Between Boyfriends (9 page)

“I
thought
the salesboys were looking rentable these days,” Flynn said.

“Not with the retail staff, silly, with each other!”

Our heads snapped toward Gus, searching for either confirmation or denial. Much to our surprise Gus impishly smiled, indicating that while Brady was being inappropriate he was also being honest. Before I had a chance to give in to my immediate desire to burst into the dressing room that doubled as their
plage d’amour
and breathe in the intoxicating smells of Gus-sex, Brady got even more inappropriately honest.

“And it was full out-and-out anal sex, not just a quickie blow job like usual.”

“However did you make the transition?” Flynn asked.

“I was trying on a pair of purple corduroys, you know, something fun and a little pansified for fall, and Gus tells me that purple is his favorite color so he just has to see them on me. So before I can come out to show him, he comes in. And then his dick comes out, well, because I took it out and then it goes back in, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean, right? He fucked me. Right in the dressing room, he fucked me!”

“We know what you mean, Brady,” I said. “Older folk like us do understand subtlety.”

“Good thing I always carry condoms with me. Magnum Extra-Large because Gus is fucking huge! And the lube is a must, I always carry those little one-night-stand lubey packets because I can take a lot, but did I mention that Gus is huge?”

“Yes, you did,” I said. “And for that piece of information about Gus’s piece, I would like to personally thank you.”

By now I noticed that Gus’s impish grin had turned limpish and he did not look at all like a forty-year-old man who had just gotten a little something-something from a twenty-something that cost absolutely nothing. Before I could wrack my brain to decipher what lay behind Gus’s silence, the train wreck that was Brady kept chugging along.

“I can’t believe no one stopped us. I bet someone was watching on the surveillance cameras. At least that’s what I was thinking while Gus was fucking me. I know they had to have heard something. Gus was really rough, which I love, but he kept making me make my sounds. Gus loves when I make my sounds; they’re like Pee-wee Herman’s laugh, only higher. Now I have to buy these cords and I really don’t even like them, but they have Gus’s jizz all over them and Gus wasn’t born in this country so it’s not like he’s going to become president some day, so they’ll just be like a souvenir.”

“From Slutworld.”

“Don’t be jealous, Flynn, ’cause you’re not getting any from Gus and I am! Gussie baby, I’ll go pay for these and then we’ll go be slutty at J. Crew. They have tweed pants with a purple motif running through them.”

As Brady was heading off to the register to purchase his cum-stained purple corduroys, he nonchalantly tossed yet another revelation to us in a not-so-subtle stage whisper.

“I’m gonna get fucked twice. On a
Sunday
!”

Left alone with Gus, Flynn and I jockeyed for position much like Charles Nelson Reilly and the manlier Brett Somers Klugman must have on the set of
Match Game
and determined through a complex combination of facial expressions and hand motions that I should take the first shot.

“Brady is such an articulate boy, Gus,” I said. “I didn’t know they taught elocution in the gutter.”

“I was actually going to go with ‘I didn’t know Slutworld had a new mayor,’” Flynn said. “But yours was more character driven and less a one-liner. I bow before you.”

“Thank you, Flynn. And Brady bows before Gus. Twice.”

“Gentlemen, I hate to break up this witty repartee,” Gus said. “But I must escape whilst I can. Please inform Brady that I am no longer in need of his services.”

We scurried after Gus as he attempted to peel out of the Banana. Over at the register, Brady was entertaining a middle-aged out-of-town couple who were buying matching cable-knit sweaters in cherry red and lime green. Flynn pulled me back to reality.

“Gus! Do they not sell the Gay Manual over in Britain?” Flynn asked. “It clearly states in chapter fourteen that you cannot fuck a boyfriend in a dressing room stall and then dump him.”

“I have to! He’s like this balmy gay sex-pig in heat.”

“And isn’t that what you wanted? To be a balmy gay sex-pig before you turn forty and your youth is history?”

“Yes, but not every bloody day! I’m popping Viagra like aspirin and it’s beginning to get dangerous. I shot a load so hard last night my nipple got a black eye.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“I fucked Brady so brutally in that dressing room I thought I broke his coccyx bone and all he did was beg me for more.”

“I bet it was the left one,” I said. “Right?”

“No, I can’t see him anymore. I’m tired! Just tell him we’re through. I can’t break a bloke’s heart.”

“But ya got no problem with breaking a bloke’s ass,” Flynn reminded him.

“Please, boys, save me! Tell him anything. I know! Tell him Wendolyn rang and I have to fly back to England. It’s an emergency.”

“Don’t worry, Gus, we’ll take care of it.”

When Brady returned he glanced about and asked, “Where’s Gussie?”

“Gone,” Flynn said. “He left you, Brady. He wanted us to make up a lie and tell you he had to leave the country to take care of his mentally unstable sister, but we’re not going to do that.”

“No, we’re not,” I added, following Flynn’s lead.

“And do you want to know why?”

“Why?” Brady and I asked in unison.

“Because you deserve the truth,” Flynn said. “And the truth is…you’re like our friend Sebastian. You’re a whore.”

Brady looked stunned. “Oh, I know that.” But not shocked. “It’s what attracted Gus to me in the first place.”

“Well, then, you know a whore is like a butterfly. It’s pretty, it’s hard to pin down, and after three days it dies.”

“Oh my gosh, Flynn, that is so beautiful,” Brady said.

“So move on, pretty little gay butterfly whore.”

“Yeah, move on,” I added.

“I will. I will move on,” Brady declared.

But standing there in the doorway, Brady made it clear that he didn’t want to move on alone.

“Do you two want to come to J. Crew with me?”

“No, Brady-whore.
We
don’t like purple.”

Like the slutty underage mistress in
Evita
, Brady nodded that he understood his time had passed and left on his mission to de-file yet another dressing room. Having dressed me for my date with my latest potential boyfriend and having spared Gus from any further potential emotional injury, Flynn decided it was time he go on a mission to search for his own potential. I spent the rest of the day cautiously optimistic that my love life, for the first time in quite a while, had some real potential as well.

The next morning on the set of
If Tomorrow Never Comes,
I was still as happy as a flibbertigibbet, a will-o’-the-wisp, a clown. I was dying to tell everyone around me about my impending date, but I didn’t want to jinx it in case Brian turned out to be the new Frank, so I decided to keep it a secret. Some other people, however, were trying to have their own secrets exposed.

“Stevie!”

“Laraby,” I said. “I haven’t even had my morning coffee. Can’t this wait until later?”

“Oh, but Stevie, I just have to tell you I rented
Cruising
this weekend. I never knew such wild shenanigans went on in the seventies.”

“Why? Have you developed amnesia?” I asked.

“I mean I only rented it because I adore that Mister Al Pacino…what? Amnesia?”

“You
were
living in the city in the seventies, weren’t you?”

“Of course. The lure of the world’s media mecca called to me and so I left home to move here.”

“So you know all about the Manhole and the Spike.”

“The…Manhole,” Laraby said dreamily. “Well, um, theoretically yes. One did hear stories about the carousing and the sweat-soaked orgies that spontaneously erupted in the musk-scented back rooms thanks to the intricate, yet necessary, language of the handkerchief. But, Stevie, I never partook; I was married in the seventies.”

“To your career?”

“No, to a Canadian woman. Midge did so love her golf.”

Before I got to the point where I screamed to Laraby that his secret was out and everyone, except perhaps a golf-loving woman from Canada, knew he was a homo in hetero clothing, Loretta Larson did something she so rarely did these days. She stole the scene.

Right after Loretta as Regina helped Sister Roberta give birth to a baby girl in a cave somewhere in the mountains she passed out drunk, her face landing right in the fake placenta. The scene looked more authentic than any Loretta had been in since her debut almost thirty years ago, yet everyone knew it was not in the script. Silence reigned until a trembling voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Did Loretta pass out on the
stunt
baby?”

An intern wearing rubber gloves and an absolutely terrified expression was pushed forward to investigate and after much tentative prodding and poking, he found that yes, the baby lodged underneath an unconscious Loretta was indeed the anatomically correct stunt baby doll. The director called for a break and the crew, including a network paramedic, surrounded Loretta not to conduct CPR, but to stare at a fallen star. Lourdes was clicking her digital camera like a young Annie Leibovitz and was overheard saying that if these pictures turned out to be the soap queen’s final photo op she would be able to sell them to the tabloids, retire, and finally have enough money to take back control of her family’s sugarcane plantation in the Dominican Republic. Her camera stopped flashing when at last someone rolled Loretta over and announced that she was still breathing.

“Damn! I’ll never get that plantation back!” Lourdes cried.

At that point I noticed Lucas on the set, wearing a black leather eye patch and looking gayer than a pirated Johnny Depp. He informed Laraby and me that he was feeling much better and his doctor had told him his eye should heal completely in a few days. The eye patch, he confessed, was a gift from M. Of course I wanted to push the conversation further, but Laraby pushed all social boundaries first and attempted to hug Lucas, pressing his flesh into Lucas’s and letting his head rest in the cradle between Lucas’s firm chest and solid shoulder blade, a truly fine place to be for a repressed homosexual.

“And the haggardsnatch blows!” Lucas cried.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Laraby, backing away from Lucas. He ran out of the room, his hands covering his privates.

“Not you, Loretta,” Lucas said as if Laraby was still there. “The tired cunt just threw up all over herself.”

And indeed she had. Vomit poured from Loretta’s mouth, orangey brown in color and chunky, like she had mixed her tequila with Orangina and washed it down with brownies. Lourdes’s camera caught it all in its gory Technicolor glory.

“That plantation
will
be mine!”

I don’t know if it was because Loretta was shitfaced drunk or because she had come to that point in her life that Laraby still hadn’t reached and simply didn’t care what the world thought of her, but she rose like a boozy phoenix, pushed away the paramedic and the terrified intern, and demanded that shooting resume. Covered in vomit, which surprisingly looked a lot like afterbirth, Loretta handed Sister Roberta her stunt baby. When the scene was over there was no applause, only slack-jawed shock as Loretta wiped a little vomit drizzle from her chin and stumbled toward her dressing room. A few feet behind her the intern followed, armed with a towel in case the volcano spewed forth again.

After work I rushed home, took a shower, and started to masturbate to an old fantasy that featured me, Aiden Shaw, and a schoolroom, but then decided that it would better aid my flirtations with Brian that night if I were somewhat horny. With my left hand holding my dick, I raised my right hand and swore to Baby Jesus that I would not have sex with Brian and would only pleasure myself in a frenzied solo jerkfest after our date. It was the absolute closest I was getting to abstinence and the Baby would have to accept it.

One last look in the mirror—not so bad. My hair was just messy enough, not one pimple had decided to join me for the evening, and my green eyes did indeed pop. In the safety of my apartment I felt ready. But when I stepped outside all that self-assurance disappeared and I went through as many personalities as Sybil. For a few blocks I felt completely inferior to this guy who I didn’t even know, then I was excited to get to know this guy who I was very attracted to, then for a block or two I was apathetic because I knew this guy would turn out to be a jerk, and for several blocks I was so nervous that I had to walk with my arms sticking out from my sides so I didn’t get sweat stains in my armpits. Why was I sabotaging myself? It was a date, not a commitment ceremony. I literally had to stop on 29th Street and go into the frozen foods section of a Korean deli to dry out my armpits and get control of the situation. If this date didn’t go beyond this first dinner I wasn’t any less of a man. I was just a man having a first date with another man. Nothing more, nothing less. I really didn’t know why I was putting so much pressure on myself. Or did I?

“Stevie!” Flynn cried from my cell phone when I answered. “Is my boy nervous?”

“I just got over my first panic attack, but keep talking, I’m sure you can induce another one.”

“Don’t worry, this date is going to be perfect. You are wearing the outfit I bought for you, right? You didn’t switch at the last minute to something from your own closet?”

“There is nothing wrong with my own clothes,” I pouted.

“Stevie, the last thing you need to do is try to go all suburban and wear your Dockers and flannel.”

“The Dockers were on sale.”

“They have pleats, Steven!”

“Hold on, it’s my mother,” I said, switching lines. “What?”

“Are you wearing your father’s cufflinks?”

“Are you psychic?”

“Flynn told me you have a very important date tonight and that you were taking a piece of your father with you. I wish you would have invited me, but at least one of your parents can share your joy.”