“Fools” 7.  Roomies

The scene: a spacious condominium apartment near the center of a major American city, jointly owned by three men in their mid-twenties.  They have in common their upper-middle-class backgrounds, their ambition for a successful career, their enthusiasm for life and boundless energy, their madcap sense of humor, their devotion to their favorite stars and TV programs, their indulgence in recreational drugs, their choice of Hawaii as their favorite place to vacation, their membership in the same health club, their good looks (lean build, narrow hips, broad smiles), their up-front, in-your-face gayness, and – but not all to the same degree – the disguise of their undisguised effeminate mannerisms.  They do not, however, share sex, though each may have had at least one one-night stand with the others sometime in the past.

Marty shares the most interests with the others: Art’s fashion sense and his passion for cheap mystery novels, domestic animals, and fine – if pretentious – cuisine, and, like Denny, he is a social butterfly and addicted to gossip and disco dancing.  Art and Denny share having grown up in a large metropolitan area (Marty only recently moved away from Midwestern suburbia), as well as an interest in politics and a love of philosophical discussion.  Politically the three could not be more unlike: Denny a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, Art a conservative libertarian, and Marty without the slightest interest in noble causes and current affairs other than those his acquaintances are carrying on.  Though they pay him no attention or discount everything he has to say, Denny does his best to join in his friends’ discussions about the visual arts or high culture in general, his only connection with it being his preference for live theatre; Art tunes the other two out when they gleefully rip their mutual friends apart; Marty covers his ears and insists he “doesn’t want to hear about it!” when Denny and Art argue over politics or lose themselves in some intense, abstruse philosophical debate, and does it most conspicuously when they talk about existentialism or any of the German philosophers.

They get on surprisingly well together, though Art is generally bored when Marty and Denny decide, as they all too frequently do, to entertain guests, and Marty seethes inside at Denny’s lack of concern for his appearance when they have anyone over.  Only once have they come close to blows, when Denny wanted to watch yet another rerun of The Wizard of Oz instead of Queer as Folk.  Most likely to pair up would be Marty and Denny, because their cattiness when they start to gossip nearly always focuses on sex and brings them one baby step beyond flirtation.

Marty, the flamer, and the archest of the lot.  A meticulous housekeeper, it is he you should thank for the spotless condition of their condo apartment.  He does not, however, take on this responsibility out of some anally retentive compulsion for order and cleanliness (though he does pretend to have one).  He enjoys prancing about holding a feather duster, stark naked except for a tiny French maid’s apron.  It annoys him no end that Art flatly refuses to recognize his display when he (un)dresses in this outfit, and he wishes that Denny would express his admiration with a caress or gentle squeeze instead of a smack on the ass.  It thrills him that he points him out to the men he brings home, but he’s stung by their total indifference to his charms, since Denny’s pick-ups are all macho types.  (Denny’s subdued effeminacy falls just within the limits of their tolerance, which is why it is doubtful there will ever be anything sexual between him and Marty.)  After sex, one of Denny’s pick-ups once said, “The guy could do with a tattoo” – Denny has one on his back – and another once asked him, “God, that housemate of yours!  How can you stand to live with anyone that swish?”

“He’s really not at all like that underneath.  Just don’t tell him that.”

“You already showed me what he’s like underneath.”

Denny found that much too quick a comeback for a man he had pegged as the rugged type, and never had sex with him again.  He was right about it being all an act with Marty, though.  Marty is a superb speed swimmer and roller-blades to work except when it’s snowing, and as a boy he was an excellent all-around athlete, but suddenly stopped halfway through high school, when an episode of some situation comedy he was hooked on convinced him that athletic skill did not become a lad of his persuasion, and he spent the next three months teaching himself how not to throw a football.  In spite of that, he’d have no trouble massacring both his housemates, but Denny especially, at tennis, soccer and, though he’s under five-foot-six, beach volleyball, but they never play sports together.  Outside the apartment, Marty and Denny only socialize to go disco dancing.  People notice Marty on the dance floor.  He took up figure skating at the age of four, and was winning competitions in junior high school, but he never could nail those triples, so in high school he made the regionals, but not the nationals.  He no longer practices, but does show off on the outdoor rink in the park in winter.

Much as Marty loves to disco dance, Streisand is his all-consuming passion.  He owns all her albums, vinyl and CD, and has them on his iPod too, and only he can keep track of how many times he’s seen each of her movies.  When she opens her wide mouth to sing, he imposes absolute silence on everyone around except to say, “Listen!”, but he keeps up an uninterrupted stream of mindless chatter the rest of the time she’s on screen, chatter so vacuous that you would think him imbecile if it was not perfectly clear that he is speaking sentences which have not gone so far as to come into his mind and his verbiage amounts to little else than a discharge of nervous energy.  “Oh, doesn’t Yentl look absolutely darling as a boy?  I do hope she’s uncut!”  (Yes, she.)  When he addresses his nonsense directly to her, he calls her Babs.

Marty works as an artist for a large advertising firm.  He does it all – drawing, photography, graphics, what have you.  Though he has not been in the city long, as shows in a certain lack of polish (one would describe him as rough around the edges), and only broke into the business by starting to freelance after he got there, he is quickly working his way up the ladder, moving from company to company and every move a promotion, and already he is head of his department.  His doting but homophobic parents worry about him, certain that he must have already contracted HIV, since they believe that he must have sucked his way to the top.  They are wrong; he keeps business and pleasure strictly separate.  The man has real talent.

That is not to suggest that he could not have made a niche (and a name) for himself by the calculated distribution of his sexual favors, for he’s cute as a button and all smiles and bounce.  Short brown curls cover his head, a near-perfect oval, and his features are vaguely Oriental, though there’s not a drop of Asian blood in him.  When something is really funny he laughs naturally; when he laughs because he wants to, he giggles.  Similarly, his tendency to traipse cannot hide his grace and its underlying power, acquired through the figure skating he gave up over ten years ago.  He has an athlete’s body.

Art, the opera buff.  In this he is alone.  The others’ expertise and interest in the art does not extend beyond their enthusiasm for whatever aria is featured as background music in the latest television commercial and the “Three Tenors” concerts, which Art sneers at and calls “the swan song of Lardy Luciano in his Turandotage”.  That turn of phrase and others like it take the place of Marty’s (largely assumed) gushy girlishness.  Still, one doesn’t need gay-dar to spot him.  With Denny, one suspects.  You’re never certain until he comes on to you, and if you’re young and butch and good-looking he probably will.

Not so Art.  He is the only one currently in a relationship, though it’s hard to say how long-term it will be.  They go on vacations together, mostly to Hawaii, and Art has taken him to meet his family.  His lover’s family disapproves of his sexuality and, while they wouldn’t dream of cutting him off, they refuse to meet his partner.  The rest of the year they sleep together two or three times a week, more often at Art’s because he has the more comfortable apartment and his lover gets a kick out of his housemates, especially Marty, which doesn’t mean that Art hasn’t caught him ogling Denny’s package more than once.

Art comes from New Orleans, and speaks with a trace of his former accent, soft and pleasing.  He has the slow, unrushed movements of the Old South, is always polite, always considerate, and comes across as rather reserved, your true Southern Gentleman.  At six-foot-three, he towers over Marty; Denny comes up to just below his eyebrows.  His height makes him look thinner than he is.  He wears his hair short, not in a crew cut, but still too short to tell exactly what color it would be if he let it grow out.  He has a roundish head and small, finely shaped ears.  He’s more pleasant-looking than handsome.  Always well groomed and clean-shaven, he usually wears gray and dresses conservatively as befits his job, his only jewelry a ring with a large tourmaline, his birthstone.  He doesn’t wear an earring like the other two.  He works as a financial planning consultant, and oversees his housemates’ portfolios free of charge.  They are much the richer for it.  If he hears of a promising investment, he mentions it at the dinner table or at breakfast.

Art doesn’t mind when he brings his partner home with him and finds Marty parading his equipment behind that very incomplete French maid’s outfit.  Marty thinks he does because he ignores him, but he doesn’t.  Denny, on the other hand, who lets it hang out somewhat less, is uncomfortable with it, and those smacks on the ass he gives Marty are how he hides his discomfort.  Art isn’t at all prudish, you see, nor is he particularly modest himself; he’s just indifferent to nudity.  Yet both his housemates have yet to see him naked.  Denny wasn’t aware of the fact till one of his pick-ups, having got an eyeful of Marty, asked him what the other looked like with his clothes off.  Then Denny asked Marty if he’d ever seen Art in the buff, and Marty said, “Shall we tackle him and strip him?”  Denny might have taken him up on it, but Marty was joking.

Art’s love of opera is not of the same ilk as Marty’s adulation of Streisand or Denny’s fixation on The Wizard of Oz.  He doesn’t go around telling everyone how wonderful it is; he doesn’t ooh and aah.  Instead he talks opera – singers, performances, works, arias, recordings, productions – whenever he finds someone who knows anything about it.  Discuss, compare, critique.  And of course he has his collection of CDs and DVDs.  He goes to the opera whenever he can, which means he goes there often.  He has a friend he usually goes with, but that friend is not his lover.  He goes with his lover too, only not as often.  He would never dream of going with a group.  He’s basically a loner.

When he attends a performance he applauds enthusiastically; he’s not one of those who call attention to themselves by yelling “Bravo!”  Their raucousness annoys him more than if they had shown up at the opera house naked.  He said exactly that to Denny the one time he managed to drag him to see an opera, Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera.  (The hardest part was getting him to put on something else besides jeans and a tee-shirt.)

“Like Marty?” Denny asked.  “I thought that drove you crazy.”

“Not at all.  Why should it?  Its his apartment, just like the rest of us.”

Denny, who frequently took in a performance of live theatre, asked him if they ever went nude on stage at the opera, expecting a firm no.

“Not at this house,” Art told him.

“Have you ever seen one where they did?”

“Not yet.”

“Would you like to?”

“Not particularly.  Almost all the best singers are built like a Mack truck.”

Denny, the slob, who can be relied on for no household chore besides his own laundry.  He’s also far and away the most promiscuous of the three.  He never goes home with that night’s bed-mate; he always brings him home with him, his one precaution other than condoms.  He figures that the presence of Art and Marty will keep him from being beaten up and robbed, though he’s more than capable of defending himself, a lot more than they are.  So far it’s worked.

Denny’s devotion to The Wizard of Oz rivals Marty’s worship of Streisand.  He catches just about every rerun, but does not own it on video.  Why bother?  It’s shown so often that the only advantage of having your own copy is that you can see it without commercials.  Of course if you spend any time with Denny there are also the inevitable “Oh, Auntie Em’s” and “There’s no place like home’s” and other quotes from the film.  Marty, not one of its greatest fans, quotes from it too, but only if Denny is there to hear him.  One hot summer day, when one of Denny’s pick-ups asked him why he didn’t put something on, he answered, “I’m melting”, and when one caustically asked if his parents let him run around like that as a kid, he pouted, “I’m not in Kansas anymore!  So there!” and shook his booty at him.

A junk-food junkie and proud of it, Denny’s favorite food is, paradoxically, imported olives, and he can distinguish among some three dozen varieties blindfold.  He is not a snappy dresser.  He’s as proud of what he calls his “casual dress” (an understatement) as he is of his fondness for junk food.  He may own one stylish outfit, if you can call it an outfit.  One Christmas Marty gave him a black and brown striped happi coat in crepe-like cotton that goes down to mid-thigh, which he wears (with nothing underneath) to lounge around in the morning until he gets around to putting on his clothes for the day.  Otherwise ripped jeans and a tee-shirt are about his only outfit, nowhere near as scandalous as the apron Marty wears to clean, but not much less revealing, since he goes commando and some of his jeans have rips in the crotch.  If he has more to show than Marty, he’s also less obvious about showing it; but show it he does.

Denny does not have to dress for work because he doesn’t go to work.  He is the only one of them who is independently wealthy, and the income he receives from his considerable real estate holdings allows him to pursue a full-time non-career as an aspiring actor, which for him means taking classes and auditioning for roles.  He looks like an actor too: wavy blond hair, regular features, perfect teeth, rugged.  Only once has he been offered a part – in a gay revue, and he turned it down because he’d have to appear naked on stage.  Neither Art nor Marty could understand why he didn’t jump at the opportunity.  Denny said he was afraid it would typecast him before he ever got started.  The producers may well have offered him the part because what could be seen and guessed at under his torn jeans was more than enough of an audition.

Denny always goes commando, and his jeans are always ripped except when he goes hiking or camping or canoeing.  A couple of disagreeable experiences with mosquitoes and one with a tick have cured him permanently of that.  He is the outdoorsman of the triad, and enjoys white water rafting, rock climbing and spelunking as well the other three activities just mentioned.  The other two do not go with him on his outings, except for the time he took Marty camping.  They spent two nights together in his small two-man tent, which seemed even smaller for the tons of equipment they had to share it with despite Marty’s best efforts to arrange all of it neatly.  Denny found Marty’s fussiness annoying, but was glad to see how his girly mannerisms dropped away almost as soon as they left the city and found themselves out in the woods.  Being dressed for camping certainly helped, both by changing his appearance and making it impossible for him to prance about – one cannot prance in hiking boots – but he changed too, gradually at first, then abruptly when, after they got out of the car and shouldered their packs, he said, “Well... follow the yellow brick road!” and Denny answered, “I camp off the beaten path.”  He relaxed and allowed his real self to come through.

They slept in Denny’s double sleeping bag, naked and side by side in physical innocence, unless you think their raging erections would disqualify them as innocent.  Both felt that they shouldn’t have sex; both wanted to.  Marty was mostly concerned that if they did it would put a strain on the easy relationship back at the condo, not that there was much chance of them becoming lovers and Art ending up left out – Denny was too promiscuous for that.  Anyway, Art had a boyfriend.  Denny was afraid that it would leave him feeling unsatisfied, since he would want to flip-flop and Marty, a committed bottom, wouldn’t.  In spite of that, they both had fun that weekend.  What’s more, they dropped their usual gossipy cattiness and talked seriously about themselves, and got to know each other better.  They promised they’d do it again sometime, but haven’t yet.

During the camping trip Marty, who makes such a big thing of his distaste and total ignorance when it comes to politics, asked his friend point-blank if he didn’t feel guilty about being a slum landlord.  Apparently Denny does not see the inconsistency between his left-wing political sympathies and the comfortable life he leads collecting rents from the poor.  To give him credit, he does not turn a deaf ear to his tenants’ complaints when something breaks down, but sends one of his many workers to take care of the problem immediately.  He, however, does no work himself.

So there you have it, a ménage-à-trois but in no way a partouze.  Those who know them, men and women alike, however slight the acquaintance, can’t think of one without the others immediately popping into mind.  Barring an unlikely de-yuppification of the neighborhood, one can easily imagine them in the same apartment thirty or forty years from now, old queens still living together and talking about the same things.