The Boys in the Bars

``The greatest thing about being gay'' is that ``you don't have to be uptight about sex,'' says a character in the title story of this compelling collection. But this exuberance is about to be extinguished. ``Histories,'' the grand finale to the volume, is a futuristic masterpiece that details the gay community's first awareness of AIDS, the heartfelt deaths, and ends, ``We are old now, Danny and I, Survivors, as many gay men over sixty-five are now called. No one knows exactly why, but some of us who were exposed managed to hold off the disease for almost fifteen years until the Cure was discovered.'' Readers will think long, hard and often fondly about the innocent boys, divorced men whose bisexuality tore their marriages apart, and other characters limned here. Most narrators are well-to-do; they dine at the Plaza when visiting New York City, vacation in Maine, Fire Island, Easthampton, Mexico or the Caribbean, and often become involved with cagey native boys. Theirs is not a very glamorous lifestyle, despite pitchers of martinis and cocaine in abundance. Davis ( Valley of the Shadow ) does not romanticize his characters; he makes no excuses for those who manipulate the rich or who run at the first indications of another's illness. (Aug.)