“Anyway…”
“Last year I knew he was alone, doing nothing on Thanksgiving. So a couple weeks ago I asked my mom if I could bring a friend down, and she said yes, and it’ll probably only be one night, but I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”
“It’s pretty major, Alex. Home to meet the family? I’ll be down, too, so maybe we can all go out, show Nick around, stop by the Bonham for a drink.”
“That’d be amazing.”
“Okay, I gotta run. One of the staff reporters wrote a rave review of this CD I can’t stand, and I have to make sure there’s no room to run it.”
“You power-mad dominatrix.”
Nick passed the Bar and was hired by a highbrow law firm in mid-October. He and Barney celebrated with a carnivorous feast at The County Line, Austin’s swankiest, beefiest restaurant. He and I celebrated with pasta at my place, where I gave him an office-warming present, an antique life-size sterling-silver tarantula paperweight. “I’ll call him Mr Young,” he said, smiling.
“Thanks a lot,” I replied, mock-petulant. He hugged me from behind so I couldn’t get hold of him, his five o’clock shadow nuzzling my nape, making me quake. “You spent way too much money on me.” I shook my head violently. “But I really do appreciate… you takin’ such good care of me.”
“Any time.”
The next Sunday I decided to fill out the law school application that had been sitting on my dry bar for almost a month. It was basically a formality — with my test-score and UT GPA I’d be an auto-admit. Still, it was a good excuse to see Nick. Maybe if we completed the app together it would forge some Olympian romantic bond that would stretch through my legal education and deposit us in love and as one at the Sunflower graduation ceremony three and a half years from now, I thought spacily, as I crossed Lamar for an uncharacteristic rendezvous at Nick’s house.
Barney was off boring his aunt in Lockhart for the day and Nick was “on call” — he’d already worked six days that week on a big case at his new job, but had to be prepared to make it seven. “So far, so good,” he grinned, cocking a thumb at the phone as I made my entrance, hair still wet from the gym.
It was only the second time I’d been to a home of theirs and it felt weird. There wasn’t much physical evidence of Barney’s existence — a tiresomely kitschy collection of Warner Brothers cartoon figurines, a stray Playguy subscription card sticking out of a pile of debris on the desk, clothing from Mervyn’s Nick wouldn’t be caught dead in — but this was Barney’s domain, all of it, and I was hyperaware of that as Nick ran down the list of home projects he’d accomplished that day, and I followed him around the place, looking at the new window-frames through which Barney peered at sweat-sheened college students jogging by, and the garbage disposal Barney would forget to empty his dirty dishes into, and the toilet in which Barney took his daily dump. I felt a perverse, powerful desire to be alone in the house, to pry into every inch of it, every drawer, every closet, every file stashed away in every box, just to learn which secret kept Nick and Barney together. Was it psychotic of me to think like this, or just to admit that I did?
We sat down next to each other on the couch — I could almost feel the perma-crevice left by Barney’s TV-addicted buttocks — and Nick and I started roughing out the brief essay on the application, inserting phrases like “destiny of this nation will be fought for and won in the courtroom” and “First Amendment activism and my artistic background.”
“You might wanna mention how your dream is to never work one day outside the state of Texas. And promise not to out any of the closeted professors. How ‘bout a Coke?” Nick put his hand on mine and I popped one. Way to go… real mature.
“Yes, please,” I said, a well-behaved choirboy. From the bush up anyway. We went to the kitchen, where he busied himself with ice and glasses while an uninhibited To-Bel frotted herself all over our calves. She knew who her real parents were. Barney was merely a wicked step-uncle. We hit the couch again, a little closer together, and continued for a few minutes until the phone rang. Nick went into the bedroom while I listened carefully. “Hello?… Well, hi. How’s it goin’ down there?” He appeared at the door carrying the phone and waved me in.
I brought the Cokes and apps with me into the room. Nick sat on the bed, his back against the wall. “I’ve got those rental grosses on file in the computer,” he told whoever was calling. “But let me just read ‘em to you.” He took a folder out of his briefcase. I stretched out on the bed (their bed) facing away from Nick, my right leg loosely hooked around his. “You know I’ll come right over if you need me…” He laughed. I started nudging his crotch with my stockinged foot. “Okay, ready? January through March, $187,904. April through June, $184,967.” I isolated his penis and increased both rhythm and pressure. “Yes, I think there’s an excellent chance they’ll make that motion…” Probably a different one than I was making, which he suggested I stop by briskly patting my thigh.
But I was undeterred, and three minutes of mountingly cryptic legalese later, the naughty first-year associate encountered a surprise witness in his briefs, forcing him to unsnap his shorts for an ad hoc judicial probe as he wound up the conversation. “I’ll be here. See ya tomorrow. Bye.” Click. “You’re just incorrigible.”
“Who, me?” I rolled over. He was yanking his pants and underwear off. He was climbing on top of me. He was pushing my shirt up and cupping my freshly exerted pumped pec. He was kissing me.
He was jerking his head up, frozen, listening to something. Something that sounded, bloodcurdlingly, like a key unlocking the front door. “What is it?” I whispered.
“Barney. Oh, fuck.” He leapt off me and the bed and shut the door. “‘Late tonight,’ he said. Shit, Alex!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get under the bed.”
“Really?”
“Yes!” I got on the floor and flattened out, getting a Russ Meyer shot of a naked Nick pulling the sheets down and hopping into bed. “I’m sorry, babe,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I ridiculously insisted. I slid under the bed, my heart pounding against the sheaf of law school papers I held atop my chest. I’d been fantasizing about observing the two of them alone forever. I just never thought it would happen. Much less as a scenario from a Three’s Company episode. What if Nick was a basket case and Barney became suspicious? My car was parked in front of the next house. What if Barney recognized it?
And what if the appearance of normalcy was preserved? How long would I have to stay under here? There had to be spiders, and in Texas that means possibly poisonous spiders. If this were a Tales From the Crypt or other EC Comics story, that would be my punishment… after giving my adulterous lover a $350 tarantula paperweight, I’d be bitten by dozens of red-eyed spiders while struggling to stay quiet under the marriage bed, the sanctity of which I’d so gleefully violated on the previous page. Even more horrific: would Nick rationalize this misadventure as some kind of spectral omen that we shouldn’t see each other anymore?
The bedroom door opened. I looked down the length of my body. The bedspread hung to within half an inch of the floor. I turned my head to the left. I had an unobstructed view of everything to that side of the bed, but I was far enough underneath so that I couldn’t be seen by anyone not also on the floor. “You asleep?” Barney asked at a volume that basically said If you are, then wake up now.
The bedsprings heaved above me as I imagined Nick sitting up. “Just takin’ a little nap. You’re home kinda early, aren’t you?”
Barney’s grungy sneakers clopped into my strip of vision. “They all decided to go tubing on the river.” We were in the midst of an extended autumn heatwave.
“That sounds like a good time…”
“You know I hate getting too much sun.” I experienced a scratchy tickle at the back of my throat and suppressed a surging need to cough. I let my mouth water and swallow
ed, hoping to wash the irritant away. It worked. But now To-Bel had discovered something strange under the bed and was crawling toward me.
“Hey, I got an idea!” Nick said. “Why don’t we go grab a bite at Taco Cabana?”
“I thought you were on-call today.”
“Well, yeah. But I’m allowed to eat. It’d take less than 20 minutes if we get stuff to go.” Good thinking, Nick.
But no. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Where would you like to go? Martin Brothers?”
“We had ice-cream sundaes for lunch. I’m tired.” With that, I felt him splat onto the bed. The springs shook as the entire contraption sagged toward me. As if this weren’t Edgar Allan Poe enough, ebony feline To-Bel became alarmed, and sank her claws through the sleeve of my Blood Feast t-shirt. (“Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror!” No shit.)
“Why are you naked?” Barney asked.
“Just tryin’ to get comfortable,” Nick explained.
Silence. What was going on? What if Barney was touching him? If they had sex above me, I might as well institutionalize myself. The springs over me announced a shift. I had a sickening image of Barney tonguing Nick’s wang, cluelessly nipping at it with plaque-stained teeth and rancid dairy breath. To-Bel curled up next to me and licked my ear. Claustrophobia came calling.
Seconds later, Nick’s hairy leg swung down and he got off the bed. Thank God. He recovered his pants and began to dress. Barney got up, too, and dragged himself into the living room. Nick peeked under it at me. “What’re you up to down there, little kitten?” He extended an arm and clasped my hand. “How we doin’ there… To-Bel?”
“Okay, meow meow,” I whispered.
“I’ll figure something out soon, Starcat,” he whispered back. “C’mon, cutie,” he commanded To-Bel, removing her from my side. “Barney, wanna go to a movie?” I heard a newspaper rattle. “Raising Arizona’s at the Hogg Auditorium in half an hour. We haven’t seen that since it came out.”
“Nuh…”
“What about Last Exit to Brooklyn at the Dobie?” No! Nick and I were supposed to see that together this week. I guess this was an emergency.
“Pete said it was homophobic.” Oh, Christ. What the hell did Barney’s friend Pete the Musicland Manager know? If I correctly recalled, his favorite film was Flesh Gordon.
“A play might be kind of interesting. That Joe Orton thing, Loot, is at school tonight. Sound fun?”
“Too expensive.”
“I think only five or six bucks with a student ID.” Oh, right. Barney was still slogging away at that MBA. “I don’t mind paying.”
“Don’t you have to stay here in case they call you?”
“If I don’t hear from them by five, I should be good to go. I can always give-’em a ring now and make sure…”
“I don’t feel like going out.” I heard the TV zap on. What better moment than now to give Barney the axe?
“And I don’t feel like putting up with one more minute of your lazy fucking apathy,” Nick could shout. “You don’t give a frog’s fat ass about my feelings or this relationship! I’ve had it. I’ve found someone who makes me feel happy to be alive, someone who thinks I’m worth gettin’ off the goddamn couch for. Alex, git in here!”
I’d pop out from under the bed, a stole of dust-bunnies fluttering from my shoulders, and stand beside Nick as Barney’s flat eyes suddenly twinkled, bulging with newfound horror. “Why you shitty little…” he’d sputter.
“Shut up, Barney,” I’d order. “You lose. Now I’m taking my new boyfriend to Whole Foods. Then I’m going to cook him a fabulous dinner before we scale peaks of sexual ecstasy on no atlas you’ll ever peruse. So why not trundle over to the drama department and get a real choice seat for Loot before the curtain goes up? There’s man-ass. My treat, sweetie.”
My speculative daydream was shattered by a ringing phone. Barney stampeded into the bedroom to answer it, probably convinced it was me. Ha! “Hello?… Who’s calling?… Hold on, please. It’s for you, Nick.” I noted he’d screened the call without revealing the info to Nick. What a douche-nozzle.
“This is Nick… Hi, there…. No problem. See ya.” He hung up. “They need me down at the office for a couple hours.”
“I told you it was stupid to go anywhere.” Oh, get a job. If Nick replied, I couldn’t hear it. He came into the bedroom and hurriedly changed clothes. Then a sheet of paper drifted to the floor next to the bed, and Nick kicked it toward me with a loafered foot. I twisted my forearm backwards and pinched the note between two fingers. It was becoming quite dark under there, but I made out Nick’s heavy pencil-strokes — GIVE ME ABOUT 20 MINS!
Guess he wasn’t waiting for a response from me, since I heard him bid Dogface adieu (if only) and walk out the front door. Leaving us alone together. The absurdity of the situation really struck me for the first time, and I had to bite back laughter. If Barney found me down here and considered me an intruder (and who could be more intrusive?), he probably had the right under Texas law to shoot me.
On the TV in the living room, Ginger was trying to break up an argument between Mr and Mrs Howell. “I won’t have it, Thurston!” Lovey bawled. “You can just keep your silly old coconuts!” Flip to 30 seconds of a Roxette video, then Richard Simmons screaming over a grade-D rendition of “Please, Mr Postman”: “The sooner we lose those tummies, the better!” Fade to more Richard: “I’m here with Yolanda, of Springfield, Ohio. Yo-Yo… cute nickname… how much did you weigh when we met?”
“Three hundred nineteen pounds.”
“And what did that feel like? To wake up every morning in the same fat body?”
“Not real good. Oh, Richard… I was a priz’ner, completely powerless over food. I worked at The Great American Cookie Corp. at the mall, and I would actually hand-to-God damage-out rolls of frozen chocolate-chip dough and eat a whole one whenever I had me a solo shift. I was like a heroin addict with an endless supply of free shoot-ups!”
“When you say you’d lie on the damage report about a roll of frozen dough… how many cookies was that supposed to make?”
Yolanda’s blubbering rendered her incoherent. And not just to people away from the TV, under their boyfriend’s bed: “Take a breath, hon. How many, Yolanda?”
“Thirty-six. Three dozen cookies, Richard. Wahhhhhh!”
“And now look at you on that scale! 168 pounds! You’re beautiful, Yolanda. Say it with me. You are a beautiful person.”’
“I — oh, it’s just so hard for me…”
“Say it, Yo-Yo!”
“I am a beautiful person!” Now I wanted to see Yo-Yo’s transformation. Richard had pulled me in. “I couldn’t have done it without Deal-A-Meal!” Barney was moving around the living room. Had I inadvertently made a telltale noise? Then I heard what sounded like a tape being inserted into a VCR. Dead silence for a beat, then cheesy generic synth-pop blared forth. Was Barney actually going to work out to a Richard Simmons video? No… this music was too cheap and awful for even that. It was like… porn — Oh, no.
Sudden silence again. As if he were fast-forwarding to the good part. Then, a heinously fake Southern accent taxing already very bad — and very fruity — “acting”: “No way! You tryin to suffer-cate me with the damn thang? I ain’t suckin’ nuthin’!”
“Then bend the fuck over, dude! This is bogus!” demanded his considerably more skilled but still terrible co-star. It was stupefying. He'd had Nick’s buffet of sensitive undraped manhood laid out before him in this bed a few minutes ago. To hell with that — instead, cue up the cruddiest porn on the market for a tacky private (he thought) beat-off sesh: Barney Gagnon, Tout Seule. The actual live sounds of which were luckily drowned out by the video: wall-to-wall Casio score, cranked-up groans and moans on a loop, and more dialogue (“I wanna ride you like a surfboard!”), some of which I got to hear repeated, when Barney scanned
back to watch some especially stimulating moment again. Or again and again — depending, I could only assume, on the volume and/or destination of the loads in question.
Finally, the ring I’d been waiting for. “God-DAMN-it!” Barney bellowed, in a shocking and unprecedented display of giving-a-shit about something. He silenced the smutscape and answered the phone, which Nick had cleverly left in close TV-proximity. “Hello?… What?!… Yeah, I see it.” Giant weary sigh. “Alright! I’m leaving now,” he snipped. He hung up, presumably grabbed something, then stomped out of the house.
I made myself wait through a count to 30 before emerging and making a mad dash to the toilet for a racehorse-piss. I ascertained I had all I’d arrived with, then headed for the front door, pausing only the briefest of moments to press the VCR’s Record switch, instigating total erasure of Bitch Skank-It Bungholes. How careless of Barney to have jabbed the wrong button on that remote. He’d really be kicking himself later.
When I got home, one of my messages was from Nick: “If you’re hearing this, it means you made it home. Hope you’re not too mad at me to see Last Exit to Brooklyn this week. Give a call and say what days work for you. And thanks.”
I’d been afraid the close call, not to mention my unflatteringly accurate glimpse into Barneyville, would embarrass and frighten Nick away for good. But was it possible the day’s hijinks had brought us closer together? Yes, I thought, after classes a few days later as I dropped off my law school application in person and bought Nick some hand-dipped dark-chocolate peppermints at the candy store for the five-fifteen Last Exit.
A splendid month came to an end with a Halloween bash at Vanessa and Chuck’s. The host and hostess appeared, respectively, as a “straight priest” and a pregnant parochial schoolgirl. Once more I resisted pressure from family and friends to dress as Christina Crawford (as played by Diana Scarwid) and went as Billy Idol. Sara was Cruella de Vil. Nick was Elvis.
We got back to my place a little past midnight. We sat in the Mitsubishi in a discreet corner of the parking lot and he closed his eyes while I massaged his right hand, anticipating his imminent departure. “That was a wild party. You’ve got really fantastic friends,” he said.
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