The Only Beauty

He never liked to think about those first days in California. He never liked to think about how soon he’d ended up in bathroom stalls with lips and hands on his body. When he’d made love to James and the two of them had been together, he felt loved. He felt special. Now he couldn’t believe he’d ever felt like that. He pushed these knew men out of his mind. It was coming to Guy and leaving that world behind that changed him. At Eagle Studios, the men who touched him treated him like a young god, and when he was with Johnny Mellow, fucking, snorting cocaine, drinking, or simply eating pizza, he felt like an Olympian in the company of Zeus.

“And the best part,” Guy proclaimed, as they were all watching the newly dubbed Casey Williams move about the stage, “is that he’s got work already. Little work, but soon, with the Internet, folks with little work’ll be posting it up, and then everyone’s gonna be a star.”

“That really gonna happen?” Noah said.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Guy said. “It’s not gonna happen today. But yeah, Casey’s old boyfriend taped him in some stuff. In fact,” he said, while the blond young man was smiling nervously and laughing at something one of the other model’s said, “I remember that the guy he was with wanted to make a lot of money off him, not for me, but for Back Door.”

“How do they know who’s going to be a star?” Noah said. “I mean, we’re all just getting fucked. And no one here is really a star. No one is taking home a Golden Globe or anything.”

“None of us is a star,” Paul said. “But all of us can be porn stars.”

“But how do you know?” Noah said. “Who’s a porn star and who’s just… doing porn?”

“Well, Meryl Streep is a star. Laurence Olivier was a star. We’re in porn, Noah. We’re all just doing it.”

Later that day Paul and Noah shot a movie. Noah always felt loved by Paul and wondered if he wasn’t even a little in love.

“If we could only shoot with each other,” he once said, “or if you could only love everyone you shot with.”

For Noah there was a difference between love and desire, but when he was with someone he was into, the difference didn’t matter. He could go so far as to say there was no difference, not when he wasn’t holding anything back.

He parked in front of the old beige stucco apartment and went around the back to walk up the iron steps, but midway up, the hairs on the back of Noah’s neck rose. Someone was here. Someone was definitely here, and when he got to the top his heart went into his throat and his skin went clammy.

“Oh, my God!” he half whispered. “James!”

“You look like you’re not happy to see me.”

“I’m surprised to see you,” Noah said. “I’m… I thought I’d never see you again.”

James cocked his head.

“Thought. Or hoped?”

“No!” Noah looked surprised. “How could you say that? How could you think it.”

“You just look… Completely fucked up,” James said. “I imagined you looking happier.”

“No,” Noah shook his head. Then he said, “Would you like something to drink?”

James shook his head.

“It’s just… It’s like seeing a ghost. Only I’m the ghost.”

“You don’t look like a ghost. You actually look fantastic. You’ve been lifting weights and all. You look like yourself,” James told him, “only shinier.”

“I feel like a ghost,” Noah said. “I sort of killed my old life. I’ve done a lot to distance myself from East Carmel. I honestly think you wouldn’t know me.”

“How couldn’t I know you?” James said. “Of course I’d know you. You aren’t that changed.”

“I’m more changed than you know,” Noah said. Then he said, “The truth is I don’t know what to do with you. Or what you’d do with me. If you knew about me.”

“I found you,” James said. “I found you and where you are. How wouldn’t I know about you? I think I know what you’re talking about. I know. Okay.”

Noah felt distinctly uncomfortable, and James said, “Maybe I will take that drink.”

Noah cleared his throat.

“Great,” he said, shoving his ball cap down tighter. “Come with me and see my kitchen.”

They sat on the beach eating tacos, and Noah said, “How did you find me? Not through… seeing me? You know?”

“No,” James shook his head. “Not like that. I asked your mom if she had heard from you, and she said a couple of times.”

“I don’t write a lot.”

“And then after a while she told me about what you were doing.”

“Porn?”

“Yes,” James said.

“We might as well just say it,” Noah said.

James shrugged.

“So I looked for Eagle Studios. And I found you. I took the semester off college.”

“That’s right,” Noah said. “You’re in school.”

“I’m going back.”

Noah folded up the taco wrapper and said, “But why did you take a semester off?”

“I just told you,” James said. “To find you.”

Noah looked at him mystified.

“Was I wrong to do it?” James asked him.

“You were… who would do that? No one’s done that. Not for me.”

They didn’t speak for a while and Noah watched the tangerine colored waves rolling very slowly onto the sand while the evening sun looked on them.

“And now that you’ve found me,” Noah said, “how do you feel about what you found?”

“You’re my Noah,” James said.

“I am really, really changed.”

“I know really changed people,” James said with certainty. “You don’t seem that changed.”

“The last time I was with you we spent the night together,” Noah said. “And now I’ve spent the night with so many people.”

“You have.”

“Metaphorically. James, I’ve… I have sex for money. I do it on camera.”

“I am well aware of that.”

“Then I guess I don’t know what you want from me?” Noah said. “I mean, I don’t know what I can be to you.”

Then Noah said, “That’s not what I mean. I’m saying it badly.”

“Okay,” James nodded. “Then take some time and find a way to say it to me the right way. But I think you don’t get me at all. I’m your friend. No matter what. I was your best friend. And you were mine. And I came to find my friend. Do you understand now?”

But Noah did not answer right away. Finally he said:

“I’ve been a bad friend.”

“You haven’t been anything. I’m sure you’ve been through a lot.”

“A lot that I don’t want to talk about.”

“I understand.”

“You always understand,” Noah said. “But I put you out of my mind. If I had thought about you it would have been impossible to do anything I’ve done in the last two years. That’s why I was so surprised when I saw you.”

“Do you want me to go away, then?”

“Absolutely not,” Noah said. “I just… You think I’m not happy to see you. I act like you’re a ghost. I must… I must be so disappointing to you.”

“No,” James said, placid as ever. “No. I didn’t know what to expect. I was afraid, honestly. But I had to find you. That’s all.”

“Do you mind if we stay here and just be quiet?” Noah asked him. “Can we just sit and watch the sunset? I feel like I haven’t done that in a really long time.”

“You never watch the sunset over the ocean? And you’ve been in California for two years?”

“The sunset wasn’t why I came,” Noah said.

James told him about college, and how he’d ended up leaving East Carmel only to end up in Renssalaer at a college where there were even fewer Black people than where his father taught. When Noah asked him if he minded, he said he didn’t, that it would just be setting himself up for a world that wasn’t real if he surrounded himself with people who looked just like him.

“It’s good to know what really is out there,” James said, “so that when an election year comes you’re not surprised.”

He said there was so little to do in Rensselaer that the biggest news was one Wal Mart and an ice cream place on the river. He and the two friends he had eventually made generally had their Saturday night excitement by going to the Dollar Tree and then Dollar General.

“There’s a lot to do on the campus, though,” James said. “There has to be. It’s a dry campus so they got around that by putting a bar underground.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. And they mix drugs above ground. Every weekend half the campus is high.”

“What about you?” Noah looked at him, fascinated.

“I tried LSD,” James said. “Once. One and done. It’s not over when you want it to be over.”

Noah thought about his drug trips. When he talked about all the people he’d met, he left out the sex, and he wondered if James did too. He wasn’t jealous, but he was curious.

“What else happens?” Noah asked him.

“Lots of nudity. Lots of couches being set on fire.

“They have a cruise lap,” James said, “and it’s a little less elaborate than the one in Rummelsville.”

“You sound like you miss Rummelsville,” Noah grinned at him.

“A little bit. More than I thought I would.”

“The more I’m away, the less I miss it. I miss you, though,” Noah told him. “Maybe if I’d known you’d only go to Renssalaer, I wouldn’t have left.”

But then he said, “I needed to leave. I don’t expect you to understand it, James. I know everyone is going to think I’ve turned into something awful. And there were things I didn’t want to do. But… I don’t know how to explain it… I feel stronger than I ever felt before. I feel strong being who I am now.”

“And that’s why you were afraid when you saw me,” James said.

“Huh?” Noah looked surprised.

“You were different with me. You loved me—”

“And still do,” Noah told him.

“But you weren’t strong yet. Not when we were together. At least you didn’t think you were.”

“There is this… metal,” Noah said, “that living this life has given me. I know I can do anything. Because I have done anything. And I can’t give it up yet. I know it sounds silly, but I’m not ready to stop being this person yet.”

“I get it,” James said.

“James, sometimes I feel so sexy and so beautiful and so powerful.”

“Do you feel that way now? With me?”

“I feel loved,” Noah said. “But fragile. All the old doubts. All the old me comes out.”

“One day you’re going to have to deal with that.”

“I know,” Noah said, “and it’s not like I don’t deal with it now, but… There is part of me that wishes I’d stayed home, or thinks about going with you. Cause I miss you. But the other part doesn’t know what I would do if I went back.”

“I do get it,” James said. “If nobody else gets it, I get it. And I miss you. I wish you’d come back too, but it would be like bringing back some kind of wild animal.”

“I’m a wild animal?”

“You always were. You thought you were some sparrow, or something weak and fragile. You never knew how strong you were. And now, with all you’re doing, all the hate you get for it, all the misunderstanding, you are so strong. You’re like a hawk, not a sparrow, and I don’t think hawks belong in Indiana.”

James kissed Noah’s cheek, and then he kissed his throat.

“James…” Noah murmured.

As they sat looking over the beach and onto the water, James’ hand went to Noah’s thigh and he murmured, “We shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“James,” Noah pled as James’ hands slipped into his shorts, and he felt himself getting hard, the rest of his body melting, “you know what I do. You know…”

James kissed his throat.

“I can’t imagine us not sleeping together,” he told Noah.

“Neither can I,” Noah told him.

“I won’t take anything from you,” James told him, “but I can’t go back home knowing we didn’t have this while I was here.”

Noah placed his cheek on James’ shoulder and felt James’ hand on his arm.

“God, you’re made out of muscle,” James murmured, holding him.

“You can put your metal on tomorrow, okay,” James said. “Tonight just be with me.”