by Ben Peller
We both sputtered laughter as we stubbed our cigarettes out in an ashtray adorned with an illustrated Dorothy discovering the land of Oz.
“I don’t think your girlfriend’s coming out anytime soon,” David said. Then he rolled his eyes. “Sorry for the pun.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ve got that habit of punning, too.”
“I’ve gotta go check on my brother,” David said. “He tends to get hammered a lot.”
“My kind of guy.”
“Really?”
I just shook my head and extended my hand.
“Sure you don’t want to come in for a quick drink?” he asked.
I considered his offer. Inside Freddie Mercury was singing about fat-bottomed girls amidst a steady stream of people talking and laughing.
“Not tonight,” I told David. “But thanks anyway.”
I walked back to my place, stopping on the way to purchase a bottle of my good buddy Pierre Smirnoff along with a Gatorade. Once back home I poured a drink and put on O-Town’s “These Are the Days” and set it to repeat.
I rocked in my chair and recalled how my mother had warned me numerous times while growing up about how the world was teeming with latent homosexuals, people who acted straight but were really gay. According to her, they tried to seduce others over to “their camp” in order to justify their “debauched choice.” She’d been talking about a man trying to seduce me. Turns out she’d been halfway right in a skewed way. It appeared the latent homosexual my mother proclaimed me destined to meet had turned out to be a woman, a woman I’d grown to fall in love with. And now she’d left me for another woman after her latent homosexuality had become too strong for her to ignore.
I mused out loud about the idea of being a “latent” anything. After all we were what we were, constantly growing or regressing. One wasn’t always an artist, or even a banker or a doctor. In the space of an hour, “nice guys” we knew as neighbors could reveal themselves as mass murderers. People always seemed so eager to define themselves and others in such stark terms; maybe because to be a human being more often than not proved to be so damn complicated. It was possible we all held in our hands the potential of our own creation with each present moment we chose to embrace. Shit, what a responsibility. It made existence into a bomb that might go off at any moment. Exciting, horrific, intoxicating.
Intoxicated as I now was, I knew what this night called for. I rummaged through a drawer in my closet dresser and pulled out my VHS copy of The Fox and the Hound. I was right at the scene where Todd and Jeff, two creatures who society’s maintained should never be together, pledged undying friendship to one another, when the phone rang.
Ah ha. Could it be that Maryanne had had a change of heart? Had her latent homosexuality proved to be a phase? Was she back on the heterosexual team?
I brought the receiver up slowly. “Hell-lo, my dear,” I purred.
“Shawn!” SinSin’s voice warbled. “How are you, honey?”
I took a healthy swallow of my drink and watched as Todd and Jeff frolicked with one another. “Great, SinSin.” I sighed. “Let me ask you a question. Do you think I’m a latent homosexual?”
“Honey,” SinSin laughed. “You’re as straight as a board.”
“What makes you say so?”
“The night I met you, you were wearing leather pants! I mean, what gay man does that anymore? That was soooo nineteen-seventies. What you are, is a wannabe latent homosexual. Good gosh, your gym teacher or priest or whoever probably traumatized you as a child. Then through the years you cultivated some kind of paranoia that you maybe secretly liked it. Now here you are, forty years old and still worrying about it.”
I nodded. Come to think of it, my seventh grade gym teacher, Mr. Frezak, had once placed his hand aggressively on my leg, inches from my crotch, to make sure I hadn’t pulled my groin while playing soccer. And I still remembered his whispering in my ear if I was sure I wasn’t hurt “down there.”
“See!” SinSin’s voice rescued me from this memory. “Any card-carrying latent homosexual would’ve protested at being called forty when I happen to know from your Facebook page you are twenty-nine.”
“Huh.” Actually I was thirty-three. But I didn’t think anyone of any sexuality held a monopoly on lopping a few years off their age. Particularly not in Los Angeles.
“Face it, honey. You’re either totally straight or a totally I-don’t-know-what-the-hell. Now tell me more about what’s been happening with you.”
I settled back in my rocking chair, O-Town on the stereo, The Fox and the Hound unwinding before me, a drink in my hand as I continued talking with my Tgirl friend. It was all curiously quite comfortable. Just a casual Saturday night at home.
I made many more trips back to the freezer as SinSin regaled me with tales of how guys had done her wrong, and how she was still hoping to save up to get another “tit job” and finally have her “member” turned into a “tunnel.”
The last memory I have of that night was telling SinSin I loved her, while at the same time knowing I didn’t, not really. But maybe that was the reason it was so easy to tell her this, and to beg for her to purr into the phone, purr me to sleep. I admired SinSin for sure. I liked her. But I didn’t love her. Then why did I want her to purr for me? Was it because our relationship didn’t have that ticking clock of love, at least not in that way? Was I so afraid of love that I would never be willing to embrace it again?
After ranting all this in the general direction of my phone, I dimly recall her wishing me a mumbled goodnight and hanging up. Then I retreated flat back on my bed with, instead of a purr, a thought that often accompanied me to my dreams: How fucked up are you?
I awoke the next morning. A glance at the clock told me it was 10:35, and my bleary eyes told me I’d probably find an empty bottle of vodka in the freezer. But at least I was alive. And ready for another day.
I stretched across my bed. My message light was blinking.
I tapped it. Maryanne’s voice came on: “Thank you for last night, Shawn. Thank you for understanding. And in my own way I love you, as I’m sure you love me in your own way. I’m sure we’ll talk soon, my friend.”
I nodded, then stretched out, secure in my I-don’t-know-what-the-hellness.
To Swing Or
Not To Swing
The residents of San Bernardino have always impressed me. Many of them are willing to endure grueling two hour commutes to and from Los Angeles proper just so they may taste that sweet nectar of the American Dream: owning one’s own house and having a family. Being that these two possibilities have always been ones I’ve had nightmares about, San Bernardino nonetheless holds a fond place in my heart as a place to stop for a good carbohydrate fix at Del Taco before gunning on toward Vegas. Carbs are good on a drive like that; they keep a driver from going batty.
On this particular day I decide to wait for my Del Taco stop until after I pick up Shawn’s latest tale. I turn down several streets named after flowers until I find a one-story home lined with abundant bushes. Neatly trimmed lawn. The air smells of barbecue, even though it’s eleven in the morning on a Wednesday. As I stand on the door and prepare to knock, I swear I can hear the sound of someone screaming in pain.
I’m tempted to leave, but out of some mixture of curiosity and duty, I rap on the door. It opens almost immediately. A pretty young woman wearing a red negligee is smiling, sucking on a lollipop. “Hi,” she says. “So you’re here for the gang bang?”
The casual way in which she asks this is disarming enough. But then there’s the source of the screaming; a porno playing on a widescreen television right behind her on the far side of the wall in which a man is whipping a woman chained to a fire hydrant. A very real-life man wearing a leather vest and nothing else strolls up behind this red dressed woman before me. “Hell, come on in!” he announces.
“Actually… I’m not here for the gang bang,” I say, trying to make ‘gang bang’ roll off my tongue, even though it’s the f
irst time I’ve used the phrase in my life.
“Hey,” the woman responds. She takes a defiant stance, spreading her legs and arms against the doorjambs in an abbreviated Christ-like pose. “We’re not breaking any laws. The people who usually host these parties are both lawyers, so if you think you can come in here and try to bust-“
“No,” I exclaim. “No intention of that at all. I’m here because, well, a man named Shawn Michals sent me to pick something up. A document, if you will…”
“I know who you are,” the leather clad man behind her speaks up. “Rita and Ross, those are the two who usually run this place. They’ve moved to Palm Springs for the season, but they mentioned you might be coming by. Hang on. I’ll get what you came here for.”
I stand motionless as my contact strolls past the television and disappears down the hall. Meanwhile the young woman keeps staring at me as though I’m guilty of something. Or at least capable of being so.
I note she has a tattoo of a broken heart on her shoulder. Not the sweet kind favored by most that has a valentine shaped object with adorned with flowers or a sword. Literally, this is a symbol styled as a chambered muscular organ, its ventricles and aortas pouring rivers of blood. “That’s some tattoo you’ve got there,” I volunteer.
“I got it after I broke up with my asshole boyfriend,” her tone is righteous.
“I’ve always wanted to get a tattoo,” I offer, unable to ignore that behind this woman the screen has shifted to a scene in which a woman dressed as Little Red Riding Hood is being felt up by a figure clad in a wolf’s costume. “A quill pen, dripping blood. Kind of like a Shakespeare thing.”
She breaks into a halting laugh. “Shakespeare, huh?” she says scornfully. “I majored in English back east. I never thought he was all that great. So you write, huh?”
“Sometimes.”
“About what?”
“I’m kind of working on a project now,” I smile. “About love.”
She immediately rolls her eyes. “Christ, the one thing everybody wants to know about, and nobody has a clue.”
“It’s worth exploring. There’s gotta be a few clues out there,” I fire back, and damned if I don’t find myself believing this.
She sighs. “So why don’t you?”
Now I’m lost. “Why don’t I what?”
“Get that tattoo,” she replies. “You want it, so why not go get it?”
I’m dumbstruck for an answer. Since I have none for the time being, I counter with, “Why are you two hosting a gang bang?” I don’t mean to sound judgmental; I’m legitimately curious.
The tattooed woman chuckles. “Because we like it, you fool.”
It strikes me that this woman, as harshly as many would like to judge her, is way more open with her body and her sexuality than most. She has courage, you have to give her that. And if getting a tattoo of a heart gushing blood and hosting a daytime den of debauchery are things that tickle her fancy, she certainly does them without apology.
“Good for you…” I tell her, meaning it.
“Raquel,” she fills in. “My name’s Raquel.”
Before I can tell her my name, the leather vested guy returns with an envelope. “Here you go,” he says, handing it to me.
“Certain you don’t want to stay?” Raquel asks.
I’m not certain at all, if only to see what all the fuss is about. Sure I’ve heard about gang bangs and orgies. But to me they’ve always seemed slightly frightening. Like becoming a world famous rock star or winning a two hundred million dollar lottery, the sheer unpredictable capacity these experience hold intimidates me. I’d much rather read about these events than participate in them.
Kind of like getting a tattoo: would I ever be able to do something that I’d always harbored in the back of my mind, but had been too lazy or frightened to go through with?
“Thank you,” I say to Raquel. “But I’ve got to go.”
She nods and closes the door.
I hurry back to my car and make a beeline for the Del Taco. Once there I make a call from the payphone outside to a tattoo artist I know in Vegas. I tell him what I want and he quotes me a price. I stand there, phone in hand, and tell him I’ll have to call him back.
I head across the street to a liquor store and buy a half-pint of vodka and a Diet Mountain-Dew. Then I retire to my car to open the latest envelope I’ve collected, to ponder the latest link in the chain of Shawn Michals’ love affair with the citizens of Los Angeles I’ve managed to snare.
Swinger parties are, like most mixed blessings such as award shows and afternoon freeway chases, inherently rampant in Los Angeles and its surrounding counties. When I was nineteen and a sophomore at Santa Monica College, my friend Kris came out (no pun intended) to shoot his first of several gay porn films. He had access to what, at the time, seemed a seedier side of life to me, and I was unabashedly enthralled by it. Kris knew which kind of lube felt the best, what adult “connection” sites were really real, and also the signs to look for when determining whether or not a street-walking prostitute wasn’t really an undercover vice cop.
Even more impressively, though he was still living in Chicago he knew of swinger parties going on right in my recently adopted town of Los Angeles. He named a website name constructed of four different words that equaled out to what most would term an unnatural sexual position. “They got ‘em all posted there,” my well-informed friend assured me.
An even more amazing talent of Kris’ was that after a day of being paid to have sex with three guys on camera, he was still horny. “I need pussy!” he boomed when I arrived via bus at the set in Burbank. His dark hair was matted and sweat still coated his forehead. We got into his rental car and he navigated in the direction of San Bernardino. He’d advised me ahead of time that this was a BYOB affair. Now telling someone like myself that a gathering is “BYOB” is like telling a racecar driver to take a Ferrari out for a spin and “see how fast you can take her.” Hence, I’d planned accordingly. Six Vodkarades were chilling in a cooler I’d brought along.
Kris had already been to one of these open minded parties back in Chicago and advised me that it would be a night I wouldn’t forget. I can indeed attest to the fact that I have complete recall of the party. From the moment we arrived at what looked like a country and western bar masquerading as a house, to the very last drop of Vodkarade I consumed that night. Here, in steps, is my first experience with a swinger party:
Vodkarade #1: I casually scanned my fellow partygoers. Some were couples, some were by themselves. Many short skirts, and a remarkable number of attractive people. The master of ceremonies looked to be about 40; a thin man with twitchy eyes and a handlebar moustache. His smile as he took in me and Kris seemed a bit vulturous. He introduced himself as One-two-three.
Vodkarade #2: Kris reminding me that at swinger parties, “always ask permission” after I’d tried to lick a woman’s face while she blew bubbles from one of those pretty pink plastic jars.
Vodkarade #3: Fortunately, after asking the woman’s permission, she was more than agreeable and I proceeded to not lick only her face but eat bubbles from her mouth, and then move on to several other parts of her anatomy.
Vodkarade #4: Me and Kris being ushered into a Special Room by One-two-three. Once inside, there were three women awaiting us. They were all scantily clad, and very eager to please. At one point during the proceedings I looked up and found my penis accidentally draped across Kris’. We locked eyes, and both shrugged at the same time. These things happen, particularly at swinger parties.
Vodkarade #5: Fully drained and it now being around two in the morning, Kris and I were relaxing in the hot tub. One-two-three was in there with us, telling us how much he enjoyed having young, cool, clean guys such as us at his parties.
Now both Kris and I, being nineteen, were most assuredly young. Cool? This was possible enough, as we considered ourselves “chill.” But clean? Kris had been known to prowl the streets of downtown Chicago and make it a
rule to never pay hookers more than nine dollars for services rendered. Not being as frugal as Kris, I’d found myself one night in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard paying forty dollars for “a suck and a fuck” from a lovely voluptuous woman who would later find her fifteen minutes of fame when arrested while going down on a famous actor.
Ah, such sweet degrees of separation. (And no, the actor wasn’t Kevin Bacon).
So though both Kris and I may have been relatively young and cool, two turds floating in that hot tub had a better chance of being cleaner than we were.
But apparently due diligence had little meaning for One-two-three. Without bothering to question us on our backgrounds, he assured both Kris and I that he could get us both into “the industry.” Not the industry associated with the HOLLYWOOD sign, but the one more closely tied to the porn shops that occupy every other block of San Fernando Valley.
“Two hundred dollars a scene!” One-two-three proclaimed, as if he was promising the moon and not merely my monthly allocation for vodka. “And the chicks are hot!”
I cast a glance at Kris, who was busy rolling his eyes. It’s no secret male porn stars get paid a great deal more for gay scenes than they do for straight ones, so when it came to putting his penis inside someone else for money, two hundred dollars was chump change for him. I, on the other hand, was new to the game and found it fascinating that I could get two hundred dollars for having sex with beautiful women. “Sign me up!” I shouted, hoisting my fifth Vodkarade of the night, hot water swirling around my private parts as cries of passion (real or not be damned) from surgically enhanced women echoed in my head.
“Sure,” One-two-three grinned. “But you’ll have to make an audition tape, of course.”
At this point Kris cleared his throat excessively and announced that it was late, and that we should probably be going.
“Whoah,” I reached for and, after several seconds of drunken grasping, managed to grip my final Vodkarade. “We’re talking business here.”