It occurred to me, once I got home, that I didn’t actually know how to act on a date with a man. It was late—I was tired, and I’d had a very long day—but I didn’t want to mess things up on my first real date with Daniel. It took me a while, but finally I found a gay chat website that didn’t want a credit card number, and I asked my questions there. The site’s title was flashing over and over, Manhole, which made it difficult to focus on the chat window. The ads in the sidebars were distracting too, jpgs of naked men with huge erections, animated gifs with bobbing erections and gyrating hips, and websites for “bears” and “twinks” and “hookups,” but when I moved the browser over far enough I could block out the distractions and stop the models from staring at me with their knowing eyes, and pay attention to the chat, where someone named Gator55 was being very helpful.
Did I need to hold the door open for Daniel? If I reached it first, yes. Otherwise, he might hold it open for me.
If we went to dinner after the expo, who would pay? Whoever did the inviting. Or, we could also split the check.
What about hand holding, did men expect that? Not usually, especially not at a predominantly straight venue. (Good to know.)
And then, before I could ask whether I was supposed to bring flowers or wine or a little stuffed animal or something, someone named ManMeat4U typed a question for me.
r u a top or bottom?
I figured he meant my top lip. I touched my whiskerburn, which was a bit sore from the kiss in the parking lot, then typed, You mean my lips?
u like 2 give head?
While I try to be tolerant of online typing, I tend to get hung up on the fact that people will go through all the effort of typing out the numeral 2 when it’s just as easy to type the word “to.” I need to read the thing multiple times to get it, and even then I still find myself confused about whatever it is they’re trying to say. Even his screen name bothered me, at least the “4U” part, which was probably supposed to mean “for you,” and was also probably supposed to be clever, but really wasn’t—unlike Gator55, who most likely added the two numerals either because they had a personal significance for him, or because plain “Gator” was already taken.
tell me about ur lips
There was a blink in the sidebar, and I saw that Gator55 was now gone, before I had the chance to thank him.
u got a hot mouth?
Uh oh. ManMeat4U knew about my whiskerburn? I glanced at my webcam, but the little green light was off. We weren’t video-chatting without me knowing it, which would be embarrassing since I might have been stimming without realizing it.
open wide elijah I got 10 thick inches of cock 2 shove down ur throat
Once I got past the 10 and the 2 and figured out the 2 was not supposed to be a circumference or diameter, but instead the word “to,” the understanding of what this ManMeat guy was saying hit me—and a mental image popped into my head: Ryan, cornering me and making the fellatio-face. I was so spooked I pushed back from the computer desk hard enough to roll backward a few feet.
ManMeat4U was still typing.
sweet mouth yeah ill fuck it til ur jaw akes im pumpin my meat in u gonna cream in both ur holes
I closed the browser window, but several more popped open, one after another. XXX-Men, and Sick Papis, and Make Me Cum, blinking and flashing: click here, click here. The jpg guy on the top window was bent over with his butt facing the camera (facing me) and spreading his cheeks wide with both hands while he peered over his shoulder and smiled, and the gonna cream in both ur holes line from the chat repeated in my brain…cream, holes, cream, holes. And I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the fleshy pink pucker of the internet model’s butt, glistening slightly as if he’d just moistened it with cocoa butter lotion. I realized what was meant by “top or bottom” and not only was I embarrassed for not catching the meaning, I was dismayed because even if I’d understood, I had no clue what I was. One thing I did know—the sight of that oiled butthole was making me queasy. I X-ed out of the window and five more popped open: Twisted Twinks and Bi Thugs and Silver Foxes and…that’s it. I’d hit the point of overwhelm. I touched my cheek, my ear, my cheek, my cheek, my jaw, and tried to figure out how to get rid of the men and men and men all leering at me from my computer monitor. My chair squeaked and I realized I’d been rocking—oh no, I hadn’t done that in years—and finally I held myself very still, and clamped my fingers onto the seat of the chair to stop myself from stimming or rocking, and I closed my eyes and breathed very deeply. I even imagined Dr. Bergman’s voice in my head, coaching me to simply relax, and imagine myself safe, and to approach the problem logically.
I opened my eyes again, calmer now, and turned my monitor off. And when I realized that it would keep me awake to know those images were actually still there, I just wasn’t viewing them with the monitor shut down, I took a sleeping pill and was asleep before midnight.
It was a dreamless sleep. That’s good, because dreams annoy me. I much prefer mnems, which at least are the product of the intelligent parts of the mind, not the strange parts that piece together symbols and random garbage and then leave it to your conscious mind to try to pin a meaning on them. Plus I probably would have dreamed about that ManMeat4U guy. And he probably would have looked a lot like Ryan.
I woke up early and ran all my errands before breakfast. It was early New Year’s Day and the streets were deserted, so even with a trip to the drug store included, I was back home in record time with my bills mailed, my gas tank filled, and my library books dropped in the slot before any fines could accrue. Once I’d finished my oatmeal and wasn’t likely to spill something on myself, I looked through my closet to plan what I would wear to the expo. I decided to wear one of my Social Circle outfits, since a date would of course be classified as a social activity. It took me a while to come to that conclusion, since going to a mnemography expo was also work-related. I decided that since my primary objective was to be with Daniel, I would treat it as a social occasion…though I did consider wearing half a work outfit and half a social outfit. But which half? No, it was easier to wear the social outfit, since Beth had gone through all the trouble of putting it together. When we first worked out the system, she had tried to explain to me why one pair of black pants was more appropriate for work and the other was more casual, but I didn’t get it. Something about the fabric, the cut…she has always understood more about these things than I have, and so I’ve found it better to defer to her judgment on the matter. My work clothes hung from white plastic hangers, my social clothes from green, and my around-the-house clothes from yellow. (Some of the around-the-house clothes used to be work clothes or social clothes at one time, though Beth had recategorized them since they were faded, or stained, or ratty around the hem. But if I thought too hard about that, I could end up standing in the closet all morning in my confusion.)
When I shaved, my lip was barely pink. I guessed the kiss in the parking lot had been brief enough to keep from irritating the whiskerburn again. I put on one more application of cocoa butter in hopes of having it be as unnoticeable as possible by the time I saw Daniel. I was angling open the bathroom blinds to try to determine exactly how noticeable it was when Beth showed up. Two quick knocks and a key-turn, unlike Tod, who makes me stop whatever I’m doing and go open the door for him. That’s when he comes upstairs at all. Usually he just sits out on the street in his truck and calls me on his cell to come downstairs. I pried open the blinds and looked outside. There it was, his truck, idling in the street. I couldn’t hear the music from where I was, but I’d bet that if I was out on the sidewalk I would hear it.
“Elijah?” Beth called. “Come help me with this.”
I went out into the main room and found her struggling with two big square things, one under each arm. Not heavy, but awkward.
“Here.” She tilted her hip at me, and I took one of the big square things from her—a shrink-wrapped cube of toilet paper. Three times two times six…thirty-six rolls. A quarter of a gross.
“What’s this?”
“A post-Christmas present. We went to the warehouse club. Tod’s mom gave us a membership. The toilet paper was only ten bucks—and the paper towels were twelve.”
Given that Beth had probably rounded the sale price of the toilet paper to the nearest whole number and hadn’t included sales tax, I couldn’t say for certain that each roll cost less than twenty-eight cents. But even if that were approximately close… “Good deal. But…this isn’t my brand.”
She dropped the shrink-wrapped cube of paper towels on the floor and put her hands on her hips. She was wearing thigh-high boots and dark red glitter lipstick, lots of eyeliner, and a black beret. And her other winter clothes, of course. “How did I know you were gonna say that?”
“We’ve known each other since we were in fourth grade, so it’s no wonder. What about Fritos, did they have multi-packs of Fritos?”
“No, only Doritos. And I knew that no amount of savings would convince you to risk your tongue to all those spicy coatings and pointy corners.” Only then did she notice what I was wearing. “What are you all dressed up for? Did Tod invite you to Wollersheim?”
“Is that where you’re going?”
“Oh…I guess he didn’t.” She shrugged. “Uh, did you want to go?”
“I don’t like wine. It gives me a headache and stuffs up my nose.”
She looked me up and down. “Then why are you wearing such tight jeans? Some special thing at the Rec Center, or did I put the wrong clothes on the yellow hangers again?”
I almost told her I had a date. While she’s always enthusiastic about me dating, she also tends to ask numerous questions, questions I didn’t want to get into right now, since I sensed the topic could lead somewhere very intense. Instead I said, “No, I have a mnemography thing. An expo.” Which was also true.
She smiled, wide. There were a few flecks of red glitter on her front teeth. “Cool beans. Make sure you fix your collar.”
My hand went to my collar—great, I’d spent half an hour picking out my outfit and then managed to put it on with the collar trapped inside the shirt. I pulled it out with my forefinger, looked up, and saw Beth had moved her cube of paper towels to the hall, and was rounding the corner to my office. “So you’re going to try the TP,” she said over her shoulder, “right?”
I hadn’t even let go of it. There was a disassembled mnemography cap on my work table and a bunch of mail and some non-perishable groceries on my kitchen table, and I hovered between the two of them trying to figure out which one would be the easiest to make room on…I glanced at the label, and said, “It’s single-ply. Beth….”
“So just use a little more.”
“This throws everything off.”
“Your butthole won’t know the difference, Elijah. I promise.”
It was my fingers I was worried about, not my—oh my God. What did she want in my office? “Beth?” I dropped the cube. It bounced once and flipped onto its side with a smack. “What’re you doing?”
“Printing a map—my printer’s out of ink. You know how the roads get all curvy and weird up there. Tod will act like he knows where he’s going, especially when he should stop and ask for dir—holy shit!”
Dead center on my monitor…not a jpg. Worse. An animated gif. Of a guy, a naked guy on his back with his legs curled up to his chest, ramming a big translucent purple dong up his butt, over and over and over. His mouth opened wider each time he thrust, then went back to half-open as he drew the glistening length back out again.
“That’s gotta sting,” Beth said, and tried to X-out of the gif…only to have several more pop open. “These things suck. It’s like trying to behead a hydra that wants to eat your credit card. How’d you end up in dildo-land, anyway?” She navigated to the End Program dialog box and shut down the browser from there. “You hate porn.”
“I was in a chatroom.” I might not have sounded mortified, but I was. I didn’t specify that it was a gay chatroom. And I wondered what I would say if she asked me why. I was completely not ready to have this discussion with her—but if not now, then when? I should have rehearsed what I might say with Dr. Bergman, maybe even in mnem. But now it was too late.
Except that she didn’t even ask. “Swear to God, a person can’t click on anything these days. So obnoxious.” In a fresh browser, she opened the winery’s site, found her map and sent it to the printer. “Hopefully this will keep us from ending up in Iowa.”
She stood with her hand on her hip watching the map emerge from the inkjet. I stood with my throat fluttering like I might throw up, wondering how to tell her I might be gay. Was probably gay. Pretty much definitely. Given the way I felt when I was with Daniel, yes, and not just because we met in mnem, either. Because I’d trained plenty of dabbling sherpas in mnem. And I never felt the urge to kiss any of them.
“Okay, well, have a good time.” She folded the map into her coat pocket and slipped around me, heading toward the door.
I should tell her now, despite the fact that she was just about to go somewhere with Tod and would likely start to cry and their day would be ruined. Anyway, she was going somewhere with him…so why shouldn’t I get to go somewhere with someone I liked? And so it was a guy. So what? Beth had plenty of gay friends in college—mostly lesbian women who got tattoos and read at poetry slams—so she should be okay with it. Also, better to do it now than to wait, because if I waited, she would be angry about why I hadn’t told her sooner.
I followed after her, but she had a head start. “Beth, wait.”
She’d already made it down the apartment stairs, but she paused just outside the front door. I said, “Um, so…this expo….” Beth turned and cocked her head, and I retreated a few paces to try to get her to follow me back into the stairwell. “The thing is…you see….”
The blast of a horn startled me—painfully intense, to the point that I needed to cover my ears. I looked up to see where the horrid noise had come from and saw Tod glaring at me from behind the wheel of his truck. He looked me in the eye, then leaned on his horn again. Longer, this time. “What’s his problem?” I snapped.
“Oh, I don’t know, he woke up crabby—look, I gotta go, we’ll be late for our lunch reservations.”
“But—”
“You can tell me all about your expo tomorrow.”
“Wait, there’s just one thing….”
Tod got out of the truck and slammed his door hard—bam. I flinched. He said, “Get in the car, Beth.”
She turned and did a double-take at him. “It’s fine. We’re not running that late.”
He wasn’t looking at her, though. He was looking at me, and walking up to us with great big strides. When he reached me and raised his hand, I thought for a moment he’d actually smack me, and I flinched…but instead, he poked me in the chest. “I go through all the trouble of squeezing you into the schedule and what do you do?” he demanded.
“What?”
“You blow me off.”
“Jeez,” Beth said, “take a chill pill.” She tried to insert herself between us, but she’s not very big.
“I’m through babysitting your fucking car.” Tod poked me again. “You want to burn through another engine, fine. Be my guest. Knock yourself out.”
Beth turned and looked at me like I’d just done something really dumb. “Oh no. Again?”
“It’s not…you can drive for a few days with the light on. It’s not ruined.”
“That’s the third appointment,” Tod said. “That’s it. I’ve had it.”
Beth put her hand on his chest and eased him away from me. “Drop it for now, okay? You’re right—you did all you can do.”
Usually, once Tod starts yelling, Beth automatically sides with me. I wasn’t sure why today was different—and maybe Tod wasn’t either. He calmed down, though. One more dirty look at me, and then he went back into the truck, slammed the door even harder this time, crossed his arms and glared.
“I hate it when he yells,” I told Beth. “I was busy—I had an appointment with Dr. Bergman. It’s not like he even asked me if the time was okay with me….”
Beth took my hand and faced me toward her. “Look at me.” I did. Her nose looked a bit red. And her eyeballs were kind of wet. “If anything happened to your car, how would you get to work?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to it.”
“Okay.” She sniffled. “We’ll figure it out. Have fun at your…thing.”
She climbed into the truck and they drove away, and I realized that between the beeping and the poking and the yelling, my chance to tell her about Daniel had come and gone.