In Search of Pretty Young Black Men Read online

  Lamont truly believed he loved beyond the body. Oh the body was there all right: the face, the smile, the everything physical. But there was a kindness, gentleness, and an attractive softness that was both delicate and masculine in the conversation, questions, and genuine interest that poured forth from the soul of this Dorian Moore.

  Lamont had to laugh just a little as his liquor-drenched fantasies redressed him in powdered wigs and stage makeup and happy Hollywood endings. He hardly knew the boy, yet he was already designing their life together, their love together, and their forever together. He had already laid claim to this angel sent to him per his prayer request, although he had not been truly able to put his finger on what it was that he had so desperately prayed for…until now.

  They had dinner by candlelight at Gaston’s and Lamont found himself spilling his guts out in code. As bad as he needed to talk to someone about all of the misery that filled his life, the details were too shameful to put into words. “I don’t know how to live,” he finally said.

  The pretty young black man took his hand. “That’s all right, Lamont. I’ll teach you.”

  They checked into a suite at the Century Plaza Hotel. Dorian also lived in Baldwin Hills. Going to his place would not be prudent. On the Hill, little escaped the eyes and ears of Abner Lester-Allegro.

  Century City sparkled beneath their window. Linen drapes billowed with a breeze passing through French doors that led to a balcony. Here Dorian schooled Lamont with a roughness that would have made Abner proud. And Lamont took it like a man. The pain made him proud and pleased him greatly. It bolstered him with a newness that could only come from knowing both sides: to give and receive, to have his tight male womanliness filled to the puckered rim, to have his manliness buried in the dark, succulent warmth of good young black booty.

  The pretty young black man’s pretty fat dick and tight warm behind set off the alarm. And the fire raged on and on, throughout a reminiscence of an affair that could never be repeated.

  Lamont awoke with a startle. He was alone. Alone with his coke and Courvoisier. Alone in their favorite suite at the Century Plaza Hotel. Alone in his blue silk boxers. Alone in a life his father had made for him. Alone in his cowardice, his get-along “niggahood.” Alone with his memories, his demons, his guilt, his regrets, his wasted life, and the burden he bore over lives he had wasted. Alone with a nature that some found unnatural. He fought hard to escape what was becoming a nightmare. He fought hard to remember only the details of the dream.

  And then it hit him. As clear as the new morning sun that now poured through the hotel room window. The last thing he saw before eyes had shot open.

  Maggie.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ricardo Mathis was one of those black homosexual writers white homosexual publications hire on that rare occasion when something black has to be reported on, acknowledged, answered to, or witnessed.

  He was the translator. Bwana’s head scout. He broke it down in the King’s English, blew on it for those who could not take the heat. He was a West Hollywood snow queen beauty, sought after for expertise on a world he knew little about. But his essays were beautifully written. His short fiction was even better.

  Lamont had heard Dorian mention Ricardo before, describe him to a tee. So he knew who he was the moment he walked in on them, saw them together on the floor of the sunken living room.

  Dorian had warned Lamont many times before: “Don’t fall in love with me.” But Lamont could not help it.

  “Your eyes are too sad.”

  “You used to think they were beautiful.”

  “They once were. They were beautifully sad. Now they’re just…sad.”

  Lamont, more obsessed than he realized, braved the threat of community exposure and went to Dorian’s house on that fateful night. He parked around the corner, entered through Dorian’s side gate, then with a surgeon’s precision, jimmied Dorian’s back door. He came through the kitchen toward the soft light and the sound of Luther crooning romance. And there they were, locked in a blue-light sixty-nine.

  Lamont froze and could not look away. And even as their eyes—all four of them—seemed to rise up to see him at the same time, the sucking and cheek bulging, the ball licking and salad tossing, did not decrease. The shock of his presence paled against the inertia of good foreplay destined to be outdone by great sex to come. Ricardo had been with so many white boys who worshiped him with begging cries of “Fuck me! Fuck me, you black motherfucker! Fuck me with that big black dick!” that the very thought of him now being the white boy butt-fucked by a black buck made his titties swell and his dick drip like Karo syrup. Whenever he was with Dorian he was Miss Ann in the hand of a half man/half beast that could have easily been his physical twin and still his soul’s foe.

  And now the other twin stood in the door: the sad-eyed twin with murder in his sad eyes. But Ricardo paid Lamont little mind—did not care who he was or why he was there. Ricardo simply continued to suck on the dick that would fuck him so dearly, while making a quick mental note: a perfect short story for Advocate Men.

  Dorian lifted himself up from Ricardo’s pubic nest and leaned back, enjoying the blow job with a gracious cool. He looked over at Lamont once again. But Lamont was gone. Dorian felt a relief that was as good as the head he was getting. Lamont could not understand, would not understand, that Dorian had something for everyone, that Dorian was a generous soul who always had to be in the position to serve where the need was great, or merely desired. Lamont could not understand that. But now he had seen with his own beautiful sad eyes.

  Dorian pulled his dick out of Ricardo’s mouth with a pop and a teasing. Ricardo strained for the dick with the tip of his tongue. He whimpered as he was allowed one last lick at the jizzumy slit. Dorian then turned Ricardo over, rolled on one of the black ribbed condoms Ricardo always brought with him, and gave him the doggy-style fucking he came across town from West Hollywood to get.

  Lamont watched from the window and cried.

  The view of the city from his bedroom window so sparkled below that it seemed religious. The light lining the basin was a neon swirl of pastel fluorescence. The stars above shimmered against the clear black lid of the sky like tiny scattered diamonds.

  Lamont saw none of this. Demons distracted him. He tossed and turned in his bed, deep in a tumultuous sleep filled with the mockery of the dead and the condemnation of the living. They sashayed in front of him, fucked snow queens before him, delighted in his motherless childhood, had babies that weren’t his, and demanded from him what seemingly could not be.

  “The least you could do is give me a goddamn grandchild that lives,” the echoed voice demanded.

  Many a night they dropped by to see him, to haunt him, to haze him, to remind him. Slowly but surely, the reminders began to take their toll. And a pretty young black man would end up dead.

  Lamont knew he would never have the strength or the nerve or the courage or the guts to do what Maggie had done, to do what Mercy had done. He would die a natural death that would come after such an unnatural life.

  His grief and despair were borne of cowardice. He was cloaked in deception created by guilt, shame, and self-loathing. He knew these things about himself and the knowing made him hate himself more. So when a rescuer appears and holds out a hand, then snatches it back, that instigator of so cruel a prank must die. Lamont was just one of many pathetic souls in the world who needed to be spared the cruelty of snickering angels.

  How many more had fallen in love with Dorian only to be rebuked by him? Why would salvation spit in your face when you’re flat on your back?

  He believed Dorian had to die and that he, Lamont, had to do the killing. He had to get rid of the pretty young black man to save himself, redeem what little was left of himself.

  Lamont had killed a pretty young black boy before; the one once inside him. And when that boy was aborted and shitted out Lamont felt the relief that comes with that kind of emptiness.

  During tho
se few precious times he shared with Dorian he was almost feeling all right, almost believing that the way that he was was all right.

  “It’s all right, Lamont Lester,” love spoke and he knew it, “but don’t fall in love with me.”

  “How could I not?”

  “Don’t do that to me. Don’t do that to you.”

  But the taste of the boy was dope through the schoolyard fence. Lamont was hopelessly addicted after just one hit: a junkie punk bitch hooked, lined, and suckered.

  He hated himself all over again, hated himself for loving what should not be loved.

  He thought he had been flushed clean of that part of himself, but Dorian Moore was the painful reminder. So Dorian Moore had to die.

  But the death of the boy exorcised nothing. When Dorian was found with his balls in his mouth Lamont felt no release. He went mad, truly mad, vexed by the passion-filled crime he was convinced he’d committed.

  His demons dragged him through the streets screaming confessions of murder. He confessed to anyone within ear-shot, to the high heavens, in a mad and feverish way that disturbed the conservative calm of his neighbors. But his confession provided no solace, no pathway to light.

  He then took to dancing naked and angry, first in the living room, then poolside, then out on the sidewalk in front of his house, pissing down his leg while sprinklers baptized him. He howled at the sky, “I did it! I had to! I killed him! God made me!”

  Elois Andrews from across the street was the first to respond to the raucous ranting. On one particularly memorable day her mouth dropped at the sight of him. She stood frozen in place until Francine Harvey next door poked her head out and Lawd-have-mercy’ed herself into head shakes and foot pats.

  “I cut off his balls! I stuffed them down his throat!”

  Others had gathered but all were afraid to approach the wild dog. Finally Albee Mention ran out of his house with a blanket. He covered his friend and was fought for his efforts. But Albee would not give up. He held Lamont tightly until Lamont could fight no more. Lamont collapsed in Albee’s arms and cried like a baby and sucked on his thumb.

  Someone had called the police, discreetly of course. When they arrived they retrieved him from Albee with deference. He was still a Lester-Allegro. They’d been told that on dispatch.

  He wailed and fought them and begged them to kill him. When they politely took him away, neighbors gathered and gossiped in hushed tones about all the years of Lester-Allegro high drama on Don Carlos Drive: the stillborn baby, the white woman dead in the driveway, the wife’s suicide on the balcony. And now this. Baldwin Hills was becoming as bad as the foothills, known as “the Jungle.”

  “I did it! I had to! I killed him! God made me!” he cried to his jailers. But no evidence could be found to support his claims. Out of respect for Doctor Abner Lester-Allegro’s power, the details of the false arrest brought on by a false confession do not exist in the files of Los Angeles County. So back to the streets Lamont remanded his case. Naked and nasty, with hair matted and nails caked with feces and dirt, he continued his tirade until his father could stand it no more.

  Abner Lester-Allegro, with regret and relief, had his son discreetly locked up in an asylum by the sea. And there Lamont Lester-Allegro stayed—mumbling, mumbling, mumbling—while the voice of his wife sang love songs by Luther with hidden meanings and visions of pretty young black men danced gently in his jingle-jangle mind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In time, calm would return to Baldwin Hills. The big North-ridge earthquake, the Rodney King beating, O.J. and the verdict-induced uprising blessedly distracted from a community ill-desirous of scandal and spotlight. The Lamont Lester-Allegro situation was but a blip on black bourgeois L.A.’s radar screen now, and they were fine with that. Mayor Tom Bradley was a god in this city and Councilman Abner Lester-Allegro was the mayor’s archangel.

  County Supervisor Yvonne Braithwaite Burke controlled the purse strings of L.A. County, the eighth largest economy in the world. The glut of black multimillionaire actors, singers, showbiz executives, and athletes who quietly used their for-tunes to buy influence and build an economic nation headquartered here in the City of Angels was no aberration. The preservation of that black influence in a city where blacks only represented 12 percent of the population was no joke. More rich black people lived in Los Angeles than in any other major city in the United States. And L.A. black folk—adjustable, tolerant, smarter than they ever let on to be, and blind when the sun shines too harshly—were not about to have their clout eroded by something as insignificant as suicide, homosexuality, murder, and insanity. The sins of the son would not be visited upon the father or the community. Social patricide would not be tolerated by the city’s black elite.

  Lamont Lester-Allegro was declared re-sane by 1999. When the healed and handsome fifty-three-year-old was released into the care of his now ancient father (in his fifth term as the District 8 councilman, recently and barely defeating his strongest challenger to date, the popular tough-on-crime and openly lesbian jurist, Lydia Titus), Baldwin Hills acted as if he’d only been on sabbatical.

  “You see, that’s the difference between you and Lydia Titus, Dad. When she sees a rat she sees a rat. When you see a rat you see a meal.”

  Lamont’s father just knew that his son could never say something like that to his face, not his face, not deliberately, not his son. Tourette’s syndrome. Yes, that’s it, because his son—not to his face, not from his son—would never. EVER!!! And besides, he had to remember. His son, the sole heir to his standing, his place, his smudge on the forehead of the anointed, had just gotten out of a facility sensitive to sensitives and would need that tender loving care that would bring him into his destiny in the scheme of family things.

  Abner Lester-Allegro was up there in age. So was his younger brother, Gregory. It was a sad fact that both these aging nobles seemed to produce nothing but offspring who grew up to be little more than burdens and embarrassments. It seemed that the Lester-Allegros, much to their practiced astonishment, could not maintain legacy no more than they could beat out mortality.

  For all intents and purposes, Lamont and his two cousins, Will and Champion, were the last of the Lester-Allegros. The three of them were childless in one way or another. Lamont had fathered no children physically. Will’s only child, pissed by family and peer pressure to marry and procreate, abandoned the family’s traditional AME faith for Catholicism, joined the priesthood, and dedicated himself to a life of celibacy.

  Champion’s oldest was shot in a drive-by during a Compton crack buy gone wrong. His younger, hating his family for everything it pretended to be, had himself fixed so he would never bring another fucked-up Lester-Allegro into this world. Will and Champion Lester-Allegro, disappointed by their offspring and disappointing their ancestors, followed each other into early graves. Lester-Allegros were piling up like dead Kennedys.

  So although a minor hope, Lamont was the only hope—not yet dead and the only one left to bet the family beads on. Thank God his treatment was effective.

  After years of incarceration, he attained acceptable lucidity. He was reborn and experiencing his childhood again, this time in an unencumbered, un-Lester-Allegro way. The Meadowbrook Rest Home-by-the-Sea was like a mother’s womb, giving him a floating protection while he developed his vital parts: a brain, heart, mind, and body. Perhaps even a soul.

  But it was indeed a long and painful process. He was forced to face things about himself, about his family, about his nature, burdens, and blessings.

  The first few weeks at Meadowbrook were the hardest. Lamont howled, kicked, and cursed relentlessly, threw himself against walls, forcing staff to bind him down for his own safety’s sake. On those nights when his fits exhausted him into sleep or medication was resorted to, his dreams became nightmares, indictments for being born and living lies. He cried every day of those first few weeks. His doctor allowed him to, waited patiently to glean from his wailings psychological morsels that could
hint at the problems, give clues to solutions.

  “When she comes to you in your dreams, what does she say?” the doctor asked one day.

  “Why?” Lamont answered in between wails. “She keeps asking, ‘Why?’ ”

  “And the young man you thought that you murdered…”

  “Did murder! Did murder!”

  “When your wife comes to you, why do you think she asks ‘why?’ What is she asking?”

  “Why was I born?” he cried, “Why did I marry her? If we couldn’t love each other, why couldn’t we at least love ourselves?”

  “Why were you born?” the doctor then asked.

  “Because somebody came.”

  “Why did you marry her?”

  “I did it for God. I didn’t want to burn in hell.”

  Lamont had never wanted to be a doctor. That was his father’s desire. At the age of thirteen Lamont Lester-Allegro only wanted two things in his life: wings and Larry Grayson.

  It was the late summer of 1959 when the Graysons took over the house across the street. The Berringers, a congenial enough white family of four, had seen the changing tide in Baldwin Hills, where white flight emptied out the grand abodes that overlooked the city from poolside terraces. Newly rich Negroes and entertainers like Ike and Tina Turner, Nancy Wilson, and Ray Charles were now claiming the castle views. The Berringer family was one of the few holdouts who indeed not only got along well with their new Negro neighbors but also actively socialized with them. They entertained one another in one another’s homes. Christmas, birthday, and anniversary gifts were exchanged. Funerals were attended mutually. Their children alternated sleep-overs.

  But in what had been a subtle reversal of certain covenants, the community council, led by Dr. Abner Lester-Allegro, had made the Berringers a financial offer that could not be refused. The neighborhood could now be transformed into a true black bourgeois enclave of discriminating taste and selective values. The black bourgeois Graysons were chosen to buy.