by Cara Bruce
We lie entwined for a few moments. The sounds of the waves hit the shore just a few hundred yards away, nearly drowning out our heavy breathing. I relish this feeling of male weight on me, of callused hand on my breast. I allow a few minutes to pass before I begin stirring, moving him off me. He tries to hold me back, but I say, “No. No, my husband is probably beginning to wonder where I am. He gets so jealous.” I marvel at how easily these words tumble out of my mouth—my husband. I wrap the sarong around me, tie the ends around my neck, and kiss him one last time before I leave the little cabana, home of our brief tryst.
It’s just barely dark as I make my way across the pool area, up the stairs to the elevator that will take me to our room on the top floor of this hotel at the southernmost end of the Baja Peninsula. I open the door quietly, thinking Greg is asleep, but across the room I see the red tip of his cigarette.
“Well,” he says, taking a long drag.
“Well what?”
“Don’t play innocent. I saw you disappear with that bartender into the cabana.” He stands up. “Slut, I can still smell him on you!” He jumps on the bed and begins bouncing. “Adulterer!” he screams, and I jump up to join him, laughing.
“Oh baby, I never knew adultery could feel so good.” We tumble on the bed and I give him all the juicy details, loving that special friendship, that bond, that only a gay man and a bisexual woman can know.
We never intended to marry. It was actually the flight attendant’s fault. By the time the plane boarded, we were already drunk. A two-hour delay and three margaritas later, we were headed south. And so when the attendant came by to take our drink order, Greg said, “A bottle of bubbly,” and she asked, “Honeymooners?” Greg looked at me and then replied, “No, our one-year anniversary.” He saw the question in my eyes and leaned forward to whisper, “I bet we get a free bottle.”
She smiled at us, opened the bottle, and poured our glasses, sighing, “Oh, to still be so in love. On the house!” As she continued down the aisle we laughed at our ruse and drank the whole bottle, so that by the time we landed, we were firmly entrenched in our deceptive role of husband and wife.
We were running away from the never-ending February rains of San Francisco. Our melatonin-deprived bodies screaming for sun and the azure waters of the Sea of Cortez.
The concierge was patient with us, used as he must have been to drunk arrivals. He told us our room was at the back of the hotel and Greg said, “Señor, there must be a mistake, I booked an oceanfront suite.”
The concierge tried to explain they were completely booked, but Greg pleaded. “But it’s our anniversary, there must be something….” The man behind the desk smiled, nodded his head, and then said the only suite left was the honeymoon, which he’d give to us for just $200 extra, well below the going rate.
“For my wife, the world,” and Greg took my hand and kissed it lovingly. We were high from the champagne, the lie, and the thought of our inflated stock options waiting for us back home.
Xavier took us to our room, a lovely corner suite on the top floor with a balcony, a sunken tub, and one large, king-size bed. We giggled at our new sleeping arrangement, hastening the departure of Xavier, who mistakenly sensed an amorous scene unfolding before his eyes.
We spent our days lounging by the pool, drinking tequila sunrises at 11 A.M., margaritas at 1, and piña coladas at 4. It was on the second day, into our second colada, that I leaned over to Greg and murmured, “We should have a fight. I want a tempestuous marriage.”
He replied, “I think you want to get rid of me so you can get laid.” He stood suddenly, knocking over the chaise longue, and yelled, “Fine, I’m leaving,” winking at me as he strode by, all eyes around the pool on us.
That was how I found myself at the bar, playing the role of poor wife, Heyzeus pouring me drink after drink in sympathy as I told him in hushed tones of my husband the philanderer, my unhappiness after one year, my need for a real man. And he took it upon himself to relieve me of my sorrow for two wonderful hours in that cabana by the beach.
Greg and I dress for dinner. It is our last night in Cabo; our brief respite is coming to an end. We walk down the hill into town, holding hands. At the restaurant he buys me roses and when the waiter asks if we are honeymooners, we explain—No, un aniversario de un año. The complimentary drinks arrive. We are now used to working this anniversary thing, having been let mistakenly into the marriage club, where membership obviously has its privileges—the free dinners, the daily fruit basket at the hotel, the drinks, and, Christ almighty, the illicit sex.
“Let’s go dancing,” I say after dinner. “I bet we could find a gay bar.”
Greg quickly says, “There is one just a couple of blocks from here.”
“And you know this…how?” I ask.
“Well, you’re not the only one indulging in extramarital activity, you know.”
Greg leads the way, and we are disappointed when we see the line to get in. We decide to try our luck elsewhere and wander the harbor until we pass a door, and hear that undercurrent of heavy bass beat, and I notice the small, nondescript rainbow flag hanging by the entrance.
It is wall to wall boys, and as we enter I see the heads turn in our direction. There are no women to be seen. We make our way to the bar and order a round of Tecates. We find a table and Greg yells to me, “I don’t know about this.” I just smile back at him and kiss him on the cheek. We are soon approached by a short, balding man who sits down with us.
“I’m Max, the owner,” he says, extending his hand, and we make our introductions. He wants to know how we found his club, where we are from, how long we are in town for. Greg is sitting across the table from Max and me, and lets me do all the talking. The music is so loud that I have to lean completely into Max and practically press my lips against his ear for him to hear me. Greg looks around the club, seemingly bored to anyone who doesn’t know him, but I know he is cruising the clientele.
“So what are you really doing here?” Max says.
I pause before I answer. “Well, the truth of the matter is, Greg and I are here in Cabo for our one-year anniversary.” I find that, even at this club, it’s impossible to let go of the lie.
“Why a gay bar?” Max asks.
“This is a little embarrassing, but I might as well tell you.” I take a breath before I continue. “It has always been my fantasy to watch Greg have sex with a man. And for my anniversary present, he has finally consented.” We both look over at Greg, who is quite ignorant of what I have just told Max.
“Really.”
“Really. But he’s a little freaked out by it, and I think he just needs to be seduced, coaxed into it. He’s never done anything like this before.”
“Really.” I can see I have Max hooked.
“Do you know that man standing at the bar by himself?” And Max turns to see where I am looking. “He’s quite attractive.” I know Greg’s type: tall and dark, to balance his blond Midwestern good looks.
“Ah, Roberto. I think I might be able to help you out here.” Max excuses himself.
Greg smiles at me and yells, “Having fun?” I nod my head and out of the corner of my eye see Max talking to Roberto. They look over at us and Roberto waves. I wave back. “Hey, do you see that guy at the bar, the one talking to Max? He’s pretty hot.” Again I nod my head in agreement, trying to hide my smile.
Max heads back to the table, with Roberto in tow. They both sit down and Max introduces Roberto to us. Roberto extends his hand to Greg and as they shake, he holds Greg’s hand longer than necessary and looks him straight in the eye as he says, “Mucho gusto.” I almost fall out of my chair as Greg turns bright red and begins to stammer, while Roberto launches into full-press charm mode.
We have a few more rounds on Max, and then Roberto says, “Can I give you a lift back to the hotel?”
I feign exhaustion and say, “Greg, honey, I think I am a little tired.” The three of us leave the bar, and I walk between them, holding thei
r hands. We climb into his car and I tell Roberto we are at the Terra del Fin.
“Bueno, nice place,” Roberto says with a smile.
I touch his arm. “Roberto, you should come back to our room and see the view. It is truly one made for love.” He agrees. Greg is silent in the back of the car. I am sure he hates me at the moment, wondering why I would torture him like this.
We are outside the door to our room when I say, “I think I’ll go get some ice. You boys make yourselves comfortable.”
I return moments later and stand hesitantly at the door. I hadn’t really thought far enough in advance to know what I would do at this moment. Do I play the voyeuristic wife? I turn the handle and walk into a dark room. I see the outline of their bodies on the balcony, the moon shining bright behind them. They are standing shoulder to shoulder, and I feel my nipples harden against my bra. I pour two drinks and walk out to join them.
Greg is visibly nervous with my presence. We look at one another, trying to gauge whether or not our “marriage” is ready for this next step. Roberto moves closer to him and touches his arm. I take Greg’s hand and place it over Roberto’s crotch. I can feel his hard-on through the rough, cotton material of his pants, and I kiss Roberto on his lips. I pull away just as Roberto tries to squeeze my ass, saying, “No, I am just going to watch.”
I see Greg’s hand cupping Roberto, and I guide Roberto’s hand toward Greg’s crotch. He is hard as well. Roberto leans in and kisses Greg, at first softly but then more passionately. Greg’s hand moves from Roberto’s crotch to his ass, pulling him closer. Their bodies press into each other, hard cock to hard cock. Their tongues continue to dance. They are so consumed that they have become oblivious to my presence.
My role of wife instigating sexplay is complete. I clear my throat to interrupt their moment. I lean over to Greg, kiss him on the lips, and whisper, “Happy anniversary.”
My nipples ache as Roberto and Greg again begin kissing softly, and then with a voraciousness I have never seen. My hand slides over my breasts and down to my cunt. I am wet, I am hot, and I am completely forgotten by the two men in front of me.
I leave the balcony, and then the room. I head down the hall, hearing the door close behind me.
I decide to go to the bar to figure out how I’ll occupy myself for the next few hours. I see from the top of the stairs that Heyzeus is working the bar again, and it’s not too busy. I sit down in front of him, and he is surprised I am alone, though not disappointed.
“Tu esposo?” he asks.
I drop my head, shake it slowly, and pretend to dab my eyes with the lime wedge I have in my hand. When I lift my head back up, I have tears in the corners, and I say, “Oh Heyzeus, esta borracho—stinking, falling-down borracho.” And he takes my hand and spits out, “Your husband is mierda.” I shake my head in agreement and smile to myself, knowing the next few hours will pass just fine.
Night on Twelfth Street
Marilyn Jaye Lewis
In the half-light before dawn, the double bed jostles me from sleep, shaking with a distinct rhythm, like riding the double L train from First Avenue into Canarsie. It’s Manny jerking off again. Lately he seems to need this furtive sexual stimulation before dashing off to work at the last minute—strictly solitary sex is what he’s after. Sex that doesn’t involve me, that lands his jism in a T-shirt, the T-shirt winding up in the tangle of sheets for me to discover later when I’m alone. And I’m the one who he says is possessed by demons. Nympho demons, the kind of demons his aunt, the Mother Superior, warned him about when he was a teenaged Catholic boy in Buffalo. He’s only twenty now, six years younger than me.
Manny came into my life almost as an afterthought, like an unwanted conception late in life, and I can’t figure out how to get him to leave. Whenever I suggest it might be time for him to move out of my little hellhole on East Twelfth Street and find a home of his own, he punches me repeatedly and starts smashing dishes that are irreplaceable heirlooms from my favorite dead grandmother.
The one nice thing about this Catholic boy, though, is that he’s so hung up on his Catholic upbringing that he’s psychologically incapable of coming in a girl’s mouth. I can suck him until the proverbial cows come home and never have to swallow so much as a drop of his spunk. The sin of wasting his seed in this specific way weighs heavy on his conscience. But all the other sins have found a home in him.
His soul is blacker than tar, mostly because his mind is so fucked up. Let’s face it, he’s too inquisitive to be Catholic, but he was raised by a father who beat him regularly, who alternated between using a leather belt on his ass and bare fists on his face, and a mother who was a sister to the top nun. It’s left a seemingly permanent schism in his psyche. Four months ago, he was a straight-A student at the university, studying to be an architect. Now he works as a ticket-seller in a gay porno movie house over by the West Side Highway. It’s run by the mob and it’s the only gay porno house left with a backroom for sex in these days of AIDS.
There are a lot of things about Manny that don’t make sense if you weren’t raised Catholic, which I wasn’t. Still, I’ve heard him babble on enough these last couple of months to put the pieces together. He started out a trusting little boy with a good heart, but dogma has doomed him to a destiny of sociopathic perversion. I try to tell him to get over it already, that this isn’t Buffalo anymore, it’s New York City. Here he can be whoever he wants to be. Sometimes he listens to me intently and makes love to me in the dark as if he’s starving for a sanctity he believes he can find in a woman’s body. Other times the black cloud rolls over his face and the fist flies out, connecting with my cheekbone.
It was never my intention to save Manny from himself, just to lead him to the vast waters of the variety of human experience and let him drink. But the variety proved to be too much for his conscience. Sometimes, without my knowing it, the things I’d want to do to him in bed would push him over the edge, and instead of succumbing to orgasm I’d end up dodging his fists. Lately I don’t have the strength to wave so much as a white flag. I’m reduced to trying to read his mind and staying the hell out of his way.
I like it when Manny’s at work. I like the fact that the movie house is open around the clock and that his shift in the little ticket-taker’s booth is twelve hours long. It doesn’t matter a bit to me that he’s back to doing blow, either. Even though it makes me spit each time I discover he’s stolen my hard-earned money from my wallet, I’d rather he spent all night in the horseshoe bar on East Seventh Street without me. Then he’s more likely to skulk around the Lower East Side looking for more blow at four o’clock in the morning, increasing the risk of landing himself in the Tombs again. He hates the violence of the Tombs. He’s come out of there sobbing. But having him locked in that mad monkey house is preferable to having his unpredictable rage lying next to me in bed.
I wish I could get him to give me back my key. I wish I could afford a locksmith to change the lock on my door. I’m going to find a way to get him out of here. I’m going to do it soon. Ruby’s band is back from their tour of northern Africa and Marseilles. She’s trying to quit junk again, which means she wants to have sex with me. It’s her pattern, and I’ve come to count on it. I love her so much it’s scary.
I can’t explain why I love Ruby. We have next to nothing in common. We don’t seek the same highs. We don’t like the same music. When we’re lying in bed together we run out of things to say. I don’t hang out in dyke bars like she does. I don’t wear black leather. Even our tricks are from different worlds. I don’t venture into the park after midnight to support a heroin habit. A cheap handjob in the shadows is not for me.
My tricks are uptown men who shoot their spunk in broad daylight. Restaurateurs, or entrepreneurs, wealthy men whose emptiness is too complex for what can be gotten in ten minutes at twenty bucks a pop behind some bushes. Ruby wouldn’t fare well in those uptown luxury apartments. She’s not OK with being handcuffed. She doesn’t own a pair of high heels. H
olding onto a man’s dick in the dark is the limit of what she can stomach. Pussy is where her heart lies.
The first time I made out with Ruby, in a toilet stall in CBGB’s, I didn’t know she was on junk. I only knew she was a good kisser, which was why I’d followed her into the stall. We didn’t do anything wild in there; we didn’t unzip our jeans or pull up our T-shirts—we just kissed. But kissing Ruby was enough to make me fall in love. Her face close to mine like that, her brown eyes closing when our lips touched, her dark hair brushing lightly against my face, then the soft groans in her throat as our bodies rubbed against each other in that suggestive rhythm. Only now do I understand why she seemed to be in slow motion. It wasn’t some trance of Eros; it was the gold rushing through her veins.
I didn’t want to compete with the junk. I wanted the whole girl. When I told Ruby that, we didn’t kiss again for a year. I blew my money that year on the gypsies on Avenue C. Mostly on the youngest girl, the fourteen-year-old with the stray eye. I paid her to hold my hand in her lap, palm up, and tell me a pack of lies. I was too in love to leave anything to chance. I wanted my destiny spelled out for me. I wanted Ruby to come to her senses. She did, after three men in the park raped her one night. She called me collect from the pay phone in the emergency room at Beth Israel. She was ready to try it another way.
She moved back in with her mother in Queens. Six weeks later, she showed up on East Twelfth Street, doubtful-seeming, though her veins were clean.
If Ruby could find a way to keep off smack for good, there wouldn’t be cracks in my world, where vermin like Manny could wriggle in when I’m blind on bourbon, crying for myself. It’s not that I kick Ruby out when she’s shooting up, it’s that she stops coming around. So I plug up the holes with whomever I can find. But now I have this dilemma: I want Ruby back in my bed. Nothing compares to her.
The first night Ruby and I made love, it was the height of summer. Salsa music blaring from some Puerto Rican’s boom box clashed with the tin calliope sounds of an ice cream truck parked under my open window. But in my double bed at the back of the flat, the intrusions of the neighborhood faded. It was finally just Ruby and me—both of us sober.
