Overhead some strings of oversized lightbulbs had been turned on as the dusk started to fall. They were pretty, quite stylish in a retro way, but I resented them. I felt like darkness was falling within me, and they had the nerve to shine so brightly.
Then I saw the blond merman from earlier, standing a few tables away with his back to me but his face in profile. I recognized him instantly because he was still wearing one part of his costume: the starfish stuck all over his bare torso.
While I watched, he took the hand of a boy standing next to him at the table, interlinking their fingers, and I saw them smile at each other.
I felt my heart sink, and wasn’t sure why.
“Is your friend gay,” Damaris said quietly. I glanced at her. She was looking at her phone.
I raised my eyebrows. “Did he send that?”
She nodded, and the smile was gone from her face. She put the phone away in her purse and crossed her arms tightly. “Let’s go, okay?”
I didn’t argue. By the time we had walked back to the entrance, she had gone quiet and was walking looking at the ground, arms still crossed as if against cold and wind, even though it was a warm summer’s evening.
There were big clouds hurrying past overhead across a clear dark blue sky with one or two stars managing to shine through. It was gorgeous.
I thought of the merman and his boyfriend and I felt a sudden rush of loneliness so strong, it was like needles pricking all over my skin.
That was when I noticed that Damaris had tears running down her face, making tracks in her fish scale make up.
“Damaris,” I said, and she just shook her head and kept walking. I put my hand on her arm. “Let’s get a cab. Okay? I’ll pay for it.”
She shrugged again as if grudgingly agreeing, and we went to the taxi stand and climbed into the back of a brand new and spotlessly clean car. I told the driver the address of Ellegrandé’s.
“I’ll take the subway from there,” I said when she looked at me as if for an explanation. I indicated my outfit as an additional excuse. “I’m not going home like this.”
She didn't say anything more, didn’t press me for where I lived. She looked out the window, then took out her phone, looked at it for a minute or two, then put it back.
“Did you reply?” I asked. I felt a twinge of discomfort.
“Reply telling him, yeah, you’re gay?” She asked.
I grimaced, but not so she could see. I felt a rising tension within me, edged with panic.
What was I going to say if she put me on the spot?
At Ellegrandé’s my sexuality was assumed. I had never told anyone I was gay.
I would never lie outright about my sexual orientation.
But at Ellegrandé’s, everyone had just assumed I was gay, the way the sky was blue and polar bears were white and there would always be one dancing kid hanging upside down in your subway car blasting music when you had a migraine and thought you would explode if anything else got on your nerves.
It wasn’t just me. Gay was the working assumption for any man who set foot in the building. Even the plumber, and he had turned out to be gay, actually—he was a friend of DT’s.
Finally I said, “Uh-huh,” as if to confirm that was what I had asked, rather than to confirm yes, I was gay.
I’m not gay.
She was silent, and then I heard her sniff once, twice, and pull a tissue out of her purse.
“What’s the point?” She said thickly.
I looked over at her. It was hard to describe the warring emotions within me.
I was on fire with jealousy, like it could consume me from the inside out, and lurking underneath that was the sick shame of rejection that always went hand in hand with it.
And on the other hand, her pain was reflected back in me in a great well deep inside me, so I hurt, hurt like I was bleeding, and I wished for nothing more than to somehow take hers away, even if I had to make it mine.
“I’ll just do it now,” she muttered, and narrated her typing. “‘You know I’m a guy, right?’—should I say that?”
I frowned, and felt a flare of anger go up in me like a flame. “What?”
She shook her head. “No, what about… ‘Do you like she-males?’”
“Why are you saying this?” I wanted to reach out and shake her arm, but I didn’t dare touch her.
“Have you ever dated a chick with a dick…” she trailed off. Her phone screen’s glow was reflected on her face in the dark cab.
“Don’t put that,” I said desperately, not understanding what she was doing.
She rolled her eyes at me and didn’t say anything. She started typing again, then put her phone down, wedged it under her leg and looked out the window.
I wanted to ask what she wrote, but she seemed pissed at me.
After a moment she said, “I’m a transgender woman. There may be some differences between me and other girls you’ve dated.”
I looked at her profile, the golden and white lights coming through the window from the streets surrounding the line of her forehead, the curve of her cheek and chin, the shapes of the shells in her headdress and the gorgeous flow of her thick curls of black hair over her shoulders and down over her cleavage in that crochet bralet.
I felt my heart squeeze painfully in my chest.
There may be some differences.
I wished I could explain to her that she was special to me, magical to me, she was transcendental, and what made her different gave her a power that no-one else had over me.
I wished I could show her that she had smashed through the barriers I had put up to keep the world out. That she had come blazing into my innermost private places, shining her light and beauty around.
But I had no comfort to offer, because she couldn’t find comfort in me. I just wasn’t right.
“No,” she said then. “No.” She picked up her phone again and as she tapped with her thumbs, she said, “I have a penis.”
I saw her purse her lips and then I heard the little sound as the message was sent.
“Let’s see how he responds,” she said, in a high, light tone which sounded forced to me, like she was waiting for his response on what type of waffles she should buy at the supermarket.
She pushed herself higher on the seat, leaning her head back against the headrest, then, “Ow—” she hissed, “stupid shell done stab me in the head.” She took off the headdress and laid it on the seat between us.
“Mine keeps poking me as well,” I admitted.
“You want me to take it off?” She asked, looking over at me.
“Okay,” I sat up and turned my back to her so she could undo the laces.
“Turn around,” she said. She put her hands on either side of my shoulders and lifted the shoulder pads off slowly. “Careful with your face,” she said. “Close your eyes.”
We had learned it was all too easy to get poked in the eye with one of the shells while putting on or taking off the shoulder pads.
“Thank god for that,” I muttered when it came off. “Good job Brooklyn, but Jesus, that was hard to wear for so many hours.”
“I don’t know why I got his number,” Damaris muttered, laying the shell accessories carefully on the floor at her feet. “I should have said no.”
“Did he reply already?” I asked, slightly confused. I hadn’t seen her check her phone.
“I know what he’s going to say,” she snapped. “And—and even if he says it’s okay,” her voice dropped in volume, barely audible. “He could be lying.”
I felt a tremor of fear go through me.
“Lying?” I echoed. “Why would he lie?” I looked at her, terrified of what I would see.
Was she crying again? She was shaking. I pulled my seatbelt strap down to get more length out of it, made it as long as possible, and reached out my arms toward her to hug her.
She hugged me back. Tightly, as tight as a death grip. I gave as good as I got, even though my chest and arms were bare and she was
wearing that bralet, and it was a lot of skin contact and I wasn’t used to that.
“He was just so hot,” she said, with a laugh, letting me go. “Mad hot, right? Did you get a look at his arms?”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
She took my hand and held it to her. I felt closer to her now than I ever had before.
“I’m a check my phone,” she said, still holding my hand.
And that was the moment. I looked at her, her features illuminated by the cold light from her phone, her hand warm around mine.
I love you.
I stared at her, stunned. My heart beat slowly. So that was what I felt.
She noticed me staring at her and flashed a smile at me. I had smiled back, tentatively, and warmth rushed through me.
I love you, Damaris.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and when these words and the memory flowed through my mind, mixed with the heady emotion of nostalgia, I put my hand over my heart and felt it so strongly, I thought I would weep.
But instead, I felt something else. Something not just in my heart.
Fuck.
I bit my lip. I reached for the nightstand, grabbed my phone and powered it on.
While I waited for it to boot, I sat tense on the edge of the bed, one hand gripping my left leg tightly above the knee, willing myself not to get an erection.
When the phone was finally on, I opened my messages. I wasn’t even going to talk to Damaris. I just wanted to see the words that she had written to me. The last message or picture she’d sent. Anything to remind me of her.
As the app launched, I couldn’t help but notice the little red circle indicating that I had unread messages. I braced myself. I wasn’t going to read them.
The moment anything I didn't want to see came up, I was going to squeeze my eyes shut tight so I didn’t have to see what they had been saying about me behind my back.
I expected the House of Ellegrandé group chat to be at the top.
But instead, now at the top of the page, was my chat with Marcus, which just had one unread message.
Huh.
Something told me not to open it.
I opened it, a flicker of trepidation going across my diaphragm.
It was a picture. The thumbnail showed Marcus, no shirt on, looking down into the camera with half-closed eyes.
The trepidation grew stronger. I wasn’t sure if I should click on this.
I sort of knew what it was going to be, and I wasn’t sure what would happen if I clicked on it. No-one had ever sent me one of these before, but of course I had seen ones other people had received.
I remembered what Marcus had said this afternoon, when he found me sitting on the park bench.
Princess. You didn't reply to my text.
The thumbnail stared back at me, the provocative way Marcus was looking into the camera, lazy yet insolent. One hand on his chest, fingers resting on his pectoral.
I bit my lip, put the phone down, went into the bathroom, closed and locked the door, and climbed into the dry bathtub and pulled my head inside my tank top and curled up with my head on my knees. On second thought I pulled the shower curtain across as well.
I sat there, huddled up, and it was quiet and peaceful inside my tank top.
I could smell myself, skin and sebum, comforting, and the unisex scent I’d sprayed on for the date, and I could see the thin skin of my stomach and chest wrinkled up and heaving in and out.
I don’t know what to do.
That was an understatement. Understatement of the year. Understatement of the millennium.
Pick a period of time, between now and one billion years ago. Any of them would serve as an example of the duration in which this statement had gone untested in terms of understatement.
When I decided this morning, what I was going to do, had I expected the tender longing that lived within me for Damaris to be easily replaced with Marcus?
I thought that feeling went with sex. Was the same as it, or they were inseparable.
It wasn’t that I questioned that sexual desire could exist on its own as a pure feeling.
It was that I had never really felt it for someone on its own, without everything else that I also felt for Damaris at the same time. Care, love, longing, need, elation, possessiveness.
Maybe I had expected, if I let myself feel sexually attracted to Marcus, that all of those other feelings would naturally follow.
Had I thought that my love for Damaris could be so easily conquered?
The underlying feeling of disgust which had battled with my arousal the entire time I was on the date with Marcus was making itself known, rising to the surface and overtaking everything else.
Was I that fickle, that I could just fall out of love with a finger snap?
Was I that disloyal, that I could switch my feelings that easily?
Love was important. I believed that.
I believed in love, more than anything else.
And what I had done, trying to make myself like Marcus, I had betrayed my own idea of what love was. I had taken my precious love for Damaris and I had polluted it.
Actually physically having contact with Marcus was not the main thing. I had thought it was. But it wasn’t.
It was what I had done after, when I made the conscious decision to try to forget about Damaris.
When I made the conscious decision to like Marcus because it was easy, because he liked me, because Damaris already thought I did—that was what I had done wrong.
I felt the full force of that disgust grip me, the full knowledge of my own hypocrisy.
I hate myself.
Marcus wanted to know if what they said was true. If I dated or not. Marcus had heard someone say I was a virgin and wanted to know if it was true.
It was true. Anthony Alcantara was a virgin.
And I just didn’t understand how that was going to change, if I couldn’t force myself to take the easy route, the one I had been unable to take today.
How hard can it be to have sex with someone that likes you?
That wasn't the question.
The question was how hard it could be to have someone fall in love with you when you were in love with them.
The question was, what was the point of trying to find love if you were doomed to always be denied it?
I slowly pulled my head out of the tank top and smoothed it down, hoping I hadn’t stretched it too much out of shape. It was new.
I drew back the shower curtain and climbed out of the bathtub. I walked slowly back to the bedroom and picked up my phone, unlocked the screen and took a deep breath.
Last night I’d had the first wet dream since I was—well, in a good few years.
I couldn’t remember what happened in it, but it had woken me, sweating, and in the dark in the middle of the night I had imagined, just for a moment, that there was someone there in the bed with me, but I didn’t know who it was.
The chat appeared, with the thumbnail of Marcus. I clicked on it.
Marcus was draped over the couch where we had kissed, bare naked, one arm reached behind him holding on to the back of the couch, his other hand on his chest, legs artfully arranged, and in the middle of it all, his erect penis, pink and larger than I expected, staring right at me over his dusky dark red balls.
Fuck.
I sent him my location.
Sent him my address, the address I had never given to anyone at House of Ellegrandé in the more than a year I had been there, and sent it.
And then I typed one word.
Now.
Concealed Carry
The doorbell buzzed less than fifteen minutes later. I jumped up and, my stomach in knots, looked through the peephole. It was him. I unlocked the door and opened it.
I had expected him to leap on me the moment I got the door open, but he just stood there, and I just stood there and we stared at each other sheepishly.
“Surprise,” he said with a nervous laugh.
I op
ened the door wider. Anxiety had my insides in such a tight grip that I couldn’t even smile or make a lame joke to match his.
He came inside and I closed the door behind him and locked it. I turned back around.
He seemed to loom very large in the entrance hall, as if he was taking up far more space than he had any right to by physical size alone.
I resisted the urge to duck around him and creep away and hide under my bed until he went away.
“Do you, um, want a drink?” I asked, meeting his eyes for the first time since he had come through the door. I could feel my face getting hot with the mental image of that picture he had sent me.
He nodded. “Yeah. That’d be great.”
His tone was awkward, not the smooth Lothario seduction voice he surely pulled out to go with the nude he’d sent.
I went to the kitchen. He followed, and then stopped at the breakfast bar and leaned against it with one arm on the bar.
I looked in the fridge. There was almost nothing in here.
I didn’t know how to cook and I wasn’t too sure about grocery shopping either.
There was a takeout container from a few days ago and, opposite to it and several shelves down, half a shriveled lemon. The empty white shelves seemed to glow at me.
“Um,” I said, then turned back around. “Water?” I tried to grin charmingly while I said it.
He smiled back, and it didn’t reach his eyes either. “Okay,” he said.
I took glasses out of the cabinet and filled them from the water dispenser on the front of the fridge and set them on the breakfast bar.
“I need to go to the store,” I said, shrugging nervously.
Why had I invited him here? That was a bad idea. He would tell everyone where I lived, and then they would know.
I stood there, waiting for him to hit on me or make a comment about the building, the neighborhood.
Marcus was looking down at the counter, pink in the cheeks again. My brain immediately associated the color of his cheeks with the color of his junk in the picture and I stepped backward, horrified by the reaction flooding through me.
I felt as if I were one heartbeat away from launching myself at him and the only thing stopping me was how much I hated myself right now.
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