I thought this up and threw it down over the course of like three days, like the first Black Heart Procession album; so, like the first Black Heart Procession album, the spirit is there, but the execution may be a tad spotty. Big ups to everybody who likes my work. (Note: there's a reference to Speilberg/Kubrick's A.I. Nothing big, but ah, it may be a spoiler. Just so you know.) Oh, ah, right, this is filthy: there are drugs and sex and tolerance of homosexuals and stuff. If your parents won't let you listen to Eminem, don't read this story, okay? This is what I have Learned By Melissa Virus, August 2001 Copyright 2001 Melissa Virus http://www.envy.nu/diffuser lissfuckingrules@chek.com This was my first job after high school. I never did the college thing- after high school, it was like, okay, my dad can get me a job at his company? And I can continue to drink illegal underage beer every night with my best friend, with whom I was on an occasional-fucking basis, and never leave my hometown, but get my own place? I was totally down. Wasn't the point of college to get you a good job? I got one automatically. Therefore, fuck college. I had no idea what we did, at my dad's company. Still don't. I think we do something international, involving trading somehow, but mainly what they have me do is take phone calls from people who tell me things I punch into a computer. So basically, the people I work with are housewives who don't need these jobs, guys older than me who had gone for their dreams years ago and failed, and a few people whose extracurricular lives were interesting enough not to need a great job- guys like my gay friend Thom. In high school, guys were simply not gay. Affluence does not breed tolerance, and gay kids would be whooped, mocked, and ostracized; of course, if three guys had come out, it probably would have helped the rest of the closeted kids at the school come out, and then they'd just be another clique; or at least be accepted as, you know, more people. But everybody realizes this in hindsight, and it didn't happen, so I didn't know any gay people until I got the job at my dad's company. The way I found out that Thom was gay is this: I was eating lunch in the cafeteria on the top floor of the building, one day of the second week I was there. Since I didn't know anybody, I was listening to music on my Walkman while I ate; once I was done eating, I usually went back to my desk and fucked about online until I had to get back to work. But I had my Walkman sitting on the table, and a couple of CDs next to it; the Rites of Spring, Fugazi, Nation of Ulysses, maybe the Make-up. I forget. I was on a Dischord kick. This guy, who was pretty tall, and blonde, walked by my table, kind of did a double take, put his plate down and picked up the Rites of Spring CD. "Is this good?" he asked me. I thought, okay, you fucking psycho, you can't just pick up one of my CDs at random and ask me about it to make friends with me because I am the only person in sight who's even near your age. My brain sometimes thinks in long sentences. Before I could respond- I like to think I would have told him to fuck off creatively, even though I most likely would have just said yeah, and made a grudging friendship- he said, "This is the band Guy Picciotto was in before Fugazi." Didn't ask, just said. He even pronounced Guy's name- first and last- right. I was surprised. "Yeah, it's awesome," I said. "Y'know, not as good as Fugazi, but nobody really is, right?" He smiled and put out his hand for me to shake. "Word," he said, "My name's Thom." "Hey, I'm Buster," I said. For some reason I always said this, and smirked. "Really?" "No. My name's Mark." Thom laughed. The only other guy I knew at the company, who I only kind of knew from high school- he'd graduated the year before me and gotten a job in the mail room- sat down at the end of the table. Sometimes he ate at the same time as me. "Whatup Mark," he said. He insisted on being as hip-hop as possible, even though the fucking black people in this office, even the ones who actually were hip-hop, didn't represent while they were at work. But whatever. Like I said, he was the only person I even kinda knew. "Hey Larry," I said. How un-funky a first name could you have? That un-funky. "Larry, this is Thom." "Whatup Thom," Larry said. "Whatup, Larry," Thom said. Now he was smirking, but subtly enough for Larry not to notice. "Yo, what are you listening to, some faggot shit?" Larry asked me. Thom probably tensed; I like to think I remember noticing him do so, but I probably didn't notice. "Whatever, dude," I said to Larry. "You know I'm not all fucking DMX and shit." "Yeah, you're a faggot," he said. This was Larry's way of making conversation: to call me a faggot. I know that at this point Thom took a deep breath. "This is all really good music, man," Thom said. "Ian Svenonius and Ian MacKaye are two of indie rock's hardest indie rockers." "Ha. Yeah, bitch," I chimed in, at Larry. In his quiet low drawl- I remember this really clearly- Larry said, "Yeah, I bet they're fucking each other and shit, yo." Thom didn't stand up or anything. I can't imagine the courage it must have taken to do this; he said, "Look asshole, if you call somebody a faggot again, or imply derogatorily that somebody else is gay, I will personally call up some really big men I know, who happen to be faggots, and have them come down here and beat your scrawny homophobic ass into the ground." There was a short pause; then Larry said, "Whatever, dude," in that saving-face dismissive way that boys have. "Not whatever, dude," Thom said. "I'm gay. You are making me very angry. I don't have to put up with this shit from you. I also don't even want to explain to you how fucked up you are... so I'm fucking off for you." Thom took a bite of his sandwich, chewed and ate it, taking long enough to let Larry know he wasn't leaving because he was intimidated, but because he was disgusted and furious with the company at the table. Then he picked up his plate and walked to the other side of the room. It didn't take a lot of thought on my part to follow him, but I got in a bunch of thoughts anyway. One, Larry didn't mean anything to me. Two, he was a homophobe, which I was against on principle, even if I'd never had an occasion to practice said principle. Three, Thom was this- how many people in this town, much less at this company, knew anything about Dischord records? Four, he was the only gay person I'd ever met, but he was so normal, but y'know, interesting, too; I wanted to talk to him, and get to know him, and stuff. Five, holy shit, did you see the way he stood up to that fucking kid a minute ago? I was amazed at his integrity. So I looked at Larry, once, then followed Thom across the room. I knew full well that Larry would be telling anyone who'd listen that I was a fag, but yo- I was completely unconfuckingcerned with people thinking I was gay. I was short and skinny, and wore tight jeans; people already thought I was a little queer. Why not bait 'em? Thom's confidence was contagious already. So. I sat with Thom. The only thing was, I had no idea what to say to him. I figured he'd know I supported him and stuff, when I came and sat by him, but I didn't really have anything to say to him. He sat at the table fuming, not really saying anything, for a minute. Then he looked at me, smiled really big, and said, "So the Rites of Spring record is pretty tight, huh?" That's how I found out Thom was gay. *** After that, working remained pretty uneventful, but we'd hang out at lunch. After like a week, neither of us had brought up his sexuality again; I at least had enough tact not to run up and start telling him all about my ex-girlfriends to let him know I was straight. We talked about music; we were superficial. We were in my car, because my stereo was fuckin' boomin', listening to his And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead CD. ("They sound like a cross between Sonic Youth and Fugazi," he told me before he put them on. "That's just fucked up," I told him back.) It was one of those writable CDs, not a pre-recorded one. He put it into the changer. Out of the speakers went: "Humidity's rising... Barometer's getting low..." I was like, yo, this doesn't even remotely sound like Fugazi or Sonic Youth. I couldn't place what song it was until the chorus: "It's raining men. Hallalujah." Thom was staring at me, making a stupid bug-eyed face. Shit clicked: oh right. The gay thing. "So uh, Mark, I guess you know I'm gay. I uh, gather that doesn't freak you out, but you seem kinda uncomfortable with it. You know, it's not like I'm gonna suck you off when you're not looking." Thom broke through every layer of homophobia, conscious or not, I'd ever had, with those two candid sentences. "Yeah, I kinda figured," I said back. I didn't want to be uncomfortable, but I was; but I also knew he didn't care, and had probably been through the uncomfortable friend thing before. I thought maybe I shouldn't say this, but I really didn't know what I should say, so I said, "I've ah, never known a gay guy before." "Yeah. I figured," he said. "Look, even if I were feeling your sexy skinny whiteboy indie rock style, I wouldn't go after you. Come on man, we're not evil predators or something; and also, I've got a boyfriend." He showed me a picture of a bookish guy, probably five years older than both of us, from his wallet. "His name's Don. He works at Lucent. We live together and everything, so it's like..." I felt all familial all of a sudden, almost maternal. "This is my girlfriend," I said, getting out my own wallet picture. Therese at the prom; she'd gone with me, but I took this picture of her, so in it she was solo. Red red hair, red red dress, long long legs. "Well, ex-girlfriend, but we live together." I didn't say, we still have sex sometimes, because then the rules of fairness said that then Thom could tell me about having gay sex, and I really, really wasn't ready for that. "Wow, she's really pretty," he said. "Uh, yeah, so's your boyfriend," I said back, throwing back the conversation ball. Thom looked at me. Then he cracked up laughing. I followed. After a minute of hysterics, we sobered up, and he put on the Trail of Dead CD so I could hear some of it before I had to go back in to work. They really did sound like a cross between Sonic Youth and Fugazi. *** I was proud of myself when I invited Thom over to my place, because it was me making a step in our friendship, being pro- active. (No matter what jokes they made on the Simpsons, being pro-active was a good thing.) I had a little apartment in a complex, where I lived with my ex, Therese; both my parents and her parents vaguely disapproved of us living together, but not seriously. We both had pretty permissive parents- and even when we were together-together, everybody knew that getting married at eighteen was a bad idea. Therese worked at a diner; she didn't have a dad with a hookup at a company. Her dad probably could've gotten her a job as a janitor at the high school, but she didn't want it. "Therese," I said one evening over microwave burritos and cheap wine, "I made a friend at work." "Oh yeah?" she asked. "Who?" "His name's Thom. He's actually really cool, even though he works at my dad's company. He knew about Fugazi and Sonic Youth and Dischord and Fantagraphics and everything." Therese was as much of an obsessive alt-kid as I was, partly because I was so into all this shit that she could not help but absorb it. Left to her own devices, she actually tended toward more mainstream and classical literature and music. But she was down. "You should invite him over some night," she said. I had a theory that, by introducing bad news with something like, "You're not going to like this," or "Okay, promise not to get mad," or "I don't know what you'll think of this, but..." you were shooting yourself in the foot, because the person to whom you were about to convey the news would be getting angry or upset before you even knew whether they'd get angry over the news itself... you know? Not that Thom being gay was bad news, or anything, but it kinda fell under the aegis of my theory. "Oh, uh, Thom's gay," I said. Therese did this thing she did, which drove me crazy- I guess I probably do too, though- which is to suppress any response of surprise, no matter how much it's there, when she deemed surprise inappropriate. "So?" she said. "Well uh, I don't know," I said. "I thought you should know, is all." The burritos were gone, so I brought our plates to the sink and got scrubbing. "You should have him over some time," she said. "And his boyfriend?" I asked. "Of course." *** The next day I invited Thom over for dinner at my house in a couple days. "You can meet my girlfriend and see the vinyl I'd never bring out of my house, and I can meet Don the Computer Guy," I said. "And we can eat pigs' feet, or porridge, or whatever it is gay people eat, if you want." At this point I was comfortable making fun of his queerness, because who cared. He slugged me in the arm. I laughed, and so did he. "That's cool," he said. "We actually eat a lot of cock, so ah, see if you can fry some of those up for me, eh?" "Um, okay. Do you get those out of a catalogue or something? No seriously, you guys should come over." "That sounds fun. Do you guys smoke weed? We could bring some over, if you want. I mean, it's the least we can do." Ha. Do we smoke weed. "Yeah man, bring that shit over. Are you Vegan or anything? Do you have any requests for food? We'll eat till we can't move then get so stoned we can't think, then listen to records. Sounds like the perfect night." They didn't care what we ate. I decided we'd have grilled chicken shish kebabs, because who didn't like those? Meanwhile, Thom decided we'd have the finest of his Northern Lights expensive shit weed. *** (Here is a conversation that took place between both myself and Therese, and Thom and Don, before that night; Thom and I are represented by "person number one," and Don and Therese are represented by "person number two." "You know," said person number one, "I don't think it's really cool to be, like, affectionate, in front of those two." "Why?" Said person number two. "Well, y'know, because I think it would be kind of uncomfortable for everybody. I mean, if we kiss or something, then they've kinda got to see us kissing, and then it's like, cool for them to do it; you know?" "Well yeah, but I don't think they'll be uptight or anything, if what you've told me about 'em is true," said person number two. "Hmm. Well true- and nobody should have to hide who they are, too, because we're supposed to be among friends... but still, y'know, we should keep the affection on low, in the name of civility, okay?" "Yeah, okay," said person number two. Immediately following this conversation, both pairs of people got all affectionate, to make up for missed affection to come.) *** They came over on Friday. Therese wore a dress that matched her hair, and I wore jeans and a Hum T-shirt; nothing but the best band T-shirt for an evening with my new friends! They showed up around eight, and we cooked and ate and got stoned on their amazing weed, and listened to my albums from a couch until around midnight. Don seemed nice enough, but I didn't understand why he was with Thom. I mean, maybe Thom just needed a square guy in his life for stability, or maybe he was amazing in bed (I didn't ask), or maybe he was just... maybe they had something special that you couldn't see when they were at the abode of a couple straight kids. But I didn't think Don was for Thom. He wasn't funny; he didn't seem to know much about cool music, and he didn't seem interested in anything we were doing. Maybe he was just embarrassed to be eating at our place, when we were so much younger than he was. I don't know, but he was uptight. Like I said, though, not a bad guy; just not a guy I'd date. If I dated guys. You know. They both loved Therese, and she totally came through for me, making me look cool in front of my new friends by being charming and funny and stuff; the fact that she thought I was cool enough to live with reflected nicely on me. She made some joke about carrots, at some point; I wish I could remember it, but it was really funny. Even Don lost it for a minute. Don and Thom kissed Therese on the cheek on their way out, and shook my hand. Then I took Therese back to our room and we had a marathon candlelit touchfest, followed by a bunch of orgasms. We were both still a little stoney, which made it seem kind of surreal, and which always made both of us horny. There's nothing like a good friend you can fuck, when you're eighteen and high on drugs. *** After that, we all kind of hung out on weekends and sometimes on weeknights. There was some almost intangible thing about Don and Thom, something about them that was all... gay; I just couldn't put my finger on it. Something about the way Thom hadn't brought any CDs to listen to, the first night they came over, because I was gonna play him my shit- mad tactful. Or uh, the way their shirts were always pressed, or the way they always showed up on time. It wasn't about any kind of limp-wristed parading around, but I could kind of tell they were different from the guys I hung out with in school. Y'know. Which was not a bad thing, just perceptible. I don't know if anybody forgets the first time they see two guys kissing up close. I haven't. We were at a bowling alley on a Thursday night. It wasn't a camp silly bowling outing, we just had nothing else to fucking do, and bowling in our town was pretty cheap; so we went bowling. We were all terrible. I remember that night, Don had excellent form when he bowled, even though his ball spent as much time in the gutter as anybody else's. I looked over at Thom once, while Don was bowling, and he was staring at his man intently; with his guard all completely down like that, just looking at his boyfriend admiringly, lovingly, suddenly they totally made sense together. I could see it in Thom's face- he loved this guy. I didn't know why, but he did. They went outside to smoke cigarettes, and told Therese and I to bowl a game on our own, they'd be back. (Thom told me what he claimed was the Big Gay Secret: every gay person everywhere smoked cigarettes. If they didn't, they weren't properly gay, and their membership card was confiscated.) I told Therese about Thom looking at Don, and she said she'd noticed too. I said it was kinda beautiful, in its way. She agreed. We were both getting- not catching it, like a cold, but getting it, like algebra- homosexuality. We didn't have a conversation on whether we were bisexual or anything, but we both admitted to wondering what it was like to be interested in same- sex stuff. We didn't bowl our own game, because that felt rude; we hung out for a half hour, then I went to find them outside. Long story short, I found them at the side of the building, on a ledge three feet from the ground, making out. At first I didn't say anything, I just kinda watched: it wasn't revolting, or disgusting. It was just two people who loved each other. It was a pure expression of love. What the fuck could be wrong with that? Suddenly I had this self-righteous urge to kill a homophobe. I didn't know if I should cough or something, because that might sound like somebody unsympathetic discovering them, and might be kinda scary. But then I was like, okay, these are your friends, you do not walk on eggshells around them. "Yo, are you motherfuckers coming back inside ever, or what?" I said, with as clear a voice as I could. Thom looked up at me from over Don's neck. His eyes sparkled. "Fuck you, buddy," he said to me, smiling real big and pulling away from his boyfriend. I had a crazy urge to kiss him, which passed quickly. A week later, Thom broke up with Don. *** He skipped work one day; I saw him the next. His eyes were puffy. I didn't know if he cried or not; I mean, that may just have been a gay stereotype, that they were all effusive and stuff. I didn't know. He told me later that he had been crying, though. Apparently, I was more perceptive than I gave myself credit for, because Thom told me he'd broken up with Don because they had nothing in common; Thom was rock n roll, Don was not. Don was boring, Thom was not. Thom was sexually adventurous; Don, despite homosexuality, was quite repressed, which was another revelation for me. I was kind of glad and kind of not when Thom did not discuss this last any further, though. Anyway, Thom informed me that some of his gay friends were organizing a Fuck Don party for him, to help him get back into crazy fucked up deviant gay sex singles life, and that Therese and I were invited. He kind of looked up at me, and his eyes twinkled in the manner that I was coming to associate solely with him, and informed me that it was a drag party, though, and that it was going to be off the fucking hizzy, and that I would be a different person the morning afterward. I was like, okay, cool. One, there's nothing wrong with a drag party, and two, what was I going to do, tell my friend that I was not there for him? Fuck that, kid. Therese was, of course, invited as well. It was her call on whether to come ultrafemme or dressed as a guy; either way was, of course, cool. Me, I had no choice. I told her that night after work. *** "Thom broke up with Don," I told her over microwave pizzas and cheap, cheap beer. "Oh my God, really?" "Yeah. You know how he and Don were never really right for each other, and you could tell? Apparently Thom knew this as much as we did." "Oh man," Therese said, getting up and walking to the phone. She called Thom immediately. "Thom!" she said. "You broke up with Don?" she said. "Wow, good for you." "Yeah, we always kind of figured." "A party? Yeah, of course we'll come. Where is it?" "That far? How come? Oh." "Drag, huh? Yeah, I've probably got something that'll fit him." She stuck her tongue out at me. Thom said something, and she laughed. "Okay, yeah, well hey, we'll see. Just remember, you did the right thing, and you get a lot of points for booting him instead of letting a bad relationship linger. Okay, by Thom." She hung up the phone. She went to the stereo and put on the Boards of Canada, which was her thinking/meditation music. "I would have told you it was a drag party, if I'd had a chance," I said. "Nah, I know. This'll be fun. My God, should we get psychedelics or something?" "Naw, yo," I said emphatically. "Fuck that. I have a feeling it's going to be bizarre as hell anyway, without acid and shit. I mean- hey, do you really have clothes that'll fit me?" She nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I have old skirts I don't wear and stuff- you don't have to look good, you know, you just kinda have to wear a dress or a skirt and some make-up. I don't think anybody's expecting you to be mistakable for a woman." True, I thought. "What kind of music do you think Thom's friends are into?" "Hell if I know," she said. It occurred to me, this was music that needed for me to be stoned. I told her. We smoked up, zoned out and worried about the party the next day. *** When I came home from work the next day, Therese was sitting on the couch. It was dark, and Portishead was playing. Loud. She'd taken the rest of the day off, because the party was the next day, and she had to hunt through her closet to see if she had stuff for us to wear, and if not, to go out and buy stuff. Except, apparently, for her anyway, the problem was solved: when I walked in, she was languid on the couch in a long red satin gown that was slit all the way up her left thigh; her legs were crossed, so I could really see both thighs, and the skirt of the dress was draped over both legs. She had on more makeup than I'd ever seen her in, all dark eyeshadow and bright red lipstick the same shade as the dress; she had something like two-inch talons, and was holding a wineglass. The wine's shade of red did not match the dress. "Hello, tiger," she purred at me, rising from the couch. I was already aroused. Surprise can be a key factor, in that. She walked over and grabbed me by the crotch. She pulled me over to the couch, where she sat down, and kneeled me in front of her. "How do I look?" "You look fantastic," I told her. She did. She may have been a caricature of femininity, but... well, some of my favorite aspects of femininity, like the breasts and the legs and the butt, were quite prominently emphasized in caricature. She slowly spread her legs, pushing the skirt of her dress open. She wasn't wearing panties. She was wearing black thigh highs without a garter belt, though. Before she said anything, I was yummy down on that like nothing. I quite enjoy cunnilingus. Unfortunately, the human neck is not designed to maintain that cunnilingus position for very long, and after a minute or two, I had to cordially request that she lay down, either on the couch or on the floor, so that I could, you know, fuck her. She handed me a condom from the tight band at the top of her left stocking. She took off the dress, because there was only one day till she was to wear it to the party, and that wasn't enough time to clean spum stains off it. Then she lay on her back, on the floor, with her legs together, because she knew I liked the way that looked. She was glorious, naked; she was a little bit shorter than me, at five-five, and her pubic hair was a completely different, more realistic shade of red than her head hair. Her skin was pale. She was so Irish. I stripped naked, not making a stupid joke of it, just businesslike, strapped on the jimmy-hat, and got on top of her. She still had her platform heels on, and her black thigh highs. We kissed while we made love; there's nothing like that cold wet feeling of tongue on tongue, when you're going in and out of a girl. It's almost too much. Aside from having the most perfect skin, Therese also had the most perfect voice for making sounds during sex: it wasn't that high, but it was very rich, and it felt like it filled the room; further, her deep voice complimented Beth from Portishead's, until my music snob ears connected with my sex-having penis, at some point in my sternum, and gave me a sublime and transcendent orgasm. I rolled off- she did not like it when I sat like a rock on top of her, after sex- and breathed heavily. "You know, sometimes I'd like to come too," she told me. Oops. *** After I calmed down some, I went and got a towel, dried us off, and started to get dressed. Oh no, she told me. "No, you need to find something to wear to the party tomorrow. You might as well stay naked," she said. Okay, I figured; whatever. I may only be eighteen, I thought, but this was My House, and I could strut around naked if I wanted to, especially right after I got laid. I was Manly! Even if I was, ah, about to go sorting through my girlfriend's old dresses for something to wear to a party tomorrow. "Okay," she said, in our bedroom. "I figure, you can wear fishnets, because then it's like you've got something on your legs, but the hair will stick out- that's funny. Then I thought, short skirt, tight shirt, overstuffed bra, crazy makeup. Right?" "Right," I said. She went to her closet to find a skirt. I figured she'd have something old, black and short, but ideally not tight, because then my dick might stick out. After sex, she'd put the amazing red slit dress back on. Now she was on her knees, on the floor of the four-foot deep walk-in closet, surrounded by her dresses and shoes, and her ass was in the air, stretching the silk of the dress taught around it. I don't know when she'd put panties on, but it was quite apparent that she had, due to the lines and all. It was awesome- I wanted to get aroused from the view, but found it tough, due to my recent ejaculation. She said, "Here," leaning back and throwing something soft and black at me. It was a skirt, of course. At first I couldn't figure out how it worked at all, kind of like how sometimes, when you look up at a high ceiling, your eyes can't focus right, and you have no fucking idea in the world how high it is. This just looked like a piece of fuzzy black denim with a bunch of buttons in it; then I figured out, okay, the buttons went down the front, and it went around my waist. I unbuttoned it, wrapped it around, my ass, then buttoned it again. It fit fine; a little tight in the waist, a little loose in the hips, but y'know, passable. "Looks good," I said- what was the Jason Lee line from that Kevin Smith movie? "I woulda made a hot chick," I said, voice rising, smirking. "Yeah, my ass, you would," she said. She threw me a shirt that looked tiny like it would probably fit a really tall Barbie doll, or those fuckin' aliens in A.I., not a human, and told me to put it on. She saw me looking at it, and said, "It stretches, dumbass. Try it." I did. It did. It was some kind of nylon/cotton something of other, and was black and white horizontal stripes. I tried to remember whether horizontal or vertical stripes were slimming, but I couldn't. I pulled it over my head; it was tight everywhere, and made my arms look skinny, and my chest look exceedingly flat; and it came down two inches past the top of the skirt. She threw me a pair of fishnets, told me I didn't need to try those on, then told me I could wear my boots for shoes. They're supposed to look clunky, anyway. "You know, I think your chest is too big around for you to wear one of my bras," she said. "I may have to pick one up for you tomorrow, on my lunch break." "Okay, cool," I said. "Thanks babe." I took off the shirt, took off the skirt, she measured my bare chest- 32 inches- and that was that. *** Thom looked infinitely better at work, the day of the party. I asked him what the fuck was up, at lunch- we were in my car. He was smiling. (Did you know that, literally, the Spanish word "guapo" means handsome, but in the vernacular, it means "gay?" As in, you know, "he's too handsome to be heterosexual." Well uh, Thom may have been too handsome to be heterosexual, if only for the perfection in his teeth when he smiled.) "Well, it just occurred to me last night," he said, "that breaking up with Don was exactly what I needed to do, and I did it. I don't need him. I don't need anyone. I can keep people around because I want to, not because I always have, or because anybody owes anybody anything. I don't miss him. Further, I'm twenty-one years old, in the prime of my God-damn life, I can drink and do drugs all night and get up the next morning to go to work, without joint-pain, without feeling bad; I don't believe in a God I have to owe anything to; I'm so fucking free, it's amazing. And tonight, my friends in a whole other town, people I've been close to for years, the first people I came out to, back when I was like fourteen- they're throwing a party for me, at which I will not have to clean up, and at which everyone will be faced and dressed up, and ... and my mood picked up last night. Some kinda biorhythmic thing is happening, or something, and I am amazingly excited about tonight. This party is hitting me on an upswing." He got ready to quote: "I woke up this morning..." I smiled one of those smiles you can't stifle, and did not complete the Rites of Spring lyric. Man, when a friend is that happy, it's hard not to have it rub off onto you. "Hey, are you and Therese all ready? You're dressing up, right?" He got serious, and his blue eyes darkened for a second. "Wait a minute," I said. I made an appalled, surprised face. "Hold up. Don was gay?" Thom smacked me on the top of my head. "Seriously," he said, "you guys are ready, right? It's not gonna be all stupid- is Therese going to be femme or butch?" "Femme, yo," I said. "Her costume is aMAZing." "And you're set too?" "Yup. Old skirt, old shirt. Therese's buying a bra for me today because I can't get into any of hers. "Yo, you're investing in this? Maybe you'll be an awesome DQ and you can change careers," he said. I put together that DQ meant drag queen on the fly. I'm perceptive, sometimes. "Alright, yo, I'm going back in. You keep listening to Sleater- Kinney until you get it- I promise you will," he said. He left the car. I had twenty minutes left of lunch. As always, with music stuff, Thom was right- after listening to the EP he'd copied for me again, towards the end, this strange girl-punk stuff suddenly made sense to me. Now I loved Sleater-Kinney. I went inside all happy. *** "Now look, if a guy kisses you or something tonight, you can go with it. I won't be offended. Just remember, if a girl kisses me, I'm kissing back." "That's awesome, Therese," I told her. "Ain't nothing I'd like to see more than you kissing another girl. I'm getting all hard thinking about it." Of course, we were in the car on our way to the party, and my dick was getting hard inside her old black corduroy skirt, which barely came halfway to my knees, when I sat down. I was of course wearing my own flannel boxer shorts, with Therese's fishnets over them, under the skirt; the bra she'd bought me was a D cup, so my chest looked kind of silly and over-inflated. Well, there were six socks in there. The bra was green and satiny, and while not very petite, still pretty feminine. She'd laughed as she pulled it from the bag for me. "Won't you be pretty," she said. "Yes ma'am, I god-damn will," I said in response, clasping it behind my back on the second try. Fastening a bra was pretty easy. I'd stuffed it with socks because what else do you stuff a bra with? Then, once the shirt was pulled over it, I mooshed the socks around till they were moderately smooth. The sleeves of the shirt only came down halfway to my forearms; aside from the fact that I was wearing a skirt, this was probably the strangest feeling I was getting from my clothes, the air on the forearms. I was driving because Therese's heels were too ridiculous for it, even though it was her car. Driving in a skirt was weird. She was navigating. We pulled up to the house about an hour after we left ours. It wasn't even a house, really; it was more of, I don't know, a little apartment complex; it was weatherbeaten brick, with lots of glass in the front, and there were four apartments. It occurred to me that it would be awful if we didn't know which bell to ring, but one, you could hear a lot of bass coming from apartment B, and two, our instructions said, er, apartment B. So we rang the bell. Thom greeted us, only I didn't recognize him as Thom, immediately. For one thing, he was something like six foot six, in his platform heels, and for another, he looked like a cracker RuPaul in a lime green dress that emphasized hips I didn't know he had, at all, and tits that were probably as sock as mine. Also, he was made up impeccably. "Darlings," he said, kissing Therese on the cheek, as was his custom. His pupils were the size of circular coke mirrors. He looked at me, wrinkled his nose a little, then kissed me on the cheek too. "Therese," he told her, "you look absolutely stunning. And Mark, this is a warning: you may be in for a drag queen makeover tonight, because that look is not going to fly." I expected him to start waving his wrist around and snapping; he was almost lisping, his voice sounded so queer and stereotypical and stuff. I was suddenly nervous; I mean, this was like, really, really gay. I knew I shouldn't be nervous, but I was. Thom brought us inside with a sweeping motion, then took us on either side of him and put a hand on the smalls of our backs. I swear he towered a foot above both of us, probably a foot and a half with the blonde curls piled prom-style on his head. We went to the left and into a noisy, sweaty, humid-with-people room. There was loud, loud Chicks on Speed music; I liked them, but at this volume, it was fucking disorienting. Thom showed us around, introduced us to Cher and Madonna, who were having a conversation about tranvestism. ("It's fun, but you can't spend your life pretending to be someone else;" "Darling, I can't spend my life pretending to be myself," "Ahahaha!") We were introduced to some big fat guys who all had facial hair, realistic and not, and a couple more RuPaul looking people, and did a lot of kissing with tongues, to a lot of people. This was not an orgy, because everybody was completely dressed, but the air was filthy with sex; incomprehensible, sweaty, and deviant, as promised. The tour of the apartment ended at a table in a back room from which it looked like Betty Boop, a fat Tom Cruise in a tie and vest, and the world's least curvy French maid were doing lines of coke. The only other thing on the table was a candle that smelled like vanilla; the air was warm and thick with it. "You guys in?" asked Tom Cruise, rocking a brown eyeliner mustache, slicked back hair and a bunch of Ace bandages. I was quite in. I kneeled in front of the table, took the proffered Bic pen tube, and snorted a line as long as a pencil. Discomfort makes you do strange things. I picked up my head and could barely see the other side of the room, through smoke. It occurred to me: I really hope that was coke, and not ketamine, or something. Otherwise, I could be out for the next hour. Luckily, it was coke. Mostly. "Mark, you're getting looks," Thom told me through a haze of his perfume, leaning in close enough for me to feel his heat. "We are going to go..." he spaced out for a second. His eyes unfocused. I felt a lock from his wig on my neck. "I'm making you over. Right now." My head started spinning because snorting works fast. My heart rate picked up. Okay cool. Let's run. Fight or flight. Flight! To the closet! Thom told Therese we'd be back in forty five minutes, and to time us. Time us! I thought. Thom led me by the hand, in his dress, to a room. Somebody's bedroom. There was no noisy shredding techno in this room, and no smoke, and no people. My ears throbbed from lack of noise. Thom flopped on his back, on the bed. "Okay Mark," he said. "I am so high on drugs right now. I don't take E, though. Listen, this is my friend Juarito's room, and he is a big drag fairy. He has so many dresses and things. I am going to make you look good. But first... you're so hairy! Come with me." He got up and took my hand and pulled me to the bathroom, which was attached to the bedroom. There was a shower. I put a leg on it, because I knew he was going to shave me. I closed my eyes and waited for it to happen. "Ahem," he said, arms crossed across his chest, pouting, forehead down toward me. He gestured at my skirt. "You are going to have to expose yourself to me, if I'm going to shave your legs, and I can't promise not to get... involved, because tonight is sex night." I'd missed a lot, I guessed, but I also knew that, with all the blood in my body up in my head, he looked really, really cute, pouting like that. I was no longer ego or superego; drugs made me id. I dropped my skirt, the fishnets, and my shorts. He set to work, ignoring my piece. I was surprised to be disappointed. He was done shaving in about ten minutes. Then he licked my inner thigh. His breath was hot on my leg. I didn't know if I could get hard on these drugs, and honestly thought I might already be. I looked down. His eyes were huge and blue and not feminine, but not masculine either, just beautiful. Honest and hungry. Sparkling like only Thom's eyes could. I was hard. Not exceedingly, because drugs impede healthy erections, but... yee-ah. He looked painfully fragile: I'd seen this look, when a girl I was with had become convinced I thought she was fat, and unattractive. His blonde hair was framed by his green dress below him, at this angle. I didn't know what to say. "Are you too high to get really hard?" he asked me, his voice somehow thin and high. Insecure. "Not on these drugs," I said. Five minutes later we were on Juarito's bed; well, I was on Thom's lap, kissing him, naked, and he was on the bed, still in his dress. I still wasn't hard, but oh man, was I happy. He gently pushed me off him, got up and took off his dress. By this point, I could barely fucking see straight, but him being away for me left that empty cold spot you only get when something goes missing while you're high. He sat back on the bed, next to me. Those eyes... "Look Mark," he said, "it would be really really easy for me to, y'know, go all the way imaginable with you tonight, sucking each other off and, y'know, doing everything I've ever wanted to do with anyone. And showing you things you've never dreamed. But um, right now, I am having a drug moment of clarity, and I realize: I am smashed. You are smashed. If you're going to," he paused, and looked like he leaned back then forward, a little, unintentionally, "if you're going to want to get in on the boy- boy thing, I think you shouldn't do it now. Because that would be bad. So no blowjobs, I am putting my foot down." This should have been comforting, to my ostensibly heterosexual self, but it wasn't; I was primal. I wanted to fuck him. I wanted him to fuck me back. But he was right. "Okay, well then kiss me," I said. Even faced, I knew how cheesy that sounded, but we make allowances. He sat down and put his arm around my waist. At this point we were both naked and hairless. I'd never noticed how well-defined his muscles were, because I'd never seen him without a shirt, but he looked like a wrestler or something, not bulky but streamlined. Oh man, I thought, cock ready to burst. I reached over and claimed one of his nipples, for finagling. Mouths are mouths, no matter which sex they come from; he had soft lips. We kissed in that position for a while. I don't know how we managed not to dive for each other's cocks. Then lucidity found me. "Yo, kid, we had forty-five minutes- I promise we can do more, because, ah, I think I'm bisexual-" I poked him in the kidney a little- "but I need to get dressed up. Also, isn't this kinda disrespectful to Juarito?" Tom looked at me and laughed. "You do not know Juarito. But yeah, okay, let's find you something and get you made up." We opened Juarito's closet. Part of one side was white shirts and khakis and stuff, normal guy clothes, but the other part of that side, and the whole other side of the closet, was dresses. Frilly ones, slinky ones, colorful ones, understated ones, you name it. Patterns, solids, whatever. "I know he's got one- I know the perfect one for you," Thom said, rummaging. I think we were both coming down a little, although I think there may have been some E in the snortload I did, because I was starting to feel a little euphoric, and my jimmy was starting to condense and suck in, like it did on E. "Aha," Thom said, taking out a dark green satin dress that didn't look particularly revealing. "See, it matches your bra," he said. He found a pair of panties in Juarito's drawer and tossed them to me: somebody shopped at Old Navy. They were soft and cotton and blue, and they said '81 on them, in faded lettering; I pulled them up. They were string bikinis. This is not exaggeration: the drugs had all but sucked my genitalia up into my fucking body, and the panties almost looked like they belonged on me, almost. Thom threw me a pair of white pantyhose, which I pulled on, bunching up the feet like Therese did; then he threw me the black fishnets, to put over, and they contrasted nicely. I put on the bra, and tom admitted that he didn't have anything to stuff it with, so I put the socks back in. But only four. When I pulled the dress on, I didn't look ridiculous. It was silk, and it was stretchy in the bodice, but hangy in the skirt; in fact, there was a pseudoslip in the skirt, which kinda peeked out the bottom. The sleeves came down to my forearms, because that seemed to be how girl sleeves worked. Thom sat me at the makeup mirror and did me up, and put my longish hair into two petite pigtails. I looked in the mirror. I looked like a girl, as far as my drug- fucked mind could see. I hugged Thom. Thom kissed me. I grabbed his ass. He grabbed mine. We kissed. Forty-five minutes were up and well over. We went outside. I didn't taste his lipstick on my lips- I had my own- but the powderiness of his foundation left an imprint on my mind, like when Renton overdoses in Trainspotting and develops the imprint of the carpet to the sides of his face. "Come along, Clarice," he said to me like Hannibal Lecter, offering me his hand. Back outside, it was still noisy, but the initial disorientation had worn off. People saw me and applauded. I look much better. Some guy in a pantsuit put his hand up my skirt and felt my ass; I laughed. I smiled at him. He kissed my cheek. It occurred to me: is that a he, at all? I saw Therese on the lap of Tom Cruise, from before; they were making out. Thom brought me a shot of something. I threw it back. Some guy I didn't know, who was dressed in kinky leather, and actually had one of those mustaches, the thick black bristly ones that go across the top of the mouth and down the sides, down the chin, brought me another; I threw it back, too. Then Thom was on a couch, making out with leather man. I want someone to make out with. A girl. Or Thom. I passed a bunch of faces and wound up back at the drugs table at the end of the apartment. I did another line, then stopped remembering what happened, which was a shame, because it was probably pretty fucking good. *** I woke up in a hotel room. It looked pretty nice. I didn't want to move. My head hurt. I was sharing a bed with Thom. The last thing I remembered was doing a line, and somebody with a red face- this image blurred into a movie image of Satan, who I know wasn't there last night, though Dionysus may have been- leering at me. I couldn't tell if my asshole felt sore. Then I thought: okay, Thom did not fuck you in the ass. Last night was the first time you even kissed a guy, let's be reasonable. Thom is a good guy. He did not take advantage of your fucked up self. I sat up, pretty slowly; there was bright white glare light coming in the window. Thom was still asleep. I looked down and realized I wasn't naked... I still had on Juraito's panties, from last night, and they fit surprisingly well. Shit, sorry, Juarito. We were fucked up. I had to pee. I got up, pain shooting from temples to eyes. I drank half the ocean, directly from the tap, there in my panties. I pissed it back out, felt a little better, and stumbled back to the bed. Thank God it was fucking Saturday, I thought, absently rubbing my lower belly through those panties, which felt nice. No denyin'. I went into that fake in and out sleep you can only go into when you're really hung over, where you think stuff, and you don't get much rest, but you're not actually doing anything. Eventually Thom woke up, abruptly: "Oh shit! Mark, I'm sorry man, I didn't mean, oh shit." He looked down, then put a hand to his temple. He looked pretty bad too. "Yo, it's cool, kid. One, I don't remember last night very well- uh, at all- and two, everything- everything- that happened was mad consensual, okay? Shit man, I didn't even realize I had a crush on you, because I didn't know what a crush on a guy felt like." Thom smiled. "Dear Penthouse, I never thought this could happen to me," he said. We both grimaced and laid back. "Okay, look Mark, this is probably going to fuck up our friendship. Nothing I can say will change that, okay? But I still need to say: please don't let this mess up our friendship. For the love of fuck. I like you, man." "Okay, I'll try," I said. "Yo, go have some water, it helps." He stumbled to the bathroom like I had. "Uh oh," he said loud enough that I knew it was intended for me. "What uh oh?" I asked, suddenly panicky. "Uh," Thom said, emerging from the bathroom with my green dress from last night in his raised right hand. "What?" I asked, fucking stupid. "Well, you wore this here last night, so..." Oh shit. I was going to be making a walk of shame, in this Juarito kid's dress. Oh shit. "Well, the good news is, we do have touchup makeup for you in your clutch from last night. Do you remember that?" "I don't remember anything." "Well, basically, we left because the party was dying, and walked downtown. Then we were too tired to come home, so we crashed here. I slept on the floor; or at least, I went to sleep on the floor. I guess my sleepy ass climbed up here while I was out. Point is, you were out in public all dressed up, because you said it was either that dress or what you'd worn to the party; you might as well look good. I wore..." He gestured to jeans and a hoodie. Lucky bastard. He got dressed. Completely sober now, and hung over, the last thing I wanted to do was put on this dress and a bunch of makeup; but I didn't have any options. I did. I even put on the white pantyhose, but I left the fishnets in the clutch: a silver clutch I'd never seen before. Thom put enough makeup on me to get me home, then offered me his hoodie to wear over the dress, to feel a little less awkward. I took it gratefully. It smelled like him, which I decided was really nice. As we walked downstairs, and I stayed silent and conspicuous while he paid, in his T-shirt. I couldn't think about anything but how exposed I was in this dress. It was scary. Thom went to a little gift shop and bought me big ugly sunglasses to try and hide my face some. God knows whether they worked. By the time our cab got back to Juarito's place, I realized that I had no idea what Therese was up to or whether she'd gone home or what. I called our place from Juarito's, still in his dress and Thom's sweatshirt. She wasn't there. I had to wait till Thom was leaving, later in the day, to get a ride home. When I walked into our apartment, crusty-eyed in a pair of Thom's jeans, Therese was eating dinner with a big girl I recognized as Tom Cruise from last night, and I sat down to join them. Therese said I still had makeup on my face. I said I didn't care. I went to bed early that night. *** This is what I have learned about bisexuality: it's not about being into either boys or girls, or both; it's about having the perspective to be attracted to a person, and not a sex. This is what I've learned about integrity: if your underlying principles are solid, and you stick to them, then you can be surprised and work within any context, and only good things can follow. This is what I have learned about myself: not much.