“What crawled up your panties today?” Oliver smiled at me. “Ants in your pants? Bee in your bonnet? Cat got your tongue? What’s up? ”
Frowning, I whispered, “Wait till we’re seated and then I’ll tell you.”
It was Tuesday afternoon and we were in the Student Union standing in line to get coffee. As it was summer the place was gloriously empty: summer was the best time to be at the University, as you got all of the amenities, but none of the teenage angst. Oliver had called me up earlier and I was in the mood to ditch my research and get out of the office. We had just met up and already he knew something was up. God-damn Thad.
“So what is it? What’s he do?” Oliver asked as we settled into a dark wood booth, tucked deep into an empty corner of the lounge.
“Am I that obvious?” I sputtered.
Oliver nodded his head like one of the less attractive seven dwarves.
“So it’s like this.” I began. “Last night I was at home and the phone rang about 9 o’clock. It was Thad calling from his house, so I answered and said ‘Hey,’ and he said, ‘Hey, is Julian there?’ and I thought he was just kidding, so I said, ‘Yeah! This is him,’ and he said, ‘Hey, Julian! This is Thad. What’s up?’ and then I realized he didn’t know it was me, and that he was actually calling some other guy named Julian.”
Wide-eyed, Oliver made a slight gagging sound.
“Yeah,” I continued. “So I said, ‘Thad, it’s me Michael.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, hey! Sorry. I guess I dialed the wrong number,’ but you could tell me was all flustered. And then I was like, ‘Who’s Julian?’ and he kinda laughed and said, ‘Oh, the drummer from Eyeball. He wanted to borrow this Lady Gaga remix CD of mine, and I was just calling to tell him he could come pick it up,’ like real nonchalant and all.”
Oliver still hadn’t moved.
“So then I thought about it, when you and I saw Eyeball at the Art Walk the last month, and I realized which one Blaine was …”
“The drummer in the ultra tight spandex pants and 80’s hair mane?” Oliver sputtered.
“Yes,” I snapped, “Ultra tight spandex and 80’s hair mane.”
“Oh, no,” Oliver sighed, fanning himself.
“Yes. The one whose package we could make out from the back row.”
“Oh, oh, I remember.” Oliver fanned himself faster.
“So I said to Thad, ‘And is this a straight man or a gay man that you’re calling up?’ and Thad said, ‘Oh, straight.’ And I said, ‘With a name like Julian?’”
“Yeah, like Less than Zero, right.” Oliver laughed.
“Right,” I said. “And Thad said ‘Calm down. He’s got a girlfriend. He just wants to borrow this CD, and I guess I dialed you by mistake. Sorry.’ And I said ‘You’re sure he’s straight?’ and he said “Yeah, he’s made it really clear.’ And I said, ‘When you pushed your unwanted advanced upon him?’ and he said, ‘No, and that’s really rude and stupid’ and then he just summarily let me go.”
“Really!” Oliver gasped.
“Yes,” I said. “And I just sat there and held the phone and was mortified thinking that he was off having an affair on me.”
“Really? Just because of that?” Oliver asked, taking a big slurp of his Shaken Passion Ice Tea Lemonade.
“Well, yes!” I stammered. “I mean, I caught him trying to call another guy…” my voice had raised so I looked around paranoid, but no one was near us.
“You’re here with me. Is that a crime?” Oliver said in a very Hercule Poirot kind of way.
“No!” I slapped the table. “You know what I mean.” I knew what he meant, but I had tried to sleep with Oliver a very long time ago, and we had been drunk at the time, of course, so that line of logic just exasperated the issue.
He took another drink. “You’re being silly. So he wants a friend. And a straight guy friend at that. Is he not allowed to have friends, Mr. Crazy Possessive Scorpio?”
“Of course he is,” I lied. “But doesn’t the whole thing seem suspicious? I mean he had never mentioned his guy and then all of a sudden Thad’s calling him, and I don’t even find out except on accident?”
“Did Thad scream, ‘You caught me!’ ? Or hang up? Pretend to suddenly go mute? No. He just told you what happened. And it is rather sweet that he dials your home phone number automatically.”
“It was his too, for two years, three months…”
We went silent.
I frowned into my coke. Oliver wasn’t sympathizing with me at all. Right now I just needed him to agree with my paranoia and offer ‘tuts’ and sighs of sympathy for Thad being such an awful boyfriend.
“Have you talked to him today?” Oliver asked, eyebrows arched either through concern or cosmetics.
“Yes. He came over and made me lunch.”
Oliver snorted. “Oh, poor baby. And was he covered in hickeys or have spandex burns?”
“No. Shut-up,” I snapped.
“So it’s fine. Did you ask him about the Spandex Hair Mane guy?”
“Yes. Thad said the guy’s just been hanging around the house with Bettina and Bayne and the other Eyeball guys...”
“Oh! Bettina…” Oliver said making an unpleasant slurping sound.
“Yes,” I continued, “He’s just some townie band guy. Thad said he had talked to him a few times, and once they talked about Lady Gaga or something and Thad has some special order CD, I don’t know. But Thad told me he ended-up calling him last night after he got off the phone with me and the guy stopped by later and got the CD and left and then Thad went to bed. But other than that, Thad was rather tight-lipped about the whole thing.”
“But isn’t he always a little tight lipped Cancerian? Hiding in his shell? Especially when you’re accusing him of cheating on you with a Spandex Hair Mane guy?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I said with a wave, brushing aside his ridiculous zodiacal nonsense. “It still freaked me out all last night. I didn’t sleep much. I just keep thinking he’s out drinking and whoring and how that would devastate me, because then I would have to break up with him again, and then what would I do? And I just couldn’t turn it off. So I just tossed and turned all night.”
“I’m sorry.” Oliver said seriously.
“Yeah, I know it’s a lot my deal, but we have our issues, so there is some reality here. And plus he’s been all weird about his upcoming 40th. He’s been real quiet about it, but I can tell it’s really bothering him getting older and heavier and all.”
“It happens to the best of us.” Oliver said, pulling back the Shar-Pei wrinkles around his eyes like Norma Desmond.
“The other day he was complaining about his moobs,” I snorted.
“His what?” Oliver asked scowling.
“His moobs. His man boobs.” I made a cupping motion to my chest.
“Oh my! My, my my! Land of Goshen!” Oliver laughed, hiding his face behind his hands.
“Yeah,” I continued, “Poor guy has these precious little A-cups now, what with all the laying around for the last 39 and a half years and all.”
“That’s just silly. We all get older. Things just settle.”
“I know. But his vanity is something to behold. It’s one of the only things he has ever really worked on. And I know 40 is hard, and he feels unaccomplished, but at least he’s sober. It’s been a year now for him, and I am so proud of him. But even after a year I just worry about him and that woman and now her ill-begotten friends and how tempting all of their drinking must be to Thad, especially right here perched on his big 4-O. I just wish he had never moved in with her…”
We were both silent for a minute, nursing our drinks.
“Then you’re not going to like this at all,” Oliver said with a dark chuckle.
“What?”
“No, no, you’re not going to like this at all…”
“What?” I said, a bit of fear in my voice.
“I went to rent a movie yesterday, I wanted a foreign film, something with sad smoking Parisians and all, and I was in that trashy Blockbuster over on 12th, and who to my wondering eyes did appear besides the Nubian princess herself.”
“Oh, no,” I said, rising up in my seat as the look of supreme mischief on Oliver’s face flat terrified me.
“Oh, yes. So I walked up and said hello, and she didn’t remember me from Adam Ant from the other night, so I lied and told her we had met at the Art Walk, and she had no idea, feigning, ‘Oh, yeah! I was wasted that night! Of course I remember you!’ So I just chatted her up, and, oh, she just looked so pretty in fishnets and a white lace shirt with a lilac bra underneath…”
“Oh, gross. Stop it.” I sighed, terrified where this was going.
“And I had her laughing and next thing you know I’m pulling out my calling card…”
“You still have calling cards?”
“Well, yes. How else is a gentleman supposed to introduce himself in society? So I gave her my calling card and she said she would ring me up for coffee sometime.”
“You are kidding? Is this for real or one of your little fantasies?” I just flat calling him out on it, which I seldom did.
“I don’t know what you’re speaking of.” Oliver said petulantly.
“So this is real? You really did run into Bettina and gave her your card and you two are going to go out on a date!”
“Yes,” he sneered. “I mean, if she calls.”
I just railroaded right over him, “So you’re just going to make things worse for me? Just weasel your way right into all my world?” I was suddenly livid, not needing anymore of Oliver’s weird asexual lying closeted crap today.
“No…” he said smally.
“You know she has a boyfriend.”
“Yes,” he said looking hurt. “But don’t they fight all the time?
“Oliver, she has a boyfriend! A real, big, drunk idiot of a boyfriend. ” I almost yelled ‘And a straight!’ but did not. I couldn’t believe he even thought he had a shot with a player like Bettina; her gaydar should be able to ping him out of the water at 30 paces.
“Fine. Whatever. It’s just coffee.” He said dismissively, picking lint off his shirt. “And she might not even call…”
“Well, for my sake, let’s hope she doesn’t!” I huffed. “Good Lord, all I need is you over there at their house too, in the middle of everything...”
“Oh, no, Thad wouldn’t allow it, would he?”
“Nope, thank God,” I smiled, praying Bettina would just get drunk and loose Oliver’s stupid little card so that this whole quagmire would just go away. Jesus Christ, Thad was not going to like this.
We were silent again, as I fumed, just wanting to go home.
“You know the Pride Parade is this weekend up in Oklahoma City?” Oliver said, changing the subject.
“Are you going to take your new girlfriend Bettina to it?” I said in as shameful of a way as I could.
“Ha ha. Maybe” Oliver smirked. “Wouldn’t that make you and I related? Your boyfriend’s hag would be my wife? I think that would make us gays-in-law?”
I just grimaced, despising him. “I hate pride.”
“Why?” he gasped. “All those floats and happy, semi-nude people flopping around waving flags depicting refracted light?”
“Yeah, exactly for that reason. I don’t want to go to a hetero parade where everyone is half-dressed and flaunting themselves lasciviously.”
“Really Miss Priss? I seem to recall when you were a drinker-not that long ago- and there was some real lasciviousness on your part.”
“Yes, in the privacy of my own home…” I said with a cautionary finger up.
“Or a night club dance floor? Or a stranger’s after party in the hot tub? or in fountain on campus?”
“Fine, fine, whatever.” I said dismissively. “I’ve been up to Pride twice. Have you ever been?”
“A few times…” He said, eyes askew, as if that was a perfectly normal answer for a straight man wearing a neckerchief.
“Okay,” I continued, “the parade was okay. But, you know over in the park, where they have all the gay booths and stuff, where all the people go- with couples and old people and children everywhere? Well, right there in the middle of everything, have you seen the giant, forty foot tall blow-up lube tube bottle? The one that just wavers back and forth in the wind, glistening in the sunlight like some sort of Grecian shrine to Priapus?”
Oliver giggled, hands to his mouth, eyes darting. “Oh, yes, I’ve seen it. It’s impressively turgid.”
“Exactly, and supremely distasteful. I mean, it’s like a giant blow-up cartoon character you see on top of a car dealership, but it’s a giant lube tube. And its right in the middle of the park, so the children play around it, and the old people and straight people sit in its shadow to stay cool, and it’s just offensive and wrong. So the first time I was at Pride, I saw it and just thought ‘how distasteful,’ but when I went back a few years later and it was still there, I realized it was, like, a thing, a centerpiece of the event. And then and there I decided I had no desire to ever be associated with an event that uses something so overtly sexual like that as a symbol of pride. So I’ve never been back.”
“You know it’s not that way all over.”
“And you’ve been to a number of Pride parades?”
“Well, yes,” he said with a nod. “In Louisiana, the pride parades are not as backwater as the Oklahoma City one, not as sleezy. But think about it, everything about Mardi Gras is sleezy what with drunk women waving their big ol’ knockers around for beads and all.”
“Exactly! And I’ve never been to Mardi Gras for that reason! It’s distasteful! Except Mardi Gras doesn’t represent all Louisianans to the rest of the America, but the Pride parades does for the gays, or at least that’s how the media presents it to all the straights around here: that we’re degenerate sex mongrels in banana thongs or dresses and leather harnesses up on floats dancing to It’s Raining Men, around a giant, forty foot tall blow-up lube tube bottle.”
“Oh, you’re over-reacting. It’s not that way.” Oliver looked away.
“Yeah, well, it is to me.” I barked, “So to answer your question, no, I will not be going to Pride. But if you go, you just have a gay ol’ time for me.”
“Okay…” he said, taken aback by my gusto.
I huffed and looked down to my watch, “Okay, look I have to go.” I didn’t really, I just was sick of Oliver.
We rose and he looked a bit concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “I just have some research I want to get done. That stupid book isn’t going to write itself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Oliver said scooting toward me.
I took a wide step away from him and said, “Bye, ” and walked off quickly.
As I exited the lounge I caught a side glance at him: he had not moved and looked rather small.
I could care less.
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