Glamourpuss

by Christian McLaughlin

  ​“The fuck it is!” Mini-Jeff planted his mini-engineer boot on Rupert’s tiny ass and shoved him away. “At least ya got to gobble some rod before yer student ID fuckin’ expires. God-DAYUM! Virgins annoy the balls offa me!” I wondered if it was too late to transfer to NYU.

  ​I did one-armed push-ups with the phone on the floor, dialing Sara’s work number with my free hand. “Entertainment,” some guy drawled.

  ​“Sara Richardson, please.”

  ​“Who’s calling?” Oooh, fancy.

  ​“The embryo she miscarried during eighth-grade dodgeball. Put my mommy on the phone, please.”

  ​Endless hold as I cranked out 18 push-ups, weakened from a month of fried clams and rhubarb pie at my grandmother’s salty Downeast retreat. Then: “Alex?”

  ​“Hi!”

  ​“You son of a bitch. Classes only start tomorrow.”

  ​“My first one’s at noon. I got back from Maine 36 hours ago… I swear.”

  ​“Then get down here right now. We’ll go to happy hour and I’ll tell you my good news.”

  ​“You’ve finally accepted JHC as your personal lord and savior?”

  ​“No. Wait a sec.” She started whispering. “It’s completely unofficial for at least a week… but they’re making me Entertainment Editor.”

  ​“That’s fantastic! Celebration’s definitely obligatory.”

  ​“A Chuy’s margarita and a buttload of nachos sound mighty appealing. I’ve been trapped in this rat hole since 10:30 a.m., trying to concoct a Fall TV Preview for the kids. I’m damn lucky you make me watch Twin Peaks. Hurry, Alex. It’s already ten-thirty.”

  ​“‘Kay. Bye.”

  “Oh, wait. Did you hear from Nick?”

  ​“No. Did you?”

  ​“Yeah, he called me about three weeks ago with his new address and phone number.”

  ​“Did he mention Barney?”

  ​“Uh-uh. He asked all about you, though. I said you’d be back from your tremendously busy, exciting summer in time for the semester.”

  ​I hopped up and looked for my unconnected answering machine. “Did he leave any message for you to relay?”

  ​“No, honey. Look, just get down here before I have to eat one of my nubile boy assistants.” I heard spirited whoops from the guys in question.

  ​“Thanks! See you in no more than five minutes.” I clicked off, set up the machine, recorded the perfect greeting (in three takes) and left the apartment in no more than 12 minutes.

  ​All I could think of as Heart and I sped down Duval Street: He’s going to call. He misses me. So he’s going to call. Sara apologized for not tracking me down in Maine after she talked to Nick, “but I didn't want you obsessing someplace, lovely as it is, that can’t even pick up the Fox network.”

  ​As we enjoyed one of the best student dining values in Austin — $1.50 for a frozen cocktail and unlimited visits to the nacho bar — I was careful not to monopolize the conversation, although I did feel it was fair to pepper my questions about her upcoming editorship with a few versions of “He misses me/He’s going to call”, declarative and interrogative.

  ​I scurried up the stairs to my apartment at twelve forty-five, anxious to rinse the fiesta taste out with a hit of Listermint, then crash, hoping my dreams would cleave to the “He misses me/He’s going to call” theme. The machine said I had one message. He misses me. He called. No, it had to be someone else.

  ​He called. “Glad you’re back, Mr Alex. Why don’t you give me a ring at the office tomorrow and we’ll see about grabbing a bite of dinner this week. Might be easier now that I’m not spending every damn minute worrying about the Bar exam. Talk to ya soon.” Bar exam?! And here I was, spending every damn minute worrying he never wanted to see me again. “Mustn’t be sarcastic,” Mini-Rupert Graves scolded as I slipped sheets from the cedar chest onto my bed. I loved Nick too much to be anything but thrilled.

  ​“Keep your fuckin’ panties dry, punk,” Mini-Jeff Stryker growled at me. I showed him by wearing nothing to bed — the A/C at 65 degrees, I slept, victorious.

  ​The next morning I looked up Nick’s work number (uncharacteristically unmemorized) and called him, extremely cognizant of keeping any giddiness under control. We could only talk for about 20 seconds because “some prize a-hole” summoned Nick to his or her office. Even so, Nick sounded great. He (not I) mentioned dinner. I suggested Thursday, because it would give me all of tonight to reconfigure my living room. I didn’t want our next scene together to have anything in common with our last one, including stage design. We decided he’d pick me up on the Drag, in front of the Co-op bookstore at five-thirty.

  ​My last Thursday class was Advanced Acting, taught by a visiting professor whose claim to fame was a supporting role in The China Syndrome. There were a few kids I liked in the class, most of them riddled with anxiety that they’d graduate with their Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees next May without ever having been cast in a University production. Having been in three myself… and by the way, once diploma’s in hand, who’d give a shit??… I stuck around briefly to chat supportively, then walked across campus to the Texas Union, where I extracted new clothes and beauty aids from my backpack to transform myself into what I prayed would be a vision of collegiate charm. I cut an imposing figure in the bookstore, nimbly dodging sweaty, disoriented shoppers, efficiently snagging used copies of all required texts. I checked out and assumed my post outside at the falafel stand at exactly five twenty-seven.

  ​And like magic, there he was. He rolled down the passenger-side window of his Mitsubishi and deadpanned, “Hey, little boy. Is ten bucks enough?”

  ​I opened the door and jumped in. “I was going to offer you 20.”

  ​We went to Kerbey Lane Cafe. I had chicken fajitas, and absolutely no idea what was going on. Was this a date? He was friendly, adorable, warm… okay, hot. He made me tell him all about my summer — which had begun, I didn’t remind him, with his devastating rejection after the Houston fiasco. He told me he was “hopeful” about the Bar exam and would know by November if he passed. I revealed my LSAT results (96th national percentile) and let him get excited. I listened to every word and searched his riveting blue eyes for some clue that things were different. He didn't say the word “Barney”, but every time he mentioned the little house he’d rented east of the Mopac Expressway, I winced. After almost two hours, I was sure of nothing, except that Nick was driving me home. And that I should really carry a pack of gum in my bag at all times.

  ​I asked him up, he said sure, and we went in. I broke out some dark-chocolate-covered peppermints. Nick munched on them, surveying the rearranged living room, while I stood a few steps behind him, observing his sexy hairy legs and how sweet his ass looked in those shorts. “Is this the same apartment? I mean, did you move one over or something?”

  ​“It’s the same,” I sat down on the sofa, respectably close to the edge. “It’s just that I’m a senior now… so everything seems cooler.”

  ​“Ahhh. Of course.” He grinned, joining me. Just to show how relaxed and nonthreatening and unseductive I could be, I zapped on the TV and we flipped through the channels, commenting for 20 minutes or so, just hangin’ out. Then a Twin Peaks promo gave me a brilliant idea.

  ​“I just bought a CD I think you’d really like. Wanna hear it?” I quickly muted superstar nun Mother Angelica, The Catholic Channel’s pissy diva suprema, my heart leaping a little for the first time since reacquainting myself with his Mel Gibson’s Little Brother (Raised By Distant Holocaust-Accepting Non-Fucktard Relatives) dreaminess curbside at the Co-op.

  ​“Let’s do it,” he said. I went to my music shelf and found what I needed between Cocteau Twins and Culture Club — Floating Into the Night by Julee Cruise, the ultimate romantic mood-setter for fans of the ethereal and/or David Lynch. I hit Play, walked back to the couch, turned off the TV and sat down next to Nick.

  ​“Mmmmmm,” he hummed. His eyes were closed. We sat together,
touching but not touching. When the second song started, he kicked off his Topsiders. I’d been breathing very deeply, and continued to do so as I gently lay my hand on his bare thigh and lightly kneaded it. Experiencing zero resistance, I unbuttoned his white cotton shirt from the bottom, then stroked his stomach. If he’d touched my basket, my cock would’ve bruised him. I was careful to keep my own paws away from his Izod-clad crotch.

  ​I suddenly felt his hand on the back of my neck and almost cried out. “This is real sweet music, Alex.” I looked at him and mouthed a kiss. He took me in his arms and I pressed my face against his deliciously hairy chest, running my lips over his right nipple, but not licking or biting. I hugged him to me, really truly content just to be curled up with him in the dark.

  ​Agonizingly soon, the album was over. He sighed and patted my shoulder. “I really should be headin’ out,” he whispered.

  ​“Okay,” I whispered back. And it was.

  ​“Let me rinse off first, if you don’t mind.” I wasn’t sure if I should be offended, but conspiring to deceive Barney just had too much appeal, so I wasn’t.

  ​“I’ll help you,” I told him. We went into the bathroom and I soaked a washcloth in hot water, then lathered it up with a squirt of jasmine-scented liquid soap my parents brought back from their vacation in Peru. Nick hung his white shirt on the hook on the door, then stood before me while I scrubbed from him any lingering traces of the Grey Flannel I barely wore. There’d been no nudity, but this evening was somehow infinitely more erotic than our first little round of Hide The Salami last May. Little did I know how young the night actually was.

  I gave his back and shoulders a couple of perfunctory swipes with the washcloth, then draped it on the tub to dry. He was hunched over, hands on the sides of the pedestal sink, not moving. I put my hand on his upper arm. “What is it?” I asked, hoping a flood of tears wasn’t imminent… from either of us.

  ​“I guess I’m just waiting for you to rub my back.”

  ​Whoa. “Sure… but I thought you had to go,” I stammered quietly.

  ​He turned around and we were chest to chest. He leaned in close to my ear and said, “We got time.”

  ​I took him by the hand and led him to my room. He lay down on his stomach, with no coaching from me. I picked up his hand and kissed it. “Be right back.” I loped into the living room. First — turn off the phone. I set the machine to Mute Pick-Up. Second — a candle. My grandmother had sent me one from Maine for my last birthday. Got it. Matches were with the incense by the CD’s. I scraped three to shreds trying to light the ‘Christless’ thing, to use one of Grandma’s pet phrases. Ignition at last. I was halfway back to the boudoir when I remembered: music. Flick of a switch and Julee was crooning an encore. I raised the volume to compensate for distance. And went back in.

  ​I doffed my shirt and straddled my dream-date, massaging his neck and shoulders and back, firmly, tirelessly. Somehow he seemed to be enjoying it more than I was. “Strong fingers,” he sort of mumbled into the pillow. I slid my thumbs under the waistband of his prep-tastic shorts.

  ​“If you took these off, I could do your lower back.” Seconds later, he raised his hips, reached down, and unlocked everything. I didn’t hesitate. Down came the Izods and the blue bikini briefs. I tossed them onto the chair.

  ​As promised, I gave his lower back a tension-melting workout, my professionalism undeterred by the presence of his adorable manly buttocks beneath my wrists. Of course, they needed a thorough, lengthy seeing-to of their own. This wasn’t a problem for me, Unlicensed Non-Prudish Boy Masseur. Or Nick, if his sighs and groans were any indication. Guess what? They were. His feet. His calves. His thighs. His inner thighs. I spread his legs and sank my fingers into erogenous zones.

  ​It was time for him to roll over. He did. The view was stunning. I worked on his legs and chest and arms for a few delectable minutes before he said, “Why don’t you work on this muscle?” And with that, his hand crept down and lifted his stiff, smooth, eight-inches-and-change penis from his stomach. I’d landed on Fantasy Island. No, it was so much bigger. It was Ed McMahon knocking on my door with a camera crew and a gargantuan but fully negotiable American Family Sweepstakes grand prize check. Pay to the order of Mr. Richard Zucker….Who?! Ohhhhhhhh. Ed, you jokester!

  “I’d love to,” I politely replied, and grabbed Nick’s cock. I stroked it up and down for maximum rigidity, then gripped it at the base and went down like a submarine. Whether by instinct, genetics, or endless video screenings of William Higgins’ Cousins and The Young & The Hung, I seemed to have a talent for this. To such an extent that Nick sat up, groaning, “You’re gonna make me scream.” His hand dropped to my button-fly. Pop-pop-pop. “But it feels too good to stop,” he added. I stripped off my jeans and he pulled me down into bed underneath him. The kissing was so rapturous — God, those lips! — I was barely conscious of him jacking me. He was rubbing his dick against my flat stomach, nibbling around my ear, whispering something. I stopped thrashing my head to listen.

  ​“Alex, can I please fuck you in the mouth?” Oh, why not.

  ​Afterward, under my comforter, Nick lie tranquil in my arms and I plotted to make this a nightly occurrence. My immediate options — hysterically confessing to Barney, suicide attempts — seemed trite. So I tried hard to make tonight enough — the intimacy, the fulfillment of almost a year’s dreaming and longing. I wondered if I was still a virgin. How did queers tell? Obviously, if you boned someone up the butt, you weren’t. Same if you were the bonee. But that left the vast world of the blow job fuzzy and gray. I didn’t think getting sucked off counted as losing your gay virginity. It was just such a basically non-interactive event. But giving head was another matter. In my limited experience, it seemed to have a certain level of intensity and commitment that bestowed it a more prominent position on the deflowering scale. I decided sustained, deep-throat penetration by or of someone you loved constituted “losing it.” Due to current medical knowledge and conditions, swallowing did not figure into the equation.

  ​My first non-virginal semester was hardly the nightmare I’d dreaded all summer. (Of course, I was a virgin then.) I was immediately given the male lead in a departmental production directed by a stringbean Cuban grad student named Alfredo. It was a revisionist version of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” from a Latin American revolutionary perspective. At the one-act’s climax, the audience, innovatively seated all over the stage, was encouraged to throw papier-mâché stones at my wife, the heroine, along with the rest of the cast, most of whom seriously considered slipping a few real rocks into the pile. (She was kind of a twat.)

  ​Sara was busy with the newspaper most of the time, so I actually started hanging around my drama friends a little. We’d get together and watch tapes of that week’s Twin Peaks episode. (Someone suggested regularly eating cherry pie and drinking “joe” during the shows, but that was just too geeky and obnoxious.) They bemoaned the rotten studio scenes they were in and the neurotics they had to act with and how they could never reserve rehearsal space. They debated graduate acting programs at the University of Delaware at Wilmington and Louisiana State. I told my parents I’d be applying for law school at UT. They were so excited we immediately went out to dinner, and they insisted on buying me new Reeboks.

  ​Nick was on my mind at least once per ten minutes of every waking hour. We were Having An Affair and I was The Other Man. Innocent little me! All my notions of propriety had been spun around, twisted and hung out to dry. Surely it was wrong to try to bust up a couple’s relationship. But then again, why shouldn’t I have a shot at Nick? Barney had gotten there first, but was there some sacred covenant that kept Nick his prisoner when it all went stale? Wasn’t my happiness just as valid as Barney’s? It was more valid, goddammit. I put myself in Barney’s place. Constantly. And the conclusion I kept drawing was that if I were in his place — in Nick’s house, at his breakfast table, on his couch, in his kitchen, his bed — Nick would never
, ever have to go anywhere else for the attention, appreciation and sexual prowess I knew he deserved. Wasn’t it completely possible to meet your life’s soulmate at an incredibly inconvenient time? The chances of ever meeting such a person were slim enough to begin with — expecting it to work out neat and tidy right away was really pushing it.

  ​We saw each other once or twice a week, usually at my apartment for dinner. I became proficient at about seven different dishes, which I served on a rotating basis, as well as massage therapy, and hot, penis-pleasin’ action. It was impossible to tell what Nick thought of the situation. I knew he liked me, and the food, and how I made him feel, but where did he see our relationship going? We didn’t discuss it. But he called me a lot and accepted my invitations and didn’t say stop when I put my hands under his shirt. He’d made my dreams come at least partially true and I loved him for that and wasn’t going to fuck it up by asking questions he probably didn’t even know the answers to.

  ​“You’re being very mature about this,” Sara said. “I don’t think I could handle it. He’s a great guy and everything, but I couldn't stand it.”

  ​“Stand what?” I squawked.

  ​“Y’know… sharing him.”

  ​“Yeah. But I hope it won’t always be like this. Anyway, I didn’t tell you my excellent news. He’s coming to San Antonio for Thanksgiving.”

  ​“Holy shit. How’d you manage that?”

  ​“Barney always goes to his parents’ house alone, right? They hate Nick for turning their little baby into a fag.”

  ​“As if.”

  ​“I know! They oughta be thanking their paint-by-numbers Jesuses that a treasure like Nick took that deadbeat off their hands.”