The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man (21 page)

Changing voices, Davey-Boy interrupted himself with “‘I
only
pointed out that if he keeps ingesting Tofurkey he’ll, like, maybe start to
look like one
!’”

“‘Oh, and
you
don’t have flaws? Such as crowding the bathroom with more
toiletries
than the
Taj Mahal
?’”

“They don’t look like they’re fighting, though,” I said.

Suddenly, one of them turned to the other and struck his cheek, hard and loud. Many of those around us missed it, but a good two dozen or so stared.

Davey-Boy chuckled. “
Twinks make terrible boy friends,” he observed, as the guy who was struck stalked off and the other one looked after him angrily.

Licking around the inside of the jar top, Ken asked, “Why do
twinks make terrible boy friends?”

Davey-Boy shrugged. “Because they’re
twinks.” Getting up and stretching ecstatically to show off his torso, he added, “What’s next, my boys?”

Next for me was a mass tea with my English friend Ian. Back in London, and sometimes in New York, Ian is theatrical, so the guest list favored stage people, including one ex-friend of mine. The parting embittered him (though he was the one who ended the relationship), and I did my best to avoid a confrontation. This unfortunately landed me in the clutches of a woman who wanted to recount the fabulously pointless saga of the long lost videotapes of some old television show. I kept trying to prompt her to the finale.

“And they were in the trunk in that closet?” I prayed aloud.

“Yes, but first comes the wonderful surprise!” she merrily warned me, preparing to launch the next hundred thrill-laden episodes.

Then someone called out, “Bud!” and I was saved—by another ex-friend, my old actor pal Alex. This parting wasn’t bitter, just one of those show-biz things. They go Hollywood, or they join boutique cults and pretend to be straight, or they
are
straight and get married. Then you fortuitously cross paths and you’re best friends all over again.

I really like Alex. By this time he was nearly Of a Certain Age, but he took care of himself and had grown into his looks: as a solidly-built, masculine forty-something. Many a soft guy dreamed of being plundered by Alex some startling Saturday night, and Alex encouraged the fantasy; he liked being cast in
studly roles, and if you know actors I don’t have to tell you that they are never not auditioning. Yet Alex had a secret soft side. He fought it, mind you. He was forever invigorating himself in the mirror, developing rufftuff facial expressions and stances. He would gesture like a halfback. He growled. And, of course, as an actor he had the skills set to see the transformation through.

“Why are you here?” I asked him, as we edged our way into the other room after a sequence of glad reunion noises.

“I came with the Bryan-Browns,” he explained, referring to a Broadway PR outfit. “I’m in the new McNally, and they’re handling it.”

Congratulations, shaking hands again, Alex taking it in manly stride. Cut to:

“I’m not speaking to you.” This came from Anne Kaufman Schneider, ensconced in an armchair in a corner. She’s George S. Kaufman’s daughter, known to supporters as “Kiss of the Schneider Woman.”

“Now what?” I asked her.

“I lent you my private CDs of James Lipton running through that
Sherry
! score,” she said. Anne doesn’t much like musicals based, like this one, on her father’s plays. When he signed it, with Moss Hart, it was
The Man Who Came To Dinner
and it had only one song in it, which is about as musical as George S. Kaufman liked to get.

“I returned those CDs,” I told her. “I gave them back to you at Kitty’s, last Christmas. That Boxing Day party.”

“That’s why I’m not speaking to you,” she said.

Joke. So we sat next to Anne, and I introduced Alex, and we played urban
smartiboots and started dishing various Broadway types and were having a fine time when my bitter ex-friend appeared, making a beeline for Anne.

“Here it comes,” I murmured to Alex. He was puzzled but clearly aware that we were in for a touch of
geschrei.

Treating me to a look of pure gargoyle, my ex-friend said, with what was supposed to be a tone of crushing disdain, “Hello…
Ethan
!”

Then he turned the faucet of love, delight, and merriment upon Anne, no doubt to demonstrate to me what heights of friendship I was missing out on.

Fine, fine. Alex shot me a quizzical look as my ex-friend made his exit, but Anne is her father’s daughter: the offspring of the master of wisecrack would have the line and the timing all set. She waited three beats, then turned to me with “I want the story and I want it now.”

In the end, Alex and I decided to play catch-up, so we repaired to my place for what John
Rechy (I think) referred to as “coffee and.” En route, Alex got very curious about the encounter with my ex-friend, finally getting to “Was it…intimate?”

“Good grief, no. He’s just mad at me. Permanently.”

“Huh,” he grunted, all jaw and profile. “Relationships,” he added. “It’s total war.” Now he shakes his head with handsome rue. “Everyone thinks, if only the sex part will work. But the sex part is a cinch. It’s the emo, right? Feelings. They’re so…everywhere a lot.” He gazes about as we walk along Fifty-Third Street. Alex ponders the world. “Mad, you say. But how mad? Irritated?
Enraged
? Or just…disappointed? There’s rather a lot of that, I have to say—guys not getting what they want and holding you responsible.”

“You know,” I told him, “you’re speaking more slowly than you used to. It’s a little like taking enunciation class from the football coach.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, as vaguely as possible. “The
coach
.”

“It casts a spell, though,” I admitted. “Are you working up a playing profile for the McNally? Or will you go through life like this?”

“If only guys weren’t so intense, you know. So touchy if you don’t give them enough attention and the like.” Deftly stepping around a street crazy with a rapt expression and the hair of a Morlock, Alex asked, “Do you still live with…”

I nodded.

Smiling, Alex said, “I remember how he does cute things. What do
you
guys do about emotions?”

“We don’t have any. He’s the houseboy.”

Alex suddenly jolted to a stop as we reached Madison. “Are we walking?” he asked. “All the way?” He gestured at the road, a long sweeping motion of his arm, capped by a sudden closing of a fist. “Like it’s medieval and there are no wheels?”

“Alex,” I told him, “stop acting.”

I was fumbling with the keys at my door when it swung open a crack to disclose Cosgrove’s sock puppet, Baron
Portugee. In a foreign accent of some vampire kind, the puppet introduced himself and invited us to join him in ze Casbah—but when I pushed the door back and Cosgrove saw Alex, he and the Baron went quite, quite still. I have to admit, if you’re into first impressions, Alex gives a great one. Tall and handsome: accept no substitutes.

“This is Alex, from way back, in case you don’t remember,” I said as we passed inside and dropped stuff on the couch. Well, Alex did; actors always have those stupid bags, in case they run into
Florenz Ziegfeld and have to present a résumé.

Music was playing: Cosgrove had been investigating the closet where I retire LPs, and now celebrated a passion for Jane Morgan, who was just polishing off “Can’t Help
Lovin’ Dat Man.”

“Hey, the same old place,” said Alex, browsing a bookcase as one might in a Roundabout “once over lightly” revival of some thirties boulevard comedy: looking without seeing.

“You’re indicating,” I said, pulling him around so that he faced into the room. “Name one book title you just read and I’ll treat you to dinner.”

He laughed. “It’s the old Manhattan
stee-ory,” he said. “Living quarters. The things we love arranged around us. Wish I had my own place. One night of solitude, it’s all I ask…What?”

This was directed at Cosgrove, who was still at the door, staring at Alex. Finally coming to, Cosgrove pulled off the sock puppet and approached Alex while I went into the kitchen to pour the sparkling.

“If you’re an actor,” I heard Cosgrove ask, “where’s your class?”

“About twenty blocks to the southwest. Every Thursday afternoon.”

I heard the music go off, and Cosgrove asking, “Do you do improvs?”

“Often.”

“I go to an improv class myself, but it’s more about psychodrama, which is how you would use acting to work out your personal problems. We don’t do scenes of Shakespeare and such. Sometimes I appear as the international café society parasite Baron Portugee.”

“I thought that was your puppet,” Alex was asking, as I returned with the sparkling. “Are you both Baron
Portugee?”

“‘There is only one,’” Cosgrove explained darkly. I think that’s from
The Exorcist
.

Handing Alex his water, I asked, “Do you still live in that crazy sublet?”

Carefully flashing a half-smile, Alex nodded. “Sigh,” he said.

Alex resides in a problem palace, with an ever-changing ensemble cast. There are three bedrooms, but at various times as many as five or six people have fielded the rent. Of course, there’s always one who’s not tidy and one who’s too tidy and one who eats your corn flakes. At one point, everyone in the place was a hunk actor like Alex; visiting was like walking onto the set of an orgy video.

“It’s pretty orderly now,” Alex was saying. “Darielle has the lease, and there’s only me and her boy friend. Neil. Older guy, sort of bald. Gray, even. Incredible body for an oldster, all-day gym stuff.”

A sip of sparkling. Alex and I were on the couch, Cosgrove sitting on the carpet in front of us.

“Yes, he…he doesn’t work, Neil. Darielle’s ee-made it, financially, you know. All controlled, the lady executive. She can afford anything she needs, so she’s got freedom. Marriage? Kids?” Alex grunted. “No way, my lady. She likes her sex steady, and Neil…” Now he plays it admiringly, with a touch of wonder. Poster blurb: “A finely nuanced portrayal”—the
New York Times
. “Yeah, the same old story. Neil’s got a big one. I mean,
really
big. So Darielle…so she…” More sparkling. “Well, she made the deal she wanted, didn’t she?”

“How do you know he has a big one?” Cosgrove asked.

There was an abrupt silence.

“You should try sitting in on Cosgrove’s
improv group,” I suggested, coming to the rescue. “They really do address their personal problems in a constructive way—
and
it’s acting.”

“It’s dangerous theatre,” Cosgrove remarked.

“Yes,” I said, “it can get quite dire when somebody starts acting his guts out. I often expect the drama police to barge in with weapons drawn. ‘Step away from Patti LuPone…’”

“You’re in the class?” Alex asked me.

“As a spectator.”

While Alex demonstrated concern—head a-tilt, eyes down, thinking privately—I asked Cosgrove to rustle us up some dinner, and he went off to design salad platters.

“If the eats are piled in an artistic way,” he said, heading for the kitchen, “they call it ‘boy food.’ Because all the sous-chefs are cute gay guys.”

Alex was intrigued when I told him that Cosgrove had taken up fancy cooking.

“See, that is what I call controlling your life,” he said, as the reassuring clamor of crockery and utensils pealed out from the other room. “Because Neil earns his pay not only for sex. He runs the household, and that means the food, and it’s…it’s like everything is grilled chicken and veg. And don’t you hate your chicken grilled? I like chicken burgers with surprise flavors. Oh, and wait for it…” Buoying himself up with a guzzle of sparkling, Alex went on, “He stands over you and forces you to partake, like…you know,  daddy when you wouldn’t eat your runny eggs.”

Cosgrove popped out for “He should try tiny chicken filets in lemon-honey-ginger batter, which I serve with potato heads and a very strict green salad.” Then he went back to work.

“Potato heads?” Alex echoed, longingly.

“French fries, except round,” I told him.

Lowering his voice, Alex asked, “Didn’t that fellow used to be, like, a demented waif?”

I lowered my voice, too, just for fun. “Remember my buddy Dennis Savage? He’s been mentoring Cosgrove in—”

“Ha!” cried Cosgrove, coming back among us while drying his hands on a towel. “But now he’s on the enemies list!” I guess our undertone needs work. “I asked so nicely for the recipe to his hundred-tastes meatloaf, and what did he do? I ask you!”

After a bit, Alex replied, in John Wayne’s voice, “Okay, pilgrim…what?”

Suddenly dropping the Dennis Savage feud thing, Cosgrove said to Alex, “At parties, do the ladies line up in front of you in wedding gowns?”