Boston Boys Club. Johnny Diaz

      KENSINGTON BOOKS

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 1

      TOMMY

      Another chilly night falls on Boston and the mercury is down to 30 degrees. Damn the thermometer! It’s not too frigid to go to Club Café in the heart of the city’s gay ghetto.

      When I say ghetto, I mean that only in the most positive sense. The South End neighborhood is full of character and charm. Streets are lined with shoulder-to-shoulder three-story brick row houses, rounded with English-style bow fronts. First-floor windows sit a few feet from street level and the decorative cobblestone boulevards. Rose and orange flowers burst from the windowsills during warmer months. And there are Volkswagen Jettas, Beetles, and Mini Coopers parked on streets that have equally gay-sounding names such as Berkeley, Clarendon, and Upton. It’s basically a gay utopia.

      As twilight beckons on this city on a hill, I brave the cold in hot pursuit of the man-traffic on Columbus Avenue. Guys sport sleeveless shirts and chest-defining T-shirts underneath American Eagle wool coats and Gap corduroy jean jackets. The top layers come off as soon as they hit the lonely coat check dude and drop a buck or spare change in his tip box. Then they walk around the club showing off smooth, tanned skin as if it’s summer, even though it’s a bone-chilling November night outside.

      Not me, the more conservative (and cheap) one. I take off my coat and leave on the Nautica red hoodie I bought on sale at Costco. (What isn’t on sale there?) It’s not that I’m ashamed of my body. I have it; I just don’t necessarily think I need to flaunt it like Lil’ Kim.

      Thursday night is the busiest gay night here. An armada of men stand around creating a logjam of testosterone, in this bar/lounge that also serves a gay gym downstairs. You come here depending on what kind of workout you are looking for.

      It’s easy to think that this place has some kind of addictive magic. Each week guys come to drink, mingle, drink, cruise, drink some more, and perhaps, find manpanionship, a queer peer, a date, a potential partner/lover/spouse or whatever boyfriends are called these days, or just a play buddy for the night. No matter how often these guys see each other in the same spot, leaning at the edge of the bar, lingering around the coat check or S&Ming (standing and modeling, folks) under the TV monitors that blare Britney, Madonna, or the Wonder Woman theme song megamix, they never seem to tire of it. They never get sick of seeing the same perfectly shaved faces with mostly blue or green eyes and Salon Selectives hair, sipping their light Sam Adams or Corona beers or nursing glowing green Apple Martinis.

      My reason for coming back is simple. After three Thursdays of coming here, chances are everyone will know your name as if you were in Cheers. But call this one Queers, where everyone knows with whom you last slept. So I try not to overdo it, at least the going-out part. Well, I try. Oh, and let’s not forget our lady friends. They’re here, too, in leather and denim jackets, jeans and winter boots. A small number wears skirts and high heels. But we men outnumber them by at least four to one. To the men, I say, You go girls!

      Club Café is a perpetual rerun episode of Same Sex in the City. Each season or college semester brings a crop of new faces. So you never know whom you will meet. That unknown, an optimistic sense of possibility of meeting “someone,” is what keeps guys revolving through these doors week after week, winter, spring, summer, fall, rain or snow. But even the ones who do meet that someone still can’t seem to pull themselves away from Club Café.

      “Howdy, Tommy Boy! What’s up with you? I haven’t seen you since what, last Thursday,” says Rico as he walks in through the front glass, snow-stained doors that face Columbus Avenue. Rico fits the stereotype of the sexy, macho Italian to a well-groomed T. He’s got thinning wisps of jet-black hair combed down Caesar cut style and eyes that easily match the green of the Italian flag.

      Tommy is my nickname, short for Tomas, as in the Spanish pronunciation. It sounds like the Spanish word toma as in “drink,” so I think I was appropriately named. Yeah, I’m the Cuban transplant to Boston from Cuba North, also known as Miami. Although if you think about it, Miami really is a piece of Cuba injected into the United States—but more on that later.

      Just as I am proud of my Cuban heritage (my Jeep Wrangler’s license plate reads QBAN) so is Rico of his family’s lineage. The tattoo on his bulging right shoulder bears the design of a sailing Italian flag. It looks good with his blue T-shirt that reads ITALIAN STALLION. Rico is that kind of patriotic. This is Boston, after all, where everyone’s proud of where they came from, especially the native Bostonians. But us newcomers have plenty of pride in our roots, too. Some people hate it, but I like that people here cling to their identities. Like the Puritans who first arrived here centuries ago, Boston today remains a city of immigrants. It’s a revolving door of newcomers, including me. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

      “Doing really well, Rico. Just hella good,” I say as he stands by the coat check, peels off his coat,