Tell Me It's Real

by T. J. Klune

  No one had ever said such things about me before, not even Sandy. I didn’t know how to take his words, because the sum of those parts made a picture of the complete faith he had in me. Or, at least that he almost had in me. He hadn’t told me about his parents.

  And as if my Mom knew that I was there and knew what I was thinking, she said, “You’re going to need to tell him very soon.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “But I don’t know how to.”

  “How long does she have?”

  “A week. Maybe a little less.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. Is she in pain?”

  He sniffed. “A bit. The meds help mostly. But she’s aware. Her eyes are brighter than I’ve seen them in a long time. She’s conscious and talking, which is more than I could have asked for. That may go away soon, but at least I’m able to hear her voice while I can, even if I don’t agree with what she’s saying all the time.”

  There was movement then, and I knew my mother had gone to him. It should have been me. It should have been me telling him that everything was going to be all right, whispering words of solace and peace in his ear. It should have been me, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how.

  “You’ll have to tell him, Vince,” my mom finally murmured. “You have to make sure he knows before he finds out some other way.”

  “I just don’t want to drop all of this on him. I don’t want him to see this shit if he doesn’t have to. I want him to be my escape from all of it. I don’t want to have to worry when I’m with him.”

  “And what happens when you can’t escape it anymore?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just… think about it, okay? And if you need to talk, you let me know. Don’t let Paul tell you that you can’t call me. He needs to get used to you and me talking, don’t you think?”

  Vince laughed quietly. “How can any of this be real?” he said with bemused wonder.

  Mom was quiet for a moment before answering. “Because sometimes it’s about letting go of what your mind tells you and following what your heart shows you instead. That’s how you know it will always be real.”

  Chapter 13

  The Lair of the Queen, An Audience With The Homo Jock King

  “DARLINGS,” Helena purred when we arrived in her dressing room. “How lovely it is to see you here.”

  Vince looked around in awe, as if he’d never been inside a drag queen’s sanctuary before. Then I realized he probably hadn’t, because most people are not invited into the inner lair of a queen while she prepares to greet her subjects. From how she was dressed already, it appeared she’d already taped her cock and balls, so I was at least grateful for that. I didn’t think I was ready for Vince to see my best friend turning from Sandy to Helena by grunting with his hands shoved down his spandex.

  “Hi, Helena,” Vince said somewhat shyly.

  I rolled my eyes. “Dude. You know her.”

  “Yeah, but she’s Helena now. I only know him as Sandy. There’s a big difference.”

  Helena chuckled deeply. “Oh, sugar,” she said to Vince. “It’s so nice to finally meet a big strapping man such as yourself who understands the distinction.” She trailed a gloved hand around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. He blushed brightly, but a smile grew on his face. For some reason, I felt like tackling a drag queen right then and there so she’d take her grubby fucking hands off my man.

  I cleared my throat as they gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes. “Do you guys want to go ahead and fuck and get it over with? I can definitely go sit with Daddy Charlie and allow you guys to have some time alone. I’ll warn you, though, Vince. Sandy’s balls have already been taped, so his erection will hurt.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Helena said, her lips right near Vince’s ear. “Paul’s just jealous because all the boys think I’m pretty. Do you think I’m pretty, Vince?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “But I don’t think I’m going to be able to look at you the same when we go to work on Monday. Oh, and I think Paul is prettier than you. No offense.”

  Helena laughed.

  “Gross,” I muttered even though I wanted to grin and break dance. Then I realized that doing somersaults on the floor is not considered break dancing, so I did nothing.

  “Who’s your daddy?” Vince asked me suspiciously.

  “Uh, you are?” I said, bewildered. Were we at this stage already? I didn’t know the etiquette of the proper response to answering such a question this early in the relationship.

  He snorted. “Thanks. I think that might be hot. Sort of. I meant who’s Daddy Charlie?”

  “That’d be me,” Charlie said as huffed up the stairs behind us. “And you are?” Then he saw who was asking, and he widened his eyes and started laughing. “Looks like Paul certainly had an interesting week,” he said to Helena.

  “He most certainly has. I told you at the show on Wednesday that our little Paulie was going to be just full of surprises. Turns out that Vince has an ass to die for and Paul just couldn’t resist following it around everywhere.” She winked at me. “Isn’t that right, baby doll?”

  Of course I sputtered. “I didn’t… I don’t even know… you hush your mouth… bike shorts… he was wearing bike shorts….”

  Helena and Charlie shared a knowing look. “Our little boy is growing up so fast,” Helena sniffed.

  “I knew you liked my ass,” Vince told me smugly.

  “I got over it quickly,” I lied through my teeth.

  “I want to see what’s got our Paul so twisted up in knots,” Charlie said.

  Vince immediately dropped his hand to the button on his jeans. Charlie and Helena grinned lecherously before I stepped in. “I don’t think that’s quite necessary,” I said with a glare. “And do you just take off your pants for anybody?” I growled at Vince.

  “Only for people who ask nicely,” he said.

  “You’re a big, fat whore.”

  He leaned in and kissed me. “Not a very nice thing to say to your boyfriend.”

  “Blech.”

  “You got five minutes,” Charlie said to Helena.

  “You coming down to the floor tonight, sugar?” she asked me. “I promise I won’t pull you on stage this time.”

  “He’ll be down there,” Vince said. “He’s got to meet Darren tonight. He doesn’t get to hide up here.”

  Helena beamed at Vince. “Oh, baby doll. How I adore you right now.”

  “I’m glad people talk about me like I’m not even here,” I grumbled to Charlie.

  “Boy, you lost the right to think for yourself over your shenanigans last weekend. You’re lucky you weren’t here on Wednesday when Helena told me what you were up to. I was planning on an ass beating that you’d never forget.”

  I grinned at him. “You promise, Daddy?”

  He snorted. “Don’t tempt me, boy. You’re lucky Vince is up here right now with you. I wouldn’t have believed you otherwise and your pants would be around your ankles and your butt would be smarting something awful.”

  “Did you guys used to date or something?” Vince asked. He was trying to keep his voice even, but I could hear the strain behind it. The smile had faded from his face, and he glanced between the two of us as if he could see something no one else could.

  Charlie grinned evilly. “Oh, am I going to like you.”

  “Don’t you encourage him,” I scolded Charlie. “You’re gonna end up getting me in trouble for something I haven’t even done.”

  “Paul likes to be spanked,” he told Vince.

  “I do not!”

  “Just take your big old hand and bring it down on that ass. It’ll get nice and pink and he’ll squeal for you like a little bitch. Give him some nice coloring to match his wall-face bruise.”

  “A home, Charlie. Remember that. I will put you in a home. With leaky roofs and an all-female nursing staff.”

  “They’re just messing with you, sugar,” Helena said to Vince. “Paul doesn’t do stuff like
spanking. His idea of kink is having a gang bang with six black guys who have names like D’Wayne and The Dominator.”

  “You guys are the poster children for why people shouldn’t have friends,” I muttered.

  “That explains the big black dildo under his bed,” Vince said thoughtfully.

  Shocked silence. Helena slowly turned to me, eyes flashing. I glared at my traitorous boyfriend quickly before schooling my face. “That explains the big what, Paul?”

  “I have no idea what he’s talking about.” I pretended I had something on my hands worth staring at intently.

  “Boy, you holding out on us?” Charlie asked. He had this annoying little gleam in his eye.

  “Paul has a box full of dongs under his bed,” Vince explained, obviously proud of himself for being the world’s biggest jerk. “I read in his diary that he uses them all the time and thinks about me.”

  “I don’t think this is working out between us,” I told him. “You and I want different things. It’s not me, it’s you.”

  “After our third date, Paul said I could use them on him,” he told a rapt Helena and Charlie. “I have the whole conversation saved from when he texted me. Tonight is considered our third date. He’s going to make so much sex face, it’ll freeze that way.”

  “This isn’t our third date!” I said with a scowl. And then, as an afterthought, “And I didn’t say you could use them on me.”

  “Hospital, Santiago and the park, dinner with your parents, then gay bar,” he counted off. “And yes, you did say I could use them on you. You were practically drooling when I told you that.”

  “The hospital wasn’t a date!”

  He shrugged. “I got to first base with you. I consider that a date.”

  “None of what is coming out of Vince’s mouth is true,” I growled. “Who are you going to believe? I mean, really?”

  “I can’t believe you write in a diary,” Charlie guffawed.

  “I can’t believe you have sex toys!” Helena grinned. “My baby is all growed up and he’s turned into a silicone slut!”

  Vince walked over and stood in front of me. I glared at him as he kissed the tip of my nose. “I’m pretty funny,” he said.

  “Not even in the slightest,” I pouted.

  “You coming down with me?”

  “Er. Argh.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Vince….”

  “Paul….”

  “I’m not really the meet-people type. I’m more the… Quasimodo in the bell tower kind of guy.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means he’s being a whiny little bitch,” Charlie said.

  I sighed. “Thanks, Daddy. That’s exactly what I meant.”

  “Then let me say it a different way,” Vince said. “Instead of asking you, I’m telling you. You are coming down to meet my friends.” He paused and then broke. “Right?”

  He looked at me with such earnestness I couldn’t say no. I had a feeling that was going to be a common event. “Yeah, I’m going down. Just give me a few minutes, okay?”

  You would have thought I’d gifted him another bicycle with the way he attacked my face. I almost forgot that we had an audience as he sucked on my tongue. I was finally able to break away before I jacked him off in front of an old man and a drag queen. There gets to be a certain point where once you get going, you just can’t stop, and he’d brought me close there twice in four hours. “You gonna let me stay the night at your house tonight?” he whispered in my ear, flicking his tongue out and grazing it just once.

  I didn’t even allow myself time to think. “Yeah.”

  “Good answer,” he said, giving me another dirty kiss before backing away.

  Helena and Charlie stared at me.

  “What?” I tried to ask defiantly, knowing I was beet red.

  Charlie shrugged and spoke for the both of them. “Diaries, dildos, and making out with a hot guy who apparently is now your boyfriend? Who are you and what have you done with Paul?”

  “I don’t have a diary,” I said weakly.

  “Can friends borrow dildos?” Helena asked Charlie. “Or is that a sex toy no-no?”

  “As long as it’s cleaned, I don’t see the problem.”

  “I want the big black one,” she told me. “But clean it first.”

  “So gross,” I shuddered.

  “It’s showtime, girlie,” Charlie said. “Get your pretty ass in gear.”

  “Walk me down the stairs?” she asked Vince, batting her fake eyelashes at him.

  “Sure.” He glanced back at me. “I’ll give you five minutes. If you’re not down there, I’m coming to get you and making you go down.”

  “I’m a grown-up,” I snapped at him. “I’ll come down when I damn well please.”

  “Five minutes, Paul.” He grabbed Helena’s hand and led her toward the door.

  “You sure know how to work him already,” I heard her say. “You got to grab him by the balls if you want to get him to do something.”

  “Oh, I plan to,” was his reply.

  The door closed behind them.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  Charlie burst out laughing. “Boy, you surprise the royal hell out of me sometimes. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “I don’t know if I do,” I said truthfully. “Vince kind of wore me down until I couldn’t say no anymore.”

  “Yeah, I bet that was such a hardship on you, looking as he does. It’s a good thing you decided to hit him with your car.”

  “I didn’t! He ran into my door!” When were people going to believe me?

  “Uh-huh. You should have just asked him out if you wanted to get his attention.”

  “I didn’t want his attention.”

  “Bullshit. You’re just as head over heels as he is. The difference is you hide it better underneath all the remarkable bluster you have sometimes. But since I’m your daddy, you can’t bullshit me. I’ve known you for far too long to get fooled by you, Paul Auster. Vince may not see it yet, but you can’t pull the wool over my eyes.”

  I sputtered at him for a good minute or two until he went over to his perch on the balcony to man the spotlight and the camera. I took my usual place beside him, but this time, instead of watching Helena, I immediately searched for Vince. It didn’t take long to find him standing with the same jocky boys he’d been with the week before. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him standing next to Darren Mayne. And I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see Darren wrap his arm around his shoulder, his mouth close to Vince’s ear as he said something to him. The drag show hadn’t yet started, but it was noisy enough that I couldn’t make out what was being said. All I knew is that Darren seemed to be standing way too fucking close to Vince, and Vince was doing absolutely nothing to push him away.

  Darren Mayne. What a lot of people might not realize is that gay bars are exactly like high school, in that there are cliques. Tucson isn’t big enough to have multiple gay bars to cater to specific groups of homos. Instead, they all converge on this one place. Sometimes they mingle with one another, but mostly they stick to themselves within their own groups.

  You’ve got your bears, your Muscle Maries. You’ve got the twinks, the ravers, the leather crowd. You’ve got the models, the lesbians (who, to be fair, have their own subgroups, but since I don’t have a vagina, I’m not privy to them). There are the queens, the transsexuals, and those random guys who just like wearing skirts. There are daddies and their boys, masters and their slaves. You’ve got the older and the younger, the middle age. There’s even a small group that comes out every now and then consisting of married couples with children, though they’re usually exhausted and leave by nine o’clock.

  And then you’ve got the jocks, of which Darren Mayne is the king. I’d never spoken to Darren before, aside from the usual, “Sorry, sir, I totally didn’t mean to be breathing your air even though you seem like a big asshole,” that I would mumble un
der my breath every time we passed each other. There were a couple of times we’d pass each other and he’d catch my eye and I’d be convinced that he was about to say something, but either he thought better of it or it was my imagination. I didn’t know what possible thing Darren Mayne would have to say to me, so I figured it was always me misinterpreting.

  But regardless, he was the king of the jocky gays, his little muscled boys around him like they’d just walked off one of those gay college porn sites that I’ve never, ever subscribed to (you know, the ones where the cookie-cutter hairless toned frat boys sit next to each other on a random couch and go through the cringe-worthy banter with the camera man who tries to convince the audience that the two dudes both have girlfriends and that they’ve never tried anything before with another guy, only to watch them proceed to fuck like bunnies. Very, very experienced bunnies at that).

  Darren himself was probably around the same age as Vince, which put him slightly younger than me. And of course he had great blond hair that did whatever he wanted it to do. A killer body that looked like he spent every waking moment in the gym. He had a smile that could make your insides feel a bit loose and a great laugh, from the one time I’d actually heard it. I’d always heard that he was a bit of a slut (those jocky college boys tended to be like that), but he was never cruel, at least that I could see, and even more, he was always at Helena’s shows. Thinking back on it, I couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been there on a Wednesday or a Saturday, grinning at her while slipping her fives and tens rather than the usual one-dollar bills she got for tips.