The car dropped him off at the gas station nearest to the farm and he waited for the farm owner to pick him up. It had once been owned by this dyke who then sold it to a Puerto Rican man from New Jersey.
He watched the new owner pull up to the gas station in a huge black pickup truck, introduced himself, and got in. The owner gave him the rundown—there were ninety-two outdoor plants tucked out past the valley that he would attend to and dry before the seasonal trimmers would come in and manicure the buds. The new owner would fly out every two weeks and give him a ride to the general store to replenish his supplies: drinking water, gas for the generators, toilet paper, and all that stuff. The owner gave him two guns to keep in case Feds or thieves came lurking, and left him on the property to his work.
That was in late July. It was now mid-November. The harvest was over and it was time to return to the city to pay rent and nestle in for the wet, rainy winter ahead.
He sat at the bus stop waiting for his Greyhound to arrive. He decided the bus trip would be nice and didn’t want to risk getting another religious fanatic as a driver.
It was raining and he was wrapped in a poncho and had his gear covered in plastic. The line for the bus was full. The unfortunate farmhands who had not shown up early enough to stand under the shoddy bus stop were all standing in the rain.
He looked over to the side and on the ground between the glass screen of the bus stop and the little bench inside sat a full ziplock bag of weed. Someone had either dropped it or left it and he shrugged his shoulders. He actually hated marijuana at this point.
The bus rolled up and all the wet, weary farmers boarded.
He was always taken aback by the beautiful landscape of the area and also by the cultural disconnect of the California backwoods. It was somehow still redneck as all hell—he even saw Confederate flags on bumper stickers here and there. He remembered that an hour outside any city it was business as usual in America.
Later rather than sooner, he arrived in Oakland. He wanted no more of the bus and got off and called a car to S.F.
His apartment was as he left it, sparsely furnished and clean. His life as a farmer had made him want to be a nomad. Every time he came from the mountain he got rid of more and more things. He wanted to be a part-time resident in everything.
For the first time in a long time (and particularly out of nowhere) he felt it, a very strange and foreign emotion; a stillness and a sense of peace. He began to cry. Had this feeling been hiding there, somewhere, all along?
He showered, put on warm sweats, turned on the heater, and began to boil a pot of water for tea. He finally listened to the voicemails on his phone that he had been ignoring all along on the mountain. It was the usual. One from Mark saying how he no longer was hanging out with the blond or the kid with the birthmark, messages from bill collectors, student debt people, his mother (over and over and over again), and one of note.
“Hello, this is Shelia Waters from the Stein Agency in Los Angeles. This message is for Antonio Johnson. We have an offer for you—the role of Jonathan is being revamped for an upcoming movie project based on your old network show Missed Connections. We hope this is still your number! We have a very handsome offer for you! You can reach me at 310-555-7762—extension 312. Hope to talk soon!”
He had all but stopped breathing. The news hit him in the gut, hard. The show was making a comeback. But, why? It seemed like a thought worth entertaining, certainly. He felt the butterflies in his stomach. He paced for a bit, and thought about a new gym routine, a new diet, going back to his acting coach, finding a place in L.A. to stay for the shooting, but then the kettle began to whistle and he was pulled back into his mind and his apartment.
He poured the hot water on the peppermint tea bag inside the cup and brought it to his bed. He sat down, and, even though it was raining, he lifted up his sweats to his knees and placed his feet out of the window. As quickly as it had rushed through him, his excitement had now left. He tuned out and heard the cars by the highway again. He heard waves. He was back at peace.
He would rest all night and he would not be calling Ms. Waters back, and he would not be doing the movie. He had decided, finally, that he was retired.
ACT III
NO NEW BOYFRIENDS
MANIFESTO: NO NEW BOYFRIENDS
ME AND ALL THE REST OF THE BOYS on the block had adopted a very trash-and-burn style with sex: no guilt, no morals, no new boyfriends. It was the rule.
Every once in a while some random two would pair up and monogamy about it. The rest of us talked shit: “Not cool, not anarchist—hoarding all that dick like that. Sexual cap!” (We said shit like this.)
Sometimes the need for something new would pinch me in the ass. Some young thing I was dating would seem like a good idea and I could go wander off in bliss with him for a while. But under no circumstances could he meet my slutty best friends—they would all fuck his brains out, for sure. I would look at the little chicken and think, The second I wife him he’s gonna fuck all my friends, or, Actually he’s probably already fucked all my friends, or, the even more precise realization of, Wait—I’VE FUCKED ALL MY FRIENDS.
(I wanted to go bathe in penicillin.)
It was a peculiar coven and we kept the circle open. I had many “brothers”; I often called on Nathan on nights when I couldn’t scratch my own itch. Nathan lived next door. I had fucked him for five years. His name was Nathan Alexander Carmichael. He was a white boy (hence the name Nathan Alexander).
We had fucked each other so much that sex at times felt like we were scraping the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube that shot its last load two paychecks ago. We had to reinvent our fuck-buddy-hood. The world moved goddamn fast—it was all bills, heartache, and defeat. Those moments of tenderness sometimes had to be engineered.
We did terrible things to each other. It was exciting.
It was his turn to top. He made all the rules for the session. We sat on a clean white bedsheet, naked in his room and across from each other. We were only allowed to talk through text messages. He texted, “Let’s pretend we’re boyfriends and make love.”
“Ok,” I texted back. He moved to my side of the bed, and I got a text: “You’re not allowed to speak. Lay on the floor.” He bound my hands and feet together with suspension ropes and blindfolded me. He left the room and I heard him set something on the floor. I heard him rubbing his hands together and he put something under my nose. “Smell,” he said out loud. It was basil. He had to have seen me smile. He put another object to my nose—it was a cloth of some sort with Terre d’Hermès on it, his favorite cologne. I couldn’t feel my body anymore. “Open your mouth,” he said. I did and he put a piece of cake in it. He rolled me on my back and undid the ropes on my ankles. He pulled my legs up and wrapped them around his hips and entered me. “I own you,” he whispered. He forced a pillow on my face and began to fuck me with force. Within a minute he was done, and he put a blanket over me and lay on top. He rubbed my lips with his fingers and kissed me gently. He lifted up the side of my blindfold and exposed my left eye. I saw him wink at me. I was freed.
I put my clothes on and walked out the door and turned to see him standing in the doorway waving at me. I looked at him and saw the same thing I saw when I looked at my right hand: a lifeline, running strong and clear through the center.
MOONLIGHT TOPS AND THE COLD WAR
THE CITY WAS A GODDAMN TUNDRA. The emotional heat index was, like, negative fifty-three and dropping (and this is summer, mind you).
We were in the middle of a Cold War. I felt like a troop behind enemy lines with no possible chance of escape. It was a suicide mission.
I had fucked some other dude’s boyfriend, over and over again, and then a couple more times after that.
His name was Hercules and every other boy in town had fucked him too … or so they said. I couldn’t confirm it, but I was at the STD clinic with two other boys who lived on my street so I knew I was at least the third on the block.
&nbs
p; “Hercules?” I asked Matty (who lived across the alley).
“Hercules!” He winked when he said it.
I wanted to get swept up in hot memories but my pee hole and pussy were burning and for whatever fucking reason they were playing that “I see dead people” movie.
I could say I deserve better than this—but do I? Really?
“Why do you think you’re here?” asked the doctor.
“I get fucked a lot, Doc,” I said. “Like, SO MUCH— figuratively speaking I don’t have a mother, a last name, or a goal or purpose in life. I’m just a hole.” I stopped just short of saying, “My only desire is to be desired. I feel like the whole equation cancels itself out and what it really means is I have no will—I can (at will) rip out all sense of self just so a boy can have one more hole to fuck me in. I’m afraid of this terrible power I wield, I just wait to be wanted, it’s killing me, Doctor…”
“You’ll be fine,” said the doctor, writing the prescription for antibiotics and not making eye contact. “I see your kind all the time…” He winked at me as he handed me my script.
Matty from across the alley and I took our pills and went for ice cream. We compared notes on the carnage Hercules inflicted. As it turns out we had mutual infections in our butts and not our pee holes, leaving Matty to declare the only strategy we had left in this epic ongoing battle.
“We moonlight as tops and fight the Cold War,” he insisted; he was an optimist, a real turn-shit-into-sugar kind of queen.
All I could think about were the gallons of antibiotics that I had poured into my system over the some double-digit number of years I’d been sexually active. I’m sure I’m going to have some form of nerve damage when I’m older (or fucking something)—and so in an effort to thwart all shitty hypothetical scenarios in which I failed, I nervously put on facial moisturizer (at the table at the ice-cream parlor, mind you) and stayed very, very quiet. It’s one method of many I use.
Now back to Hercules.
That first time, his boyfriend and I had a three-way. When his boyfriend left for work in the morning, Hercules kept cornering me and shit, and biting me, like SO HARD, to the point that I didn’t like it and I said, “We need a safe word.”
He looked me square in the eye and said, “Why?” like he was daring me—and that’s when I said to myself, Yes. He gets it. But that was the first time. I remembered bits and pieces, but the sixth and seventh times were a blur for sure … fuck.
Matty bought more vegan double chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough ice cream. “This will help with the Cold War,” he explained, as he heaped another scoop into my already empty plastic container.
Matty left to go be a top, and I was left with the task of putting together a composite of this whole mess with Hercules.
•••
* * *
I HAD ASKED HERCULES FOR NOTHING, and got more than I bargained for. If I had to think about it I had “won.” It was those nights I would come home late and he would be waiting for me at the end of my block. “You free? Can I come in?” he would ask, already knowing what the answer was. I knew the question was a demand, to be honest, but also the more often these nights happened, the more I knew that I had him in my pocket—for whatever it was worth.
Hercules was not particularly handsome, he wasn’t particularly hung. The only reason for his extended residency in my psyche was that when he came to consume me, he did it the right way—I literally felt like he might eat me alive.
In the morning, I would awake feeling neutral—not that left-for-dead feeling the other boys on the block stuck me with. I couldn’t explain the alchemy that had made me a perfect victim for him, but here I was and here I would stay for a bit.
However wrong his reckless consumption of me was, it mostly felt like a fellow winter soldier handing me a blanket. I was too cold to say no.
I stayed in the ice-cream shop until my vegan double chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough had melted. My butthole was on fire but I figured I would take a stroll down the block—in for a penny, in for a pound, they say. I would see if Hercules was waiting. If so I would be his snack tonight and take my antibiotics again tomorrow. I would keep trudging this way until the War was over.
REPEATER
HE SAID HE LOST HIS VIRGINITY when he was twelve to his older cousin, who was seventeen. It was on some beach off the coast of Portugal one summer.
“First time, eh? Did you give him poop-dick?” I asked.
“No, man—it was summer, my diet was all oysters and champagne!” He giggled as he pulled my body closer to him.
We were lying naked in bed together, and it was cold outside. It was early spring in Berkeley and the window facing the bay was open. The air was brisk and chilly, but also fresh and sobering. I could see the fog rolling over the streetlights and the orange glow refracting off the fog. It gave that muted orange Creamsicle color I always found peculiar. I missed it whenever I left the bay.
It was chilly but when he said the words “Portugal,” “beach,” and “summer” I could feel the slap of hot heat on my face and saw blue sky for miles and miles. He always took me there.
“Did we really just have sex?” I asked.
“No!” he said, and looked me in the eye, stern and annoyed, and I already knew what it meant.
This meant, “My boyfriend can’t find out.” This meant, “This is our secret.” To me this meant, “You are somehow disposable.”
I got quiet and he noticed. “Stay here a second,” he said, and left the bed and went to the bathroom. I lay there in the bed and felt … silent.
I looked at the décor of his room. It was very calculated, a mix of midcentury and Northern California rustic. It was all wood, and glass mason jars, and sensible lighting. He had graduated from UC Berkeley, top of his class. He had some tech consulting job in the city and he owned his home. He was only a year older than me. I always felt like I had to be well-behaved, like I was this baby doll thing he would play with until he got tired. He was generous most of the time, though stern at points, but never unkind. He’d bake me things, tell me how “cool” I was, and invited me over every night whenever his boyfriend was out of town. Heaven help me I was defenseless.
I heard the bathtub running. It was his ritual. He always made me fancy baths, and they were always made of different things. The first time it was five other naked boys and me on drugs dancing around his fireplace. He took me and his boyfriend aside and brought us to the bathroom. “I made this for you guys,” he said. It was a warm bath with rosemary, slices of lemon, clover oil, and some herb I didn’t recognize. His boyfriend and I sat in the water drinking whiskey. He washed us with soap and poured water over our heads.
This particular bath was lavender, Dead Sea salt, and basil.
“Sit and talk to me,” he said.
It was always the same conversation when we were alone. We talked about the first time we met, though neither one of us could really pinpoint it. He was one of those types of friends that you forget exactly how you met them; it’s as if they’ve always just been there. Every year our mutual orbit got closer, then farther, then closer again. Perhaps it started as a chance meeting at an art opening or at a bar but then it inevitably crescendoed into that first night we went home drunk together. Then it would happen again, and again, until it became a pattern.
I sat in the bathtub sideways with my feet dangling out, facing him. He was sitting on the bathroom floor, naked, smoking a cigarette. I hated the way he smoked in the house.
“The problem with you is…,” he began, and I winced because that is a horrible fucking way to start a sentence.
“… that if you really thought about it, you already have everything you need from me,” he concluded, sucking on his cigarette hard, like it was a joint or something.
“I’ve only ever wanted you to acknowledge me,” I said.
“You’re not my boyfriend. Thomas is,” he said, his voice raising a decibel louder, as I expected it would.
>
He stood up in an angry manner and got in the tub with me. He sat behind me and pulled my body from sideways to lengthwise with the tub. He held me from behind, my head fell on his chest. He dripped single droplets of water on my head from the warm bath; the drops slid off his fingertips to the middle of my forehead. He is the only man who makes me feel this special.
“I’ve never really asked you for anything,” I said, quite meaning it, as I raised my head off his chest to look him in the eye.
“Be quiet,” he said, taking my head and gently pushing it back to his chest.
We stayed in the bathtub silent until the water turned cold.
We dried and retreated to bed, wrapped our naked bodies into each other on clean white sheets. I could feel his stomach press into mine and start to sweat before I fell asleep.
Around 3:00 a.m. we were both awakened by his phone ringing. It was his boyfriend, Thomas—he was having some form of crisis. He hung up the phone, his face red and in a panic.
“Hey, let me call you a car home. Thomas is coming over, it’s serious,” he said in a rush.
“It’s fine, I’ll walk,” I said, already out of bed and putting on my underwear. I got dressed faster than I realized. He kissed me and told me to call him later that day. I heard right through him.
The fog was gone and the night sky was clear, save the orange glare of the streetlight pollution. There was no longer that dreamy orange Creamsicle color, but literally just orange light; it was ugly as hell.
I took a bit of bourbon from my backpack and put on my headphones and decided to drink and meander home the long way. I was not hurt, distressed, or even bothered, only filled with a weird feeling that was somewhere between a premonition and déjà vu, like this was a day that had happened many times before and would also, one day, repeat itself.
100 Boyfriends Page 8
