Love the One You're With by James Earl Hardy Page A

zone?”
    â€œGiven my history, the doctor says it’s no wonder my lungs don’t look like the sky on a foggy Frisco day. They’re going to monitor me over the next few months.”
    â€œWell, if you want me to go with you—”
    â€œI do.”
    Silence.
    â€œWhy didn’t Babyface and B.D. tell me?”
    â€œBecause it wasn’t their place to tell you. This was something I had to handle. But if it turned out I did have it, I would’ve told Pooquie.”
    â€œYou would?”
    â€œYes. When I got that phone call from him last month … he proved that he is worthy of my respect.”
    â€œHe’ll be happy to hear that.”
    â€œNo, he won’t, ’cause you ain’t gonna tell him. He’s still on probation.”
    â€œProbation?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œAnd when will that be over?”
    â€œWhen you two have celebrated your fiftieth anniversary.”
    We laughed.
    â€œHow do you think Babyface and B.D. will feel about your leaving everything to me?”
    â€œBabyface doesn’t care. He helped me draft it.” He pointed to Babyface’s signature on the document; I didn’t recognize it since I’ve never addressed him by his given name (Courtney Lyons) in the five years I’ve known him. “But I’m sure B.D. will be flabbergasted. He’s always had his eye on my fake mink stole. You can give it to him.”
    â€œWhy don’t you just put it in the will?”
    â€œBecause if I left him something, then everyone else would trip.”
    â€œAh. So have everybody angry with me, right?”
    He elbowed me in the side. “You got it.” He leaned against me, his head resting against my neck. “I don’t ever want to be missing you like that again.”
    I lowered my head onto his. “You won’t.”

4
ALL NIGHT LONG
    â€œIt’s the only thing—besides you—that could get me to venture into Crooklyn.”
    So says Gene about Body & Soul, a dance held every Sunday night in Brooklyn. I hadn’t attended it in some time. In fact, I haven’t been to a club since Pooquie and I closed a spot called UnderCover up in the Bronx the summer we started seeing each other. (UnderCover is exactly that: a place where all those boyz who are very under cover —including those homiesexuals in hip-hop—can go to jam.) Body & Soul lives up to its name: You don’t come to dance; you come to Dance. You will sweat the stress, wash the worries, abandon the angst. You won’t just work that body—you’ll set your soul free. And, while the slammin’ sounds of the disco/dance era take you on that trip to Redemption, you won’t find the aloofness, antagonism, and attimatude that pollutes much of the Black gay club scene. No muscle heads or cutie pies whose noses rise three inches in the air if you talk to them—or whose eyes hold you in contempt if you don’t. No crafty cretins whose main purpose is to break up other people’s happy homes because theirs is so un happy. No Geritol Granddads preying on the Embryos (or vice versa). No homiesexuals holding up the walls, standing guard like pit bulls and wearing menacing stares that would make Medusa turn to stone. No Queens without a Country holding court on a stool they rent nightly, being way too catty and way too loud. And, what do you know, not a single “cool” or “hip” Caucasian, or a Snow Cone hangin’ on his arm who feels out of place because there’s way too much Negritude in the room (but, like his man, watches us in awe as if they are on safari in Africa).
    Just the brothers coming together to do the Chic cheer: Dance, Dance, Dance .
    For Gene, it just isn’t about the Dance. The party reminds him of the very festive and fierce Paradise Garage, the dance-club landmark that preceded Body & Soul, the H(e)aven away from home for Black and Latino gay men in