by Rick R. Reed
I look up and see that a bulldozer has lurched into the road in front of the bus. A hunky construction worker, all hirsute and swarthy, is holding up a stop sign.
Bikes whiz around us.
And I look down to see that the universe has made a decision for me. The sudden halt of the bus caused my finger to touch the screen, sending my message off.
It was meant to be.
I look out the window, squinting at the sun, and realize I’m smiling.
WHEN I get to work, Don’s waiting for me in my cube. He’s looking down at his watch and tapping the face. “You’re late,” he says, with a big grin to show he’s only kidding.
But it’s true. In spite of my best efforts, I’m ten minutes late. If our boss had seen me skulking through the network of cubes to my own home away from home, he would have given me one of his trademark frowns of disapproval, which are just perfect because he’s had so much time and so much practice in getting them just right.
“Yeah, yeah.” I wave Don away with my hand and then sling my messenger bag onto my guest chair. I stoop over my computer to log in. I quickly scan my e-mails to make sure there’s nothing urgent, like a midnight missive from the boss with something that must get done before 9:00 a.m. He’s done it before. I don’t think the man ever sleeps.
Or ever disconnects from work e-mails.
But there’s nothing earth-shattering there. So now that I’m late for work, why not compound the tardiness by immediately leaving my desk to disappear downstairs for fifteen or so minutes?
I smile at Don. “Starbucks run?”
“Why do you think I’m standing in here waiting for you? Honey, you’re not that irresistible.” He rubs his potbelly. “Those blueberry muffins in the bakery case are not gonna eat themselves.” He sighs and heads off toward the elevators just past our lobby. He knows I’ll follow.
“He texted me. Last night,” I say to Don as we stand off to the side from the ordering line at Starbucks, me waiting for my smoked butterscotch latte and he for his Americano and warmed blueberry muffin.
“Who? Chris Hemsworth? Because if that bitch called you before me, I am going to strangle him.”
I laugh. “You’re too much.”
“Well, how should I know who this mystery man is who texted you! Jesus, for a while there, you were hooking up with every Tom and Hairy Dick in town on Adam4Adam.” He wags his eyebrows at me. “Has that changed?”
“It changed months ago. You know that.”
“Yeah, when you got, what was it, chlamydia?”
I look around before I push him lightly. “Shut up!” I glance around again, but everyone is consumed with getting their caffeine fixes. “Someone could hear you.”
“Over that espresso machine? I highly doubt it. Besides, in my day, venereal diseases were a badge of honor.”
“That’s not true. And no one calls them venereal diseases anymore.”
“Okay. Sexually transmitted disease. STD. How’s that?”
“Still wrong. The cool kids are calling them STIs these days, short for sexually transmitted infections.”
“Charming.” Don moves up because his name has been called. I watch as his eyes light up when he claims his Americano and muffin. I know there will be exactly four packets of sugar added to his coffee.
“Anyway,” I say in his ear as I step up beside him to nab my own order. “The waiter I told you about yesterday?”
“Ah. Yes. The little boy who’s far too young for you.”
“Right. That’s the one. Why is it you always remember the wrong stuff?”
“It tickles me,” he says, heading for the condiments counter to load up on sugar.
We finish doctoring our caffeinated beverages, he with sugar and me with half-and-half, and head back upstairs.
He throws my messenger bag on the floor and plops down in my guest chair to have his breakfast and a chin-wag. I know he’ll spew crumbs everywhere. I will wait until he’s back in his own cube and at work—finally—to quietly clean them up. I know all of this because this is usually how we spend the first hour of work here every day, unless something trifling and annoying crops up like a staff meeting or, you know, actual work.
“So what did he say?” Don asks.
“He wants to get together.”
“Do the horizontal bop?”
I shake my head. “It’s not always about sex.” I open the messenger app on my phone to bring up Jimmy’s text.
“It’s always about sex, honey. I would think you, Miss Chlamydia of 2017, would know that.” He giggles.
I shudder. “Will you shut up about that? I’m sorry I ever told you.” I show him the screen. “See? ‘Love to see you.’ Does that sound like a booty call to you?”
Don snickers. “Honey, it’s been so long since I’ve had a booty call, I’m not sure I’d know what one sounded like.”
“Well, that’s your own fault. You need to get out more.” I look him up and down and feel a little sad. Don is about forty pounds overweight, balding, with a kind of wizened, pinched face that makes him appear even older than he is. Picturing him lounging at the Cuff or the Eagle just sends the pathos meter in my heart skyward. I love the guy. I really do, but I also know how youth and beauty obsessed other gay men can be. In short, I know why he no longer goes out, even though he never says.
“Maybe next weekend, I’ll do a bar crawl with you.”
“Okay. That’s the spirit.” I know it’ll never happen. Next weekend he’ll do what he always does—order a Pagliacci pizza and watch some old Douglas Sirk movie on Netflix. Drink a bottle of red wine. Cry himself to sleep. If he gets any action, it’ll be courtesy of Pornhub on his computer. I know all of this because he’s told me. Secretive, Don is not.
“Anyway, I texted him back that maybe we could grab a drink or a bite to eat.” I put my coffee down on my desk and smile. “Tonight.”
“Oh! Look at you. Mr. Proactive! Mama’s so proud. And no questions about top or bottom or what he ‘likes’?”
I grin. “Not yet. I like to ask those in person.”
“When you’re bent over in front of a guy?”
I’m tempted to say that when I’m bent over in front of a guy, such questions would be redundant. Instead I just sigh and turn to my computer to wake it up. Over my shoulder, I say, “Oh, look here. I have a meeting to get ready for. It’s in fifteen minutes.”
“You’re a liar. And I get it.” He gets up and wanders away. The easy thing about my friendship with Don is that he knows when he pushes over the line.
I pull out my phone and check to see if any new text messages have come in. I do that every fifteen—okay, every ten—minutes throughout the day until, at last, my diligence and persistence get rewarded.
I’d love to see you—dinner, drinks, coffee, whatevs. Just shoot me a time and a place and I’ll be there.
Really? I stare dreamily away from the phone, knowing there’s a grin spreading across my face. I curtail it suddenly when I have a bad thought. You know that saying—if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is?
That’s how I feel about this. I know I shouldn’t. I should just look at what I have here and not what I lack. I should be happy instead of wary—because things are turning out just the way I’d like them to.
But a lifetime of disappointments—especially in the romance department—has kind of conditioned me toward being a pessimist. I mean, if you look at the parade of losers who have marched in and out of my bedroom—druggies, thieves, poseurs, liars, cheats—you’d sympathize. I really think you would.
I shake my head and glance out the window. The day has remained sunny, and the light falls in slants down on the Sound, which looks slate blue and churning just a bit from the wind. I shouldn’t do this to myself. Those self-help books that have accumulated on my Kindle all say the same thing: that, basically, perception shapes reality. Our minds and what we choose to focus on really do determine how our lives go.
So I can choose to l
ook at Jimmy as just another loser in a long line of losers and conclude, before I even give him a chance, that things will go to hell in a handbasket and I’ll come away licking my wounds and wishing I’d never met him.
Yeah, I can choose that. And that choice will most likely be reflected on my face as soon as we sit across from each other, face-to-face. And that attitude will carry through, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
See what I mean?
Or….
I can look at Jimmy’s message—so positive, so eager, so cheerful and guileless—as a sign that things are turning around for me. That things are going right. That maybe I’ve been able to meet a guy who’s not only younger than I have a right to, but who’s also hot and actually a nice person. I could anticipate good times ahead rather than dread bad ones.
Where’s the harm in that?
Where indeed?
I have nothing to lose, really, by accentuating the positive. In fact, maybe I can encourage the good to happen by believing in it.
I text him back, swatting away that buzzing, annoying thought that pops up in the back of my brain like a gnat, and decide to simply be positive and proactive. And immediate.
How about tonight? Dinner? Café Mecca? 6:30?
I can’t be much clearer, or more positive and specific, than that. I hit Send.
Before I even set my phone down, it makes its little chime, letting me know I have a text. I look down to see:
Sure. I look forward to it. See you there, handsome.
I smile and laugh a bit to myself, staring at the screen. My laugh must’ve been louder than I thought, because a nasal voice comes at me from the top of the partition that joins Don’s and my cubes.
“You watching porn again?” he whispers. “Group scene? You can tell me.”
I just shake my head. He hurries around the partition, and I hand him my phone, on which the messages are still up.
He plops down in my guest chair and quickly scans. He hands me back the phone. “So lover boy has a date. And tonight? Already? Are you gonna have time to get home and douche?” He snickers.
I’d give him a hard time, but I have a sneaking suspicion he’s a little jealous, so I’ll let him slide.
“It’s a first date, Don. No reason to douche. I’m not like that anymore. Remember?” I don’t know if that’s really true. But it’s fun to tease Don that I am. It hadn’t even occurred to me yet, which I suppose is a bit of progress, that the upcoming evening could end on a sexual note. I was just happy about my good fortune—that all was working out the way I wanted it to. That, and looking forward to seeing Jimmy’s smiling face again.
I know that in the past, my first thought would have been Am I gonna get laid tonight? and it almost makes me worry that I’m becoming an old man… prematurely. I am, after all, only almost forty. In a few months—let’s not rush anything. And as Don says, “Forty is young.”
Or maybe the direction my train of thought is traveling in isn’t a sign of age or waning sexual desire, but of maturity.
“I don’t remember a thing, you whore.” He smiles to soften the name-calling, and I grin back. The reason Don is my best friend is because, not despite, we can say the most horrible things to each other and know it’s all in good fun and, most important, out of love. “But six thirty? Does that even give you time to get home and change?”
“Why do I need to change? I look fine.” I’m wondering if my clothes are too wrinkled or if the day has created bags under my eyes, if I simply look tired… and twenty years older than my prospective date.
And for once, Don isn’t mean or snarky or biting. He leans forward a little. “You do look fine.” He eyes me up and down. “More than fine. Hot.” He leans a little closer and whispers, “And I hate you for it.”
Chapter 5
JIMMY
“YOU LOOK fine. Better than fine. Sweet. Hot.” My roommate, Kevin, gives me the once-over. “I like that T-shirt. Where’d you get it?”
I glance down at my Rat City Rollergirls black tee and note how it hugs my chest and grin. “That thrift store on the Hill. I forget the name. The one on Broadway.”
“Oh yeah, they have good stuff. Great for Halloween.” We’re in the kitchen, and Kevin is making himself dinner—bologna and Velveeta cheese on white bread with pickles and yellow mustard. Just looking at it makes me want to hurl.
But I hold back my gag reflex. We will not entertain why my gag reflex is, for the most part, nonexistent. We will not go there. “So I look okay?”
Kevin sighs and nods. “Oh, quit fishing.” He takes a bite of his sandwich and sets it down on the counter. I have never seen the man actually sit to eat. He turns to rummage around in one of the cupboards and brings out what I assume is his vegetable side dish—a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. He pulls a handful out and sets them on the plate next to his sandwich. He points to his supper. “Now that’s a balanced meal. You got your starch, your protein, and your corn.”
“If you say so.” I grab a Dorito from his plate and pop it into my mouth. They are good.
He pours himself a glass of store-brand cola from a can in the fridge and tells me, “You’re what? Twenty-five?” Kevin himself could be anywhere between thirty and forty. He’s skinny, nondescript—everything on him is a various shade of beige—and almost invisible.
“Twenty-three,” I correct him.
“Okay.” He takes a sip of cola. “When you’re twenty-three, you look good even if you don’t look good. You get me? Youth is always on your side. Even when you put all the crap you put in your body.”
“Which I don’t anymore,” I remind him, maybe a little too harshly.
He holds up a hand in supplication. “I know, I know. And I’m proud of my little recovery poster child. My point is, Jimmy, you couldn’t look bad if you tried. You not only have youth on your side. You have good health. Vitality. And though it pains me to say it ’cause I know it’ll go straight to your head, you’re the kind everybody in the bar hopes they’ll go home with. Which is why they wait until 3:00 a.m. to settle for the likes of me.” He laughs, but there’s a bitter edge to it.
“Don’t talk about yourself that way.”
He waves me away with a sandwich-bearing hand. “Ah! I gave up on illusions about my looks the same time I gave up meth.” He grins. Even his teeth are beige. Thank God I didn’t do enough crystal, or do it for long enough, to have it mess up my teeth. “As Popeye says, ‘I yam what I yam.’” He cocks his head. “And I’m good with that. You know?”
“I do know.” I nab another Dorito, and as I pull my hand away, Kevin slaps it. “You’re going out for dinner! You’re probably getting laid tonight. Can’t you let me have my junk food supper in peace?”
I chew up the Dorito and swallow. “Sorry. Never could resist those things.”
He shoves the bag toward me, and my hand snakes inside, grabbing more. “I don’t know about that last part, though.”
“Getting laid?”
I nod. “Yup.”
“What do you mean? You’re young, hung, and full of come. Or at least that’s the word on the street.”
I snicker. “It’s been a while. You should know that. Your bedroom is next to mine.”
“Honey, that don’t mean nothin’. Time was, when I was getting high, doing it in the bedroom was an oddity. I was more likely to be behind some bushes in a public park or at some adult bookstore or the baths. A bedroom? How quaint! How very Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary!”
We both crack up. It’s good I live with Kevin. Even though he’s usually as quiet as To Kill a Mockingbird’s Boo Radley, Kevin is good for me because he understands the horror of addiction and we can laugh about it. There aren’t many folks in the world I can find that in common with. It’s really a blessing.
Certainly not my date tonight. Marc doesn’t do drugs. Or at least he didn’t the last time we were together, the time I’d rather not think about. I know, because I tried to tempt him.
My gut gi
ves this little queasy lurch, and I taste bile splashing up at the back of my throat. And it’s not because of Kevin’s sandwich.
“What? You just turned white.” Kevin puts his sandwich down.
I let out a shaky sigh and lean against the counter. Suddenly this date seems like a very bad idea. “I shouldn’t go,” I mumble.
“What? Why? I thought this guy was really cute and you liked him a lot.”
“I know, but I barely know him.” I look down at the worn red linoleum of our kitchen floor just as a cockroach scampers by. I think about stomping on it but decide to let the creepy critter live to see another day. I’m magnanimous like that.
Kevin knows a lot of my story. And he sure as hell understands how crystal meth can turn someone into a completely different person—selfish, narcissistic, reckless—so he doesn’t hold my history of homelessness and sometimes crime against me. He knows the Jekyll-and-Hyde effect of the drug on people, knows it firsthand, so he wouldn’t judge. But still, this coincidence of running into Marc, a former trick from back when I was using, an innocent bystander I did wrong, seems like too much to share with my roomie. If I don’t even like looking the demons from my past in the eye, how can I expect Kevin to?
I don’t want to talk about it. “Ah, never mind. Just having first-date jitters.” Even though it’s not technically a first date, I remind myself. I practice what Miriam told me to do when I feel stressed. “It’s simple, sweetie. What you need to do is breathe. In through the nose—deep breath—and out through the mouth. Do that a few times and I promise you’ll calm yourself.” So I do what she told me and—what do you know—it works. I feel calmer, a little more in control. “Things are gonna be okay,” I say to Kevin, who’s just about to head into his own room to do whatever he does on his personal laptop.
“Of course they are.” He puts the loaf of bread back in the cupboard, along with the chips, and then puts the sandwich fixings into our fridge. “Have fun. And be careful. You sure this guy isn’t a user, right?”
