Fickle

by Peter Manus

My plan was to try to get Slenderbuns at closing, and so I called The Blue Pearl from my office to find out that this was eight o’clock—Friday being an “open-late” night. So I worked until then (Lord knows I’ve been overdue for some catch-up time) and hurried over, making sure to arrive around 7:58 p.m. Why such precision? The last thing I wanted was another face-to-face with X—I can’t say I feared the woman after our shadow spar, but I wasn’t sure how philosophical she’d be, away from the surreal atmosphere of his loft and her meds. I figured her for a late worker, and Slenderbuns for the type who punched out on the button, and I wanted to catch him sashaying out the door.

  Of course, I realized (as you have) that this totally blew my idea of having Mysterious Hottie along, but this is what comes of a bloke playing hard to get with his email address. In addition, I cannot say that I didn’t note the poetic justice of blowing him off—he shows up, Cheshire Cat-style, whenever he feels like it, causing me a jolt of discomfort, so now it was my turn to NOT show up unexpectedly. Touché, Mr. Lovely Face!

  Alas and alack, none of my careful plans went my way. I arrived at the Jewelers Building at the designated hour, took the elevator up, did the both-right-then-both-left dance with a tall Jamaican lady wearing a pretty but out-of-season poppy-red chiffon dress, a shortie jacket in faux sealskin and matching hat (yeah, you heard right—a sealskin hat), and way, way too much floral perfume as she got on the elevator and I got off, then hurried down the marble tiles only to find that The Blue Pearl was locked up for the night. I could see a slice of light coming from the back room, and was toying with the idea of knocking for a followup interview with X on what it’s really like to spend Thirteen Years Married to a Philandering White Bisexual, when the truth struck me like a belated knock on the back door of my skull:

  THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT JAMAICAN LADY AT THE ELEVATORS!

  And what was that? The answer came immediately:

  HER ASS WAS WAY TOO THIN FOR ANY SELF-RESPECTING JAMAICAN LADY!

  Yes, mes amis, because that she-Jamaican was a he-Jamaican—Slenderbuns in strappy ho shoes. The little vixen changes—metamorphosizes?—right at work. Why hadn’t that occurred to me?

  So I go racing back down and luck is on my side—my elevator drops like a bucket while Slenderbuns must have been on the vertical milk run. I spot the tail of his tomato-colored hem as he exits the building. That’s when I decide—don’t ask me why but life’s been getting like this—to tail him.

  I wrap my coat around me and button up—somehow that seems like the way to tail someone—and head after him. It’s not hard, what with the glossy sealskin hat bobbing in the air amid the drab wool caps. He (she?) walks very distinctly—going for the subway, without a doubt, which is a relief because you can’t tail someone on a bus. I’m just foraging around in my mitten for a token when I get my second suprise of the evening. Get this, crime fans—I spot the Mysterious Hottie, also tailing Slenderbuns!!!

  How does this tricky bastard always outmaneuver me? My only solace is that I do not believe M.H. has spotted me—i.e., he thinks I made the 4:45 rendezvous and wandered off to sink my chin in latte foam and sulk. I watch him watching Slenderbuns as the three of us pick our way through the commuters milling around Downtown Crossing, and by the time we hit Park Street I’m confident Mysterious Hottie is not aware of my presence. This makes me feel all warm and smug inside.

  Sigh. I’m SOOOO easy.

  Slenderbuns, who gets his share of broad comedy double-takes as he catches men’s eyes and then they pick up on what he’s peddling, leads us on a short ride to where we switch lines at Copley (a sun-ov-o-bitch to pull off undetected), followed by a long ride on the Orange Line—Mysterious Hottie takes the train car one up from Slenderbuns and I scurry onto the car one down from our quarry just in time. I stand where I can spy Slenderbuns’ bobbing foot—the fellow’s ability to cross and then recross his legs just so is like nothing I’ve seen this side of Scarlet Street—so I am well prepared when he finally alights (believe me, “alights” is the only word for it) in a decidely iffy South End/Roxbury neighborhood.

  I don’t see the Mysterious Hottie getting off the train, a fact I find curious but don’t have time to ponder because I’m busy preparing for my inevitable mugging/murder as I hurry up the subway stairs and into the seedy night. Darkness is falling fast, which is actually a comfort in this neighborhood where I stand out like a sore thumb—a very gangbangable sore thumb.

  I follow Slenderbuns down a few garbage-strewn streets—he walks with the same deliberate sway that he’d affected in Downtown Crossing—and then he minces down some steep stairs and enters a sort of club or something. There’s no signage, but I watch a couple of men—with good pecs and highlights—hustle down and enter, and I can hear bar bustle when the door opens, so I figure it’s just a gay bar. I need to think about what I’ll say to Slenderbuns when I “come across” him in said gay club, but I conjure up no opening line so I decide to just go for it. I hurry down the steps, groping in my purse for the undoubtedly outrageous cover.

  I was under the impression that I’d been to gay clubs, but those were just theme clubs where girlie-girls like myself sip chocolate martinis with their boy pals from work. This is a serious gay bar. Lots of midnight purple—walls, seats, bartender’s outfit, stage curtains. In spite of prevalent stereotyping, gay does not guarantee fastidiousness, and I have the sensation of microscopic DNA in the air, waiting to be breathed in. Anyway, unlike the atmosphere when I’ve been out with Noah, which is one of a bunch of guys just giddy with excitement at the rare opportunity to go ahead and get silly in public, here there are all types of men, most of them not fey or pretty at all. The mood is about as sexual as, say, a health club that caters to suburban dads—these fellas are willing to be social, sure, but there’s a sense of purpose in the air that’s not frivolous in the least. I’m the only woman present, a fact that I would not have thought would be so obvious because I’d have figured there’d be a handful of transvestites fluttering around in taffeta, but there are no she-he’s present—even Slenderbuns has disappeared.

  In spite of my feeling of having infiltrated a slice of life where I utterly don’t belong, everyone’s abundantly nice enough to me—the door guy with his shaven head, the grizzle-cheeked bartender, the bar hound who scarfs peanuts on the stool next to mine, etc., etc.—it’s like they are going out of their way to demonstrate that they’re not out for trouble (and, no, they don’t dress in macho-man leather—nary a silver chain, tattoo, or lip stud in the place). I’m tempted to order a whiskey with ginger ale on the side (“and don’t be stingy, baby!”) but instead I order a cosmo for God knows what reason—perhaps to wave the rainbow flag a little—and try to come off like I’m waiting for someone as I sip. Fifteen minutes go by and I am considering bailing when Slenderbuns himself comes to my rescue. He flickers out from behind a sparkly curtain that half blocks a back hallway, slips under the bar’s flap, and pours himself a glass of something from the speed rack. When he raises his head to flash the bartender a smile in acknowledgment of his naughtiness, he spots me. He’s left his dress somewhere and is wearing a circa-1930 negligee—like the silver-screen ladies wear during scenes when us real-life slobs would be schlumping around in sweats. His is an iridescent pink and, I have to admit, a good choice for his skin tone. His wig is gone. In its place is a multicolored kerchief tied in that complicated way all the black girls are doing. He cocks his head, smiles big, and hurries round the bar, clutching his vodka with two hands.

  Slenderbuns: Oh my stars, it’s you (running some fingers down my coat sleeve like I might be an apparition). Are you meeting someone? (His eyes flash to my near-empty drink, then to my eyes, as he gauges how long I’ve been sitting there and how blotto that makes me.)

  Me: (considering what to say and coming to the realization that I am in fact a little drunk) Yes. I mean, I came to see you.

  Slenderbuns: You came here to see me? (tilting head) Did you hear about…? (He flickers his
fingernails in the direction of the shoddy little stage.)

  Me: What? Oh, no, although I’d love to see it. (I try to collect myself—man, they are gracious with their cosmopolitans in this place.) To tell the truth, I followed you tonight.

  Slenderbuns: (gasp—hand to heart) The girl at the lift? I thought that was you. I would have sworn you didn’t make me. Devil you! It’s my ass, isn’t it? So ironic—every woman in the world is trying to carve hers down to what I’ve got, and for me it’s a curse. (He looks ruefully over his shoulder.) But you followed me—I’m dying to know: why, honey?

  Me: I…(I dip my head and smile as a pale-haired businessman I swear I made small talk with at a book fair a month ago stops to exchange a greeting with Slenderbuns. When I get Slenderbuns back I point at the curtained hallway.) Any possibility we could…?

  Slenderbuns: Sure, honey. (He laughs, lifting the hem of his negligee.) A private moment in my dressing room! You make me feel like an absolute starrrrrrrrrrr!

  We go down into a narrow bare-brick hallway lined with naked bulbs, then turn into one of those windowless backstage rooms—long and narrow and vaguely crescent shaped because it wraps around the little rounded stage out front. There’s a ton of costume-related junk—boas and bras and falsies and hats and wigs—all over the place, and a long Formica counter on which has been vomited an endless tangle of makeup, soda cans with cigarette butts stubbed into their rims, and glassy jewelry. Well down the room from where we enter, a man—white, hairy, and about as lithe as a manatee—is standing, one foot propped against the counter as he smokes a cigarette with one hand and runs a razor up his haunch with the other. He’s either totally naked or wearing some sort of nylon thingy—I have no intention of getting a clear view of which—and the momentary glance we give to one another through the quarter mile of clutter sends the message that he’s as interested in seeing mine as I am in seeing his. Slenderbuns drops gracefully onto a metal folding chair, then sweeps something drapey off a comparable chair. He cups his drink in both hands and hunches his shoulders, Monroe style.

  Slenderbuns: Sit. Talk. This is about Stephen?

  Me: Yes. Or I guess I don’t know, actually. When we met in The Blue Pearl, you said something about me being “the girl.” What did you mean by that?

  Slenderbuns: But, honey, why didn’t you just ask?

  Me: Well, when I got a glimpse of Mrs. Pearle and you started steering me toward the door, I thought it wasn’t the right time.

  Slenderbuns: Mrs. Who? Oh, you mean Edie! (He drinks as if to smother a giggle.)

  Me: Why is that funny?

  Slenderbuns: (through the glass) It’s not funny, sweetie. Not a bit, you’re so right.

  Me: Was that woman in the back of the store not Mrs. Pearle?

  Slenderbuns: (slowly licking his lips) I didn’t say that, honey.

  Me: But I met her at Stephen’s loft. She told me they’d been married for thirteen years. Didn’t she tell you about her talk with me?

  Slenderbuns: She doesn’t tell me a thing, the meanie. But you tell me. What was it like?

  Me: (caught by this additional fallacy in my thinking) You’ve never been to Stephen’s loft?

  Slenderbuns: (feeling at the head scarf as he makes big eyes) Me? Why would I go there?

  Me: But I thought you were his…

  Slenderbuns: (wide-open eyes for once looking genuine) Me? Stephen’s lover? Honey, where did you get that? Did Stephen think of me in that way?

  Me: No. I mean, I have no idea how he thought of you. I just thought, from my conversation with Mrs. Pearle, that you were the one he’d had his affair with.

  Slenderbuns: (more wide-eyed staring)

  A couple of boys enter. They crowd past Slenderbuns, tapping his headscarf affectionately. Both are skeletal and total screamers, essentially white versions of Slenderbuns, and they begin doing up their faces as they share a cigarette and complain about some “uberbitch” named Gerri—maybe Jerry, come to think of it. Neither of them gives me more than a glance, but it’s clear my time there is limited.

  Me: Look, forget about the you-and-Stephen idea. What I’m wondering is what you meant when you said that I must be “the girl.” What girl?

  Slenderbuns: (reaches for a pair of brown-toned pantyhose, and spreads his hand inside, checking for runs.) Well, I think of you as “the girl” in Stephen’s life. As opposed to “the boy” in his life—who was most definitely not yours truly. (He’s satisfied with the pantyhose and starts rolling one foot up over his toes, lifting his leg high in the air to do so. I have to say, the guy is so natural about it that it doesn’t strike me as odd in the least, even when his negligee falls back. I can’t help noticing that he waxes, and find myself wondering, fleetingly, what size pantyhose he takes. He’s thin, but God gave this filly a pair of long, muscular calves—and quite a quandary, judging from the shape of his thong.)

  Me: Did you and Edie ever talk about Stephen’s private life? She seemed very open when I met her. Is that where you get this boy-then-girl idea?

  Slenderbuns: Oh, no, no, no. Edie’s a talker, but not to me. I got what I knew about Stephen from Stephen himself.

  Me: (feeling like I’ve hit the mother lode) He confided in you about his love life?

  Slenderbuns: Good lord, no, you silly goose. (He’s finished smoothing on the pantyhose and drops back to his seat, crossing his fantastic legs.) I’m a listener and a watcher. Never at keyholes—nothing crude—but I like to keep my ears open as I go about my own little business. And, well, y’know.

  Me: Y’know what?

  Slenderbuns: (sigh, as if it’s tiresome to have to spell everything out) Stephen did a lot of phoning during the day. Hushed conversations into his celly. Bicker-bicker here. Lovey-dovey there. You can tell when someone’s changing horses, let’s just say, particularly when it’s from a stallion to a filly. (He giggles, then retrieves his drink and drains it.)

  Me: And this gave you the idea that he was with a man, then started up with a woman?

  Slenderbuns: (nodding at me while studying his face in the mirror, apparently planning his makeup campaign) That’s pretty much it, doll.

  Me: Just out of curiosity, what were the signs? I mean, I get the changing horses clues, but from a man to a woman? Come on—you can’t tell me that shows.

  Slenderbuns: Oh, but, honey, it shows, like, most of all. Stephen’s whole tone changed at a certain point. With Blondy he was all boyish. Gay was a whole new thing, see? He was the newbie taking lessons from a stud, and he was grooving at being the stuttering ingenue. When he started up with you, he got, I don’t know, more himself, back to the way he’d learned it, see? And you were younger. Anyone could tell. You were the ingenue. (Here he makes a little hand gesture that is meant to present me as the proof of all his theorizing.)

  Me: (ignoring that for the moment) I think I follow. So did you know the guy—Blondy?

  Slenderbuns: No, honey, contrary to popular belief, us faggots don’t all know one another.

  Me: Then how did you know that he was blond?

  Slenderbuns: (puffing air through his makeup brush) Blond hairs on Stephen’s jacket or sweater. Stephen wore a lot of black, remember?

  Me: (watching him through the mirror as he brushes rouge on his cheeks) So you didn’t know anything about the male lover except he was blond.

  Slenderbuns: (rubbing some stuff over his eyes that makes the skin shine) You’re totally off, hon. I know exactly who the male lover was.

  Me: But you just said you only knew him because of the hairs.

  Slenderbuns: (rolling his eyes) That’s how I homed in. I saw him several times, however.

  Me: (gesturing) In a place like this?

  Slenderbuns: Oh, no, hon. Not Stephen’s speed. Fact, that’s probably why Blondy got tired of him. You decide to go gay, best to go gay. None of this hiding in the mainstream nonsense. No, I saw the two of them together in a business capacity.

  Me: (wonderingly, although it instantly clicks in my
head that this jibes with what X had said about the “boy from work”) Stephen started up with someone he did business with?

  Slenderbuns: We can be discreet, you know. I didn’t catch on that they were lovers at that time; I didn’t even spot the man as gay, and I have superb gaydar, if I do say so. I just thought Stephen was incredibly solicitous of him, like maybe he represented some fabulous commission or was some rich client’s son. Then, when I figured out that Stephen was “dabbling” and caught on that his partner was blond, it all fell into place.

  Me: But what about the girl? You can’t say you ever saw me with Stephen—that I know.

  Slenderbuns: (his eyes glazing a little) I’m seeing you now, aren’t I? So that makes me the lucky winner of the Sighting Stephen Pearle’s Lovers contest. Ding, ding, ding, where’s my prize? (I go to respond but he cuts me off.) Look, I don’t want to rush you off, honey-bunch, but I have a face to put on, right?

  Me: But…(not seeing the point of straightening him out on who I was and was not, particularly if I’m about to get the heave). Okay, let me ask you this. What made you think I was Stephen’s lover when you met me in the shop? I mean, that took some deducting on your part.

  Slenderbuns: (without hesitating) You’re the type.

  Me: His wife’s a black woman. His first lover’s a blond male. This is a guy who had a type?

  Slenderbuns: No, no, sugar: the type he started designing for these past months. Modest. Uptight. Classy.

  Me: I’m classy? And here I’ve just reconciled myself to “boring but slutty.”

  Slenderbuns: (big sigh like I’m fishing for compliments) Tennis bracelets. Princess necklaces. Pearl drop earrings. Moonstones and platinum. (He flicks a hand in my direction.) Lovely, and easy to sell, but a tad boring, dare I say, without hurting your feelings too, too terribly?

  Me: And that was it? You saw me and it reminded you of the jewelry Stephen was designing?

  Slenderbuns: Ain’t that enough, honey? Shall I suddenly remember a tattoo of your initials that I noticed on his left cheek at the racquet club?