You Can Say You Knew Me When (10 page)

The clock read 11:50 when I finally remembered Colleen. Friday at noon was our standing lunch date. We would meet at Café Frida, in the Mission, where neither the food nor the coffee was especially good, but the boy-watching could be compelling: scrappy, shaggy-haired hipsters wearing tiny, ironic T-shirts, absentmindedly scratching their bellies while reading Noam Chomsky. We’d been meeting like this for over a year, ever since Colleen left her job as a graphic designer for Levi Strauss. These days she worked at a little South of Market shop run by a gay couple who made cheap, outlandish clothes, perfect for drag queens and club kids (and no one else, really). Colleen managed the store and promoted their events, though what she really wanted to do was design her own clothing line. One of the owners had a crystal meth habit and the other was prone to depression—we called them Up and Down—but working for them, she said, was better than answering to a chain of corporate department heads.

I rushed into the café, sweaty from the ride over. She rose to hug me. Her head was wrapped elaborately in a colorful silk scarf that hid her hair and made her features seem larger: her caramel-brown eyes more expressive, her lips wider, her slight overbite more pronounced. She gave me the once-over, taking in my three-day stubble, my ripped sweatshirt, my damp brow. “So you’ve given up hygiene for the new millennium?”

“And you’ve started chemo?”

“Ha ha.” She dropped back down into the chair. “I’m in Hair Hell.”

“Woody said it was very pink.”

“He got my message? I’ve been absolutely paralyzed without your advice, Jamie.”

“Pink can be cute.”

“This is not cute. It’s a disaster.”

“Cotton candy?”

“Duller than that. Orangey pink. Salmon. Tongue.”

“Labia?”

“Labia!” she screeched. “My hair is the color of my pudenda. This is so not-okay.”

“Can I see?”

“I will not flash my pudenda at Café Frida.”

Hair dye gone wrong was nothing particularly new for Colleen. Since I’d first met her, back when we both lived in New York, I’d seen her try out blue, green, red and purple, sometimes wearing it proudly, sometimes erasing the whole thing with platinum and starting over. Once upon a time it was a punk thing—she’d had a
riot grrl
phase when she first got to San Francisco, not long after I moved here, when she wore combat boots with vintage dresses and dated a girl who played bass for a band called Hillary’s Pills. For the last few years, working for the Man, she’d limited her color to streaks and stripes. The pink, she explained, had been meant as a reaction to all the neutral tones she saw everywhere in San Francisco: khaki pants, brown shoes, beige sweaters. Charcoal gray T-shirts, fifty dollars at Banana Republic. Not to mention a reaction to spending a week with her own family at Christmas. “My cousin, the sleazy lawyer? She had the exact same amber streaks,” Colleen explained. “That was the final injury.”

We settled on black, deep dark inky black. Sort of mod, sort of new wave, with chopped-up bangs so no one would mistake her for trotting out that tired old Louise Brooks bob. Colleen seemed calmer once we came up with a plan. Me, too. I was back in my world, a place where I was expected to solve problems rather than cause them.

“Here, Pinky, this will cheer you up.” I pulled a little bundle out of my backpack, hastily wrapped in magazine pages on my way out the door. Inside: my father’s vintage beer coasters. I knew she’d like them. Colleen was a collector of cultural detritus, but a picky one.

“These are beautiful,” she cooed. “Where are they from?”

“From my father’s house. And before that, San Francisco, 1960.”

“I’m such an idiot,” she gasped. “I haven’t even asked about the funeral.”

I worked up a series of tragicomic encounters—my father’s mattress, my aunt’s fur coat, my cousin’s tipsy confessions, the streets full of slush, my shoes full of slush, my head full of slush—beneath which I hoped Colleen could hear the truth: I wanted to put the entire trip behind me.

All of it, that is, except what I found in the attic.

“It’s Pandora’s box,” she pronounced after I summed it up. “Be careful. Some of those ghosts are going to have fangs. What does Woody have to say?”

“He probably thinks its sort of cute
,
you know?
There goes Jamie, off on another tangent.”

“We hardly saw Woody at all while you were gone.” She looked away for a moment, her eyes moving toward the ubiquitous Ché Guevara poster. “We’ve got to rescue him from that place.”

“He doesn’t want to be rescued. He wants to get rich.”

“On second thought, let’s let him. He’s the only person I know who might actually make money off this dot-com thing.”

We finished our coffee and then wandered up 16th Street to the Castro, arms interlocked, pointing each other’s attention toward cute boys.

“What about him, the bald in the camo?” she whispered.

The
bald
in question was sauntering towards us, a shiny shaved head, a thin sweater shrink-wrapped on a hard torso, baggy camouflage pants drooping invitingly from narrow hips. A perfect specimen of what it took to be sexy these days. “What’s up?” he grumbled, his voice all bass.

“Woof,” Colleen whispered as we passed.

I turned to look back and found him doing the same. I snapped my gaze away: I recognized him. “I had sex with that guy. Years ago, when I was going out with David.”

“Who didn’t you have sex with when you were going out with David?”

“Um, David.”

I peered back again. He’d stopped in his tracks, idling in the middle of the sidewalk, daring me to come talk to him. I couldn’t even remember his name, but I remembered our athletic sex, which had begun like this, with eye contact on the street.

“Stop it,” Colleen admonished. “You know if you look again you have to talk to him, and that’s not okay.” She was right: One glance was curiosity, a second showed your interest, the third was a commitment.

Dish
was central to my friendship with Colleen, which for all its longevity still had the soul of a sorority. And so when we parted company an hour later I was painfully aware that the only thing I hadn’t told her about from my time on the East Coast was my tryst with Rick. In the past, I’d have gone right to her with this kind of thing. She and I used to bond as sluts, trading our explicitly dirty adventures, happy when we could outdo each other. But these days Colleen was a huge supporter of my relationship with Woody. “Monogamy is the new promiscuity,” I had announced to her as things with him were growing serious. “Sexual exclusivity, in your thirties, gives you the buzz that sleeping around did in your twenties.” Colleen liked that Woody had reined me in. His jealousy, which often frustrated me, was charming to her. She wanted a Wormy of her own.

On this afternoon, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the new promiscuity had started to feel a lot like the old.

I had a date to cook dinner for Woody that night. I overloaded my bike with expensive groceries and spent hours preparing. Pork loin, butternut squash ratatouille, wild rice pilaf. I had hoped to have the knives back from Anton, to present the gift that evening, but Anton had called to say that one of the handles was shot and he was waiting for a replacement to be sent from a dealer in Los Angeles. That was my first disappointment. My second came at seven o’clock—with the oven heated and the gas burners blazing—when Woody phoned to say he’d be late. He’d forgotten tonight was set aside to take the new guy at work, Roger, out for drinks. “I would skip it,” he said, “except he’s the only other gay guy we’ve hired. I feel like I should be there for solidarity.” From behind him, I could hear a volley of male voices chanting “Wood-man!” He begged me for an hour’s leeway.

I thought about what Colleen had said to me, wondering how I could possibly rescue Woody from Digitent when I couldn’t even lure him to dinner on time. A year earlier Woody had been the assistant director of Learn Media, a nonprofit that trained underprivileged teens how to use computers. The small, embattled staff spent half its time fending off a landlord who wanted them out so he could triple the rent, and half acting as surrogate parents for the troubled kids—sorry,
at-risk youth
—who came into their keep. Woody was doing all that plus acting as Learn’s self-taught webmaster. Two jobs for half the price of one: a recipe for burnout. I didn’t question his decision to make the leap to the for-profit world—time to give Saint Woodrow a rest, time to climb out of debt—and when he got hired at Digitent at a salary more than twice what he’d been making, I gathered together our friends for a celebration. But those dot-com dollars were casting a dark shadow. The hours were longer and the stress more pronounced, and all of it without the warm-fuzzy of teaching some kid from the projects how to use a PC. A month ago, I’d gone with him to Learn’s holiday party, where he was greeted with family-style hugs for the prodigal son and then forced to endure his former boss leading the crowd in the buoyant toast, “To all of us who haven’t been lured away by the boom!” When the room erupted in cheers, she added, “Keep fighting the good fight!”

“That was awkward,” I offered after we’d left.

“She knew exactly what she was doing,” he grunted. “She’s jealous of anyone who takes control of his life.” He spent the rest of that night in an uncharacteristically glum mood. The next morning, a Saturday, he was called in to work and stayed for hours.

He made it to dinner, well past nine-thirty, carrying a spray of red flowers and a bottle of Merlot way more expensive than our usual $4.99 Trader Joe’s special. It was his apology. I couldn’t stay mad.

“How’s the new guy?” I asked.

“Funny. Smart. Good style.”

“Is he cute?”

“Not as cute as you.”
Plup
went the cork.

I shook my head. “You don’t have to say that. I can handle you working with a cute gay guy, Woody.”

He poured me a glass and changed the subject. “I had to threaten one of the slackers today. He’s
this close
to being fired. I swear, he’s always stoned.”

I thought about how many hours I’d spent stoned since I visited Anton, hours I’d kept hidden from Woody, who rarely joined me in my favorite vice. It was my turn to change the subject: “Sit and start eating. It’s all getting cold.”

He flattened a cloth napkin in his lap. “You’re mad that I’m late.”

“Not after tasting this wine I’m not.” I sat down and held my glass aloft.

“Here’s to being back together,” he toasted. “And to true love.”

“Sure, here’s to.” I felt my face flush even before the wine went down.

His eyes were fixed on me. “Even after a year, that makes you uncomfortable.”

“No. Well, a little.” I started cutting my food. “Come on, eat. Tell me how it tastes.” He was staring, waiting. “I love you too, Woody. I’m just not so good with the words.”

“You write words in your journal all the time.”

“Speaking them is harder.”

“How about this,” he said. “Speak to me about your trip. Tell me something you haven’t told me yet.”

An image of Rick at the urinal flitted by like a sprite. I washed down the food with more wine. “Well…I found out that my high school fuckbuddy is married with children.”

“Eric-something, right? Was that a surprise?”

“Considering everything we did together, plus the fact that he went into the Navy after high school, yes.”

“It’s a mystery to me how you managed to have sex with boys in high school.”

“Sex wasn’t the mystery for me. Friendship was, friendship with other guys.” I paused. “This is what I was trying to explain to you, about why I got so interested in my father’s friendship with Danny.”

He wiped his mouth, then reached across the table, surprising me by taking my hand. “You know, I’ve been wanting to raise an issue with you.”

“Uh-oh. The I-word.”

He sighed. “Annie mentioned a friend of hers who lost a parent recently, and this person decided to see a therapist.”

I slid my hand out of his, tried to joke this away. “I cried at the wake. In the bathroom. I told you that, right?”

“Annie thought this therapist might be a good candidate. If you were looking.”

“Um,
I
haven’t even talked to Annie about my father.” In addition to being a good friend of Woody’s, Annie was Brady’s girlfriend. I cringed at the idea of them sharing a dinner like this one, trading theories about me and my
issues.

Woody said, “Your friends care about you.”

I gathered up a forkful of the ratatouille. “You haven’t tried the squash yet.” I leaned in close and brought it to his lips. He frowned, then blew on it, and I felt the tickle of his breath on my cheek. I watched his eyelids lower as he chewed. His lashes so lush for a guy. His concentrated brow so elegant.

“I wish I was as good as you in the kitchen,” he said.

“Wormy, I know you’re looking out for me. But the idea of therapy makes me feel like this ugly damaged thing.”

“Baby,” he said, a smile returning, “you’re a
beautiful
damaged thing.”

We spent the rest of the meal staying away from the I-word.

After dinner, walking backwards down the hall, he peeled off my clothes. My T-shirt, ripe from hours in the kitchen, went over my head. He planted his lips on my chest, his tongue on my nipple. My weakness. He pulled me by my belt loops and then slid my pants down. I nearly fell into him, eager for his kisses. We hadn’t had sex since I’d returned from New Jersey. I’d been avoiding it. For months we’d been fucking unprotected. We’d been tested, we were both negative, we were monogamous; we didn’t need condoms to have safe sex. But I’d crossed a line with Rick: My lips had been winter-chapped, he could have been HIV-positive, that tablespoon of cum in my mouth could have been the instance of transmission. Now I was going to give it to Woody.

He pushed me onto my bed, pulled my cock through the fly of my boxers, wrapped his warm hand around it. In a moment he was down on his knees in front of me. I hooked my fingers under his armpits, tried to raise him back up. I needed to be the bottom tonight. He wasn’t having it. He was hungry, determined, inspired by half a bottle of wine. I watched his lips wrap around the head of my dick and slide down its length, his eyes closed, his eyelids like two gentle smiles, his blonde curls bobbing. I fell back on the pillow and stared up at the ugly light fixture over my bed.