Femme (3 page)

It seemed like a good time to make my move. I said, “Excuse me” to the table, and wandered off like I was heading to the men’s room. I looked around for Lionel but didn’t see him anywhere. I slipped out the back of the bar to the smoking area. He was there, leaning up against the back wall of the building smoking a cigarette.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

“I quit. I just keep forgetting I quit.”

“Look, I’m sorry about Chuckie. He’s an asshole.” I took a ten-dollar bill out of my pocket and tried to hand it to him. He just kept smoking. “I shouldn’t have let him say those things. I should have stopped him.”

“Sweetheart, in case you didn’t notice I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to protect me. I’m not a damsel in distress.”

“That’s not, I didn’t mean—you know he’s probably going to try and get you fired.”

He dropped his cigarette onto the ground and stepped on it. Then he rested a hand delicately on his chest and said, “When I was a little boy, my only dream was that I would someday serve drinks in gay bar. Please, kind sir, do not let that evil man crush my dream.”

“You’re not being serious.”

“Of course, I’m not being serious. War is serious. Cancer is serious. Starvation is serious. Whether or not I work at The Bird? Not such a big deal in the scheme of things.”

“You don’t mean that. Look, go back in and buy him a drink. Say something that sounds like an apology and you’ll be okay.”

“He calls me names and stiffs me, but you think I should buy him a drink and apologize? Did you get hit in the head with a bat?”

“Come on, you are kind of a stereotype. You’re not stupid, you know that.”

“I’m a fucking stereotype?”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” I was sure there was a nice way to say what I wanted to say, I just had no clue what it was.

“No, that’s fine. You meant it that way. And, yeah, I’m a fucking stereotype. Knock-knock, so are you. So is everybody. It’s how we identify one another. It’s how we communicate with strangers. Every single person is a stereotype until you get to know them. Getting to know someone you find out all the ways they don’t fit their stereotype. You find out the other things they are, the stereotypes they’ve played and rejected. When I was a little boy, I was a mama’s boy. That’s a stereotype. Except my mother died when I was ten. So I was a mama’s boy without a mama. No one knew what to do with that. Then when I was a teenager, I was very emo, borderline Goth, very Winona Ryder in
Beetlejuice
. That’s another stereotype.”

Winona Ryder? Was she that singer? He must have misread the confused look on my face because he kept going. “I know, I know, not even my generation. But the aughts suffered a real lack of teenage rebellion. I mean, I certainly wasn’t going to model myself after Amanda Bynes. When I turned eighteen, my father had had enough of a depressed, semi-suicidal teenager and threw me out. Best thing that ever happened to me. I got a job as a bus boy. Went to beauty school. I know, a gay boy at beauty school. Stereotype. Then I realized no one wants to actually pay for a haircut anymore and I got a job working here. And, yes, I’m nelly, I’m femme, I’m a flamer, I’m a queen, whatever you wanna call me. But I’m me. And I’m good at being me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It seemed like what I should say. That was a lot of words.”

“And your response is
one
word?”

“I’m sorry your dad threw you out. He shouldn’t have done that.”

“See, you’re the strong silent type, that’s a stereotype. And you’re kind of a bear, that’s another stereotype. And you’re straight-acting. That’s also stereotype. Oh Gawd, why do I bother?”

He pushed off the wall and started to go back inside.

“Wait—” I said, then couldn’t get anything else out. I was caught by the way his skin looked flushed in spots by anger, and the incredible blue of his eyes. He was sexy and I couldn’t figure out exactly why. Yeah, he was good-looking, but the world is full of good-looking guys. And very few of them are sexy for more than a minute. Lionel struck me as the sort who’d be sexy no matter what he looked like.

Stopping, he looked back at me with a sort of leer, seeing exactly what going on in my head, and said, “Oh honey, that ship has so sailed.”

Chapter Three

Yes, yes, yes, I hear you, darling. I should have kept my big fucking mouth shut. The customer is always right. What does the occasional insult matter when it means I’m not living in an alley eating out of trash cans? Believe me, all of these thoughts crossed my mind as I walked home from The Bird. It also crossed my mind to wonder what the fuck I should do with my life.

I couldn’t be a cocktail waiter forever. I knew that. But when you’re on your own there aren’t always many options. I mean, I was doing okay. I had a job. Well, hopefully I had a job. I had an adorable little apartment. I even had a thousand dollars saved in a CD to buy a car so I could stop begging people for rides. I had a pretty good idea how I wanted the next year of my life to go. Beyond that things were fuzzy.

Deftly, I managed to avoid Chuckie Cooper for the rest of my shift. Carlos was nice enough to take care of the Birdmen and their orders, so I didn’t have to go near them. I dealt mainly with a swarm of older guys there to see Larry Lamour. Some of them were a bit handsy, which compared to Chuckie wasn’t so bad. One of the older guys who comes in every week—I think his name is Gilbert, though some people call him Coco—offered me a trust fund if I’d run off to Vegas and get married. Though, it was very loud by then so he might have said, “I think it would be
such fun
if we went to Vegas and got married.” Not that I would do it. Cash or no cash. But it is always nice to be asked.

The Birdmen were gone by seven. Drifting off to other bars, or in a few cases patient husbands holding dinner. Because Carlos had been nice enough to run interference with Chuckie, I let him go home first. One cocktail waiter went home at eight and the other at ten. It was my turn to get off early, but Carlos always wanted to get home early and walk his dogs. One of them was old and there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d pee on the floor if left alone for more than an hour or two. Leaving her alone for a six-hour shift was hopeless.

“I think I saw Chuckie on his cell phone. He might have been talking to Bob.”

“Carlotta, half the guys in the bar were on their cell phones at one point or another. Some of them were texting each other rather than getting up to walk across the room.”

“Chuckie Cooper is not a nice man. You need to be careful.”

When my shift ended, I could have wandered down the stroll for a drink at the Pub or some other place, but the last thing in the world I wanted to do was run into any of the Birdmen. So I walked home, planning to watch a DVD.

My building is an L-shaped, two-story stucco painted the color of cinnamon icing, surrounding a courtyard filled with old-growth birds of paradise and elephant ear ferns. There’s a security gate that doesn’t work, which is unfortunate since anyone could walk in. And anyone had. Dog sat on the narrow stoop in front of my first-floor apartment. He looked sad and his face was blotchy, like he’d been crying.
He hadn’t been crying had he?
I worried.
That would be hideous.

“I thought you had no memory of how you got to my apartment when you were here last week?”

“I was sober when I left. Remember?”

“And you left a trail of breadcrumbs.”

“Why would I do that?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Wait, don’t answer that. I know why you’re here. I told you. That ship has sailed. You’re cute and I probably would have fucked you again, but now the whole thing is kind of ruined. Once I’m off the scent, I’m off. Got it?”

Suddenly, he sneezed. Hard. He pulled a rumpled, over-used tissue out of the pocket of his shorts and tried to clean up his nose.

“I gave you my cold, didn’t I? Shit.”

“I think the medicine I took is wearing off.”

“So this isn’t a bootie call, is it?” Or at least I hoped it wasn’t. He couldn’t be so arrogant he’d think I’d have sex with him while he was oozing mucus. Though, to be honest, he had had sex with me while I was—

“I want to ask you to dinner.”

“Dinner?” Gawd, I sounded like I’d never heard the word. “You mean like a date?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Because it’s a bad idea, that’s why not.” And it was a bad idea. I doubted we had anything in common. And even though I had a very pleasant moment imagining myself as Susan Sarandon in
Bull Durham
sitting in the bleachers at an imaginary ballpark wearing sexy off-the-shoulder sweaters while cheering on my baseball-playing man, he really wasn’t my type at all. My type was more nerdy computer guys who could bore me for hours talking about the usefulness of algorithms or hipster-ish bisexuals who’d bring their girlfriends to The Bird to meet me. Okay, so maybe I’ve
never
had much in common with the guys I went out with, but still, Dog was just so—

“Wait, how long have you been sitting here?”

“Couple hours.”

“You have a cold and you’ve been sitting at my door for a couple hours?”

“Yeah.”

What kind of guy does that?

“Okay, fine, I can at least make you some tea and honey,” I said, unlocking my front door. As soon as I said ‘tea and honey’ he got a ridiculously happy look on his face. Odd, to say the least.

He followed me in. As I closed the door behind him, I got a bit too close and smelled the beer he’d had and sweat from his game and a rather nice aftershave he’d put on many, many hours ago. It was a much sexier smell than I wanted it to be.

“So, do you have a history of mental illness?” I asked.

“That’s not a nice thing to ask.”

Waiting around for me like that was sweet, but not well thought out. “No, it’s probably not a nice thing to ask. But it’s a good thing to know.”

“I’m fine. Would you have made me leave if I wasn’t?” There was something defiant about his expression.

“No. But I’d ask you a lot of questions.”

“I have the feeling you’re going to ask me a lot of questions anyway.”

That was probably true. I stepped into my miniscule kitchen and put the kettle on. When I returned, Dog was still standing in the middle of my living room. “You can sit down. It’s okay.”

“There’s dirt on my shorts. I don’t want to ruin your couch.”

On the one hand, the couch was fabulous. It looked like something Liberace had owned in the sixties. On the other hand, I’d gotten it at Out of the Closet for fifty dollars. Still, I’d spent a whole week scrubbing it clean and deodorizing it. I went into the living room, grabbed a cherry red throw that matched the walls, spread it over the sofa and said, “Better?”

“Now I’ll get your nice blanket dirty.”

“Are you angling to take your clothes off?”

He blushed and sneezed.

“Let me get you a decent tissue.” Leaving the room, I added, “And for Gawd’s sake, sit down. The blanket is washable.”

I actually didn’t have any decent tissue, so I brought him his own personal roll of toilet paper from the bathroom and set it on the glass coffee table that belonged to a completely different era—fifties patio—but still managed to work with my couch. I watched him blow his nose, which he did in an oddly delicate way. When he was finished, I asked, “Why Dog?”

“My name is Doug. The first day of practice some of the guys heard me wrong. It stuck.”

I was expecting something more interesting, but was kind of glad I didn’t get it. “Well, that’s better than a story about you peeing on a fire hydrant.”

“They made me do that after the first game.”

“Nice.”

“They’re good guys.”

“Yeah, they’re okay. I know most of them. I’ve been working at The Bird for two years.”

A cloud seemed to pass over his face and I was afraid he’d bring up my apparently-hanging-by-a-thread job again. Fortunately, the kettle whistled and I scurried into the kitchen. Making his tea, pouring the water over the bag, getting out the honey bear, squeezing a big glob into the cup, and then adding a tiny shot of whiskey, I felt very domestic. My mom used to make me something similar when I was a kid, not as much whiskey but some. She’d whisper in my ear when she gave it to me, “Don’t tell anyone.” It was our secret.

Walking back into the living room, I wondered what I was doing. I had the sinking feeling I should never have invited Dog into my apartment.

###

Lionel hadn’t answered my question, hadn’t said whether he’d have dinner with me. He’d said it was a bad idea, but that didn’t always mean no. It usually meant no, but not always. I needed to convince him that it was a good idea to have dinner with me. I just wasn’t sure how to do that.

Or why? Why did I want to have dinner with him? I wasn’t sure. I just did. I liked listening to him. I mean, I liked having sex with him, too. But that wasn’t going to happen over dinner. It might not even happen after dinner. It definitely wasn’t happening tonight. Not while I had a cold. Making out with someone while you’ve got a cold causes oxygen deprivation. Not fun.

Lionel handed me the tea. Except it was more than tea. It was half booze.
Well,
I thought,
maybe it will dry me out
. That and the three shots of tequila and four draft beers I’d managed to have at the bar. Oh, maybe that’s why I wanted to have dinner with him. I was a little drunk. I did stupid things when I was drunk. Like having sex with Lionel in the first place.

No, that wasn’t stupid. It had been nice. And I did it once when I was sober, too. It was even nicer sober.

“What?” I asked. Lionel had sat down in the bright yellow chair that looked kinda like a daisy. He’d said something but I had no idea what it was. Now he was staring at me. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you have a fever.”

“Oh. No. It’s just a cold. You only get a fever with the flu. Unless it’s a respiratory infection. Or pneumonia. But this isn’t. Either.”

He looked at me very seriously and asked, “So darling, who are you? Exactly?”

“I told you, people call me Dog.”

“And your name is really Doug. And you like softball. Tequila shots. Draft beer. There are certain things in the sex department you are very enthusiastic about, but I won’t mention them because…” He watched me intently as my face flushed. “…you embarrass easily. The blushing is very cute by the way. All in all you’re quite tempting. Tell me something that will make you more than tempting. Be irresistible.”

I had no idea what to say. Or how to be— So, I said, “That’s not fair. You’re putting me on the spot.”

He smiled a little as though he liked my answer. “What kind of job do you have? Why don’t we start there?”

“I administer cardiac stress tests at Harbor.”

“That sounds interesting.”

“It’s okay. It’s a job.”

“What kind of job do you really want?”

“I wanted to be an EMT, drive an ambulance, but that didn’t work out.”

“Why not?”

I took a big gulp of my whiskey tea. “I got a DUI when I was twenty. You can’t get insured with a DUI so no one will hire you.”

“Do you have a drinking problem?”

“Only on Sundays.”

He nodded. “Why did you want to drive an ambulance?”

I shrugged. “I guess I wanted to save lives.”

“And wear a uniform?” He added a sexy wink to that.

“It is kind of a cool uniform.”

“Are you sorry that you’re not an EMT?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, listen sweetheart, the tests you give help save people’s lives. And you’re wearing a kind of uniform right now. You’re not that far off from where you were aiming.” He had a habit of waving his hands around when he talked. He saw me notice and laid his hands in his lap, one on top of the other. I didn’t think he’d be able to keep them there long. “What else? Tell me your coming out story. That’s always very revealing.”

“I sort of dated women until I was twenty-one. I almost got married, but it never felt right. When I told my ex-fiancée I was gay she didn’t believe me. She thought I was lying so she didn’t feel bad about my dumping her.”

“Saying you’re gay to be polite, yeah, people do that all the time.”

I shrugged. It was what she said. I couldn’t help that.

“How are your parents about it?”

“They don’t know.”

“You’re not out to your parents? How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“I guess you have that option.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re straight-acting.” He used obnoxious air quotes around straight-acting. “People assume you’re straight. I’m a sissy boy. No one assumes I’m straight. When I come out people roll their eyes and say, ‘Big surprise.’ Are you going to tell your parents? Or are you just going to wait for them to die?”

“My dad has a heart condition and he’s kinda religious now.” And I didn’t want to see the disappointment in his eyes when I told him.

“But you know how to do CPR, don’t you?” I must have made a face, because he immediately said, “Sorry, I suppose that wasn’t very nice.”

“What do you want to be...someday?” I almost said when you grow up which would have been stupid. He seemed a little younger than I was but he wasn’t a kid.

Lionel thought about it for a minute and then said, “Safe. I want to be safe.”

Huh? People didn’t say things like that. They said, they wanted to be an architect, or a businessman, or a pilot. What did it mean if all you wanted was to be safe?

“You said your dad threw you out?”

“On my eighteenth birthday. He did at least wait until after cake and ice cream. I thought that was good of him.”

“So you don’t ever see him?”

“Once. At Walmart. He was standing in the automotive section. I don’t have a car, though, so I couldn’t see any reason to walk over there.” His hands were floating around again in front of him. He saw me notice again, but this time instead of stopping he waved his hands around more. “Is the tea helping?”

“Yes, thank you. It’s making me sleepy. And kinda drunk.”

“Where do you live?”

“Over near the marina.”

“So you drove?”

“No. The field is in Tustin. Chuckie gave me a ride.”

“And then he ditched you?”

“I ditched him.”

“How did you plan to get home?”

“Ask for a ride or call an Uber, I guess.”