Between Boyfriends (13 page)

“Did it hurt?” I asked.

“Burned mostly,” Sebastian said, upside down. “But that went away the next day.”

“I don’t want a dirty tunnel of love,” Lindsay declared. “You must give me the name of your doctor.”

“He’s a magician and he’s Brazilian. Plus he’s got the fattest uncut prick I’ve ever taken up my ass.”

“Your doctor fucked you?” I asked.

“My doctor fucked me before he was my doctor,” Sebastian said. “But once I heal he’ll fuck me after too!”

“How long does it take to heal?” Lindsay wanted to know.

“I can’t get fucked for a week. I can get sucked off, if anybody’s interested, but you can’t rim me ’cause you could get poisoned by the bleach and die.”

Finally Sebastian stood right side up and wriggled himself back into his Speedos. Most of us had to do some wriggling of our own.

“But like I always say, sex is risky.” he continued. “Oh, I almost forgot.” And down came the Speedos once again. “Sniff.”

Like gay Pavlovian dogs we all bent over so Sebastian’s anus was mere inches away and took one collective sniff. We were transported out of Gus’s apartment to an English rose garden.

“Doctor Pinga Gigante used a rose-scented bleach. Not only will I have a pink man pussy, but for the next two weeks my shit won’t stink.”

“Will I really die if my tongue tastes your pink rosebush?” Lindsay asked.

“Yes. But don’t worry, I’m inviting all of Chelsea to a tasting party in a week. I’ll be sure to send you an invite.”

“That does it,” Brian declared. “We need to leave.”

“So early? The party’s just starting.”

“Baby, I am so fucking horny if we don’t go now I’m gonna mount you on Isaac’s minibar.”

It was “Man from Atlantis” all over again. We bid good-bye to Gus, the fugitive, Patrick Duffy, Sally, Reuben, Isaac, and Emmanuel and hightailed it out of there. In the elevator ride downstairs, Brian kissed me ferociously, even doing the old two-hands-on-either-side-of-the-face kiss which only works when both parties are completely out of control. When the elevator stopped at the lobby so did Brian.

“I’m sorry, am I being too aggressive?”

The only words I could find to answer his question were on the tip of my tongue so I shoved it into his mouth and he seemed to understand that his aggressive behavior was perfectly acceptable.

We practically kissed the entire way home and when we were naked on his bed and I was watching him put a condom on his beautiful, nicely thickened dick, I laughed. Brian was a bit startled, but he got it and he laughed too. After all, sex was supposed to be fun. And as I grabbed the flesh on his back and felt him penetrate me we stared right into each other’s eyes and laughed a little bit harder.

W
aking up for the first time in a new boyfriend’s bed is a lot like being plunged into one of Sid and Marty Krofft’s 1970s Saturday morning TV shows. One minute you’re roaming through the familiar reality of your own dreamworld and the next minute you’re waking up in an unfamiliar land of the lost next to a guy with skin as soft as the smoothest Styrofoam. It leaves you feelin’ groovy and just a tiny bit funked out.

As I watched Brian smile in his sleep I felt like I had fallen a thousand feet below into a place where boys could be ladybugs and sea monsters could find refuge at a beach house. It was a magical place, but also a place where I didn’t have secure footing. So I closed my eyes and when I reopened them I was happy to see that nothing had changed—Brian was still asleep and smiling. I suddenly felt as sexily innocent as I did as a young boy hoping that yet another button on Will Marshall’s tight-fitting khaki shirt would come undone.

Lying there in Brian’s queen-sized sleigh bed, swathed in olive green Ralph Lauren cotton twill bedsheets, I breathed in the faint smell of musk that rose from underneath the covers and marveled at how gay I was as a kid. I wasn’t a lisping sissy-boy (though one Christmas I did steal my cousin Robyn’s Sun Valley Barbie mainly because she wore a cool orange ’n’ yellow ski outfit that I totally coveted) but my most profound memories of childhood and early adolescence are those that include feeling special pangs of excitement toward other boys whether they were on TV, in my classroom, or living in my neighborhood. Wavy-haired Wesley Eure as Will Marshall was just one in a long line of crushes that I couldn’t really explain, but understood made me a little bit different than the other boys. Luckily, I no longer felt ashamed about feeling different, only pleased that I could still recall the happy pangs. And happy pangs were what I was feeling lying next to Brian.

“Are you staring at me, sexy man?” Brian asked with one eye open.

“Guilty as charged.”

“Then you have a punishment coming to you.”

“Well, I’ve done the crime, so I must do the time.”

“Your sentence is one really long pre-mouthwash morning kiss.”

“That sounds yummy.”

Brian grinned as his naked body slinked on top of me. His skin was warm and inviting. Our woodies ground into each other slowly and I reached under the sheets to get a good grip on his asscheeks. I could feel his hot breath hover over my mouth for just a moment before his lips pressed themselves onto mine. Then I got the wake-up call every gay man craves—a deep, penetrating tongue kiss from a handsome guy.

My right hand traveled north and tousled Brian’s hair as my left went due south and found the center of Brian’s firm and meaty buttocks. Instinctively, my legs spread apart and I wrapped them around his. Our kiss got deeper and harder until our woodies were full-fledged hard-ons and soon Brian was thrusting his pelvis into me with slow, deliberate strokes. In between kissing my eyes and darting a tongue in my ear he said, “You are so fucking hot.” To which I responded, “So why doncha fuck me again?” Wasting no time, Brian reached under his bed for his secret stash of lube and condoms and took another ride inside my love tube as I gasped, sighed, spread my legs even wider apart, and smiled because I was having hot Sunday morning sex—which is simply the grown-up and more interactive version of watching dreamy teenaged boys in Saturday morning TV shows as a kid. I was glad to know that some things hardly ever changed.

While Brian was in the bathroom having some private time, the moment I had been expecting finally arrived. My mother called.

“Steven, I am outraged! Outraged, I tell you!”

“Did another bingo caller resign?”

“Worse! Audrey and I lost the Halloween costume competition!”

“Well, you can’t win ’em all,” I said as I examined my naked body in the mirror. I clutched the mini-paunch underneath my belly button and surmised that if I was going to have sex on a regular basis with the same fella it might prove beneficial to increase my daily number of sit-ups and decrease my daily intake of soft drinks and junk food. How impressed was I that I could carry on a conversation with my mother and contemplate my sex life at the same time? However, my mother’s shriek made me rethink multitasking in her presence.

“That is not the response I was hoping for!”

“Sorry, Ma,” I said, backtracking. “That is incredibly and enormously unfair.”

“My heart is broken, Steven! Broken into many small pieces!”

“I don’t get it. I mean seriously, what costume could beat Before and After Barbra?”

“Before and After…Judy
Goddamned
Garland!”

Ah yes, a dead diva always wins by a nose. My mother explained that Lenny Abramawitz and his granddaughter Loni came as the beginning and the end of Judy Garland. Loni was the pigtailed, gingham-clad Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz,
while Lenny, the oldest friend of Dorothy this side of Chelsea, was Judy from her famed concert days. He wore a Bob Mackie-inspired black sequined dress with boatneck collar and three-quarter length sleeves, black sheer stockings that showed off his bony, manorexic legs, and black pointy-toed pumps that a drag queen would have had to practice walking in for twelve hours before going out in public with any confidence. But it wasn’t impeccable attention to costuming detail that won the Abramawitzes the coveted award, it was the fact that Lenny pranced around with a microphone all night and channeled Ms. Garland’s repertoire. He was such a flaming success that by the end of the evening every Secaucus senior citizen (except a bitter Anjanette and Audrey) had forgotten their troubles and had gotten so happy that they were slurring their words.

“It isn’t fair! Jews don’t even like Halloween!”

“True. Their holidays are more somber by nature.”

“I tried to have them disqualified since Loni isn’t a resident, but the friggin’ rules clearly state you could enter with a guest!”

“Didn’t you write the rules?”

“Throw my mistakes in my face, why don’t you?!”

“Hey Steve, I’m gonna take a shower,” Brian called out to me. “Wanna join me? And just so there’s no confusion, I’m not asking.” Covering the mouthpiece of my cell phone I answered, “Be right there.”

“Stevie, who was that?”

I took a deep breath. “That was Brian.”

“Ohhhhhh,” my mother replied. I didn’t even get to silently count to ten before she turned into an Italian inquisitor. “And why are you two boys going to a baby shower?”

“Ma! I have to go.”

“You like this one, don’t you, Stevie?”

“Yes, Ma, I do. Now I’m going to hang up so I can like him a little bit more.”

“Stevie’s got a boyfriend,” she sang. “So when will Mama be meeting your Mister Man?”

“When he gets his anti-Anjanette shots.”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that!”

“Gotta go…love you, Mom.”

“Steven Bartholomew Ferr—”

The rest of my mother’s outburst was the rest of the universe’s problem, for I had to soap up a well-hung suitor and have sex for the second time on a Sunday morning. If I ever bumped into Gus’s ex, Brady, while shopping again, I would have to remember to share that information. And just so there’s no confusion, by share, I mean brag.

Well-scrubbed, we went to brunch and then browsed our way through the stores in Chelsea. As we squeezed into one partition of the revolving door and swung into Bed, Bath & Behind, I was stricken with Jackflash. Not an overwhelming desire to jump out of my whiteboy skin and whoop it up like Whoopi Goldberg trying to protect the homeland from Russian spies, but a flashback of my ex-boyfriend Jack. I hadn’t had one for quite some time and was thrilled to find that this one wasn’t accompanied by the usual feelings of self-pity and sorrow. This was that rare judgment-free memory. Obviously my life was moving forward to a bright future instead of sliding backward toward past blight. I silently thanked Brian and held his hand a bit tighter. His silent response was to give my hand a squeeze.

“So this has been a great weekend,” Brian declared.

“Yes, it has,” I agreed.

We were standing on the steps of my apartment building, the fall chill making our cheeks and noses rosy, and for the first time all weekend we were a tad awkward with each other. But it was a good awkward and not like we were each searching for a kind way to say, “Your Manhunt pictures were Photoshopped.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” I said, sounding less romantic than I had wanted. So then I took a chance: “This is good, isn’t it?”

I startled him, which is not what I really wanted to do, and I could feel the chilly air around me get hot and thick as I tried to read his face. Had I said too much? I couldn’t think of anything else that I could say to him. So I was forced to wait for his response. It was worth the wait.

“Yeah, Steve, it’s really good.”

And then he leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips. It was a new kiss for us, tender and sweet and knowing. His kiss said that while he didn’t know everything about me he knew that he wanted to gain that knowledge. My return kiss said
I’ll help you learn anything you want to know.

For the first time since Jack broke up with me four years ago I felt really hopeful. I gave Brian a little wave and walked up to my apartment wishing I could bottle the moment. That little insecure boy who watched Saturday morning TV and wondered if he would ever be like the normal boys was wearing a very satisfied smile.

There were no smiles on Monday morning, when I returned to work to find Lorna Douglas was taking full advantage of Loretta’s absence and trying to claim the position of deranged diva. She was strutting around the soundstage acting like Benita Bizarre after she’d taken several puffs on the magic dragon. It was a performance that would have caused even those koo-koo-kooky Krofft brothers to flip their lids.

“My sister Regina is a drunken
whore
!” Lorna as Ramona declared during taping, causing Laraby to turn a bright shade of Witchipoogreen. He tried to scream “Reshoot” but his throat was burned by acid reflux and all he could do was swallow the acrid fluid.

Midweek Lorna was busted while swallowing a much tastier fluid. Lourdes caught her in the denouement of a blow job she was giving Lionel Smythe, the hunky Brit actor who recently started playing her long-lost nephew, Rick (who bore a striking resemblance to a young Jack Wild), in the cave where Loretta had recently thrown up while helping Sister Roberta give birth. Between the vomit and the semen that cave was going to have to be disinfected by the local hazmat crew. Afterward, Lourdes was heard demanding that her confiscated digital camera be given back to her so she could commemorate special moments like these. And, of course, so she could sell the prints and add to the down payment she was going to put on the plantation in the motherland.

I thought I was going to have a special moment of my own later that evening, but Brian had to cancel our dinner plans because his friend Rodrigo was having a crisis. He didn’t elaborate as to what kind of crisis Rodrigo was going through even when I deliberately paused to give him the opportunity. Try as I might I couldn’t stop my mind from going all psychotic and imagining that Brian and Rodrigo were actually renting a movie or hosting an orgy or doing something that was fun and Steven-free. It was the first time I’d gotten an anxious twinge in the pit of my stomach with Brian, but I shrugged it off and attributed it to the fact that I was a bit nauseous from the smells emanating from the cave. Determined to be proactive and not spend the night wondering what friend’s crisis could be more important than a boyfriend’s romantic dinner, I invited Flynn over. It turned out he was having a crisis of his own.

“Steven, I’m fine,” Flynn protested as he took a sip of his second glass of red wine.

“Well, you’re not yourself,” I said. “Have some more chicken?”

“Don’t pull out the meal card, please. Your chicken parm was delicious, but I’m full. And I have not lost any weight so as the soccer moms in Ohio like to say to their Ritalin-resistant offspring, ‘don’t go there.’”

“Then what’s wrong?” I asked.

During dinner Flynn had listened to me prattle on about Brian and the joys of new boyfriendhood and he’d smiled and nodded and mmmhmmmed in the appropriate places, but he hadn’t asked sexually inappropriate questions or squealed with delight or uttered the word
mama
—in short, he was very unFlynn-like. He was silent for a bit too long and I could tell that he was wrestling with himself to choose the correct words that would address his present state of mind. When he finally spoke, he was quiet and definite.

“Steven, I love you like a brother, you know that,” he started.

“Right back at ya,” I replied.

“And I am very happy that you’ve found someone to make you happy, I really am. But it’s made me think about my own circumstances and how I don’t have that. And how I need to accept the fact that while I will always have you as a friend, I might never have that type of intimacy in my life.”

“Mama no like talk like that,” I said, sounding as stupid as Flynn sounded sincere.

He smiled at me like an older and wiser brother. “You wouldn’t understand.”

I watched Flynn finish his wine and, regrettably, I did understand. It was time to peel off my happy suit and acknowledge that the world could be like Saturday morning TV shows starring has-been actors. It could get ugly.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“That’s just it, there are no names. There are no current flames, no could-be flames, no exes to call up in the middle of the night.”

“What about Lucas? I thought you were going to pursue that.”

“What’s to pursue? At best he’s a closeted soap opera actor who loves musical theater. I kind of doubt that he’s going to want to enter into a relationship with an openly gay, HIV-positive attorney. Let’s face it, I’m not the type of guy you want to bring home to your publicist.”

“There are plenty of guys who don’t choose their dates based on what kind of media coverage they can expect.”

“But there are plenty of guys who choose their dates based on what diseases they can contract.”