Through the Mirrorball

by Browatzke, Rob

  “Alex, you’re looking good.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking money out of my pocket and slapping it down on the counter.

  “All business tonight, my friend,” he said, as he counted the cash. “So much? Someone is having a party.”

  “Just me,” I said. Maybe it was a lot at a time. I didn’t want to run out. This would make me happy. This would make me forget.

  He handed the Baggies to me, one by one. “Always a pleasure,” he said. “We’ll see you again.”

  I wanted to strangle him, anything to wipe that smugness off his face. He had known I would be back. He was right. I was wrong. I was always wrong. Wrong about this. Wrong about Steven. Wrong about life.

  I didn’t strangle him though, just said good-bye and locked the door behind him. I poured out the first Baggie onto a mirror, cut it up into lines, and started my weekend.

  Later.

  My heart was racing as I swiped through Grindr profiles. There had to be someone out there, someone just looking for an ass to pound. I was that ass. I didn’t even care if he was particularly hot. I wouldn’t see his face. He could just shove me into the pillows and plow me from behind. I didn’t care. I just had to be fucked.

  Swipe. Swipe. Snort. Swipe. Swipe.

  Later.

  He was gone, and good. I suddenly couldn’t stop crying.

  I could still feel him in my ass though, HngTop34. Not as hung as I would have hoped, but it had done the job.

  Should I find another? It was early. I had booze. I had drugs. I had nothing left to lose. I swiped through the profiles. I had seen all these before. There was no one new. And no one like Steven anyway.

  Steven. Maybe I should call him. Would he be awake still? Just coming home from Wonderland? Had he been dancing? With Aaron maybe? Maybe they were fucking. They were probably fucking. Right now.

  I dialed his number. “Fuck you, Steven. I can get fucked too. You should’ve seen him. He was black and built and he fucked me hard. Fuck you.”

  I shouldn’t have left that message. Fuck. Why did I do such stupid things? Swipe. Swipe. Snort. Swipe.

  Still later.

  I just wanted to sleep. My dick was sore. My nose hurt. My heart was pounding too fast. Like the guy had pounded me too fast.

  Had I really just had another random guy come over? Two in one night? I wondered if Masc4Masc could tell that HngTop34 had been there before him. I wondered if he cared. More gin. That would help me sleep.

  But first, Aaron.

  “Hope you like my seconds, you asshole. What a fucking waste. You both fucking suck.”

  I needed to not have my phone turned on. That was the problem. If I turned it off, I wouldn’t keep leaving these messages. It was four in the morning. I just wanted to sleep.

  At least I wasn’t thinking about Steven anymore.

  Oh. Wait.

  Chapter 9

  It had been a long and hellish Friday at work, and I wanted nothing more than to get home and pour myself a very generous gin and cran, but no, that was not to be. My dear and darling fag hag Dinah was getting married in a week, and tonight was her bachelorette party. And of course, good little fagcessory that she was, she was having it at Wonderland. Wonderland was the last place I wanted to be tonight. I would have been perfectly happy staying in and getting comfortably numb, but I was Best Bridesman and had to be there.

  I loosened my tie on the elevator up to my condo, stretching the kinks out of my neck. Why did this party have to be tonight? What were the chances I could get her drunk enough quickly enough that I could leave her with her other friends and sneak back home? Doubtful. “Stupid fucking wedding!” I said to myself, not for the first time that day.

  The elevator doors opened and there was my neighbor from across the way, Walter, who had lost a lot of weight recently thanks to our friend Jesse’s personal training program. He still sported the ridiculous mustache that had caused me to nickname him Walrus, though.

  “Hey, Alex,” he said, “rough day?”

  “Does it show?”

  “You just don’t seem your normal self lately.”

  Normal self. What was that again? It had been a long time since I’d felt normal, been a long time since life had been normal. The past six months had been . . . complicated. “Getting better every day though,” I said, which was a lie but I wasn’t in the mood for a long discussion.

  He must’ve picked up on my short temper. Normally, he would chatter away until I missed the time he was nothing more than the cranky asshole who used to sneer and swear at me. Now, he just said a quick good-bye and got into the elevator.

  Griffin bounded out at me as soon as I opened the door, a big cuddly ball of brown and black. Not even he was enough to put a smile on my face, though. Was there really no way to get out of this bachelorette party? Dinah herself hated when straight girls brought their parties to the gay bar. We were her gays, Dinah always said, and she didn’t want to share us with every roly-poly straight girl come looking for a GBF.

  Wonderland. In the past year, that club had given me some of the happiest, horniest, most horrifying memories of my life. And I had to go. She was my bestie since high school, and this was important to her. She had stood by me through coming out, through a relationship, through a breakup, and through all of the shit that had happened this past year when Steven was kidnapped. Through all of it, she had stood by me.

  I had to be there for her now.

  But first things first, if I was going to face Wonderland again, there was no way I could do it sober. I scrolled through my phone until I found the Caterpillar’s number and called him. “Sup,” he said. “Want a visit?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “For you? Don’t mind at all. Be there in twenty.”

  I waited for him to arrive, and was on my second stiff double when the buzzer rang. Soon, he was up, and it was my money for his coke. “Thanks, Alex,” he said. “I didn’t expect to be back here this quick.”

  “Don’t judge me,” I said, angrily, but then, it had only been two days since his most recent visit. Maybe I should be judged. But not by him.

  “Oh, I’m not judging. You, my friend, have become one of my favorite customers,” and he was off again, into the night, to visit whoever was next on his list of fiending fans needing a fix.

  I pulled the mirror out of the coffee table drawer, and poured out a pile of the pure white powder. I crushed it flatter, separated it into two fat lines with the razor blade that was already all waiting for me. It was that common now, I just kept the paraphernalia I needed right there. The chances of anyone coming over and seeing it were pretty slim, after all. I had made sure of that.

  The first sniff of the weekend was wonderful. It was white fire filling my brain and my heart seemed to pause, and then I gasped. I finished off the first line, and looked down at my reflection in the mirror. This was my life now. This is what I did. Even if I hadn’t been going to Wonderland, I still would have called the Caterpillar over. When the gin was nearly drunk, and I was clearly drunk, and when some guy off Grindr was on his way over, I would have called the Caterpillar to set up a little party and play, because that’s what happens when you take everything that is wonderful in your life and wreck it with a series of progressively stupid choices.

  You forget however you have to forget.

  Tonight, there would be no Grindr boys. There would just be real boys. They would all be there at Wonderland, because it was Friday and that’s where they went. Brandon would be working behind the bar. Jesse and Colton would be dancing. Steven . . . oh yes, Steven would probably be there too. What would he say if he knew how bad things had gotten since we called it off? If he knew I drank myself to sleep every night without him, and coked myself into oblivion and orgasm every weekend?

  How could he hate me more than he already did?

  Would he be there tonight? Dinah hadn’t said, and I hadn’t asked. Aaron would be there though, and if Aaron was there, Steven probably w
ouldn’t be far away. They could say there was nothing between them, but I knew what I had seen, and it had been weeks now. Who knows? Maybe they were official now. The two men I had loved the most, loving each other.

  I inhaled the second line and vibrated. I was flying now. Only that high could I be safe. Only that high could I face them, could I face Wonderland.

  Chapter 10

  It hadn’t always filled me with dread, that magical club called Wonderland.

  When Steven had first taken me there, on our first night together, so long ago now, I had been enchanted by its whimsy and its magic and its men. Even though I was so into Steven, there were gorgeous men all around me. And the men and the music and the merriment made it easily the most incredible gay bar I had ever set foot in. Way better than sad old Trix back home.

  Wonderland had become a part of our relationship. It was where we went to unwind from our week, where we went to drink and dance with our friends. It was a home away from our homes, and we were stars there, and we were in love.

  All that changed though, when Steven got kidnapped. Well, before, I guess. I looked back now, and I saw the coke use creeping up on me. It was not a new problem, now, but it was my new solution. Back then, it had been so very once in a while. But Steven hated drugs and when Steven found drugs on me, we had had what was then our worst fight ever. If only that had stayed our worst fight.

  It was at Wonderland I had bought the drugs that caused that first breakup, and it was to Wonderland I went after that breakup, to lose myself again in gin and cocaine and, eventually, in a disastrously stupid threesome with Wonderland’s Wonder Twins, Jesse and Colton. We’d all been friends, but they were a lot more sexually open, and that night, with nothing left to lose, I went along with it, gladly, willingly, hornily.

  That could have been bad enough, but then Steven went missing, and in the week that followed, as I was stalked and harassed and tormented by calls from his kidnapper, that one night of indiscretion became something more. During that week, Aaron resurfaced, my long-ago and long-forgotten ex. And my confusion and my frustration and my inebriation led to a few encounters that should never have happened, that stirred up a whole bunch of feelings that should have stayed buried.

  When I got Steven back, we were just so happy to have it over with that we tried to forget it all ever happened. Steven was the one who insisted we include Aaron in our lives. He joined our little circle, and there at Wonderland, how amazing it was that everything would be fine from that point forward, like all that meaningless fucking, like all that meaningful loving, had never happened, and that the kidnapping had never happened, and that the drugs had never happened, and like the proposal had never happened.

  And then it happened, That Friday Night . . . one Friday night just like tonight, when I had to go back there, for the first time since that night. No. I couldn’t let myself think about it. It would psych me out of going and I had to be there tonight. For Dinah.

  I scraped up what was left on the mirror and snorted it back. Time to shower and change, and then maybe one more line, getting high before going down once more, to Wonderland.

  Chapter 11

  Dinah met me outside. Even though it was her night, she knew how nervous I was, knew I hadn’t been back since That Friday Night. She looked radiant, even with her tacky plastic tiara. Maybe she had found the real love of her life in Twitten (okay, in Christopher) . . . maybe she would be the exception to the rule. Maybe she would get her happy-ever-after.

  The little voice inside me that said that that was because she was straight, the little voice inside me that said that I would never have it because I wasn’t straight, I told that little voice to fuck right off. It was with me a lot these days though, part Taylor’s voice, part Nathan’s. All I could hope was that the Friday night beats of the Hatter in Wonderland would drown out its insistent nagging.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, wrapping her arms around me. Instinctively, I picked her up and spun her around, and for a second, I didn’t want to let her go. We’d been through a lot, me and her.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for anything, love,” I said.

  “Come meet the girls,” she said, taking me by my hand and leading me down the stairs.

  The music was generic, fast and thumping hard, and my heartbeat sped up in response (to the music or the blow, I wasn’t sure, but in response). Immediately, I looked around to see where they all were: Jesse and Colton, Brandon, Aaron, Steven . . . but I couldn’t see any of them. The dance floor was packed tight, the lines at the bar were long, the Hatter was in his new booth, a balcony overlooking the floor.

  Dinah introduced me to her gaggle of girlfriends. I’d heard about them all before, but was only now putting faces to the gossip. Sure, we talked about her straight friends from her straight life, but she kept me and the gayborhood for her, and I was fine with that. We had enough to deal with in our own world, without them coming down. Stacy with the Cuban lover. Amanda who had just landed herself a rich husband. Samantha, who’d recently given birth to a second perfect baby. The names went in one ear and out—I had my hag, and one was plenty, even if I did love her to death. Eventually, all gay boys and their hags separated—Dinah’s wedding would lead to Dinah’s pregnancy and that would be the end of our adventures in Wonderland.

  Really, Alex? After all you two have been through? Do you really think that? Was it inevitable, that she would leave like everyone else had left? Of course it was. And then, I would be alone.

  “Let me go get us shots,” I said without thinking, and was halfway to the bar before I saw Brandon, all blond and abs and memories of his sketchy little ex, Allan. I did a quick about-face and headed to the side bar. It was safer. Tim, the side bar guy, in no way figured in to any of the mistakes of my semi-recent past. He was bookish, kinda plain-looking, boring as fuck, quite frankly.

  Maybe Walter was right and I was shallow. Tim still served drinks just as well as anyone else. Did it matter that Brandon was ten times hotter, with the most cut abs I had ever seen on anyone, and an absolutely perfect valley of butt crack poking out from his Andrew Christians?

  “Six tequilas,” I told Tim, and he smiled and started to pour. I turned around as he did, checking out the club from an angle I didn’t normally see it from. Yes, there they were, on their dance box on the packed dance floor, two perfect specimens of gayness. Wonderland’s Wonder Twins: Jesse and Colton. What was with Colton’s uber-douchey chinstrap, though? That was new, and shot to shit the looking-like-twins thing.

  I paid for the tequila, which Tim had been nice enough to put on a tray for me, along with a handful of lime wedges. Fighting my way back to Dinah and the girls, I kept glancing about, dreading the moment when someone would see me, or when I’d see him. Either of him, actually, Aaron or Steven. There may be no X in Wonderland, but there was always an ex at Wonderland. It was the nature of the gayborhood, and I wasn’t ready to face either of them yet.

  “Shots!” one of the girls squealed and started handing them out as I put the tray down on the table. “Hey, there’s too many,” she said.

  I grabbed the extra and tipped it back. Dinah shook her head. “Alex, are you okay?”

  “Absolutely, bride-to-be,” I lied. “Let’s do these.”

  The tequila burned, and two back to back was almost too much for me. I had the coke baggie in my pocket, with a bit left over, and the Caterpillar would be along soon if I needed a little more powdered sobriety. The girls flocked to the dance floor as the Hatter mixed in some Britney. I stayed, both to guard the table and to avoid the twins. They’d tried to get ahold of me after That Friday Night, but I had ignored their calls. When the passive-aggressive status war ended between me and Steven on Facebook, I’d deactivated all my social media, and blocked them on Grindr. I hadn’t talked to them since. I just wanted to get through the night without seeing them, without seeing Brandon, without seeing . . .

  There he was. Steven. Did he count as an ex-fiancé, or just an ex? Sure, he
had worn the engagement ring I’d bought for him, but it had been put there by Nathan, not me, while Nathan had us tied to chairs. Hardly a real, romantic proposal. Was Nathan right about gay marriage? Was it just not for us?

  Steven looked good, he always had. My heart ached and my body tensed and my eyes brimmed with tears I refused to let fall. Maybe he wasn’t the gorgeous perfection of the twins, and no one had Brandon’s abs, but he had been mine. From the moment I saw him getting into his white VW Rabbit to our first night dancing at Wonderland, through a summer of exceedingly perfect moments . . . until Nathan kidnapped him and Aaron came back into my life, and everything got all fucked up.

  Our eyes met across the room, the way they had once met across a parking lot, but this time, the smile that was on his face fell. Just for a second, but long enough for me to notice. He had to know I’d be there. Dinah had been my friend first, of course. But the smile came back as he came toward us, and she squealed and jumped into his arms, just as she had squealed and jumped into mine. He even swung her around the same way I had, as well as he could in a crowded bar.

  And then he set her down and turned to me. “Hey, Alex,” he said. It was almost with a sigh. A sad, disappointed sigh.

  “Hey.”

  “How’s things?”

  Hell. Shit. Fucked up. How do you think things are, Steven? “Fine. And for you?”

  “Things are good. You look good.”

  It was a lie. I knew it was a lie, and he knew I knew it was a lie. It was one of those lies we tell because we don’t know what else to say. “Thanks,” I replied. “You too.” That wasn’t a lie. He did look good. And it wasn’t fair that he looked good, happy, handsome, when I was falling apart and a total wreck, inside and out. Maybe it was time for me to dip into my Caterpillar leftovers.

  “Steven!”

  “About time!”

  The twins descended upon us, and there were more hugs and laughter, and then they turned to me.