“I like ya, but if you wanna keep this job, you gotta learn to—”
“Why don’t I roll and you cut?” I said. “We all got our strengths.”
“My niece can cut in like a master,” said a painter. “And she’s five years old.” He’s so perfect it hurts to watch, blond jock hair, clean shaven, always smiling and courteous, and bangin’ all the housewives when their husbands are at work. Good for him for being better than me.
I feel like a loser working a three-million-dollar home. My problem, I know. Once the owners move in, my welcome moves out. It’s like those workers at the Chinese Olympics: Hey, put up a stadium, now get out, you too ugly.
*
I like the boss. I like how he handles me, how he turns me around, how when I get all stupid, he sticks that brush or spray wand in my hand and curls my fingers over it. Yeah, I like all that. Truth is I know what I’m doing, but a rough touch is better than nothing at all.
But I’m not a damn Monet, and I can’t always cut in so good. The light was bad, I couldn’t see what I was doing, whatever my excuse, boss wasn’t having it. “Now we gotta do that shit again.”
“Okay, I’ll try.”
“Not you, Crewman. You screwed it up once.” It was an odd term, Crewman, but boss liked it, and we all started using it.
We got all types here. Boss hired extra to get this job done. It’s that or we work sixteen-hour days, and apparently that kind of labor agreement doesn’t happen anymore. Sometimes they’ll hire a bunch of illegals to do it for ten bucks an hour. Yep. I said illegal. So sue me. Tryin’ to make a living.
I told you about blond stud, plus we got a couple smooth, cool black guys, and we got the college kid who sings Elvis all day and says he’s gonna win American Idol, and I hope so because it’ll get him off the crew. We got me—I’m the dark blond lanky guy with the hair on his face. Ain’t seen my lip in a decade. My jaw’s covered up too. Carl’s always saying, where’s your damn lip? I’m like, boss, come find it.
I think he likes me, he just doesn’t know he does. Doesn’t know how to say it, so he throws me around the jobsite like an oily rag. That rag of mineral spirits that you never know when it’s going to burst into flames. I’m that rag, trying to stay oily, trying not to burst and burn, but damn I want to. I go home all lit up and have to put that fire out with that hand he curled over. These guys find out I like the boss, I might as well throw that rag down. You like guys, it’s one thing. You like the boss, it’s about ten things more.
Yeah, I’m the gay guy. Queer guy. Whatever they call it these days, I’m that. I don’t know if they know or they don’t, and I don’t know if they care or they don’t, so I don’t talk it up. It’s not like everyone on crew feels the same way about everything. I see some guys get all racial about painting with someone a little darker, Carl’s like, suck it, dude, he sweats just like you do. I’m like, oh no, he sweats better.
Folks think you’re a painter, so you have a problem with gay guys. Like we’re all alike, all poured out of the same bucket. I watch ’em work, and I like who I like. I don’t like who I don’t. I want a guy who can cut in. Who can roll. Who can put in that time to do it just right. Who can bail me out of what I can’t do while we’re living in these Blueberry Tropics. I like the guy who can do it just right without having to be told. I wish it was me, but I’m just not that responsible. But boss wants to throw me up against a wall and find my lip, so I stay on.
For now, I tape up plastic sheeting on the counters below a row of fine-crafted cabinetry so someone can come by with an HVLP and spray up a stain. Someone shoulda sprayed them before they were installed, but whatever. I’m demoted to no-skill prep with a newfangled tape and plastic in one. Carl puts my hand over the taping machine and says go for it. If I learn to tape straight, maybe I can learn to paint straight. His hand stays on mine just a second or two longer than usual.
“What would you know about straight?” I asked him. Closed mouths don’t get fed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You got your hands all over me all day long.” Our eyes met, and I felt like all those oily rags were gonna go up at once. “I ain’t gonna file harassment, if you’re worried.” My lip trembled, not that he could see it. “I got this,” I said. “Go babysit college boy.”
*
I don’t wanna be that guy. The guy who likes the boss and everyone knows it. That I’m just there because I do more than paint. I don’t wanna be that guy, but yeah I do. I like the boss and his tough love. I like how he calls me Crewman.
“My name’s Noah,” I reminded him once.
“I ain’t all up in your grill like that,” he said.
I wished he was. Damn, I wished more than I ever thought I could wish. Just had a bad day on the picture framing thing. This three-mil home pissed me off. Jealousy didn’t look good on me, so I had to let it go somehow. I’m always being that guy I don’t want to be. I’m lonely. I keep fucking up so he grabs me like a convict. It’s all the sex I get.
*
It’s paint, dammit! All this starched white yes sir, no sir bullshit. We get a bad rap as drug addicted alcoholics. Well, it’s the drug-addicted alcoholics that gave us that rap. Showing up as painters when they ain’t.
That ’stache I got’s longer than the hair on my head. I got dark blond fuzz on top. ’Stache curls over and covers my lip. Beard’s about the same. It’s clean, just thick. I’m a taller guy, have a bit of muscle, have a Duck Dynasty look to me, but I’m better lookin’ and with more brain cells. I have a don’t fuck with me kinda face, so I have to work extra to get someone to fuck with me.
Boss, he’s dark haired, he’s good looking but doesn’t want to let that secret out. He can’t do a beard like me, and it kills him. That’s why he wants to get close to mine. It’s kinda like me and this three-mil house. I can’t do it, and it kills me. In the summer, it gets hot and guys take off their shirts. We’re still wearing goggles and all that safety stuff that covers up your looks, but Carl, I like to watch his arm move up and down when he actually paints something and doesn’t just tell us what to do. On a hot day, he gets all rank smellin’ and I get next to it.
“Y’all finish up,” he says. “I need to take Crewman here and teach him how the hell to use a brush before I fire him.”
I rode in with him to save gas, so we get in the company truck and head out. There’s not much left to do but clean up anyway and come back the next day, except for college boy who’s stuck fixing my picture frame. I’ll never hear the end of that. Some young thing all up like, I can paint better than the guy who’s thirty-five. I’m like yeah, but boss don’t like you, like he likes me. He better not. I got a streak in me about that kinda thing.
*
Carl takes me to his place. I’ve been there before. We’ve had staff BBQ and such there. I got sauce on my…oh, you’re tired of hearing about that damn ’stache, aren’t ya? I can’t see the word mustache on a page without getting weak. The real thing on a man, it’s worse.
“What’s here needs painting so badly?” I ask.
“I wanna find your lip, Crewman.”
I got it, finally. Saying Crewman worked him up. Working around guys like this and we’re all a jack-off fantasy. You wanna say working with a queer guy isn’t any different, then you’re drilling your eyes right through his Dickies acting like you’re just worried about picture framing.
“Find it,” I tell him. “But you can’t use your hand.”
Carl’s shorter than me. He’s gotta step up, which takes the boss-crewman thing and puts me in the lead for once. He pins me up on a faux brick wall right next to that big screen TV—yeah, I painted my way through life so he could get that damn thing—he comes on up under my ’stache with his tongue and his top lip. He’s all over that thing, and I’m pinned to the wall while he gets his fill.
I throb everywhere. “How long you been wantin’ that?” I asked.
“How long you been workin’ here?”
/> “That’s too long to want that.”
“Didn’t want you to make a complaint.”
“What you gonna curl my fingers on now?”
Kissin’ the boss feels weird. He’s the boss, he’s not even supposed to be into guys, he’s supposed to be the guy I hide from the most. Turns out he doesn’t really care what we are, other than we can paint. For all my shootin’ myself in the foot, I need thicker shoes.
He was all about me, though. He threw me into the bedroom, ripped off a couple buttons, and told me it was time for a new set of painter’s whites. He knew when to call me Crewman and when to call me Noah and when to talk about forty-day floods and all that stuff. His eyes burned into my face watching me react to his hands. Some guys are jealous because I got chest hair thick like my ’stache. Carl got all into it, he got all into me like no one ever had. I didn’t think I could ever feel this, much less deserve it. I’m just a crewman, after all.
I hate feelin’ like that. Letting someone so far into my soul that they can see through my skull. I want to feel it, but I just can’t. Part of me is like, damn, no one’s done that to me and another part’s like, can’t let him know, so yeah, it was as good as it could be.
“We shoulda done it in that house,” I said. “In the doctor’s bedroom.”
“Don’t shit where you eat, Crewman,” he said.
I look at his wall. I’m lying here naked and all full of his drool, every part of me’s exposed to my boss, my heart most of all. He’s pretty much sniffed and licked off whatever I smell like during whatever day it is. Paint doesn’t smell like it used to. Some of it’s so low odor, as they call it, that you gotta stick your head in the bucket to smell it at all, and this way we don’t come out having to wash up with turpentine and mineral spirits. It’s all water and soap, and we’re clean. Your boss’s tongue just scrapes off the rest.
“There’s a picture frame up in the corner.”
Boss looks at me like I’m crazy, then he looks at the wall too. It’s slight, but you can see it if you pay attention. I like that angle of his face, the way his nose and jaw jut out, the stubble on his lip, fierce eyes. He’s forty-five, and he’s got it goin’ on. I wanna say, wow, your lips make me float on a cloud, but I say, there’s a picture frame up in the corner. I trained myself too well. Not to let it show even when I need to, when he just wants to hear, you sure know how to take care of your crewman. You are how you are, or you’re not. So I am how I am in that way I shouldn’t be at the biggest moment I shouldn’t have been.
“I didn’t paint it,” said Carl. “And after painting all day I don’t want to fix it.”
“I’ll fix it for ya,” I offered. “Just dressed like this.”
Picture frame thing kinda set him off. So did the doctor’s bedroom thing. I shoulda known better than being this way I don’t like myself to be. I don’t got nothin’, just a damn apartment they won’t let me paint. Now I know why.
“You call everyone Crewman all day long,” I said. “You’re getting your rocks off on all of us calling us Crewman, and we don’t even know what’s hit us. How many other guys been your crewman after hours?”
“It’s my company. So, yeah. You got me figured out. You can’t paint for shit, Noah. But I love you, so I keep you on.”
Can’t remember the last time I heard that, and the words didn’t fall right over me. I want to say it back, but I can’t cut myself open like that. “I didn’t think you even liked me that much.”
“Y’ain’t figured that out ’cuz you’re an idiot. Too busy being tough. So, get it together. I don’t want to have to tell you again.”
“It did feel awfully good, boss.”
“Well, if you’re gonna be in here again, you’d best fix that wall. I can’t be drivin’ you that far into ecstasy if you’re scoutin’ around for paint problems while I’m tasting the goods.”
*
Carl overdoes it now at work. He’ll toss me from room to room. I hate that he calls everyone Crewman. I get scared ’cuz he’s starting to do the same shit to that college boy. I’m terrible at this. I’m used to everyone having everything I don’t: love, friends, money, even those damn cabinets. I’m trying hard not to let him down and not to punch college boy right out of a singing career. Boy’s growing a handlebar trying to outdo me. It’s dripping with sex, big and black, and it curls up on the sides and fuck him. It makes me weak. It makes Carl drool. It’s just a natural reaction. It is, right?
Carl calls him College Boy and everyone thinks it’s an insult, a step below Crewman.
Maybe this love thing will work. It’s got to. It’s all I have.
American Master Bakers
Dale Cameron Lowry
Joey hated Terence. He hated his perfect puff pastries, his melt-in-your mouth mille-feuilles, the way he arranged lebkuchen on a platter, and his baritone voice barking “yes, chef,” and “no, chef” loud enough to be heard over twelve roaring stand mixers. He hated Terence’s salt-and-pepper hair, prettier than white buttercream dusted with silver sugar, and how Terence didn’t seem to think anything was wrong with strolling naked between bedroom and bathroom at the contestants’ dorm, his nuts hanging low beneath his meaty cock, swinging shling-shlong, shling-shlong with every stride.
Terence had become the bane of Joey’s existence from that first day on the set of American Master Bakers. There’d been fifty contestants then, each presenting their signature bake for a chance at being on the full season. Within the four-hour time limit, Terence had somehow managed to bake and decorate a three-tier wedding cake with a different sponge in each layer, two custard fillings, and three jams from scratch. That alone would have made him a shoo-in, but then he’d decorated its flawless ganache with handcrafted fondant lovebirds that looked like the real thing.
“Well, Terence, we might as well skip the whole season and give you the bakers’ crown now!” had been the judges’ assessment.
Fucking show-off.
Joey’s goal in life became getting Terence axed from the show. If he could eliminate Terence, he would win the season hands down, easy as pie. Joey had learned to bake rugelach by his grandmother’s side at age four, made his first croquembouche wedding cake at age nine, and by sixth grade ran an unofficial catering business out of his parents’ kitchen. He might be the youngest contestant at only twenty-six, but he had been born to own this kitchen.
The camera crew knew Joey hated Terence. The judges knew it. Hell, all of America knew it. Joey never tried to hide his contempt.
“Oh, look at Terence make marzipan for his stollen from scratch—and watch him run out of time.” Joey smirked at the cameras as he kneaded his Swedish coffee ring dough. It was the first day taping episode twelve: forty-four contestants gone and six left.
But Terence beat the clock, and the judges gushed so much over the final product you could practically smell the cream in their undies from five stations away. Both of them had a permanent hard-on for Terence.
“Experience beats youth any day, motherfucker,” Terence said on their way back to the dorm that afternoon, flipping Joey the double-bird.
On day three, they had to grind fifty pound bags of flour by hand, then make four different kinds of whole wheat bread. “Hey, old man, don’t give yourself a hernia,” Joey shouted across the studio as Terence pranced around with two bags on each shoulder, one for each remaining contestant save Joey.
“You’re just jealous because I look twice as good as you at forty-four than you do at—how old are you, anyway? If I based it on your maturity level, I’d have to guess twelve.”
Of course, Terence didn’t get a hernia. Didn’t come close. He might be almost twice Joey’s age, but he had a muscular chest and big burly arms from years of pounding dough out by hand. His thighs wouldn’t quit, and his muscular ass also managed to look soft and pliable like bread dough. Joey had an urge to poke it just to see how fast it sprang back up.
Damn that ass.
Now they were at the final challenge of
the episode, the one that would determine who stayed and who went.
Joey walked into the studio pretty damn confident. He’d slayed the bread bake the day before, and even if the judges hadn’t liked his Swedish tea ring as much as Terence’s stollen, day two had brought a Linzer torte technical challenge that Joey had knocked out of the park. The judges had gone on and on about the perfection of Joey’s red-currant jam while sighing about Terence’s being on the runny side.
Joey knew he was safe from elimination.
The contestants lined up shoulder to shoulder at the front of the room, like bride and groom cake toppers at a triple wedding. Joey was between the grandmother of eight and the four-foot-ten, ninety-pound elf woman from Santa Clara. With long brown hair and golden skin, she looked like a chocolate éclair standing on end. The grandmother was more of a Catalonian xuixo pastry—plump in the middle and dusted sugar-white all over. On the other side of elf woman was the guy who’d lost one arm in Hurricane Katrina. His muffin-top stomach made Joey think of saffron buns.
Completing the lineup were the Korean lady DJ with a face as round as an English muffin, and Terence, who was any and every pastry Joey had ever tasted, good or bad. That morning, his reflection in the camera lens reminded Joey of a Runeberg torte, a delectable brown-sugar cake topped with white icing. Joey’s mouth watered.
Chef Dharma stepped forward to greet them. “Chefs, we weren’t able to agree on a single chef who has excelled above all others this week. Therefore, all six of you will compete in the elimination round.”
Someone might as well have dropped a bowling ball on Joey’s stomach. But he didn’t flinch or frown. He kept his face frozen for the cameras.
“A good chef knows how to learn from others. So for today’s elimination round, you’ll be working in pairs. Members of the two best-performing teams will progress to the semifinal. For the members of the weakest team, today will be good-bye. So get ready to put your brains together. The teams are—” Chef Dharma began pulling names from a metal mixing bowl. Joey crossed his fingers behind his back and prayed to get paired up with elf woman, or maybe Hurricane Katrina guy, or even DJ lady, but please not—
Men in Love: M/M Romance Page 3