by Ty Jacob
34. Sisterly Love
MIKE WALKED DOWN the hall to Dale’s bedroom door at 3:00 in the afternoon, carrying a cup of tea. He knocked, but there was no answer, so he opened the door and went in. The room was dark, the curtains drawn and windows shut tight. The air was stale with the smell of fermented sweat. There were clothes all over the floor.
“Morning,” Mike said softly, an almost inaudible whisper. He set the tea down on the nightstand and opened the curtains halfway, then cracked open the window. Traffic noise came in, horns honking out on Fountain Avenue.
Dale was lying on top of the covers in the black satin dress from the night before. There was a rip in one of the slits on the side, and his leg stuck out. Sasha’s wig was on the floor beside the bed. A muffled moan came up from the bed and Dale rolled over. His white pillowcase was covered with makeup. His face was a slur of color.
Mike had planned to undress Sasha when he put her to bed last night – he knew she wouldn’t want to sleep in that dress – but after what happened he’d decided that undressing her would have been a mistake. In the four years they’d known each other, she had never tried to kiss him like that. It was horrible, that moment, her drunk on the bed, wig crooked and makeup already a mess, holding him and struggling to shove her tongue down his throat. He’d pushed hard to get away. It felt even worse than that time she’d wanted to jack off together, just before Kerry left. Not only was last night more aggressive, but it was more personal.
The scales of sexual intimacy for Mike were very clear, and he didn’t want any of it with Sasha, or with Dale. In Mike’s mind, the least personal thing you could do with somebody was to jack off together. The next thing you could do was to let a guy fuck you, which was only slightly more personal than jacking off. Some people thought getting fucked was pretty intimate, but it wasn’t, not really. At least it didn’t have to be. You didn’t have to look at the guy. It didn’t have to be face to face. You could pretend you weren’t there. Mike would much rather get fucked by a guy he wasn’t into than to suck him off, because when you sucked off a guy he was literally in your face. You couldn’t get away from what you were doing. But there was no doubt that the most personal thing you could ever do was to kiss. Not only were you facing the guy, but he was facing you and, even if you kept your eyes shut, there he was in front of you, all of that energy going back and forth between you. It was impossible to close down and imagine you were somewhere else.
Mike only kissed co-stars and clients because he had to. He’d met ‘gay for pay’ straight guys doing porn and escort work who would fuck a guy but wouldn’t kiss at all, ever, as though they thought kissing alone made you gay. Once, Mike slipped up and kissed a straight top on the lips while bouncing up and down on the guy’s dick. The guy jerked back and snapped, “I’m not a fag. No kissing.” He understood. It was like they’d unexpectedly touched on a kind of universal truth, as though everyone, somehow subconsciously, knew that of all the physical acts you could do with somebody, kissing on the lips was, in its own strange way, by far the most intimate.
“Wake up, Dale,” he whispered now, leaning down and touching Dale’s nylon-covered leg.
Dale opened his eyes slightly and squinted at the light coming in the window. “Oh, Jesus.” He shut them again.
Mike sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon. We’ve got rehearsal at four.”
It was the first official rehearsal for the Hard Place tour, although Dale had been working on the costumes and choreography for weeks.
“Shit.” Dale’s eyes shot open again and he stared at the ceiling, suddenly alert.
“Do you want me to call and cancel?” Mike asked. “Maybe we can do it some other time.”
“No, we can’t cancel. We said we’d be there. We launch in less than a week. I don’t want a sloppy show. Oh, fuck.” Dale went to sit up, but quickly put a hand on his head. “Oh, Mike. Oh, fuck. My head.”
“I’ll bring you some aspirin.”
“I don’t know if I can keep it down.”
“You can try.” Mike brought in two small white tablets and a glass of water and sat back down on the edge of the bed.
Dale took the aspirin. “I’m sorry I got so drunk last night. Thank you for taking care of me.”
“That’s fine.”
“Did I make a fool of myself at the after party?”
“No, I got you out of there before you had a chance to do that. Nobody but me and Rafael knew you were throwing up.”
“God bless you, my child.” Dale cracked a weak smile.
Mike patted his leg.
“What about here?” Dale asked. “Did I make a fool of myself here? With you?”
Mike paused. “Don’t worry.” He smiled. “We’re like sisters.”
Dale looked away. He looked incredibly sad.
“Now,” Mike said. “If we’re going, we should leave in half an hour.”
“I stink like booze and other people’s cigarette smoke. My face must look a mess. I have to take a shower. It’s not fair. Sasha goes overboard, and I’m the one stuck with the hangover.”
Mike whispered in a sugary voice. “Oh, poor, sweet, innocent Dale.”
Dale laughed faintly and grabbed his head again. “Don’t. It hurts.” He sighed. “Can you start the shower for me?”
“You bet.” Mike stood up and left the room.
Dale was still in the shower ten minutes later when the phone rang. Mike picked up and was surprised to hear his sister say hello. It felt surreal, sitting on the couch in the front room, the muffled sound of the shower coming from the bathroom down the hall as Lisa’s happy voice said, “I got out of the hospital yesterday, Mikey. I had my baby. A little girl. Her name is Abigail.”
“Abigail?”
“After Mom. Abigail Marie.”
Years ago, when Mike first moved into this old building with Dale, he’d called Lisa to tell her he was living in Los Angeles. He’d wanted to sound like a success and he told her he was getting started as an actor. She’d asked for his new phone number and when he hesitated she sounded almost wounded, so he finally gave it to her. Ever since then she had been calling a couple of times a year, and always on his birthday. He returned the kindness by making a point to call on her birthday as well, and sometimes at Christmas, if she didn’t call him first.
“Are you okay?” he asked her now.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“And the baby? How is it?”
“Fine. She’s fine.”
Although he genuinely cared for his sister, sometimes talking to her on the phone felt strange, like visiting a place where the past was kept behind glass, where the air in the rooms had become stale. He’d moved far away from their childhood, but she still talked about certain stories: the time they got lost together in the woods at Black Creek, the time they dared each other to eat Molly’s dog food. Now here she was on her end of the phone, a married secretary with a newborn baby in the suburbs of Cleveland, and here he was on his, a gay escort and a porn star, and she didn’t even know.
Two years ago he’d made up an excuse to avoid showing up at her wedding, and it was clear that it still bothered her. He felt bad about it. She had sent him money when he needed it most, all those years ago, but he hadn’t been there when she needed him. From time to time she would still say, “It would have been nice to see you at my wedding.”
Other times, randomly, she would throw comments about their dad into the middle of the conversation. “Dad asks about how you are. Why don’t you talk to him anymore?” He never gave an answer.
He concentrated now on the sound of Dale in the shower down the hall. “Does it have all its fingers and toes?”
Lisa laughed. “Yes. Ten each. Perfect sets.
“Good.”
“But she’s not an ‘it’. She’s a little girl. Abby.”
“Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?” he said. “I mean, that’s Mom’s name.” The silence on the other end of the pho
ne told him that he’d wounded her again. Down the hall the shower turned off.
“No. I don’t think it’s weird. It’s honoring Mom.”
He felt bad. He was always hurting her. “Sorry, sis. I didn’t mean it. Not like that.”
“We’re calling her Abby. I want her to know her Uncle Mikey.”
He felt refracted and split. Was it possible to use his mother’s name when talking about his sister’s daughter, his niece? And was it possible that he himself could exist simultaneously as two such wildly different people: both Billy Knight and now this Uncle Mikey?
“I figured it out the other day,” Lisa said. “I haven’t seen you in over twelve years. That’s more than a decade. That’s too long for a brother and sister to not see each other. I still can’t believe you missed my wedding. Will you come visit? Please?”
He heard the bathroom door opening, Dale padding away down the hallway to his fuchsia bedroom, the door shutting behind him.
“Mikey?” Lisa said.
“Yeah?”
“Will you come?”
He didn’t want to hurt her again. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I’ll come.”
35. Drag Queen and Strippers on Tour
DALE LOVED THE tours, loved the travel, the new cities, the audiences, all the lights. As Mike drove them to the first official rehearsal for the Hard Place tour, Dale sat in silence, one hand on his head, remembering back to their very first tour.
It had been to promote Sasha’s feature-length directorial debut with Cougar: Back Door Delivery, staring none other than Billy Knight as a very obliging courier. At the time, Steve hadn’t believed the tour idea would work. So Dale, determined to make sure Sasha’s first movie with Cougar sold well, had organized it all without any help whatsoever. Dale booked the venues. He sewed the costumes. Then he piled Mike and two other Back Door models into his car, said they’d have to buy their own food but he’d pay for gas, and he drove them all over Southern California, staying with friends and friends of friends. They performed in Laguna Beach, Palm Springs, San Diego, and of course back in LA.
The venue was always a gay bar, and the show always started with Sasha announcing the film and doing a drag number on her own. It was only with the second number that the models were revealed, coming out on stage to be her dancing boys. They were dressed in tight little courier uniforms. After that, she left the stage for a while and the boys danced and stripped down to G-strings. At some point during the evening Sasha would conduct a lottery and somebody in the audience would win a free copy of the video and a kiss from Billy Knight. She’d deliver a campy monologue about all the hot scenes in the movie, and then she’d announce that you could buy your very own copy in the back of the bar at a discounted rate. There would be a couple more numbers and, depending on the city and if they thought they could get away with it, the models would strip down to nothing and grope each other on stage. Sasha always kept her clothes on because she said, “The goal’s to sell movies, not scare everybody away.”
Audiences loved the Back Door Delivery show, and the stack of videos they brought each night often sold out. Afterward there was usually an article or two about the performance in the local gay rags, and a review of the film, often with a picture of Sasha and her sexy models. It was great publicity.
It was only after the Back Door Delivery tour was over that Steve realized it had been a wonderful idea. He saw the interest it stirred up, all the sales it created. From then on he was fully on board.
Now, for the Hard Place tour, Steve was finally paying for everything – the accommodation, airfares, and even the food. It was fabulous. Steve’s financial investment was a big part of the reason Dale had refused to cancel their first official rehearsal in spite of the hangover. He couldn’t just not show up.
When they arrived at the Lucky Pony to rehearse that afternoon, Dale pushed through the headache and the sour nausea and diligently taught all the choreography he’d prepared, pretending he wasn’t hung over at all. He absolutely refused to look unprofessional, refused to let Steve down or be a bad example for the models.
The Hard Place tour opened at the Lucky Pony a week later. It was the official launch of the movie, and that night their stack of videos sold out so early that Steve had to run back to the studio for more. From LA they flew to San Francisco, then Dallas, Atlanta, Washington D.C., New York, Boston, and Chicago. Steve stayed in L.A, so there were only four of them on the road together, the director and the three biggest stars – Billy and Erik and Dom. The tour went incredibly well, and the four of them were like a little family. They worked hard and took their performances seriously.
Dale was proud of the Hard Place show and pleased with the dances and the outfits – especially that moment when the boys came out in orange prison coveralls and slipped them off to reveal hot pink sequined G-strings underneath.
It was nice travelling around with three handsome young men as well, even though there was nothing sexual. Sex never seemed to happen, at least not when Dale was with them (although he wondered what they got up to when he wasn’t in the room). Instead, when they were all together they laughed and gossiped and made jokes. To Dale it felt like he and the boys had become equal somehow. He fit in with the beautiful ones, in his own way. He was no longer the odd man out like he had been back in high school, secretly adoring Doug Kohler and the other football players from afar, even as they bullied him. Now, in this new world, the world Dale had created for himself, all the attractive young men liked him.
He knew Mike had clients scheduled throughout the tour. By that point there were guys all over the country who wanted a piece of Billy Knight. Mike’s agency in LA had contacts with other agencies across the country, so it was easy for Mike to find work anywhere. Sometimes his clients would turn up at the Hard Place shows and stand in the back of the room, staring. Mike would point them out in the crowd if Dale asked, although lately just seeing them there made Dale feel jealous. He tried to tell himself that he had more intimacy with Mike than those bug-eyed johns ever would. Sometimes he believed it.
No matter what city they were in, Dale always made sure he shared a motel room with Mike, even if Mike didn’t usually come home until the wee hours of the morning. They slept on separate double beds, but it was still nice – like a boyhood sleepover. Sometimes when they woke in the afternoons Mike would climb over to Dale’s bed and sit on top of the covers to talk quietly before their day started. Invariably then Mike would work out in nothing but his underwear, right there in the room, push ups and sit ups, triceps dips off of chairs. It was beautiful. Mike was getting so good with exercise. He knew so much, talked about things like sets and repetitions, knew the difference between his trapezius and his latissimus dorsi. Dale just liked being able to sit in bed and watch Mike sweat.
At the same time however, and some days more than others, Dale found those near-naked motel room workouts terribly frustrating. They were alone, away from home. There was no cameraman. He wished Mike would just give him a mercy fuck. It would be easy, like a favor to a friend. Why not? Nobody needed to know. Did Mike really find him that disgusting and ugly? Was he any worse than those horrible johns who stood in the back of the bar and drooled? Dale knew what happened the night Sasha got drunk, remembered it very clearly, and it confused him. Here Mike was giving up his ass to total strangers left and right, but still denying even a simple open-mouthed kiss to someone he cared for. Dale could not, even in his most lucid moments, figure out why.
36. Can’t Go Back
MIKE WENT HIS own way in Chicago. The tour was over. He set down his old grey duffel bag at O’Hare airport and gave Dale a hug. The bag was full of toys.
“Good luck in Ohio, Mr. Michael Dudley,” Dale said.
Mike smiled. “Thanks.” Hearing his name like that, it suddenly sounded false, like it was the name of somebody he was now going to try and pretend to be. He turned to Erik and Dom, gave each a quick hug and a slap on the back, saying, “See ya” and “Take it e
asy.” Then he left them at their gate and walked toward his own. They were headed back to Los Angeles. He was flying on to Cleveland.
He’d enjoyed the tour. Dancing wasn’t so bad when it was only once in a while. It was nice to have people in different cities tell you how much they adored you, how great you were.
Looking back over his shoulder as he walked away, Mike saw Dale sitting down in between Erik and Dom outside their gate, already laughing. He remembered Sasha running out on stage back in Atlanta, when the tape jammed during Mike’s number. She’d saved the show, saved him from looking like an idiot, standing there awkwardly with no music. He always felt safe when Sasha had his back, when Dale was close at hand.
Mike had pocketed a good amount of money from dancing tips and from his work on the side seeing clients. In Chicago he’d spent that money on his new niece. He’d taken a cab to FAO Schwarz on Michigan Avenue, smiling at the cute guy dressed as a toy soldier by the front doors as he walked in. Mike wandered around for over an hour there, picking out all the toys he could for a baby.