by Kris Ripper
She sighed in my ear. “Son, you miss a lot, don’t you?”
“Considering you haven’t actually said anything, I don’t think my failure to grasp what you haven’t said reflects badly on me.”
“Anyone looking at them can see what they mean to each other. Surely you’ve noticed that they’re bound to eventually announce their engagement.”
The air left my lungs. I deflated like a whoopee cushion. “Oh.”
“You do understand…I know you and Alex have always been close, but you must have known he would eventually find someone. That he’d fall in love.” Another loaded pause. “Justin?”
“Of course they’re in love,” I snapped. “And obviously I was the first to fucking notice that, thank you, Mother. They’re my best friends.”
The phrase best friends had sneakily crept into my vocabulary in the couple of months since I’d acquired other friends. I’d needed a way to differentiate Alex and Jamie from entry-level friendship. In college, someone had mistaken Alex and I for brothers, and an awkward, horror-struck moment had passed during which I’d almost blown my big secret and shouted I’m fucking in love with him, you asshole, he’s not my goddamn brother!
Weird, about that being my big secret. Though I supposed, with regards to Ma, it still was.
“I didn’t mean anything,” she said stiffly. “Peppe and I thought maybe you knew more than we did about their plans, that’s all.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, away from the speaker. “I haven’t heard anything about weddings or announcements.”
“That’s all I wanted to know.”
We spoke with a sort of wooden, artificial politeness for another minute or two before getting off the phone to our—I’m sure mutual—relief.
Christ. Marriage. I poured myself a moderate amount of whiskey and drank it morosely, contemplating modern queerness. Anyone who wanted to get married should be able to. Full stop. Except that after investing so much in marriage equality, we’d incurred both its best and worst traits. Yes, the permanently coupled among us were more legally stable now. Yes, we were all seen as more human, less freakish. Yes, queer families were more valid in the eyes of the Everyman. To say nothing of being more protected by law. And I didn’t discount the value of any of that.
But then there was also this: two queer people in love were expected to marry. Sure, Alex had fallen for a woman, but the conversation I’d just had with my mother would have happened no matter who he fell in love with. Because marriage was the Ark of the motherfucking Covenant, and no one escaped the hunt.
Jamie had joked about it. About the three of us. Our three-way wedding, she’d said. For which Alex would wear a dress.
He’d look spectacular in a wedding dress. Alex wasn’t a cross-dresser, and he wasn’t trans. He was a cis dude who enjoyed skirts. And the occasional dress. He probably wouldn’t wear one to his wedding. But then again, he might.
Fuck me. I poured a little more whiskey in my glass and recommenced hating everything.
* * *
I could have finished reading Hazeltine’s essays at home, but I didn’t. Maybe I should have. It would have saved me the awkward moment when Chad looked over and noticed me crying at my desk.
“The fuck is wrong with you?”
I ignored him and turned to the computer. I hadn’t googled the pictures before. It was enough that I knew they existed. I’d even thought they might be hard to find, considering they were of a dead man. But of course they popped right up.
Chad came around behind me. “Who’s that?”
Seriously. Visual artists. The caption actually said Enrico Hazeltine, as taken by his lover, Samuel G.
“It’s Hazeltine. After he died.”
“Holy shit.” He leaned in closer. “Why the fuck does he look like he just got out of Auschwitz?”
“Jesus, Chad. What if my great-grandfather was in Auschwitz?”
He glared at me. “Bullshit your great-grandfather was in Auschwitz.”
Neither of my great-grandfathers had been anywhere near Poland during the war. As far as I knew. I suppose it was possible, theoretically. “The point is, stop being a culturally insensitive asshole. And he died of AIDS.” Additional cultural insensitivity in five, four, three, two…
“Fuck.” Huh. He didn’t sound as totally disgusted as I’d expected. “Those guys were so goddamn young. What’s he, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Chad shook his head. “Kid was more fucking talented than ninety-five percent of artists making shit right now. Dead at twenty-seven. Christ, what a waste.” He reached over for the mouse, blissfully unaware of things like boundaries and personal space. “All of these pictures are him dead?”
“He asked his friends to take them. I just finished the last essay he wrote before he died. He wanted to become his work, he said.”
“Yeah. The longest goddamn night.” He paused on one with a stooped old lady holding Hazeltine’s dead hand to her forehead. “That his mother?”
“He was estranged from his mother. I think that’s his ex-lover’s mother. They were together for a long time.” Off and on. For a very non-exclusive flavor of together. But they’d hustled together, and fallen in and out of love with each other, and Hazeltine’s books had always looped around to a few particular characters from his life.
I’d had an incredibly sexy dream once about Hazeltine and this woman’s son. I forced my brain to veer away from that before I blushed.
“You read a lot about this guy, huh?” Chad’s gaze landed on me at point-blank range.
“I knew about him before you mentioned him to me. But yeah, I bought the books I hadn’t read. It’s so…depressing. There was so much he wanted to do. Travel, have adventures, make art, change the world. He never stopped coming up with things he wanted to draw, or paint, or make, or photograph. His early essays are pretty dark, because his life was pretty dark, but they always had this underlying hope. Like he knew things would get better.”
“And then they got worse,” Chad said flatly.
“It’s more that they just…ended. All of his hopes. Everything he planned to do. Over.” Fuck, do not cry while Chad is staring at you. “He dictated his last essay. Because he couldn’t hold a pen long enough to write it.”
So, the not crying in front of Chad idea failed.
I swiped at my eyes. “Anyway, I think he’d like what you were trying to do. I think he’d appreciate you reinterpreting a piece that meant so much to him. And I know he’d want someone to get The Shortest Day into the world in some form.” I paused and went for broke. “You’re not pissed I didn’t tell you he was gay?”
“The fuck do I care who he liked to screw? Plus, I could tell you were up to something. Figured it’d be the gay thing.”
Okay, setting aside how obnoxious it was that I was somehow transparent to Chad of all people, I thought he was handling everything pretty well.
Until he tapped the screen and said, “Did he have to wear a fucking nightgown, though? Jesus Christ.” He pushed away—thank god—and walked back to his clay table, where he was playing with different possible designs.
I studied the picture a little longer. It was a hospital gown, of course. One of the man’s feet stuck out of his blanket, bare and bruised-looking. For whatever reason, that was the worst part of the picture for me. Not his lifeless face or the woman weeping over his hand, but his bony, dead foot.
Since the whole project was for work I didn’t mind sitting there a little longer, crying on company time.
Chapter Sixteen
MAYBE I’D BEEN too quick to nix sex.
Not in general (heaven forfend, as Cork would say). But with Alex and Jamie.
Technically, we’d done it twice, and both times the sex part of being with them had been fine. Or good. Doable. Amazing. Whatever.
The part where everything got screwed up had to do with feelings and history and all that crap. But there was really no reason we couldn’
t fuck like normal people. They’d fucked plenty of people who weren’t each other since they got together. I’d fucked plenty of people who weren’t them since always. It shouldn’t be that big a deal to just…do that. But the three of us.
It was at least worth a shot. Because not fucking them was…dissatisfying. In new ways. My hands sought their skin and my body wanted to curl around them, wanted them curled around me. I kept having to force-quit thoughts like that and I resented it.
So.
I bought a bottle of wine and Thai food, and texted them that I was providing dinner if they felt like coming over. Very casual. Then I pretended that my stomach wasn’t fluttering (because I was just planning to get laid, which did not make me nervous), and that if this didn’t work, I’d just hit a bar.
Sex. With my friends. Whom I’d actually banged before. No down side.
The last time I’d seen them they’d been dropping me in front of my apartment after we spent the entire week at the Saints house. I caught myself trying to wear a shirt that complimented my choker and put it back, reaching instead for a battered Save a mouse, eat a pussy tee that had been worn at different times by all three of us.
Fuck. No goddamn feelings, no history, no complications. What the hell was wrong with me?
But I kept the shirt on. It seemed to suit the mood I was going for. Then I became momentarily lost in the idea of, you know, eating pussy. Which sounded like a reasonable and sane proposal.
Could I lead with that? I thought I’d wine and dine you and then go down on you. Questions?
Alex would love it. Would love me. Doing that. Doing Jamie.
I would love it. Probably. I couldn’t imagine not loving fucking Jamie, no matter how we did it.
Also, probably I should have something apart from boxers on when they arrived. Alternately, I could just don a trench coat over my hard, naked body. Except I didn’t have a trench coat and the food would get cold.
The food was getting cold. Where the hell were they?
I was freaking out. I opened the wine and had a glass. Then I stopped, because drinking all the wine you bought to share was tacky.
They finally knocked, thank fuck, saving me from any more contemplations about how much wine was acceptable to leave for guests, or what it’d actually be like to go down on a woman, or if it was weird I didn’t have shoes on.
The first thing both of them did was take off their shoes. Everything was going to be fine.
I’d planned to be suave, and controlled, and wait until after we ate to say anything, but what actually happened was they unpacked the food, I poured the wine, and as I was putting their glasses in front of their plates I said, “I think we should fuck.”
Then, because that’s not the kind of thing a man can back away from once he’s said it, I added, “Tonight.”
Jamie’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that right?”
I shrugged. “I think I was maybe too hasty. Before.”
“You mean when you said we were too good for your, and I quote, slutty ways?”
“Er, right. Yeah. That was…potentially inaccurate.”
She stepped up to me, letting our clothes, but not quite our bodies, brush against each other. “I’m pro-slut. You may recall.”
“Uh. Yes.” We were almost undoubtedly both remembering the same drunken not-fight our first year of college. It had been loud, and intense, but since we both agreed about slutting around being a positive value, it hadn’t been an argument. More like we were both arguing the same side of fights we’d had with other people.
That was before I was willing to admit that we were friends, when we’d done a lot of loud talking at one another in tones that scared other people away.
I glanced at Alex, who was watching us, warily, much as he’d watched us then. “That was a stupid thing to say. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. But what changed?”
“Uh, well, I kind of…got my head out of my ass?”
“Is that it?”
This was not the brief. Dammit. But I couldn’t do this under false pretenses, either. Mostly because I didn’t think I could fool them. And also it would probably be wrong or something. “Just, we’ve had sex before. Seems like we should be able to have sex again. And anyway,” I added, suddenly inspired, “maybe it’s the Saints house screwing things up. Figured we could try a change of scenery.”
Jamie leaned into my space and inhaled, slowly, like I smelled better than Thai food and she was savoring it. Savoring me. “I do like the current scenery quite a bit.”
This was not the brief. I shoved her. “The food’s getting cold because you two took forever to get here.”
“Jame worked late. Again.”
She held up her hands. “It’s this case. But it’s almost to the point where it’s well out of my hands, and then I can resume my normal life again.”
Cue small talk. Or whatever small talk is when it’s with people whose lives you’re genuinely interested in. It’s strange that the same “here’s how my day was, how was yours?” conversation can have an entirely different tone based on who’s involved and how much you care about them.
Oh god. I was letting my precious hold on casual slip. Damn. I applied myself to eating. And drinking a bit more wine.
* * *
The wine helped. Booze always helps. The idea of booze always helps; two actual glasses of wine weren’t exactly going to make me sloppy. But it did relax me to have a glass of wine in my hand. And it may have made me just brave enough to say, “We’ve never fucked in my bed before.”
“This is exciting.” Jamie smiled, but I couldn’t trust it. Not entirely. It was the kind of smile that spelled out words I didn’t recognize, maybe in a different language, but familiar, as if I could almost decipher them. “How are you planning to seduce us, baby?”
I made a face. “Ew, Cork.”
“Hey, this is your show. And your place, as you pointed out.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “What’re you in the mood for, big boy?”
“Oh my god, not you calling me weird things. Jesus.” I wanted her. I wanted both of them. But I was too chickenshit to deliver the line about going down on her and she hadn’t left me any Eat a pussy shirt-related openings in that direction. So I turned to Alex and said, “You want to make out?”
It felt a little tiny bit like a cop-out…but then he bit his lip and it felt oh so very fucking right.
Making out with Alex. Yes. Win.
Jamie made a…noise. Sound. Breathy sort of mmmm. “Hot.”
I couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t actually replied yet. Leaving me slightly awkward. But if they were just normal people, acquaintances, friends I didn’t have all these annoying feelings about, I wouldn’t have paused for a return telegraph.
So I didn’t. I stood up, and grabbed his hand, and tugged him toward my bedroom.
I’d totally underestimated how much more serious this would feel in my bedroom. Shit.
No, block it out. Do the thing. I shoved him down on the bed and got ready to thoroughly ravish him. Except where the hell was Cork?
“Are you coming?” I called. “Cork, I swear to god, if this is some dumb bullshit about how you don’t have to be—”
Urghlllph. Jamie McGowan, sex god, lounging in my doorway. In her…oh my. One wonders what the point of underwear even is if it’s going to be all lace and nothing much else.
“Also, we had to meet at the house so I could change my clothes,” she said. “Sorry the food got cold, Jus.”
“Uhhhhhmmmm. Ne’rm’nd.”
To think that I had once been a man who was firmly not attracted to women. Hard to remember why at this exact moment. “You…” are so fucking sexy I can’t think “…match.”
“Sure do.” She snapped the straps of her dark red bra, which made her breasts…move. Shift. Not quite bounce. Draw my attention.
Alex cleared his throat. “For the record, I picked those out. Just so I get credit, too.”
I recovered my abi
lity to breathe and turned back to him, blinking a bit as if to clear an afterimage from my vision. “And I’m certain I’d like them on you, too, Alexander, but I’m not sure you’d quite compete with Cork.”
“We could find out?” He pulled his shirt off.
That had potential. “You want to be my puppets?”
Mayday, mayday, this is not “pick up a random trick in a bar behavior.” And it wasn’t. But…
Wait. I turned back to Jamie. “Hey. We have a no sex rule. Why are you all—” I gestured. “You planned ahead.”
“Technically you have a no sex rule with us. Alex and I have sex all the time. If you weren’t prepared to put out, maybe we would have found someone who’d appreciate my sexy bra-and-panties set.”
I blinked. “I had the same Plan B. If this didn’t work out. Wouldn’t it have been extremely awkward if we’d run into each other while shopping for meat?”
“Maybe it would have been a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
Alex cleared his throat again. I was still staring at Jamie when he announced, “In case you guys care, I’m naked.”
We cared.
I felt a strange sort of possessiveness, looking at him on my bed. Not exclusive of Cork, but entirely alongside her. She’d accused me of liking skinny dominant boys, but the truth was that skinny dominant boys were merely the lowest common denominator of people who didn’t painfully remind me of Alex.
Alex, who was neither skinny nor dominant. Who was certainly my type. Or he was the prototype, and everything else was a departure.
“You have too much clothing on for this party,” Jamie purred in my ear. Yes: purred. I couldn’t tell if she was pretending, but I felt the need for a certain amount of bravado.
The thing I wanted was for Alex to don Cork’s lacy underthings and undress me slowly. I could picture it, picture him, and I wanted her eyes on us, wanted her touching herself as she watched.
But that was not in the brief.
Neither was going down on her.
Things we’d done before: I’d fucked each of them, separately, in the most straightforward of ways: I had put my dick in their bodies. I was almost certain I’d blown Alex the night we’d been drunk; I knew he’d blown me, or at least that he’d teased me with his mouth before I’d somehow ended up pussy-deep in Jamie.
