The Best Little Boy in the World by John Reid; Andrew Tobias

about him now.
    IBM was a good place to work, but boy, did I miss Yale. I missed sweat shirts and jeans and track shoes walking past my library nook. I missed maneuvering for a seat next to that sandy-haired boy from Tucson I was determined to meet and "happening" to sit next to him in 100 SSS, striking up a conversation, meeting for a couple of beers at Mory's Thursday night, shaking hands when paths crossed at the Co-op.... And now I was getting an invitation to that sandy-haired boy's wedding.
    Goliath, too, had long since gotten married, and it was getting to be my turn. My grandmother, subtlety personified, told me she would give me $1,000 when I got married, but I was holding out for more. My parents wanted to know when I would start bringing girlfriends up to Brewster for weekends the way Goliath had.
    I would respond by changing the subject. My parents never pressed the point, but their anxiety over my finding happiness (and happiness is a family) was all too apparent, anyway.
    I should have brought girls home, for my parents' sake. And I should certainly have dated in New York, to keep up appearances and to keep my hand in. I knew that the longer I went without a date, the more uncomfortable I would feel when I finally had to get one. The longer you put off your visit to the dentist, the more cavities he finds to drill. Yet without football games to require dates, and without Hank to supply them, I could no more take the initiative and inflict a date on myself than a little kid would take the initiative to visit the dentist.
    How long could I go without dating—or marrying— before people decided I was queer? I had vague notions of two years in the Peace Corps: A series of letters home talking about this girl I had met in Nairobi, a picture or two sent; a sudden marriage which, for fear they would not approve of my marrying a Kenyan girl, we decided to hold in the jungle without family or friends (read: witnesses). A year of letters about how happy we were... and then tragedy. She was bitten by a snake or smitten by leukemia—whatever seemed most plausible. I would be so grief-stricken I would not be able to remarry, or even date, for years. Maybe ever. The perfect alibi.
    I shared an apartment at Sixty-third and York with an old friend of mine from camp, Jimmy Iskowitz, a college pole vaulter who looked as though he were put together from five sticks of Ronzoni #9 spaghetti, with big meatball feet, hands, and head stuck at the ends. We had a view of Rockefeller University, the Cornell Animal Hospital, and the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. It was a nice walk to work.
    I have known Jimmy from the time we were ten, our first year at camp. Now he is one of the 4,000 assistant vice-presidents at First National City Bank; in camp he was considerably less dignified. He was one of the most active experimenters and one of the least embarrassed about experimenting. He never came right out and said he was experimenting; but everyone else said he was, and he would just grin.
    Once when I was still at Yale, my last year, Jimmy was in from the University of Wisconsin, where he was an economics major, and he came up to visit me. We went to Mory's for a few drinks. After I bought him his third, I came right out and asked him: On a scale from one to ten, I wanted to know, where ten is totally straight and one is totally gay, just where did he fall? It wasn't a belligerent question. We were good friends, and he as much as invited it by joking around so much all the time. I felt secure asking the question because Jimmy knew perfectly well that I was ten on that scale. Hell, I wouldn't even let anybody at camp give me back rubs, for crying out loud. So I could sound a little curious without raising any suspicions.
    After rambling through a lengthy preface, Jimmy said he was "about five" on the scale. (How could he admit that?) He told me that he used to mess around a lot at camp. Messing around meant sleeping in the same bed with