Boston Boys Club. Johnny Diaz
to make sure guys are looking at him. “When are you going to write an article about me in the Daily? I’ve got some upcoming projects in the works. You could put me on the front page or in the Features section. You write about everyone in this city but moi!”
I crane my head up to speak to this giant queen of a man and I “uh-huh” my way throughout the one-sided conversation. It’s hard to get a simple word in when Kyle talks; he’s a conversation hijacker. Finally, he takes a breath and lets me speak. “Yeah, keep me posted, Kyle. I’m really tied up with some other assignments but let me know if you get a big part in a movie or something,” I say, noticing that Rico’s V-shaped back is turned to us, intentionally oblivious to what is going on. “I can’t guarantee a story. But I will let you know either way. Cool?”
Kyle, who is ever preening, can easily pass as a male version of supermodel Rebecca Romijn, you know, Mystique from the X-Men movies but without all that blue body makeup and morphing capabilities. He leans in for a double air kiss before he heads off to feed his ego answering all the inquiries and stares from The Real Life show’s fans that are here tonight. “Great, Tommy. I’ll have my agent send you an updated bio and press sheet. You’re a doll!” he says, strutting off like Tyra Banks or a contender on America’s Next Top Model, his favorite show.
I turn around and catch up with Rico at the bar as he waits among a throng of guys for the ponytailed bartender in the wife-beater shirt to come our way. “Hey, look at that guy, with the orange hoodie. He looks like your type. Pretty, skinny boy,” Rico says. As I scan the rainbow of hoods and baseball caps, Rico smiles at the bartender, who doesn’t even need to ask what he wants. “Sam Adams light, right?” Rico goes for the low-carb stuff. He nods back, smiling of course, as he fumbles for five dollars from his Urban Outfitters leather wallet and grabs his cool elixir for the night.
The guy Rico is talking about, the one I’m now scrutinizing like a Monet painting, resembles Ethan Hawke. He looks extremely boyish, sandy brown straight hair that really brings out his blue eyes, which sparkle like two small swimming pools. I watch him across the room bantering with his friends and taking a swig of Corona, and he laughs back. He’s having a good time; he seems like a happy good spirit. His orange hoodie has a simple 10 on it. It agrees with him. I’m definitely interested. He looks my way, our eyes lock for one…two…three…seconds and we look away. As Rico turns around to talk to me again, I leer out of the corner of my eye and notice No. 10 looking back at me. We look away again. Reality bites in a good way.
“Guao!” as we say back in Miami. “He’s sooo cute, Rico. He kinda looks like the prototypical American guy, the boy next door. Should I go up to him?” I look and look away from Mr. Ethan Hawke’s clone.
“Yo, Tommy, why not just say hi to him when we walk by. Not everyone’s gonna come up to you. For a reporter, you can really be shy sometimes. You just gotta put yourself out there. Let’s go make the rounds. Let’s walk, boyeee,” Rico says.
So we trudge through the thick crowd of men and try not to spill our drinks. This place is packed! It’s like a highway intersection of men, where Interstate 93 meets the Turnpike—during rush hour. In this traffic, you’ll inhale a heady mix of aftershaves, body lotions, and colognes that the guys doused themselves with before leaving their brownstones or triple-deckers. I bump into Kyle again, who happens to be in the middle of the bar, babbling to some wide-eyed, impressionable younger guys about what it’s like to be on The Real Life. I hear him saying “Yeah, we have microphones on alllll the time and there are cameras in the bedrooms. The only private place we have is…well, come to think about it, we don’t have any areas off-limits to the cameras. So as I was saying, I…”
After Rico and I tap a few fellas on the shoulder to get by or squeeze in between some others, we approach Mr. Number 10, dead ahead at twelve o’clock. He sees me coming. We lock eyes once again, and we both break out in a grin at the same time.
“Hey, you’re cute,” he tells me, slightly tipping the top of his chin. “What’s your name?” he asks in an undiluted Boston accent.
“Thanks, I’m Tommy,” I respond, smiling and looking down. I can’t help it. I get shy around cute guys. I get butterflies in my stomach, even if I interview police chiefs, mayors, the homeless, and strangers every day for work. “You’re cute, too,” I say, my inner butterflies flying away. “And you are…”
“I’m Michael but call me Mikey, everyone else does,” he says, although it sounds more like “Mike-eee” with his accent, which hints at a Cape Cod/Plymouth upbringing.
I almost forget about Rico. These things happen when someone captures my eyes and, perhaps, my heart. I do believe in love/lust at first sight. I’m a dreamer. I’m a Pisces.
“Nice to meet you, Mikey. This is my buddy Rico or as I like to say R-r-r-ico.”
Rico rolls his eyes at my cheesy joke (it’s not the first time I’ve said it), smiles, and then turns to us and says, “Hey, I’m gonna make a round here. I’ll catcha in a few.” I wink at Rico, mentally thanking him for giving me some space with Mikey. That’s the mark of a true friend, when he leaves you alone to chat up a cute guy. No sense in cock-blocking. Rico’s not like that—and a good thing, too. It’s hard to make good gay guy friends without breaking out into catfights over cute men. That’s why I feel blessed to have at least one good hangout buddy here in this sometimes-unfriendly metropolis. My closest friends are back in Miami. My best friend Brian lives in New York and Miami, jetting back and forth on his helicopter with his partner. While we see each other only a few times a year when I visit mi familia, we e-mail and talk on the phone several times a week, kind of like the two women in the movie Beaches.
Rico disappears into the sea of guys as Beyoncé bounces her bootyliciousness on the video monitors mounted on each corner of the room crooning and hiccupping, “So crrrazy in loooove. Uh oh, uh oh…” And I’m here with Mikey, smiling and chatting up a storm in a corner of the bar, where cushy stools and small bar tables line up against a wall of windows, protecting the club goers from the freezing weather just on the other side of the glass.
Mikey is an elementary school guidance counselor on the South Shore, where he also grew up, just outside of Plymouth, as in the Rock. He is slight like the lead singer of Maroon 5 and a little hunched when he talks. I find it hard to believe he’s thirty-three, only four years older than me. He looks twenty-five—probably because he has a head full of hair and exudes a boyish playfulness that seems endearingly innocent. Small freckles dust his nose and cheeks. When he says something he thinks is funny, he pops his tongue out and gently bites down. He’s a cutie pie. Que lindo.
“Tommy, what do you do? Are you Italian? You look it, cutie,” he tells me as I smile and glance away again. I need to stop doing that.
Folks here think I’m Italian or Greek, something that is bittersweet for me. In Miami, no question about it, everyone knew I was un cubanito. In Boston, my light olive skin allows me to blend in with the populace, allowing me to see how others are treated when they don’t blend in and hear what others have to say about them. That’s Boston for you. Almost thirty years after the divisive racial busing riots, the city still sometimes views itself through the old black-and-white prism. That surprises me because Boston itself is a minority-majority city. As for Latinos or Hispanics (depending on whom you ask), the townies don’t know what to make of us, because we represent various shades of the ethnic spectrum.
Back in Miami, the city is a sea of Cubans. But in Boston, it’s another story. Only a couple thousand Cubans, according to the Census (I know this because I am, after all, a reporter) and just a handful of gay ones. So when I tell someone I am Cuban, they look at me like I have a third eye. To others, Cuban sounds exotic.
Anyways, back to Mikey. I explain to him that I grew up in Miami Beach. I was born and bred there, by the sun, sand, and surf, and grew up watching Miami Beach undergo an extreme makeover. When I was a little kid, the city was more of a Jewish retirement community with the elderly lining the porches of Ocean Drive hotels with the best views of the beach. By the time I was eleven, the place had become gun-slinging, cocaine-cowboy country just like in Scarface and Miami Vice. In my teens, Miami Beach