A gay story: The Human Condition Ch. 04 “Did you get the 23rd off?” I asked sleepily.
My law partner was finally tying the knot and it was Joe’s and my job to make sure he got there on time. Not an easy task when you knew his nickname was Late Again Murphy.
We were still in bed. I knew I should make an issue out of it, but it was so warm and nice and quiet. It had been a long time since Joe and I had had this much lazy time together. Our jobs, our friends and family seemed to eat up the days. Not mind you, that I’d have traded any of it. Still, to be able to lie in this bed with my lover was heaven.
“Yeah, I traded with Mark, but it means I’m going to have to work the next two weekends.”
“Next weekend? Your Mom wanted us to come over and help her get out the porch furniture.”
“You’re a big guy,” Joe grinned. “I’m sure you can handle it by yourself.”
“Terrific,” I stretched. “No wonder she likes me best.”
“In your dreams.”
We snuggled silently for a few minutes longer. I moved closer to him and my hand slid down, inadvertently I swear, to Joe’s cock. It twitched.
“Oh,” I groaned. “Do not even think about it.”
“Then quit trying to wake him up!”
“You’re a hound you know it?” I moved my hand back up to a safer place on his chest.”
“And you love it.”
We kissed, but we both knew there wasn’t time even if we could have gotten the equipment working again, which was unlikely. We weren’t 22 anymore.
“Hey Mike,” Joe sat up. “Did you get a hold of the painters?”
“They’ll be here next week, which should work out okay because the furniture is supposed to be delivered on the 16th.”
“Of which month?” Joe said sarcastically.
We’d had experience with furniture deliveries before. The house we lived in was great, a modern multilevel with lots of light and space. But the previous owners decorating was for shit. I mean it would have been fine if you were a Colombian drug lord, but it didn’t fit our lifestyle.
As first time home owners, we had blithely thought that all of the mistakes could easily be fixed. That had been five years ago and our innocence was long gone.
“The carpet is already at the warehouse, they’re just waiting for the painters.”
“God I hope they got it right this time,” Joe laughed and I grinned back.
I knew he was remembering the day we’d both come home from a very hard day at our jobs only to find wall to wall purple plush carpeting installed in the living room instead of the beige Berber we’d actually chosen.
I’m not talking mauve or even violet here. I mean vibrant, pulsating, right in your face, purple. The guys at the carpet shop were aghast when I called and told them to rip it up and get it out of our house. They said it was a special order and they couldn’t return it. I said I had the receipt to prove they blew it and I didn’t give a damn what they did with it, but it wasn’t going to stay in my living room.
You know, it wasn’t too long after that, that a big dinosaur named Barney made his debut on TV. Coincidence? Maybe…
“I went over and checked. It’s the right stuff.”
“Well that’s something at least,” Joe stood and walked over to closet. “The Reynolds’ invited us on their boat for the Fourth.”
“Ugh!”
“I know, he’s the most boring human being on earth, but he’s my boss.”
He pawed through the closet then turned to me. “Have you seen my Cubs jacket?”
“No.”
“Damn, I think I left it at the cleaners.”
“You’ll live.”
“But it’s my lucky jacket.”
“Joe,” I laughed. “The Cubs don’t need luck, they need a fucking miracle.”
“Hey!” He turned and pounced on me. “Those are my boys you’re slamming. And besides,” he kissed my nose, “it’s only June, they still have a chance.”
“If every other team quits, maybe,” I convulsed with laughter as he started to tickle me.
“Holy shit,” Joe had caught site of the clock. “Look at the time!” He slapped my ass and bounded off the bed. “Come on we’ve got to hustle.”
“Now he’s worried,” I stayed where I was.
“Okay, I’ll shave first,” Joe glared at me. “But in 15 minutes I want to see your ass in the shower.”
“You always want to see my ass,” I yelled at his back as he left the room.
He flipped me the bird without turning around. I snuggled deeper under the covers.
God, I wondered, how had I gotten here? Worrying about jackets and painters, and a mother-in-law who bossed me around like I was her own kid.
Twelve years ago, I would have laughed my ass off if someone had suggested it. No, I remembered, that wasn’t true. There was a time when someone had talked to me about it and I hadn’t laughed at all…
August 21, 1988
I looked around the apartment I had just moved into. Well, I sighed, at least there was plenty of space and the price was right.
It was the second floor of an old carriage house that was nestled in the back yard of a large Victorian. I had gotten it, amazingly enough, through my advisor, Dr. Cline. He’d heard me bitching one day to a friend about my impending homelessness and had stopped his journey to whatever meeting he was on his way to and gave me the address of a friend who had a place that might work for me.
After I picked my jaw off the floor–I’d never thought the guy even liked me–I thanked him profusely and scurried my ass to the nearest pay phone. There I made an appointment with my prospective landlady for the next day.
Joe and I had kept our bargain to be more open and include each other in our daily lives, but I had remained adamant on refusing to live with him in that apartment. It was no longer about mine or his privacy you understand, I just wasn’t going to live anywhere where I couldn’t pay my fair share. I was only half kidding when I told him it made me feel cheap.
He reluctantly agreed and I was careful to exclude him from any of my further forays into the housing market. He really did love the frat house and I would have felt guilty about robbing him of his last year there to room with me. So I didn’t tell him about my hot lead until after I’d signed the lease. But by that time, I had quite a story to tell.
Her name was Lucy Cummings Galway and she had always lived in the house on Oak Street. She’d been born there in fact, and fully had every intention of dying there though not soon, unless those ham-handed medics killed her with all the medicine they were always trying to get her to take.
She told me this at the door. I was to learn that Lucy usually said everything that came into her head as soon as it got there. She said it was one of the perks of old age but I thought she’d been doing it a lot longer than she’d been in AARP.
I never could figure out how old she was, anywhere from 50 to 80 was my guess. She wasn’t about to tell. She didn’t believe in ages and said that knowing how old a person was limited your ability to judge them on their own merits.
She was tiny, barely five feet tall in her sneakers, and she dressed in pants and sweater sets ala Katherine Hepburn. She had that kind of voice too, clear and harsh and classy. She had an ageless beauty, and she knew it, though she did nothing to capitalize on it. It was that deep, under the skin, beauty that only happens with the right alignment of bones. She could look down her nose at someone like nobody’s business; but she saved it for phonies and those with money, but not much else.
She took me into the parlor and sat me down on a horsehair sofa then chose the only comfortable chair in the room for herself. After giving me a cup of tea, in china so thin I was afraid I’d crush it, she gave me a long stare.
“You’re the gay boy Richard sent over to keep me company.”
My tea splashed over the edge of my cup and on to my leg. Lucy calmly handed me a napkin and went on while I mopped up.
“He thinks you’ll be quieter because you’re a swish.” She shook her head in exasperation. “He’s a fool, but he means well.”
I stared at her. I mean, how was I supposed to reply to that?
“Come on.” She stood abruptly. “If you’re still interested in seeing the apartment that is.”
Then she turned and stalked off without bothering to look to see if I was following. I had to hurry to catch up. We passed a wall of family portraits and stopped.
“My mother.” She pointed at a delicate beauty in white lace. “Gorgeous, but the most complete ninny. Only read Vogue.”
She pointed again to a stern man. “My father.” She raised her eyebrows. “Now he was brilliant. He was the Dean at the law school, did you know that?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Yes, he was academically superb but an utter asshole when it came to dealing with people.”
I choked back my laughter but she noticed. There wasn’t much, I was to find out later, that Lucy missed.
“Go ahead and laugh, he was a ridiculous figure.”
“Oh no, I…”
Lucy ignored my stuttering protests. She waved a hand at the wall.
“The rest of these are my brothers and sisters. There were nine of us you know. Most of them are dead or moved away now, thank God.”
She saw the shock on my face and gave me a wicked grin. “We were never what you’d call close.”
She turned back to the wall and stroked a picture of a young man with laughing eyes. “Except for Brian, my youngest brother. I was the baby and he was one up from me. We were a team, he and I, always different from the rest of them.”
“He’s handsome.” I finally managed to say something.
Lucy laughed and looked sideways at me. “Yes he was,” she tilted her head. “He’d have liked you too. He was your kind, you know. A pouf, as our dear father used to say.”
“He’s dead I take it?” I had decided that bluntness was the course to take with this remarkable woman. From the look of approval on her face it appeared I was right.
“He died young. They say only the good die young. That was certainly the case with Brian. The only consolation I have is that it means that I shall live a long, long time.”
This time I did laugh out loud and she grinned back at me, pleased. Then, in a quick birdlike gesture I was to get to know very well, she sprinted down the hall.
“Come on,” she called back to me. “I haven’t got all day.”
We climbed the stairs on the outside of the carriage house and Lucy produced a key and unlocked the door. I stepped inside.
It was really only one huge room and it was filthy with dust and cobwebs, but it had possibilities. There was a kitchen area along one wall with a window over the sink that overlooked the big house and the tangled garden between. A bathroom of incredible antiquity occupied one corner and there was a light switch that I assumed worked the unfortunate choice of chandelier in the middle of the room. A couple of outlets completed the modern amenities.
I barely noticed. The thing that caught my attention was the wall overlooking the alley. It was all windows. Not sliding doors or some big bland picture window but small panes with leading in between. They were old and wavy and even now with so much dirt on them you couldn’t see out, the light was incredible. The rest of the walls were plaster with exposed brick on one and the floors were plank. I knew right away I’d found the place I wanted to live in.
“Nobody’s lived here for 10 years,” Lucy said by way of apology for the dirt. “Not since that girl writer whom I thought might become the next Katherine Ann Porter.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust and it wasn’t over the state of the apartment. “I was mistaken.”
“How much?” I said hoarsely.
I had to have this place, but I knew all too well how much it would go for with a little elbow grease and a new coat of paint for the cabinets.
“Two hundred.”
“What?” I thought I was hearing things.
“Too much? Okay then one fifty, but not a penny less and you have
to mow the lawn.”
“Ms Galway…”
“Call me Lucy since we’re going to be neighbors.”
“Okay Lucy, I feel I have to tell you that you can get a lot more for this place if you fix it up. God, even if you don’t, it’s worth three times your first offer.”
“Oh I know that,” She waived a hand dismissively. “You think I need the money? I’m sorry to disappoint you dear, but I don’t. I hadn’t thought of this place in years until Richard called me about you. Even then I only agreed to see you because he thought he was doing me a favor. To be truthful, I never had any intention of offering you the apartment. I was going to see you, let you down gently and call Richard and tell him to mind his own damn business.”
“But you have offered me the apartment. Why?”
She shrugged and tilted her head up to meet my eyes. “I like your face. You have, knowing eyes. And I need a new lawn man, the last one sucked.”
So, as I told Joe later that evening, I signed a one year lease and we celebrated with Irish whiskey and Japanese seaweed crackers. I couldn’t however, let her get away with giving me such cheap rent. We haggled and eventually reached an agreement that seemed to please Lucy as well as me. And I would clean up the garden, as well as mow the lawn.
“Jesus, Mike,” Joe laughed as I finished my story. “How’re you going to be a lawyer if you can’t even screw one old lady out of a little rent money?”
“Fuck you,” I said with no rancor.
“In your dreams.”
“You wish.”
It was amazing how far we’d come in a few weeks. Things I’d never have believed I’d say to Joe rolled off my tongue as if I’d never held them back.
“Wait ’til you meet her,” I returned to the topic of Lucy. “You’ll go nuts over her.”
“Sounds like it. Too bad it’s going to have to wait.”
I nodded. This was Joe’s last night in town. Tomorrow he was heading back to Chicago to take a job as an orderly at Cook County Memorial. He had gotten the AIDS research job he’d coveted our freshman year, and for the last two summers he’d stayed in Ann Arbor to work as a lab rat. But funding had dried up as it has a way of doing, so he was going home for the last summer before he graduated.
I would be leaving by the end of the week too. I could have stayed; my job at the law firm was always there. But I could save more money working in Pennsylvania and sponging off my parents, so I was heading in the opposite direction from Joe to do my yearly stint as a slave at Hershey Park. It would be almost three months until we’d see each other again and I don’t think either of us were very happy about it.
But the time passed as it has a habit of doing and now I was standing in my brand new apartment and wondering what the fuck I had gotten myself into.
Lucy had been busy that summer. She’d had the place cleaned and she’d put in a new apartment sized stove and refrigerator. She’d even gotten somebody to slap a coat of paint on the cupboards.
A friend who was graduating had willed me his beat up furniture. Now I had a couch, table and chairs and a bedroom set plus some other little goodies like knifes and spoons and a bent up set of pots and pans that looked like their surface had been scored by a fork and left little gray flakes of Teflon in everything you cooked.
My mom had made up most of the rest in one horrendous shopping trip to the Big K that she insisted I take with her. We bought sheets and towels and a cute little plastic plaque that said Bless This Apartment and made me want to throw up every time I looked at it.
My grandma had given me her extra set of dishes, which she said she was going to throw away if I didn’t take them. That statement tells a lot about the way they looked. And my Aunt Livia, or Aunt Livid as the family called her behind her back because of her nasty personality, had amazed me with a silk flower arrangement.
Seeing my pleasure, she’d promptly told me she got it because it was the sort of thing my kind seemed to like. That bitch had earned her nickname.
Now all my new toys were piled up in the middle of the room waiting for me to find them a home. The place was shaping up nicely. Except for one problem and it was a lulu.
The place was hot. I don’t mean warm. I don’t mean uncomfortable. I mean hot; Amazon rain forest hot. I expected kudzu to sprout through the floorboards and start creeping up my legs at any moment.
In my obsession with the damn windows, you might have thought I’d notice their purely decorative purpose. Not one of the little puppies was made to open. Instead, they radiated heat, magnifying the 80 degree weather outside to a bone melting 98 inside.
There was no cross ventilation to help alleviate this either. The only windows that opened in the whole place were the one over the kitchen sink and the tiny one in the bathroom and they were both on the same wall. There was some kind of a hatch in the ceiling that had probably opened to let out the heat, but a new roof had put that out of commission.
I stood there with sweat dripping off my fingertips and considered my future. Ann Arbor may have been in Michigan, a northern state, but it was in the southern end and the heat of summer could and often did last well into October.
If I bought some fans, okay, a lot of fans, I could probably manage to sleep there as long as the weather cooperated and the nights cooled off. But how was I going to actually live and work inside this blast furnace?
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a stampede charging up the stairs. I deduced that Joe had arrived. Seconds later he flung the door open.
“Dude! Hey it’s great to see you… Holy shit!” He stepped back involuntarily as a wall of heat attacked him. “Damn! Open the windows quick, it’s fucking hot in here!”
“It is open,” I pointed glumly to the lone window over the sink. It wasn’t even double-hung; it cranked out from the bottom and the opening stuck at about six inches.
Joe took a deep breath and stepped into the room. He stared at the wall of light. “What about these? Oh man, they don’t open.”
It had taken him 30 seconds to see what I had just become aware of. Maybe I should have brought him with me when I first looked at the place.
“Well, you’ll get used to it,” he said helpfully. “What’s the temperature anyway?”
“98 degrees,” I answered hopelessly.
“Hmmm, feels hotter.”
“That makes me feel better.”
“You know,” he said looking around again. “It’s not too bad a place, if it wasn’t for the danger of heat prostration and all.”
“You’re not very funny.”
“Sorry, I thought I was.”
We were both silent for a while. Joe walked back over to the door.
“Wish I could stay, but I just dropped in to say hi.”
“Yeah right, coward.”
“No really, I’ve got to meet some of the guys. You’re welcome to come.”
I shook my head. The only place I was planning on going was a store with a sale on fans. I almost wished now that I hadn’t been so honorable in my dealings with Lucy. With a little less rent, I might have squeezed my budget enough to afford a small air conditioner. I wouldn’t have been able to get a big one but even a little one would be better than nothing.
“Hey Mike.”
I’d forgotten Joe was still there. Funny, he’d been the one person I was most looking forward to seeing and I hadn’t even said hi yet.
“It’ll all work out buddy,” he continued softly. Then he grinned. “Just drink Gator Aid, lots and lots of Gator Aid.”
I’d have flipped him the bird, but I was too hot to make the effort.
“Later,” he ducked out the door.
I eventually forced myself to move and half heartedly tackled a couple of the boxes, but halfway through the third one I was soaked and my eyes were going blind from the sweat that was running off my forehead.
I gave up and took a cold shower. That helped for just about as long as took to get redressed. I had to get out of that apartment.
The mall was always cool and it was for that fact almost as much as the necessity for fans that I decided to make it my destination. I was just getting into my car when Lucy came out of the house and beckoned me over.
“I’ve made up a spare room for you for the night,” she said with no preamble.
“Thanks, but it’s not necessary.”
“Of course it is. You can’t be expected to put up with that heat,” she shook her head. “I’d forgotten about the ceiling window when I had the new roof done. Oh well, it can’t be helped now. Get your clothes and come over to the house.”
She darted away. A lifetime of giving orders had convinced her that I wouldn’t say no. I wasn’t so sure how happy she’d be when I told her she was wrong.
“Lucy, wait,” I caught up to her. “I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I’m going to have to refuse it.”
“Your very pig headed. Normally that’s a trait I admire, but not when it’s taken to extremes.”
I grinned. “Better not look in the mirror then.”
She was about to retort when a beat up old panel van pulled up in the driveway. The passenger door slid open and Joe jumped out. A tall guy with sandy blonde hair and a wicked grin followed close behind him. I’d met him before. Beauchamp “Beau” Maxwell star receiver for the Wolverines was from Alabama. It was said that his daddy didn’t stay around long enough for his momma to get his last name and that Beau didn’t get his first pair of shoes until he started school.
I had no idea if any of that was true. I did know that, myth or not, Beau liked to perpetuate the stories of his white trash origins. But for all his good ole boy posturing, there was intelligence in his eyes and gentleness in his manner that revealed his true character to me. I had met him the year before, when he was a freshman, and he had been the only one of Joe’s teammates who I’d gotten past the hi, how’s it going stage.
“Hey Ross. How’s it hanging man?” He didn’t wait for my answer but turned and slid the back panel of the truck open.
It was dark and I couldn’t see into it because of the glare of the sun but I did detect motion. A mountain appeared at the doorway and I blinked.
It was Abdul Marsh, all nine feet, 800 pounds of him. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating, but trust me; that’s how big he looked. He was a center for the team and I had only met him once before.
“Mike,” he said to me in his disconcertingly high voice, “good to see you man.” He stood there in the doorway of the van squinting and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get out until a voice from inside started to whine.
“For fucks sake, would you move your fat black ass. I can’t breathe in here!”
Abdul complied in Jabba the Hut movements and Ronny Gould jumped lightly out behind him. Ronny was not a member of the football team though he was an athlete with every bit as big a fan club as our beloved Wolverines.
He was a gymnast and his team bronze and individual silver at the last World Games along with his Opie cute looks and smart assed mouth had made him a media darling. He was maybe 5’7″ tall and standing next to Abdul should have made him look insignificant, but it didn’t. Not by a long shot.
“Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I don’t need some room. Christ, Ab, you had your ass stuck so far into my face I thought you wanted a rim job!”
I cleared my throat, Lucy was still standing next to me and although I realized there was no heat to Ronny’s complaints, I wasn’t sure how she’d react. Joe saw my concern and stepped to the rescue.
“You must be Ms. Galway,” he walked over to her and stretched out his hand. “I’m Joe Lassiter and these ill mannered jerks are unfortunately my friends.”
The rest of them immediately realized that they were in polite company and started to fall all over themselves to make amends. Lucy looked at each one grimly until they finally fell silent their eyes downcast, looking more like little boys than the stars they were. Ronny was even kicking the dirt in front of him with the toe of his sneaker.
This impasse might have gone on forever if Beau hadn’t screwed up his courage and stepped forward. “Ma’am,” he said in a Southern accent that dripped with honey. “Ma name is Beauchamp Maxwell and I would like to apologize for our appallin’ behavior here today.” Then he took her tiny hand in his and raised it to his lips and kissed it.
I sucked in a breath and held it waiting for the inevitable blast of put downs I was sure were going to come out of Lucy’s mouth. Instead, I watched with astonishment as a slow smile appeared on her face.
“Oh,” she laughed and shook her head. “You’re good. I’ll bet you could talk a nun out of her habit.”
Beau had the grace to blush and the wits to follow up with his very charming smile. The rest of us just breathed again.
“Okay,” Lucy continued. “You’re all forgiven this time.”
Thank you Ms Galway’s were heard from every mouth including my own.
“And call me Lucy, I have no desire to be treated like a librarian.”
That seemed to break the spell. One by one the others introduced themselves to Lucy. After he’d done his duty, Ronny ran up the steps to my apartment and opened the door I’d forgotten to lock. He stuck his head in, then quickly retracted it.
“Goddamn, you were right Lassiter, it’s hot enough in there to melt your dic…” He stopped and looked sheepishly at Lucy. “Sorry.”
Lucy looked at the heavens, but I could tell that she’d decided that she would be amused rather than insulted by the vulgarity that Ronny couldn’t seem to stop coming out of his mouth.
“Lord give me strength,” she said, then changed the subject abruptly.
“Who wants lemonade?”
As usual she didn’t wait for an answer but set off to the house to get the refreshments.
“What are you guys doing here?” I said when she’d finally disappeared through her back door.
“Gotta a housewarming gift,” Joe grinned. “Jamal will you do the honors?”
“I guess,” he groused. “Shoulda known the only reason I was let in on this honky gathering was to do the heavy lifting.”
But there was no rancor to his words and he turned back to the van and stuck the top of his enormous body into the back. When he reappeared he had a huge box clasped to his chest.
“Up those stairs?” He looked at Joe for direction who nodded in agreement.
I watched in fascination as the big guy lumbered up the steps and winced as a couple of the boards screamed in protest from his weight. Luckily they held and we all followed him up to the hell on earth that was now my home.
Abdul set the box down in the middle of the room and I went over to examine it. It was already opened, so at first I didn’t dare hope that what was inside was really what the writing on the outside said it was. But when I looked at the contents I realized that miracles occasionally do come true.
It was an air conditioner. It was the biggest fucking air conditioner I had ever seen. The box said it could cool a whole house and looking at the thing, I had no doubts as to the truth of that statement. I turned and looked at Joe who was watching me with some trepidation.
“Look,” he said in a rush. “I know you hate anything you think of as charity but that isn’t the deal here. The way I see it is I’m saving my life and anybody else’s who’s stupid enough to want to visit you.”
I thought about making him sweat but then I realized that, like the rest of us, he already was. He was right, under normal circumstances I might have protested such an expensive gift, but this time I decided to just accept the offer.
“Shut up, asshole,” I said in my most gracious manner. “I think it’s great.”
He grinned and I realized how worried he’d actually been that I’d refuse his largess. That bothered me a little but I decided to think about it later.
“So let’s get this mother set up so we can cool this fucking place off,” Ronny whined.
It was then that it dawned on me that there was no place where we could put it. As I mentioned before, the windows were small. There was no way that monster was going to fit in either of them. My breath came out in a whoosh of disappointment. It looked like my reprieve from Hell was not to be after all.
Lucy came through the door with a tray of lemonade. She stopped and looked at the box we were all staring at.
“Mr. Maxwell,” she spoke briskly. “Come with me and I’ll show you where the chain saw is kept.”
We all looked at her completely clueless as to what she was talking about.
“Well you’ll need something to cut a hole in the wall, won’t you?” She turned and sped out of the room with Beau trailing dutifully behind her.
“I love that woman.” Joe said. “I wonder if she’d be willing to bear my children?”
The next couple of hours were not fun. Well yeah, maybe they were in a kind of perverse, sado-masochistic sense. We sweated and swore and hammered and sweated some more and somehow through it all I gained three new friends along with a cooling unit that turned my little hot box of an apartment into a refrigeration unit that could keep ice from melting.
After it was done Ronny, Abdul and Beau said they had to split; the van was from the store that Beau worked at part time and they had to return it. Joe decided to stay awhile and help me unpack so the two of us said our good-byes to the others and started to really move me in.
“Hey,” I said after about ten minutes of shoving everything into the kitchen cupboards. “What did Abdul mean about seeing me on Friday?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Joe’s voice was casual, too casual, and my spine stiffened suspiciously.
“Didn’t you tell me what?”
“Nothing really, just that I told the guys that you’d thank them for their help by having a poker party here on Friday.”
“Nice of you to ask me first.” I said it sarcastically but I shouldn’t have wasted my breath.
“Knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“Wait,” I remembered something. “This Friday?”
Joe nodded. “Has to be, next week starts the pre-season.”
“I can’t do it this Friday,” I protested.
“Why not?”
“Saul and Kevin are coming over.”
Joe shrugged. “So, don’t they play cards?”
“It’s just that it would mean there would be seven of us. That’s too many for a good game.”
“Aw bullshit. You know how these things go, half the time nobody ever shuffles a deck. It’s really just a chance to drink some brews and shoot shit. It’ll be fine.”
“Joe…”
He lifted a hand to stop me. “It’ll be cool Mike, trust me.”
I shrugged my shoulders and let the subject drop. Maybe he was right. At any rate, I’d promised myself that this year I was going to try and be more of a friend to Joe. Apparently he believed that should include mixing our two worlds. I was just going to have to go along with it and hope for the best.
Joe stayed for a couple more hours to catch up on the summer and eat most of the pizza I ordered in. He had finally broken up with Missy when she’d given him an ultimatum, a ring or the door.
He said he’d made the right decision but still it had made him think about the possibility of settling down. He knew Missy wasn’t the right girl, but he figured that pretty soon somebody would turn up who would make a trip down the aisle seem like a great idea. Even the thought of it made me nauseous.
I was still thinking about it after he’d left and I was finally getting ready to go to bed for the first time in my own apartment. I’d been over Joe for a long time, but still, the idea of him with a wife and that kind of commitment to another person made me a little jealous. I was the one he came to with all his personal baggage. I didn’t know how I’d handle it if I slipped into the number two position.
Christ, even writing it makes me feel like a selfish bastard. But I’ve seen a lot of friendships, both gay and straight, that haven’t been able to stand up under the stress of one of the friends finding a life partner. I didn’t want our relationship to end up the same way.
Oh, I knew that eventually he’d find somebody to share his life. I just wished it’d be later not sooner. But we were all getting older and this was probably our final year together anyway, I was just going to have to accept that.
The next day, I was back at work at the law firm I’d been working at for the last year. Yeah, yeah, I know, if I’d been working there how come it’d taken me so long to figure out that I wanted to be a lawyer? I can’t really answer that except to say that what I did there was so far removed from the legal profession that I rarely even saw a lawyer.
See, I worked as a data processor for them. I entered the billable hours into their accounting system. It was boring as hell, taking stacks of papers and transcribing them into the computer (this was before they’d upgraded to a lot more amenable system), but I could pretty much set my own hours, and the pay was great by college standards. At least, it got me away from paper hats and flipping burgers, which is what I had been doing before I landed this job.
When I returned to school for the fall semester, I’d expected to take up where I’d left off but when I got to my office there was a note asking me to go to Personnel and see a Ms Grey. Uh oh, I thought, they’re going to tell me they don’t need me anymore. I went to the office already half resigned to resuming my stellar, no-growth career in the fast food industry.
Instead, when I got to Ms Grey’s office, I was informed that a part time job had opened up in the research department, sort of an assistant’s assistant. Since I was now planning on making the law my career, it was thought that I might be interested.
I was, very. Not only would it get me out of the basement where my lonely cubicle was located, but I would also get to do something I might actually like. It wouldn’t hurt my chances of getting into graduate school either.
There were five stories in our office. Each rise in elevation also included a raise in status. I was shown to a new desk on the 2nd floor, a huge step up from my former dungeon. I had my own PC and I was across the hall from the law library the firm maintained.
A young black woman with Whoopi Goldberg dreads and a very pretty smile was told to show me around. Her name was Penelope Washington, but she told me to call her Pen. She was a senior research assistant and already in her first year of law school, though I found out later she was younger than me. Pen wasn’t smart; she was brilliant.
She showed me through the stacks and told me which lawyers were approachable, and more importantly, which were not. After an hour, we were calling each other girlfriend and I was sure that with her help and friendship, I was going to like this job just fine.
A few times during the morning, we ran across some of the legal eagles that walked those hallowed halls. Pen would smirk and simper and invisibly pull on her forelock like a good little serf, and I’d follow her lead. The Suits themselves, would barely acknowledge us. After a while I started to get a little pissed.
“Are they all like that?” I said after one of powers that be had brushed past us with barely a nod.
“Nah,” Pen shook her head. “There’s 83 lawyers in this firm; some of them are bound to be actual human beings.”
“Oh yeah?” I wasn’t sure I believed her. “Show me one.”
“There,” she pointed. “Exhibit A. Culvert Atchison Montgomery IV. Bad name, but good people.”
She rambled on, but I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I was too busy gawking at the God standing in front of me.
Culvert Atchison Montgomery IV was all my wet dreams rolled into one. As tall, or maybe a little bit taller than me, he was bronzed and fit with a Kennedy smile and Paul Neuman eyes. He couldn’t have been much past 30, and his hair was dark honey with streaks of gold that looked natural. His face, was all hard planes and handsome as Hell even with, or maybe because of, the slight flattening bend in his nose that told me it had been broken at least once.
It had been a while since I’d had a bed partner. Rick, the guy I’d been seeing in the spring, had graduated and moved to Atlanta. My hometown had never been a hotbed of homosexual activity and traveling to one of the more cosmopolitan areas in Pennsylvania had seemed like too much effort for a summer fling. I knew I’d be coming back to Ann Arbor, so it’d been just me, and my hand, for longer than I cared to admit. Now, just one look at the lawyer Adonis in front of me told me it was way past time to go looking for somebody new.
He noticed us at about the same moment my jaw dropped open. He came over to us with a big smile on his face that showed 32 white teeth that must have cost a fortune in orthodontia.
“Hey Pen,” he said in a bone-melting bass. “How are you?”
“Fine Cam,” she answered with a grin. “Just showing the new slave how to pick cotton.”
“Hi,” his baby blues turned to me and my knees got weak. “I’m Cam Montgomery, one of the partners.”
I managed, just, to shut my mouth, and took his hand as he offered it. My cock twitched at his touch and I could feel a flush of arousal spreading across my chest. I looked down and realized where I was staring. I quickly looked up again and saw amusement on his face. Oh God, I could feel the red spreading to my cheeks only it was embarrassment that was causing it now.
I stuttered out my name and we talked for a few more minutes but I couldn’t begin to tell you what we said. Eventually he left and when I could breathe again, I noticed that Pen was looking at me with a big shit eating grin on her face.
“Liked that did you?” She asked.
“Oh yeah,” I grinned back. There was no point in denying it; the girl wasn’t blind.
There was also no point in pursuing it. Not only was the guy sort of my boss, he also had a big gold ring on the third finger of his left hand that told me he was probably unavailable. I was also pretty sure he was straight, even if my obvious attraction to him had seemed to amuse rather than offend him.
“Girlfriend, you are not alone,” Pen told me. “I don’t think there’s a gay man or straight woman in this building who hasn’t wondered what that guy would be like between the sheets. Even the straight guys fawn all over him, wanting to be his best buddy and all. If he wasn’t so nice, I could really get to hate him.”
“Everybody’s hot for him, Eh? That include you?”
Pen grinned again. “Didn’t I say gay men and straight women?”
It took me a minute to realize what she meant. “You’re gay?” I finally asked stupidly.
“Same as you, sweet pea, only with a different focus, if you get my drift.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall in the direction of the elevator. “But I can see the attraction.” She admitted.
“Well I guess that’s all anybody’s going to get anyways.”
“Come again?”
“He’s married. I saw the wedding band.”
Pen shrugged. “I don’t know much about his personal life. He only transferred here from the big office in Chicago about two months ago. He might be married, probably is, most of the partners are. I know that so far he’s not been a player, at least not in the office. Many offers have been made, none have been accepted.”
I realized suddenly that we were outside. “Hey, where are we going?”
“To lunch, then the law library at the U.” She turned and poked me playfully in the stomach. “Then if you’re real nice, I’ll take you back and give you another peak at Mr. Gorgeous.”
I laughed and we changed the subject to our favorite lunch hangouts. But in the back of my mind was the image of Cam. He may have been out of bounds, but he sure was fun to look at.
But I didn’t get a glimpse of the eye candy again that day or for the rest of the week for that matter. Instead, I settled into the new routine and found that I really loved my new job with or without the attractive Mr. Montgomery. Maybe, I thought, this lawyer thing was going to work out.
Before I knew it, Friday rolled around. I had shoved the prospect of the poker party to the back of my mind. Now it was the big night and the reservations I had about hosting the event came back with a vengeance.
Part of it was just the nerves that came from having a party of any kind; this was the first one I had ever given on my own. But a lot of it was because of those same old feelings about being gay and not fitting in to the so called normal world. Would the very mixed group that was coming tonight work?
Fortunately, my schedule was so tight that I didn’t have too much time to stew about it. I got off work at six, ran to the store and then slammed home to hide my dirty underwear and throw the breakfast dishes into a pan in the cupboard under the sink.
Satisfied that the place was looking as good as it needed to for a bunch of college aged guys, I hopped into the shower. When I got out, Joe was already there. He was pouring chips into a bowl and had iced down a tub and loaded it with the cheapest beer that money could buy.
“How’d you get in?”
“Lucy gave me a key.”
“How thoughtful of her.” I said with an edge to my voice though I knew by then that Joe was impervious to it.
“Yeah,” he nodded absently. “She’s really great.”
I sighed and gave up and got dressed while Joe shoved my furniture around and pulled my table and chairs to the center of the room. We had both just finished when we heard the wooden steps give a groan of pure agony as their strength was tested to the limit. It was clear that Abdul had arrived.
“Hey Ab,” we both said without looking as he knocked and then walked in.
“Hi Ross, Joe, how’d you guys know it was me?”
“Psychic,” I grinned and Joe rolled his eyes.
“Cool.”
“Aw Jesus H. Christ, Ab!” Ronny Gould had been hidden behind the human monolith but now he stepped around his friend and roommate and nodded hello to us. “They’d have to be in a fucking coma to miss you coming up those stairs. Shit, it’s a miracle everytime you make it up here without breaking your goddamn neck.”
Ab ignored him, as always. I was beginning to realize that anytime you time you saw one you were sure to see the other. It had to be one of the strangest friendships I’d ever run across. First, there were the physical disparities. Not just their size difference, which was well over a foot, but also you had to take into account the difference in their looks.
Abdul was black, and I don’t mean just ethnically, I mean literally, he was black. When we’d been working to put in the air conditioner he’d taken his shirt off and the sight of that ebony skin had been just awesome. There had been not a variation, no patches of lighter or mottled skin, no blemishes or scars to break it up, it was all just black, a lot of black, I had never seen a chest that big.
Ronny on the other hand, was simply the whitest boy I knew. He had bright red hair and that clear milky complexion that usually went with it. It didn’t help that almost all of his time was spent indoors in a gym. Even his eyes were colorless, a clear light gray. Except for the hair on his head, and I’m assuming in other places, the only color on his body came from the billion or so freckles he had covering every square inch of his skin.
You might think from this description that these two were the opposites ends of ugly but that wasn’t the case at all. In there own unique ways, they were very appealing, and neither of them had any problem finding any number of ladies who agreed with that assessment.
They had been roommates now for three years. I can only think that whoever had decided to put them together had a very bizarre sense of humor. But if so, they’d been doomed to disappointment.
Although I hadn’t known either of them for very long, Joe told me that they’d been friends from the minute they’d met. Nobody could explain it. By rights they should have hated each other.
See, Ronnie was a Jew, though not a very devout one. He told me later that the main reason he’d agreed to a Bar Mitzvah was it was the only way his parents were going to cough up the Atari he’d been whining for. To this day, I think his favorite meal is Virginia ham, AuGratin Potatoes, Green Beans cooked in bacon grease and pecan pie for dessert.
Abdul was a very, very devout Muslim. He didn’t drink, never swore and except on the football field, he never showed an ounce of temper that I’d ever heard of.
Ronnie on the other hand, flew off the handle at a moments notice, cursed better and with more originality than anyone else I have ever met and drank like a fish except when he was in training.
Like I said, theirs was an unbelievably odd friendship, at least on the surface. But then, who was I to talk? I was an openly gay guy whose best friend hadn’t gone a week without a girl since he’d been fourteen.
I pointed at the tub of beer, which Ronnie took as an invitation, and gave Abdul a glass of the tart lemonade that I’d conned Lucy into making for the party. I figured Ab would like that since he’d drunk about a gallon of it when we’d been putting in the air conditioner. It appeared I was right. He swallowed the whole glass and I wondered what Miss Manners would say if I just gave him the whole big plastic pitcher and a straw.
“So,” Joe said, “you guys know where Beau is?”
“Work, he’ll be here later.” Ronnie said and looked around as he sat down. “Hot damn Ross, this place is the shit.”
I grinned and started to thank him when there was a knock at the door. It was Saul and Kevin. At least, I was sure it was Saul in his signature Ralph Lauren duds. The guy next to him could have been Kevin or he could have been a refugee from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I stared, my mouth dropped in shock.
It was Kevin all right, dressed in a black leather bustier, purple tube skirt, fishnet stockings and six inch spikes that had BITCH spelled out in rhinestones on the heels. And trust me, he did not have the legs for this outfit.
I finally forced myself to look up. Did I forget to mention that Kevin stood about 6’5″ in his stocking feet? Now with heels on, his face was just about even with my porch light. I stepped back involuntarily. He was wearing more makeup than a Las Vegas showgirl. I was pretty sure I was going to have nightmares that featured his lipsticked mouth. But the Shirley Temple wig was a nice touch, though I thought the tiara might be a tad too much for a college poker party.
“Aren’t you going to let us in?” Kevin said in a whispy, tragic parody of Marilyn’s baby doll voice.
“I don’t think so,” I spoke involuntarily.
He laughed and pushed past me and the noise in the room behind me died except for one loud “Fuck me!” from Ronnie. Saul looked at me with real misery in his eyes and shrugged.
“I couldn’t talk him out of it,” he whispered apologetically. “He kept saying they wanna see gay, I’ll give ’em gay.” He grimaced. “He gets a little outrageous when he’s nervous.”
A little outrageous? I couldn’t think of anything to say so I stepped aside and motioned Saul into the room. Then I braced myself to turn and see what was happening with my guests.
It was not a Kodak moment. Abdul was staring at his hands like he’d just noticed them for the first time in his life. Ronnie, for once, was speechless, and even Joe didn’t seem to be able to blow this off.
Kevin stood in the middle of the room with one hand on his hip still playing the part of a transvestite whore. But there was an air of panic surrounding him as he realized that nobody thought his little stunt was as funny as he’d hoped. Finally I cleared my throat. It sounded like a gunshot in the dead silent room.
“Uh, guys.” I squeaked. “Let me make some introductions. Saul this is Ronnie, Abdul and you know Joe.” Everyone nodded like robots. “And guys, this is Kevin.”
“Well I didn’t fucking think it was Princess Di.” Ronnie muttered.
The door slammed open and Beau breezed in. “Hey guys, sorry I’m late but…” He stopped. “Hey Kevin is that you?”
I looked at Joe and raised my eyebrows. He shook his head to indicate that he had no idea how these two knew each other.
“Hi Beau,” Kevin said in his normal voice but he was still stiff and uncomfortable.
I know he brought it on himself; I mean what the fuck had he been thinking? But still I had to feel sorry for the guy. He looked like I felt when I had that dream where you realize you’re in church or school or the grocery store and you’re stark naked…
You know the one.
Beau stared at him for a minute and then walked over and circled him, looking at him critically. We all watched, waiting for what was going to happen next. Finally he stopped in front of our own Madonna wannabe and looked at him seriously.
“Not bad, but you might want to rethink the jewelry.” He reached over and took Kevin’s hand and removed the small, gold signet ring he always wore. “There, that’s better.”
We all burst out laughing. The tension that had been palpable in the room just moments ago was gone.
“Oh fuck!” Kevin said flopping into a chair and kicking off his pumps. “My feet are killing me.”
“It serves you right, asshole,” I said calmly.
“You should have seen the look on your face,” he laughed.
“Yeah, well you should have seen the look on yours when it didn’t look like anybody got the joke,” I retorted.
“So,” Abdul said seriously. “You don’t really dress this way normally.”
Kevin just stared at him and I howled till the tears ran down my cheeks. Saul slipped out the door but returned a few minutes later with some jeans and a tee shirt for his lover. We all protested when he went into the bathroom to change, then laughed again when he came out.
“I can’t get this fucking pancake shit off my face!” He protested. “Don’t you have any lotion or anything?”
I thought of the assortment of lubes in my nightstand and my eyes involuntarily strayed to that location. Kevin and Saul saw me, but the expression on my face told them not to push it. They knew as well as I did, that being camp was one thing, but reminding straight boys about the realities of gay sex was quite another. Kevin went back in the bathroom and wiped off what he could of his happy hooker face and learned to live with the rest.
But then the most amazing thing happened. It turned into a really great night. Beau told us that Kevin had been a TA in his Psych course last year and that’s how they knew each other. Saul started talking to Ronnie about gymnastics. He’d been on a team in high school but quit when he developed chronic tendonitis in his left elbow that wouldn’t respond to any treatment.
Abdul wanted to know all about working at Hershey. Seemed the boy loved chocolate and he thought a job in a town that smelled like candy just had to be heaven.
And Joe? Well, he just moved from group to group talking, laughing, acting like he was the host. Which in a way since he’d set the whole thing up, I guess he was.
Eventually the beer was gone along with the eight pizzas we’d ordered at midnight and all of Lucy’s lemonade. Joe had been right; we never did get around to playing cards.
“Let’s do this again.” Abdul said as I walked everybody to their cars.
“Sure.” I agreed.
“When?”
I thought about it. Next Friday was out because it was the day before preseason started. In fact from now on in the fall the weekends would be taken over with football.
“How about a week from Tuesday?” I finally offered.
Everybody agreed and that was that. The Tuesday game was born. None of us realized how important a decision this was going to prove.
After they left, I went back up to my apartment. I stopped surprised, at the door. All the mess was gone. The only evidence was a large black trashbag sitting in the corner and Jamal’s glass and lemonade pitcher in the sink. Joe had been busy. I’d left him in the apartment while I’d walked the guys out. I didn’t see him now though.
“Hey, where are you?” I yelled.
“In the john taking a leak.”
Can I watch? The thought came unbidden into my head. Jesus, I had to find a boyfriend. It had been years since I’d gotten over Joe, I wasn’t about to start mooning over him again.
I sat down on the couch and waited for him. What the hell was taking him so long? The bathroom door opened wide and I swung my head around. I couldn’t believe it, one long leg dangled out over the doorjamb, the foot attached to it was wearing a black patent leather fuck me pump.
“Look what Kevin forgot,” Joe popped his head out and grinned at me.
“They fit.”
“Gee Cinderella, now you can marry the prince,” I said sarcastically, then started to laugh as Joe minced out into the room his pant legs pulled up over his knees to show off the heels.
“Holy shit!” He said as he stumbled and grabbed the nearest piece of furniture for balance. “How does anybody ever walk in these things?”
“How would I know?”
“You never tried heels?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly a drag queen.”
Joe shrugged, and gingerly made his way to the other end of the couch. He sighed in relief as he sat and kicked off the shoes and wiggled his toes appreciatively.
“Man, I couldn’t believe Kevin tonight in that get up,” Joe laughed softly at the memory. “You should have seen Ab’s face when he walked through the door. I thought he was going to shit himself!”
“Kevin can be a little perverse at times,” I grinned back at him.
“Yeah, that’s an understatement. I like him though,” Joe leaned back and sighed. “What I really don’t understand is how he and Saul got to be a couple. I mean, Saul seems so serious while Kevin… Well just look at tonight.”
“Actually, you’re off base,” I disagreed mildly. “Kevin is really the more reliable of the two. He runs that program downtown, you know, for gay teenagers and he’s just finished up his Masters and is going to start his Ph.D. this fall. And he’s doing all this by himself. His parents kicked him out of the house when he was 16. He’s been on his own ever since. That’s one of the reasons he’s so effective with the kids he works with. He knows exactly what they’re going through.”
“Jesus.”
“Saul is the one who can really be a fuck up. He’s the only son of a Dermatologist up in Grosse Pointe and his mom is a typical society matron. I guess they gave him everything and he had no problem taking it. He got into drugs in high school big time. He got caught by the police for that. Did some other stuff too, just kid shit I think, but he would have gone to jail if Daddy hadn’t pushed his weight around. He only got in here because his folks are big time alumni with deep pockets.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I met him my freshman year and you should have seen him then, talk about a wild man. He met Kevin a couple of years ago though and he helped him work through a lot of shit. I think he’s gotten past most of it now. His grades are good and he and Kevin are pretty solid.”
“It’s nice when couples work out.”
I nodded. It was after 2 and my eyes were starting to droop. Joe’s next comment made them open wide.
“I want that,” he sighed. “I’m beginning to realize I want that a lot.”
“You trying to tell me something here?” I joked lamely.
“Shit,” he snorted. “You know what I mean. I told you last week, the whole thing with Missy started me thinking. I’m tired of the whole dating scene. I want to find somebody I really care about, that I can talk to, commit to. Not just for sex, that’s the easy part, but for the emotional attachment.” His voice dropped. “I want to fall in love, get married, have a family.”
It should have sounded stupid and corny, but it didn’t. I swallowed hard. I knew Joe, knew him better than I’d ever known anybody else in my life. He wasn’t bullshitting. He did want all those things. He believed in them. And as much as I hated the thought of losing the intimacy of our friendship, I wanted him to have all of it. He was a great guy and some girl was going to get very lucky when he fell in love.
“It’ll be weird though when it finally happens.” He continued, talking to himself as much as me. “I mean, imagine looking at someone and thinking, this is it, for the rest of my life, this is the only one.”
Now I snorted, I couldn’t help it. I realized he was absolutely serious but the sentiment was so opposite of my situation that I couldn’t help showing my disbelief.
“You don’t believe I’m capable of that kind of commitment?” Joe said quietly, a whisper of anger in his soft voice.
“No man,” I denied quickly. “That’s not it. I believe that, for you, that’s the way it will go. Monogamy is a wonderful thing in its place.”
“Uh huh, but not, I take it, a place you want to go to yourself?”
“Well let’s face it,” I said. “It isn’t very likely that a house in the suburbs with the little woman and our kids is gonna be in my future.”
“Maybe not, but what about a loft apartment with a partner you can’t wait to get home to every night.”
“It’s not so easy,” I finally said.
“Yeah but it’s been done. The need to commit is ingrained in us. You can’t tell me that just because you’re gay you don’t want the same things that everybody else on this planet wants, a home, family, someone to warm your feet at night, someone you trust completely.”
“Look Joe,” I tried to explain. “Gay relationships are very different than straight ones and I’m not just talking sexually here. When you talk about commitment what you really mean is the forsaking all others bit. Personally, I don’t know any gay couple that are completely monogamous.”
“I think you’re exaggerating, look at Saul and Kevin.”
“Bad example, dude.”
“How could you know that?”
I stared at him. It took him a minute, but eventually light dawned in those clear blue eyes. He flushed as understanding sank in.
“You’re shitting me,” he finally said. “Saul and you?”
“Kevin.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“It was last fall. Saul was at some family do, Kev and I went out for drinks,” I shrugged. “One thing led to another…”
“Does Saul know?”
Joe actually looked worried. The boy was so straight.
“He said the next time we’d better include him.” I stifled the impulse to laugh at the look on Joe’s face.
“Like I said,” I continued. “Different rules.”
We sat there in silence. Emotions played over Joe’s open face, shock, disbelief, he settled for stubborn.
“I don’t buy it, Mike. Sure there are lots of people who cheat, both straight and gay, but that doesn’t mean it’s the way it has to be.”
“You’re missing the point,” I shook my head slowly. “It’s not cheating, not like you’re thinking. I don’t know why it is, maybe because there’s no fear of pregnancy.” I grinned. “Maybe it’s just that men are dogs who’ll rut anything in heat if the stabilizing presence of women aren’t in the mix. Whatever the reason, guys who like guys also like variety.”
“And you believe that’s okay?”
“I believe that’s reality.”
“It sounds; sad,” he gave me a long measuring look that made me want to squirm and drop my eyes. I forced my face to remain expressionless and returned his stare. Joe finally sighed and leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes.
“Damn, I’m bushed,” he yawned.
“You going home or you want to crash on the couch?”
“Home,” he stood and stretched and walked to the door. When his hand grabbed the doorknob he stopped and still facing away from me he started to speak.
“I still think you’re wrong. At least I hope you are. I think you’re a great guy and I want there to be somebody out there who recognizes that. I want you to have the best that life can offer and to share it with somebody that realizes how special you are. Whether you believe it or not, you deserve that.” He turned and faced me.
“I know you, Mike,” his words mirroring my earlier thoughts about him. “I’ve told you before, I think we’re a lot alike. You want what I want and you can bullshit all you want to the rest of the world, even to yourself if it makes you happy. But I know the truth.”
“Joe…”
“Let me finish. Maybe you’re right about what has been the norm in your world. It makes sense when you think about the closet gays have had to live in, in this society. Hiding is not conducive to relationships. But look around you Mike, things are changing, Anita Bryant and the whole fucking religious right, this God damn awful disease; people are realizing that it’s time to accept others for who they are.”
He stayed silent for a moment then spoke again. “It’s a new world out there Mike, the rules are changing. Whatever kind of relationship you want can be yours if you believe in it enough. Just don’t shut yourself off from the possibilities.”
He smiled. “You’re my best friend, I love you, man. So don’t be an asshole and screw up your life.” He turned and walked out the door.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I do know that when I finally made it into the bathroom to brush my teeth my cheeks were wet. Was Joe right? Was I just a romantic fool who wanted a vine covered cottage and a white picket fence or whatever the gay equivalent was. Mr. and Mr. Cleaver, I thought, and grimaced.
The frown was an automatic response honed by years of practice. I’d realized, almost from the beginning, that being gay was going to mean my life would not take the normal track.
Kids, of course, were out of the question. Even normal contact with said little persons would be tricky. Pedophile is such a nasty word and so easily bandied about by those who can’t understand the difference between gay and deviant.
Would I even get to know my own future nieces and nephews? Or would my siblings, when the time came, be distant and afraid to let Uncle Mike get too close because, you know; he’s different. No, I wasn’t really that paranoid but still, there was this little whisper in the back of my mind that couldn’t be silenced.
As for marriage, well obviously I wasn’t going to even consider that. One of the main reasons I finally came out to my family was because I couldn’t stand the way they were always throwing me into the path of some pretty girl. There had started to be some talk about gay marriages but that seemed so out there that I couldn’t get very enthused about it.
So I told myself, and anybody else who asked, the same things I’d just finished saying to Joe. Gay was different, not bad, but different. We didn’t need the outmoded conventions of the straight world. We could handle multiple partners, needed them even. I was very convincing.
But did I really believe it myself. Did I truly want a life filled with men in my bed who weren’t in my heart? Or was I holding up my freedom like a cross in the face of the vampire of loneliness. And if that were the case, what was I going to be able to do about it.
I’d been telling the truth when I said that I’d never known a completely monogamous gay couple.
That was, I suddenly realized, why I’d never gone down that path. It was one thing to fuck around when you were just dating, quite another to find strange briefs in the couch cushions and stains on the sheets. But the men I knew played around as a matter of course. It may have just been because we were in college, but I didn’t think so.
I took a good long look at myself in the mirror. I was young, apparently good looking if the come on stares I got were any indication, and at this point I had no problem finding willing guys to fill up my dance card. But what about 40 years from now when my muscles were gone and most of my hair? Who would be there for me then?
I sighed and scrubbed my hands through my still thick hair and shuffled off to bed. It was stupid to worry about what might happen. I needed to concentrate on the here and now, not some doomsday possibility of the future. And what I needed right now, I thought as my eyes drifted shut, was a boyfriend.