Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys Read online

  So beautiful.

  But it just occurred to me that perhaps you’d rather not include the business about drinking, drugs, fucking, being naked, depression, and suicidal feelings. It’s your call. But in the event that you do agree to publish this as part of the essay, I will need your written consent. I will forward the necessary papers to your lawyer. Are you and I still represented by the same law firm? Have you seen their new offices?

  The other passage of yours that I’d like to include is a note that you slipped to me the day after I confessed to you that I was having suicidal feelings. I had just returned to New York from L.A., where I had run out of money and options. After years of trying to make my way in the world, I saw little visible success, and on top of that, I felt as though I would never find a decent boyfriend. Without real work and true love, I didn’t see much point in going on. You stayed on the phone with me for a long while, trying to convince me, once again, that I was loved, that I did matter, that it would all turn out all right. Finally you got in a taxi and came to my apartment. It was eleven o’clock on a Sunday night, hardly an hour to go visiting, and yet you sat with me while I cried and cried and eventually cried myself to sleep. The next day you handed me this note:

  14 Reasons Not to Kill Yourself

  Coffee

  The Trevor Project (The twenty-four-hour suicide prevention helpline for GLBTQ teens that you started!)

  Pumpkins

  Thanksgiving at my house

  Me

  Rilke, e.e. cummings

  Great moments of discovery in the theater

  Sex

  Provincetown

  You’re going to die anyway

  City buses

  Great cotton, silk, shoes, hats, bags, accessories in general

  Because things always turn around and you’ll miss it

  Because it would break my heart

  I don’t want to give the impression that you and I just sat around being depressed, discussing the intensity of our feelings and considering suicide, because that is not the case. As I recall, we were very busy creating things, trying to move the world, and helping our fellow humans. And I can honestly say that I never laughed as much or as heartily with anyone before or since as I have with you. I also plan to include a few amusing anecdotes about shopping sprees, makeovers, fabulous summer shares, pedicures, parties, and perhaps a list of celebrities with whom we have worked. If I can’t think of anything in those departments, I may have to make stuff up, but I will run it by you beforehand for your approval so that you can pretend it really happened.

  Perhaps it’s not specific to gay men and their best girlfriends, maybe it’s just a function of being a friend, but it seems to me that what you and I have always done for each other is (a) encourage each other’s work; (b) remind each other that our lives may be determined by a shattered past, but we will not be limited by those events; and (c) love the very essence of the persons we are becoming. What is specific to gay men and their best girlfriends, however, is that we have always managed to look fabulous while we were busy with a, b, and c. I will be sure to make that point, and if possible I will publish a favorite photo of you and me together looking fabulous so that everyone can see what I’m talking about.

  Finally, I plan to end the piece with a conversation we had not that long ago about the nature of friendship. I think it will make a good wrap-up. I can’t seem to recall if it happened at Orso’s or at Joe Allen’s. Not that it matters, but maybe you can remember. We had either just seen a Broadway show or I was meeting you for dinner after one of your shows. I do recall that it was a lovely spring evening and it had just rained. Or was it autumn? In any case, we were talking about the nature of friendship and you said, “This is how it works. I love the people in my life, and I do for my friends whatever they need me to do for them, again and again, as many times as is necessary. For example, in your case you always forget who you are and how much you’re loved. So what I do for you as your friend is remind you who you are and tell you how much I love you. And this isn’t any kind of burden for me, because I love who you are very much. Every time I remind you, I get to remember with you, which is my pleasure.”

  And mine, as well.

  Always,

  James

  P.S. There is also the issue of your name. Should I include it, or would you feel more comfortable if I gave you a made-up name? In the case of the latter, I have compiled a list of names for you to choose from.

  Kiki

  Meg

  Sid

  Anastasia

  Claire

  Brie

  Bette

  MY DINNERS WITH TOM

  Gigi Levangie Grazer

  A lot of stars come into The Ivy; success and charisma breed at this fashionable West Hollywood bôite. But by far, my best sighting at The Ivy was always Tom Bailey.

  You’ve never heard of him. Tom Bailey was my favorite waiter.

  But Tom was much more than a waiter: Tom Bailey was The Way.

  Tom Bailey in his life, and in his death, taught me a thing or two about how to live.

  Just over a year ago, I wandered into The Ivy on Robertson at about eight o’clock on a Thursday evening, wrapped in the pleasant buzz of anticipation. I was seeing a close girlfriend—a comrade, the type of friend who knows you, knows your secrets, and still, loves you. You may have heard of The Ivy, if you’re familiar with such publications as US Weekly or Star, or even Elle Decor. You may have spied its shiny denizens, human Christmas ornaments tucked safely behind a white picket fence that shielded them from the masses on Robertson Boulevard, its wood slats pitched out at odd angles, like rows of long, crooked fangs.

  There was a time when climbing the uneven brick steps to the inner sanctum of The Ivy—deceptively quaint, grandmother’s house steps—would require courage that I did not yet possess, a worldliness I couldn’t muster, and a sense of entitlement I was not born with. Those brick steps were my Everest, and Tom Bailey was my gay Tenzing Norgay—on the way up and on the way down.

  The first time I met Tom was at The Ivy at the Shore, the Santa Monica version of The Ivy. I was seated across from my future husband. I was young and awkward and unfashionably dressed and not quite pretty enough to get away with my determined lack of style. Around me were tables of blondes, thin and beautiful and assured and obviously (hopefully) idiotic, and God, I wanted to be just like them. As I sank into internal despair, longing to be with my brown-haired, near-sighted, Toyota Corolla–driving sisters on the east side of La Cienega, a voice reached out and wrapped its long arms around my hunched shoulders.

  “Someone shut that woman up already—there’s not enough Percocet in the world to get me back to that table—can I take your order, doll?”

  I looked up and placed the face with the voice. It was love at first sarcastic sound bite.

  But by that night last year, I had been cradled in the heady, cosseted world of the Hollywood inside track for close to fourteen years. I was married to a highly successful Hollywood producer and I had a writing career of my own. I knew the name, even the birthplace of the maître d’; he knew mine. But there were times when I was reminded of my modest roots, times when my club card was declined. I’d once made reservations under my maiden name, and another for the same lunch, by mistake, under my married name. Gigi Levangie rated a small, lopsided table in the back room, squeezed in with the Orange County tourists and the low-level, faceless development execs; Gigi Grazer was seated on an expansive, padded bench in the sun-streaked front room overlooking the patio, where she could watch an unobscured Justin Timberlake chew diligently, two tables away. Tom laughed and told me not to take it personally; I didn’t, and I learned my lesson about the value of a name.

  So on that Thursday night, I was eager for the first margarita, as welcoming as a sunrise, the rich, dark bread, the specials that never change (they are not special at all, but reassuringly familiar), the ease of the experience. It was a warm, breezy April evening; I had not seen
my girlfriend in a month and there was much to tell, much to hear. I’d arrived a few minutes early, and the maître d’ greeted me with a kiss, a smile, words floating into each other in a Missouri drawl, the verbal equivalent of a languid backstroke. I looked over his shoulder for one of my favorite people, a man who had played the part of the Greek chorus to a man-eating party girl in my second novel. No one had better lines, in the book or in life, than Tom Bailey.

  “Where’s Tom?” I said. “Has he died?”

  William looked at me. It was night; the light was gray. But I could see his face pale.

  Jesus Christ, what have I done? I thought to myself.

  “William,” I said. “Come on, William. I was joking.” What did I say? What did I say? My big mouth—

  My table mate had just arrived. Her face was pink, lit up. A thick tassel of blond hair swept past her large eyes; she appeared carefree, breathless. “Darling,” she said. (She’s British, this is what they do; it’s not an affectation.)

  “We’ll talk later, after your dinner,” William said to me. Gently now, he spoke, every word standing alone, forlorn and unadorned, the drawl put aside for the moment. But my hand was fastened to his arm, his navy jacket, the gold buttons. My eyes were on his, carving inroads into those silvery blue mirrors. Tell me, tell me, tell me, I implored.

  People were waiting. My companion’s smile had faded and concern had replaced joy. Our anticipation of commiseration fueled by minor amounts of alcohol and heaving plates of picture-ready food had become something else entirely.

  “You have to tell me, William. Tell me. I was joking. He’s not dead. Tom is not dead.”

  You know those moments, when your brain is so far ahead of your words, the words are coming out—one, two, four, eight—but your brain is saying, I just saw him, when did I see him, was he sick, he’s always so…alive, vibrant, so funny, never ever ill, never a cough, so much energy, in great shape, skinny even, maybe he drank a little, but still, where is he, is he in the hospital? Not in a hospital. He couldn’t possibly be in a hospital—the food, no alcohol—Jesus, God, what if he doesn’t have a cute doctor—

  “Can I visit him?”

  William just shook his head.

  Tom had died the week before. In a hospital.

  “Conform” is the telegraphed message of the glossy watering holes in and around the Westside of Los Angeles. Wear the right shoes, lug the right bag, buy the right bland nose if God didn’t give you Jessica Simpson’s. It is a true and frightening thing that any woman walking down Rodeo Drive around noontime is likely to have the same bridge, the same swollen lips, the same color and length hair as the three preceding her, all teetering with misplaced confidence on their uniform stilettos. “Conform” is something I’ve fought against and yet felt eerily attracted to—but I’m even more attracted to those who don’t conform. Like Tom Bailey.

  Maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe he really cared about what people thought of him, about his skills, his looks, his “funny”—but I don’t think he did. For one thing, he directed the majority of his pithy comments not toward my husband, a producer, but to me, someone who could not change his life with the wave of a script deal, the promise of a screen test. Tom wasn’t interested in the next job, in other possibilities. Unlike other waiters, there would be no script awaiting us at the end of dinner, no headshot proffered after our coats. In a town where lines are drawn and crossed at the same time, he did neither. He enjoyed his riches; he never seemed to want more.

  So picture this man, his head carpeted by tightly woven, neat brown curls angled back from a long, café au lait face, punctuated by startling, light green eyes—his was a face that wouldn’t be out of place on a National Geographic cover, a Benetton ad. Even more striking than Tom’s face had been his body. This body, in constant movement, tall, made taller by his sleekness, the lack of curve—a human exclamation mark—more of a liquid than a solid. His arms and legs, exceedingly long, seemed without bone, a yogi carapace with the comic soul of a Buster Keaton.

  He was obviously American, but did Tom have Egyptian blood? Pakistani? Were his people from some remote mountain region of Afghanistan? I never asked—I don’t know why—but when I learned Tom’s last name at the memorial service, I had my answer. Exotic he was, and yet not at all. Tom Bailey: My God, he had the last name of the Jimmy Stewart character from It’s a Wonderful Life. How could I not know this of him? Why hadn’t I asked?

  Was I afraid or unwilling to cross a line into a deeper relationship? And is this why I never realized he’d been ill? Did I not want to acknowledge the possibility? Had I become one of those people I write about, who are unable to deal with the darker realities of life, of death? What else did I not know?

  When Tom died, my life was in flux, as they say, “they” being more polite than I am. My life was taking a hairpin turn on a bumpy road. I had turned forty-two; I was looking at the rest of my life and not liking what I saw. I had written a third novel about life in L.A., my hometown, and I was done with it. Done with this city. I no longer found excessive plastic surgery or materialism amusing; the erratic behavior of the Westside wealthies ceased to be rich fodder and became, instead, an annoyance, something to be avoided altogether. I even regarded the lifestyle as a danger to my children. I had, up to that moment, justified my existence in this fun house Oz by writing about it—but what would happen when I stopped?

  Who was I now?

  I was looking for an escape and I was looking for distraction and I was looking for a few laughs. Or so I thought. I was really looking for a new way to live, a new way to be. I hadn’t yet had this conversation with Tom: Hey, what do you think I should do with the rest of my life? Got any ideas?

  I was looking forward to having that conversation with him.

  Instead, I went to Tom’s memorial; it was held at a conservative Catholic church in a Republican enclave of Los Angeles, Pacific Palisades; irony was all around—and with it, humor—Tom, my Tom, had been an altar boy. I met his delightful mother and thus started putting together the pieces of Tom—the things I did not know and wished I had. I looked at her face, open and forgiving, while she, the bereft mother, smiled and comforted everyone who came forward. This was where those startling green eyes had originated.

  I stared. I saw his smile in hers, and oh, the slight tilt of the head. I watched her and heard his loving words regarding his mother, saw his description of the trips with her to San Francisco, experienced the immovable bond of a mother who loves unconditionally and a son who accepts her love. Could we all bear a piece of this, her ultimate loss?

  I put the memorial picture of Tom on my dresser. (He is so young in the photograph!) Instead of talking to him over a menu, I talked to his picture. As things in my life bucked and keened, as my marriage faltered and threatened never to recover, instead of asking “What would Jesus Do?” I’d ask “What the fuck would Tom Bailey do?”

  Tom would keep his sense of humor. And so I did. Tom would be true to his nature. And so I was. Tom would ride the current until it brought him to shore or pushed him out further to sea. I pinched my nose and dove.

  The rough tides of my emotional life have died down now. I am walking again. My marriage, our marriage, has found its footing. It would have been nice to have had Tom along for the ride—or at least for the wicked narrative. I can only imagine the things he would have said, though my imagination is no match for his words.

  I don’t know exactly what my relationship was with Tom. How would I classify it? Friend? Well, we were friendly—we certainly had a connection—but were there shared meals? Late-night phone calls? Serious commiseration over love’s vicissitudes? No. But we weren’t acquaintances, either. There was a service-clientele element, but often it was difficult to tell who was serving and who was being served. When seated in Tom’s section, one was subject to the titillating vagaries of Tom. One felt lucky and so one wished to gain his favor. Look this way, Tom! Who’s that at Table 9, Tom? Please, please gift us with one
of your one-liners about “Ears,” the restaurant manager who heard everything. You can finish my margarita, Tom—

  I can still see his brows shoot up his forehead, his eyes widen and flash as he bestowed on us a zinger about the cheap, many-times-married studio boss (“He should tip more and marry less!”) or the closeted action star. Nothing escaped Tom’s senses, and everything was subject to his true acid wit—he would be so pleased by his own displeasure.

  Anyone who was served by and served Tom loved him. Some relationships seem gossamer thin on the surface, but to look beneath, to see beyond, is to see a whole world. I’m sure I loved Tom more than he loved me, but in this case, I don’t mind. I was happy to admire him like a besotted schoolgirl; I was satisfied with my lot as the rapt audience member, the girl in the first row, begging for attention from the lead singer. I would not have had it any other way.

  The Ivy at the Shore, where I first met Tom Bailey, was shuttered and moved down the street days after Tom’s death. The differences were slight: The menu was unchanged and the white uniforms remain, as do most of the staff.