How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden Page A

insisted, another hand on my arm.
    “I will never understand you,” I said, “because I know what tricking is and I know what romance is, but you have the idea that you can—”
    “What a splendid thing it is, a sunny day at the beach!” Lars Erich shouted as he stormed in shining-wet, trailed by Cosgrove and Fleabiscuit.
    “These great waves!” Cosgrove agreed. “You’re bigger than them, so you stand against them, but they come slapping you down, dousing you with their whole what-they-are.”
    He made the sounds and mimed the effects of the ocean’s tugging power.
    “You are swept away,” Cosgrove concluded, going to the fridge. “Yet one orange juice pick-me-up and everyone’s as good as new.”
    Lars Erich was taking Peter in with one of those meaty smiles that made our German friend so interesting and disturbing at once, a world’s fair during a world war.
    “Peter is not liking last night,” Lars Erich said, peeling off his swimsuit and grabbing a towel from wherever. “That Jim and Sean! What a worst thing to happen!” He had stopped smiling. “How much I love you,” he whispered to Peter.
    “Prove it,” Peter replied, like a second-grader. “How much power do I have?” He got up and added, “What if No more sex with anyone else or we’ll break up?”
    “Bravado,” said Lars Erich as Peter approached. Moving around Peter, Lars Erich took hold of him quite gently from behind as if to create peace between them, but he suddenly tightened his grip into a stranglehold.
    “Let me go,” said Peter, actually rather blandly.
    “One sees what comes of defiance,” Lars Erich told him; and Peter started to struggle.
    “‘Klaatu barada nikto,’” said Cosgrove, coming over to them.
    “Peter must calm down befirst.”
    “Let me go!”
    “Let him go, damn you!” I shouted, and a startled Lars Erich released Peter so abruptly that Peter staggered before steadying himself at the breakfast bar.
    “Wie Sie befehlen,” Lars Erich told me, ever so courteously: As you command.
    “This is conduct unsuitable to gay life,” I said.
    “It is not pleasing, his defiance,” Lars Erich replied. “I warned him from the start how it is with me. I am in charge of him, and he loves me like that.”
    “I hate you like that,” said Peter.
    “‘Ach, nun wird mir immer bänger! Welche Miene! welche Blicke!’” said Lars Erich, quoting mockingly at Peter: Now it’s getting really scary! What a face! What evil eyes!
    Peter just looked at him.
    “Ja, smart Americans,” Lars Erich whispered. “What is this poetic highlight?”
    “Goethe,” I said. “ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And you’re the sorcerer, right? Peter’s learning fast and hard.”
    “Peter teaches also,” said Lars Erich, taking hold of him again, but nicely now. Peter did not resist; he had the look of a prisoner in love with the headsman. “Peter teaches me that I feel now as I have never before so felt. It is a cure for all woes.”
    “You guys have a problem, and you better resolve it,” I said.
    “No, it’s true,” said Peter as Lars Erich started to … well, deep-dish him. “No, Lars … yes, but stop … okay…”
    “Lars Erich Blücher,” said Cosgrove, “are you respecting the tone of the house?”
    Eventually, Lars Erich took a time-out to say, “In the next life, when I become a cute little shorty, I will respect the tone of the house. In this life, I am in control, and all learn from me.” Performing one of those penetrating looks at his lover, Lars Erich asked, “It is good like this? Nice, this taste? You will give me all your American kisses, ja?”
    “Ja,” said Peter, ready for the block.
    *   *   *
    Y OU HAVE TO HAVE a best friend who knows all your secrets anyway and thus might as well be confided in. You need enjoyable friends, and you also need sexy friends. But what if they are combined into one figure, coming after you like your favorite nightmare?
    I don’t mean Lars Erich; I mean