Between Boyfriends (21 page)

“Doesn’t he totally put the dick in melodic?” Flynn whispered.

Lucas ended his performance with a sing-along version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” that got the seniors singing at the top of their congested lungs. When his performance was over and the cheering finally subsided, I needed to end my torment and find out the truth.

“Brian, what happened?” I asked.

“I’m not really sure. I didn’t notice anything weird until I was on the plane and people were staring at me. At first I thought people in Ohio just aren’t used to seeing a real live gay.”

Something wasn’t right. “I thought you said you were going to South Carolina?”

A split second pause. “Columbus,
Ohio
, not Columbus,
South Carolina
.” Another pause. “Is there any food? I’m starving.”

Brian made a beeline for the breadline as Flynn pointed out the geographical glitch in Brian’s story.

“Sweetie, it’s
Columbia
, South Carolina. Not Columbus.”

My lungs felt as congested as those of the elderly celebrants surrounding me. I wanted to breathe freely but couldn’t, and I knew that the reason was bad karma. I looked over at my boyfriend making small talk with a woman who was wearing a Christmas sweater the same color as his hair and wondered how much longer I’d get to call him my boyfriend. I just hoped the karmic reaction to my actions didn’t screw up Flynn’s chance of a happier tomorrow.

A mere five minutes later I was thrilled to discover that the karmic buck had stopped with me.

“Did you tell him?” I asked Flynn.

“Tell who what?” Brian asked with a mouthful of lasagna.

“Yes, I told Lucas that I’m HIV-positive.”

“And what did he say!?” I demanded.

“That he’s fine with it and in fact he’s dated positive guys before.”

“Good for him,” Brian said. “And you.”

“And then I went into this long rambling paragraph about how I was so nervous because I didn’t think someone with an up-and-coming acting career would want to date someone of my status and he just smiled at me and said, ‘I’m not a moron, I just play one on TV,’” Flynn said, beaming. “And then he gave me the second most romantic kiss I’ve ever had in my life.”

“Which was the most romantic one?” Brian asked.

“The one he gave me earlier this evening in the bathroom.”

“Of course. Love among the ruined tiles.”

“Flynn, I am so happy for you,” I said. “I just knew it would work out.”

“Of course it was going to work out,” Brian added. “If Steven’s willing to go out with me in my condition there’s no reason why Lucas wouldn’t want to go out with you in yours.”

Stymied, Flynn asked, “What do you mean?”

To illustrate, Brian took off his cap. “Honey, in the gay world, imperfect health is acceptable, imperfect beauty is not.”

“Ay papi, did you dye your pubies red, too, so you could be a little gay Christmas elf?” Sebastian asked as he and Gus came back to the group after sampling the buffet.

“It must be a reaction to this new gel I used,” Brian said, not so convincingly.

“Have you switched shampoos?” Gus asked. “Maybe you bought one of those bloody kid shampoos by mistake, the kind that temporarily dyes hair green to make shampooing fun.”

Brian thought about this for a moment and then called out, “Hey, Renée!”

“Yes,” Renée answered, stroking Trixie’s hair faster in an effort to calm herself.

“You work in the hair industry. Any idea how this could have happened?”

“Well, there are so many factors that can cause a hair malfunction,” Renée began. “But in this case I’d say there are only two ways this could have possibly happened. Either you tried to dye your hair and it went terribly awry, or you’re the Grinch.”

“You got me!” Brian joked. “I’m Mister Anti-Christmas. So as a hair-care professional, is there anything you can do to restore my hair to its former glory?”

“Of course. Come over by us after the party and I’ll work my magic. If you’re good I might even put in some highlights.”

“Thanks, Renée, you’re my Christmas angel.”

Which made me the Christmas devil. Or just Santa. I thanked Renée for agreeing to dye Brian’s hair back to its beautiful shade of blond.

“I’m really doing it for me,” Renée said. “It’ll be like penance.”

Something in my expression must have told her that I could use a dose of penance myself.

“Are you going to confess?”

“I don’t know. If I do, that’s going to make Brian confess how Rodrigo’s shampoo got on his head and I’m not sure if I want to know.”

“The holiday sure is getting off to a great start, isn’t it?”

But as Tommy Tune once warbled in a bygone Broadway musical, it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish. And unfortunately, the Salvatore DeNuccio Tenants Group’s Christmas Celebration was not over. For one member of our group the real drama had yet to begin.

When the hoopla surrounding Lucas’s concert died down, all eyes turned to Santa, who made a grand entrance pulling behind him a sleigh full of gifts. Despite my previous encounter with him, Lenny Abramawitz had ignored my threats and donned a red suit to impersonate jolly old Saint Nick. I was disgusted. I didn’t care for Santa, but I knew what he represented to the world and I hated that Lenny was hoodwinking my mother and her pals into thinking he stood for the same ideals that their Santa did. However, I didn’t feel I had the right to judge.

“Leonard!” Sebastian shouted.

All heads turned to see who dared call Santa by his real name.

“You gave me the gift that keeps on giving!”

“Lenny, that is so sweet,” my mother shouted. “But I thought you said the foot massager was for Loni?”

While Lenny’s face turned two shades redder than his costume, I turned to Sebastian to find out why he wanted to reveal that his former trick was lavishing him with gifts.

“Can I please tell ’em, mate?” Gus asked gleefully.

“Tell ’em what?” I asked.

“Oh, go ahead if it’ll make you feel better,” Sebastian said.

“The old man gave Sebastian herpes!”

Immediately icky thoughts of a naked, entwined Sebastian and Lenny penetrated our brains and we all made the same face. Sebastian explained that even though he was promiscuous, he was diligent when it came to his sexual health. We all made the same facial expression we had two seconds before. Right before he’d had sex with Lenny, he’d tested negative for every STD in the
Physicians’ Desk Reference
. On his next visit he tested positive for herpes.

“I’m sure you had sex with more people than just Lenny during that time,” Flynn suggested.

“Only my regular weekly fuck buddies and we share all our medical results with each other,” Sebastian said. “I’m a smart slut.”

“Steven always said you were,” Brian commented.

“Shut up, greenhead!” Sebastian roared. “When I went over to Gus’s to fuck him, I took my dick out and I had an open sore—and it’s all that old geezer’s fault.” He turned to the man in red. “You want to know my wish this Christmas, Santa? Take back your gift!”

“Honey, you should keep it,” my mother responded. “Your feet might not hurt now, but trust me, in a few years you’ll be begging for Lenny’s gift.”

Just as Sebastian went to undo the top button of his jeans, Lucas (ever the performer) jumped into action and diverted the attention away from the Spaniard with the STD.

“I think it’s time for another sing-along!”

Lucas then led the crowd in a very loud rendition of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” For a few of us, the song now had an entirely different meaning. We were able to calm Sebastian down long enough to get him to promise that he would not strip down, and to convince him that any sort of confrontation would not only embarrass Lenny, but my mother and her friends as well. I was quite impressed when Sebastian said that he would never do anything to hurt a friend’s mother and that he would wait to confront Lenny at the proper time. The slut had scruples.

“Didn’t you see Lenny’s dick when you had sex with him?” I asked.

“I half-close my eyes when I’m turning a trick,” Sebastian confessed. “But it wouldn’t have mattered. Have you ever seen a seventy-year-old dick? With or without herpes, a dick that old is all skanky and scabby anyway. Oh,
Dios mío!
Gus, can you take me home now? This situation is stressing me out and I feel another outbreak coming on.”

Two nights later as Brian and I sat on my couch watching my absolute favorite Christmas special,
The Year Without a Santa Claus,
I was overcome with guilt.

“I have a confession,” we both said.

“Let me go first,” I said.

Once again Brian and I repeated each other word for word. I had to speak quicker before I lost my courage.

“I’m the one who turned your hair green.”

“What?”

“I flipped out, Brian. I put hair dye in Rodrigo’s shampoo so his hair would turn green and he wouldn’t want to go outside in public and be with you every single day while I was at work and somehow his shampoo got on your head. And I know it was childish and stupid and I’m sorry and I really, really wish I hadn’t done it and that I wasn’t so jealous, but I did and I am.”

“I didn’t go to Columbus, Ohio or Columbus, South Carolina.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s Columbia, South Carolina. Your geography isn’t as good as your history.”

It was Brian’s turn in the confessional. “I’ve had plans to go away with Rodrigo to Mount Snow for some time now. It was completely platonic as is my relationship with him, but I know you’re jealous of him and I knew you’d freak out if I told you we were going away on a long weekend so I lied and said I was going on a business trip. It was juvenile and stupid and
I’m
sorry and I wish I hadn’t done it either.”

So we both lied. It either made us even or through.

“So where does this leave us?” I asked.

“I had a talk with Rodrigo this weekend and told him that he needs to back off. Not just because it upsets you, but because it upsets me. I like you, Steven. A lot. I’ve been single for a long time and I’m rusty, but I want to see where this relationship can go. The problem is I can’t guarantee Rodrigo is going to change overnight, so it’s really up to you. Can you trust me?”

I looked into Brian’s blue eyes and saw the sincerity of his words. I pulled him close and kissed him tenderly.

“Yes,” I answered. “And you can trust that I won’t flip out again.”

“Good, because I really like the highlights Renée put in my hair.”

“I’m sorry I doctored Rodrigo’s shampoo.”

Brian laughed. “I know. And I’m sorry I washed my hair before he did.”

We made love on my couch—and then again on my bed. Rodrigo was true to his word and kept his distance, giving Brian and me the chance to have our first Christmas together and re-discover the true joys of an adult relationship. It felt good to “let go and let gay” and just embrace the man who was trying very hard to embrace me. For the first time in years I didn’t feel like such a misfit, I felt like a normal gay man in a normal gay relationship. A relationship I hoped would be as beautiful and unique as Rudolph’s shiny red nose.

N
ew Year’s Eve is the perfect children’s holiday. It’s one of the few times kids can stay up until midnight, have a sip of champagne, and blow on a noisemaker. Good times. For adults, however, it can be a good time gone bad. Staying up past midnight is no longer a novelty, Veuve Clicquot champagne doesn’t have the same kick as a kicky cosmotini, and blowing on a noisemaker is just another Saturday night. By the time the twelfth chime chimed, I was longing for the New Year’s Eves of my childhood.

About two hours before midnight Brian and I showed up at Marys bar. We’d decided to ring in the new year with our friends at our favorite bar instead of spending a quiet evening in my bed with Brian’s balls striking my asshole when the clock struck twelve. Actually, Brian decided and I reluctantly agreed. He promised to goose me at midnight, but it just wasn’t the same thing as a good old-fashioned turn-of-the-year fuck. So when I entered Marys, it was with a forced smile.

But my smile became genuine when I saw a beaming Flynn and Lucas waltz into the bar followed by Lindsay and Donald. Two of my best friends were also going to start the new year off on the arms of new beaus. Our futures looked promising. And then the door opened and the promises of the future scrambled for the nearest exit: framed in Marys’ doorway was Gus flanked by the two people I despised most.

On Gus’s left was Rodrigo, who was supposed to be spending the night with Jörgen, a six-foot-four, blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedish interpreter who spoke ten languages, one for each inch of his cock, or so his business card claimed. And on Gus’s right was the woman I feared more than my mother, Gus’s sister Wendolyn.

The last Gus had told us, Wendolyn was on vacation at a spa somewhere in the south of France. We all knew that
vacation
meant
doctor-mandated rest
and
spa
meant
obscure mental health-care facility that only took cash
and as always we didn’t tell Gus that we knew Wendolyn was having electric shock treatments by a most likely unlicensed European psychiatrist and not having seaweed infusion treatments by a probably uncut European masseur. It didn’t matter as long as it meant that we didn’t have to deal with the letter-
G
-hating fem-Brit. A few hours before the year’s end and our luck had finally run out.

“Odd-dammit!” I shouted to Flynn.

“Holy fuckin’ shit,” he replied, flabberhasted.

And Lindsay added, “Fellas, this is not ood!”

As Gus grabbed their coats and headed to the coatroom, Rodrigo grabbed Wendolyn’s hand and headed toward us. My spine went cold. I felt like I was seven years old again and my mother was playing the
Sophie’s Choice
game with me, except this time instead of being forced to give up either my beloved Big Jim doll or my
Battlestar Galactica
playset complete with Cylon fighter ships in an attempt to clean out my toychest, I had to choose between befriending what was behind Evil Door Number One or Evil Door Number Two. Once again, Brian made the choice for me.

“Roddie!” he cried. “Why aren’t you fuckin’ the Swede?”

“Wrong positioning,” Rodrigo said, not noticing Wendolyn twitch twice. “To him, being versatile meant fucking me doggie style or fucking me on my back.” Wendolyn twitched a few more times, grabbed the drink out of my hands, and chugged it down.

“Sounds like my kind of Swede,” Lindsay added.

“I’ll give you his card.”

“So you didn’t want to end the year as a bottom?” Flynn asked.

“I’m all for that, but I’m homoflawed—no matter how hard I try, I can’t take ten thick inches of cock!”

“I can!” Gus shouted as he rejoined the group. “And I have!”

“Oh ’us!” Wendolyn said. “You’ve become so bloody American!”

I closed my eyes for a moment and said a quick prayer to Saint Stephen, my patron saint who, according to Catholic history, was the world’s first martyr. I asked him for an anti-nasty blessing so I could enjoy the evening. I thought I heard Saint Stephen laugh at my request, but I couldn’t be certain because Brian distracted me by tugging on my arm.

“I told you to take a nap.”

“I’m not sleepy, I was saying a prayer.”

Brian’s smile faded and his voice become cold. “You know, I didn’t plan for Rodrigo to be here.”

Obviously Brian did not ask Saint Stephen for an anti-nasty blessing. Stung, I stuttered an apology for what Brian thought I was praying for and told him that I was just upset because Wendolyn was here, as whenever she’s around disaster strikes. He tilted his head slightly to the left like my father did when I told him my grammar school
required
me to have an Easy Bake Oven to conduct scientific experiments. In retrospect, I believe it was my request to also have a pink Barbie Chef apron that triggered his disbelief.

“Could we make a New Year’s resolution?” Brian asked.

“I’d love that.”

“Let’s take all our petty jealousies and insecurities, put them in a box, tie them up in a pretty little bow, and toss them into the Hudson so they can disappear from this relationship completely.”

The faint whiff of bourbon mixed with a Southern drawl floated up my nostrils and I realized Brian was, at best, pre-drunk. I didn’t want to end the year in an argument so I nodded in agreement and gave him a kiss.

“Now, sugar, you wait here for me. I’m gonna rustle us up some more of this here magic potion.”

This wasn’t a New Year’s Eve celebration, it was the first scene out of a lost Tennessee Williams play. Brian was starring as the Southern floozy, Wendolyn was featured as the insane grandame, and I was left to play the newspaper boy who has one scene, kisses the star, and gets booted off the stage. It was enough to make my mouth water with fury. Well, if Brian wanted a New Year’s resolution that’s exactly what he would get.

“Roddie, buddy!” I said, cozying up to my new best friend. “So sorry the Swede was inflexible.”

“That’s okay, I’m sure I’ll find someone who’s way under ten inches,” he replied. “Are you free later on?”

Saint Stephen, where the fuck are you?!
How the fuck did Rodrigo know I was way under ten inches? And why the fuck was Wendolyn suddenly arm in arm with some busty blonde?

“Steven!” Wendolyn shouted, her normal tone of voice. “This is my lady friend Lenda. Lenda Ilchrist-Oolie.”

Actually her name was Glenda Gilchrist-Goolie and besides being Wendolyn’s lady friend (whatever that meant), she was also a favorite subject of the British tabloids. According to the
Daily Mirror,
Lenda was the love child of the lead singer of Douche, the revolutionary Brit punk band of the ’80s, who died of a heroin overdose when Lenda was two, and a British Petroleum heiress who committed suicide when Lenda was twelve. The orphan’s story made Wendolyn’s tortured past seem idyllic. Wendolyn explained that the two women met while she was doing PR for Lenda’s soon-to-be-released tell-all tome,
Vinegar and Oil.

“Wendy made me realize I can’t run from the slippery ooze of my past,” Lenda said in a bored Princess Di-ish British accent. “I have to, you know, let it enter me like cool rain on a summer’s eve.”

Acting as if Lenda had turned into a giant letter
G,
Wendolyn’s glassy eyes filled with tears and she cried, “I need the loo!” Lenda informed us that “her Wendy” was a bit balmy these days as she had just learned she’d been fired from her stint as host of the BBC’s new show
Glorious Green Gardens of Greater England.
The firing, of course, was inevitable, but it hurt just the same.

“I thought she ran off because she was wiping from back to front again,” Lindsay said. “A pussy can be dangerous, you know.”

“You don’t know dangerous until you’ve met Steven’s mother,” Brian said, rejoining the group. “She could teach a pussy like Wendolyn a thing or two!”

I turned to look directly at Brian to try and determine what would prompt him to make such a comment. All I saw was an unembarrassed smile as he handed me my drink.

“Hey, Stevie, maybe Wendolyn’s actually your long-lost sister!” Brian shouted, then actually high-fived Rodrigo.

I’m the first one to admit that my mother is crazy, but she’s my mother and I, as the offspring of crazy, have that right. Even my friends who know her understand her eccentricities and love her anyway and would never make a derogatory comment about her in or out of my presence. I looked at Lindsay and Flynn, and their hanging jaws told me that they too heard something besides the words Brian spoke. They heard something unkind.

Suddenly I heard myself mumbling, “I don’t know…you know…if I would…um…put my mother and Wendolyn in the same category.”

“Well, of course not,” Brian said, much to my relief. “Wendolyn has a long way to go to be your mother’s equal.” My relief was temporary.

Brian and Rodrigo’s howls of laughter were drowned out by the squeals of laughter coming from the bar. Sudden mood swings are another of Wendolyn’s list of symptoms and it turned out that DJ Esqualito’s real name was Medwyn Wintersham and he hailed from Sheffield, England, the same town where Lenda’s father grew up, and he was a major local celebrity. So in honor of his daughter’s presence at Marys, Esqualito/Medwyn decided to play Douche’s biggest hit, “Yeast Infection,” from their second album,
Scratch the Itch.
Very much like Twyla Tharp, Wendolyn turned her most recent personal pain into dance and pushed Lenda on top of the bar, where they both danced like it was 1984.

I tried as well to act as if it were a much more uncomplicated time and joined the dancers of Marys’ makeshift mosh pit. As bodies jostled against me, thoughts jostled inside my head, angry as the lyrics that were being shouted into the air. I mentally beamed positive energy rays at the negative vibes, concentrating on the fact that I was not boyfriendless this New Year’s Eve instead of the fact that my boyfriend was acting less like the boyfriend I had come to really, really like. I wasn’t the only one with a boyfriend problem.

“How dare you say the
O
-word in my presence!” a drunken Lindsay shouted, as Douche sang about “unshowered Taiwanese.”

“How dare you make me
do
the
O
-word last night…prematurely!” an equally drunk Donald shouted back, as Douche rhymed their previous lyric with “stinky cottage cheese.”

“So that’s what this is about! You’re pissed that I made you shoot several hundred thrusts before your goal number.”

“You knew I wanted to reach one thousand before the end of the year! You deliberately clenched your asshole so I couldn’t make it past eight hundred.”

“That’s still no reason to remind me that this is an Olympic year! That’s spiteful, Donald, just spiteful! And I cannot help it if my asshole is tight. I am an athlete,” Lindsay spat.

“You’re not an athlete!” Donald spat back. “You’re a
figure skater
.”

The venom coming out of Donald was so palpable it was as if he were a life-sized plastic Massengill applicator.

“You want to see an athlete, Mr. Fuck-by-the-Numbers!? I’ll show you an athlete!”

Lindsay stormed over to the DJ’s booth, yanked
Scratch the Itch
from the turntable, and instructed Esqualito/Medwyn to put on a new album. Shocked but submissive, Esqualito/Medwyn acquiesced and soon the patrons of Marys were hearing the opening notes from the music of Lindsay’s Olympic long program—
Yanni Live at the Acropolis.

As the new age electronic sounds filled the air, Lindsay stood in the center of the dance floor and proceeded to do his entire pewter-award-winning skating routine, determined to prove that he who can do a triple lutz shall be called an athlete. Mouths agape, we watched Lindsay spin, leap, and jump with surprising agility and grace for a man several points over the legal drinking limit. When he launched into the straight-line footwork section of his routine, looking like Zorba’s gay son, we automatically started to clap to the beat of the techno Greek music and when he took his final pose we responded with enthusiastic applause.

“If only he had skated that well in Lillehammer he might have come away with a real medal,” I said.

“Wellshhugar,” Brian slurred. “Ya can o’whays get whatcha wan’.”

As if he were standing on center ice, Lindsay bowed to his fans one section of the audience at a time. When he got to the section that included Donald, he paused and the two men contemplated each other. After a moment, they simultaneously tilted their heads in acknowledgment that their relationship had ended right there in the midst of the cheering crowd. Lindsay turned to the next section and grandly bowed before them, not even watching Donald leave the bar. I wasn’t going to romanticize their relationship as I knew it was nothing more than a fuck-buddy-with-the-occasional-dinner sort of thing, but I still felt sad that it ended so casually and with very little effort or emotion. The way I had ended many relationships.

“Looks lahk thahs one couple down,” Brian said, then turned to look at me. “I wonder who’s gonna be the next tah go kuhr-plunk?”

My father’s face flashed before my eyes. Not because he was gay or Southern, but because there was a period of his life when he was drunk or on the verge of becoming drunk very often. I don’t consider him a full-fledged alcoholic and he never missed a day of work because he was hungover (a fact of which he was quite proud), but during my early teenage years he would start his morning with a little anisette in his coffee and end his day with a little rum in his Coke. My mother made excuses for his behavior and tried to shield us from his outbursts and tirades, but I still remember the things he said to me while he was drunk. “Steven the Sissy” was his favorite barb. Even though he apologized for his remarks years later, the words—and the hatred behind them—still hung in the air and rang in my ears. I never thought anyone would make my ears ring like that again.

But now, standing next to the man I had thought I could fall in love with, my ears started ringing. A sly Alabaman drawl could hide many things, but not hatred. And that was what I heard coming out of Brian’s mouth. That was what I’d been hearing in smaller doses all night long and intermittently throughout our relationship, but now the sound was strong and unmistakable. I believed that the true self often emerges when you’re at your most vulnerable—sick, frightened, or, like Brian, drunk.