About two months after Jack’s wretched birthday party, I met Bunny Montebank.
Just as the air cooled and the sweaters emerged from the bottom drawers of our dressers, but before the leaves had quite begun to turn, Lee decided I should try dating again. I insisted I wasn’t ready, but he was equally insistent that I was and it was time.
Mostly, I think he wanted to set up my Tinder profile.
“Isn’t that a hookup app?”
“It can be,” he said wryly. “And don’t give me that look. You eventually want a boyfriend, naturally.”
“Do I?”
“But a little hanky-panky in the meantime wouldn’t kill you, and of course you do. Don’t be silly.”
I was in Lee’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, making us some grilled cheese sandwiches while he was scrolling through my photos trying to find a sexy picture of me. I doubted such a thing existed, but Lee remembered one and described it in perfect detail. He had taken the picture with my phone. It was taken in Rehoboth, he said, at Aqua Grill the summer before last, and I was wearing a tank top. Freddie was in the picture, but Lee was certain we could crop him out.
“Here it is!” He handed me my phone. Yes, I was wearing a tank I’d purchased in Provincetown the month before. I had been facing Freddie but had turned my head to face the camera. I was smiling. Freddie was smiling too. It looked as if he’d said something funny, but I couldn’t remember what. The adaptive lenses of my glasses had darkened in the sun, but it was obviously me to anyone who knew me. I held what appeared to be a vodka and cranberry in my hand. As Lee had predicted, Freddie was standing at some distance and could be easily removed. Just like life, I thought.
“I look fat here.”
“You look hot.”
“Hot and sweaty. Look at my belly. Don’t you have any photos of me taken from the front?”
“Your belly is sexy,” he said, and I made another face. “And if someone doesn’t think so, then they can swipe left and keep moving. Confía en mi, cariño. You’re going to get a lot of attention with this.”
He raised his fingers to my lips before I could object and uploaded the picture to my new profile. I returned my attention to my grilled cheese sandwiches and attaining that perfect shade of toasty goodness on both sides. Better than a lover, I told myself, almost believing it.
It wasn’t until I delivered a perfectly toasted grilled cheese sandwich, the bread both crispy and buttery, the cheese both gooey and plentiful, to the kitchen counter that I realized Lee was typing, on my behalf, a message from me to my potential suitors.
“Let me see that,” I said, but Lee swiveled away before I could reach my phone. “Leonardo García Dorsett. Give me the phone.”
“I’m almost finished. You’re going to get so much dick with this.”
“But I—”
“So. Much. Dick.”
“I really think I’ve had enough dicks for the year,” I said. “Just let me see it. I don’t want you to—”
“Hush,” he said. “Besides, your grilled cheese sandwich is burning.”
It wasn’t, but it was toasted more than it should have been. I should have given the slightly charred sandwich to Lee, but I was afraid he’d retaliate by telling every gay man in Washington, DC I was chomping at the bit to chomp at their bits.
Half of my sandwich was gone before Lee had even taken a bite of his, and frankly it annoyed me. I worked hard on that sandwich. That was a goddamn perfect sandwich.
“Your cheese is congealing,” I said.
“Your mom’s cheese is congealing.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I know, papi, I know. You’ll thank me later.”
When he was finally done, he handed me my phone and bit into his sandwich, for which he was appropriately full of praise. And yes, I was forced to admit he had done a good job of capturing my personality in the profile he created. Both Freddie and my protruding stomach were cropped out of the photo he’d chosen, and he described my situation accurately—recently single and okay with it—without making me sound like a hermit or a whore.
“Okay, where do I hit send?”
“Oh, sorry. I sent it. It’s already out there.” I wanted to be upset, but he was enjoying his grilled cheese sandwich too much. I’ll be honest. That was a fucking good sandwich, and the version of me he’d broadcast to the world wasn’t half bad, either.
* * *
On Monday evening, when Lee called, he was upset to learn I’d received only two responses, both from men we agreed were not for me.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Fresh meat always gets noticed.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Mamie hopped up on the couch next to me to get closer to the speakerphone, tail wagging. She found Lee irresistible.
“Are you sure you’re swiping right? You don’t get matched unless you both like each other.”
“Yes, I—”
“And don’t be too picky.”
“Not being picky is how I ended up with such a winner the last time.”
“Swipe right some more, and I’ll call you tomorrow. You’ll get more responses tomorrow, okay?”
But to be honest, I didn’t much care. While my ego might have appreciated lots of fawning attention from an army of chiseled homosexuals, it would have meant going on a first date and wondering if I was too fat or too gay or trying too hard or playing it too cool, and hoping he’d text me the next day, and fretting if he didn’t while being slightly weirded out if he did, and wondering all the time if I should be texting him. I was much happier sitting on the couch, watching old movies with Mamie curled up beside me.
True to his word, Lee checked up on me on Tuesday evening and was happier with the response rate. I had been furiously swiping right per his instructions, and this time there were seventeen gentlemen callers vying for my affections. Tennessee Williams would have been proud. I sent screenshots to Lee so he could look them over.
“You could send me your password, and I could look them up with you.”
“Not a chance,” I said. “You’d spend the next three days swiping right on every man within a thousand mile radius.”
He huffed and puffed a bit, but didn’t deny it.
Already in my pajamas at eight p.m., I sat down on my couch. Mamie jumped up and moved to the other end, curling up in a little ball, oblivious to Lee’s attempts to find her another daddy.
“Oooh. Victor’s cute.”
I scrolled down to find Victor, a skinny man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old with blond hair and blue eyes. “Meh. He’s awfully young.”
“What’s wrong with young? Look at how white his teeth are.”
“So other than tips on dental hygiene, what are we supposed to talk about?”
“If you can’t find anything to say, Charlie, just put something in your mouth.”
There was a time in my life I would have gleefully accepted that advice. In fact, I’d taken it many, many times. I’m neither proud nor ashamed that I couldn’t begin to number the men I’ve fellated in my life. It’s probably not information I’d share with my mother, but it’s typical for anyone who’s ever been thirty, gay, and sexually active at the same time. It struck me as strange I rejected this advice now. Was I becoming a prude in my old age? Did a sudden surge of puritanism happen to everyone when they got older? Was I just sad?
“Next,” I said.
I didn’t feel sad. Or if I was, maybe I was in denial. I was fairly certain I didn’t miss Freddie. With each passing day, it was clearer and clearer how much I didn’t really know him. The lies he told were hard to fathom, and I began to wonder how much he’d lied to himself. It dawned on me that perhaps I knew Freddie as well as Freddie knew Freddie. If I missed anything at all, it was my life with Freddie in it—or rather, my identity as someone who was with someone—the access it gave you, the feeling of hello, look, someone chose me and, therefore, I am worthy of being loved.
All I knew with certainty was the rest of my suitors were either too fat, too thin, too young, too old, too into video games, too religious, or just too much. Honestly, who wears a ball gag in a dating profile photo?
“Charlie,” Lee said, exasperated, “these are all men that you liked.”
“I never claimed to like them.”
“You swiped right!”
“That’s because you told me to! And in my defense, the ball gag photo wasn’t his primary picture. I didn’t notice it last night. But c’mon, you can’t unsee that.”
“Okay, the gimp is out, but you liked something about each of these boys. You can’t reject them all the next day.”
And yet that’s exactly what I was doing. I didn’t know why, but my entire being recoiled at the idea of writing any of these men back and asking if they’d like to have a drink sometime. That would entail picking out clothes in which I looked approachable but not too eager, sexy but not slutty, young but not trying to look young; applying just a drop of cologne; scanning my face for middle-aged acne; arriving at the restaurant exactly on time and killing time at a nearby Starbucks in case I was too early, because being too early makes you look desperate; greeting a total stranger as though I were happy to see him, but happy in a casual way, not overjoyed or anything too psychotic; laughing at all of his jokes while monitoring every word to make sure the jokes were intentional, or else risk laughing at him when he was being deadly serious; telling jokes yourself but also being appropriately sincere at least half the time; talking about Freddie without a trace of bitterness, and talking about Mamie without sounding like a weird, dog-obsessed recluse; looking for signs he liked what I just said or didn’t, and editing everything I said or did in response to these imprecise clues; slowly learning to hate him; and when it’s all over, desperately hoping he called me back. The whole process was infuriating. The idea that anyone enjoyed this arcane and abusive ritual seemed to me both ludicrous and sad.
“What about Bunny?” Lee asked. “What was wrong with him?”
“For starters, his name is Bunny.”
“I’m sure that’s just a name he uses for the app. He’s cute, admit it.”
Bunny was thirty-five years old. Younger than me, but within a decade, which seemed reasonable. His asymmetrical smile was goofy but endearing. His eyes twinkled, undeniably. Yes, he was cute.
“Drop him a line,” Lee said. “You don’t have to say much. Just ask him a question about something in his profile or say hello. You’re probably going to chat for a couple of days before anyone asks anyone out anyway.”
“Maybe.” Mamie lifted her head and looked at me quizzically. Perhaps she could tell I was annoyed and was preparing to come to my defense.
“No maybe, Charlie, just do it—”
“Look, if you want to go on a date with a dude named Bunny so badly, then you write him back. I’ll be honest, Lee. Nothing about this sounds fun to me. Maybe in another few months or so.”
“Or maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow, look in the mirror, decide you’re too cute to deny the world your fabulousness any longer, and you’ll decide to write him back then.”
“Maybe that.”
“Te quiero, you big ol’ chicken.” And then he hung up the phone.
I could hear an ambulance in the distance. Mamie could hear it too, and as it got closer she pointed her little snout to the sky and began to howl along.
The next morning, I didn’t see an overwhelming amount of fabulousness in the bathroom mirror. However, when I meandered back to the bedroom, I did see three notifications on my phone. Bunny had taken the bull by the horns.
BUNNY: Hi, cutie.
BUNNY: Wanna hang out?
BUNNY: Doing anything on Friday?
I wasn’t, in point of fact, doing anything on Friday. And I knew Lee and Claude had theater tickets, as I’d already asked if I could show up at their place on Friday with Mamie and a bottle of wine. I could tell Lee felt guilty as he declined my intrusive offer. He kept apologizing, and I told him not to be ridiculous. I felt a little guilty myself, constantly imposing myself on them like a wayward orphan in need of shelter.
I planned to spend Friday night at home with Mamie and something in black and white featuring Ginger Rogers or Katharine Hepburn, something featuring dialogue racing by at lightning speed, too fast to allow me to wallow in my nobody-loves-me blues.
I should say yes to Bunny, I thought. It’ll solve everything.
On the other hand, what if one date leads to another? I can’t marry someone named Bunny.
I heard a scolding voice inside my head, belonging either to Agnes Roche, Banana Daiquiri, or Nancy Pelosi, saying, “It’s one date. You’re not marrying anyone.”
On the other hand…
No. Agnes or Banana or Nancy was right. I had no good reason to turn him down and I knew it. I typed my reply.
CHARLIE: It’s a date.
I hit send as Mamie hopped up on the bed to let me know that while she had been looking forward to Kitty Foyle or The Philadelphia Story, she understood my decision and would support it. I thanked her with a scratch behind the ears and got dressed for work. As I was slipping a sweater over my head, I heard the faint ding of a bell.
BUNNY: Your place or mine?
Maybe, I thought, but you’ll have to at least buy me a cocktail first. I offered the name of a little pub on H Street where we could meet and size each other up before committing to anything else, and he seemed amenable.
I decided I wouldn’t tell Lee just yet. I’d tell him eventually, but not until afterward. I knew he’d cluck like a proud mother hen, and I didn’t feel like being congratulated just yet. Most of all I didn’t want any advice. Whatever happened, I’d call him on Saturday and tell him all about it.
* * *
That Friday, Agnes left work a little early, and I followed her out the door almost immediately. These were the days before the insufferable Muriel Ball, and no one minded when someone’s work was done and they wanted a head start to their weekend.
The drive home was accompanied by National Public Radio, and there just so happened to be a story about what to wear on a first date, specifically about the gender-based double standards existing in the straight world. Women, according to NPR, were expected to look like they just stepped out of a magazine, whereas men could pull a T-shirt over their unshaven faces and hop into a pair of jeans, accessorize with a blazer and dress shoes, and run a comb through their hair, and this was completely acceptable. I smiled as I listened, mostly because I was thankfully not a straight woman, but also because I no longer had to worry about what to wear or whether to shave. If a scruffy face was deemed acceptable by NPR, it was good enough for a Tinder profile named Bunny.
After walking Mamie around the block, I showered, spending a little extra time on those hard-to-reach areas just in case, and donned my T-shirt, jeans, blazer, and dress shoes. To gay it up a little, I picked a tee featuring the Golden Girls carved into the side of a mountain like Mount Rushmore. I dried my hair with a little bit of product, but not too much, in case someone might be running his fingers through my hair before the night was out. I sprayed my cologne into my hair and on my Golden Girls T-shirt in case someone might be kissing my neck at some point. I will admit hoping for a little nooky was exciting. The end of my relationship and my life after its demise had been entirely celibate, and I had almost forgotten about sex. It was nice to be reminded.
When I was satisfied with my reflection in the mirror, I glanced at my phone. True to my nature, I had more than an hour to kill before Bunny and I were scheduled to meet, so I took Mamie for a second walk around the block, mostly to kill time. Also, I felt a little guilty about leaving her at home inside a crate while I was out trying to convince a cute boy to like me.
When we returned, I unfastened her leash and said, “Kennel!” This was her cue to jump into her crate and await a treat, which she joyfully consumed as I fastened the latch. I was now only forty minutes early, but if I walked to H Street instead of driving, I’d arrive right on time. Besides, that way we’d only have to worry about one car if we decided not to end the evening at the pub.
The air was pleasantly cool that early autumn night, but after ten minutes I was a little chilled, and before long I was doing a sort of walk-jog just to keep warm. So, despite all my stalling tactics, I was still early. I didn’t want to stand outside, so I walked in, grabbed a barstool, and sat.
The barkeep, a young woman with wild blond curls, approached me immediately. “I’m Coral,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Maker’s Manhattan,” I said, hoping it would seem more rugged and masculine than the cosmopolitan I truly wanted. “Up.”
“Coming right up,” Coral said with a smile. “Are you stopping by for a drink, or can I get you a menu?”
“I’m, um…meeting someone. We’ll probably have dinner, but I’ll wait until he gets here.”
Coral smiled. “First date?”
“How could you tell?”
“You look a little nervous,” she said, and my face must have fallen. “But not in a bad way. It’s adorable.”
Bunny arrived about twenty minutes late, but I was inclined to forgive him. They call lateness “gay time” for a reason. Besides, he was even more attractive in person. Shorter than I expected, but definitely cute. He had those sad eyes which made him look permanently in need of a hug, and a little cleft in his chin reminiscent of Dudley Do-Right.
“Are you Charlie?” he asked. I smiled and nodded. “Cool,” he said, sidling up next to me at the bar.
“Oh, we can get a table if you want,” I said. “I was just waiting here. I was early, until you, um, y’know?”
Shit. I was nervous. I didn’t think I would be. I told myself not to be. But I hadn’t done this in years, and I wasn’t very good at it then.
“No, this is better,” he said, placing his hand on my inner thigh. “I have easy access this way.” And he proceeded to slide his hand all the way up to my crotch and give it a little squeeze.
I mentally objected to this brazen action taken without my full and informed consent. But the longer his hand remained there, the less either of us could deny a physical reaction that told a different story. “Nice,” he said, smiling.
Okay, so Bunny would probably never attend feminist lectures with me or march by my side down Pennsylvania Avenue, holding signs reading “Crush the Patriarchy” or “Feminism Is My Second Favorite F-Word.” We would probably not marry, move to the suburbs, and quibble over the kitchen backsplash. But I was probably going to get laid.
“You keep that up, and I’m not going to be able to walk home,” I said.
He removed his hand from my groin as Coral reappeared and handed him a cocktail menu list. “Don’t worry. I brought my car.”
Coral smiled and gave me a wink. She approved of Bunny, it seemed. “Ready for those menus?”
“Sure,” I answered, and she walked away, beaming. “So, I have to ask. Who named you Bunny?”
“Oh, that’s a name I picked up in college,” he said. “Sometimes I’d keep my roommates up all night.”
“But what does it mean?”
Just as Coral reappeared with the requested menus, Bunny answered, and not quietly. “It’s how I fuck.”
Coral’s eyes widened. She set the menus on the bar and walked away. I wondered for a moment if she was offended, but while Bunny and I were perusing our menus, she caught my eye and began fanning herself dramatically.
Yeah, I was definitely going to get laid.
Our conversation over dinner was terrible, honestly. We had no cultural touchpoints in common. Bunny had no idea who either Bette Davis or Ella Fitzgerald were, but in fairness neither could I name a single Real Housewife from anywhere. I did learn that Bunny came from a wealthy family who happily paid his rent and utilities while he discovered himself as either an aspiring actor or lead singer of a rock band that did not yet exist.
He had no interest in my career, and without much in common, our conversation frequently hit a dead end. But we found we could always salvage the moment by letting our hands do the talking. I typically opted for a hand on the knee, but Bunny wasn’t the only one who scaled the mountains in search of a peak before the evening was out.
So, while it was painfully obvious after an hour of awkward conversation and roaming hands we were not headed for boyfriend status, it was just as clear the evening was not going to end at a little pub on H Street. I found I was no longer nervous. Nothing I could say to this horny little elf was going to dissuade him from coming home with me after our meal, but nothing I could say would induce him to call me the next day, either. In fact, a call or text from Bunny the next day was about the last thing I wanted.
Eventually, I asked for the check and paid it, rewarding Coral’s theatrics with a thirty percent tip. As I got up and put my blazer on, Bunny slipped his hand into my back pocket, and he squeezed my left butt cheek all the way back to his car.
Neither of us were all that interested in any more strained chatter, so we quickly opted for my place, which was only four minutes away by car. He found a parking spot right in front of the house, and I was already fumbling with my keys as I opened the car door and stepped into the street. We could see our breath as we sped to my front door. Before letting us in, I kissed him.
“Hurry up,” he said.
I opened the storm door, and it squeaked a little. The sound caused Mamie to begin barking furiously from her crate in my bedroom.
Bunny’s eyes grew wide. “What the hell is that?”
“Oh, that’s just Mamie. She’s smaller than she sounds from out here.” In my haste to get inside and rip Bunny’s clothes off, I was attempting to insert the key to my front door upside down. “And don’t worry if you’re allergic or anything. She doesn’t shed, so—aha!” I finally managed to unlock the latch. As I opened the door, Bunny took a barely perceptible step back. Perhaps he was afraid of dogs.
“And she’s very friendly,” I said. “She barks like this whenever someone’s at the door.” I stepped inside. “Mamie, hush! C’mon in.”
He peered inside the house from where he stood. “Where is it?”
“She’s upstairs in her crate.”
At the sound of my voice, the barking was quickly replaced by an excited whine.
“You lock it up?”
“It sounds awful, but apparently they like it. Here, I’ll go get her.” I dashed upstairs to free the maiden from her cell.
“Wait, where are you—”
“Just close the door behind you!” I yelled.
When I appeared in the bedroom, Mamie was sitting up, wagging her tail furiously. As I opened the door to her crate, she met my face with a barrage of kisses until she heard the front door latch. Realizing we weren’t alone, she began to bark again in earnest, going to the top of the stairs to get a view of the intruder.
“Mamie, stop,” I commanded. “We like him, I promise.” But the barking continued. Bunny stood like a statue, both still and silent.
Wanting to get this part over with as soon as possible, I scooped Mamie up in my arms and carried her downstairs. Bunny didn’t look happy to meet her and, based on her growling, the feeling seemed mutual.
“She won’t bite you. Promise. Just let her sniff your hand, and we should be good to go.” He obeyed warily. Mamie got a good sniff and seemed satisfied with the results. “You going to be a good girl?” I set her down on the floor, and she took in the scent of Bunny’s ankles. When the tail started to wag, I smiled at Bunny. He looked calmer. “Now,” I said, “where were we?”
I positioned myself in front of him and gently rested my thumb in the little cleft of his chin. When his lips parted, I began to kiss him. The first kiss involved only the lips. The second was deeper, but brief. I pulled away until he opened his eyes, and once I’d established a deep kind of eye contact, I opened my mouth a little wider to kiss him again.
Apparently, this was Bunny’s cue to use his tongue to try to find every nook and cranny within my mouth in twenty seconds or less. There wasn’t anything remotely sensual about his technique. It was less like an arousing exploration and more like the world’s fastest dental exam.
Okay, so kissing wasn’t his strong suit. I have a theory about bad kissers. As Bunny poked and prodded, it occurred to me that he wasn’t enjoying himself in the slightest. He was probably only kissing me because the movie industry taught us that it was a necessary step between flirtation and penetration. Given his druthers, he would have probably skipped the kissing altogether, the way one might skip the shrimp cocktail and head straight for the prime rib, so to speak.
“Shall we go upstairs?” I asked.
“Fuck, yeah.”
I took him by the hand and led him upstairs. Mamie, who had been gathering data on Bunny since he arrived through the various aromas contained in his ankles, happily trotted after us, passing us on the stairs and waiting for us on the landing. When I was eye level with her, I gave her a little scratch under the chin. “Hey, sweetie, who’s my good girl?”
“Are you gonna put it back in its cage?”
I pretended not to hear the question, hoping he’d drop it. I wasn’t averse to crating Mamie for the hour or less I was guessing Bunny would be here, and I wondered about his obvious aversion to her. Bitten as a kid? Allergies? Random antisocial tendencies that manifested in a hatred of nature’s most perfect and loyal animal? Still, I was hoping she’d just quietly crawl under the bed as she used to do whenever Freddie and I got a little frisky.
But when we reached the bedroom to find Mamie making herself comfortable among the pillows at the head of the bed, he spoke up again.
“I really think it needs to go back in the cage.”
“It’s a crate. Um, okay. Mamie! Kennel!”
Happy to receive another treat, Mamie bounded off the bed and into her crate. I placed a doggie biscuit between the bars for her while I closed the latch behind her. For a moment she chewed happily.
“Wow, it’s really well-trained,” Bunny said.
“I can be very commanding. You. Take your clothes off.” And just as happily Bunny obeyed.
Once naked, Bunny jumped on the bed and lay on his back, his erection standing at a perfect ninety-degree angle, like a weather vane waiting for a breeze. Trying to be seductive and alluring, I was removing my clothing much more slowly, giving Bunny a bit of a show, which he seemed to appreciate. Once I was stripped myself, I slowly climbed on top of him. Before I kissed him again, I grabbed a fistful of his hair. I figured he’d like it, and he did, but mostly I did it for control to avoid another cavity search like the one downstairs. Letting go of his hair, I kissed his neck. Foraging through his hairy chest, I found a nipple and teased it with my tongue, which elicited a moan.
Wow, I’m better at this than I remembered, I thought. I moved lower, past his belly button. I teased him a little, showering his inner thighs with little kisses until the anticipation made him groan. Then, quickly, so he wouldn’t quite expect it, I swallowed him whole.
Taken by surprise, he cried out in what I hoped was ecstasy. About a split second later, Mamie began whining in her crate. She was done with her biscuit, and we clearly weren’t going anywhere. Her continued imprisonment was a violation of precedent, and she wasn’t having it.
I tried to disregard it, focusing intently on the task at hand, but after about twenty seconds of her plaintive cries, Bunny couldn’t ignore it either.
“Can you make it stop?”
I took his dick out of my mouth just long enough to holler out, “Mamie! No!” and then I went right back to work. My authoritarian tone bought us another five seconds of uninterrupted fellatio, but then the whimpers began again. Undaunted, I scolded her one more time, and again received the same five-second reprieve.
“Dude, you have to make it shut up.”
I knew I couldn’t make Mamie stop protesting, so I got up and let her out of her crate.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Under the bed,” I commanded, and miraculously Mamie obeyed. I noticed her favorite antler in her crate, and I gingerly placed it under the bed in case she needed a distraction, and a moment later heard a familiar scraping sound. She was happy. I was happy. Bunny was horny, and that was good enough for now.
But he was also nervous. “Can’t you put it downstairs?”
“She wouldn’t stay there,” I said. “She’s fine. She won’t bother you.”
He raised himself up and walked on his knees to the edge of my bed. We kissed again, in his usual enthusiastic and thorough manner, but he resisted when I tried to coax him onto his back again. Instead, he started kissing my neck. Apparently, it was his turn, and he was taking it.
Like the way he kissed me, his approach seemed to boil down to as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Like a starving beggar who hadn’t eaten in weeks, he devoured me. Still, apart from one moment involving teeth, it wasn’t unpleasant—particularly after my prolonged dry spell.
“Okay, let’s get to the good stuff,” he said as he turned around, buried his face in my pillows, and presented me with his posterior. At the pub, I had wondered whether Bunny was going to top or bottom, and this sudden move was my answer. I was relieved. Based on his performance thus far, I imagined being fucked by Bunny Montebank would be something akin to being gently explored by a jackhammer, and it wasn’t an experience I longed for. I went to the nightstand, opened the drawer, and removed a small bottle of lube and a condom sealed in foil.
“Aren’t you on PrEP?” he asked, half of his face hidden in pillows.
“No. Like I said, I just got out of something, and we were monogom—”
“Okay, whatever, just hurry up.”
I hurried. Once I was wrapped in safety and bathed in lubrication, I stood behind him and slipped my thumb between his cheeks. I moved in a clockwise circle, then counterclockwise, just like I learned in my now worn copy of The New Joy of Gay Sex. Jack always called this move the wax-on-wax-off.
“I’m not a fucking virgin,” Bunny said. “You can skip the formalities. Just get in there.”
So, without so much as a hello-how-are-you, get in there I did. He moaned a little too loudly for my taste, but I was determined to enjoy the present moment before the time came to bid Bunny adieu and never see him again. I closed my eyes as he began to buck wildly against me. I wondered if his nickname was offered in the same congratulatory vein as Bunny had received it, or perhaps it was a commentary about style rather than frequency or endurance. I held on for dear life as if I was riding a mechanical bull, wondering if this was what hate sex felt like. I’d never experienced hate sex myself because my last three months with Freddie was more like hate celibacy.
With my eyes shut tight, and the guttural sounds Bunny was making, I hadn’t noticed Mamie crawling out from her hiding place. She probably felt unsafe under a bed that was shaking back and forth like a seven on the Richter scale. I noticed her out of the corner of my eye right before she jumped up on the bed to see what the hell was going on.
She landed right next to Bunny’s head. His eyes grew wide as his moans morphed into a loud scream, and before I could stop him, he lifted himself up and pushed Mamie off the bed, hard.
She let out a piercing yelp, probably more surprise than pain, but she cried out again, and louder, when she landed on the wood floor on her back.
“What the fuck!” Bunny yelled.
“Mamie!” I immediately dislodged myself from Bunny and ran to my little dog, who was lying down, staring at the floor and then trying to stand but unable to, either from shock or pain. “Are you okay? Mamie, are you all right?”
Finally, she stood up, and I began to examine her, gently squeezing her joints to see if she flinched or yelped. She seemed fine, just a little shaken. Eventually, she met my gaze with a look that communicated both sadness and confusion.
“I told you to put that fucking dog downstairs,” Bunny said.
“Get out.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said get the fuck out of my house. Now.”
“What for?”
“You’re a bad kisser, a lousy lay, and you threw my dog across the goddamn room. Get out.”
“That’s not my fault. Your stupid dog jumped up here and scared the f—”
I picked up Bunny’s windbreaker from the floor, and pitched it directly into his face.
“Ow!”
“Out. Now.” I found my underwear on the floor next to Bunny’s shoes, and put them on.
“Let me look at her. I’m sure she’s fine.”
“You don’t touch her.” I threw his shirt, then a sock, at him.
“You’re being an asshole.”
“I’m crushed you think so.” I took his jeans, boxers, shoes, and his remaining sock and walked down the stairs with them.
“Where the fuck are you going?” He pulled his shirt over his head and followed me.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, jacket and lone sock in hand and naked from the waist down, I was tossing the remainder of his clothes onto my front porch.
“Give those back!”
“Go get them,” I said. “Or do you want me to toss you out in much the same way? Because I’m mad enough to do it.”
Once he was gone and the door locked behind him, I walked back upstairs to check on Mamie, who had managed to jump up on the bed a second time. She sat at the edge, her head raised ever so slightly and her tail wagging, happy the loathsome stranger had been removed. Downstairs, I heard a man screaming expletives at the house from the sidewalk. A moment later, I heard him start his car and drive away into the night.
“And don’t come back,” I muttered.
I retrieved my blazer from the floor and fished out my phone from the inside pocket. I draped the blazer over the desk chair as I moved back to the bed, Mamie at my feet.
I felt her rest her chin against my foot as I opened my phone and promptly deleted the Tinder app. Once that was done, I picked up the remote and regarded my brave little dog.
“Well, Mamie, what’s it to be? Kitty Foyle or The Philadelphia Story?” Mamie gave me a dissatisfied little sneeze. “All right. Stage Door it is.”