Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin

about the Forty-niners, poor thing, but gave up the effort when it became clear that sports banter was not in my manly repertoire. When our talk turned to where we lived, I knew where we were heading.
    “I’m in the Dubose Triangle,” he said, “but I have roommates.”
    “Ah,” I said, realizing exactly what that “but” meant.
    “How ’bout you?” he asked.
    “I’m up on Noe Hill.”
    “No partner or anything?”
    “Nope.” I smiled at him. “Not for a few years now. I’m just out for fun these days.”
    He nodded solemnly for a moment. “I’m really into giving head,” he said.
    “Is that so?” I gave him a crooked smile.
    “I’m pretty good at it, too. You could just kick back.”
    There was no easy response to this, nothing glib that could rescue me. I liked Jake well enough, and he was still a hot little bear cub in my mind’s eye, but what would happen once we got down to business? Would the illusion still hold? Would I embarrass myself completely, or, worse, hurt his feelings? I bought time by asking a question I’d rarely asked before in my fifty-five years of existence: “Aren’t I a little old for you?”
    Jake just shrugged. “Age is no biggie, if I like the guy.”
    “And there’s something else,” I said, reminding myself of Jack Lemmon in the last scene of Some Like It Hot, when he’s up against the wall and desperately searching for all the reasons he can’t marry Joe E. Brown. “I’m HIV positive.”
    That just made him shrug again. “Then I won’t floss,” he said.
    When I laughed at that, Jake laughed, too, almost in relief, realizing that he’d won that round out of sheer audacity. It was a moment of brotherly bonding, so the pressure was off for a full five seconds before he turned serious again.
    “There’s something I have to tell you ,” he said.
    I’d been ready for this, so I looked him squarely in the eye. “No, you don’t,” I said. “You really don’t.”
    He gazed at me solemnly for a moment. “You’re cool with it, then?”
    “I’m new to it,” I said. “Let’s put it that way.”
    “We could talk about it, if you want.”
    I shook my head. “I’ll spare you the after-school special. I’m sure that gets old.”
    “Oh, man,” said Jake.
    “The thing is,” I offered, “I’m sort of an old dog. And you’re sort of a new trick.”
    Jake smiled at my inadvertent pun. “Do you mind if I ask how you knew?”
    I decided to banish the kilt queen once and for all. “It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “It had nothing to do with how you look, if that’s what you mean.”
    “For real?”
    I nodded. “You’re a handsome guy from where I sit.”
    Jake was blushing furiously now, a tide of scarlet surging beneath his five-o’clock shadow. He plunged a fork into his burrito. “Can we go to your place, then?”
    I nodded. “As long as you understand—”
    “You won’t have to do anything to me, all right?”
    “That wasn’t what I—”
    “And don’t worry,” he added. “I’ll keep my jeans on. I don’t like that thing any more than you do.”
     
    Jake followed me back to Noe Hill in his car. Once inside the house—and the proper lighting was established—I retrieved my hammered-copper pot tray from the drawer by the sofa. As I rolled a joint, Jake just stood there, bouncing on his heels and socking his fist into his palm like an anxious delinquent. He reminded me of myself, over thirty years earlier, all bluster and bluff, when I first went home with a stranger.
    “Sit down,” I said, patting the sofa.
    Jake sat next to me, but not especially close.
    I lit the joint and held it out. He took it and toked expertly.
    “Did you get stoned in Tulsa?” I asked.
    “Are you kidding? I worked at Wal-Mart.”
    “Does that mean yes or no?”
    “It means what the fuck else is there to do.”
    He passed the joint back to me, and I dragged on it fiercely, hoping it would give me the nerve to face the uncharted territory ahead.