(photo courtesy Adam Millet)
While Wayne was getting ready to go out, the cat had showed up again, just waltzed right in like it lived there. Wayne had left the front door of his apartment ajar to catch a cross breeze, maybe secretly hoping the cat would return although he’d never admit that because Wayne likes to say that cat lovers are masochists, people who think they don’t deserve love, pathetic saps who get off on giving more than they get. Cats just take and take, offering nothing but the negligible pleasure of their fickle company, leaving nothing but fur. Not like a dog. Hell, even a fish gives more than a cat does, swimming around, putting on a pretty show. A fish is a contribution to the décor but a cat does nothing for him.
He was in the bathroom fixing his hair in the mirror when the cat slunk in and wrapped itself around his leg. “Hello there.” Wayne knelt down to scratch behind the ears and along the jaw, marveling at the softness of the fur under his fingertips. The cat closed its eyes with pleasure and when Wayne carried its small body into the kitchen to find the tin of expensive imported sardines he had bought just in case, that featherweight of warmth enfolded in his arms filled him with a fierce surge of tenderness and longing.
The cat snapped up the fish and licked the plate with its pink tongue. “Stupid cat,” he whispered fondly. “You shouldn’t trust just anybody.”
*
The bartender who brings his mojito is cute in a Matt Damon/Ricky Martin sort of way but a bit too beefy for Wayne, but nice looking, solid and trustworthy, and Wayne smiles with all his charm and slaps down a fat tip before he picks up the napkin with the glass and swivels on his barstool to appraise the room.
It’s good to be in California again. Looking back, the time he spent in Iowa City feels like one long, lonely vigil on a sidewalk outside of a window looking in on people that never acknowledged his presence, never turned to smile or lift a hand to wave or invite him inside. Iowa City had only one gay bar, a gritty joint filled with cigarette smoke and skinny white boys with sallow skin, crude tattoos, and baggy pants. Wayne prefers pretty boys, but he’s no pedophile; he likes them bathed, buffed, educated, well-dressed and employed, and the room is full of boys like this, nevermind that at least half are probably underemployed, part time, between jobs, in retail or a restaurant, because they’re young and pretty and there’s plenty of time. Sure, everyone pretends to be well educated and employed; everyone here seems to know what he wants, because it’s what everyone wants. It’s all about maintaining appearances. If Aunt Bea taught him anything or if the years he lived in her house impressed any implicit value upon him, it was the primacy of that Armani suit that demonstrated in clear-cut, monochromatic terms the importance of a costume in maintaining a certain reality. But this place full of smiling faces has nothing to do with Aunt Bea. In her house, she was alone at the top looking down and the fact that she has dared to enter his thoughts now irks him. He takes a long sip of drink and smiles at the room. Here, he thinks, we’re in it together, an ensemble cast. We’re all on the same dance floor.
Someone catches his eye and they lock eyes for a pulsing moment before the crowd surges between them, giving Wayne a moment to remember that his name started with a K—Kevin? Keith? — in graphic or interior design or something like that, that they had met six months ago, and that they had kissed. Back then, when he thought he would be hired any minute, his story was new-hire-at-UCLA-on-an-undeviating –tenure-track. Wayne shifts in his seat. He doesn’t want to catch Keith’s eye again because he doesn’t want to have to explain.
But it is nice to feel connected to a familiar face in the crowd. Sometimes Drew comes out with him. He knocked on her door earlier but she’s never home any more. If she were here, they’d have something to say about those Greek statues by the dance floor or the Morrissey redux. But when Wayne wants to mingle, Drew never understands what to say. She says things like, “Oh my god, you look just like Seth Green. Can I have your autograph?” She thinks it’s okay to elbow her way through to the DJ and make a request or ask someone to smell her breath. She doesn’t seem to know or care how to make herself look good and if she were here now, she’d probably talk too loud and get mint leaves from the drink stuck in her teeth.
But still, he misses her. He’s wearing the new shirt he bought with the birthday money from Aunt Bea and it fits him perfectly. He knows he looks good but he wishes she was here to say it.
On the other hand, when she’s not with him he is free to do whatever he wants. He knows he looks good, declares the deep voice of the narrator in Wayne’s mind. He takes another sip of his mojito and scans the crowd. Down the bar there’s a cute boy laughing at something someone said. The boy tosses back his long hair and laughs from his tight belly, not a cocktail laugh that ends with a sly glance to see who else got the joke but a full-throated guffaw. Now that looks fun, Wayne’s narrator intones, and he summons all his telepathic powers to lasso the boy’s eye and pull him in. Within fifteen minutes he’s deep in conversation with Joey, the twenty-three year-old actor/model who just moved out from Madison. Wayne has a thing for Midwesterners, he confesses, and leans in close to tell Joey about his current projects: an autobiography for a famous actress (he can’t divulge any more), and the screenplay he’s writing, sort of like Taxi Driver only different. Joey’s fawn-like eyes widen- he loves de Niro!
“Have I heard of you, Wayne?”
“If you haven’t, does that mean I don’t exist?”
Joey laughs and shakes his head.
“Good. Because I was wondering if you’re the kind of person who thinks that if you walked through that door that says VIP” —Wayne points to the sign—“that would make it come true. Poof, you’re very important.”
Joey laughs. Joey thinks he’s funny. They order another drink, and another. The night becomes a stream of details: forty foot curtains stirring in the breeze, a table burning with a hundred white candles oozing wax, a white tablet balanced on the tip of Joey’s tongue, a sweaty go-go dancer with dollar bills snaking out of his Calvins, a palm tree glowing electric pink, then blue, then pink, a long hallway full of alcohol fumes and a faint stench of piss, a painting of Elizabeth Taylor in a gold frame, and the ubiquitous shadows of boys embracing in the corners of the room.
While he’s standing at the urinal he imagines Drew leaning against the wall, shaking her head.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he thinks. “If I’m forced to affect the virtue of another man’s name or occupation for the sake of conversation, so be it. Besides, I’m not hurting anyone, am I? Just having some fun.”
“It’s true. You’re only hurting yourself,” she tells him. “But you don’t need to lie to get someone to like you.”
“I’m not lying—I’m adapting the truth. Or I’m adopting yours, which is mine too, in a way. This was all my idea, you know. I brought you to L.A. and told you what to do.”
“It’s true. I owe it all to you. You inspired everything. Like I always said, you’d make a wonderful father.” She looks down his dick in his hand and sighs. “But just tell me one thing, Wayne: Why not just be real?”
“I like to take a lump and give it wings.” She raises her eyebrow. “You know where I come from. You know me. When I’m around you, I can just be myself. But when you’re not here, I can do anything.”
The music thumps on and on. On the dance floor Wayne swims above himself looking down. Looking good, if he must say so himself. He is one with the crowd moving and breathing the same breath, pulsing slow motion in the liquid air, all together in this moment, one fused life in the giant womb of the world. He pulls Joey close and kisses him, marveling at the delicious feel of skin under his palm. He wants to lose himself and find himself and lose himself again.
(photo courtesy Kancano 2)
