Between Boyfriends (4 page)

“That’s right! Show him your Mother Teresa side,” Gus offered. “But remember to dress like Princess Diana. Didn’t they make the cutest couple? I personally think Mother Teresa died of a broken heart.”

“What if Frank’s just not interested?” I asked meekly.

Like a bad hostess I had brought the party to a grinding halt and dismantled the chain of supportive daisies. The group was forced to regroup and contemplate a different approach.

“Well, honey,” Flynn began weakly. “That is a possibility.”

There was another awkward pause as we all reflected on how well gay men can flip-flop even when they’re not in bed. Maybe what happened was that Frank got caught up in the magic that Starbucks creates and before he thought it out completely he jotted his phone number on a newspaper and thrust it into my eager hands. Then maybe when Frank got outside and breathed in real air and not Starbucks magic-air he realized offering himself to me was a mistake. Maybe he knew I wasn’t worthy.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked.

“Nothing is wrong with you!” Flynn and Gus cried out in unison.

“You don’t spend enough time on the treadmill!” Lindsay added.

“Shut up, Lindsay,” Flynn reprimanded. “Steven, there isn’t anything wrong with you. It’s the gay species, our interactions are very intricate. Like the relationship between Carrie and her mother in
Carrie: The Musical
.”

Everyone at the table, including me, let out a collective moan, for Flynn had once again compared something important and real to the Broadway stage’s biggest flop, the musicalization of Stephen King’s horror classic
Carrie
. About five people saw the show in ’88 and Flynn was one of them. Since then he had become an evangelist for the singing telekinetic and at any moment could and often would wax rhapsodic over the melody that was Carrie’s pain regardless of the fact that it had nothing to do with the present conversation. Like right now.

“Gay men are their own worst enemies,” Flynn began. “They, like Carrie and Mrs. White, superbly played by Outer Critics Circle nominee Betty Buckley, are victims of their own psycho-sexual-socioreligious dogma.”

“Flynn, we’re talking about some bloke who forgot to ring Steven back,” Gus corrected.

“It’s a symptom,” Flynn continued. “A symptom of the society that we have collectively created. Its structure is weak and if we don’t mend it, it will crumble.”

“Just like the way the gym crumbled at the end of the movie?” Lindsay asked, trying to sound like an innocent commentator when he was really a guilty instigator.

Flynn responded the way we all knew he would. He took the bait.

“I’m not talking about the movie!” Flynn barked. “The movie is a manifestation of Brian De Palma’s fear of Hollywood. A fear that made him turn from the source material—Stephen King’s straightforward, yet poetic prose—and run into the dictatorial arms of the movie studio machine. Brian didn’t trust his source, like gay men don’t trust theirs. They want to constantly be like the blockbuster and appeal to a wider audience instead of being happy to appeal to a niche market.
Carrie: The Musical
isn’t afraid.”

“But
Carrie: The Movie
was scary,” Lindsay said, unable to remain silent.

“Yes, it was scary!” Flynn freaked. “Because it was a prime example of how yet another talented filmmaker bent to the whims of the Hollywood dictatorship.”

“What about the hand coming up through the grave at the end?” Lindsay asked. “Tell me that wasn’t scary?”

“That isn’t even in the book!” Flynn screamed. “And now yet another gay man has bent to the whims of the gay male society. ‘Here’s my number, call me. No, wait, I can’t trust my instincts so when you call I won’t return your phone call.’ If gay men want to be trusted by each other and the hetero world, they have to begin by trusting themselves and stop playing this endless game of push me–pull me.”

“Ah yes, the old llama dilemma,” Gus commented.

Flynn didn’t even hear Gus’s
Doctor Dolittle
reference; he was still under Carrie’s musical spell.

“We as a community—and I am not including lesbians, bisexuals or transgendered peoples because they need to stop piggybacking and create their own community ’cause they’re sucking the life force out of ours—must take a cue from Mr. King and Michael Gore, the wildly misunderstood composer of
Carrie,
and explore the psycho-sexual-socioreligious dogma that we have allowed to dictate our framework before that framework ruptures and traps us within our own fear.”

Flynn was finally finished. He took a gulp of his coffee to refuel and waited to see if his didactic words had any effect on his pupils.

“So what you’re saying,” I started, “is that Piper Laurie really wanted to fuck the shit out of Sissy Spacek and then knife her to death so she didn’t have to deal with her emotionally anymore.”

“My insight is wasted on you people!” Flynn shouted.

“Give it one more day,” Gus said rationally. “Then if Frank still hasn’t called you back you can call him again.”

“I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t one of you call Frank right now to see if he’s around? That way I’ll know if he’s busy or just uninterested.”

“Even if Frank answers, it won’t tell you anything,” Gus rationalized. “It’ll just tell you that he’s home.”

“And not interested in calling me back!” I said, sounding as pathetic as I knew I would.

“Is this about Jack?” Lindsay asked.

The silence this question stirred was deafening. If this were a scene from
ITNC
the end credits would roll or we’d at least cut to a commercial. Everyone at the table knew that my ex-partner Jack DiRenza had told me to leave his apartment and his life four years ago on July fourth (forever ruining for me a day that to the rest of the country is a cause for celebration) and everyone at the table had shared their advice as to how best to move on, as well as their shoulders for me to cry on when I didn’t think moving on was an option. But everyone at the table also knew that Jack was more than just an ex-partner. He was the love of my life and the man I thought I would grow old and happy with. No one at the table, including myself, ever thought he was the person who would push me from his life because he felt tied down, or as he so eloquently put it, “too bored with the whole commitment thing.” So like most fragile elements of a person’s past, Jack had been carefully packaged and stored somewhere just out of reach. Now Lindsay had ripped him thoughtlessly from the distant emotional shelf I had placed him on and the result was shocking.

“Lindsay!” Flynn scolded. “Don’t say the J-word.”

“Steven, I’m sorry,” Lindsay said. “But it has to be said. This is not the first time you’ve freaked out since Jack broke up with you. It’s becoming a pattern. So before it gets out of hand and you waste any more time hurting yourself you have to admit if your reaction to Frank’s tardy response is a result of your split with Jack.”

An odd thing happened when Lindsay spoke sense; it caused those listening to pause. But within that pause was quite a bit of action. First the listener had to remind himself that it was indeed Lindsay speaking. Then he had to repeat his comment silently, ignore the surprise that his comment included not one figure skating term, process his comment, ignore the surprise that his comment actually contained sense, and articulate a response. After a few moments the pause was over.

“This isn’t about Jack,” I said.

“Are you sure, hon?” Flynn asked.

I looked at my three closest friends—Flynn, Lindsay, and Gus—and realized I had to be honest. And I knew there was no reason why I shouldn’t be. They chose to be in my life and I chose to let them stay. They had to take the good with the bad, since they knew that I had done and would continue to do the same for them.

“It’s not about Jack, it’s about me,” I said. “I’m really tired of looking for someone, but I’m not ready to give up. I’m scared that I don’t know the difference between some jerk who throws his number at me just so he can get laid and a nice guy who would like to get to know me on a deeper level.”

I could tell from the looks on their faces that such honesty was not what they’d thought they’d hear when they were summoned to Starbucks. But I could also tell from their expressions that I had hit upon a shared truth. They understood me, which is exactly what friends are supposed to do.

“You have to let go and let gay,” Lindsay said.

“What?” I responded.

“Let go of everything that is holding you down and be your gay self,” Lindsay explained. “Let go of your impatience to find your soul mate, your preconceived notion that every new guy you meet will
be
your soul mate….”

“And Jack,” Flynn finished. “You have to let him go too, Steve. Not only Jack himself, but what the two of you shared. For a while you had perfect. And now you don’t. That doesn’t mean you’re never going to have perfect again. It just means that perfect now means something a little bit different than it did when you were with Jack and now you have to figure out what perfect means to you.”

I looked at my friends again, closer this time and without the Pity Party eyes. It was then that the light dawned on me.

“Did you all swallow Dr. Phil pills with your Viagra this morning?” I queried.

“A bit too sappy?” Flynn asked.

“It was fine up until the perfect part,” I said.

“I thought that was a bit over the top myself,” Gus remarked. “But I’m British. ‘Thank you’ is considered over the top in some parts of the U.K.”

“I stand by everything I said,” Lindsay declared. “You’re handsome, you’re hot, Flynn tells me you’re hung. If I were you I’d be freaking out why loser boy didn’t return my phone call. But remember, I saw him too and I don’t think he’s worth pining over.”

“That’s ’cause you were on a Dick Button rampage,” I said, reminding Lindsay.

“Again?” asked Flynn and Gus, once again in unison.

Lindsay’s face scrunched up the way it did when he was about to do some incredibly difficult jump on the ice. He looked like he was going to do a triple-triple combination, but instead he just banged his fist on the table.

“That man just annoys the shit out of me! I’d love to take his two Olympic medals and shove ’em—”

“Thanks, guys,” I said politely, shutting Lindsay up.

“For what?” Flynn asked as a representative for the group.

“For reminding me that when a crisis arises I should simply”—I paused for effect—“let go and let gay.”

“To letting go,” Flynn said, raising his cup.

“And letting gay,” we all responded.

So for the second time that day I found myself raising my coffee in honor of some intangible notion. And for the second time that day while I sat with my arm outstretched, my coffee raised, and a fake smile plastered on my face, I was consumed with the same persistent thought:
why hasn’t Frank called me back?
And then another thought popped into my head:
why can’t I just let him go?

I answered my questions almost immediately thanks to Lindsay’s earlier advice. Like some people just can’t be anything other than gay, other people just don’t want to be let go.

T
he next day was as chaotic and poorly choreographed as a Bollywood musical. It was so haphazard that by noon I was actually considering changing my name to Kumar “Steven” Patel, but I reeled myself in knowing my mother would have a coronary if I turned my back on my Sicilian heritage, even if she was developing a taste for cumin thanks to the latest occupant of the Salvatore DeNuccio Towers, the widow Padma Maharaji. As one madcap hour evolved into another I could almost hear the high-pitched nasal twangings of a chorus of Hindi dancers wearing Western garb and gyrating in front of a huge waterfall. Then in the middle of a sun-drenched desert. Then stopping traffic in the center of Bombay’s busy market district. My day, like a screwball comedy in Sanskrit, clung desperately to its through line.

Here’s how the day went. Bright and early on Tuesday morning I marched into the
ITNC
studios with the determination of Norma Rae and the optimism of Gidget, resolved to ask Lorna Douglas if she would star in my mother’s Christmas celebration. But by our first early morning break my resolve recoiled. I succumbed to the belief that if you think the answer to your question will be bad it’s safer to avoid asking the question altogether. By ten-thirty, however, I realized that if I didn’t report back to my mother with a yea or a nay as to Lorna’s participation pronto, she would use her maternal powers to psychically haunt me from the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel. She had done it before; she would do it again.

Luckily, luck was my lady and I spotted Lorna sitting by herself during a break in taping. Her lips were moving like those of a silent film star on crack, so I could tell she was using her down-time to memorize lines while a few feet away the makeup team surrounded her costar, Lucas Fitzgerald, to reapply a fake scar to his face. I knew it would take them more than a few minutes since Lucas’s character, Roger Renault, was a race car driver who had sustained terrible burns from a recent boating accident and the resulting scar started at the left side of his forehead, ran over the bridge of his nose, somehow never made contact with his incandescent blue eyes, and ended on the sharpest point of his right cheek. The implausibility of the scar was matched only by the implausibility of my question getting a positive response from Lorna. But the time had come for me to somehow try and make the implausible plausible.

“Hey, Lorna! Sorry to interrupt, but this December my mother is organizing a Christmas musicale for her senior citizens’ group in New Jersey and she’d like you to be the headliner and perform for free,” I explained. “So how’s about it?”

“Cool,” was Lorna’s monosyllabic reply.

For a second I thought she was referring to her scene partner’s scar, which I had to admit did look grotesquely arousing, and in the next second I understood why Lindsay found the guy in
Mask
a masturbatory fantasy, but in the second after that I realized Lorna had seriously answered my indecent proposal.

“You’ll do it?” I asked.

“Sure,” she monosyllabically replied.

Just as I was beginning to think Lorna was saving all her dialogue for the camera, she added her disclaimer.

“As long as there’s no press, I can use my own band and it’s before the GMHC show,” she demanded. “It’ll be like a rehearsal.”

If all women were so accommodating and logical, I might consider heterosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.

“Lorna!” I squealed. “Forgive my zeal, but you are the first woman since Lynda Bertadotto to make me truly happy.”

“Who’s Lynda Bertadotto?” she asked.

“Sixth-grade teacher,” I explained. “She made me sit next to Richie Troisi so I could help him with his sentence deconstruction. He looked just like Scott Baio and I still have the puka beads he gave me as a thank-you for helping him master the intricacy of the adverbial clause.”

“God, that’s romantic,” Lorna said. “Pathetic, but romantic. You should have the writers include that memory in my back-story.”

“I’m sorry, but I prefer to keep the puka beads private,” I replied. “Richie’s married now with three kids and, well, I’d hate to stir up trouble.”

“Gay
and
moral,” Lorna said with a sad smile. “Another illusion shattered.”

I ignored her stereotyping and circled back to the reason for our conversation—I needed to lock her in before the makeup team was finished cosmetically mutilating Lucas’s otherwise flawless face and she would be called to the set.

“So I’ll get the details from my mother, and her girl—which is me—will be in touch with your girl, who actually
is
a girl,” I stammered, “and a mighty pretty one I might add.”

Lorna tilted her chin to the left and clenched the skin around her eyes the same way she did when her character, Ramona, put a hit on her sister Renata’s psycho doctor, Rodney, when she found out he caused Roger’s accident as an act of revenge against Renata’s family. I knew that look could not be good.

“You think she’s
mighty
pretty?” Lorna queried.

How stupid could I have been? Lorna may be even tempered and cooperative most of the time, but she is still an actress midway through her second contract cycle on a daytime drama and perilously close to her thirtieth birthday. Every producer knows you don’t tell an insecure, aging actress that her younger assistant is
mighty
pretty.

“Well, yes,” I stumbled, “in that I-was-nice-looking-in-collegewhy-the-hell-am-I-so-ugly-in-the-real-world sort of way. And by real world I mean your world and not MTV’s.”

“She does wear a lot of makeup,” Lorna rationalized.

“Applied with the restraint of a kabuki,” I offered.

This comment seemed to pacify Lorna, and her artificial warmth started to thaw the ice in her veins. Soon the actress was all businesswoman.

“My GMHC gig is December fifteenth, and we have a one-hour rehearsal on the fourteenth. As long as your mother’s thing is before then we have a deal,” Lorna said. “If not, there’s no way I’m hauling my ass to Jersey to entertain a demographic that’s not going to be around long enough to do me any good.”

Before I could mumble “That’s the Christmas spirit,” a high-pitched shriek pierced through the studio, sounding like an Indian princess after she’s been ripped from her would-be lover’s arms by a Hindi villain. In this instance, the Indian princess was being played by Lucas.

“My eye!” he screamed. “Oh dear God! My eye is on fire!”

Lucas’s eye wasn’t actually on fire, it only felt that way. Some of the glue holding the fake scar in place had dripped into his eye, causing it to turn a bright shade of red and burn like a Vietnam-era soldier’s pee the day after he grabbed himself a fine piece of poontang. Not that I have any idea what that feels like, but I’ve heard stories. Lucas cried and flailed about so animatedly it took a while for the makeup team to flush out his eye with water. He didn’t stop moving entirely until Lorna slapped him across the face.

“You’re an actor!” she declared. “Use your pain.”

I felt as if I was watching Uta Hagen bitch-slap Marlon Brando. Lucas’s one good eye focused intently on Lorna, while the other one tried desperately to open fully. It was like watching a mildly retarded baby chick being born. But there was beauty within that ghastly looking inflamed eye. And ratings.

“Action!” the director shouted.

There was a kind of hush all over the set and then the magic of soap opera began. Lucas and Lorna as Roger and Ramona played out their scene with more sincerity and passion than either of them had ever previously produced under the harsh, unforgiving studio lights. At the end of the scene Lucas dropped to his knees, not out of thankfulness that he just delivered the performance of his life, but out of anguish as his reddened eye began to swell. This time when the director shouted, it was for an ambulance.

As they wheeled Lucas away on a gurney I waved good-bye, but since I was on the side with the injured eye I’m not sure that he saw my show of support. The director called for an emergency meeting with the writers to write Lucas’s character out of the rest of the script, so I took the opportunity to press speed dial number one on my cell phone and once again call Frank. Just as I was hearing his message I got an incoming call. Could Frank finally be answering one of my many voice messages? Nope, just my mother. Well, if I couldn’t be satisfied, at least I could satisfy.

“She’ll do it,” I said.

My mother and I speak the same language so there was no need for me to explain any further.

“That’s wonderful!” she shrieked. “Paula D’Agostino is going to shit a brick when I tell her I booked Lorna Douglas.”

“I’m so glad I could help.”

“Tell your Lorna dress rehearsal will be the night before the show in the Community Room,” she said. “I’ll make some refreshments and there’ll be a small invited audience so she can get the feel of the room.”

“Ma, when exactly is the show?” I asked, then held my breath.

“The eighteenth,” she replied.

“No!” I shouted, releasing my angry breath into the spiteful, spiteful air. “You have to push it up a week.”

“I can’t do that, December is completely booked. I have the Christmas tree lighting, the nativity play, the children’s pageant starring Lenny Abramawitz as Santa.”

“The gay Jew is playing Santa?”

“The children do not need to know!”

“Ma! Lorna won’t do the show unless it’s before the fourteenth, you have to rearrange your schedule.”

“It’s too late! I’ve already printed up the calendar of events. On heavy bond paper,” she replied. “We’re locked in until the end of the year.”

“Old people need to be flexible! Death is right around the corner.”

“I have no room for death in my date book,” my mother countered, then paused for effect. “Look, Stevie, just tell Lorna to have her girl call my girl and we’ll work this out.”

“I am your girl!” I shouted. “And I’m telling you we can’t work it out unless you change the date of your show.”

“Then get me somebody else. Not for nothing, but Lorna’s looking a little tired lately. She’s always clenching the sides of her eyes. She’s going to wrinkle if she keeps doing that,” my mother informed me. “Honey, Mama has to go. Coco, the seamstress, is here and she’s going to measure me for my Halloween costume. I’m going as Barbra Streisand.”

I involuntarily pulled the phone from my ear when my mother’s voice rose three octaves and twenty decibels.

“Come with me! We can be Barbra: Before and After! You can wear a midi-blouse and be Barbra from
Funny Girl
and I’ll be Babs from
The Prince of Tides.
I’m due for a manicure anyway.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Ma, I don’t dress up like a woman.”

“Oh come on! Our only competition for Best Couple will be Sheila and Vinny Caruso; they’re going as Myron and Myra Breckinridge. Vinny’s going to be Myra, he’s got less hair on his legs.”

Faced with the realization that my mother was living in a home for aged drag queens, I hung up the phone.

“Lorna,” I started. “The Christmas thing at my mother’s isn’t going to work out.”

“No biggie,” she replied. “Why don’t you ask my assistant? She might be available.”

Lorna turned from me in what seemed like slow motion, her bouncing and behaving hair whipping through the air and making her look like a brunette Heather Locklear in a vintage water-cooler moment from
Melrose Place
. Until then, I had thought I handled the mighty pretty assistant near-fiasco rather well.

“Kidding!” Lorna squealed.

Obviously I had.

“That bitch who picks up my dry cleaning might be a few years younger than me,” Lorna said, “but damn, I can act!”

Learning from my earlier faux pas, I remained quiet and gave Lorna one of my I’m-such-a-proud-producer stares.

“Tell your mother I’m sorry and ask Lucas to do the show.”

Lorna once again started a slo-mo turn away from me à la Heather, but paused to glance back, allow her collagen-improved lips to slink into a smirk, and add, “I hear he’s itching to sing.”

The
Melrose
theme music pounded in my head as I contemplated what Lorna’s smirk suggested. Could it be that hunky Lucas Fitzgerald—two-time
Soap Opera Digest
award winner for Best Male Lips, one-time contender for the coveted role of young Bob Barker in the E! original drama
Is the Price Right? The Untold Story of Bob Barker
—was gay? He did shave his chest, contour his eyebrows, and highlight his hair, but what guy didn’t these days? Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to play the gay guessing game because at that very moment there was a scene change and I saw Lindsay striding across the studio.

“Stevie!” Lindsay yelped. “Do you know how hard it is to get onto this set? Doesn’t anyone remember that I was once the star of this sinking soap?”

“You were a day player. No better than nine out of ten waiters in the city,” I reminded him. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to take you to lunch,” Lindsay replied. “Rudy Galindo opened up a new restaurant in SoHo called Blade. Isn’t that a great name?”

“I give it a perfect six.”

“Ahh! Skating lingo,” Lindsay yelped again. “I
am
rubbing off on you.”

“Linds, I’d love to go, but we’re in a bit of a crisis mode here. One of the actors was rushed to the hospital.”

“Drug overdose?”

“No.”

“Alcohol poisoning?”

“No.”

“What else is there?”

“Inflammation of the eye,” I said, trying to make it sound deadlier than it was.

Lindsay leaned in confidentially and whispered in my ear.

“Is ‘eye’ a euphemism for ‘dick’?”

“No!” Now it was my turn to yelp. “Why is your mind always in the gutter?”

“Sorry. I’m pre-horny.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t just come here to invite you to lunch, I also got an invitation to a sex party tonight. Say you’ll come with me. I never go to these types of functions, but I feel like shaking things up a bit.”

I thought for a moment and realized a sex party might be just what I needed. Forget my troubles, come on get…laid. And Lindsay was actually the perfect person to attend a sex party with. He really just liked basic missionary sex, with him on the bottom of course, and wouldn’t force me to do anything outrageous. Plus he upheld the gay motto that what takes place at a sex party stays at a sex party and would never mention anything that took place ever again even if he and I were having a private conversation. Lindsay’s offer seemed almost too good to pass up, until I remembered the other man in my life.