Best Gay Romance 2008, page 14
Tempting as the offer was—not!—I declined. I was holding out for Stuart. Crazy at it sounded, when you know you’ve met Mister Right, you know you’ve met Mister Right. And if you can’t reel in the big one, you might as well row the boat back to shore. Too bad for me the water was so rocky and my boat had sprung a leak.
I reached for the door handle, and then a thought popped into my already addled brain. A glimmer of hope. “Which museum?” I shouted at the guy, who was now at his own car.
“Huh?” he shouted back.
“Which museum does Stuart like to hang out at?”
“All of them. Goes to one every Sunday. Like I said, boring!”
I nodded my thanks and hightailed it out of there. “Every Sunday,” I said, again talking to myself, which I hoped was only out of anxiety and not a new habit of mine. “Today is Sunday.”
Now I only had one problem—well, one more on a growing list, besides having to buy a new cell phone. Did I mention I live in the city? New York City, to be exact. An awful place for fishing for normal guys—but not for museums. The city is awash in them. It could take endless Sundays for me to find him, if ever. What were the odds of going to the right one on the right Sunday at the right time?
Then again, I’d already beaten the odds once simply by meeting him in the first place. If lightning were going to strike twice, I would be standing out in the rainstorm with a big stick of metal held up in order to attract it. In other words, I wasn’t giving up, not yet, not by a long shot.
Stuart was out there, somewhere, and I was going to find him.
I raced home, flicked on my computer, and Googled New York City museums. And there went that kerplunking stomach of mine again. There were dozens to choose from: the American Folk Art Museum, the Museum of Television and Radio, the Ukrainian Museum, the Queens County Farm Museum, the New York Transit Museum, the National Lighthouse Museum. You name it, there’s a museum for it. And virtually all were open on Sundays. Thankfully, so was the Museum of Sex, which opened at eleven, and was third on the long list I compiled for the next twelve weekends of museum visits.
If I couldn’t find Stuart, at least I’d brush up on my African, Tibetan, and Judaic art.
“No,” I said, admonishing myself. “I will find Stuart. I will!” Great, not only was I talking to myself, but now I was shouting to myself. This must be how the other New York crazies got started.
So, with a new determination, I ate breakfast, showered, grabbed my list, and ran for my front door.
And there, on the other side, was Stuart.
“Stuart!” I practically shouted. Okay, I did shout it, which I think sort of scared the hell out of him. “What are you doing here?”
He backed up an inch, blinked, then said, “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan is just up the block. That’s where I was headed.”
I knew that. It was first on my list. My karma was back on track. “Um, yeah,” I said, staring at him, wondering if I was dreaming. Then again, I still hadn’t gone to bed yet, so that was unlikely. “But how did you find me? How did you know where I live?”
He smiled, a glorious, eye-crinkling smile. “Well, silly, you told me. Last night. Remember?”
I thought back…Stuart, chitchat, blue eyes, hand-holding, address, kiss. Fuck, I did tell him my address. With all the recent turmoil, I’d plumb forgotten.
“Of course I did. And here you are.” I was almost at a loss for words, for there, truly, he was. In the glorious flesh, and just a scant few inches away from me.
“Oh, but you’re on your way out. I’m sorry. I didn’t have your number, or I would have called first. It’s just, well, I wanted to, um, say hi, you know, again.” He was nervous, and oh, so adorable. “Well, I won’t keep you then. Maybe some other t—”
“No!” I shouted, scaring him back another inch or two. “I wasn’t headed anywhere.” He pointed to the coat in my one hand and the list in the other. I dropped both to the floor. “Oh, just to the store.” I stared down at the long list. “To do some grocery shopping. For dinner.”
The smile returned to his face, and a red flush rose up his neck and across his cheeks. “Yes, well, um, that’s actually why I stopped by.”
“To take me grocery shopping?” I was slaphappy from exhaustion, or I wouldn’t have asked such a stupid question.
“Um, no. Well, I could, if you wanted to. But no. I was going to ask if you wanted to do dinner. I know a great seafood restaurant nearby. If you like fish, I mean.”
“Fish!” I’d have to stop doing that in the future, I knew, but at least I was no longer shouting at just myself. I stepped forward, and reached out my hand to his. “I mean, yes, I love fish. And, yes, I’d love to do dinner.”
“Really?” he asked, taking my hand in his own and pulling me toward him.
“Really. And I love children’s museums, too. All kinds of museums, for that matter. Tibetan, African, you name it.”
And then the lips, those soft lips, were once again upon my own. And the perfect kiss from the night before was somehow miraculously bested.
“Well then,” he said, when we’d come up for air. “Seeing as you don’t need to go grocery shopping anymore, can I interest you in a trip to a museum?”
I squeezed his hand and shut the door behind me. “Lead the way.”
Which he did.
And my fishing days were gladly and forever over.
VIVA LAS VEGAS
Max Pierce
I stood at the top of a grand staircase suitable for a classic MGM musical, but feeling less like Cyd Charisse and more like Debbie Reynolds: an eternal boy next door. Perennially cute, but seldom sexy. I forgot that sometimes cute wins over sexy.
It began as the worst date ever: a comic misadventure of epic proportions. If one was reading TV Guide, the log line would read something like this: Romantic Comedy; Boy travels to Sin City and finds nothing is as he expected yet discovers love in the process.
However, I hadn’t the luck to read the log line. Three hours before I stood on that staircase, located in the swankiest hotel in town, I only knew I’d been invited on a potential romantic voyage and it was sinking faster than the Titanic, with no lifeboats in sight. Cue up Celine Dion.
Notice I wrote potential. I paid for my airfare but Tom insisted he’d pay for the hotel and we would be sharing a room. He was cute, I was cute, and it was Vegas, right? I’d read the literature.
This was my first visit to Las Vegas and I’d jumped at the chance to go. Showgirls! Roulette wheels! Ninety-nine-cent shrimp cocktails! If I were feeling particularly decadent, I might even smoke a cigar. So what if I didn’t smoke? And the kicker: meeting Ann-Margret after her concert. Sexy, age-defying Ann, who’d rocked with Elvis, pined for Birdie, and was iconic enough to appear in animated form on “The Flintstones.” Tom had a connection who had guaranteed we’d get backstage after the show. The time: early November, Halloween was out of the way but holiday thoughts hadn’t taken over. The setting: Caesars Palace. And for the next eighteen hours, I rolled the dice and had the best date ever. And it wasn’t with Tom.
Reality had kicked in shortly after I stepped off the United flight from Los Angeles, overnight bag in hand, and found I was being whisked away from the glittering Las Vegas Strip to the more moderately priced downtown area. Our hotel was no grand resort, more a glorified hostel with a room the size of a closet and the smell of an old humidor. It was perfect if you’d lost your pagoda at the Pai Gow table and needed a place to slash your wrists or swallow a handful of Seconal: precisely the reason why none of the windows opened. The presence of two twin beds in opposite corners, no less, squashed any idea of romance, as I’m not one for shoving beds together. Our $3.99 dinner in the hotel restaurant, a necessity due to our late arrival, made me eager to find a McDonald’s—or a bathroom.
I had taken great care in dressing to meet Ann, perhaps a tad over the top, only to be informed by Tom that he had only secured one backstage pass. Setting a new record for the transformation from romantic possibility to platonic nobody during the cab ride between downtown and my dramatic Caesars entrance, I felt like the Christians being introduced to the lions. Suddenly trapped in a black-and-white RKO budget picture, I was a plucky hero pining for Technicolor, Cinemascope, and Stereophonic Sound. When a lonely boy knows he’s different, but doesn’t know there are at least ten percent more like him in the universe, and is raised on a steady diet of old movies, he can’t help but aspire to glamor. I knew I didn’t belong in downtown Las Vegas. I belonged in Caesars Palace, hobnobbing with the high rollers.
Ann, thank goodness, did not disappoint. Seated close enough to the stage that if she’d taken another tumble, as she did in Lake Tahoe in 1972, we could have caught her—and the eye of any press photographer in the pop of a flashbulb. After watching her sing and gyrate for two and a half hours, and guzzling one vodka-infused drink after another, my now-former date went around to the back with his original Bye Bye Birdie, The Pleasure Seekers, and Bus Riley’s Back in Town posters, leaving me to my own devices. Exploring the casino, I plunked myself in front of a slot machine, accepted a complimentary cocktail from a woman dressed as an extra from Troy, and lost twenty bucks in ten seconds flat. Not sure how long Tom’s assignation with Ann would take, and not having enough money to keep losing, I wandered out of the casino and into the hotel. In a rather obscure passageway linking Nero’s all-night buffet, Cleopatra’s disco Barge, and an exclusive restaurant named Bacchanal (which plugged toga’ed attendants massaging sacred oils into your neck while you ate), rose a marvelous staircase, all gilt rails and plush ruby carpet, stretching to where I wasn’t sure; but my inner Nancy Drew had been activated and I was eager to find out. Never being one to pass on an opportunity to make life more like the movies, I climbed the stairs two at a time, paused at the top, whirled in a dramatic fashion, and began descending, arms outstretched, visions of Lana Turner in Ziegfeld Girl swirling in my head.
About two tap steps down, I remembered that Lana’s character died in that film, so I wasn’t drawing upon the most positive movie reference. Nor was Norma Desmond’s close-up in Sunset Boulevard a good role model. Hello Dolly! and Mame were too obvious and far too queeny, even for a musical queen like me. I had no Rhett Butler to whisk me up, and there were too many steps to effectively re-create Bette Davis gunning down her lover in The Letter. I went back to Ziegfeld. Rewinding, I became Hedy Lamarr slinking downward to a chorus of “You Stepped Out of a Dream” that played in the soundtrack of my imagination. Halfway down, I eyeballed a cute guy in a black tuxedo at the foot of the staircase, looking like he stepped out of a dream. About this same time, a slot machine in the casino rewarded a Midwesterner with a jackpot.
Ka-ching!
“Yee-haw!”
The guy looked back up at me, and burst out laughing.
I mentioned earlier I had dressed a bit over the top: I was wearing a tux. And why not? I’d had one for years with no occasion to put it to use, until now. To me, Vegas means Sinatra, Steve and Eydie, and Bugsy Siegel, with well-heeled patrons tumbling from casino to showroom along the Strip soused on martinis and chewing cigars, garbed in fashions from Armani and Versace. Or in my case, Calvin Klein, whose tuxedo design I’d nabbed at a department store clearance sale. After partying into the wee hours, I’d expected Tom and me to stagger into our room and consummate the evening with a tumble onto the requisite circular bed while the mirrors on the ceiling reflected our every decadent act. Roll credits, end of story.
Of course, our hotel room was nothing like that, and even if there had been a second backstage pass, I don’t think I’d have consummated anything. Right now, however, I was alone and in my element—glamor and just a hint of mystery with a stranger at the foot of the stairs. And whoever he was, he was about to join my movie, whether he liked it or not. Nicely draped in his own tuxedo.
Except he was still laughing at me. No longer Hedy Lamarr, I marched down the remaining steps, now in tough-guy Jimmy Cagney mode, hoping he wasn’t a house detective about to bounce me from the joint.
“What’s so funny?”
He said, “You look like you’re having a good time.”
“I am,” I replied, as if I made a living walking up and down hotel staircases. At the last step, and to my amazement, I discovered I stood two inches taller than him. I didn’t think there could be anyone shorter than me, yet he was, although what he lacked in height he made up in muscle, apparent from the thick forearm exposed as he extended his hand, and covered with a healthy amount of body hair of the Robin Williams variety. Behind us, another jackpot echoed in the casino.
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!
“I’m Bill.”
I shook his hand and lost myself in his eyes, which were hidden behind glasses. I’d popped my contacts in before I left the hotel, but left the all-essential drops in the room. The smoke in the air was making me squint, and I wondered if Caesars’ amenities included an all-night drugstore.
“Did you see Ann-Margret’s show?”
“Yes. I especially liked the number where she sang and danced with her old film clips.” Oddly, I now pointed out, Ann had looked younger now than she had in her Birdie days. After saying that, I hoped Bill didn’t think I was too bitchy.
“Have you seen the pool?” It was a charming non sequitur.
I shook my head and we, two penguins, walked outside. The deserted pool was oversized, like everything at Caesars (except my new acquaintance), and decorated in a Roman Holiday motif. The fresh November air, dry as vermouth and windy and warm, had the same effect on me as a bushel of raw oysters. I eyed Bill much like a cat does a canary.
“Where are you from?” we both said at the same time.
“Los Angeles,” we both answered.
This was an incredible run of luck. Had I not been so interested in continuing my conversation with Bill, I knew I could have run in, plopped a hundred on the roulette wheel, and doubled my bet.
“My friends are backstage getting her autograph.” Bill said.
With that, I might as well have been Cinderella—wearing a watch with a dead battery—who hears the village clock strike midnight. Tom! My date-in-name-only. He had paid for the show tickets. Yikes.
I was glad the pool area was discreetly lit, as I knew my eyes had bugged out. “My…friend is probably looking for me.”
“Boyfriend?” Bill asked.
I shook my head. He too had mentioned friends. I prayed that was plural.
“Boyfriend?” I queried, holding my breath.
“No. Let’s go back in.” And there, in the stillness, beside the shimmering pool reflecting faux-ancient columns and pseudo-classical statuary, with the lights of the Strip illuminating the sky above us in a Technicolor rainbow, Bill leaned over to kiss me, and there was nothing faux or pseudo about it. Bingo.
Okay, so he wasn’t that much shorter than me.
During the walk back into the casino, my sense of honor attacked me. I had come to Las Vegas with Tom, and even if things hadn’t worked out, manners dictated I should remain with him. I’d been on the receiving end of being dropped more often than I cared to remember, and it wasn’t a pretty feeling. The polite thing, the honorable thing, would be to get Bill’s number and call him later.
Or I could tell Tom See ya and drag Bill to the nearest poker table. We’d fit easily under the green tablecloth.
For years I’d been the good boy with the straight A’s. I was entitled to a little selfishness. And if Bill turned out to be a mass murderer, well, so be it. It wasn’t the first time I’d gambled on romance and come up short—make that lost.
The casino was swarming with activity, except around Tom, who stood tapping his foot impatiently where we had parted earlier. What a difference twenty minutes can make!
“Where have you been?” he said, eyeing Bill as if his lamb had come back to the pen accompanied by a miniature wolf.
I can be pretty quick with my back against the wall. I did a double take. “Oh! Why, this is___Bill. He’s from…Los Angeles. Small world, isn’t it? Bill, don’t you know…Tom?” I hoped this cocktail party chatter made it seem as if we were all old friends.
I needed to go no further with my charade. Bill’s friends Ray and Greg, also tuxedo-clad, popped over clutching programs. Never before or since have I felt as if I’d fallen through a film screen and right into a classic screwball comedy. If Carole Lombard and William Powell strolled up, I would not have been surprised.
“I’ve been invited to go with some of Ann’s friends—” Tom said, his voice fading out after go. Just where they were going escapes me now. Maybe Ann-Margret herself had seen Tom in the front row clutching his posters and was spiriting him away for a private screening. Whatever the destination, I knew providence was removing Tom. I needed to offer a novena, at my earliest convenience, to thank the patron saint in charge of romance. “I have my key, so I’ll see you back at the hotel,” I answered, hoping back at the hotel meant tomorrow around the time we caught the cab to the airport. It probably was not the most tactful dump, but I didn’t care. This was a magic moment, and I was going to hope for a royal flush. I could blame it on the staircase and the Stoli.
With Tom conveniently removed, I got acquainted with Bill and his friends. He was the chief financial officer for an upscale Century City firm. Ray was an entrepreneur who owned a variety of successful businesses. Greg was Ray’s boyfriend of the moment, and didn’t appear to have any job other than placating Ray, which appeared to be a full-time job. Ray wanted to play baccarat, so we went into the high roller area, the one cordoned off with velvet ropes. We were ushered through by burly yet impeccably groomed guards as if they had been waiting for us.
Ray lost five hundred dollars on his first bet. As I saw him toss another chip down, my mind reeled with the thought that his chip could pay my rent. To my relief, Bill was much more frugal with his money, and we watched Ray lose, and lose, and lose. In fact, Ray and Greg became so absorbed in their game that we were able to casually fade into the background.
