Read Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others for Free Online Page A

chests as tenor voices filled the warm night. The world was pairing off these days, no doubt about it.
    The hostages took turns at the podium. They talked about home and family and the need for expressing love openly. Then they asked for a moment of silence for the sailor who’d been killed on their plane. When it was over, Michael wiped his eyes and checked his watch. He was already half an hour late for the JO party.
    He strode briskly at first, then began to run up Castro as the band blared forth with “If My Friends Could See Me Now.” At Nineteenth, he cut across Noe and completed his ascent to Joe’s apartment. The house, as he’d remembered, was a potentially handsome Victorian that had been hideously eisenhowered with green asbestos shingles.
    He caught his breath for a moment, then pressed the buzzer. Joe came to the door wearing nothing but cutoffs. “Oh … Michael. You’re a little late, fella.”
    “It’s over?”
    “No. Just sort of … Round Two. C’mon in.”
    Michael entered the dark foyer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Sorry,” he said. “I was singing the national anthem and the time got away from me.”
    If his host appreciated the irony, he didn’t remark on it. “Take your clothes off out here. Stack your stuff on the stairs.” He slapped Michael’s butt and slipped behind the bedspread separating the foyer from the parlor.
    Michael stripped, piling his T-shirt, jeans and boots next to a dozen similar groupings on the stairs. He faced the hall mirror and checked himself briefly—for what? he wondered—before pulling aside the bedspread to greet his public.
    The men were slouched on sofas and chairs arranged in a crude crescent in front of the TV set. On the screen, two men in business suits were sucking cock in an elevator. A few heads swiveled in Michael’s direction, but most remained fixed on the movie, intent on the business at hand.
    He scanned the room for available seating. Nothing was left but the middle section of a sofa on the far side of the room. Heading there, he passed in front of the TV set, and it occurred to him—perversely—that someone might shout “Down in front!” just to embarrass him.
    No one did. He sat on the sofa, nodding gravely to his sofa mates, then glanced discreetly around the room at the other participants. This was Round Two, all right. As Teddy might have put it, there were very few members in good standing.
    In a La-Z-Boy next to the window sat Teddy himself, cock in hand, smirking ruthlessly at the latecomer. Michael looked away from him, fearful of losing the moment altogether.
    After a while, he got into it. There were some hot guys there—including that number from Muscle System—and the porn video suited his tastes perfectly. Once his self-consciousness had passed, he began to savor the sensation he had missed so dearly, the lost tribalism of years gone by. It wasn’t the way it used to be, but it stirred a few memories just the same.
    He was on the verge of coming when two men next to Teddy’s La-Z-Boy rose and left the room. They were followed, moments later, by three others. Presently a small din was emanating from the foyer, where the dressing ceremonies had begun.
    The guttural commands and primal grunts of the video were no match at all for the brunch being planned beyond the bedspread. “Don’t do pasta salad,” someone said quite audibly. “You did that last time and everybody hated it.”
    The fantasy collapsed like a house of dirty playing cards. As Teddy exited through a sliding door to the dining room, Michael caught his eye with a rueful smile. Teddy leaned over and whispered in his ear: “There’s no such thing as being fashionably late for a JO party.”
    There were two other men left in the room. One of them, the Muscle System hunk, was watching the screen with unblinking single-mindedness; the other, in similar fashion, was watching Michael watch the hunk. It was getting too intimate, Michael decided, so he