by Sara Ney
“Sure it can. I wake up at four forty-five to jog.” Blaine likes to constantly rub in our faces how fit he is. How well he eats at every meal. How disciplined he is about going to bed at a reasonable time. How great the chick he’s been dating is.
The fucker meal preps.
“No one wants to hear about how amazing your life is, either,” Phillip tells him.
Wow. Aren’t we a barrel of laughs?
“You’re such an ungrateful bastard.” Blaine laughs, picking at the olive in his empty highball glass before leaning back in the big, overstuffed leather chair.
“Bastard. God I love that word.” I smirk, doing more than just chugging rest of my cocktail. It’s cold—full of ice—and sour, just how I like it. It slides down smooth…a bit too smoothly, because the alcohol keeps going straight to my head.
Damn. I should probably eat something besides condiments and cocktail snacks.
“Yeah, you do love throwing that word around for no apparent reason,” Phillip declares, telling us all what we already know.
“You also love being a bastard,” Blaine adds unnecessarily, reaching for a handful of the mixed nuts set on the decorative table in front of us. It’s no bigger than a footstool, just large enough for all our drinks and the tiny bowl of free snacks The Basement provides.
And yeah—yes. I love being a bastard.
“Bastards are the new nice guys.”
Phillip rolls his eyes harder than a twelve-year-old teenage girl arguing with her mother. “They are not.”
Snapping my fingers, I point toward my friends. “That gives me a fantastic fucking idea.”
“You swear way too much,” Phillip points out, ignoring me, determined to snub the light-bulb moment I’m having.
Blaine has no such reservations about my foul mouth or my ideas, instantly curious for more details. He’s always been a bit of a follower. “What’s your great idea?”
“The Bastard…b, b b,” I repeat the first letter of the word for encouragement. “What’s another word that goes great with the word bastard, begins with the letter b?”
“Bagel.”
I roll my eyes. “How the hell does bagel make any sense?”
“Considering I have no idea what the hell you’re even talking about, I’d say it makes total sense.”
“Bandits,” Phillip tosses in, chewing on nuts.
Bastard Bandits? The fuck? “No.”
“Baggage,” says Blaine.
“Boomerang?” says Phillip. “B words are hard.”
“No!” I exclaim, excited. “Think bigger. Like—what could we call a club?”
“What club?”
I sit forward, balancing my elbows on my knees, looking both of them dead in the eye. “Back in the day, they used to have secret societies and they would get together and smoke cigars and talk women and gamble.”
Phillip scratches his balls through his polyester slacks. “I still don’t get it.”
“We should do that.”
Phillip glances at me, then at Blaine, then back at me. “So you want to have a secret club?”
“No?” Actually, yes. Yes! It’s a great fucking idea! Maybe it’s what I need to get out of the funk I’ve been stuck in at home and at work. Maybe it’s what I need to feel some creativity—the creativity that dimmed when Kayla left me. “Yes. A secret club sounds so badass.”
“You want us to have a secret club and act like bastards?”
“I personally don’t want to act like a bastard.” Blaine pouts. “You’ve got the market cornered on that lately. I want to be one of the good guys.”
My head shakes. “That’s not what I meant. You don’t have to act like a bastard. We could meet every week and smoke cigars and shit.”
“Stogies—me likey.” Phillip nods, warming to the idea like I knew my friends would. “And we can drink scotch on the rocks.”
“Let’s order another round right now!” Blaine enthuses, getting into the moment. He raises his hand for a second time, like a grade-schooler to get the server’s attention, and when she comes over, he orders us a round.
B, b, b…
Bastard drinking club.
Nah, doesn’t have the nice ring to it I’m going for.
Bastard brigade. Bastard…
“Bootleggers.”
“Oh Jesus.” Phillip sits back, crossing his legs.
“What does bootlegger even mean?”
The server sets the drinks in front of us, interrupting the flow of our conversation and doing her best to keep a straight face. “Bottoms up, gentlemen.”
Blaine tips his head to the side, a sour expression crossing his features; he’s downed the most alcohol of the three of us. This place might be in the basement of an old building, but it’s bougie as fuck and serves the best of everything, the best liquor in the best atmosphere. We’re seated beside a brick wall covered with plaques from members who were part of an era gone by, from when The Basement was in its heyday.
In its prime, back when you had to pay to take a seat at the table and share a drink.
Now, anyone can frequent The Basement to imbibe, but that wasn’t always the case.
“Maybe we should get drinking jackets if we want to act like gentlemen,” Phillip suggests. “Like Hugh Hefner used to wear before the old goat kicked the bucket.”
Blaine pats his rosy cheeks. “Yeah, but navy blue instead of red. Red isn’t a complimentary color for my complexion.”
We stare. Did he just argue a case for a jacket to flatter his skin tone?
He shrugs at us, no shame. “What? It’s not.”
“Try not to push down so hard on your razor when you’re shaving,” Phillip tells him. “You’re giving yourself razor burn, you douche.” Reaches forward to give our friend’s cheek a light smack with his palm. “And use an aloe-based moisturizer.”
Blaine swats Phillip’s grabby hands out of his personal space.
I ignore them both and power ahead with my idea.
“The club is still in need of a proper name, but we’ve already got a dress code?” I laugh, excitement building. “Where the hell do we get our hands on three velvet smoking jackets?”
Blaine is rubbing his ruddy face.
“Lisbeth.” Phillip swirls his glass. “I’ll have my sister look into it—she can find anything.”
Phillip’s sister Lisbeth is hot, smart, and a stage manager for a Broadway production company in New York City. If anyone can get us jackets to wear on a lark, it’ll be her. And did I mention she hates my guts? Granted, she seems to hate everyone’s guts, but particularly mine. Pretty certain it has something to do with the fact that when we were in our teens, I accidentally walked in on her while she was in the bathroom. Saw Lisbeth naked before she had tits and told the guys at school how flat-chested she was, before I learned about respecting boundaries, and privacy, and because I didn’t know she would carry a goddamn grudge the rest of our entire lives.
She’s treated me like shit ever since—not that I blame her in the least.
“Hot Lisbeth?” I love calling her that because it pisses him off so bad.
“Don’t call my sister hot. She hates your fucking guts.”
Even better—her anger makes her that much hotter. I love a good loathing, and a hard hate fuck does every body good.
“She can hate me all she wants because she’s hot.” I’d have hate sex with her any day. “Besides, it’s not like I said I want to bone her.”
His laugh is less than amused. “I’m not telling her this involves you. She’d burn your jacket and the building it was manufactured in to the ground before she’d give it over to you.”
Sometimes it makes me jealous that he has a great relationship with his sister; I barely see mine. We’ve never had a great relationship, not since we were young and in grade school. Val was a mama’s girl, I was a daddy’s boy, and our piss-ass broke parents did nothing but fight. Home life sucked; Dad could never hold down a job, and I spent half my life defend
ing that piece of shit to my sister when he didn’t deserve it because I was too ignorant to know better.
My sister and I played outside a lot back in those younger years, but not together. Sometimes in the road, we’d kick the can around until the streetlights came on at dusk.
I had neighbor boys to hang with, a small gang of hoodlums with no curfew and fewer rules. We’d play Bloody Murder and Ghosts in the Graveyard and ride our bikes around the block until the rubber wore off.
Val had one little girl across the street named Jessie, whose mother didn’t want them playing together after “The Incident.” It’s not like Val was a sassy brat—I remember her being pretty chill for a kid.
Except for that one time.
One afternoon, Val gave Jessie’s long hair a cut without permission. Granted, they were six years old and barely out of kindergarten at the time, so someone should have been watching them.
No one was. No one was ever watching us—our parents couldn’t afford babysitters or childcare. Valerie and I survived on common sense and by the grace of God.
After the horrifying haircut, the two weren’t allowed to play together; us guys didn’t want my little sister tagging along after us, either. It wasn’t the cool thing to do.
So Val had no one. And now? We don’t speak and rarely see each other.
I frown down into my glass.
Shit. I should call my little sister.
Or text. See how she’s doing and what she’s been up to lately.
“B, b, b…” Phillip’s fumbling interrupts my drunken, morose internal monologue. Somehow I missed the fact that my buddies are sitting here, repeating the same letter and B words over and over. “Basket, blanket, blaze.”
“Blowhard, bedazzle, booze.”
Christ, where are they coming up with these so fast? It’s like they’re playing a name game and trying to win a competition.
No. None of those pair well with the word bastard.
“Business, ballbusters, blasted.”
“Break, breaking, breakup.”
Breakup? Hmm, that gives me pause. “Bastard breakup. Bastard…batches.”
We all keep talking at the same time.
“Bastard Bachelor’s Club,” Phillip suggests. It’s a stroke of genius.
Shit, I actually like the sound of that. “Fucking love it.”
Blaine’s nose wrinkles. “Meh. Not loving the word club. That belongs on a treehouse, and we’re not five.”
Has he conveniently forgotten that he was in a fraternity in college, which is a glorified club? One you pay to be a member of?
Still, I humor him. “Fine, come up with a better word than club and that’s what we’ll call it.”
He stares at me like I’m an idiot, raises his glass in the air as if he’s a victorious gladiator. “Society. Boom shakalaka, nailed iiit.”
And the Bastard Bachelor Society is born.
“What’s the club for?” Phillip is palming a handful of nuts, shoving them in his mouth. “Like, why are we doing this when it’s just the three of us?”
“We’re socializing. Relishing the fact that we’re single and ready to mingle. Doing manly things, like smoking cigars and drinking scotch.”
“We’re not all single.” Phillip looks pointedly at Blaine. “And we do those things literally a few times a month.”
No, we’re not all single—but we should be.
Who needs a relationship? Who needs to be coupled?
Not Phillip.
Certainly not me.
We look at Blaine.
“Can we talk about Bambi for a quick second?”
Blaine pauses, glass of liquid halfway to his lips. “What about her?”
Bambi is the girl he’s been seeing. It’s not serious, but I think this one might eventually stick, though she’s a complete Yoko Ono intent on breaking up the band.
“I mean…dude. Bro.” I soften my tone as I break it to him gently. “You can’t really see her anymore.”
“You want me to break up with her?” His voice rises a few octaves.
“Bastard Bachelor Society—the word bachelor is in the name. It won’t work if we’re exclusively dating people.”
“Then why can’t we just change the name?”
“Because.” I sigh, frustrated by his lack of enthusiasm. “It won’t have the same ring to it. Your options are: to not be a member of the society, or to become single.”
Phillip clinks his glass with the fork from the olive bowl. “Guys, we’ve been in business for a whole two seconds—why are you being pricks?”
“We’re bastards, not pricks.” I’m being stubbornly literal, fanning the flames of Blaine’s pity party. I’m kind of drunk and in the mood to be an ass.
My friend’s features contort, mouth a serious line of annoyance. “I like this girl. What the hell would I break up with her for?”
I pick an imaginary piece of lint off the front of my button-down dress shirt. “You won’t win any bets if you’re not single. That makes you ineligible.” My knowledge sounds superior.
“What bets?” he inquires, unsure.
“Back in the day, they had betting books in these gentlemen’s clubs—we can use the notepad in Blaine’s’ phone for keeping track of our bets—and noble blue-blooded dudes would keep track of who was doing what, with who, how much money they lost at the gaming tables. We could do the same thing.”
“Can we not keep comparing ourselves to those guys? They lived two hundred years ago—they didn’t have Hulu or Game of Thrones. They were bored and didn’t have phones and only banged their wives to get them knocked up. We have phones. We are not bored—you are. We can bang whoever we want, whenever we want.”
I think he’s completely missing the point. “The point is, let’s have a little fun. Let’s put a few wagers down on paper like they did in the old days.”
Blaine has been quiet for a few moments, finally breaking his silence to say, “I have fun with Bambi.”
Bambi isn’t fun—she’s someone who monopolizes my best friend’s time to the point where he rarely sees us anymore. She tells him when to jump and how high. Some might call her insufferable—I mean, honestly, the woman insists on being named after a fictional cartoon deer.
We’d be doing him a favor if we got him to break up with her.
I study the ice in my glass. “Really? You have fun with Bambi?” I squint in his general direction, clearly skeptical. “Do you though? You can still have sex with someone, but does it have to be the same person?” Does it have to be her?
“Uh—yeah. I like having sex with the same person, you asshole. I’d rather not get a sexually transmitted disease by sleeping around.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“No, I think you are.” Blaine’s dark brown eyes get darker the more pissed off he gets. “You sound sexist and like a woman-hater.”
“Me, sexist? I love women!”
“You haven’t loved anyone since Kayla dumped you six months ago. You’re bitter and nasty.”
So what? Am I not entitled to be hurt?
Kayla was my first true love, the first woman I let myself fall in love with, the first woman I’ve felt anything for. I let myself be vulnerable, let myself get lost in her, let myself depend on her for my happiness.
Then she dumped me without warning.
Ghosted me, really. No texts, no voicemails. Blocked me from her pages and from her life, offering me no closure.
It was devastating.
I ignore Blaine completely. He’s unbearably in like, and right this second, I don’t want to hear about it. “Dude, write this down. Rule 1: No member of the society shall date the same person exclusively while an active member of the society.”
“What if we get invited to something, like a holiday work party?”
“That’s fine, as long as you’re not exclusively dating. That’s what exclusive means, dipshit. Rule 2: No seeing the same woman more than three nights a week. Mix it up.”
<
br /> Blaine nods. I can’t tell if he’s on board just yet or if he’s just being agreeable, but at least he’s entertaining the idea. “Right. Okay.”
“Rule 3,” Phillip adds. “No giving gifts.
“That would be impossible since you have no money.”
He clearly disagrees. “Just so we’re clear, I have some money. I can pay my rent. Shut up.”
Yeah, the rent on his shithole apartment, but who’s judging? We’ve all been there, though I wasn’t as old as he is while I was living in a dump. My first apartment was in an old building and I shared it with two other dudes; we were all in college and scraping by. None of us had jobs, let alone careers.
Benji and Miles were fucking fun roommates. I wonder what they’re up to these days. Should definitely look them up when I get back to the office in the morning…
“Rule 4: No marriage or babies.” Phillip throws this down with a superior tone, crossing his arms and nodding.
Blaine scoffs, sipping his cocktail. “Who the hell is going to have a baby?”
“Uh, I don’t know about you, but my boys are strong swimmers. There’s a chance I’ll get someone knocked up.”
“You better start putting a lid on it then,” Blaine tells Phillip. “No riding it raw.”
Riding it raw. Who are these guys? Jesus.
Certainly no one wants any illegitimate babies running around.
“Rule 5: We don’t speak of the BBS.”
“The what?”
I roll my eyes. “The Bastard Bachelor Society.”
“Oh. Right, I forgot.”
“Rule 6.” Blaine still looks a bit like he’s been whipped, but at least he’s getting into creating the rules, contributing. “Never let a girl wear your BBS smoking jacket—that shit is sacred. Never, not even after sex, and not even if she’s hot as fuck.” He pauses. “Do you think we should have them monogrammed? I have an uncle who knows a guy who owns a place.”
Monogramming the jackets is fucking brilliant. “Hell yeah!”
“Rule 7: These rules are getting borderline ridiculous.” Blaine crosses his arms, still griping like a little bitch.
“Do you want a rad navy velvet smoking jacket or not?” I threaten, because he hasn’t lost his whiney tone since I brought up this idea.
