by Ariel Schrag
Gillian ran ahead. She, Adam, Brad, Nadia, Jackie, and Jackie’s friend Lionel walked down the street toward the karaoke bar. It was sundown and the sky hung pink between the cracks in buildings. They were in Chinatown, and the trash-scattered sidewalks and restaurants with their bright red Chinese character signs and Peking ducks swinging in the windows made Adam feel cool and like he was showing Brad the real New York. They’d all met outside the subway station, and everyone was already drunk. Brad and Adam had finished a six-pack at the apartment before they’d left. Gillian and her gang appeared to have done something similar.
“Let’s play it too!” Nadia said to Jackie, and she ran ahead and joined Gillian, reclining against a brick wall.
Jackie rolled her eyes at Adam, and he rolled them back. At first Adam was worried Brad would be disappointed there were more guys than girls hanging out (Jackie counted as a guy), but Brad was so enamored with Nadia, it didn’t matter. That she was obviously with Jackie didn’t faze him at all—that was almost part of it. “Lesbian pussy, here I come,” he’d whispered to Adam, definitely too loud, when they’d first met up with everyone.
Part of the reason Adam had gotten so drunk was nerves—that Brad might actually blow his cover or Gillian might refer to something trans, even though she knew Adam was stealth with Brad and shouldn’t. He had thought getting drunk would soothe him, make him chill out, and feel like everything was going to be fine, but instead it made the anxiety worse. He felt unhinged, not in control, his surroundings slippery and grease-covered. He wished Brad and he had just stayed home with Ethan. Ethan who knew the real him and the real Brad, and there were no lies; it was all just jokes and comfort, and Adam felt solid and safe. He never should have agreed to Brad hanging out with Gillian and her friends. Brad had seen Gillian; he knew she was hot—there was no reason for them to see each other again. But Brad had gotten so excited about meeting his own lesbian, and Gillian had said on the phone, “It’s sweet seeing you with your friend, even if he’s kind of a douche. I like watching you guys together,” and Adam had felt trapped. Ethan had said, “I see some tragedy in the future,” and as Adam recalled that now, it felt like an omen. He remembered that first night in New York, walking to the L Word party down Lorimer, sucking on the Cherry Bomb pop, and that fleeting second of elation when he’d known—he’d just known—everything would turn out right. Now, drunk and stumbling down this twisted alleyway, the sidewalk all buckled and cracked, he felt a murky insistence in his body that something, some thing he couldn’t conceive of yet, was going to go horribly wrong.
“What did you think?” said Gillian. She ran back and grabbed Adam’s hand as they continued walking. She was so cute when she was drunk. Her voice got really high.
“I thought you looked Jewish,” he said.
Gillian punched him.
“Prostitute?” Jackie was saying to Nadia.
Brad almost walked into a bus stop pole.
“Someone do me!” said Lionel. “Everyone do me!” and he ran ahead and posed against a building like Gillian and Nadia had.
Adam could tell Lionel was trans. He was short and his hands were tiny. He had hair on his face but in a patchy trans-guy way. His hips and butt swelled out of his Dickies. His voice was tranny nasal. Something about him just seemed like a fucking girl. And that stupid fucking name. Everyone on the Internet had names like that: Lionel, Elias, Aiden, Asher, Tucker, Tristan. Adam was sure Lionel passed to Brad—that wasn’t a worry—the question was whether Jackie had told Lionel that Adam was trans and whether Lionel would start running his mouth. Gillian knew not to tell people, but Jackie’s alliance was to Lionel, not Adam. I mean why was Lionel even here? “Adam’s this really cool trans guy; you guys should be friends.” Adam had caught Lionel looking at him, checking him for trans giveaways too.
The karaoke bar was empty when they arrived. Empty, except for one old Chinese man hunched at a table in the back who looked up with a cracked-tooth grin at Gillian and Nadia as if they had come there to meet him.
The gang packed themselves into one of the red booths while Jackie ordered a round of drinks. Nadia and Lionel pored over the thick karaoke song binder. The emptiness in the bar felt oppressive. Adam could not imagine anything more awkward than someone getting up and singing right now.
The bartender—a too-old-for-her-outfit Chinese lady—came over with the drinks. Adam watched Brad guzzle his whiskey, his teeth crunching the ice louder than any other sound in the bar.
“So, Brad,” said Gillian, “you dating anyone?”
Brad glanced at Nadia, who was murmuring lyrics, psyching herself up to sing.
“I’m dating this girl Sandy,” said Brad. He stuck his pinkie in his ear. “I mean, I was dating her, back in high school, at Berkeley High.”
“You haven’t dated her since high school?” said Gillian. She took a sip of her drink, giving Brad a weird look over the rim of her glass.
Brad’s pinkie pulsed in and out of his ear. “Yeah. Not since my arm injury.”
Adam leaned in, poised and ready to take over if this got any worse. Gillian was drunk. He had that on his side. Things were sloppy, confusing. Things could be explained as something else at a later time.
“Your arm injury?” said Jackie. “Can I ask what happened? I’m in med school, so . . .”
“Hey, Adam,” said Lionel, “you wanna get in on this Backstreet Boys duet with me?”
“I hurt it playing baseball,” said Brad. “I mean, in a car wreck on the way home from baseball practice.”
“Uh, sure,” said Adam to Lionel. He turned to Brad. “You just sprained it; it wasn’t a big deal.” He needed to reel Brad in—they weren’t supposed to actually use that retarded story. What was wrong with Brad?
“‘Tell me why,’” Lionel sang disturbingly loud. Lionel wasn’t drinking, but he kind of seemed like he was on crack or something.
“Yeah, I just sprained it,” said Brad. “Mainly it just hurts when it rains and shit, you know?”
Brad looked especially pleased with himself for having ad-libbed this detail.
“That could be cold agglutinins,” said Jackie. “It’s when antibodies cause red blood cells to clump together in low temperatures and can cause pain. Or your pain could just be the increased pressure from the temperature drop. That shouldn’t happen with an old sprain though, only breaks.”
“It might have actually been a break,” said Brad, finger returned to his ear. “It was a while ago.”
“Hey, Adam, you’re from the Bay, right?” said Lionel. “I got my top done with Brownstein in Oakland, so I was there for a week last March.”
“Word,” said Adam.
“Pretty sick town. And Brownstein was the shit.”
“How do you know Adam?” Jackie said to Brad.
“Tennis,” said Brad, eyeing Adam.
“Are you sure about that?” said Gillian, laughing. “You look uncertain.” Gillian looked at Adam.
“Who’d you go with?” said Lionel.
“Fischer,” said Adam.
“Sweet. My friend Beaumont used her.”
“What?” said Brad.
“Where I got my surgery, you know,” Adam said, and he gave Brad a barely perceptible head nod. Then quietly, but catching Gillian’s attention too, Adam said, “Appendix.”
“Oh, yeah!” said Brad, acknowledging this must be part of some previous lie Adam had told: Adam’s own tragic story involving an inflamed appendix and possible near death. Tragedy breeds sympathy. Brad kicked Adam under the table and grinned.
Gillian gave Adam a knowing look and then leaned over to Lionel. She gestured at Brad with her head. She was trying to tell him not to out Adam in front of Brad, but Lionel wasn’t getting it.
“You’re good at this,” Brad said to Adam under his breath.
More people were coming into the club now, filling up the other red booths and thickening around the bar. Adam smiled. He was good at this. His whole body felt electrified, ready for
whatever came at him next. He imagined his brain as a jigsaw puzzle of lies, everything fitting perfectly, a 1,000-piece Van Gogh painting.
“Hey, Nadia, can I get you another drink?” said Brad, noticing Nadia’s empty glass.
“How old are you?” said Nadia.
“Nineteen.”
“Last time I checked you had to be twenty-one to buy alcohol.”
Jackie laughed as Brad turned red. She was amused by Brad’s crush on her girlfriend.
“You know what I have no desire to ever do?” said Nadia, staring out as if in reverie.
“Yeah?” said Brad.
“Have sex with a man,” said Nadia.
Jackie laughed really hard.
“Do you work out?” said Lionel to Adam. “You look awesome.”
“Uh, a little,” said Adam.
“I just don’t like the idea of a guy fucking me. It’s like he thinks he’s getting something. Or getting away with something,” continued Nadia.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Gillian. She caught herself on the last word and looked quickly at Adam. It’s different with you, her expression said. No problem, of course, his expression said back.
“Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it,” said Brad with a lip-sneered smile.
“Oh, I’ve tried it,” said Nadia.
“Yeah, I’ve been trying to lift a little, even though my doctor told me not to yet,” said Lionel. “I’m just ready to get ripped. What’s your dose?”
Jesus, he would not give up.
“I’m gonna sing a song!” said Gillian, jumping out of her seat. “Lionel, will you sing it with me?”
“Uh, sure, what are we singing?”
Gillian grabbed Lionel’s hand and dragged him over toward the karaoke DJ. They stopped midway, and Gillian whispered something in Lionel’s ear. Lionel nodded and looked at Brad.
“I’m buying a round of shots,” said Adam. “Hey, Gillian, you guys want shots?”
“Thanks, baby,” she said.
“Straight edge!” said Lionel, and he drew an X across his chest with his finger.
The music for Gillian and Lionel’s song came on, and Lionel started in.
Adam strolled confidently up to the bar and slapped down Ethan’s ID. Ethan had loaned it to him before they went out. He’d done that a few times. Adam loved using Ethan’s ID.
“Five shots of whiskey,” he said. “Jameson.”
Ethan Karl Anderson from 90 Field Point Circle, Greenwich, Connecticut 06830, grinned back up at him and winked.
Adam looked around and realized the bar had become packed, buzzing with loud, rowdy hipsters, their gang a natural part of it.
“‘You cry . . .’”
Adam’s head turned to the karaoke stage, where Gillian was singing the cheery, ’60s-sounding song. She was usually so nervous and bumbling, but now, smiling up at the lyrics on the screen, this perfectly pitched, startlingly bold music just rolled out of her mouth like it wasn’t anything. He’d sometimes heard her singing softly along to music in the background but had no idea she was actually this good. Why hadn’t she told him? Her voice was beautiful. All he wanted to do was stand there and listen to her.
“Whoooo!” someone cheered behind Adam.
Adam looked around and saw that people had stopped talking to step closer and watch her. Everyone could tell she was amazing. Adam’s chest seized. She’d never even said she liked singing. Let alone that she was good at it. Adam felt a desperate, wild neediness. She was really good. A crowd had formed at the front of the stage. These people loved her. They wanted her. But she was his, right? She belonged to him. The separation between them seemed suddenly vast, insurmountable. Gillian and her talent on one side of the world, Adam on the other.
Gillian turned away from the screen, and her eyes met Adam’s. She put her hand to her heart as she sang, and his body fluttered. She was his. He was the one she wanted. You can’t have her. You can’t have her. You can’t have her. He flung these thoughts at the various patrons watching her.
Gillian handed the mic back to Lionel. His voice was embarrassing in contrast. Weak and strained. Tentative and pathetically hopeful.
Adam looked back at the booth. He could tell Brad was frustrated by the Nadia situation but, at the same time, fueled by some inexhaustible optimism, still hadn’t given up. It was kind of hilarious actually, the way he kept that cocky grin on his face. Nadia and Jackie were clearly fucking with him, and Brad was just riding along, bouncing up and down with no seat belt in the back of their janky-ass car. It was sweet, his earnest perseverance in the face of pure shit.
When they were kids, he and Brad had been equals. Everything was after-school snacks and Knights and Swords for hours, chasing each other all over the house. And then in middle school that had stopped, and Brad’s crude asshole side had emerged, which impressed Adam and made him fear Brad because, for some reason, Adam couldn’t do it too. But watching Brad now, it all seemed so obvious. That asshole persona—what had always made Brad so cool and old and inherently better than Adam—was really just another dumb play sword for Brad to swing in front of himself.
Gillian and Lionel finished, and everyone in the bar whistled and applauded. Gillian’s face went back to being bashful.
Another song came on, some aggressively rhythmic thing Adam didn’t recognize but that caused Jackie and Nadia to shriek and jump out of the booth.
“Oh my god, they have Ani?!” said Gillian, equally excited by whatever was playing.
Jackie and Nadia joined Gillian and Lionel onstage.
“Adam! Sing it with us!” Gillian called to him.
Adam reddened. No way. He shook his head.
“Please?”
Oh god, please no.
“Just this one!” she pleaded.
His gorgeous girlfriend. So Adam hustled over to the stage, where the four of them were singing.
“‘I cannot name this . . .’”
Gillian grabbed Adam’s hand, but he saw Brad looking awkward, left alone in the booth, so he broke free and ran and grabbed Brad’s hand too.
“I’m not doing this shit alone,” said Adam.
“Fucking kill you, Freedman,” said Brad, but he was grinning, and they ran back on the stage, where the rest of them were really going at it, and Adam and Brad had no idea how this fucking song went, but they bounced up and down, and Nadia even threw her arm around Brad, and by the second time the chorus came on, Adam and Brad winged it and sang too, and soon they were just screaming along with whatever words they could, and Gillian kept kissing Adam, and Brad was doing his dumb-ass dance moves, and it was just so much fun—it was fun, it was fun, it was fun.
Adam looked at Gillian and at goofy Brad, and he thought of Ethan at home and his sister, Casey—Casey who had made all this possible!—and he was filled with such intense love for each of them, it felt like he wanted to cry or maybe laugh or some absurd expression of emotion he’d never performed before, but then Nadia was punching him in the shoulder and saying, “Shots! Shots!” and so he got himself together and ran through the people back to the bar where the shots were waiting.
“That’s you, honey?” said the bartender.
“Yes!” said Adam, and he cupped his hands around the shot glasses—balancing two on each side, one suspended in the middle—and carried them carefully back to the stage.
***
“You’re sure?” said Gillian.
They were all standing outside the Canal Street subway deciding who was going where. Gillian was taking the C back to Fort Greene and wanted Adam to come home with her. She was drunk and had those loose, drunk eyes, looking him up and down, not caring how obvious it was she wanted him. It was so fucking sexy.
“I can’t . . .” said Adam.
“Brad doesn’t care, right, Brad?” Gillian said.
“Dude, I don’t give a shit if you spend the night at her house—just give me your keys. I’d rather sleep in your bed than on that futon anyway.”
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Adam hesitated.
“I mean, don’t make me twist your arm . . .” said Gillian. “God, I feel like some nympho girlfriend.”
Brad gave Adam a look like, What the hell is wrong with you?
“Let’s go-o-o-o-o,” said Nadia, hanging off Jackie. “I’m sleepy. Wanna go home-home.”
“It’s just we told Ethan we’d hit that bar with him,” said Adam. “Remember?”
This idea appealed to Brad, so he nodded his head. “Oh yeah, we did.”
“We’re gonna walk to the J,” said Adam. He leaned in to kiss Gillian goodbye.
Gillian gave him a confused smile. He could tell she was hurt but trying to play it off. He wanted nothing more than to go home with her right now. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t wearing the ACE bandage. Wearing it around Brad made him want to kill himself so he hadn’t. And he was too scared to go home with Gillian and into her bed without it.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, boys’ night out . . .”
Gillian and her friends headed down the subway steps, and Adam and Brad continued on the street.
“So is there a cool bar in your neighborhood that doesn’t card?” asked Brad. “Somewhere you and Ethan usually hang? I’m feeling restless! You think he’ll be up for it?”
“Sure!” said Adam absently. He was still thinking about Gillian. She thought he didn’t want her.
“Dude, I’m texting Colin and telling him I hooked up with that Nadia girl. You’ll back me up, right? I think he’s lying about fucking some girl in San Francisco. I think he’s still a virgin, actually.” Brad’s head swiveled to Adam. “You’re fucking Gillian, right?”
“Um, duh,” said Adam.
Brad threw some boxing punches into the air. “Man, I hope Ethan’s up to go out. I’m feeling fuckin’ restless!”
***
As soon as Adam opened the door to the apartment, he knew something was wrong. He could tell Brad sensed it too, the way his blathering abruptly trailed off.
Casey, June, and Ethan sat around the television, watching intensely. Casey looked like she had been crying.
“Quiet!” Casey said, as Brad shut the door. She hadn’t seen Brad since he’d arrived in New York—hadn’t seen him since she’d left for college a year ago actually—and this was apparently her way of greeting him. Brad didn’t seem to notice or care. Things were as the two had left them.