My Worst Date

by David Leddick

  And look at all the people who are gay and all the saps who don’t know and don’t want to believe it. The one who’s such a big singer, looks a little bit like Elvis. In all his interviews he’s always talking about how his heart was broken and he’s taking a long time to get over it. Please. One of these days somebody besides me is going to notice he still lives with his mother.

  And the one who’s making all the action movies now. Started out doing a gay play in Canada. He didn’t get to Hollywood because they loved the way he did Hamlet. Really wild when you think about it, all these girls going to bed dreaming about him at night and he couldn’t care less. And he doesn’t even bother to pretend he’s got a girlfriend. The interviewers just skip the subject.

  And what’sername. One review I read said in her last movie she played the role of a heterosexual very well. Wild. I guess little by little the public can be brought around to be interested in seeing somebody in a movie they know they haven’t got any hope of sleeping with. They haven’t anyway if they’d just think about it.

  And there’s that little Prince. In my brief life I have learned that men who like to pose nude and wear a lot of makeup are probably not interested in girls. Michael Jackson. I guess it’s easier to just slip off into being a nut case than dealing with it.

  So what’s in store for little me? Guess I’m supposed to dream I’ll meet some hunky guy someday who isn’t interested in other hunky guys. I think what it really is is that they’re so in love with themselves that the closest thing to themselves is what interests them. Failing that, somebody who worships them. I guess I could fall into that category. Better yet, maybe I should keep my eye out for someone really plain who thinks I’m a goddess. Those are two really poor choices.

  Shit! What was that? Sounded like the windows in the bedroom just blew out.

  hugo’s hurricane

  One thing I didn’t expect in a hurricane was to fuck. But it happened. But it happened. Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m having too much experience for a young boy of seventeen.

  Now it’s over I kind of wonder if I imagined it. But when I look out the window and see the trees all topsy-turvy down the street I know that the hurricane happened, so the rest of it must have happened too. I’m being a little silly. Of course it happened.

  While we are stuck in the bathroom and the storm sounds like a hundred airplanes are taking off on the roof there was a crash in the next room that sounded like the end of the house had gone. Scared the shit out of all of us. Glenn said that it sounded like the window had blown in. He said we should try to go in there and put something over the window, or up against it. Don’t ask me why we hadn’t already. Everything we did over at our house on Royal Palm we never did here at Ken’s. I guess we were so sure that the storm was going over Miami Beach we never thought about it. Mom wasn’t crazy about us going out there but Glenn said it wasn’t dangerous. We were just going to go in and push the mattress up so the wind didn’t do any more damage. And he and I were going to do it because we were closest to the door. So we did.

  Wow. It was crazy once we opened the door. The wind banged the door open at the other end of the hall and we had to hang onto the door openings to even stand up. Glenn yelled, “Get down.” So we got down and crawled across the floor to the side of the bed. We pushed the mattress off the bed but it was impossible to stand up with it. The wind kept pushing us back and we were falling all over each other. With our two bodies struggling together we kept trying and got the bed turned around so we could push the headboard up against the mattress.

  I could hear Mom yell, “Are you all right?” from the hall. Glenn shouted, “We’re getting it. Get back in there.” We finally got the mattress up against the window and our backs against the headboard of the bed. We were stuck there, the wind whistling through our hair. The bed was caught on something on the other side of the room so it was real solid, with Glenn pinned between me and the mattress.

  Glenn took my hand down and put it on the front of his jeans. He had a hard-on! Christ, I thought. He turned his head back and yelled in my ear, “Fuck me, Hugo.” Pressing against his butt the way I was I had a hard-on myself. I never took cocaine, but it must be something like this. All that noise, things flying and banging outside, the wind rushing through. Glenn’s pants were coming down and he was reaching to get me out of mine. And here I was pushing into him. His butt was soft and hot and he was twisting and pushing to help me get in. He put his arms around me from behind and held me as tight as he could. We could hear Mom calling, “Are you all right, are you all right?” It was pitch black in there, but you didn’t even think that you couldn’t see. It was as though seeing wasn’t an option. Glenn shouted, “We’re fine. We’re fine. Stay in there, we’ll be right there” while pushing his ass back and forth frantically. I felt for him and started pulling on him as I pushed further and further into him. My own cock seemed enormously long to me. As though I was pushing deep, deep into him. So soft, so hot. He was really frantic. He grabbed himself and was jerking violently and working his ass as hard as he could at the same time.

  You know how you can be really into sex and at the same time know you’re sort of standing aside observing it? I couldn’t see him but I knew he was wilder and hotter than I’d ever known him to be. Just as violent as the storm, I guess. We fell down on the floor between the mattress and the headboard and the mattress fell back a little, sheltering us. I really felt like fucking him hard now. I pushed up and started giving him really long strokes. The head almost coming out, then sliding way, way in again. I felt absolutely huge. He was pushing up against me as hard as he could when I went back in.

  Mom called again, “What’s happening? What’s happening? I couldn’t get my breath enough to call back but Glenn yelled back in a really calm voice, “Almost got it. We’ll be right there. Stay there. We’ll be right there. We’re coming right now!”

  And we did. Man. I never had an orgasm like that. I felt like I was pumping quarts into him. And he was groaning and pounding the floor under me. I could hear him but all those groans were lost in the screaming of the wind over our heads. I slid out of him. He reached up and pulled my head down beside his. “Went in like six and came out like ten, Hugo. That was great. Let’s get out of here.” We scrambled out from under the mattress and pushed the bed up against it. Bracing it with the bureau. I got my pants back up and zipped up somehow as we stumbled back to the bathroom door.

  We squeezed back in and Glenn said, “That was exhausting.” “You’re covered in sweat,” Mom said, feeling his body. And mine, too. “So is Hugo, that must have been hard.”

  “I didn’t know if we were going to make it or not,” Glenn said. “But finally we did. Hugo was great. He can be a real toughie.” I thought we smelled so much of come that everybody must be able to figure out what just happened. When I woke up the wind had died down a lot.

  after the hurricane

  Outside, all is wreckage. Inside, all is calm. The house actually survived with little damage except for the blown-in bedroom window that Glenn and Hugo patched up with such difficulty during the storm.

  The sun was shining brightly as the wind died down and we knew the house was not going to blow away. Glenn and I pulled some blankets over ourselves on the springs of the bed, and left the kids to sort out what sleeping arrangements they could in the living room. They pulled open the folding couch and just fell on it in a heap, like a bunch of puppies. Poor Hugo wasn’t really awake when they dragged him in there to jampile with them. A brave kid and I know it wasn’t easy for him to have Glenn here with us. He couldn’t really be my brave protector and our private communication was cut off. It’s part of growing up and it’s just as well, but I feel sorry about it all the same.

  Once we hit the bed Glenn was very much in the mood to make love and I felt very much the same. Sort of like we survived and let’s propagate. Although that wouldn’t be the greatest idea on earth.

  He was more loving than I’d known him
to be, less urgent. He is such a sexual being that once it’s plain that intercourse is in the cards he is very interested in getting to the good part. But early this morning he was very comforting and soothing, stroking me and petting me as though he really understood I needed that. He’s such a strange guy, he doesn’t really have any verbal thinking process, I don’t think. He’s not stupid. Certainly not in business. And he certainly knows how to use his charm, but his charm is really just himself. He just places himself in your path and lets you discover him.

  Lovemaking is such a pleasure with him because he really likes it and understands that there are two people involved. It’s not just his pleasure. Of course, that’s a man who has been involved with a lot of lovemaking in his time. But when you look like he does and have his gifts for sensuality, it is inevitable. Such a great kisser. I think that tells you so much about how much a person is willing to give. Eyes can lie, but a person’s mouth tells you everything. Glenn really has lips. Beautiful lips.

  A really nicely shaped penis, too. Maybe the two things go together. But he has been quick to point out that the more he kisses me the more enthusiasm I have for making bamboola.

  He took all of my clothes off and all of his and then proceeded to make very long and slow love. It was as though he was treating himself to a great pleasure and was in no hurry about it. He didn’t seem terribly exhausted despite all the struggle covering the window. He’s a very strong person physically, which you realize once you’re in his arms. He could crush me if he was in the mood. Strange how with some men you can really let yourself go and let them plunge in and touch your heart. There’s something about Glenn, the sort of powdery smell and the softness of his skin over his hard muscles and the way his mouth pulls on mine, that really suits me. We have virtually no small talk but I think he feels that I am dependable and that he can count on me. We don’t seem to get restive in one another’s company. We seem to have fallen into sharing each other without anything you could really call romance having happened. Go with the tide, I say, go with the tide.

  When we woke up we were still in each other’s arms. Glenn Elliott said into my neck, “This must be love when you wake up in someone’s arms.” I said nothing. He is not given to saying things like that. We all struggled into our clothes. There was no electricity so we couldn’t cook anything but there was plenty of orange juice and I made sandwiches since we couldn’t have toast or eggs or anything. Our cars were intact, although trees were sprawled everywhere. We all went out and picked up branches and did what we could to clear up Ken’s lawn and his landlord’s. Many men were out sawing away at the trees on the street in front of the house. Coconut Grove has many more real trees than palms, so there was a lot of work to be done. The palms seem to have swayed their way through, though many of them were tilted over at a 45-degree angle. And they stayed that way until someone came around to straighten them up.

  By the end of the afternoon we decided maybe things had been cleared up enough to try to get back to Miami Beach. It was quite a trip. Wandering around fallen trees, cutting corners across people’s lawns, getting out of the car to haul giant limbs out of the way.

  We traveled in convoy, with Macha and Fred driving behind us. We decided to kidnap Fred and bring him back to Miami Beach with us. If we had to battle for food and water at least we would all battle together. The causeways were open and poor old Miami Beach looked battered but considerably better than Coconut Grove. Trees down and branches and torn loose shrubbery everywhere, with garbage cans and lawn furniture laced through it, but we could pass through it and find our way up Royal Palm. Those old royal palms looked good. Not one had gone down and the big one in our front yard was standing straight and tall, didn’t look as though it had lost a frond. The same was true of the one in the backyard, we discovered, soon surrounded by our cats, who were delighted to be able to rush outdoors and squat under the hedges. They didn’t seem to be particularly upset by their night of disorder. They probably figure everything that goes on outside the house is the work of humans and how in the hell can any self-respecting cat understand them?

  The house was intact. Longing to get our lives back in order we immediately set about carrying everything back downstairs that we had carried upstairs yesterday morning. We’d left Ken at home, but both Macha and Fred were staying with us, so we had lots of helping hands.

  Glenn improvised a grill in the backyard and we grilled some steaks that were in their last moments. And we had some tomatoes. The ice cream was soup. Eggs we can probably fix over the grill in a frying pan. It’s like camping out.

  Glenn Elliott wandered off to his own flat to see how things were there. I wasn’t sorry. I wanted to mull over the really satisfying maneuver of this morning. Sometimes your lover needs to be something of a fantasy to be really appreciated.

  Cold showers and all of us go to bed. Macha is in the guest room and Fred dossing down with Hugo. Before Hugo went off to bed I said, “I wonder if your father survived the hurricane all right?” He said, “We can only hope he didn’t.” And off to bed. I asked Macha if she wanted us to go over to her parents’ house to see how things were but she said, “Who cares? If anything needs to be fixed I’m not going to do it tonight. I’m hitting the sack.” She is a wonderful girl. Nothing but good things are in store for a person like that. I wasn’t that mature until I was years older than she is. I’m not sure I am now.

  So the hurricane has come and gone. All we know is what the car radio told us. Poor Homestead got the worst of it. Pretty well obliterated I guess. Haven’t heard that anyone died yet. I feel as though I’ve had a baby or something. As though things will never be quite the same again. We’ve come through something.

  played out

  I told Macha what was going on. I can’t keep everything to myself. She was pretty brief. She said, “You’re too calm. Get hysterical.” So I did.

  The hurricane was pretty well over. The electricity was back on so we could stop putting ice in the refrigerator to keep things cold. The trees were all cleared up in our part of town. Old Mrs. Rasmussen has hardly noticed the difference. She eats so little and goes to bed early so even the fact there’s no electricity hardly bothers her. She hates television so that wasn’t a problem either.

  Of course, down in Homestead things are a real wreck. Glenn and I went down to take a look. It was like the first pioneers had just come in to clear the land. Trees topsy-turvy everywhere, all the houses looked like shacks that had just been thrown together. Hand-lettered signs nailed up everywhere telling people what street they were on or where people had gone or warning people not to mess around. Stray animals wandering about trying to find their owners. People were pretty good about that, feeding them and taking them in.

  So seeing all the hysteria around me I got pretty hysterical myself. Glenn was pretty surprised. I said, “Glenn, what are you going to do? What’s going to happen to you and me?”

  He said, “That was a pretty good fuck you threw into me the other night. Isn’t that what’s going to happen between you and me.”

  “But what about you and my mother?”

  “What’s that got to do with you and me? That’s between your mother and myself. Just like what’s going on with you and me is just between us.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that we’re all living in the same house?”

  “We’re not all living in the same house, Hugo. I don’t live there. I spend a lot of time at your place, but I don’t live there. You and I never screw there. You must have noticed that.”

  “Yeah, but Mom and you do while I’m there. How do you think that makes me feel?”

  “Well, how does it make you feel, Hugo?”

  “You are such a shit, Glenn. A real shit. If it was somebody else I’d probably come in there and kill both of you. But I love my mom and I want her to be happy. So I just lie in my bed and feel like I’m falling all apart. And then get up in the morning and act like nothing’s happening. It just makes me feel awful.” And
I started crying. I was all bent over in my seat crying and crying. It was really awful.

  Glenn pulled off the road. We were on the Julia Tuttle Causeway so he could pull over on the grass. And he undid my safety belt and undid his own and pulled me over and put his arms around me, and I cried like I have never cried before in my life and had to get it all out. And while I was doing it at the same time I thought, Christ, what if some of the kids from school go by and see me? It’d be all over the school in five minutes. Or what if a cop car stops? But I couldn’t get myself under control. I just kept saying, “I love you, Glenn. I love you.” And crying some more. He held me real tight and kept rocking me back and forth and saying, “Hugo, Hugo, Hugo.” Like I was his baby. But I guess that’s what I needed because I calmed down and got myself sorted out. His shirt was soaked. “I got your shirt all wet,” I said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “Look, Hugo, I know you love me and I know what that’s like when you’re a kid. What can we do? You and I can’t move in together. You couldn’t do that. You wouldn’t do that. You can’t say, ‘Look, Mom, I’m in love with Glenn and we’re going to set up housekeeping together.’ I can’t marry you, Hugo.”

  “Why not?” I said. “Some men do.”

  “Not our kind of men, Hugo. Neither of us wants to be somebody’s wife. I’m not sure I even want to be somebody’s husband. We just have to hang in there and see how this works out.”

  We drove back to his place and he said, “I don’t suppose you want to come up and fuck a little?” Actually I did but then again, I didn’t. I told him I should really go home and study. So my handsome Glenn went upstairs and I rode my bike, which I’d left locked up in front of his place, slowly up Meridian and then up Royal Palm.