I still hadn’t had the chance to open J.J.’s gift, and as I collected plates and utensils and the like, my eyes kept being drawn to the beautiful, orange, almost papyrus-like wrapping paper and the simple yellow cloth bow. I was dying to open it, but part of me also wanted to save the surprise. Partially because I didn’t want to feel rushed by Buck’s waiting to feed, but also because the tantalizing secret it held for me was almost sensual in its teasing.
But when I heard the unexpected sounds of high heels walking down the steps from upstairs, my stomach lurched, and afraid of what Coco might be up to, I grabbed the dinner necessities, and without another thought of J.J.’s gift, pushed my way through the door.
Coco was just gliding to the bottom of the steps. She wore a snug, black-and-white polka dot cocktail dress, actually rather tasteful and demure, black high-heeled shoes, and a sassy short wig. Where the heck had she hidden all this stuff without my noticing? Duane’s backpack was not big enough to carry it all, was it?
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
Coco looked at me like I was crazy. “You said you didn’t have any opinion, so I’m following my instincts.”
Before I could say anything else, she disappeared through the living room doors as I stood frozen and mortified in the hallway.
Then I heard Buck say, “Dude, you make a hot girl!” and panic thawed my freeze, sending me stumbling desperately into the breach.
Buck had sat up and was making room for Coco on the couch, and Iris looked as if she was trying to make her eyes focus. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, for once, it wasn’t the wine or the pills; her eyes were actually functioning properly.
“What movie did you decide on?” Coco asked.
Knowing Iris and Buck’s preference for the colorful and mindless, I took a stab at scaring them away by quickly picking a classic. “Casablanca.”
“What’s that?” Buck asked with his lip curled, doubting my choice would be one he would like.
“Oh, it’s fantastic,” Coco said. “Ingrid Bergman never looked more gorgeous. World War Two, ‘Play it again, Sam,’ it’s so romantic and sexy.”
Buck shrugged. “If you say so.”
“I do,” Coco said.
Iris sat up in her chair. “Wait, isn’t that in black and white?”
“Yes,” I answered, maybe a little too quickly.
“Uck, I hate black and white.” Then, looking back and forth between me and Coco, she stammered, “Um, I didn’t mean, you know, I mean, well, you know—I’m going to my room.” She stood up so fast I was surprised she didn’t get woozy. Trying to cover a laugh, Coco asked, as Iris passed by, “Don’t you want to take a piece of pizza with you?”
“Carbs are the devil’s candy,” Iris said with a wave of the hand holding her carb-filled wine glass. As soon as she was out of the room, Buck motioned for me to put the pizza down on the coffee table. As I did, Coco frowned. “We need drinks.”
Giving her an annoyed look, I answered, “I didn’t have time to get them before I heard high heels on the stairs.”
Having suddenly decided that a Southern accent would go with her outfit, Coco said, “Do ya’ll have any sweet tea? I just love me sweet tea with my pizza.”
“There’s a pitcher of regular iced tea in the refrigerator,” I said. “But if that’s not good enough, there’s surely a flight to Atlanta leaving from LaGuardia soon, and you could make it there in no time.”
“He’s so dramatic,” she said, winking at Buck. “I can turn what ya’ll have into sweet tea in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Want some, Buck?”
“Sure,” Buck said, moving the plates off the pizza boxes and opening them to check the toppings.
As soon as the click of Coco’s heels had faded down the hallway, I turned to Buck who was enraptured by the pizza. As clueless as he was, he couldn’t really be obtuse to what Coco was up to, could he? Discord between my new friend and my family was the last thing I wanted to promote, but I just didn’t feel like I could take any further misunderstandings or complications, so being beside myself with frustration, I decided to trust in what I hoped was Buck’s good sense of humor.
“You know he—she—totally has the hots for you, right?”
After taking an annoyingly long time to tame a dripping string of cheese into his mouth, Buck said, “So what? You don’t really think he’s the first guy to throw himself at me, do you?” He waved the pizza in his hands at his pecs and biceps. “I mean, look at me. And it’s not like it’s hurting anybody. So why not let him enjoy his fantasy?”
Although it’s usually really tempting to shoot down anyone so confident in their looks, however justified they may be, for a beefy jock airhead like Buck to be that comfortable with his own and everyone else’s sexuality … what could I really say? It was another of the moments where I questioned what actually went on inside that head of his. I know, I know, I go back and forth on whether Buck is an idiot or a secret genius, but I can never decide!
“Besides,” he continued, “it’s so much fun to watch you squirm.” He took another huge bite of pizza, held up a finger to make sure I was paying attention while he slowly chewed and eventually swallowed, and then added, “Let’s just be clear on one thing. There will never be any three-ways between us.”
“What?” Were my ears bleeding?
Buck laughed so hard he had to drop the rest of his slice onto a plate, then held his hands to his stomach, the belly laugh seeming to grow in volume and intensity.
“What’s so funny?” Coco asked as she sashayed in with the pitcher of iced tea and three glasses.
“Nothing,” I answered with a surly glare at Buck. Which seemed to make him laugh even harder. Finally, he started coughing—dare I hope he was choking on something?—and Coco quickly poured him a glass of tea, telling him to drink it to clear his throat.
“Mmmmmmm, that’s good tea,” Buck said after he’d drained half the glass.
“Thank you,” Coco said. “You know what my secret is? Brown sugar.”
“Oh really?” Buck asked.
“Yes, honey. I just stick my finger in and stir.”
Buck looked me right in the eye just to make sure I was listening when he told Coco, “Sounds delicious.”
“Mm-mm-mm, child. It’s so hot and humid on this sultry Southern night,” Coco said, acting as if perspiration were dripping from her brow.
“It’s November in New York City,” I said.
“Hush you,” she said. “Make yourself useful, and just go stick it in.”
“What?” I choked, not believing the things that were being said to me, on my birthday of all nights.
“The DVD,” Coco said. “Go stick the DVD in the player so that we can get on with the movie.”
One hundred and two of the most uncomfortable minutes of my life followed. While Ilsa and Rick tried to deny their great love for each other, and he eventually sacrificed his heart for the good of mankind, I ate my pizza without tasting it, Coco played the role of a Stepford wife, and it would be hard to say which Buck enjoyed more—the pampering, or my discomfort at watching it. And on top of all that, my boyfriend was out on a date with my stepsister, and there was a wrapped-up surprise waiting for me in the kitchen.
The credits had barely started rolling before I was pushing Coco upstairs to get her things, and because I didn’t want to have to wait through the lengthy process of her turning back into him, I tucked a portion of the grocery money into her bra, and said I’d call a cab. I was aware I was being rude, but it was taking everything I had in me to get through one of the worst birthdays ever, and I just wanted to get J.J.’s present, escape to my bedroom where I could be alone with it, and fall into the blissful oblivion of sleep as quickly as humanly possible.
That was why I found myself alone by ten o’clock on the night of my eighteenth birthday, feeling about as low and lonely as I’d ever felt. I sat on my bed, holding the still-wrapped present, which should have made me feel better, but t
he way the day had gone, I suddenly had a fear that the present might be a disappointment. Then the one piece of hope and happiness that I’d been holding onto would tip me over the edge into an even deeper and darker abyss.
But the thing was, even if it turned out to be something awful—have I mentioned I liked to prepare for things, I liked to know what was going on, and that I hated surprises?—I would never get to sleep if my mind was just thinking up all the things I would most hate to get. So maybe it was better to get it over with.
I’d felt the package and knew with about ninety-nine percent certainty it was two smallish hardback books. Unless it was one of those things made to look and feel like something it wasn’t, in order to trick thieves or whatever. And I loved books, so at least he hadn’t gotten me a video game, or a hockey puck, or whatever else would suggest that he didn’t really know me.
After pulling the yellow bow loose, I slid my finger through the flap where the wrapping paper ended, breaking away the double-sided tape that hid underneath, and slowly unfurled it, revealing the backs of two very old but pristine books. I turned them over and had a curiously mixed reaction when I saw a two-volume copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Yes, it was my favorite novel, so it showed that J.J. had been listening when I’d said that, and that, of course, was a good thing. But he also knew I already had a copy. I’d even shown him a couple of quotes I’d underlined in my edition. True, mine was a paperback copy, and these were hardback, so maybe he was trying to help me start building the library I told him I someday dreamed of having, and suddenly I felt very happy. The fact that his gift had a symbolic meaning to my future, possibly our future, lifted me up and made the day melt away. Today might be rough, but there’s always the potential for better in the future. At least, that’s how I decided to interpret it.
I opened the front cover of the top book, and that’s when my new happiness grew even greater. It wasn’t just any old hardcover copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion; it was the first edition—from 1818! The title page said, “Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, In Four Volumes,” and although I briefly wondered if he’d gotten the entire set and was planning on giving me the other two books tomorrow, almost as quickly I thought to myself, as much as I loved Jane Austen, I didn’t care anything about books compared to what I really wanted from J.J.—HIM!
Feeling a little lightheaded from my quick ascension from depressed to euphoric, mixed in with a healthy dose of hormonal and horny, I decided a little fresh air might do me some good. Pushing the books aside and leaving them on my bed, I stepped out onto my balcony, shrugging on a hoodie against the chilly November night air. I leaned forward, putting my elbows on the ledge, hugging my arms around myself, and luxuriating in the perfection of J.J.’s gift, the crazy way that just thinking about him could make my heart pound, and this may sound weird, but also almost relishing the delicious torture of not being able to be with him right now, when I wanted nothing more in the entire world than that. I don’t know if it’s this way for everyone, but other than actually being with your beloved, sometimes the best part about being in love is the anticipation of seeing them again.
I lost track of time thinking about J.J., allowing my imagination to linger on his smile, and his laugh, and his lips, and his eyes, and his hands, and the dark hairs on his muscular forearms … if you know the word tumescence, you could apply it here.
But then something happened which confused me, because everything about him had been so crystal clear in my mind, it confused me when I thought I actually heard his voice whispering, “Psssst, Chris.”
I shook my head, stood up straight, and decided it must be time for me to go to bed. The punishing schedule of my usual schoolwork, keeping the house in order, and escorting Kimberly was evidently getting to me.
“Pssssst! Chris!”
There it was again.
I looked around, and then over the ledge, and what miracle should I find smiling up at me from the shadows of Kimberly’s balcony below other than J.J.
CHAPTER 13
A PUDDLE
“J.J.?” I asked, still not quite sure if he was really standing on the balcony below mine, or if my imagination was simply taking another flight of fancy. Although the night was dark, the whites of his eyes and teeth sparkled familiarly.
“‘But soft,’” he said. “‘What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Christopher is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious. It is my Christopher, oh, it is my love!’”
Kimberly’s balcony was much longer than mine, and he was standing at an angle where we could see each other’s forms decently enough, but it was still a flight below, and the ten or fifteen feet between us seemed like the cruelest distance ever conceived by man or deity.
“Aren’t you impressed?” J.J. asked.
“I’m a puddle.”
“Then maybe I should come up there and wipe you up.” He cleared his throat. “I wonder if that would have sounded less cheesy if I hadn’t just quoted Shakespeare?”
“What are you doing here? Those charity events usually go on forever.”
“I slipped out as soon as I saw a chance. But Buck said you had gone to bed.”
“You didn’t leave Kimberly, did you?! Kiki will kill us all!”
“No, she’s in the bathroom.”
Although we’d been whispering to each other, I lowered my voice, worrying that maybe we hadn’t been whispering softly enough. “You let her take you to her room?”
“I don’t know if you realize it—I had not, but Kimberly seemed pretty sure—but this is the first time since she and I met that either you or Iris hasn’t been waiting for us when we got home.”
“So why didn’t you say you had to leave? You know what she has in mind, right?”
“But this was my only hope of seeing you tonight.”
If I hadn’t already been a puddle from his Romeo interpretation, I would have been now. As it was, I was basically whatever liquid state followed. Distilled puddle?
“You’ve got to get out of here,” I said, saying the thing furthest from what I wanted.
“Shit!” J.J. said, reacting to a light going on inside Kimberly’s room.
“Is that her?” I mouthed.
Somehow he must have been able to read my lips in the faint light, because he nodded.
Then the most amazing thing happened.
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed how certain old buildings have a pattern of bricks sticking slightly out, almost like a little ladder of hand and foot holds. I guess maybe because back in the day, chimney sweeps or someone needed them, but our house had these, and before I could even comprehend what was going on, J.J. climbed up the wall of our house like Spiderman.
“What are you doing?” I asked, panic making me forget to keep my voice as low as I should have.
Too preoccupied to answer, J.J. continued up from Kimberly’s second floor balcony to my third floor balcony, all on the exterior wall of our house, without any sort of safety harness or anything that might have prevented him from plummeting to his death. Because that’s about all I could think about. That, and how was I going to explain to the world why I was basically responsible for the death of J.J. Kennerly?
Although his ascent probably took less than half a minute in real time, to me it felt like one of those movies where the ticking red digital clock attached to the Bomb-That-Will-End-Civilization goes into slow motion, and the last fifteen seconds of humanity takes up most of the third act. But then, somehow, miraculously, J.J. was swinging his leg over onto my balcony, and I was reaching out to pull him to safety.
“Are you crazy?!” I asked him, the pitch of my voice about two notes higher than a dental drill.
“What? I climb the rock wall at the gym all the time,” he said. Which could have been really annoying, but he had just climbed up the wall of a building to be with me
on my birthday!
This time I would forgive him. I threw my arms around him, hugging him fiercely to me, and immediately I felt the reassuring strength of his hands on my back, each of us trying to pull the other closer than was physically possible, our mouths meeting desperately. But then the sound of Kimberly’s anxious and confused voice calling his name below, “J.J.? Where’d you go?” tore us briefly asunder.
I grabbed J.J.’s hand and pulled him off of the balcony and into my bedroom. We’d have to figure out an explanation for Kimberly soon enough, but at that moment I cared only about one thing. It was my birthday, and for once I was getting exactly what I wanted.
As I lay beside J.J., watching him sleep as the first whispers of dawn began to waken the city, a numb, sleep-deprived happiness might be the best way to describe my state of mind. Sometimes in life I felt like the most boring, milquetoast, asking-to-be-walked-over nonentity in the world. Other times I felt like I must be the most painfully obvious freak who could never hope to be accepted or esteemed or loved. But lying in J.J.’s arms I just felt like … me. And whatever “me” meant, that was perfectly fine and absolutely enough. Everyone should feel that kind of peace and self-acceptance far more often than I think most of us do.
I can’t say I’d gotten much sleep that night, an hour or two at most. Besides multiple “physical expressions of our love,” while J.J. seemed to be easily able to fall asleep in between, every one of my senses was hyper-alert, and every minute that passed was almost excruciating in its wonderfulness. Every moment I wanted to drink in the sight, taste, smell, feel, and sound of him, and although even when I tried to close my eyes knowing that I needed to get some sleep, my other senses just seemed to become even more alive, and my eyes would pop back open. Sometime after four o’clock in the morning, I drifted off for a little while, but now here I was thinking how badly I wanted the sun to come up so that I could see this beautiful man more clearly, but also knowing that light would mean the end of the night’s miraculous dream.
My Fairy Godmother is a Drag Queen Page 14
