by Shaw Sander
“Let’s see. Okay, now, I never thought I’d get to say this to you but,” he knelt down again in front of me and looked up smiling. “Spread your legs.”
Slowly I opened my knees, the quiet of the place suddenly very loud.
“I’ma lift your dress up just a little more,” he said, eyes never leaving mine while his hand slowly slid the silky fabric higher. “I think there might be some damage on…the other thigh, too.”
Finally he looked down, his thumbs firmly holding my legs apart. I couldn’t feel the cuts and the fear of the bad experience was dissolving under his touch. I tried to remember what color underwear I had on. Black, I thought to myself, it was black so he still hasn’t seen anything, really, just a shadow. I relaxed my legs a little more.
“This is gonna sting ‘cause it’s alcohol,” he said, letting go and soaking a cotton ball with disinfectant. “You just relax and I’ll get you all cleaned up.”
“Ow, Jesus, ow!” I yelled, clamping my legs together.
“Al, you’ve got to relax. I know it hurts but that’s killing the germs. God knows what-all you picked up on window glass. Open your legs. Please.”
I took a breath, swallowed the rest of my drink and gingerly I let him swab my cuts. There were three of them, toward the back of my leg where I’d straddled the windowsill after throwing a vase through it.
“I’ma rub some Neosporin on ‘em now. It has anesthetic in it so they should stop hurting in a bit.”
His voice sounded detached, too clinical.
When his eyes had met mine, I felt the electricity. It took everything in me not to look down at his crotch.
“I can feel the soothing part already,” I said as he circled the cuts with his fingers, spreading the crème.
“Jesus, this is killing me,” he groaned. “Al, here you are all hurt after some guy tried to force himself on you and I want you so badly I almost want to do the same thing…”
I grabbed his Italian silk tie at the neck to pull Malcolm toward me. He smelled like whiskey, another comforting smell of Cora’s that had always turned me on.
“No, Malcolm, it’s not like that at all. You aren’t forcing yourself on me. Jesus, it’s the opposite,” I’d said. “You’re taking care of me. C’mere.”
His hands then left my legs and held my face. Rising from a crouch, he pulled me up with him and kissed me deeply, pushing and insistent.
“But I want to fuck you hard, I want to force you open and fill you with my dick, Al,” he’d whispered directly into my ear as he’d trembled in front of me. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you but…..”
“Fuck me, please, Malcolm, Jesus, I need this, please, baby…” I begged against his perfect chest.
Malcolm ran to the bar, dimmed the house lights all the way, pulled the blinds and tore open a condom from the bar’s fishbowl. Sweeping his arm across the top of the bar, he cleared everything in seconds, the fruit-garnish tray and the few remaining cocktail glasses hitting the terrazzo tiled floor in a shower of broken glass. Tearing the condom wrapper open with his teeth, he spit out the corner as his fingers tore the package open.
“C’mere,” was all he said.
“How about if you and I go out for Christmas?”
Birgitte called a few days before the holiday. She pressed on with her logic before I could answer.
“Look, neither of us wants to cook or do anything, and neither one of us has any family around. The twins are with Kyle over in Eastern Washington. I swear, they bonded with all his bad habits and I lost them in the divorce to their damn step-father. Anyway,” she sniffed. “I don’t care if its Denny’s at this point, I’m so damn broke from owning this house by myself. I’m gonna have to get a roommate, I think.”
“Sure,” I told her, “Let’s have Christmas dinner together. Out. Let’s find a Denny’s between us and meet half way. I’m so tired of driving.”
“Mexico City. Mere months away!”
I hadn’t told Drake about the near-rape or the torrid incident with Malcolm. I hadn’t told anyone, wanting to savor the details myself, balancing the horror-show of the night’s beginning with its raw wild end. I was imprinting the wicked fun, the date’s scary part growing miniscule in comparison.
Drake crowed his excitement into the phone.
“All I have to do is live through Christmas and soon I’ll be in gay old Mexico! And my English Teaching class is almost over. I’ll have a certificate so I can get the hell out of this dog-town. I know everyone and it rains all the time and I need excitement, Al. I can’t wait. I’m thinking Italy. ”
“What are you doing on Christmas?” I asked, wondering if Spokane pressed on him this time of year. His family had to do everything right, lots of protocol followed and tradition reinforced. He tried to stay just out of range, sending deep regrets and FedEx-ed gifts.
“I’ve got nothing, darling. There’s an old Francois Truffaut film at the Uptown. Maybe Dick’s will be open.”
“Birgitte and I are going to Denny’s. Wanna go? Christmas Day. Whaddya say?”
. “Sure. Sounds funny and sweet. Christmas at Denny’s with the homeless people. Maybe we could just go to McDonald’s instead,” he sneered but I knew he was glad to have the offer of companionship on an emotionally loaded day. He hadn’t found an ideal boyfriend yet, either, preferring his Netflix account and a pull-apart cinnamon roll.
On Christmas morning, both of us having lived through another peak, I called Shelly. Alone and afraid of old Christmas blackout drinking, Shell had just finished agreeing to meet Birgitta, Drake and me at Denny’s when my other line rang.
“Al, it’s Malcolm,” he said huskily, as if he was out of breath. “I’m at Swedish Hospital. It’s Bernie.”
The pouring rain disappeared behind us as we shook out our wet clothes inside the silent Blue Canoe. Closed for Christmas, everything looked still and spare in the grey light of day. Malcolm switched on a back kitchen light while we waited in the dark foyer.
“Come in, come in,” he urged, beckoning us all toward the kitchen. “Let’s make Christmas dinner, shall we?”
Malcolm’s wife Bernadette had fallen off a ladder while adjusting the angel on top their Christmas tree, breaking her hip and arm. After hours of surgery to pin her back together she was going to be okay but Malcolm was shaken up. With Bernie sedated, Malcolm didn’t want to be left alone for Christmas. Delighted to hear other orphans were in the same boat, Malcolm warmly offered to open his restaurant for our private party with himself as host.
None of my friends knew each other. Their only connection was that they all knew me.
The first thing Malcolm did was to go in the office off the kitchen and roll a joint from the stash he kept in the safe.
Shelly and I, drug-tested at random, looked at each other and shrugged.
“What the fuck, it’s Christmas, right?” I said, letting job security disappear for a moment.
“Roger that, chiquita!” Shelly glowed, relieved to be able to share the moment with me.
Drake took off his topcoat, neatly folded it and set it on a pile of clean green linens wrapped in brown paper and twine. Pulling out a festive pine-green apron, he turned to the rest of us.
“I’ll be the barmaid if that’s alright with you, Malcolm.” he asked, grabbing an order pad and doing a brief curtsy. “Where’s the Tanqueray?”
“You are so hired,” Malcolm smiled, handing Drake the joint. “Bar’s out there on the floor, on the left wall. Just flip on the little switch down by the bar sink. That’ll light the area without looking like we’re open. I’ll have a shot of Jack.”
“Cosmopolitan for me!” Birgitte smiled, hopping up on the cutting board countertop and passing the jay to Shelly.
“Let’s see. Are we doing this up right, chica?” Shelly looked at me for company. I nodded, approving. “Then I’ll have a 7-7.”
Drake wrote on the pad and waited for me.
“Lemon drop,” I said, looking at Malcolm. “They remind me of hap
piness.”
Malcolm cut his eyes sideways then back at me shaking his head.
“Al, come with me to the walk-in and we’ll see what we can rustle up.”
Once inside the cool refrigerator, Malcolm took hold of my shoulders.
“Look, Al, I….I had a great time, don’t get me wrong, and I loved every moment of that night, but my wife….it scared me, this fall. She doesn’t deserve this, I mean, she’s never done anything wrong, always done what I asked her to and some of it was nasty shit. This hospital gig, it made me realize how short life is and how comfortable I am and I don’t want to fuck it up. And I want you to have this domestic scene of connectedness, too, that’s the thing, but we can’t have it together. I already have a wife,” he said, looking me in the eye. “So are we clear? Friends?”
He looked panicked, with no Plan B if I didn’t agree.
“Friends.” I kissed him lightly. “It was fucking awesome, literally. I’ll never forget it. You erased the whole bad experience for me so don’t go thinking you wished it never happened. It was necessary for me.”
“I don’t wish it never happened, no way. I just can’t do it anymore.”
“Deal.”
Malcolm handed me half-pans of food covered with clear plastic lids. I shoved the silver vacuum-seal door open with my hip and we carried our loot out to the huge cutting board table. Malcolm began turning on the equipment, firing up the convection oven, lighting the griddle, flipping on lights, getting out chef’s knives. Drake, looking for all the world like a professional, carried in the perfectly poured drinks on a shoulder-high tray and set them down next to Birgitte
“What?” he said at my open mouth. “I did this in college to pay the bills,”
“Thanks, Drake,” Malcolm said, pausing a moment to recognize the warm bliss of an event none of us had planned. “To friends, old and new. Don’t matter whether we ever met before, our bond today is a gift from the gods. Bottoms up,” he said, looking straight at me.
The rain slogged down all through January, doing exactly what Seattle does all winter. With Christmas over the tinseled festivities died away and I faced a long string of months with monotonous sameness.
The next big FedEx push wasn’t until Valentine’s Day so business was slow. My seniority made me able to take a lot of days off. I was exhausted from somewhere deep down. My feet never really stopped hurting except after a long night’s sleep and my knees made crunching noises when I walked up stairs. FedEx was on a productivity witch hunt and I was falling behind in numbers, my stops per hour down. I already had one letter in my file. The writing was on the wall. I needed to get out of there.
The holiday had left me tired and seven pounds heavier, despite running like a madwoman. I wanted nothing but comfort food, thwarting my efforts to diet. My house grew steamy with meatloaf and mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, chocolate cake, oatmeal raisin cookies. I had trouble fitting into my uniform and all I wanted to do was sleep.
This lethargy also left me dateless since I felt fat and unattractive so I slept, taking a morning nap on Saturdays after breakfast and an afternoon nap before dinner, then television until two a.m. and sleeping again until midday next. My name remained at the top of the boss’s call roster for overstaffing, always ready to volunteer to stay home.
I cooked instead of writing.
There was now plenty of time to write, the rain pounding outside my bay window, making a comforting noise on the roof, my fireplace insert toasty-warm. But I had nothing. I was dry. No words appeared or even could be recalled. There was nothing interesting about which to write. My life felt blank, no material to mine in my completely mundane world, everything a flat, dull grey.
With gritted teeth and determination to change I headed out in the bone-chilling rain for the new Writer’s Market. I would produce something, dammit, I would sell. I would figure out my own Rubik’s cube of literary success. Others seemed to break in naturally, or had the right New York connections, or their style was perfect for that moment. Many others were so awful in their popular prose that I was sure they had slept with the right person at Random House or Esquire Magazine. It simply did not seem that merit equaled success. Who did I have to blow to get something published, to get paid?
Rejection letters trickled in as I re-sent re-worked older pieces to different venues. Unable to squeeze any more juice out of what I had already done, I needed some new material.
Chapter Five
“It’s official,” Drake crowed, “I’m registered at Saks if you want to get me a graduation gift.”
“You’re certified! Hey, that’s wonderful.”
I was holding the phone to my ear as I stirred some chicken and dumplings. The recipe was Drake’s, its origin traceable back to his Mayflower ancestors.
“Thank you. Finally, I’m going to do something with my life. No more sobbing to Elliott Smith while it pours. Rain be damned, I’m putting on my Mackintosh and heading for the bookstore, darling, to research living abroad, visas and all that. I hate this moss-covered cow town and the badly-dressed yuppies drinking five-dollar coffee. I can’t wait to get out of here. I’m so psyched! It feels like everything’s wide open, my whole future awaits. I haven’t felt like this since I graduated from U Dub. Back then I moved to San Francisco but…ah, well, that’s when I was young and carefree. Castro Street was something else, I tell you.”
“Yup. I remember Chicago pre-AIDS, too. It was a different world.”
We both got very quiet, thinking of that wild, innocent time. Sylvester blaring at the discos, coke in the bathroom, lots of Tenax and musk oil and feathered hair spilling over upturned collars. We were all so thin and beautiful. And there were so many of us then who now were no longer on the planet. Every one of my queer boy friends in Chicago was long dead. It had made my urge to reproduce that much stronger.
“Well. Anyway.” Drake cleared his throat. “I’m off to let a guidebook decide my middle-aged future. The men are hairier in Greece than Italy or is it the other way around?”
“I’m just so tired of doing this,” Shelly moaned over the phone. “I hurt all over and I’ve been fighting with my supervisor. I just don’t want to work anymore.”
Her funky mood was leaking out everywhere, with a few extra pounds on, loneliness that made her cry at night and a leftover exhaustion from peak that wasn’t going away. I knew how she felt but to her it made her past life on the streets suddenly look a little better, a little more fun.
“Mishellina mine, stick with it. I feel crappy all the time, too. It’s nothing that a sandwich and a nap won’t cure. Sure, today looks a little hard but tomorrow will be better. Then it’s Saturday and you can sleep in.”
I stuck with laying out short-term goals. She had given me this same pep talk in the past, and later we’d analyze it, mining it for improved data for next time.
“I just wanna get really drunk.”
“That might help in the short-run but it’d fuck up everything in the long run. Think the drink through, Shelly. I don’t have the money to come get you in Texas. Let’s go to a meeting. Or out for a milkshake.”
“No. No meetings. Fuck them. Fuck AA and NA and all the goddamn A’s.” She started to cry. “I’m so tired, Al, and everything hurts all over.”
“You thought about seeing a doctor?” I suggested.
“No. They scare me,” she sniffed.
“You have insurance, Shell. That’s one of the benefits of these hard delivery jobs. Go see a doctor. If you don’t have one, go down to the Country Doctor. They’re really nice and they’ll take you.”
“You’d go with me?”
“Make it on a lunch hour, sure.”
“She’s much better, thanks,” Malcolm beamed at me across the booth. “A bunch of comfort people come by and fluff the pillows while I’m at work, a visiting nurse or something. I got her one of those smooshy beds with the foam and she’s got the t.v. and good drugs so she’s fine. How’s Drake doing with his foreign move plan
s? Man, I envy him. And Shelly? You said she was ill or something?”
“They did a bunch of bloodwork and tests. She’ll know in a few weeks if it’s anything. I think it’s just wintertime blues. She’ll get another lover and things will feel better. Drake’s thinking of Mexico first, his big vacation, so the Greek boys who need English lessons are having to wait.”
“Man, that was the funnest Christmas I’ve ever had.”
Malcolm watched my face, knowing I couldn’t bear it.
“Funnest is not a word,” I had to say at last, and he smiled.
He looked off into the distance and reassessed our happy holiday, obviously pleased with my friends.
“Shelly gets wild after a few drinks, don’t she? And she does have nice titties, even if she doesn’t think so. And that Birgitte? There’s a woman who needs a black man to show her a good time. That overgrown frat boy she married, man, he’s a piece of work from what she says. I’m glad she liked my coq au vin. I’d cook for her anytime. She was so appreciative. Oh, and speaking of that, Drake sent me a lovely thank-you note on hand-made paper. I think it was even scented. I had to wash my hands afterward so I wouldn’t smell all flowery.”
Our holiday had ended up raucous, despite timid beginnings. Over appetizers in the Blue Canoe kitchen, we’d swapped small biographies, the details getting more vivid with each round of drinks. First nostalgically painted in colored ribbons and longing, our compared childhood Christmas details seemed sweet, but then the reality surfaced for each of us, laughing as we described drunk hands-y uncles, family secrets erupting, competition and fistfights over decades-old slights. With reefer and holiday liquor, we got to know one another as we all chopped vegetables, sliced fruit, split chestnuts and prepared coq au vin. Our awkward Christmas dinner turned warm as we bonded, sealing the surprise love-fest.
By evening’s end, Shelly had danced topless on the kitchen’s long prep table, Drake had recited “The Cremation of Sam Magee,” Birgitte had done dead-on celebrity impressions, I’d described an entire Sunshine Festival from beginning to end, and Malcolm told stories of dealing coke out the drive-thru window of an Oakland Burger King, joining the Navy soon afterward to avoid arrest.