Gulliver Takes Five (9 page)

I snap a few times to give the pianist the tempo and off he goes. Off I go too. I don’t know what singing is like for anyone else, but here’s what it is for me: an out-of-body experience. It starts in my stomach, a distinct tingling heat that spreads rapidly like liquid from a punctured water balloon. Before I know it, the warmth is flying out of every pore on my body, except I’m not even there anymore. My voice sounds like it’s miles away—a speaker in a car thumping four blocks from here. Trancelike. I give myself over to the notes, the words. I am a slave to the syllables and syncopation. It’s better than an orgasm. It’s better than a full-body massage. If I could sing every minute of every day, I would do it. There is nothing better in this world.

“Stop!” says the casting director.

I am back in my body. Disoriented. Blinking. It’s always a system shock to return to my own skin.

“Thank you, Marty,” he says.

I nod and whisper, “You’re welcome.”

I turn to go, determined to hold my head high.

“Wait. Come back. Can you start from the beginning and take us all the way through, please?”

Now my smile is genuine. All of them, including the pianist, are sharing in my emotional high. “Are we okay with postponing lunch for four more minutes?” he asks his tablemates.

“Absolutely,” one of the women says.

I snap. The pianist starts. And once again, I exit my body.

I can’t stop smiling on my train ride back to Astoria. It isn’t every day that a group of five exhausted casting directors and producers ALL tell you how beautiful your voice is. (Trust me—I know.) In fact, it’s the first time I’ve heard such accolades since Stanford first heard me sing, the day
he
brought me in to audition for him.

Gulliver.

I guess I CAN stop smiling. Thinking of him is a surefire way to dampen my spirits—and sure enough, now those spirits are sopping. I thought I was done with this—it’s been over a month! But
no, fifty days is clearly not enough time, because the ache is still as raw as it was on day one, a wound that refuses to scab over.

I stare out the window and, when that doesn’t work, try reading the many ads covering the interior of the subway car: Dr. Zizmor will help me clean up my face in time for the beach! My career doesn’t have to end here; I can take it to new heights with summer classes at the School of Visual Arts! It’s considered good train etiquette to give up my seat for a handicapped person or a senior citizen!

This isn’t working, either, so I close my eyes and rewind back to my amazing audition. Close-up on the smiles. Replay the audio of their applause. A reenactment of the light-headedness I felt.

And Gulliver. Gulliver, Gulliver, Gulliver. Suddenly, he’s sitting in the panel of casting directors. He’s also playing the piano. He’s rolling around on the floor laughing with those boys who were unknowingly mocking my song choice. Gulliver is my judge, jury, and executioner. Never mind that it was the best audition I’ve had yet; no matter that those catty gays ridiculing “Lost in the Wilderness” undoubtedly earned much fainter praise than I. Where there’s joy, there’s Gulliver, bent on crushing it. The real Gulliver is—well, who knows? Surely he doesn’t know I had an audition today, and probably wouldn’t care if he did. But the figment-of-my-imagination Gulliver? He’s always here, always watching. And he really has it in for me.

Fail. I’m running out of options. Normally, just leaving the chaotic, crass city for my tranquil home base in Astoria is enough.
Its quieter streets, diverse neighborhoods, and actual view of the sky soothe me almost instantly. But not even that works this time.

I plug my headphones into my iPod and hit shuffle. If anything can take me away, it’s music. It HAS to be music. My last resort.

The song that comes up is Beyonce’s “Halo,” which I only have because Gulliver gave it to me on a “Summer Love” playlist. Which I thought I deleted.

There are no more ads to read. The audition happened too long ago. Beyonce can see my halo, halo, halo. The countdown to yet another Gulliver meltdown begins. That boy has taken up residence in my brain, and if history is any proof of the future, he’ll stick around for another few hours, at least. It’s always when I should be feeling high as a kite that he manages to pull me back down to these trenches.

Now I’m regretting doing so well in today’s audition. Because when Gully fever sets in, I am overcome by the idiotic hope that he might come back from the ether. And what if he did? What if I weren’t here? What if I were on tour? In my mind, he returns at night in the pouring rain, like it’s a classic movie. He’s outside my apartment, hitting the buzzer over and over, screaming my name. Then I rush outside, and he takes me in his arms, kisses me long and hard, and begs me to give him one last chance. I say, “But of course, you fool!” (In this fantasy, I sound like Katharine Hepburn.) And while none of this is very realistic, it’s a much more definite impossibility if I’m in San Francisco or Charleston or New Orleans with a show rather than at home, waiting for him.
If it weren’t for Gulliver, I wouldn’t even have had an audition today. I wouldn’t have Stanford as the quarterback for Team Marty. On the other hand, I also wouldn’t have contracted my first case of chlamydia, wouldn’t still feel disgusted with myself and the things I am apparently capable of. And hell, I might actually be HAPPY about blowing away the casting directors at my audition.

God. What am I doing? I didn’t land this part, I haven’t heard a word from Gulliver. Fuck. Too much Gulliver. Gully OD. Get me home NOW. The train pulls up to my stop and I bolt for the doors before they’ve even begun to wheeze open.

I sprint the five blocks from the train to my apartment and reach my room just in time to open the floodgates. Thank God my roommates are out, because I’m pretty loud when mess status overtakes me. I slam my door and blast “Halo,” making sure it’s on repeat so I can’t be heard if anyone comes back. Now I will saturate myself with Gulliver to purge him from my system, like he’s too much tequila and the consequent spins are keeping me from falling asleep.

I do, sometimes, have trouble sleeping. Because of him.

Remember these walls I built?
There’s a box hidden in my drawer that holds all that is left of Gulliver. E-mails from when I was still at school, promising a new relationship to wipe away past shitty ones (especially that horrifying bout with bat-shit crazy Brayden Castro). Movie ticket stubs from disappointing summer blockbusters I enjoyed more than Oscar winners because he was there to laugh at them with me like we were silhouettes from
Mystery Science Theater 3000
. Playbills from shows we student-rushed because his college ID didn’t have an expiration date. He’s everywhere—even though nobody knows where he is. I should tell them: he’s right here, in this box. In my head.

I should throw the box away. I was close to doing so, until Gulliver pulled his Houdini act. I didn’t even know he had vanished until two weeks after the fact, when Brayden clued me in. I still have that text:

“Gulliver is gone btw.”

That was it. I sent Brayden fifteen replies that first day alone:

“What do you mean gone?”

“Please tell me! Is Gulliver okay?”

“BRAYDEN ANSWER ME NOW DAMMIT. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!?”

But that was Brayden’s sweet revenge. He still isn’t over the secret relationship I had with Gulliver behind his back, and probably never will be. He gave me just enough rope to hang myself with and not a millimeter more, leaving me to pry the rest of the information (what little there was) from his friend Shane when I ran into them at a party one night. Gulliver just disappeared. Left his apartment in Astoria without a word, without a trace. Back to California? Off to another new city? Or maybe still hanging around the concrete jungle, maybe a mere mile away from me, or even just around the corner? I still look for him,
trying to imagine how I’d feel if I saw him. If he looked at me. If he smiled.

We were so close. Almost there. Almost happy. If only we hadn’t been sneaking around so much. If only Gulliver had been honest with his friends, or me, or anybody. Gully isn’t a bad guy, but he’s not good at owning up to the truth if it means someone is going to be mad at him. And when that person has a temper like Brayden, well, I can’t say I really blame him. It was bad luck that he was friends with my psycho ex—bad luck and worse timing. I see that now.

And if I never get a chance to see him again and tell him all this, I will never forgive myself. What I did to Gulliver was not something I’d wish on anyone. I ruined his life—without thinking, without knowing what would happen. I just did it. And there’s no excuse.

My throat is hoarse from coughing and crying. God, I feel like such a baby. I slap myself across the face. Hard. Again. Over and over in front of the mirror until my cheeks are hot and red. The crying gradually ceases like a case of hiccups.

I need to get my shit together, put Gulliver in the back of my brain where he belongs. Because I have a date in two hours. No—one hour?

Shit. Fifteen minutes.

What? Have I been playing “Halo” that long? Just sitting here, stewing about my fucking ex?

Now I’m going to be at least half an hour late. I should just cancel. I WANT to cancel. In fact, I never wanted this date in the first place.

Oh, his pictures are cute enough—including the slightly slutty MySpace-era one of him shirtless in the bathroom mirror, showing off a tattoo of a pocket watch on a chain that winds around his belly button. Normally this would have been enough for me to avoid spending time with him at all costs, but our consequent e-mail exchanges changed him from a definite no to a potential yes. He’s charming, funny, sweet. And he “doesn’t mind at all” that I’m an actor, launching him to the front of the line.

But he’s also a boy. The first I’ve agreed to go on a date with since Gulliver. I guess, in a way, that means I’m accepting the possibility that Gulliver may not be coming back, and the more likely possibility that we won’t be getting back together even if he does show his face in this town again.

Do I want to accept that? Do I want to meet this random boy who, let’s face it, is not my type (except maybe in the looks department)? His name is Chase, and if his OKCupid profile and our conversations are a true representation of who he actually is, he may be the first guy to help me get Gulliver to disappear from my heart as cleanly as he did from Manhattan itself.

But do I want him to?

Yes, I decide, while scrambling to find and put on something cute that doesn’t make it look like I’ve put too much thought into it. I’m not getting any less single crying in my room, pining for
Gulliver. There are thousands of gay boys in this city, and as any casting director knows, you’ll never find the right one if you don’t hold a big ol’ cattle call to weed through ’em.

So bring him in. After this morning’s audition, maybe I’m on a winning streak. Let’s give today a 2 and 0 record, shall we?

Stupid rain! I didn’t even think about bringing an umbrella—it was hot as hell when I was rushing back to my apartment post-audition. But now, as I reach Manhattan, the sun has ducked out and left the door open for a blanket of fat, smog-stained clouds. Seems nobody expected this sudden turn, because everyone is scurrying for cover like subway rats just before the 5 train pulls in. Leave it to New York—nothing predictable. Ever.

I duck under a scaffold on Fourteenth Street, which doesn’t help at all. I still end up drenched by renegade streams of dirty city runoff. I send Chase a text apologizing for being late, plenty of extra exclamation points dedicated to four-letter words addressing the rain. His text comes back:

“I thought we were meeting an hour ago? Already went home.”

Am I a whole hour late? Gulliver strikes again. Bastard.

“I’m so sorry! I’m here now, can you still come out?”

Five soaking minutes pass without a response. During this time, I am treated to a homeless man ranting that the CIA is putting
chemicals in our drinking water to turn our children gay. I am just about to head back to the subway when my phone beeps: