Second You Sin (21 page)

Rueben said to me. ‘I’m never going back to that again.’ ”

I knew I should have said something comforting to him, but thinking about how much he must have hurt my friend, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“He left,” Ansel said once the flow of tears slowed to a trickle. “He went out the door with nothing in his pockets and I let him. I knew what I said was wrong, but I just let him go.”

As I suspected, when Ansel said Rueben was dead, he meant “dead to him.”

“Ansel ,” I told him, “you have to pul yourself together. You can stil make this work. Rueben has a heart as big as the world, and I know he real y loves you. This doesn’t have to be the end.” Ansel looked at me gravely. “Kevin, the next day two policemen showed up at my door. They found Rueben in the al ey half a block down. He overdosed on heroin, Kevin.

“Rueben is dead.”

It was my turn to cry.

20

Hands Off the Man

“It’s just like when Farrah Fawcett’s character, Jil Munroe, left the Angels,” Freddy said, his voice soft and sad. “Only, she left to become a race car driver.

Not because she was dead or anything.” I nodded. After spending another hour with Ansel Darling, I cal ed Freddy and told him to meet me at our favorite restaurant, Foodboys. He assumed I’d be here with Rueben. When he arrived, I told him what happened.

“Of course, when Jil left,” Freddy continued, “she was replaced by her sister, Kris, played by perky ingénue Cheryl Ladd. Because the producers knew there always had to be
three
Angels.” Freddy looked down at his uneaten plate of pasta, absently twirling it into abstract patterns, like those people who rake Zen sand gardens on their desks.

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

“So my question to you is”—Freddy looked up from his plate, his deep brown eyes damp—“who’s going to be
our
third Angel? Because I was al set for Rueben to join our little team, and now he’s, wel , he’s not coming back, is he?”

I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to say anything just then.

“Fuck.” Freddy went back to spinning his spaghetti. “At least when Farrah left the show, she had a good reason. She had to get on with her movie career. OK, maybe that didn’t turn out so wel , but that’s not the point. At least she was moving
toward
something. Something positive. But this . . .” He lifted a fork ful of food halfway to his mouth, let it drop again, the silver banging noisily against the plate.

“I thought you said he was
clean,
Kevin.” Freddy’s voice was about twice as loud as anyone else’s in the place. “I thought you said he was
done
with that shit.”

By this time, a few other patrons were stealing glances at us. We were becoming The Angry Fighting Couple That Everyone Stares at in the Restaurant. Only we weren’t a couple and we weren’t angry. At least, not with each other.

“I know,” I told him, pitching my voice low in an effort to quiet him down. Although I felt like screaming, too. “That’s what he told me. And Ansel , too. He had us al convinced.”

“Then what
happened?
” Freddy asked loudly, rendering moot my efforts to calm him.

“I don’t
know,
” I answered, a little overemphatical y myself.

Two guys at the next table looked at us and whispered. The older one was classic bear, ful beard, ful er bel y. He had the heavy build of a Colt model, as solid as a soldier from
300.
He looked angry.

His younger, cuter, multiply pierced companion seemed to be laughing him off. The big guy, who reminded me of Smokey the Bear, only not as likable, shook his head. Congruent with his assigned role, he growled.

“Goddamn it,” Freddy cried, hitting our table with his fist. Every glass, plate, and utensil lifted a few inches and noisily fel to its new place.

“Hey, Salt and Pepper”—Smokey turned to us

—“could you two keep it down a little? We’re trying to have dinner here.”

I decided to ignore the racial slur in hope of avoiding a scene. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just a bad time

. . . we lost a friend today.”

Piercey Boy looked about to offer a sympathetic comment but he was beaten to the mike by Smokey.

“Yeah, wel , the way you two act, I’m surprised you didn’t lose
all
your friends.” Smokey chortled.

Freddy tensed his jaw. I could see he was holding himself back. Probably a good idea.

Piercey Boy hit his companion on the arm. “Their friend is
dead,
man. Show some respect.”
Hmm,
I thought,
take the metal out of Piercey’s eyebrows,
ears, and whatever that area between your nostrils
is called, and he’d be a real honey.

“Like they showed us respect when they started their little show at the table next to ours? I didn’t come to this place to be insulted by twinks like Blondie and his pet monkey here.”

I knew Freddy was thinking exactly what I was: that Smokey deserved to be taken down hard for his obnoxious attitude. But tonight was not the night for it.

I think we would have stuck with that plan had Smokey not taken it to the next level.

“And you,” Smokey said, grabbing Piercey Boy’s forearm in his beefy paws, “better learn not to hit me.

Or correct me. Especial y in public.”

Piercey Boy tried to squirm out of Smokey’s grip.

“I’m sorry,” he whined. “I didn’t mean it.” Whatever trip these two were on didn’t look like a whole lot of fun. At least not to me. But who knows what they were into?

How do you tell the difference between love and
pain?

Smokey glowered. “You’re just getting yourself into more trouble, boy. Shut up.”

Piercey tried harder to pul his arm away. “Come on, man, you’re hurting me. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

A vein in Freddy’s forehead throbbed steadily in a way I’d never noticed before.

Smokey twisted Piercey’s arm a little. Piercey gasped in pain.

“Al right,” I said, “that’s enough. I’m sorry if we bothered you. Let’s just forget it.”

“Fuck you,” Smokey barked at me. He gave another quarter turn to Piercey’s arm. Piercey moaned.

I looked at Piercey. “Is this what you two do? I mean, I don’t want to get in the middle of—whatever it is you have going—but it looks like he’s real y hurting you.”

Piercey’s eyes were wide with alarm. “I . . .” Smokey let go of Piercey’s arm and stood up. He leaned over our table. His face was inches from mine. “You little shit. Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to my boy?”

Freddy stood up, too, his chair fal ing back with a crash. I took a quick look around—yup, we had everyone’s attention now. Waiters whispered to each other with a what-do-we-donow urgency.

“I got this,” I told Freddy. I stood up, too.

Hey, let’s make it a standing party.

My head was a few inches south of Smokey’s chest. Hard as it was to be intimidating at this angle, I figured I’d give it a try.

“Listen, buddy,” I said, “I said we were sorry, OK?

So, let’s just go back to our dinners and move on.” Smokey grabbed the front of my shirt in his huge hand. “Oh yeah, little man? Who’s gonna make me?” Freddy stepped forward but I put up my hand. “I said I got this.

“Al right, Kong,” I said, “your friend may think it’s fun being pushed around by you, but you have five seconds to get your grubby hand off of me.”

“Or what?” Smokey snickered. “You gonna cal your mommy on me?”

Smokey may be a bad guy, but I didn’t hate him
that much.

“Or,” I said sweetly, “I’m going to break off your arm and beat you to death with it.”

Smokey brought his hand up to smack me. “I am real y going to enjoy slapping the smart out of you, boy.” He pul ed me toward him.

I was always a little guy. Blond, cute, boyish. The kind of kid who couldn’t put up a fight if you paid him to.

A few years ago, I was in a near-empty subway except for some guys who decided I was a little gay-looking for their tastes. Two hours later, I was in the hospital with no wal et, multiple bruises, and a cracked rib.

I don’t remember anything that happened between the time those guys started walking toward me on the E train and when I woke up in my hospital bed.

But I do remember how I felt when I woke up. I remember the pain and the humiliation and the decision I made never to be a victim again.

Little as I was, I needed an edge. I was already strong and limber from years of gymnastics, but that wasn’t enough to protect me. So, I took some self-defense courses at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center. I fol owed them up with advanced training in one of the principles they taught at the center, Krav Maga.

Krav Maga is a fighting technique initial y developed for self-defense in World War Two by Jews in Czechoslovakia who were harassed by Nazi youth. It was later refined and expanded upon by the Haganah, an Israeli defense force.

Let me give you a piece of advice: Don’t fuck with the Israelis.

Krav Maga isn’t a sport like karate or an art like Judo. Krav Maga is about survival. It’s about doing whatever is necessary to neutralize your opponent and take him down fast. It teaches you how to move quickly from defense to offense, to employ the aid of any available objects in your vicinity, and to go for your attacker’s most vulnerable areas first.

It’s not pretty and it’s not fair.

But it works.

Smokey wanted to pul me closer? Fine. I went with it, not only al owing myself to be pul ed toward him but actively moving in. It caught Smokey off guard; he expected me to pul away. I felt him stiffen in surprise. Good.

We al have hard and soft parts. It was time to introduce some of Smokey’s squishy bits to some of my hard ones.

I brought my knee up to meet his bal s. The air whooshed out of him. “Fuck,” he cried, instinctively bending over at the waist. “You little . . .” But I was denied the pleasure of hearing whatever Smokey was about to say because as he was leaning down, I was jumping up. The top of my skul is hard, what’s inside his mouth, not so much. Which is why it must have hurt like a motherfucker when I hit his jaw with my head and he almost bit off his own tongue.

Now, he didn’t know which way to bend. He let go of me and stepped back. One hand went to cradle his bal s, the other flew to his mouth.

I checked out Piercey. Was he going to rush to his boyfriend’s defense? Apparently not. In fact, he was smiling. I smiled back.

Smokey noticed I was looking away and decided to make his move. He bent forward to rush me. Too bad for him, he was slow. Whether natural y or because his testicles had swol en to the size of ostrich eggs, I couldn’t say.

You know what real y hurts? Getting hit in the kidney. Now, Smokey knew, too. He doubled over again.

Time for my hard elbow to meet the back of his exposed neck. I brought it down decisively. Smokey crumpled to his knees.

I brought my leg back enough to let him see how wel positioned I was to kick him in the head.

“Enough?” I asked.

He nodded. Gently, as if getting ready for a nap, he lowered himself to the ground, curled into a fetal position, and whimpered. I was pretty sure he wasn’t playing possum, but I kept my eyes on him, anyway.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve taken down a big guy.

As much as I hated to admit it, it never stopped being fun. I felt better than I had al day.

There was a murmur of voices as everyone went back to their meals. That’s New York for you. When the show’s over, it’s over.

“Why is it,” Freddy asked, “that I love seeing you do that so much?”

“Me, too!” Piercey gushed. “That was
awesome.
” Freddy looked at him. “So, what’s the deal with you two? You going to take him home and kiss his boo-boos?”

“You kidding?” Piercey asked. “It was a first date.

Last date, as it turns out. We met on BearTrap.com. I like a bit of rough, but this guy’s just plain rude.”

“There’s never an excuse for rudeness,” Freddy agreed. “Good manners are important even in S and M.
Especially
in S and M, now that I think of it.” Piercey squeezed Freddy’s prodigious bicep.

“What about you, stud? You like it rough?” Freddy put an arm around Piercey. “I throw it down like it’s going out of town,” he asserted.

I didn’t even know what that meant.

This was usual y the point of the evening where Freddy made his excuses and walked off with the flavor of the hour.

I was stil watching Smokey, but I felt Freddy’s eyes on me.

“But not tonight,” he told Piercey. “Tonight my friend needs me.”

Wel , that was a pleasant surprise. I smiled.

“But that’s just tonight,” Freddy said. “Give me your number because tomorrow I might need
you,
baby.” That’s my Freddy.

21

I Got Plenty of Nothing

Ten minutes later, Freddy and I were at The Scoop, a local ice cream shop that makes its own New York–inspired flavors. Since our dinner had been rudely interrupted, it was only logical we skip right to dessert. At least it seemed that way to us.

Tomorrow, I’d pay for it on the treadmil .

The Scoop had a laid-back, downtown vibe that perfectly suited our mood. The lights were dim and the music was mel ow jazz. We took a quiet banquette in the corner so we could talk.

Freddy enjoyed a Broadway Banana Split, with once scoop each of Chelsea Chocolate, Lickin’