Gulliver Takes Five, page 21
I read the invite again. A random hookup with a Grindr guy is a crapshoot. But if the door is as...discerning as the invite says, I’m guaranteed far prettier people at the party. And if I change my mind when I get there, I don’t have to do anything. I can stand in a corner and watch. (Voyeurism is a kink that sex parties are more than happy to accommodate.)
But then again, it’s in Brooklyn. I can’t remember the last time I got on a train and left Manhattan. Oh, wait, yes I can. It was TODAY. When I went to the Bronx Zoo to NOT get weed. And if I went all the way out there for something I didn’t end up getting, what’s one more long-distance trek? The weed was a bitter disappointment. Hot, willing naked guys seem a fitting substitution.
Fine. I’m doing this.
I jump into the shower and clean myself appropriately, return to the studio, and select a cute jockstrap that will allow fantastic access to any part of me. I grab a tight T-shirt and a pair of short shorts and head out.
I wish I’d come face-to-face with Servy as he walked into the building. With that apologetic smile and his arms open wide, ready to have that makeup sex we do so well.
But there is no Servy. Not in the hallway nor on the sidewalk nor in the subway station.
He’s not on the train and he’s not at the stop where I get off to transfer to a Brooklyn-bound train. Before going into the bowels of the second station on my trip, I stop by a nondescript ATM, standing alone and dirty in a corner by a shuttered barbershop. I look around again, one last time, even though I am well aware that the odds of Servy being here are slim to none.
Turns out the odds are none.
Fine, Servy. Fine.
I’m going through with this. No turning back now. And this time, I make sure to withdraw MORE than I’ll need to get what I want.
By the time I’m back in Hell’s Kitchen, I’m not in the mood for a frozen cosmo.
For one, I’m soaked. For two, I’m so dehydrated I’d probably die of alcohol poisoning. And for three, all I really want is Rowan. With all this excess energy and testosterone bouncing around inside of me, I’m ready to fuck his brains out.
Except, Rowan isn’t home. I buzz three times with no response and finally give up, fishing my keys out of my pocket. When I get inside, I can see that he was here. And busy. Our place hasn’t been this spic and span in FOREVER. Why the fuck was he cleaning? The apartment smells like weed, but it always smells that way, so who knows if he was smoking up recently.
“Rowan?”
I can see every corner of our apartment from the entrance, including the open bathroom. If I can’t see him, he isn’t here.
I’m still heaving, covered in sweat and rain. I haven’t run that far in a very long time. Ripping off my clothing, I head to the bathroom, where I find Rowan’s outfit from today hanging, dripping into the tub.
Where the hell did he go? Why didn’t he text me?
Deep breath in, deep breath out. I peek out the window by our bed, into the unkempt garden space behind our apartment, just in case he snuck out for a smoke. No such luck.
So...He got stoned, cleaned the apartment, then left? I feel like a gay Sherlock Holmes, rearranging clues to figure out where he could possibly be. No answers come to me.
He probably just went to find something to eat. I myself haven’t eaten since breakfast, which was interrupted by the damned rat that set this day’s many unpleasant, potentially life-threatening events into motion. So I make some ramen.
Oh, wait. NO, I DON’T.
Because Rowan ate my last ramen! I KNOW I had one last cup. It was the spicy-shrimp flavor, and sure enough, the empty container is hanging out of the fucking garbage can, a few stray noodles on the floor. (And Rowan wonders why the fuck we have a rat!)
New clue: he ate my last fucking ramen. And he KNOWS I hate that. We’ve fought over this at LEAST forty times.
I’m trying not to get angry, but the feeling creeps up as I imagine Rowan getting high, cleaning, eating my food, and then fleeing the coop without a word to me. And to think I was ready to forgive him! I was primed for makeup sex! In the short period of time he was home without me, Rowan’s done a bang-up job of doing every single little thing that pisses me off.
Didn’t he wonder why I wasn’t back yet? For all he knew, I hopped right back on a downtown train after I left him. If that were the case, I would have been home waiting for him. It really never occurred to him to wonder, Oh, gee, where’s my boyfriend? Maybe I should call him just to make sure he’s not about to get his ass kicked by five thugs in Washington Heights.
But no, why would Rowan take a fucking second to care about anyone except himself?
This, of course, is nothing new. THIS is why I won’t be his fucking boyfriend. Rowan gives too many shits about himself and not half a shit about anyone else. Why would I want a boyfriend who’s so distracted and stoned and careless all the time? That makes me look like a fool. I deserve better.
I start to text him, but stop myself.
Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe he thinks I’m still walking off my anger. That makes sense, right? Even though I don’t think that a stoned Rowan is capable of such reasoning, I give him the benefit of the doubt. It was I who instituted the halting of communication, wasn’t it? Maybe he thought I’d want to be alone when I got back—which would have been an accurate assumption, if I hadn’t had my run-in with the violent homophobes earlier.
I take a deep breath, dig through the refrigerator, and come back out with a bottle of Gatorade. I take three huge gulps, the chill of the sugar water cutting right through the back of my head. As I recover from the assault of brain freeze, I send a quick text to Rowan: “Hey, I’m home. Where are you?”
Twenty minutes later, no response. I’ve finished the Gatorade, and I’m seething. I send another text: “Where the fuck are you?”
That’ll get his attention. Whenever I get pissed like that, he writes back pretty fucking quickly.
Twenty minutes later, still nothing. And now I’m worried. What if he and his dealer got caught by the cops or something? No—he would have gotten that one permitted telephone call. He would have called me. And I don’t have any missed calls (believe me, I know, because I keep checking my phone every thirty seconds just to make sure I didn’t somehow miss him trying to contact me).
Besides, that wouldn’t account for the miraculously clean apartment.
I text Todd, asking if he’s seen or heard from Rowan. No response. I crash down onto our futon to distract myself with something stupid on TV. Soon Rowan will come back blazed and fed, and who knows? Maybe with more ramen. He does endearing little things like that every once in a while.
Wait.
Rowan’s underwear drawer is open. Not all the way, but open enough. I can’t believe I didn’t notice that until this second! One of his jockstraps is hanging out. I open it farther.
Ha. The fucking asshole.
Conspicuously missing from the tangle of underwear is a certain jockstrap, a blue-and-yellow one we bought together at a boutique in Chelsea. And I know for a fact he hasn’t worn it in weeks.
No, this means Rowan is wearing the jock right now. And Rowan doesn’t wear jocks unless he plans on fucking around. (Who does?)
That piece of shit. That son of a bitch isn’t answering my fucking texts because he’s busy getting a dick shoved up his ass by one of his dom top buddies, who’s probably got the jockstrap knotted up in one hand, pulling him back deeper and harder.
That’s his way to deal with our disagreement?
Yes, we’re in an open relationship, but there’s such a thing as the wrong fucking time. And our rules have ALWAYS been that we let the other know BEFORE it happens. NOT okay.
There are so many ways I could retaliate. Lock him out. Text the hell out of his phone until it explodes. Break up with him for real. For good.
But no. I have a better idea.
I’ll go out and get some myself. Because if Rowan’s not going to be back anytime soon, I’m sure as hell not going to hang around waiting for him.
I send out booty texts to my three favorite bottoms. Brendan, the skinny actor/model from Boston with a mop of brown hair. Jay, a sprite of a thing with nipple rings and a penchant for posting underwear pics of himself on Facebook. Travis, a dangerously tall blond who only bottoms for me.
I wait.
Then, finally, my phone beeps. It’s Brendan, tonight’s big winner. Two can play at this game, Row-Dog. If you’re getting some, then I will too.
“Sup Servazoid?” he asks.
“Wanna play?”
“Of course I do,” he texts back. “But I’m not home.”
“When will you be back?”
“Not for a while :(”
Or maybe not. “Oh. Maybe another time.”
“No! Wait! You can come too. Going to a party.”
On any other night, I could be convinced to party. But not tonight. In all honesty, I don’t even want sex. I want Rowan. But since that’s out of the realm of possibility, I can’t let him win this undeclared war. He is already en route to victory, and I just can’t. Not after this afternoon. No way.
“No thanks, babe,” I text back. “I don’t feel like doing the social public thing tonight. Just lookin for some fun.”
Brendan texts back: “Not THAT kind of party. This is more of a...get-together. Of the sexy variety.”
“Go on.”
“It’s in Brooklyn. I can get you in without having to pay the stupid crazy cover. Jockstrap recommended. Everything else will be there. You can be the first of many I take tonight ;)”
Now we’re talking.
I’ve been to three sex parties in my life. At the first, I just watched gorgeous men all around me go crazy; I had enough material to beat off to for the next six months. The second was where I met Rowan, which is probably the most romantic thing to ever come out of an organized orgy. The third was actually where Rowan and I “broke up” and ditched our label. We’d reached that point where we both wanted to fuck other people in public, so who were we kidding calling each other boyfriends? From there came Servando and Rowan 2.0—the open-love revision of what we once had. And that was it for the sex parties.
So perhaps number four will be equally monumental? Maybe I’ll meet someone new. It worked that second time around, so I won’t rule out the possibility.
“Well? You coming? About to hop on the train,” Brendan texts.
I’d much rather spend the night with a hot mug of tea and Thai food delivery. All that running tired me the fuck out. I could even go to bed early, wake up, and start a new morning-running regimen.
But who am I kidding? That’d be a great way to spend the evening if, say, Rowan was at work. But right now, he’s getting his hole pounded. The very thought of Rowan squealing as he takes that dick—making that half-pain, half-pleasure face he does when you get all the way in—dashes any hopes of staying in tonight. I wouldn’t be able to sit sipping tea if I wanted to. I’d more likely crouch in the corner and chomp straight through my mugs, gnashing the ceramic down to dust. Thinking about the positions he’s in. How many times they did it. If the other guy was better than me. What Rowan said. What the guy tasted like...
This will drive me insane. If Rowan’s doing this, then I am too.
If we’re over, then we’re really, truly over this time. No more gray area.
It’s finished.
“I’ll be there,” I text back. “Meet at West 4th and we can take the train together.”
“Hot ;) see you soon, sexy.”
I drop my phone on the futon and my shorts on the floor. And I think, What the fuck? I’ll help myself to one of Rowan’s jockstraps. The one I grab is brand-new—pure white, traditional sports type. That’ll work wonders.
Have your fun, Rowan. Because I’M gonna have a blast.
This night already sucks. Nothing beats a one-hour train ride when it comes to sucking the fury out of you. Now I’m standing outside this sex party and seriously considering turning around and going home. The rain is back to its old tricks, and I’m soaked for the second time today. I’m dying to get out of these sodden threads; then again, I guess a sex party would facilitate that nicely.
The location is a brownstone in Brooklyn, pretty standard for sex parties in this city. I read Larry Kramer’s Faggots and had to laugh as I took in the tale of pre-AIDS-crisis sluttery that existed in this city back in the seventies. Apparently, a guy could get head or get fucked basically anywhere: the docks, the streets, any bar or club. Not so any longer, friends. If you wanna get down and dirty with a handful of similarly bodied individuals, you’re headed to some sort of private property. The Board of Health is more than happy to shut down any actual business that places exposed pubes so precariously close to open containers of booze.
I have been standing under a tree on the corner for ten minutes. I had planned on going inside, but now I’m not. Why? Didn’t I want this? Yes, I DID—but now I don’t, for some reason. Guilt? Laziness? In all honesty, I wish I’d stayed home instead. Servy would have come back sooner or later. We could have fought or fucked—or both at the same time. (We’ve done it before.)
But I’m here. I traveled longer than I should have, WAY too far to just turn around and head home. I made my bed, and now I’m going to get fucked in it.
Yes. I’m doing this.
The door has a sliding grate at the same level as my eyes. I knock and the grate slides open with a squeak.
“Password?” asks a tough, deep, throaty voice on the other side.
“There’s a password? Uh...It didn’t say so on Grindr.”
For fuck’s sake. Tell me that he’s not going to let me in without this magical password. Tell me I’ll have made TWO ridiculously long, fruitless journeys in the span of twenty-four hours.
“Oh, fuck it, you’re cute,” says the voice. “Hold on a sec.”
The grate squeaks and slams shut as the door swings open.
Brendan has been rubbing his leg against mine for the entirety of this train ride, occasionally leaning over to lick my ear. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but it’s not half as exciting as it should be. I’ve gotten harder sitting across from Brendan at the table in his family’s kitchen, engaging in coffee talk while we wait for his parents to go elsewhere so we can strip down and get crazy.
Could it be that I’m feeling guilty? I shouldn’t. I know Rowan is out getting some, and he never bothered to let me know he was off to get laid. But I AM going to a sex party without texting him, which is in direct violation of not-quite-boyfriend rules. These rules aren’t that complicated. Anyone who’s been in a relationship—or whatever—for as long as we have develops their own body of laws by which they agree to comply. For us, it’s like this: we can play together, or we can play separately. If we play apart, we must let the other know in advance, and it has to be somebody we both know well enough.
We haven’t really put this into action in months, except with Gulliver. He was new in town; he had that sheen about him. Rowan and I couldn’t wait to give him a proper welcome to the city, and in many ways, he was the perfect third, because there was never any danger that he was secretly into one of us more than the other or that either Rowan or I would fall for him. That’s always the risk. Theoretically, an open relationship is supposed to free you up so that lusting after a third party doesn’t tear you apart. But that possibility never really goes away. Sometimes I’ve watched Rowan going at it with one of our guest stars and wondered if he was enjoying it more than he enjoyed being with just me. He must, or else, why are we doing it?
Brendan’s hand finds its way between my legs, a bold move considering how packed this train is. At least it hasn’t broken down. We’re making great time, already in Brooklyn and five stops from our final destination. He kneads his hand in deep and finally my dick springs to attention, waylaying my fears that it is permanently down for the night.
He really is cute, with his boyish face, the giant dimples that make him look seventeen.
“Have you been to this party before?” I ask.
“Oh, for sure,” he says, ramping up his sexy voice, closing his eyes halfway, rubbing harder between my legs. “You’re going to love it.”
“Yeah?” I ask, trying as best as I can to tease back, even though it feels weird. “Tell me about it.”
“Sixty to a hundred guys. All gorgeous. They check you at the door, and if you aren’t cute enough, cut enough, or hung enough, they send you packing. Condoms and lube and toys and slings as far as the eye can see. Live DJ, which is SO much better than the iPod most sex parties in the city have.”
“Most sex parties? I didn’t know you were a regular,” I say, letting my eyes drift down to his hand.
“Definitely. I love them.”
It occurs to me that I met Brendan at the last sex party I went to, the one I went to with Rowan. The last time we were ever officially boyfriends.
“How many have you been to?”
“This month?” Brendan asks, smiling.
He keeps talking, and I watch the tunnel through the windows opposite where we are sitting. Three more stops. Two more. One.
We have arrived.
“Come on!” Brendan hops out of the seat and makes a run for the door. I follow and let him guide me through the station, back aboveground. Shit, it’s pouring again. We run, heads down, across the street.
“This way!” he screams. “Almost there!”
I am drenched, my legs sore as hell. The rain is freezing cold, and my clothing is sticking to me.
“This better be good, bitch!” I scream, laughing.
“It’s worth it, trust me!” he screams back, grabbing my hand and pulling me along.
Four blocks later, we get to the building. Brendan pounds on the door, yelling. It’s a good thing he does—the music inside is blaring so loud, the rain outside so heavy, that the doorman wouldn’t hear anything that registered below the decibel level of a low-flying jet. A slate in the door opens, Brendan shouts a password, and we’re in.
I am bathed in shifting colored lights. This is already unlike any sex party I’ve ever been to. Staring down a long hallway, I can see the entrance to the main play area, but with the mixture of blasting music and flashing lights, any normal person might assume it was the portal to a regular dance party.
