“The one with Jesus,” I said distractedly. “I need to use the restroom. I’ll be just a moment.” I grabbed my purse and fled the table, probably looking like I was slightly crazy. I asked a waiter where the restrooms were, and he pointed me down a hallway. There was a moment of dread when I realized I couldn’t really go into either set of restrooms without fear of someone seeing something they shouldn’t, but there was a single family restroom on the opposite wall that was unoccupied. I locked the door behind me and leaned against it, trying to take deep, even breaths.
The worst possible thing had happened.
I had… feelings… for the Homo Jock King.
I was an abject failure at faking a relationship.
And what was even more terrible was the thought that Darren might find out.
I was calling Paul even before I realized I’d pulled the phone out of my purse. It rang once, twice, and then, “Please tell me you’re not calling me midcoitus, Sandy. I swear to god I don’t think I’d be able to handle hearing you sucking on Darren’s balls. There are lines that even we shouldn’t cross. Unless we should. Should we? I don’t know if I can do a group thing. Where would everybody’s feet go? Not near me, that’s for damn sure. In fact, everyone’s feet should stay as far away from me as possible. I’m not one to kink shame, but if your kink is feet, shame on you.”
And just like that, I felt better. Not completely. But a little. Paul had that effect on me. He always had. “Not even remotely close,” I said, trying to sound flip and probably missing by a mile. “And don’t lie. You have a foot fetish. You probably like sucking on his toes and licking between the—”
“Oh my god, shut the fuck up.”
“Yeah, I might have been gagging a little too.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, sure I sounded believable.
“Sandy. You sound like you’re either on your way to freaking out or coming down from one.”
Maybe not so believable. “Bitch, please. You don’t know me.”
He snorted. “Not even a little bit. What’s going on?”
“Um. Nothing?”
“Right. Where are you?”
“Out.”
“Succinct as usual. Is Darren with you?”
“Not at the moment. Are you alone?”
“Yeah. Vince went on a bike ride with Corey before we went to lunch. I thought that sounded like a terrible idea so I’m sitting on the couch eating beef jerky. I don’t know why. I don’t even like beef jerky.”
Ah, the ramblings of my lunatic.
“So, what’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing much. How are you?”
“Sandy.”
“Ugh,” I said. “Sometimes I love you to pieces. Now is not one of those times.”
“Sure you don’t.” Then, “Did Darren do something?” His words were careful, his tone casual, but I knew him too well to not hear the slight coil of anger.
“No,” I said. “Nothing. Um. So. Funny story. I. Might? Have feelings. Ahem. For Darren.”
“Right,” he said slowly. “He’s your boyfriend. You should have feelings for him. That’s kind of how that works. Wait. Do you not know how this works? Don’t you know how to boyfriend? Wow. Seriously. This must be totally embarrassing for you.”
Oh. Right. I’d lied to Paul about everything.
Because I wasn’t supposed to actually feel like this.
And here I was, in drag, clutching a knockoff purse while trying not to hyperventilate in a bathroom where Tim Curry had probably urinated at one point in his life.
I really didn’t understand how I got myself in these situations. It was obviously not my fault.
“Deeper feelings,” I said, trying to salvage the situation. “Like, deeper than I thought.” And that technically wasn’t a lie, because any feelings at all would be deeper than I thought. It made sense in my head. Mostly.
“Do you love him?” Paul demanded.
“What? Gross. No!”
“Oh boy,” Paul said. “Because that’s an age-appropriate response to have. And what the hell is causing you to freak out about this? Did he slow-bone you? Oh my god, he did, didn’t he? I bet that’s it. I bet he slow-boned you and now you’re freaking. Was it good? Was it a good slow-bone and now you’re having all these feelings?”
“Do I even want to know what a slow-bone is?”
“You know, looking deep into your eyes while he fucks you all slow like. Like your two souls are becoming one, your hearts beating at the same time, your breaths mingling as he thrusts his penis into your fluttering hole and makes your skin come alive with the fire of a thousand suns and you just know at that moment that he’ll hold you forever in his arms and everything will be just fine. And then you both orgasm at the same time because your bodies know what you need from each other and you’re just so in sync and in love and everything is wonderful. And afterwards, you lie in each other’s juices and just bask in the scents of your lovemaking until it’s dried into your skin and then you go and giggle in the shower before you go make bacon or go out for fro-yo. You know. Slow-bone.”
“That’s not even a real fucking thing!” I snapped at him.
“It’s a thing,” he insisted. “Everyone knows that. There are reputable articles on it and everything in Cosmo and on BuzzFeed. I’ve read them. It helps you achieve a higher state of being when you slow your bone.”
“I hate to break it to you, but BuzzFeed should not have the word reputable coming before it unless it’s sarcastic. They have lists on there where they try and guess your age based upon the type of music you listen to. It’s fucking stupid.”
“Yeah, I took that quiz. It said I was one hundred and forty years old. I think I did it wrong.”
“Maybe you should stop listening to music played by topshuurs. You are not Mongolian, no matter what Nana says.”
“We saw a monk play a topshuur in Asia,” Paul said. “Vince said it was life changing. And then we got drunk and accidentally insulted someone’s grandma. It was awkward. White people are terrible. It’s cool. We still have the slow-bone.”
“Please tell me you and Vince don’t do that,” I begged. “And also, please find out a way to send me back in time so I never have to hear you describe the term slow-bone to me ever again. If I had to list the top five traumatizing things that have ever happened to me, that would be number four. At least.”
“Oh please,” Paul said with a sniff. “You mock because it’s never happened to you. Trust me, once you feel the power of the slow-bone, you won’t ever feel the same way again.”
“Stop saying slow-bone,” I hissed at him.
“It’s a magical thing,” Paul said. “One day, you’re going to call me and say, ‘Hey, Paul. You were right. Darren just slow-boned my butthole and I never should have doubted you. I’m so in touch with my feelings, you don’t even know.’ And I’ll say, ‘Of course I know, dear friend. I too am in touch with my slow-bone feelings. Let us have feelings together.’ And then we will. And probably also eat some pie. Pecan, preferably. No whip cream, though, because people that put whip cream on pecan pie should be dragged out into the streets and shot.”
“Paul.”
“Right. Sorry. I got distracted again. There was a commercial on TV for a cheese grater and that led me to think about mice and that led to chipmunks who store nuts for the winter and pecans are nuts and there you go.”
“Sometimes, I don’t think people quite understand the depths that you go to to find some way to confound me.”
“Slow-bone depths,” he whispered into the phone.
“Paul!”
“I really don’t understand what the big deal is,” he said. “So you like him. More than you thought. That’s what supposed to happen in relationships. The longer you’re together, the more the feelings grow.”
“I’m not ready for him to know,” I said, trying to find some sliver of truth to give him.
“Okay. Well shit.”
r />
“What?”
“Uh, you’re not exactly good at hiding feelings when you have them. In fact, you get downright awkward. I was wondering when that was going to happen with Darren. I was surprised it hadn’t happened already.”
“Says you,” I retorted. “I’m the Meryl Streep of masking feelings, you motherfucker. And I don’t have an awkward bone in my body.”
“Okay. Tenth grade. Sam Haversford. You had a crush on him and every time he tried to talk to you afterward, you would squeak, turn red, and then laugh that really high-pitched fake laugh before running away.”
“Okay. So. One time.”
“Eleventh grade. Kang Yoo Taek, that foreign exchange student. He didn’t understand English, so you tried to learn Korean. When he said hi to you, you told him, in Korean, that his grandfather’s spirit had been sacrificed to a monkey god.”
“Hey! Korean is a hard language to learn!”
“You were trying to ask him to sit with us at lunch!”
“There may have been something lost in the translation,” I said. “Also, did he really need to react like I’d just shit on his entire familial legacy? Talk about a drama queen.”
“The point is, Sandy, you can’t Meryl Streep your way out of this,” Paul said, sounding amused. “You’re going to become the most uncomfortable-looking person in the history of the world until you spill your guts. Trust me on that.”
“I’ll show you a slow-bone, you scandalous bitch,” I snarled into the phone.
“Will you look into my eyes, then come on my chest with love?” he asked.
I screamed into the phone and disconnected the call quite savagely. It felt good. I felt good. I could do this.
I would do this.
Chapter 14: Raising Holy Homo Hell
OF COURSE, as soon as I approached the table, I heard a topic of conversation I hadn’t expected and didn’t know whether to throttle Darren or kiss him.
And then I thought even more about kissing him and I swear my ass crack was instantly sweating.
“—know Vince likes to go there,” Darren was saying. “And he takes his boyfriend. They have other friends there too.”
Taylor looked annoyed. “Be that as it may, I’m not in any position to discuss that with you. Whether or not some club of disrepute stays open or not has no bearing on you and me or this conversation. Honestly, Darren. You know that I get enough of this from your brother. I don’t know that I need to hear it from you.”
“Funny,” Darren said, “I didn’t know you got anything from Vince, seeing as how he won’t speak to you.”
“Sorry about that,” I said, pretending I hadn’t heard a single word they’d said.
“I ordered you the sea bass,” Darren said. “Hope that’s okay.”
I coughed and tried not to blush when I looked at him. “Thank you,” I said, cursing inwardly how breathless I sounded, like someone ordering me fish was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. I cleared my throat and tried again. Much to my horror, my mouth didn’t get the message my brain was sending. “You make me want to speak Korean and tell stories about monkey gods.”
It was pretty silent after that for a while.
Then Darren squinted at me. “Um. What?”
“Ha-ha!” I said, trying not to sound hysterical. “A quote. From a movie. Just this… thing. I was thinking about. In the bathroom. A lot of people do that. It’s not weird, to think in the bathroom. Or whatever. Anyway. Sea bass! That’s… that’s just swell.”
I sat down in the chair next to him and tried not to think about how awesome it would be to give Darren Mayne a blow job within the next twenty minutes. Because that was just ridiculous. And also, we were out in public with his father, so now was not the time to realize that my feelings toward Darren had become less about anger and more about wanting to suck his balls. It was quite the quandary to be in. But then, that was the story of my life.
I was never going to get out of this lunch alive, much less this fake relationship. Chances were I’d probably have a guilty jerk-off session tonight (and possibly for weeks to follow) and would never be able to look Darren in the eyes again. His pretty, pretty eyes that were like stars in the sky—
Oh dear god.
No. I was stronger than this. I was more than this. I was the protégé of the legendary Vaguyna Muffman. I was the Queen known as Helena Handbasket. I ate men like him for breakfast and then threw them up because I had to watch my figure. I was the Meryl Streep of drag queens in the performance of my career in front of a powerful douchebag and his son whose cock I wanted to gargle at the back of my throat and—
Whoa.
That was me getting distracted.
Which was not a good thing right now.
And they were both still staring at me, waiting for more.
So I said the stupidest possible thing I could have said, just to get the attention off me and my impure thoughts about my fake boyfriend.
“What were you guys talking about just now?”
Darren sighed.
Taylor said, “That… place. Downtown. The homosexual bar.”
Helena wanted to gnash her teeth. “Jack It.”
Taylor grimaced. “Yes. Darren had heard a rumor that the city might not renew the contract. He asked me about it and I told him I don’t comment on rumors.”
Well, that certainly wasn’t true. He commented on them all the time. It was sort of his job to respond to rumors. “Understandable,” I said. “Besides, it’s obviously a false rumor, so no need to worry about spreading it.”
“Why false?” Taylor asked me.
I shrugged. “Because closing one of the few gay clubs in Tucson would undoubtedly lead to the reasons being made public, which would cause the gay population of Tucson to starting raising holy homo hell.”
Darren snorted unattractively.
Okay, that was a lie.
Even his snort was attractive.
I was doomed.
“Holy homo hell?” Taylor repeated with a frown.
“It’s a thing,” I said. “Usually involving peaceable, yet sarcastic protest and glitter. Maybe someone makes quiche. I don’t know.”
“And you think this will happen.”
I shrugged. “Well, yeah. The city closes it, the gays will head straight to the media, and allegations will be made. The ACLU will get involved to represent the owner for free, maybe Lambda Legal. National media will descend on Tucson, fingers pointed at why any of the college bars up and down 4th Avenue were never closed even though they were under the same contracts. Especially if someone were stupid enough to bring up the reason for closing it as making the downtown area a more family-friendly place, given the drugs, the homeless, the fact that you can walk down there at midnight and see people throwing up on the side of the road, or working girls in the underpasses trying to make a few bucks. People say that the LGBTQ community bitches about everything. I say they have to bitch until there’s no reason not to anymore.”
“Do I even need to mention the rumors of what happens in the back rooms of that place?” Taylor asked, wrinkling his nose in distaste. And no, he really didn’t, since I’d been in those back rooms myself. As had Darren. As had a shit-ton of other people over the years. But in the last decade, there’d been no fines, no citations, no charges of lewd and lascivious conduct. People were carded with scanners that even the best fake IDs couldn’t bust. “Not exactly what we want Tucson to be known for. We want families to be able to walk down the street without having—”
“Remind me, again,” I said. “Which bar was it that got shut down for a week because of allegations of people getting drugged and raped? Surely it wasn’t Jack It. It was O’Donnell’s, that frat-boy bar. I assume it’s going on the chopping block too. You know. Because of the raping.”
“I can’t speak to that,” Taylor said. “Honestly, I really shouldn’t even be speaking about any of this. It’s all just speculation and hearsay. But, I understand your points. I rea
lly do. But I don’t see any redeeming quality that a place such as… as Jack It, has to offer. I mean, it’s not as if they—”
“But what about the children?” Darren blurted out.
I choked on my tongue and almost knocked over my water glass because what the hell was he going on about now?
“The children?” Taylor asked.
“Yes,” Darren said, glancing quickly over at me before squaring his jaw. “Those poor, defenseless children.”
“Right,” I said, praying that Darren knew where he was going with this. “The babies. The homeless babies. Addicted to crack. Needles in their arms, just wanting to chase that ever elusive high—”
He squeezed my hand really hard at that, and I knew I was going too far, but his hand felt nice and warm and big and then I couldn’t stop thinking about how they’d feel wrapped around my—
“The children are whom I’m trying to protect,” Taylor said, looking at both of us like we’d lost it. Which, to be fair, we just might have. “Though, I don’t know anything about the ones addicted to crack.”
“Right,” Darren said. “But you’re a big supporter of Casa de los Niños, right? And Angel Wings. Both of which are nonprofits geared toward low-income families. It just so happens that Jack It is also a supporter of the same nonprofits. Well, they will be. It was decided this year to do a fund drive.”
“Do what now?” I asked Darren in a low voice.
“You know, boo”—Darren looked as if he was trying very hard not to grind his teeth—“that stuff we talked about. With the thing.”
“Right. The stuff and things.” I had no idea where he was going with this. And I didn’t like it one bit because we’d never had a fundraiser for either of those places, nor did we plan to. Any money that was raised went to Wingspan or some other nonprofit with a LGBTQ focus.
“Really,” Taylor said, obviously not believing a word we were saying. “And what kind of fund drive are you planning on holding? We raise tens of thousands of dollars just by holding a gala dinner. You really think you can top that? How?”
And there I was, thinking about how I’d like to top Darren, because my mind was a stupid, stupid thing.