Friday, October 01, 2004

 

I'm back.


During my absence, the lovely Zenchick posted something I wrote that functions approximately as an "entry." If you're interested in reading it, here it is. We'll call it Entry 145.5.


And now, on to business.


ENTRY 146: SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING BLUE


It wasn't exactly a surprise that Sunday evening seemed about to turn into an orgy. Michael had said something along the lines of "Things may get a little wild" when he invited me to join him for drinks at the apartment of a fortysomething couple he'd gone home with a few nights before. I was somewhat hesitant to accept the invitation, but then he told me about the spacious Chelsea apartment filled with artwork, and how they owned a very expensive art gallery (one piece had recently sold for $350,000), and that they had a house in the Hamptons.


In fact, Michael threw in a lot of quantitative information. I'd always known that money and numbers impressed him. He regurgitates salaries and the prices of things, but he had no idea who Melville is when I mentioned Moby Dick. That's not to say he's at all stupid; we simply have very different value systems.


So I wasn't exactly drooling over the aura of wealth that his stories of this couple exuded, but my writerly curiosity was piqued. This was a world I'd never much bothered to ingratiate myself into, and I thought I might as well visit for an evening.


Their building was quite nice, with a tasteful, yawning, desolate lobby and an entrance opening onto an avenue. Michael had stressed how attractive these men were, so I was interested to see what my own opinion would be.


When the door opened, I saw that Michael and I have different tastes in men. That doesn't mean the couple were ugly, but they were above my somewhat arbitrary cutoff age, which is somewhere in the early 40s and seems to be lowering in more recent years. I suspected that they might even be a bit older than fortysomething. Nevertheless, I strove to be as charming as I could; I'd never planned on anything more than a friendly visit.


Blaine asked me what I wanted to drink, and I asked what they had.


"Everything."


"A gin and tonic, please."


But they had no tonic. I always find the exception to the rule.


It was a Cape Cod instead, then, or, more accurately, vodka with a splash of cranberry, which clued me in to the distinct probability that the game was already afoot, or adick, or whatever the clever turn of phrase should be.


I placed myself on a beige settee across the coffee table from our hosts, and Michael sat next to me. The table bears mentioning because it was rather unusual: a rectangular box filled with intensely blue, crumbly-chalky powder, something like cobalt. I asked about it, and Blaine said that the artist had used a substance that was actually toxic.


"Leave it under glass," he joked. "Don't open the lid and try to eat it."


I laughed politely, then glanced around the room to get my bearings as Michael asked about the square footage of the townhouse they were building on the beach in Miami (3,600). Gilbert went into another room and returned with a fat portfolio containing images of the final structure, while I asked Blaine if the Mapplethorpe flower prints were originals (they were). I stared hard at a metal sculpture on a low white pedestal, then turned as Blaine approached with a small plate. I expected olives or canapés. Instead, I noted two tiny orange-tan pills evenly spaced on the smooth, glazed, slightly concave surface.


Michael took his pill without hesitation. I slowly reached for the other and asked what it was.


"It's E," said Blaine matter-of-factly, popping one into his own mouth. Gilbert was just swallowing a tablet, too.


"Oh, no, thank you," I said, handing it back. Glances were generally exchanged.


"It takes about half an hour to kick in," said Blaine. "You should take it now."


I shook my head.


"Are you going to be able to loosen up when all the fun starts?" he asked.


"The fun," I echoed.


"Oh, he'll loosen up with another drink," said Michael in this weird proprietary tone, as though he'd known me six years rather than six months.


Gilbert took my glass to freshen my drink. I watched him carefully as he crossed the room into the open stainless-steel kitchen--I'd lost track of what happened to the E I'd rejected, and was worried he might try to slip it into my drink.


At the same time, Blaine had settled cozily on Michael's other side at the end of the settee, and said, "So have you two ever fooled around?"


Michael smiled--he often smiles--and said, "Oh, not really, but Frank will occasionally hint at something, like 'You know, we've never had sex or anything, have we?'"


With one eye still on Gilbert in the kitchen, I said, "Really? I don't recall saying anything like that." I was certain of this, since I've never been particularly attracted to Michael.


Blaine ruffled my hair, an action that always vexes me. "Isn't he adorable?" he asked Gilbert, who was just handing me a new Cape Cod. The E must have been kicking in.


"Absolutely," said Gilbert, who took his own turn thoroughly investigating my scalp, as if for lice. I had the impulse to smooth down my hair again, but didn't want to seem peevish, so I sat there, acutely aware of the bothersome dishevelment on top of my head.


Blaine put his arm around Michael, and looked at Gilbert and me. "Why don't the two of you go into the bedroom and get better acquainted?" he suggested, in a line straight out of a high-school makeout party.


I was trying to think strategically, which was difficult, because the two drinks were going to my head. But it occurred to me that being with just Gilbert would be easier than going one against three.


Gilbert closed the French doors behind us. I was just inebriated enough to extract a cigarette from the pack beside the bed. I put it between my lips and brought my face close to a tall flickering candle, leaving the end of the cigarette in the flame until it ignited. My nose and mouth grew warm.


I sat on the bed and squinted through smoke at Gilbert, who placed an ashtray next to me and sat in a chair by the window.


"I need to use the bathroom," I said truthfully, my bladder full, and retreated.


The bathroom was about the size of my bedroom, with a gaping white tub against the far wall. As I peed I glanced at the wastebasket, full of unmentionable odds and ends and with an empty KY package right on top. It had clearly been an interesting weekend.


I looked in the mirror, fixed my dishevelment, and frowned at my reflection. It was time to find my way out of that apartment.


When I returned and sat on the bed, a long ash-ending hung from the end of my cigarette, and I tapped it into the ashtray just in time. Gilbert turned from the window.


"It seems like Michael didn't really fill you in on what would be happening," he said.


"Not exactly."


Before I knew it he was on the bed kissing me--and not well, I might add. It was a sloppy impersonal sort of kissing, with a fair amount of disregard for skill or technique. It was the kind of kissing they do in porn. Or at orgies.


He stopped. "You're not really into this, are you?"


I puffed compulsively on the cigarette, shook my head, exhaled in his direction. "No. I'm more the dating type, always have been." He retreated to his chair; I hesitated. My words were coming out thick and slow and strange, and more heartfelt than I'd intended. I had the liquor to thank for that, but maybe not just the liquor.


Pausing briefly, I then spoke again. "I know that I probably seem...very naïve and...I don't know, provincial. Sorry if I'm a wrench in the works"--for an odd moment, I really was sorry--"but it's just the way I am."


Gilbert nodded silently, and then walked across the room to the French doors. "I'm going to Splash," he announced.


I stood up and said, "I'll go with you." It was my ticket out. With hurried fingers I buttoned my shirt, which he had managed to undo almost all the way during the kissing; I'd hardly noticed. Smooth. Too smooth.


When we entered the other room, Michael and Blaine were completely nude and entangled on the settee.


"Hey, Frank," said Michael cheerily, as though we'd interrupted a game of Yahtzee. A fully clothed stranger sat on the couch on the far side of the coffee table, holding a drink and looking uncomfortable. It was a latecomer, a friend of Michael's, and, stepping carefully around the entwined nude bodies, I shook his hand and made a friendly introduction as though it were any old situation.


"Are you going somewhere?" said Blaine, who was on his back on the settee while Michael knelt in between his legs. I looked at them, noting my emphatic non-erection.


"Splash," said the monosyllabic Gilbert, heading out the door. I started to follow.


"Wait," said Blaine. He beckoned me over, and I froze my features as I obeyed. He pulled me onto the settee and stuck his tongue in my mouth. He was a worse kisser than Gilbert. For a polite few seconds I sat there before moving away.


"See you later," I said, and vanished at Gilbert's heels.


He hailed a cab and we were off and I was thankful and curious.


"Whose idea was the open relationship thing?" I asked. It was Blaine's, and had happened a few years ago.


"And how do you feel about it?" I said.


"I'm fine with it," said Gilbert. I didn't quite buy that. There was a melancholy air to him, as though he had convinced himself that this was just the way life is. I wondered if, in the absence of their successful business, they would still be together.


"It's too bad," he said. "You're just my type."


"Thanks," I said. "You're an attractive guy." I looked out my window, not wanting to give him false hope.


We got to Splash, which I hate, and sat at the bar. It was fairly early on a Sunday evening, so there were few people there. It suited me just fine.


He ordered me a drink and asked me about my dating life (which took a good fifteen seconds to describe), whether I was a top or a bottom (which I was drunk enough to answer), and where I'd come from and why (which I answered at some length). I asked him about himself, what he'd been like when he was younger, what his interests were. To the latter question, he replied, "The gym and the stock market." Depressing. I made some joke to the effect of, "Well, that gives us tons of stuff in common!"


I don't think we'd been there quite an hour before he asked if I was ready to leave. I was, so we were off in another cab. I was just along for the ride, because their apartment was closer to the subway than Splash was, but I didn't say anything to explain that, and he didn't ask.


When the cab pulled up in front of the building, he made as if to head straight in, and I said, "Hey, I think I'm going home from here."


Gilbert turned around, stepped toward me, placed a large hand on my arm.


"Why don't you come up?" he said. "Just for a little while. It could be interesting."


I looked at him. He seemed like a nice guy. I was tired. I imagined myself waiting wearily for the late-night train, half-dozing with my buzz. I felt the inertia, the desire not to go anywhere, the strange wish to be compelled and fussed over and corrupted. He had a strong grip on my arm, was pulling me insistently toward the door.


"No," I said, shaking my head to break the spell. "I'm just going to go home." Home was only my empty bed in a dim room in a rundown apartment building, but it was where my thoughts would clear, where nothing would happen that I'd regret.


I slipped out of his grasp and took a step toward the subway.


"Goodbye," I said. "Thanks for the drinks." He waved and I waved and I turned and walked and didn't look back to see whether or how long he watched me. I had to leave the toxic things under glass, where they belonged.

8:35 PM

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