Fail Seven Times

by Kris Ripper

  Which wasn’t to say I was all that focused on listening to them talk about it.

  “…just making sure,” Ally finished, flushed and happy.

  She was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met, reminiscent of Alex as a kid. I found her mystifying. How a grown up could maintain that level of sweetness without being either simple or obnoxious, I didn’t know. But she was neither.

  She did, however, appeared to be addressing me. Whoops.

  “Uh, what?”

  “You’re coming to the wedding, right? I mean, we’d like it if you did.”

  I shot an accusing look in Paul’s direction, but he was too busy gazing adoringly at her to notice. Waste of a glare. “Sure. As long as it’s not in the next two weeks.”

  “It’s in April,” Madison said. Emphatically. “As Ally just said, like five seconds ago.”

  “While you were lost in thought,” Avery added.

  Miguel shook his head. “Yeah, excuse Justin. He’s lost in thought a lot lately.”

  “I am not.”

  “Ohhhhh.” Avery glanced around, rubbing his hands together. “I sense a story. Spill!”

  “What is this, a fucking slumber party?”

  Paul shifted his chair just a little, either angling himself closer to Ally, or in a better position to look at me. Paul was a danger zone. I liked him (so that’s a warning sign). He also occasionally asked questions beyond where most people stop. “Go on. Is it about them? Your people?”

  “Alex and Jamie,” Miguel supplied.

  I groaned and downed my shot, grabbing a sip of Miguel’s beer to chase it. “Fuck all of you.”

  “So, yes, then.” Paul patted my arm. “You don’t have to share your feelings if you don’t want to, but I think you kind of do.”

  Which wasn’t true, at all, even a little. I waited for them to keep digging so I could defend myself—claws out, if necessary—but they didn’t. My “friends,” if that’s what we were calling them, waited, a bubble of silence for me to fill amid the squawks and bleats of the bar on Friday night.

  “I could be having sex right now,” I muttered.

  Madison waved a hand. “With them or someone else?”

  “Oh, goddammit. With them. Or not, I mean, Alex got called in to work. But we were supposed to…or at least we could have…I hadn’t decided…”

  Miguel heaved a sigh. “You guys see what I mean? He’s hopeless.”

  “You talked about me behind my back?” I mustered outrage, but it fizzled when exposed to their sympathetic shared glances.

  “The only way we can talk about you to your face is if you show up,” Avery said. “And what do you mean, you hadn’t decided?”

  But that wasn’t the right question. I contemplated my empty shot glass and coasted into the words I wouldn’t usually say. “They said there aren’t rules for who does what to whom, and who’s around for it. Like, Alex had to come back for work, but Jamie and I could have stayed. And I…freaked out. And now they think I freaked because she’s a woman, but that’s not really it, and I don’t want them thinking that, I don’t want her thinking that, but I can’t bring it up.”

  I needed another shot. I needed a rewind button. I needed to be so drunk I’d never connect what I’d just said to anything at all. Blacking out was too good for me, but when I drank enough my words seemed to float around, detached from meaning. It was better than when they got far too real.

  “It’s not because she’s a woman?” Madison’s voice didn’t hold an edge, which was a little surprising. I would have expected a lecture on the awesomness of pussy. “I just mean…okay, this isn’t totally the same. But in a way it’s exactly the same.”

  Reigning queen of contradictory statements. I sighed.

  “I thought I was only ever attracted to women, right? Like, that’s just what it was. But now I’m with Adrian, and ze’s definitely not a woman, so that leaves me…where, you know? I don’t have some big hang-up about it, but every time I think the word lesbian, I catch myself wondering if that’s even true anymore. Or if it ever was.”

  An unlikely alliance. As much as I hated to admit it, I could relate. “I think about it. It’s weird. Or maybe it should be weirder, and I don’t understand why it’s not. And sex was…good. I think for both of us. I have no fucking idea what the hell I’m supposed to be doing, but Cork knows how to get what she needs, so I’m not worried about that. It’s more that…I mean, there are a lot of aspects of it. A lot of complexities.”

  It was all complexities and complications. I had no idea how to even approach it as a subject.

  “You mean she’s not dominant enough?” Ally asked.

  Or, of course, I could just wait for a recent graduate of BDSM and Dating to ask about it directly. Fuck my life.

  “Sorry.” She was blushing, and I didn’t miss the way Paul reached for her hand.

  “No, don’t fucking apologize, you’re right. I mean, you’re completely wrong, she’s plenty dominant enough, but that’s…one of the harder parts of this.”

  “Which part?” Miguel slid his beer closer to me. Like it was a reward. “Bottoming to a woman?”

  “Fuck. No. Just.” Why the hell had I come out with them when I couldn’t stop my brain traveling over these deep ruts again and again?

  “Just what?” Paul asked, looking at me a little too closely. “You remember what Hugh said? About taking responsibility for what you want?”

  “I remember he used a whole lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing.”

  “Please. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t blow him in a hot second.”

  “Blow him? Yes. Have a conversation with him?” I made a see-saw motion with my hand. “No comment.”

  “I would do both in a hot second.” Miguel fanned himself with a hand. “But anyway, back to you can’t bottom to a woman.”

  I cut my hand through the air sharply, trying to banish even the thought of it. “That’s not the problem. She’s always been crazy dominant. I’ve always been—what I am, which is not that. She knows me too well. I don’t know. Hell.”

  Avery leaned over to look at me. “When did you meet them?”

  “Alex and I have known each other since grade school. We met Jamie in college. They’ve been together about five years now.” Five years and four months, but who was counting?

  Whistles around the table from Miguel and Madison.

  “Jeez. So. You’ve known them…I mean…” Avery shook his head. “Wow.”

  Madison laughed. “That’s him trying not to ask how old you are.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake. I’m thirty-two. I’ve known Alex for twenty-seven years, and Cork for fourteen. Happy now?”

  “I mean…I can’t even imagine that. Honestly.”

  I leaned my head on the table and stayed there.

  “I think it’s kind of amazing,” Ally said. “You guys don’t think there’s something sort of wonderful about knowing people that long and wanting to…like…”

  “I definitely do.” Paul, of course, springing to her side. “But I get how it makes it more delicate, too. Though you have to go back to what you were saying before. It seems like if you and Jamie know what each of you likes, and know you’re compatible, that would make things easier, not harder.”

  “Unless that’s the problem.” Miguel took his beer back and drank. “I bet Justin, here, doesn’t really like to be known. Not to cite a common cliché or anything.”

  “You wound me,” I muttered.

  “Well, it’s not just that, either, right? I mean…” Ally trailed off. A better man would have lifted his head to look at her, this woman who’d never spoken about anything sex- or kink-related out loud until the workshop.

  I wasn’t that better man, so I closed my eyes while she continued.

  “I think it might be hard to have a lot of history with someone, and be able to…try new things with them. Trying new things with new people is different.”

  “That’s true,” Madison said. “But th
e longer you play with someone, the more you can build. I don’t think you even get how deep it can go until you’ve tried it.”

  Boring. I sighed again. “I’ve done really good scenes with people I never saw again.”

  “Me too. And I’ve done scenes that went balls up with people I’ve played with a dozen times. It’s not the hotness of the scene that changes, necessarily.”

  “Then what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your headspace.” Paul cleared his throat. “I mean, not that I have a whole lot of experience. But for me, it’s a headspace thing. Same as it’s different playing with someone I’m attracted to romantically as well as physically.”

  “Are you attracted to her?” Avery asked. “Like, you told us you’re in love with him, but you really haven’t said anything about being in love with her.”

  I swallowed. Remembered what it felt like when she’d spoken into my ear on the beach. Remembered imagining kneeling at her feet, touching her, and then backing off from actually doing it because I was scared. “It’s complicated.”

  They groaned.

  “No, I…yes. The ways I respond to her are…recognizable symptoms. Of me having…feelings. Romantic feelings.”

  Madison snorted. “You’re acting like you’ve contracted an STI or something. OH NOES, HAVING A ROMANCE RELAPSE.”

  “Did you just say ‘oh noes’ out loud?”

  She stuck her tongue out at me.

  Avery smacked her. “But you definitely want to have sex with, uh, Jamie?”

  It was strange to hear her name said by these people who were nominally my friends. “Have had. Enjoyed. Pro-vagina. Definitely pro-clit.”

  I could sense Miguel looking at me, craning his neck to do it, going still. “You submit to her?”

  “She gets me off, yes.”

  “Not what I asked.”

  Friendship was so overrated. “What do you want from me?”

  “I figured you were balking because you didn’t want to submit to her.” He shook his head. “I’m just…so fucking jealous. Of what you could have with them.”

  “Amen,” Avery muttered. “When can we meet them? Are they coming to the wedding? Hey, guys, Justin needs a plus-two.”

  “I do not—”

  “Yes!” Ally sounded delighted by the prospect. “Plus two! I mean, obviously we’re just inviting Hugh and Will, but my brother would have a plus-two, too. Two too, oops. Also, my friend Lucy. I kind of have a lot of poly people in my family.” She turned, charmingly, to Paul. “Is that weird?”

  “Nope. We’ll come up with wording to make it clear that we have no expectation of two-person couples.”

  And oh god, of course they’d come up with poly-inclusive language for their wedding invitations. Because they were those people. They couldn’t help themselves. They were so good, and so well intentioned, and…

  Fuck, I missed Alex and Jamie so much it felt like a burn, one of those small, almost invisible burns you get moving a tray in and out of the oven too quickly. I couldn’t see the thing that was causing me pain, but it was constantly in my awareness, unavoidable and aflame.

  I rested my head on my arms, listening to all of them talk, grateful when they didn’t force me to join in. After a while someone rubbed my back. Miguel. Attempting to offer comfort, despite his jealousy.

  He was a good guy, too. They all were. Of everyone I saw with any frequency, the only other true, bone-deep schmuck was Chad.

  What fucking awful company.

  Chapter Nine

  WE DIDN’T MAKE it back to the Saints house for the next three weeks. I worked a few Saturdays flogging Chad through the sea birds (not literally, alas, though don’t think I never considered it). Alex worked straight through something like sixteen days in order to buy himself an entire week off for Christmas, and he’d have to pick up the Sunday after and work straight through New Year’s and most of the following week.

  Jamie had a holiday bonus and the week off, full stop.

  I’d been too busy to think a lot about spending a week with them. I hadn’t been too busy to think a lot about the night I’d done tequila shots and said too much to my friends.

  And I’d spent a whole lot of quality time with Enrico Hazeltine. Who’d embraced a culture of gay men that I’d never felt at home in, but I’d assumed that was because they were dumbasses. Not that I failed to measure up in gayness.

  I didn’t think that now, not really. I’d dismantled my fair share of whiny arguments against the existence of bisexuality, and whatever I felt for Jamie, it didn’t really seem to touch the essential…me. I’d known I was gay since I was that lonely kid on the playground. For a long time, I’d assumed that was the why of my loneliness, though obviously it wasn’t. Plenty of not-queers are lonely; plenty of queers are not-lonely. My queerness was, at most, a contributing factor, like my Jewishness, or my intelligence, or my innate bitchiness.

  For years I’d seen the subtle fault lines expanding around the middle class, white, cis, gays and lesbians. Sometimes the battle being fought was race, or assimilation versus separatism, or “those people aren’t welcome in our community” about bisexuals, trans folks, people too poor, too flamboyant, too militant, too loud. And I’d fought those battles carrying the weight of privilege, never really being the one attacked, though Alex had been. And Jamie.

  Maybe Madison and I, aging activists that we were, had come to some kind of identity plateau, where things that once mattered simply mattered less. If I was only ever attracted to Jamie, did that make me pansexual? If she and I were on a beach and she was practically nibbling my ear, did I look straight? It was too fucking much to deal with.

  And then there was the poly thing. But at least I could talk about that one. After three beers our first night at the beach, sitting on the back porch, legs dangling where there were still no steps, listening to the waves in the dark.

  “Ally and Paul are trying to come up with poly-inclusive language for their wedding invitations.”

  “Hey, that’s really cool!” Alex turned so he could sit with his back to the railing. “I didn’t know you’d seen them lately.”

  “Went out a few weeks ago.”

  Jamie nudged me with an elbow. “You trying to invite us to the wedding, Jus? As your guests?”

  “Shut up. And no. And you’d be my plus-two.”

  They laughed.

  “That’s so cool,” Alex said. “But you are inviting us, right? If you take other people as your plus-two, I’ll be super offended.”

  “You want to go to the wedding of people you’ve never met? Dear god, I don’t want to go and I actually like them.”

  “Oh, I’ll handle this one, Alex.”

  I braced for Judge McGowan, presiding.

  “One: we like them because you like them. Two: I’m sure there’s plenty of time before the wedding for you to introduce us. And three: we’d follow you anywhere and all you’d ever need to do was ask.”

  “That is adorable,” I muttered.

  “Alex and I decided we’re definitely going to seduce you this week, so fair warning.”

  Alex’s chiding “Jame” was somewhat lost under my “Are you fucking kidding me with this?”

  She only smiled. “I mean, we’re open to you seducing us whenever you want to. But if you’re waiting, then rest assured, we are totally going to seduce you. At some point. In the next week. Poker may or may not be involved.”

  I turned to him, since he was the sane one. “Seriously? Is this the shit you two talk about when I leave you alone too long?”

  “Uhh…technically I don’t think…I mean, I haven’t gathered all the data, but I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between how long you’ve left us alone and how much we talk about…I wouldn’t have said seduce…” He tilted his head forward and his hair fell in front of his eyes. “Umm.”

  I reached out, hesitated, then realized there was no pretend-wave that could get me out of what I’d been about to do, so I went ah
ead and tucked his hair behind his ear. And my stomach tumbled because then he was looking at me and I was touching him and just fuck.

  “But we talk about you, yeah. You want us to stop?”

  My fingers curled into my palm, trying to keep from reaching out to him again. I shook my head.

  “Good. I’m glad. Because it’d be hard.” He slowly, deliberately, extended his legs until he could tuck his toes against my thigh. “If I suggested we should kiss right now, would you?”

  “This the grand seduction already?”

  “Huh uh. We have a whole plan.” His eyes cut up over my shoulder to Jamie, then returned. “This would just be kissing. Because we’re here. And I missed you. And we can.”

  I always want the watershed moments to be huge, like dodging out of the way of an oncoming train. But sometimes they are this: pale yellow light spills out from the kitchen windows, barely making a dent in the darkness of the evening, and your best friend leans forward, dislodging the hair you just pushed behind his ear. And you lean in to meet him.

  His lips felt right. Of all the stupid, sentimental things to think at that moment, I thought: His lips feel right.

  Then his hands cupped my face and my heart beat against my ribs like a moth trapped under a glass, frantic and desperate. I needed Alex closer, I needed his grip tighter, I needed him to bite me so I knew he meant this, that it wasn’t just because we could.

  Jamie’s fingers alighted on the back of my neck, not directing, for once. Gentle and present when what I dearly wanted was force.

  I pulled myself away and managed to beg. “Cork, hurt me.”

  “Oh, I will. Anytime. But first Alex wants to make out.”

  “Goddammit.” I banged my head into his shoulder a few times, trying to master my emotions. I needed distraction, incapacitation, fucking. Not making out. What were we, teenagers? “It’s too fucking cold for this.”

  “If we let you up to go inside, are you gonna let him kiss you again?”

  Alex’s hands smoothed down my arms like he wasn’t sure where else was safe to touch me. “Please? It’s like…the thing I always wanted. And now I can sort of have it? Unless you don’t want to kiss me.”