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These two, this man and this man, they
don’t have their health. Their solitudes are
fearful. And then they find one another.
—Denis Johnson
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It's my second, and surely last, visit. Curt has made his decision. The school has been informed. A lawyer lurks in the wings. It's a goddamn shame. His complex is airy and scrubbed and reasonable. Best of all, you can lose yourself among the units. But there's no time for discursion, however badly I wish to wander. Five-thirty, I promised Curt. I trip upstairs to the second-floor landing. My high has dissipated but refuses to depart. I tell Curt the whole truth, but incidentals waste his time and sour my breath. It's my second, and surely last, visit.
My polite rat-a-tat knock wins no response. Neither does my stronger staccato. I pound the door with a flattened palm. Often, at other men's doors, this moment implodes beneath the weight of panic. A wrong address given in cruel jest. His peephole preview of me failed to impress. Men are fuckwads. Men are carnival hucksters. I go home because nowhere else does a door promise to swing open.
But the panic never descends. I stand, my hand still flat against the door, unsure what to feel.
Dominic is with him. If not inside, they must be littered about the pool. Our first visit, Curt took me there. He seemed so proud, I cackled that I wasn't in the market and didn't need a hard sell. It's September in Austin. It's warm and stale. The pool, of course. I hitch my overnight bag higher upon my shoulder. No one need know I tried his apartment first.
Crossing the lot, it occurs to me what all this means. No panic, no enraged texts. I trust him. I fucking trust the bastard. I forget the heat. I forget the stiffness seizing my lower back after three hours on the road. Faith is a tricky fucker. Easily, it's mistaken for density—of the mind, I mean. My intellect resents any emotion that forbids thought. Faith. Even the tweak can't scramble the signal. Curt has no faith, no god. I concur. Gladly—to him, to anyone.
Actually, I do believe in God. He has a plan for me. It sometimes reveals itself, but only after I snort. I know I disappoint Him.
The pool awaits at the center of the complex. A whirlpool bubbles in a far corner, an afterthought. An iron fence, waist high, surrounds both. Deck chairs and wobbly tables topped by dust-plagued umbrellas. A recent Fall Out Boy jock jam pervades. I spot the Bose speaker Curt adores instructing—if it’s your job to listen, you’re sure to hear more than you expect. I spot the open cooler. The Shiner’s bitter bite, I crave it. I spot Curt. I spot Dominic. I watch them longer than any stranger should, failing still to prepare myself for two who knew me before I wished to be known. I holler their names and break the spell.
“I still can’t believe you don’t own a bathing suit,” Curt cries. He’s from Bossier City—originally. Meeting him, you wouldn’t need to be told. I’ve never asked when he grew the beard. His thinning hair remains a vibrant yellow, but his whiskers shimmered copper and gold when, last visit, we sat on his balcony, drinking Shiners in the afternoon sun. His body has softened and thickened. Still, middle age has yet to blunt his expansive gestures or chasten his bayou brio. He views chaos as an unending opportunity. Each absurd risk serves as an emblem of faith in his ability to survive—absent any god’s largesse. When his watery blue eyes shimmer, I believe.
There’s a latched gate, painted the same indifferent shade as the fence. I love this complex. They realize and respect no one cares about color or style or slant. But the gate, it demands either a key or combination. The panic I was certain I’d eluded? It crests with the sleepy certainty of a lounge singer pinpointing her pianist’s key.
Being the sole faggot among straight dudes comes with perks that don’t require me to fall to my knees. We’re free to feign helplessness over the most mundane tasks. No one calls bullshit. A few wisecracks, maybe a smirk—nothing a red-state queer can’t handle.
Curt sends Dominic to facilitate my admittance. We haven’t seen each other since graduation, twenty-five years ago. He’s smiling, complacent and complicit. He’s handsome—laugh lines and crow’s feet have besmirched his good looks, not vanquished them. Should you encounter him at a used car lot, he’d no doubt sell you a lemon, but the guilt would shatter him. Same hairstyle—wayward waves of shiny copper, a few strands, moussed into obedience, dangling to his brow. He’s grown an impish belly. Frankly, I prefer straight dudes’ backhand embrace of middle age and its mockeries. I’ve always wondered why I never desired him—not as boys, not now. The gate yawns open before me.
Curt leers from the far end of the pool. “What happened to sisters are doing it for themselves?”
I strut past his friend. “I can still diagram any sentence. You can’t strip me of that.”
“Bald is beautiful.” Dominic always sounds like he’s rehearsing lines for a show with no audience. “I told Curt the same thing.”
“Did he suggest you go fuck yourself?”
Dominic tosses a towel over his shoulder. He smirks, his only response. I know to glance back for it. This aborted banter, you might mistake us for friends—or enemies. We sat beside one another in Algebra II. Some friendships need only proximity to bloom while others require spilled blood. Curt, too, smirks as I approach. I was foolish to expect the same candor I savored during our last visit, no remnants of our boyhood spare those invoked.
“Curt tried to catch me up on your life.”
My old friend drapes his frame atop an innertube. He flips over to his belly. Squeaks and splashes. I don’t recall last time seeing an innertube stored in his apartment. This gap in logic distracts me, and I ought to thank him for that. I do not, however. Expressed gratitude never sounds sincere unless it’s not.
Dominic settles at the pool’s edge, water lapping his shins. “You really write dissertations?”
“I write dystopic fiction,” I tell him. “Stories about worlds where life sucks, but in ways you’d never expect.”
Curt spins around. Squeaks and splashes. “One story is about a world where sex is just another chore. You know, like an oil change.” He sounds repulsed, yet eager to make the repulsion known. He hasn’t read a single word I’ve written. Still, his pretense touches me. I trust him. I trust the fucking bastard. “No one gives a fuck about fucking. Soon, people stop wearing clothes. No point in marriage. Crazy fuckers start communes. No one has kids...” Curt seems content to drift. “So much depends on a simple orgasm...”
I roll my eyes. “Thank you, William Carlos Williams.”
“Curt told me about your fiancé.” Dominic isn’t smiling now. “What kind of cancer was it?”
The thick-armed girl’s head turns this way then back. She can’t determine which of us deserves the spotlight. I keep forgetting her cowed sidekick only to refresh my perspective, now tinted with guilt. I have a duty to the discarded. It’s why I picked up the phone when Curt’s number flashed across my screen last July. It’s why we spoke for two whole hours, confessions and recollections and the sweet, sad, sobering fact that Curt Broussard had resumed his long-departed orbit around my fucked and feral world. I take my duty seriously.
“Ack!” Dominic finally finesses his lips into a familiar shape. “I’m sure you never thought we’d have this conversation...”
"Hodgkins," I say. "Spread to his lungs. So fucking quick. I thought we had time. We'd grow old and have affairs and relapses and screaming matches. And I wouldn't wonder whether it's appropriate to call myself a widower."
The water has stilled. I perch upon a deck chair. For a moment, I am alone inside a complex of derelict design, wishing it might consume me. Still warm and stale. It remains September. Austin. I do not live here. Curt watches me. Dominic watches me. I'm so tired of this tale, the role I must play. Grief is mere pantomime—the words excluded ought be shouted in rage.
"They were engaged," Curt informs Dominic.
"Crumbling Christ, I am so sorry, Jebediah."
I chuckle. Good to know my past bears a name. All I must do is utter it. "Jeb is fine. We're too old for all those syllables."
Dominic tells me about his older sister. Her husband died just two years after they wed. He was drunk, she was furious. He scaled their claptrap rental home, vowed to walk the roof's perimeter. Because he could. He most trusted her love whenever she feared losing him. Straight dudes from shitbox East Texas can't resist high stakes. A wife in tears is a wife for life. The fuckwad fell and broke his neck. Dominic smirks before going on. He doesn't seem to care I notice. I've never liked him more. The coroner, he said, ruled it "death by misadventure." A finding no less official than homicide, accident or natural causes. Ask my sister about it now, he adds. She'll tell you it's doubletalk for dying because you're a dumbass.
I remember Josephine, his sister. Junior-year chemistry. My straight-A streak showed little chance of surviving the onslaught of protons and electrons, beakers and burners. Josephine embraced the dirty thrill of helping the class brain cheat. Also, she bought me Marlboro Lights. Seeing a boy compromised offers far greater insight than simply watching him strut and surpass.
“Curt found himself a maiden.” Dominic seems tickled. He kicks his feet at the water’s surface like a child. Curt hasn’t drifted far. His friend’s splashing jostles the innertube carrying him. He tries to sip his Shriner. The suds soak his chin.
The thick-armed girl laughs. Her derision ricochets about the complex. Dominic and I laugh, too, but it goes unheard. So many moments in a friendship aren’t shared. They are cherished, they are mourned, they are the first moments to fade. I never fight. I respect how my life seems fated to vanish even as I live it.
My first visit, Curt bemoaned his bedroom, so barren of women, even transient lovers. I told him my last fuck was two weeks prior. He marveled at gay dudes’ talent for fornication. Blowjobs for breakfast, ass-pounding a certainty. I lay beneath the roof of the unpainted gazebo, worried the abrasive cushions might incite a rash. I wanted to tell him I didn’t enjoy it. I wanted to tell him I was already confusing it with other fucks. But a man who gets laid proves so easy to admire, and everyone needs a hero. His Boise speaker offered tinny validation.
Dominic and I watch Curt flirt. The thick-armed girl titters and smirks. Curt refuses to lift his shoulders or even head from the innertube. He courts her with words spoken to the sky. Her male sidekick, I haven’t forgotten him—I suspect he needs no help with that task. The girl hoists herself onto the pool’s edge. She gestures somewhere far away, some unit somewhere else. Curt paddles back to us. He’s elated. He chuckles. I don’t recognize the sound.
“She’s going to meet us at the bar.”
I haven’t dropped my overnight bag this entire time. “You breeders and your courtship rituals.”
Dominic reminds him our arrival time isn’t definite.
“Make sure you’re back here by eight,” Curt says.
He’ll no doubt ask if I need dinner. I haven’t eaten in three days.
Dominic collects his towel, slips a T-shirt over his head. His girlfriend needs something. She won’t be joining us at the bar. She works in marketing and has a daughter in junior high. Dominic divulged the basics of his Austin existence while Curt heeded his dick. I almost told him my dead fiancé’s name.
After Dominic departs, Curt and I make our way back to his apartment. The sun sinks, but the heat persists. Curt can’t stop talking about the thick-armed girl. Her name is Glenda or Galen or Gilda. He tells me what he’d like to do to her. He doesn’t use the word pussy. He uses words that make me nostalgic for pussy—the word, only the word. I warn him that pretty strangers break promises even more often than unhappy lovers. The gold-colored form clipped to his door holds his attention so briefly, I at first dismiss it, but the word EVICTED, its bold font, startles me.
Unlocking the door, Curt explains. “I’m moving across the globe in two weeks. Why pay last month’s rent? I’m leaving anyway. Let the fuckers evict my ass.”
The apartment’s floor plan makes no concession to ingenuity. The kitchen, dining area and living room meld into a single airless vacuum. A balcony beckons from the side. The bedroom and bath oppose one another at the unit’s far end. If there ever were furniture, it was scrapped before my first visit. Curt is packing. Heaps of clothing, documents, and objects whose purposes mystify me litter the floor. A cache of family photos, unframed, seems destined to get lost. One is a school portrait of Curt from maybe second grade. He smiles like no one ever gave him reason to stop. I want to steal it, but then I’d be obliged to look at it forever.
Curt fusses over one of the packaged dinners from the HEB across the interstate. Exotic foods, squash and curry and udon, foods you can’t procure through a loudspeaker. He mentions once again that my diet disappoints. Our first visit, I insisted on Sonic and Chicken Express. He cracks open a Shiner, offers me one. I don’t often drink, but the thought of him drinking alone craters me.
We relax on the balcony. He eats his dinner as if apologizing to it. Would I like a bite? C’mon, Jeb, he says, you should try new things. I decline. I need to survive the emptiness another night, maybe two. I know what he’s doing. His concern is sincere, but its potential to distract has not escaped him. We need to talk about Taiwan. Two more weeks. The police lie in wait at the airport. I need to discuss this with him. Again. It’s my second, and surely last, visit.
“Have you heard from the lawyer?”
Curt asks me for a cigarette. I’ve taken only a puff or two from the Camel wedged between my chapped lips. I pass it to him, the cherry bright and private. He takes it without comment. Whenever I’m flirting with a dude, I light the cigarette as if it were my own only to relinquish it. I like men thinking about my mouth, despite what awaits them there. But this is Curt, and I never fuck a dude I actually like.
“Fuckers don’t have any evidence.” He holds his cigarette like a blunt. “No real evidence, anyway.”
“Dude, this is Taiwan. Didn’t you see that Claire Danes movie?”
“Who the fuck is Claire Danes?”
“And the whole world hates Americans.”
“Do you know how many yellow chicks I’m Snapchatting at the moment?”
“Your online harem unnerves me.”
Curt pops up from his seat. “I left Miss Nasty inside. Be right back.”
This is what he calls his Boise noisemaker. Returning, he sets the speaker on the dusty Plexiglass table separating our two lawn chairs. He demands Bob Marley. As boys, we got stoned and listened to those goosestep baselines.
“It’s just something I have to do,” he says. “A man faces the music.” The bravado drops from his tone. “It took me a long time to call myself a man.”
“If you get stuck in the clink, it’ll be like solitary confinement. None of those dudes will speak English.”
“Is solitary confinement really that hardcore?”
I wield the newly-lit cigarette clenched between my knuckles. “Man is a social creature. Spend too long alone, and your mind devours itself for sport.”
“What do you want me to say, Jeb? It’s something I have to do. Taiwan is home. It’s time I went back home.”
A couple of years ago, long before he resurfaced stateside, Curt was busted with a brick of marijuana. It weighed as much as a newborn. He managed to skip town thanks to several improbable windfalls he never adequately detailed. Always, he finds the particulars of any past scrape too mundane to recount. All I know is that he expects to face arrest the moment he steps onto the tarmac. He insists the incarceration is a mere formality, unlikely to extend beyond a week. But there’s always a chance—a chance of what? Even with the backing of the elementary school where he taught, and plans to return, disaster remains far from impossible. Ignore Claire Danes at your peril.
“What does Dominic have to say?”
Curt shrugs. “Says I should follow my heart.”
“Dope smugglers don’t get to follow their hearts, friend.”
A half-hour before Dominic is due to fetch us, Curt hops in the shower. It tickles me watching straight dudes preen and primp for a night out. I see no reason for such rituals. A breeder bar, one Dominic proudly labels a “dive,” seems an excellent place to nurse a Jack and Coke while fading into the walls. Curt promises karaoke. That’s the principle difference between bars straight and queer: at one, the patrons burst into song, and at the other, patrons watch men in evening gowns mouth the lyrics to songs carved into their psyches. When Curt emerges from the bath, the new-car aroma fills the apartment like the ring of a call no one intends to answer. He’s trying a new beard oil. The thick-armed girl will surely spread her thick legs. Right, Jeb? I’m no good at reassurance. I find the truth too tempting, its potential for devastation an elixir more potent than even primo speed. We shouldn’t keep Dominic waiting, I tell him. I have to remind him to lock the front door.
Dominic drives a Jeep Cherokee that might have once passed for black. To my surprise, Curt concedes shotgun. From the back, he strokes his oiled beard as a lover might. We zip out of the lot and onto the access road. Interstate 35 slices Austin down the middle. A stone barricade running its length, at least as far as we can see, compresses the freeway down to just two northbound lanes. Cones and reflectors, all neon orange, litter the lanes. The city is widening the interstate, Dominic informs me. No one knows when the expansion will finish, and no one can recall when it started. It’s after seven on a Tuesday night, but the traffic bottlenecks before we reach downtown. The radio plays so softly, I wonder whether I’m hallucinating. Speed concocts fake voices to blot out the real ones urging you to stop. Dionne Warwick croons that’s what friends are for.
“I don’t sing,” I inform them. “Don’t even ask.”
“C’mon, Jeb,” Curt brays. “I need backup vocals.”
Dominic chuckles. “I’m sure they have some Madonna.”
“That’s not only offensive, it’s unimaginative.”
Curt and Dominic drift into a conversation that doesn’t involve me. We pass sign after sign: DETOUR, LANE CLOSED, EXPECT DELAYS. I’m listening to my friend and his friend speaking as if alone. The subject is girls. Our junior year, Dominic took out my old friend, Corrine, took her for an overpriced dinner at Chili’s then to the opening night of “Wayne’s World.” She excused herself after the first reel. Ladies room, she said. She never returned. Cell phones, of course, didn’t exist back then, so Dominic never learned her fate until the next school day. Indigestion, she swore. So humiliating. MERGE RIGHT, BE PREPARED TO STOP, TRAFFIC FINES DOUBLED. When my focus returns, I hear Curt teasing him about his girlfriend. Was she ready to assume the mantle of Ex-Wife Number Four?
I turn to Dominic. “You’ve been married three times?”
Curt snorts. “Didn’t invite me to a single one.”
“Guys, marriage is difficult. You wouldn’t understand.” He winces the moment he finishes. I could’ve made an effort to conceal the wound. Then again, my only shot at compassion resides in the souls of others. I spare none for myself. “Jeb, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Curt swoops in to rescue one of us, or perhaps both of us. “Dude, it gets better.” He tags Dominic’s shoulder. “C’mon, man, tell him their names.”
“Fuck off, Curt.”
“You can’t fathom the hilarity.”
Not even a quarter-century has lent their friendship a richer dynamic. They make each other laugh, and I suppose that’s enough. A man who can’t rouse even a chuckle from his intended ought cancel the wedding at once.
“Fine.” His gaze penetrates me. Should I return it? “Belinda, Becky, and Bess.”
Curt preens, victorious. Dominic concentrates on switching lanes to breech the exit for MLK Boulevard. He seems, still, to wish for consolation, some promise that the next woman he weds—sure, she’ll be the one. This hope announces itself in his lifted brow and tremulous jaw. I say nothing. The unsavory view outside my window offers needed distraction. Concrete swatches imbedded within asphalt roadways; patrol cars boasting their red-and-blues, light pulsing atop traffic, but bereft of sirens; mounds of damp sod; and a slew of workmen unmistakable in ill-fitting vests of fluorescent orange.
“Jeb, take another whiff of my beard. Tell me you’re not aroused.”
My cheek presses against the window. “Austin keeps evolving, but its dwellers never do.” The silence greeting my observation must be filled. “I’m goddamn wet, Curt.”
I do believe in God. He has a plan for me. I know I disappoint him.
It’s been many years since my doctoral days at UT Austin, too long to warrant even a moment’s marvel at which landmarks and businesses have endured and which succumbed to the same impetuous expansion afflicting the interstate. Are we jumping puddles far beyond Sixth Street and its array of queer clubs? If not, are we mere blocks away from my fuzzy and fair-weather social debut? I snorted my first line of coke in the men’s room of Oilcan Harry’s. The memory crests so sharp and certain, it demands I unveil it—but I deny myself. Dominic skirts one pothole only to jolt the whole Jeep upon striking one deeper and wider. Curt asks where the fuck we’re headed. My head lands upon the headrest, and I allow my eyelids to slip shut. Dominic calmly reminds Curt this dive bar is no different from the one they trolled back in July. When he first entertained me, a childhood friend from a presumably more delicate tribe of menfolk, Curt gladly escorted me to Oilcan Harry’s, to the side bar located in the billiards room. Several men, as the hours grew heavy, asked whether we were lovers. Curt didn’t notice, too drunk for such mundane inquiries. I didn’t tell the entire truth. I didn’t know the entire truth. I may never know—the truth, I mean, the truth of this life, of the lesson Curt offers that no other man can. This is my second, and surely last, visit.
Have I slept? That small, sad ache I experience upon waking pangs the back of my head. Life missed, the lives of others, the life I’ve navigated by depicting worlds both more dire and more desirable than the one I currently share with Curt and Dominic.
He won’t stop stroking his beard. “Why are we parked under an office building?”
“I told you about this place,” Dominic replies.
I take in the unlikely view. “Surely, this wasn’t always a bar.”
Dominic chuckles. “It’s Austin. It’s a bar. I thought you did grad school here.”
It appears to be the size of a small-town meeting hall, but dive bars have a way of obscuring their true floor size. No windows, walls painted so darkly, they could be plywood or brick. A few dozen vehicles shine sickly like wax fruit beneath bare fluorescents that illuminate all the scene’s worst details. Pierced and preening, kids smoke cigarettes and scan the lot. My beers with Curt have dulled the edge, but I mustn’t lose myself. He’s clearly bombed, shuffling alongside us, his gaze snatched then dismissed by sights I have no faith exist. Still, I have a duty to the discarded.
When we reach the entrance, a heavy oak door bearing an airbrushed heart cracked down its middle, an emo dude steps before us. It takes me too long to realize he’s the bouncer. No bigger than Dominic, this rodent. But his smile is wide and carries no hint of irony. He hands me a perfectly bloomed red rose. It’s perfect because it’s not real. Curt and Dominic take their roses, baffled.
“When you find a lass at last,” the bouncer purrs, “do what any gentleman would do.”
“Eat that pussy with a spoon.” Curt’s beard oil mixes with the dense aroma of Axe body spray, its many insistent varieties. Breeder boys always wind up smelling like a single-bed room rented by the hour. Dominic stammers an apology I miss. The tone tells me enough. I don’t see the point. The more Curt debases himself, the more quickly I can disappear.
The bouncer bows grandly, arm extended. “Enjoy your night at Chivalry.”
Curt cackles. “This place is called Chivalry?”
In grad school, my choice queer bar was named Male Call. When drinking, I prefer limp wit to tone-deaf sincerity.
As we enter, the bouncer delivers a final bit of advice. “Don’t surrender your blooms too soon.” I surrendered my bloom to Harrison Murtz in the scene shop a week before finals my junior year at Texas State. He’s married. I’m not. He’s happy. I hold a rose I can’t give away without giving away myself.
Curt lurches ahead. “Where the fuck do you sign up for karaoke? Jeb, sing us some ‘Vogue.’”
“Don’t make me kiss you,” I mutter. “Then no lovely lass will take my flower.”
Dominic grins. It doesn’t occur to me to ask way.
There’s a stage, festooned with generic Valentine’s Day trappings: hearts pierced by arrows, cherubs grinning, unnumbered calendars all flipped to February. A dumpy woman writhes while never quite keeping up with the beat to Rhianna’s “Umbrella.” Billiard tables, two of them, stand in the back. Enough room for dancing onstage. No one dances. Maybe five dozen breeders, sardined among the plastic bake-sale tables, sit atop what reminds me of piano stools. To the side, the only bar, the requisite looking glass stretches behind two unsmiling bartenders. I can’t help speculating how often they’re mistaken for lesbians. In my head, I name one of them Sunshine and the other Sourpuss. Already, I’m liking them more.
Dominic and I wedge ourselves between two patrons, each of them already listing and heavy-lidded, at the bar. Dominic’s body radiates an oddly paternal heat. My appreciation of this warmth sparks not a desire for sex, but a desire for home. Not my current Houston abode, shared with no one and greeted by visitors who rarely stay over an hour, but our home, in East Texas. Shitcan, backwood Pineknot.
“Jeb, wake up, fancy man.” Dominic stumps for my attention. Who knows how many attempts he’s made? “We’re in a bar, but we’re not drinking. You’re the brain. How do we redress such bullshit?”
He calls out for Sourpuss, calls her lady instead of ma’am or miss. Whenever a man calls a woman lady, I think of all those Jerry Lewis films I learned about during childhood, how I made no effort whatsoever to sample them. Sourpuss doesn’t simply stop before us, she strikes a pose, making no secret of her indignation. Dominic orders two Jack and Cokes, one of them, I assume, meant for me.
“How did you know what I drink?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He chuckles, visibly flustered. “Usually, I do the ordering, I forgot that...”
“You forgot I was a dude.”
“Nothing personal, Jeb.”
“What do I owe Employee of the Month?” I fish for my wallet.
With a quick, decisive gesture, Dominic stills me. He’s paying for the drinks. Curt paid for the case of Shiner meant for the three of us this afternoon, and, later, just him and me. Curt also footed the bill during my first visit. Once I’d filled the tank and hit 290, my obligations were met. My company, I strain to convince myself, is all Curt expects me to provide. Well, he does find my Camels hard to resist. Most men, I know, wouldn’t see the point in dissecting a generosity so benign, free of undercurrents or subtext. It’s my second, and surely last, visit.
I sip from the glass Sourpuss slams in front of me. I spit the instant it desecrates my tongue. “I didn’t order tequila! Sourpuss! Over here!” Jesus fuck! Dominic is too busy watching a dude with a belly too bulbous for his chicken-bone arms and shins. He’s singing “The Shape of You,” that Ed Sheeran staple that always imbues me with hope. If that ginger joke can get laid, hope remains. Just offstage, Curt bounces like a child eager to conquer the wildest ride at Six Flags. Dominic takes a long sip, makes no complaint.
“Excuse me, miss. I think you switched our drinks. I’m pretty sure this is whiskey.”
I turn to my right. A pocket has opened between the dude speaking and myself. He must shave twice a day. A dark, porous shadow reaches high, just beyond his cheekbones. He’s slicked back his dirty blond hair, but his curls will not be denied. His eyes are kind. Men with kind eyes don’t know how to fight. Not for lovers, not even for levity. But his soothing tenor secures Sourpuss’ attention right away, and she trades one glass for another with grand gesture. I suppose this dude and I could’ve done that ourselves. The fact neither of us made an attempt might indicate a rare but serious shared character defect. He absently twirls his fake rose between his thumb and outstretched fingers. I think about his mouth. I then recall what’s so, so wrong with mine.
I return my attention to Dominic. “The Shape of You” clip-clops through its last chorus.
“Please tell me he chose a song from this decade.” I need a cigarette.
“That ain’t how we do it.”
“You’re no help.”
Sunshine hands Dominic his credit card, a long and fluttering receipt wrapped around it. He pockets the card without giving it a glance. He’s smiling, complacent and complicit. The receipt cascades from his breast pocket.
“That was a clue, Jeb.” The following silence takes me by surprise, my eyes narrowing as if Dominic were out of focus. “I’m trying to play fair.”
There’s a meaning implicit in his confession. It shouldn’t surprise me he and Curt discussed how we’d function as a trio, perhaps brainstormed several strategies to neutralize me. This is likely to be, however, my only chance to educate him on the treachery perhaps awaiting our friend overseas. Casually, I ask whether they discussed his kamikaze impulses before my arrival.
“I just want to give him enough good memories to last him however long he needs.”
“Dom, we both know Curt is impulsive, foolish.” I wonder if he realizes those same descriptors could glibly label me. He watches Curt climb onto the stage. The breeders hoot and cheer, and my naïve, nihilistic old friend pumps his fist to encourage them. “Fond memories won’t keep him sane. They won’t keep him alive.” I gulp from my glass, set it behind me on the bar.
Dominic jerks his head to the side, perhaps too irritated to counter. On instinct, I grasp his shoulder, my other hand falling upon his thigh. These aren’t inappropriate flirtations, but rather unwelcome evidence that I now consider Dominic my friend as well. He’s given me no reason to expect any such latitude.
“Lasses and laddies,” a middle-aged MC announces from the stage, “Chivalry is proud to welcome Curt Broussard.” Catcalls, hoots and stomps. “He’s an English teacher in—wait for it!—Taiwan!” The crowd schisms: some groans, some cheers. Some asshole shouts, “Buy American!”
The MC cracks a lame joke about his surprise over meeting anyone blond from that part of the world. Curt snatches the mike and lurches forward. “My stage name is G-Dog Sizzle! I am here to represent!”
My upturned hand catches my head. “Dear Christ, it’s just like high school except I have to smoke outside.” Dominic roars with laughter. I’m not the friend Curt needs right now.
The MC scuttles offstage, and the music bursts from the speakers. Cheap karaoke approximation, an impromptu band composed of cake tins and crockpot covers and myriad kitchen utensils. It sounds cheap, the kind of cheap that takes perverse pride in its half-assed efforts.
Montell Jordan was a one-hit wonder who blipped on pop radio’s radar sometime during the nineties. Too accessible to be termed a “rapper” without drawing mockery, but certainly not a singer, either. The song is called “This Is How We Do It,” a painfully ordinary paean to the party life. I remember white boys, nervous that their racial heritage was nothing but an echo chamber, lined up to emulate whatever black musicians offered the tricky cocktail of “legitimate” and “bland.” Dominic, himself, mouths the lyrics. I need whatever’s left of my drink.
A fake rose, its bloom collides with my nostrils when I tilt back the glass. I glance up at Dominic, but he’s too busy manufacturing memories to notice. Obviously, I was intended to find the flower—but I’m not a lass. I just cry like one whenever Green Day catches me unawares.
I snap my head the opposite direction, the back end of the bar in full view, a narrow hallway branching off from beside the bar and leading somewhere unknown. A man hustles toward that unknown. His dark blond curls raise even more ruckus than when I first saw him. I must follow. Nothing to do but mourn my boyhood friend’s freefall. I’ve trained my gaze elsewhere since the dinky instrumental track started.
“Jeb? Dude! You’re missing Curt! He wanted you here! What the fuck?”
The hallway dead-ends, safely from most barflies’ vantage, into twin restroom doors, each airbrushed with the same enormous, breaking heart that afflicts the main entrance. Inside the men’s room, I’m relieved to note the bar’s suffocating whimsy has not followed. Three stalls, three urinals, a mirrored bank of sinks. It seems empty. I know better.
“Hurry, bud. Someone might catch us.” His voice, it’s scratchy and emphatic, as if puberty still has a trick or two in store. He clears his throat. Last stall in the trio. Pacing toward my fate, I listen to my footfalls’ pissant echo—they ricochet but rubber soles offer too little racket. I push open the door but stay rooted at the threshold.
My admirer stands atop the toilet, bending at the waist just low enough to avoid detection by any third party needing to piss. His shorts and boxers are collected at his ankles. His shirttail hangs so low, it grazes his erection. He’s not fully hard, and I’m not fully sold. It’s thick and mercifully cut, and I can’t help admiring a man who proudly eschews all foreplay and banter. Again, he urges me to hurry. I lock us inside the stall.
Once inside my mouth, he thickens a bit more, and hardens more than a bit. I have rules when sucking off strangers. These are not the same rules I follow when sucking off men whose pleasure I place above my own. Despite his awkward positioning to avoid being caught, he allows himself to moan, even mumble a few banal vulgarities. Thankfully, he doesn’t call me bitch. I can’t stomach that word, at least not when it disparages a man.
“Ow, ow, ow. Careful there, bud. I feel those teeth.”
I should address this obstacle now, but I don’t. Even after losing my last one, I still assured myself that nothing in my life, not even sucking dick, need change. I apologize and adjust the angle of my jaw. Moments later, the same complaint. I hate to disappoint, especially with something so simple as another man’s orgasm, so I slip him from my mouth, reach into my own and pluck out my bottom denture. Into my pocket, it disappears.
I do believe in God. He has a plan for me. I know I disappoint Him.
“Ask me even one question about my teeth, and you’ll have to get yourself off.” It’s the first time I’ve glanced into his eyes since starting to suck. “Is that unambiguous enough for you?” I can’t help smirking to watch his head jerk as he, frankly horrified, nods in agreement.
Like shame, I didn’t lose my teeth all at once. Any tweaker will tell you that hygiene rarely troubles the spun. It’s not a matter of demolishing your teeth, it’s simply a matter of forgetting them. Starting in my early thirties, they were excised individually, or in small groups, until so few remained, my dentist suggested a humane end for that embattled crew. I didn’t care. I wasn’t pretty. It thrilled me to witness the erosion of my physical self. Alas, sucking dick, the vacuum that forms inside your mouth, readily uproots a lower denture from its precarious position upon the gums. Incidentally, I’ve been forced to jettison from my diet popcorn, gummies and corn on the cob.
Minus that distraction, time unravels only to then congeal into blocks of eventfulness difficult to measure, impossible to mourn. Have I been sucking this dude’s dick for three minutes, or fifteen? Finally, his moans grow louder and deeper, and his hips start to buck back and forth. We’ll be done soon. I contend that debauchery, sex—especially impromptu sex—is our tribe’s sustenance and salvation. All such fucks are triumphs for any man who desires other men. He doesn’t whine or haggle when I slip him from my mouth before orgasm, and I am grateful. From my knees, I rise.
“What’s your name...? That was...” He shoves his shirttail into his khaki shorts.
I grin. I’ve been hoping for this chance. “William,” I tell him. “William Pope.”
The eloquent bouncer, that emo rodent, lunges for me the instant I leave the men’s room. “Whoever your friend is, you need to take his ass home.” His spittle spews forth. “The police are on their way.” He grabs my arm, pulls me down the hall toward the barroom. This boy is steeped in alarm, and he wants company.
“Which friend?” I call out, unsure he hears me. “What exactly has he done?”
Fucking Curt, I knew I shouldn’t have left him on a stage with a means of public address. No doubt Dominic finds his man-child madness utterly charming. I’m beleaguered by bothersome boys. The bouncer releases me and fades into the swarm of patrons. I scan the stage: no Curt, no one at all, actually. I missed his performance. I’d love to lie, but I tell that man the whole truth. Always. He’s nowhere among the crowd.
“Give me back my fucking card, you fucking cunt!”
Not every man can be identified from his raised voice. It’s coming from the bar. I hook to the left, the patrons casually clearing the way. Part of me persists believing it’s Curt who must be corralled. Not until I see Dominic, tendons stretched along his neck and his frame angled over the bar, bellowing at Sourpuss, or maybe Sunshine, can I admit my error. In fact, Curt tugs at his elbow, like an ignored child desperate to steer his father from temptation
“You think I’d let my name appear on some Discover card bullshit!”
Ah, yes. The credit card wrapped inside an endless receipt. He never looked closely. At least, not until now, apparently. Police sirens, afloat upon the melee like motor oil atop puddled rainwater. There isn’t a moment to lose. I shoehorn myself between my two friends and shout my warning inches from Dominic’s face. The cops, I inform him. Even a minor legal complication might prove one complication too many for Curt. I don’t know how true this might be, but I’m hoping Dominic secretly aches to bail. Whether it’s Sunshine or Sourpuss, her blank façade hasn’t shifted once.
Dominic pulls me closer, his voice dropping to a whimper. “That bitch stole my credit card—and she won’t give it back.”
“Cancel it with your phone. I’m sure your bank has an app.” I never learned that guy’s name, the one with the crown of unruly curls. Then again, he never learned mine.
The sirens fade. This relief, however, surely won’t last.
“C’mon, Dom, I need to get home.” Nice to see Curt has co-signed my script. I want badly to glance over my shoulder, eager to know if the patrons, in a sort of osmotic solidarity, watch our enfeebled exit. But I don’t. We shuffle out the door. The din resumes before it can swing shut behind us.
Kids, more than before, still loiter in clots, smoking and judging. But there’s a young woman, dressed in black denim hot pants and a low-cut blouse that first knew life at an Army/Navy outlet. She watches us skitter toward Dominic’s Cherokee, keeps watching long after the kids lose interest. Her arms are quite thick. No garment could distract from those tree trunks. Of course! It’s her! From the pool. She seems to recognize me, too. But I do not alert Curt, and I never again look over my shoulder. I’m tired. I’m strung out. And distractions are the last thing I need.
My duty to the discarded never outlaps duty to myself.
“Why’d you skip out on my karaoke?”
“I was sucking off some strange dude in the men’s room. He left his rose in my whiskey.”
Dominic veers left onto the interstate. The late hour has thinned traffic. No bottlenecks, no substantial delays. We’ll be home soon. At least, if my recollection of this city can be trusted. Home. A funny word I chose. Austin hasn’t been home for nearly two decades. Curt can’t wait to leave this city far, far behind. I suppose Dominic claims this place as his own, but I find myself too stingy to include him in my semi-conscious doodling. These thoughts distract me while I pretend to fight sleep. Curt and Dominic bicker about the nearest Whataburger locale, whether the construction might play spoiler.
“Isn’t it kind of dangerous, Jeb, skipping off with some stranger, telling no one you’re gone?”
Their voices, I can’t quite discern one from the other, but Curt never moralizes. Not to me, anyway. I don’t respond, and Dominic lets the matter drop. I’d be curious to meet these ex-wives, or maybe eavesdrop on his last blowout with each.
Back during the summer, my first time to visit Curt, we stumbled out of Oilcan Harry’s not long after midnight. He stumbled, I steadied him. It took him far too long to recall his iPhone’s passcode, but the Uber app presented no trouble once located. Still, Sixth Street bustled with vagrant, visceral life—taxis and bar-hoppers and sporty rides headed nowhere near. I fretted we’d miss our own ride. I demanded that Curt share this burden. He instead threw his arm over my shoulders and muttered how I hadn’t changed since Pineknot and how deeply that touched him. I was strung out and somewhat drunk but knew, like I know tonight, that Curt couldn’t truly enjoy his oblivion without supervision. Our Uber driver spoke with an accent. His skin was a deep brown, but the passing headlights and streetlamps left unknown the finer points of his identity. He tried to chat. I wasn’t interested, and Curt wasn’t coherent. Not long before we reached his complex, however, he announced that I was a real writer, that people paid to read the endless ways I imagined our world might fuck itself. Curt hasn’t read a word I’ve written—for him, the words don’t matter so much as the audacity required to write them.
Dominic’s Cherokee idles in the cul-de-sac separating the gated entrance and exit of Curt’s complex. They banter and curse. Curt clutches a take-out bag from Whataburger. After my brief doze, I no longer feel the least bit tired. A whole night staring into the ceiling atop Curt’s air mattress in his ransacked living room does not delight me. Dominic bids me farewell. I wave and smile. I’m still furious he turned out to be more complicated than I dared wager.
“How did that man convince three separate women to marry his ass?”
Curt shrugs. “They were all bow-wows, every last one.”.
The hydraulic gate slowly shuts behind us. We amble deeper into the complex. My deep appreciation, my juvenile love, for this complex renews, no doubt compacted by the certainty my love matters not a bit to its units and standard-issue amenities. Again, I want to lose myself among them. My complex boasts just a dozen buildings with scarce parking after the late news. I’ve always wished to show Curt my home, to discover where he’d choose to sit, which of my blu-rays he’d ridicule first. This is my second, and surely last, visit.
Once inside, I beeline for the fridge. Another beer offers my only chance of sleep. I sit at the kitchen island and drink while Curt throws on flannel lounge pants and a Nike tee. He grabs a beer and sits across from me. He asks for my rose. I can’t recall what I did with it, those pissant plastic petals. Maybe it lies unnoticed on the dirty concrete floor in the men’s room. Maybe my curly-haired trick wanted a memento. Maybe my name wasn’t enough.
He chuckles. “Fuck if I know where mine went either.”
“Theme bars are the worst.”
“Shit. Almost forgot.” He tosses the take-out bag upon the countertop. Grease stains smatter the white, orange-striped paper. Curt and his crew loved Whataburger in high school. Sometimes my crew encountered his. Curt and I exchanged hellos unobserved. “Bacon and cheese, no tomatoes, right?”
I don’t bother to conceal my amazement. “I’ve had boyfriends who never learned that.”
“You haven’t changed a bit since school.” His smile flattens. “Eat your dinner.”
A sour, aggrieved ache blossoms in my gut, but even the thought of flavor, of chewing, of working my jaw for ten, maybe fifteen minutes sickens me. I tell him I’m not hungry. He should eat it. Whataburger tastes delicious when you’re smashed.
“When was the last time you ate, Jebediah?” I open the bag slowly, as if wishing to avoid crinkles. “I hassled you about this last time.” I glimpse inside. Large box of fries, perhaps cold by now, burger below, wrapped in yellow paper. “Stop staring at it. Every Texan knows what comes in those bags. Eat, motherfucker.”
I pinch a single fry—soggy, not quite cold—between my thumb and forefinger. Flummoxed, hoping I might make Curt laugh and lighten up, I drop my jaw as far as I can. My bottom denture, confused, disengages. I then maneuver the limp fry over my gaping mouth, like a songbird feeding her hatchlings. Quite a clever sight gag, I assure myself. As I chew, the salt overwhelms my tongue.
“Fuck this shit. Start with the damn burger.”
This is all I want. Someone to stop me, someone to convince me not all the darkness within my abyss merits exploration. None of my lovers loved me to enough to make threats or demands. In their defense, I didn’t love them enough to heed any they might have made. My late fiancé, of course, is the exception—the addiction.
I unwrap the burger. Surprisingly flat and compact. Twigs of bacon jut from between the buns. Diced onions, shreds of lettuce tumble onto the open wrapper. I’m close to taking a bite. But not close enough to refrain from one more plea that my self-destruction continue unabated.
“Curt, it’s not right...you funding both our times together.” His eyes haven’t lost their forlorn intensity. I must continue. “I know you make far bigger bank than me, but...” The top bun feels damp and clammy inside my grip. “I can take care of myself. You know that.” Impulsively, I hand him the burger. “Please, I can’t think about food tonight.”
To my shock, he takes it from me. Gingerly. He takes a big bite. I’m relieved. I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed over my relief. He gulps it down then hands it back. What choice have I?
“I know what’s waiting for me in Taiwan. It’s true, I wanna go back, but there’s another reason.” Anxiety pricks my hands, my feet, even my face. “The company I’ve worked for these last six months? I’ve embezzled thirty grand from those fuckers.” I chomp down. The mustard’s tang unnerves me. “I quit last week, but those bucks are too big to go unnoticed forever. I need to be overseas before the shitshow starts.” The food slides down my gullet with the grace of a cud swallowed by a Holstein. “It was money well spent. We had a goddamn good time.”
I called him Will. His mother, dead long before we met, named him William Pope. He asked me to marry. I hold little hope I’ll be asked again.
I’ve returned the burger to its flattened wrapper. I might cry. I might spring from my stool and bolt. One night I’ll run out of dicks to suck—what then?
“I’m a speed freak,” I tell him. “Will and I kicked it together. Not at first, but sooner than I dared hope. When he died, the next right thing no longer seemed worth doing.” The act of admission hasn’t provided catharsis for years. Too much rehab, too many smoky rooms peppered with broken fags terrified they’ll break again. “I don’t think I can stop this time. This freefall, though, it feels very much like freedom. I no longer know the difference.”
We hand the burger back and forth—a bite from him, a bite from me—until it’s gone. The fries are a lost cause, now too cold. I ask him when he’ll start packing. He asks me when I need to wake for my return home. We pretend our answers carry weight. We pretend our words have impact beyond this night, this moment in this apartment, in this city.