44. Art Walk

“Yoo hoo! Stephanie! Yoo hoo!” Oliver cried, his tiny frame jumping up and down as he waved madly at someone across the busy street. 

“Would you stop it?” I hissed, “People are starting to stare.”

“What?” He spun around to pout at me. “So! I swear to God it's Stephanie Banner over there and I haven’t seen her in eons.” And then he turned back around and began bleating again at the random crowd of girls across the street, “YOOOO-HOOOO! Stephanie Darling! ‘Tis I! Oliver!”

I turned and walked off, trying to look like I did not know him.

The Art Walk was not going as well as I had planned. First, Oliver had apparently decided to dress as an extra from Newsies: He was in knickers, buckle shoes, an argyle sweater vest over a poufy poet shirt and tartan tam tiled just so, of course. Why? I have no idea, and he did not offer any explanation besides an opened handed, “Likey?” when I first walked into his house to pick him up. Second, he was tipsy on wine, taking advantage of my permanent sobriety to act as his designated driver, which was pissing me off.  And third, he would not shut the Hell up. I don’t know if it was the wine or his darling outfit, of if he just hadn’t been let out of the home recently, but he was on fire, a big gay, gay, gay fire.  

“YOOOOOD-HOOOOD! Stephie Baby!” Oliver crooned.

An elderly couple walked by and looked at me pityingly, like I had an R-word child who had just pooped himself.  

“Oh!” Oliver laughed shrilly, waving his hands over his face, “That’s not Stephanie at all! How silly of me!” And then back to me, “So which gallery do you want to hit next?”

“This one.” And I pulled him into the closest empty-looking gallery, just to get him off the street.

 It was a dank place with ridiculous Technicolor fish paintings hung about, as if it were an entire store of art for your cabana. At least it wasn’t crowded. 

The Art Walks were cute little affairs, begun by the burgeoning city art community last year to drum up business. There were about 15 little places to visit among the historic old Main Street downtown buildings. There were two good galleries, four okay galleries, five or six places with crafty art, one or two smoky/skinny jeans/funny facial hair hipster hangouts, and a scattering of coffee and or gift/antique shops. At present we were in one of the okay galleries.

All-in-all the Art Walks made for a nice evening wondering around, seeing and being seen by the art sect. Or at least it had always been with Thad. But with Oliver it was a different story altogether. Oliver and I used to do things like this all the time, but since Thad and I encoupled four years ago, I hadn’t gone out in public with Oliver in a while. And I guess I had forgotten how terrible he could be when he was ‘on.’ But since we had arrived an hour ago, he had wanted to talk to absolutely everyone he saw, consume at least one free plastic glass of wine in each gallery, and laugh uproariously at any little thing. And as we had already been to 4 galleries, he had as many glasses of wine, as well as 2 canapés, a handful of mushroom caps, and some sort of prescription pills I watched him take from his pocket and chew up like Flintstone chewables. Whatever the case, he was being loud and ferocious, and way too publically gay for my subdued tastes.

“Oh, I lOOOOOVE this one,” Oliver said, running over to another stupid fish painting.

I snorted and walked off in the exact opposite direction.

As I frowned at a particularly ridiculous dolphin painting, I wondered how soon it would be before we ran into Thad. He was to be at the coffee shop Eyeball was playing at tonight, and it was our next stop.  I had told Thad earlier about my plans with Oliver and all Thad had said was, “Fine. Just don’t let him near me,” since they just hated each other.  But I did want to run into him, just to show him how much fun I could have without him. And maybe catch him drinking. Was there anything wrong with that? A little bit of spying? No, I didn’t think so either.       

“Michael Stiles?” A voice beside me said.

I turned to see The Two Bobs-Bob and Robert-a couple than I had met through friends-of-friends a few years ago, when they were brought to few of my thematic cocktail parties. They were a few years older, Bob a landscaper and Robert a dentist, both clean-cut and all smiles, and both alcoholics.  

“Hey guys!” I said and we all twittered and hugged, as the gays are apt to do.

“Where you been?” Robert asked, “We haven’t seen you around at any parties.”

“Well, yeah. I’ve been around…” I knew where this was leading, as I had not run into them in a long time, and I was uncomfortable with the trajectory.

“Are you still with Thad?” Bob asked, with a head lilt.

“Yes, oh yes. It’s going really well.”

“Really?” they both said in rather surprised unison.

“Yes,” I snapped, and here it was, what I didn’t want to admit, but had to: “Well, we quit drinking.”

“No!” Robert gasped, hands on hips.

“You’re kidding!” Bob said, and then a guffaw, “No wonder we haven’t seen you out at the bars!”

“Yeah, it’s been really good for us.” I smiled. “It helped us put things in perspective.”

“How long’s it been?” Robert asked.

“A year and a half.” I did not add that my last drink was September 26, 2009, or that Thad’s was June 26, 2010.    

“No!” Robert gasped again. 

“I know,” I said shaking my head. “It’s been really good though.”

“You two were such partiers,” Robert said, “I mean, you threw such great parties. We just thought you had dropped us from your guest list, since we hadn’t heard from you in such a while, didn’t we Hon?”

“Yeah. We thought we had pissed you off.” Bob said. “I mean, last time we saw you was at that amazing Midsummer Night’s Dream Garden Party you two hosted in, gosh…”

“Summer 2009,” Robert said.

“Yes, 2009!” Bob agreed, “Has it been that long? I mean we knew you were still in town and all, but we had no idea you were…”

“Sober,” I smiled. That had been a great party, one of our best. Immediately I felt stupid for having to give up a perfectly good vice-and a vast social life-because of Thad’s inability to control himself. But I knew it was for the best, the best for us, and Thad was worth it. But it had dramatically altered my life and in situations like this, where I had to explain myself to two of my previous parting buddies, both here holding little plastic glasses of wine, it made me wince. 

“Well, good for you,” Bob said with great enthusiasm, like he had just heard my Mom had beaten cancer.

“Yup. Sober.” I smiled.

“I mean, and you don’t have to answer this,” Robert said in a quiet voice, “But, was it hard? Did you get…any help? You know…”

“He knows,” Bob said, putting his hand on Robert’s shoulder, who shook it off.

 “No, no,” I smiled, “No AA. It wasn’t hard, just weird, to give up all of that socializing, all of the bars and parties and people. But we just stopped. And it was the best thing we could have done. We love each other and want to be together, but the drinking just wasn’t working. We would just drink and fight and that was no fun.  So we just stopped, it wasn’t hard, just a change, for me. And we’ve never been better.” I did not mention that Thad had just moved out, as that was a completely different paranoid discussion.

“Well good for you!” Robert said taking a big drink of his wine.

Bob coughed and frowned at him and Robert shrugged and said, “What?” as he took another swelligant drink.

“And who do we have here?” Oliver said, pirouetted into the scene.

“Oh, hey,” I grimaced, “This is my friend Oliver Branch; we worth together at the University. Oliver, this is Bob and Robert.”

“Well, hello!” Oliver said with a grand bow and then all of the men shook hands and made genteel introductions.

“I don’t know about all of this,” Oliver said in his high camp tone, motioning around at the paintings, “But it all just seems, I don’t know, for the fish? You know, fish!” And then he laughed  his petite, baby doll laugh uproariously.   

The Two Bobs looked at each other and blanched, but then laughed along politely.

Mortified, I butted in, “Well, it was lovely to see you guys. Thad is around here somewhere, and I should find him, so we should go. Great to see you….”

“Oh, yes, it was…” Bob said and we made goodbye hugs with salutations.

“And you keep at it,” Robert said in a very Vacation Bible School sort of way, “We believe in you.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling vaguely insulted.

As they walked off Oliver leaned in to say, “Well, they seemed nice…for the gays…”

I just rolled my eyes.