The Arrangement
by Ryan Field
Chapter One
In l962, if a man was attracted to another man, he was considered a homosexual in clinical terms. In more realistic everyday terms, men like this were considered queers, fags, pansies, deviants, and perverts. Among other crude references, which ranged from pillow-biter to corn-holer, depending on how graphic someone wanted to be, men who were even remotely attracted to other men were, in essence, sick freaks of nature and societal outcasts. And if a man fell inlovewith another man, he was one step beyond royally screwed. In other words, there wasn’t much hope.
Toby McFarlane didn’t think of himself as a freak or a pervert, at least not deep down inside where it really mattered. Though he wasn’t sure two men could fall in love with each other, he didn’t discard the concept, either.
It wasn’t until he graduated from college and realized his attraction to men wasn’t a stage. When he finally decided to stop fighting his feelings and learn to live with them. And even that wasn’t easy. He never went a day without feeling anxious or worried that someone would figure him out. He was always looking over his shoulder, making sure he didn’t make the wrong gestures or give anyone the wrong look. So he did the best he could to blend in with everyone else, which seemed to be the safest way to live his life.
In the summer of l962, right after he graduated from the ultra conservative Drew University in New Jersey, Toby moved to New York City. It seemed like the best thing to do. He took a small apartment in midtown Manhattan on the fourth floor of a building that had once been a large single family home. He figured moving to New York would be safe and there would be more men like him in an urban environment. He knew there were more men like him; he’d read about them and heard about them. But he just wasn’t sure how…or where…to meet them. There had to be a way to search them out, and he was determined to do it.
A week after he moved to New York he went on an interview. They offered him the job that day and he accepted it with a huge smile and his strongest, manliest handshake. The next Monday he went to work as an assistant art director for Johnson, Frederick, and Lindsay Advertising, Inc, where he fell into a comfortable routine. It was the golden age of advertising and Toby couldn’t have asked for a better position. He wore dark suits and white shirts to work, with skinny solid ties, boxer shorts in pastel colors, and always white undershirts. On his feet he wore black Thom MaCan’s he had shined once a week by an old man named Otis in the lobby of his office building on Madison Avenue. He ate lunch at Horn and Hardart and ordered cheap Chinese take out three times a week. On weekends, he took long walks in central park and rode the bus to Newark, NJ, so he could shop inBamberger’s, because he thought it was cheaper thanMacy’s. On the third Saturday of every month he rode the subway downtown to little Italy to maintain his short dark hair. The barber on Mulberry Street, between Defazio’s Bakery and Orritelli’s shoe repair, only charged three dollars. In those days, Toby’s ninety dollar a week salary wasn’t considered terrible, but he’d learned how to stretch a dollar and make it last.
When Toby walked to work in the morning, he looked just like all the other men on the street. He even wore a dark felt hat and a baggy beige raincoat during inclement weather. The only thing that ever really set him apart from the other men was that he often carried a large portfolio to the office instead of a briefcase. Sometimes he took work home, especially when he was working on an advertising campaign that needed extra attention. When he was inside the office among his peers, no one would ever have guessed he was more interested in the cute young guy who brought the mail up at eleven every morning than he was in the shapely blond receptionist in the front waiting area. That is, no one except for Brad Lindsay, one of Toby’s bosses and the third and youngest partner in the advertising agency.
Brad and Toby were both in their twenties, both thin and attractive; both had similar hair cuts and wore similar suits. If Toby’s hair hadn’t been a few shades darker than Brad’s, they could have passed as brothers. The only real difference between them was that Brad was married to Carl Frederick’s daughter, Misty, and had been made a junior partner the day after his wedding. Toby was single and considered a bachelor.
They weren’t men who should have been close friends, and wouldn’t have been if something hadn’t happened one Friday evening the first autumn Toby worked there. Toby had stayed late at work on a project that had been bothering him. He was the new guy in the office and he wanted to impress his bosses. He’d been trying to come up with a new slogan for a baby food company and he’d been working so hard that day his head was pounding. He’d forgotten to eat lunch and had lost track of time. When he finally took a break to go to the men’s room, he ran into Brad Lindsay at the urinals. Brad was standing there leaning back, with his legs spread wide and one hand on his penis. He glanced at Toby and sent him a cocky smile, and then started to whistle a tuneless song that made the short hairs on the back of Toby’s neck stand up.
Toby returned the smile and took a quick breath. He regained his composure and tried to act casual. He usually avoided the men’s room at all cost because it made him feel awkward and out of place. He’d never been a man’s man in the sense that he didn’t know how to talk about sports and dreaded it when other men started talking dirty about women. But he didn’t have a choice now. If he left without doing anything he would have looked peculiar. So he walked up to a urinal at the opposite end of where Brad Lindsay was peeing and pulled down his zipper. Toby’s hands felt a little shaky and his heart started to race. Brad continued to whistle; he took his time and remained in front of the urinal far longer than he should have.
Toby pulled his penis out of his pants and glanced down. He didn’t look sideways and he concentrated on what he was doing. But he felt his ears getting red and his heart had begun to race. If he’d known Brad was in there he would have waited another fifteen minutes.
Then Brad caught him off guard. He smiled and glanced in Toby’s direction again. “Working late tonight?”
This was the first time Toby had actually encountered Brad Lindsay up close. He’d nodded hello and smiled at him in the elevator. But he’d never actually been face to face with him alone. Toby froze; he gulped and said, “Ah well, I’m working on the baby food campaign.”
Brad laughed. “Oh, you poor sucker. I heard all about that son of a bitch. He’s one of the worst clients we’ve ever had. It’s impossible to please him.”