Maybe the Moon

is,” he said.
    We both started giggling, rolling on the floor like puppies. Jeff’s seizure was more purgative, though, lasting longer than mine and playing itself out in a resonant sigh.
    “You’ll get over it,” I told him.
    “I know.”
    “Did you leave him…or vice versa?”
    He thought a moment. “Both, really.”
    “How does that work?”
    “Well…I told him it was over, and he looked relieved.”
    “I see.”
    “He looked very relieved.”
    I hesitated before asking: “You think there’s somebody else?”
    “Oh, hell no,” he said, and then thought about it and smirked. “Unless you count Billy Ivy.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “This porn star, a local kid. He plays college boys in skin flicks…wrestles in jockstraps, gets fucked with a tie on, that sort of thing.”
    “Of course.”
    “Callum’s obsessed with him. Back in Maine, he used to jerk off to him in Honcho . Then he moved back here and got the video, which, I swear, never left his VCR at the Chateau Marmont.”
    “You watched it together?”
    He nodded. “I got off on it the first time, but it turned into a real thing with Callum. After a while he never had sex with me at all without Billy Ivy’s preppie butt on the screen. It got to be almost insulting. Then one night Callum came to Silver Lake—the only time he ever did—and flipped through one of my Advocates and found out that Billy Ivy has his own eight hundred number for outcalls in L.A.”
    “Phone sex, you mean?”
    “No. The real thing. If you’re tired of his movies, you can call up and order him .”
    I smiled at him. “You think Callum did?”
    “I know he did. He says he didn’t, but he did.”
    “Does that bother you?”
    “It bothers me that he lied.”
    “Nothing else?”
    “No. I’m a sex-positive person.”
    I gave him a dubious look.
    “OK,” he said, “it bothers me a little.”
    “Thank you.”
    “That wasn’t why we split, though. He just panicked because I told him he should come out.”
    “Ah.”
    “I didn’t bully him or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “I’m sure you didn’t.”
    “I was really gentle about it. I told him just to think it over…how much more peaceful he’d be, how much it would mean to millions of gay kids who’re still struggling with it.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He didn’t. The blood just drained out of his face, and he changed the subject.” Jeff traced a pattern on the carpet with his forefinger. “That was it. I became the enemy after that.”
    He seemed so filled with sadness that I refrained from comment.
    “You know,” he added, “I thought I could fix him.”
    “Yeah.”
    “My first mistake, right?”
    “Maybe not.”
    “Yeah. It was. Nothing ever changes here, and you can’t do shit about it. That kid is twenty years old, and he might as well be Rock in 1949. They just keep making ’em.”
    “Someday it’ll change.”
    “Right,” he said. “In the meantime, Ned would be laughing his ass off.” He stroked the carpet slowly, soothingly, as a form of punctuation. There were tears blurring his eyes, but whether they were for Callum or some dim, resurfacing memory of Ned was far beyond my powers of observation.

19
    I ’ M SO MAD I COULD SPIT . O NE WEEK AND TWO DAYS AFTER THE lunch at Icon, Leonard finally called. I don’t much feel like writing about our conversation, but I’ll do it, anyway—in the interest of thoroughness, if nothing else.
    “Doll.”
    “Leonard.”
    “How are you doing?”
    “Swell.”
    “Terrific. Look, this thing is on.”
    “What thing?”
    “The thing I told you about. You free a week from Saturday?”
    A low-grade dread began to seep through my system like pale-green poison. Blockbuster musicals are not generally described as being “a week from Saturday.” I sat down on the floor, took a deep, cleansing breath, and collected myself. “Just tell me what it is, Leonard, and I’ll tell you if I can do it.”
    He didn’t answer right away, obviously conscious of my fragile state. “OK…how does this grab you? Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno, Candy Bergen, Sly Stallone, Elizabeth Taylor,Michael Jackson, Annette Bening, Warren Beatty, Madonna…Stop me when you’ve had enough.”
    “No, go ahead. Keep jerking my chain.”
    “I’m serious.”
    “Right.”
    “It’s a tribute, doll.”
    “To what? My gullibility?”
    He laughed. “To Philip Blenheim.”
    I said nothing.
    “You still there?”
    “I’m