The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel

by Monopoli, Ben

  “Hi,” I said, reaching forward to squeeze Alex’s shoulder. “Sorry it’s been like forever.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I forgive you.”

  “This guy’s been keeping me busy. Mateo, Alex, Alex, Mateo.” They shook hands against the armrest.

  “Happy V Day!” Alex said.

  “Vagina day!” said Jimmy. “Not!”

  Mateo slumped forward and closed his eyes.

  The restaurant we went to

  was one Mateo had tagged the side of three years earlier. He claimed the piece ran for less than six hours before it was whitewashed by a frantic maitre d’.

  The table was round, the lighting dim, the food French and expensive. The waiter sported a yellowed comb-over and wore a white towel on his forearm. He sold us on a bottle of wine. Alex and Mateo got carded; I didn’t, and didn’t know how to take that.

  “None for me, Jeeves,” Jimmy said. “I don’t do alcohol. This body is a temple.”

  I thought: Understatement.

  A loaf of bread on a wooden board was placed on the table and Mateo took the thick knife and began to cut, gently at first, and then grabbing the bread to keep it from sliding.

  “Excuse my fingers,” he said.

  Jimmy laughed. “What’s with those fingers anyway, Mr. Brazil?”

  Mateo tipped over the first slice, the heel, and resumed sawing. “Huh?”

  “He means the colors,” Alex said.

  “I mean the colors,” Jimmy said, grinning as he lifted his chin slightly. “You a painter or something? Do a lot of painting?”

  “Oh. No. Not really. I was, uh, coloring Easter eggs.”

  With a curious smirk Alex leaned forward. His plate clinked his water glass, which in turn clinked his wine glass. “In February?”

  “We do Easter in February in Brazil.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Um. Sure. Yup. Bread? Anyone?”

  Jimmy took a slice and offered the board, littered with crumbs, to Alex. “And next I bet you’ll tell us you have Christmas in the summer,” Jimmy said.

  “Oh. We do, actually. Yeah. Southern Hemisphere and all.”

  Jimmy laughed. “Southern Hemisphere. That’s hilarious.” He looked at me. “Your boy’s hilarious, Fletcher. Not only a stud but a comedian too.”

  Alex laughed, reaching across the table to pass me the bread. I took a slice and noticed Mateo aggressively buttering his.

  “This table reminds me of when we met,” Jimmy said to Alex.

  “Darlene’s wedding.”

  “I think these are the same candles. Aren’t they the same candles, babe?”

  “They look the same,” Alex said. “But then again I wasn’t exactly focusing on the candles.” He let that sit for a second before adding, “I had some other long thing on my mind.”

  “You guys should’ve seen it,” Jimmy said, tearing a piece of bread with his teeth, lips shining with butter. “It was love at first sight basically. Totally storybook. I knew nothing was going to keep me from getting this guy in the sack that very night.”

  “Not even your boyfriend,” Mateo mumbled under his breath. Under the table I kicked him in the goddamn Chucks.

  Jimmy said, “After I got him good and sweaty on the dance floor, I invited him back to my hotel room for a shower.”

  “And the rest is history,” Alex said, bumping his head against Jimmy’s.

  A trio of servers arrived with our meals and set them in front of us, removing metal dish covers and releasing lots of steam. Coq au vin for me. Mateo got some kind of salad that he quickly began stirring around.

  “I actually saw some photos of you guys’ first night together,” I said, not wanting the conversation, amidst the arrival of the food, to lose the thread of Jimmy’s nudity. “Alex showed me.”

  Jimmy turned to Alex. “You showed him those?” But he didn’t look upset. More surprised. “What’d you think, Fletcher? Good stuff?”

  “There wasn’t a whole lot to see.” I ruminated for a second and then added boldly, “Unfortunately.”

  Jimmy laughed. “Well that’s a darn shame.” He sliced into his chicken and a burst of steam wafted over his face, either making it or revealing it to be a little pink, the kind of pink that looks good against a white pillowcase. “You wouldn’t believe what X is like in the sack,” he said.

  “Yeah—” I started to laugh but when I realized the implication of his comment my laugh became more of a choke. Alex flicked his eyes away after briefly meeting mine. Why would he not have told Jimmy about our weekend together? How could Alex do that to me? What I thought I had with Jimmy—the link, however tenuous, in the sex-chain—hardly mattered if he didn’t even know about it!

  “How’s your chicken?” Mateo said to me.

  I lowered a forkful of mashed potatoes back to my plate. “Sure I would, Jimmy. Did Alex never tell you about how I quote-unquote kept him company last summer?”

  “You guys were together?”

  “More than once,” I said. “When he was house-sitting. Right after you guys met, I think. So you and me, Jimmy, we’re just one link apart.”

  “I need the bathroom,” Mateo said, pushing back his chair.

  “X, you never told me that.” Jimmy looked at me. “What other secrets do you guys have?”

  “I barely remember it,” Alex said. “It totally got lost in the shuffle.”

  Ouch.

  “So was there chemistry?” Jimmy said, nudging his plate forward with his elbow so he could get in closer. He didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable or jealous. “Were there sparks?”

  I looked to Alex to find the right answer. I wasn’t sure what to do with Jimmy’s encouragement, and I balked. “It was just a friend thing,” I said finally. “Alex and I go so far back. It was only ever a matter of time.”

  “It was a friend thing,” Alex affirmed. “And it was just what I needed.” He said to Jimmy, “After we met I was so bent out of shape about you. Fletcher gave me some solace.”

  “Well that’s what friends are for, right?” Jimmy said, and he winked.

  We dropped two credit cards

  on the plastic tray with the bill and the waiter returned them with two slips, two pens, and four little green mints. Mateo unwrapped one and chewed it.

  Jimmy was watching me fill out the receipt. “Are you going to leave a good tip for your coq?” he said. Alex laughed and swatted him. “How was your coq, Fletcher?” To Mateo he said, “Did you taste your boyfriend’s coq?”

  Mateo stood up, balled up his napkin, dropped it on the table, and pushed in his chair. “This was fun, guys,” he said. His accent was unusually thick; I wondered if that was because he was angry. In a vague way that I knew meant never, he added, “We should do this again.” He buttoned the first button of his jacket, clapped me on the shoulder. “We’ll just grab the T out here at the Pru.”

  “Hey, it’s early though,” Jimmy said. “You guys should come chill at our hotel a while. We’re at the Marriot down on Tremont.”

  Mateo laughed.

  I said, “Really?”

  Mateo said, “Why’d you get a hotel?”

  “A special Valentine’s Day hotel. Our apartment’s kind of a dump.”

  “We could watch a movie or something,” Alex said.

  Mateo frowned. “Don’t you guys want to— I mean it’s Valentine’s Day.”

  “We’ll order room service,” Jimmy said. “It’ll be fun.”

  “What do you think?” I asked Mateo.

  “I dunno. Room service? We just ate.”

  “Sure, we’ll come for a little,” I told Jimmy.

  The waiter came by and Jimmy placed the signed receipts into his hand. “Delicious,” he said.

  The hotel room was small,

  devoted mostly to the king-size bed and a love-seat, which I was sitting on now. The TV was tuned to the Pay-Per-View menu but we hadn’t selected anything yet. The room was just starting to warm up again after Mateo opened the big sliding d
oor to step out on the balcony “for some air.”

  Jimmy and Alex sat side by side on the bed, bending big gullies in the outrageously fluffy comforter. Jimmy threw himself backward and said, “You guys are beating me!”

  “Fletcher beats me too, though,” Alex said. “He slept with a guy named Scotch Tape.”

  “Scotch Tape?” Jimmy said, sitting up again, lips full of hysterical smile.

  “Legally Scotch Tape,” I said, “a full-on legal name change. I saw his license.”

  “That’s crazy. Why?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Was he sticky?”

  “Haha.”

  “OK,” Jimmy said, “my guy who wouldn’t take off his socks during sex is definitely not the weirdest.”

  “I could probably even top Scotch Tape if I really thought about,” I said.

  “But you’ve traded the weirdness for the Brazilian, huh?” Alex said. “He seems pretty normal.”

  “He has his moments.”

  “We like his accent,” Jimmy said.

  “Love,” Alex said.

  “Me too,” I told them. “I think it’s more pronounced when he’s angry.”

  “Then let’s get him furious,” Jimmy said, and Alex busted up laughing. “So how about when you’re fucking? What’s it like then?”

  I looked at Jimmy for a long time while I decided how to answer. My brain searched for witty retorts; my eyes felt like they were crossing; my pulse cranked up; a shiver went up my back. Finally, when Jimmy raised his eyebrows in expectation, I said, “Why tell you when I can show you?”

  Mateo stood on the hotel

  balcony with his arms bent across the brass railing, suit jacket flapping in the wind. His fingers glowed dully in the light from the window nextdoor. They were cold but he was used to it. Out and below was the city, his city. From here he had a great view of the South End, full of brick walls and stone monuments waiting to be tagged. The city was a never-ending canvas—when they blasted away his work or painted over it with those silly gray squares, that only made the canvas bigger. More blank space. He smiled.

  I shut the sliding glass door behind me and reached around him, gripping the railing against his hips. His tailored pants needed no belt and had no loops.

  “It’s freezing out here.”

  “It’s not too bad.”

  “Whatcha looking at?”

  “Just looking. Thinking about where we could paint later. Any ideas?”

  “Oh. No, not really.”

  He turned and faced me, put his lips against mine—we exchanged clouds of breath. Last September on the night he painted my body he showed me how to press our mouths together and share the same air back and forth, from my lungs into his and back—this reminded me of that.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said.

  “You too.”

  “We about ready to go off by ourselves?”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Been ready for a while.” He shrugged. “Since before the appetizers.”

  “Ah.”

  “I hate them,” he confided, making a funny grimace to keep it light.

  “Why do you hate them?”

  “I don’t know. I just do. They make me nervous.”

  “They really like you.”

  “They don’t even know me. Maybe that’s why I don’t like them. They’re too familiar. They act like we’re old pals. I don’t like people like that.”

  “They’re just friendly. They’re nice.”

  He shrugged. “So you’re ready to go? Lead the way. I’ll follow you.”

  “Actually,” I said, my teeth chattering, both from cold and excitement, “I was thinking we could stay a little while longer.” I grinned sheepishly. “They, uh.” I couldn’t stop the grin. “Wow. Yeah. They want to, like, hook up with us. Jimmy especially, I think.”

  “Hook up?”

  “I’m supposed to come out here and see what you think.”

  “You mean like—group sex?”

  I smirked. “Well yeah. I was kind of thinking it might go this way. Valentine’s Day and stuff. You know. A hotel room. Four homos.” I felt him go rigid in my arms.

  “You were kind of thinking? So this was all planned out?”

  “No, it wasn’t planned, but— C’mon, it’s hard not think of it as being in the air.”

  “I didn’t think of it as being in the air. I thought this was a double date, not one big single date. And what do you mean, four homos? What does that mean?”

  “It just felt in the air. Have you ever done anything like that before?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think it would be fun? Or something new, at least? A fun experience?”

  “Have you done it?”

  “Three. Never four. Never Jimmy.”

  He looked away and scrunched his face. His eyes had that blur of moisture that can sometimes be caused by cold wind. “I don’t even like them.”

  “But he’s so hot.”

  He turned back. “Let’s go paint. OK? I know a place that’s practically a heaven spot. You’ll like it. You’ll like it.”

  “Teo, I go painting with you so much. And when I’m not painting with you, I’m by myself. It’s freezing out. Why can’t we do something I want to do?”

  “We can. Whatever you want. But come on, Arrowman. Not this. At least not with them.”

  “You don’t have to be jealous.”

  “It means something to me, Fletcher. It doesn’t have to be sacred. But it has to mean more than them.” He nodded at the glass door. The curtains moved; we were being watched. The discomfort in his eyes flared to anger and his lip quivered.

  “Well I want to do it.”

  He looked at me for a long time. “OK. Then I’ll let you get right to it then.” Again he waited for me to acquiesce but it didn’t happen and it wasn’t going to happen. A gust of wind lashed his hair across his eyes; he brushed it back behind his ear. And again he said, with more urgency this time, “We won’t paint tonight. We’ll go back to your place, watch a movie. We’ll get Cara and Jamar to hang out. We’ll do anything you want.”

  “I don’t think you understand, Mateo. I want to do this. I want to know what he looks like. I want to know what he feels like. And tastes like. And sounds like.”

  “Who? Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “Fletcher, newsflash! He looks like all the rest! Tastes like all the others. Like all the other fuckwads from Porcupine City.”

  “I want you to be there, Mateo, but if you won’t be there, that’s fine too.”

  He exhaled through his nose. “Well then that’s it.”

  “What’s it? What do you mean, that’s it?”

  He stabbed his finger into my chest. “You know what?” He pursed his lips and I could tell he was about to really lay into me. But then he just sighed. His finger rolled into a fist that pressed against my sternum. “Fuck it. Never mind.” He let it drop along my buttons and fall to his side.

  Then he raised it again and pushed me away. “Be safe at least,” he said. He pulled open the sliding door and pushed through the curtain, and in the room Alex and Jimmy were falling back onto the couch, having scurried away from the door when they heard him coming. Mateo charged toward the main door, keeping his eyes on the glossy sign indicating what to do in an emergency. He forgot to undo the chain and yanked the door and one of the chain’s screws popped out of the wall with a loud thwunk. He closed it, undid the plastery hanging mess and, with the door open and his hand on the knob, he turned. “We don’t fucking color Easter eggs in Brazil,” he said.

  And then he left.

  I watched the plaster dust

  settle. Clouds of it turned the bright carpet gray.

  “Did you guys just break up?” Alex said.

  “I don’t know. No. Maybe.”

  Jimmy: “So I take it he said no?”

  “Are you sure he’s even gay?” said Alex.

  I walked to the door a
nd pressed my cheek against it to look through the peephole, expecting to see him standing against the opposite wall, but there was just a distorted expanse of floral wallpaper. I put my fingers against the hole where the popped screw had been.

  Jimmy again: “So that must mean you said yes?”

  And then Alex: “What do they do if they don’t color eggs?”

  I knelt, felt around on the carpet for the screw, found it and stood up to press it back in the hole.

  “I don’t know what they do,” I said. Then I took my suit jacket off, stood twisting it slowly. I was stalling. Not thinking about going after Mateo, but wondering how to get this started. They were sitting on the bed, side by side, looking at me. I felt out of my element, and although I really wanted to do this, I was afraid. Promiscuity is, ironically, a refuge for the sexually vanilla. A new person is all the novelty and spice one needs. Rarely on the first date did I ever need to go beyond the basics.

  I looked around. Why were there no drugs here? Pot wouldn’t help me but why not some ecstasy or at least a little alcohol? Something to loosen me up. Jimmy was some kind of health nut, but Alex— On the other hand, maybe I wanted to be sober for this, to capture all the details.

  “So are you staying?” Jimmy said, and because it was Jimmy I said yes.

  “I don’t know if he’ll come back,” I added, and to buy myself a few more seconds I went back to the door and had another look through the peephole. I felt lightheaded. I was even shivering. Tingly.

  When I turned around again Jimmy and Alex were gone and the white bedspread was now a large, ill-defined, wobbling hump.

  “Fletcher,” said the hump in a muffled voice, “come see our cave of solace.”

  That’s how it started. Imagine. Such a kiddy thing to initiate something so adult. I stepped out of my shoes and went around to the side of the bed, wondering if I should be getting undressed yet. I lifted the edge of the bedspread and stole underneath, a runaway slipping into a circus tent.

  “There you are,” Jimmy said. “Welcome. Nice suit.”

  “Thanks.”

  They were sitting Indian style with their heads bent under the weight of the bedspread. It was totally uncomfortable but it was serving its purpose. Alex had his hand on Jimmy’s crotch, rubbing lightly. I sat facing them, my knees touching one of each of theirs. I tugged closed the flap of the tent. Light came in pink through the blanket.