Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden Page A

Virgil began; but Dennis Savage took the banjo from him and laid it on the couch.
    “Intermission,” he explained.
    “What I’m thinking,” said Carlo, “is what’s next about Bert Hicks?”
    “That’s easy,” said Dennis Savage. “Invite him to dinner.”
    Well, it
was
Bert Hicks and it
wasn’t
. Or, like, it
was
Bert Hicks. But never in all Stonewall had you seen a man so reinvent himself by going clone. It was as if you had left Gloversville and come back ten years later to find Tacitus’s Rome where Gloversville had been. This guy was built and torrid, a sinful package of afternoon delight. Jesus, what confidence good looks give you!—not to mention the red-gold hair. Yet it was the same face, the same (one presumes) insides. Whatever hurt him originally and led him into a no-win relationship with Scott Hellman must still shimmer, with an elated ache, within him. Yet his eyes shone.
    You devil, I kept thinking. You
devil
! as he sat in Dennis Savage’s living room, sopping up the host’s Hundred Ingredients Beef Stew, one of the spectacular taste treats in the Western world (though I always crinkle up my mouth and pretend it’s garlicky, to keep the cook from becoming content and aging too quickly—getting indignant keeps him fresh). You devil: You pulled it off. You upped and moved and changed and now you’re some kind of absolutely winning man. But Dennis Savage, after motioning me into the kitchen, could only shake his head.
    “This is uncanny,” he said. “This is danger.”
    The kids were rather intrigued by Bert, until Cosgrove asked him, “Do you know many of these chicks with dicks I’ve been hearing so much about?”
    Bert smiled. “I only know bods with rods.”
    There was a pause.
    “I know some really hot tanks,” Bert went on, “who spread out for you like they’ve been trimmed a thousand times. But they still have that first-time tightness. I know heavy street trash, sexyblond boys who’d snuff you for a twenty, but they love to be fucked coco-style, on their back like a chick. I know Bill Congdon, a man of the world with the biggest tattooed dick in San Francisco, an eagle with veins. I know Wesley Tusan and Bob McCrack, first-floor-front apartment in a building in which there lives a very handsome and innocent boy who walks on crutches and has highly developed abdominals which excite Wesley and Bob. Their idea of a party is you all come over and drink a few cold ones with the door open till this boy passes by on his crutches, and Wes and Bob pull him into their place and they take his crutch away so he’s helpless, and then we all strip him and stretch him out on the bed and everyone takes a turn whipping the kid’s ass. He’s so beautiful like that, and I kiss his tears just then. I know Paul Nestling, a real hairy fucker, whose idea is if you can think of some sex thing and he isn’t willing to do it, he’ll give you ten straight cash dollars. I know Pete Puleo, he won the South of Market rimming contest three years running. Some of the judges haven’t waked yet. I know amputees and ex-cons and shit freaks and killers. But I can’t say that I know any chicks with dicks.”
    There he paused, grinning and positive about himself and without a shred—not a shred—of self-mockery. He had passed into the looking glass. Boys and girls, he wasn’t one of us anymore.
    Cosgrove phrased it well. “I don’t like this guy,” he whispered to Virgil, and they went into the bedroom to practice their new Von Sondheim Koto Ensemble
Me and My Girl
medley.
    “How’s Scott?” I asked Bert.
    “I was about to ask
you.”
He was still grinning. “I haven’t seen him.”
    “Excuse me for remembering, but wasn’t he the love of your life?”
    Bert laughed. “Those are juvenile infatuations. Oh, I am going to see him real soon. Scott. Yes. That’ll be happening. But I thought I’d . . . I’d land here, you see. I’d make my presence known. Gym talk really travels. And then . .