lead past rooms with open doors, how many ladders and staircases seem to be there just as ascents and descents, not really as means of getting anywhere. Odd, too, how much eye-contact everyone seems constantly to be making. Some voice comes out of the steamy ether as I walk: "None of our dads knew when we were kids"--and I look around, but none of the lips are parting to say the actual words; no single throat seems to be uttering what it's like that they're, or possible we're, collectively thinking--"which ones of us would turn out to be." And the sound hovers there, incomplete, as I seem to be the only one asking, turn out to be what? And then even I'm not so dense as not to get it: turn out to be gay, and it seems I'm the one non-gay in the place. Not so fast, an inner voice says to back myself: not so fast, about yourself, and not so fast, about any number of apparently gay guys, currently walking naked around this place.

Ouch, that hurts, to have conscience smite me, as I'm discovering I'm naked, too, and must have willingly come into a place like this, naked, and not like Schwarzenegger in a Terminator movie, abruptly, nakedly arriving in some other-worldly, time traveling scene. I'm about to assume his character's crouch and his residual Austrian accent, but no one would get it, and it's too serious a scene for playacting. One of the doll beauties, young enough to be my son, takes his turn at eye-contact, and says--but again, it's just a disembodied voice; his lips aren't moving; his throat isn't speaking--"you knew in your heart of hearts, what you were doing to me." It has an accusing, guilt inducing tone to it, and also the assumption I must know as the listener and as the owner of that heart of hearts, what I did, to whom I did it, and what I knew that he didn't know about it in turn. My son comes up in my mind again and in whatever real-life this is I'm experiencing, I'm still looking in the kid's face in front of me. We could have fun together if I'm his type. I could still go home to a woman tonight and not tell anyone, even my son, it ever happened. I think by now--I gather, finally breaking eye contact from the kid, as though I should have offered him a cigarette or something by now--the kid, my son, knows already, can feel it somehow. But if he's accusing me of knowing something I was doing to him, it's too late now to bring it up anyway.

So is a guy who goes into a place like this--and it was clearly an outlaw's hideout, some kind of sex club built around steamy baths--necessarily a gay guy? Was I a gay guy, for having come here, evidently, and for going other places like it? Why did I do to gay clubs and claim I was straight, just showing off? Why did I listen to my one son coming out to me, and not chime in that I'd felt the urges, too, and had acted on them? It's not like I'm totally honest with the kid about anything, anyway. It's not like you're--like I'm, even--the man you once were, and shit like that? But it's not like you can change, gay to straight and straight to gay, or can you? It's not like you can go back and erase the lies you told someone just to protect them, and start over, honest and fresh, or can you? It's not like the play really hurt the kid, or really made the kid gay, or pushed him in that direction, or did it? It's not like the play, what I can remember of it, ever meant molesting the kid or getting into something borderline incestuous with him, or was it? It's not like I'm totally honest with everyone, including with myself, about everything all the time, anyway. Or, am I? And, I wonder if, wherever I am, I can catch up with the flirty kid with the roaming eye, who just, once again, walked by?