Boston Boys Club. Johnny Diaz
say it each time with the same enthusiasm as the first. I guess that’s what makes him a good writer or a bit of a cheeze-ball. You just have to learn to zone him out when he repeats himself.
I see the top of this guy’s fuzzy head as it bobs up and down on me like a bungee cord. He loves Oscar, all eight inches of him. I’m not the Italian Stallion for nuthin’. I’m staring at the popcorn ceiling of my room with my arms cushioning the back of my head while this guy gives Oscar a wet workout.
Ahhh, man, this is heaven. He’s a human vacuum cleaner. I could stay like this all night. There are so many dots on my ceiling.
Like boxing, Boston seems to fit me like a glove. I moved here at the beginning of fall from western Massachusetts, the Berkshires. Rich tourists go there during the summer and brag about it once they get back to Boston or New York. They bring traffic to the region, which some of us natives can’t stand. But they also bring money, which helps the locals in the wallet.
Earlier this year, I graduated from college with a degree in accounting and landed a job I applied for through an online ad. It’s a junior position, pricing stocks for the company’s clients. I gotta start somewhere. You know, I’m twenty-seven and just getting my degree now, so I took whatever job I could to get my life in order again. I feel a bit behind everyone else sometimes. Most college students here in Boston graduate at twenty-two or twenty-three and get their master’s. Most guys I know here have their own condos already. Some even have kids, though I wouldn’t want one at this point in my life. I’m too young and there’s plenty more playing to be done.
It was time to move on with my life. Also time to get away from Jeff, my lying, two-faced-shithead ex-boyfriend of two years. It was a toxic relationship. Unhealthy. You can’t be with someone if he’s cheating on you, and then you end up hooking up with other guys as a way of dealing with him having an affair with another guy. It was a total mental jerk-off. We weren’t going anywhere except driving each other crazy. You gotta be true to yourself and no one else. If you’re not, who will? Boston was a great place for new beginnings—and fresh faces to hook up with.
On megslist.com, where everyone posts rooms for rent, cars (even cats) for sale, or digital cameras to hawk, I found an ad for a room in a house here in Savin Hill, or what I call Stab N’ Kill. It’s a pretty neighborhood on a hill, full of Victorian and triple-decker houses with white picket fences and porches. From the top of the hill, you can see the whole friggin’ city, even Fenway during a Sox game, and the Fourth of July fireworks exploding over the city from the Esplanade. I’ve taken some tricks up here in my Ford truck for another kind of home run and explosion. My Ford Explorer has become my Ford Exploder.
The neighborhood was called Stab N’ Kill years ago when there was more crime and people wouldn’t dare venture over the highway to the other side of the neighborhood, which is connected by a narrow overpass. They called that part “OTB,” as in Over the Bridge, where thugs and gangbangers were robbing folks, stealing cars, and even burning down some houses. It was more ghetto back then.
At least this side of Savin Hill, the good part, has turned around, cleaned up as young professionals with families and some gay couples and their well-to-do friends bought up, refurbished, and renovated some of the depreciated housing stock and brought a sense of pride to these parts. Now these houses are worth more than double what they went for in the early and mid-1990s. It’s a great moneymaking investment. Those fuckers! I wish I had done that years ago when I had some dough in the bank. But I chose to follow my adventurous Aquarius spirit, travel down to Virginia and back up the East Coast, taking odd jobs as a waiter and a hotel clerk to feel free and live life. You only live once so why not do it as much as you can in your early twenties? I could have been rich by now if I had invested my money; instead I’m renting a room, barely surviving check to check, and have a mountain of credit card debt from those years of running around the country.
“Ouch,” I tell the Hey-kid. “You’re using your teeth. Watch it!” The kid corrects himself and he’s back to sucking me like an Italian ice.
I live in one of the bigger Victorian houses, right on the outer edge of the hill, where it overlooks The Boston Daily’s parking lot. Tommy comes over sometimes after work and we hit Boston Market for some carved turkey breast and macaroni. I love macaroni.
My roommate Bill seems okay although he can be weird at times, walking around the house talking to himself and bitching about his disability check not coming in the mail or about the heating bill getting too high. Bill is an older dude, in his fifties, with a nest of salt-and-pepper hair. He bought the first floor of the house as a condo conversion years ago when he was a more established events promoter and food critic. He doesn’t do that anymore. He just does odd carpentry jobs in the neighborhood and spends the day painting some part of the house.
He charges me $500 for my room and tends to leave me the fuck alone, except when I bring too many guys over late at night. Then he makes catty comments in the morning like “What number was that this week? Forty-six?” in front of the guy as he leaves. What an asshole!
Besides, the subway stop is down the street at the bottom of the hill, parallel to Interstate 93, so putting up with Bill ain’t too bad. I have another roommate, Peter, a straight college student, but I never see him. He works nights at the 24-hour pharmacy a few miles down. Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel like he lives here. Our rent pays Bill’s mortgage, I suspect, which explains why he doesn’t work a lot and is always on the prowl for that state disability check.
This is not going to be my permanent home. No friggin’ way. Once I pay down some of my credit card debt and school loans, I’d want a condo or a house around here as an investment and a home. Till then, I’m saving every penny I have. I collect my Sprite cans at the office and return them for cash. I take my spare change to the coin machine at the market. I don’t buy too many drinks when I go out and I only take $5 with me, which covers a beer and a tip. Actually, Tommy’s good about treating me when we go out. He’s a cool dude like that. Besides, I’m sure he makes good money as a reporter at the Daily so if he offers to pay, then, hey, why not, right? It’s not like I am asking him to. To save gas, I take the subway to work and I also encourage Tommy to drive. More gas in my tank.
For food, I load up on groceries at BJ’s out in the western suburbs. Once a month, I spend $70 on food, chicken cutlets, meat for meatloaf, cookie dough, boxes of Sprite, and large cans of Gatorade powder mix to brew my own at home. I take my lunch to work (grilled chicken breasts I cook and cookies I bake Sunday night for the week) and my soda cans. I don’t spend any money on food during the week. I save about $10 a day just by making lunch and eating dinner at home. For Boston Market with Tommy, I bring coupons. To pay him back sometimes for the times he treats, I cook him some stir-fry chicken with vegetables when we rent movies now and then.
I change my phone plan every few months when a better, cheaper deal comes along. I am so money-smart that if I squeezed a nickel hard enough, it would make the Indian on one side of the coin ride the buffalo on the other side, as the saying goes. If I have a date, I pretend to fight with the guy over who will pay and then I let him pick up the bill. This way, it looks like I made the effort to pick up the tab. I always say I’ll pay the next time around but my first dates are usually my last. I lose interest in the guy once I have him for dessert. At least I get dinner and dessert without paying.
My cell phone starts singing.
“My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard…” I love that ring tone for my phone. Cool, huh? It’s a text message from Tommy Boy. Go figure. That guy can talk all night if you let him.
“Hey! Me and the guy just kissed good-bye. He’s sooo cute. I’ve got his number. He has mine. Hopefully, we’ll have a date soon. What’s new with you?” The text message ends with one of his trademark smiley faces.
While this kid’s face is buried in my waist, still working on getting me off, and I am getting very close, I quickly punch in a message to Tommy, “Yo! He’s blowing me right now. TTYL!”
I toss the phone on my desk chair, where a laundry pile of underwear and white T-shirts sits like snow on a mountaintop. I glance around my room and see all the photos of me from over the