Between Boyfriends (20 page)

As I poured half the contents of the hair dye into the bottle of cheap, generic brand Suave, I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. For a moment I felt like Lorna’s character Ramona, who had once tried to drug her sister, Regina, by mixing the powder from her sleeping pill caplets into her facial cleanser. But the next moment I regained control and hoped my attempt would be more successful, for Ramona only succeeded in giving Regina an allergic rash.

The rest of the night was spent with me half-listening to Brian and Rodrigo’s activity schedule for the rest of December, half-chastising myself for not having a job that has a better time-off policy, and half-erect because I have to admit playing Electra Woman gets me excited. When I fucked Brian later on that night I was half-smiling not only because I thoroughly enjoy topping my guy, but because I had a dirty little secret.

The next few days were more suspenseful than any episode of
ITNC
ever filmed. The weekend passed and Rodrigo still had not been cast as My Favorite Martian. By Tuesday there was still no word and I grew convinced that Argentinians had a different approach to hygiene and simply never washed their hair. Tuesday night Brian left for a business trip, which meant I would probably not hear about the transformation until he returned that Saturday. Fortunately, between Christmas shopping and helping my mother with the last-minute details of her Christmas extravaganza I was too busy to dwell on my misdeed. And before I knew it Saturday night had arrived.

“Where the frig is Baby Jesus?” my mother shrieked.

“Here he is!” Audrey replied, cradling the statue of Baby Jesus as if it were a real infant. “I gave him a little bath, he was very dirty. Made me feel like Mary Magdalene.”

“Audrey! He’s supposed to be dirty! He’s sleeping in a manger next to farm animals.”

“I am sorry, Anjanette, but you know that I cannot bear a dirty child.”

Anjanette yanked the statue of Baby Jesus from Audrey’s arms and raised it overhead. When she spoke it was as if she were auditioning for the role of the Blessed Mother in a film to be directed by Mel Gibson. “This baby is a symbol, Audrey! A symbol of how cruel and hateful people can be to one another. Don’t you know the true spirit of Christmas?”

“I apologize, Anj, I just wanted to wash my Lord.”

“Well, knock it off! Now go find Betty Occhipinti. She smokes. Smear some of her cigarette ash all over Jesus so it looks like he spent the night in a barn! Steven!”

Involuntarily I flinched. I was used to my mother’s powerful personality, but she was starting to get Santa-nasty. I needed to channel my inner Rudolph and save the holiday.

“Mother! You need to take your own advice and knock it off. Your attitude is becoming frightful.”

It was harsh, but it did the trick. “I have become frightful, haven’t I? Oh, Steven, I’m sorry.” Then she turned to her people and cried, “I’m sorry, everyone!”

And her people cried back, “That’s all right, Anj!” “We still love you!” “You’re the joy to our world, Anj!”

“Thank you. I couldn’t do this without your support. And that tree has too much garland!! Steven, I’ve just been on edge. So many decisions, so many details, and all the while I have the evil eye of that friggin’ Paula D’Agostino on my back just waiting for me to fail. At least this event has gotten me closer to God.”

“By being dictatorial and dreadful to your subordinates?”

“By understanding how difficult His job is. I now know the pain of leading people.”

I felt my eye twitch. I had to learn to let my mother’s comments skim off my skin and not permeate my central nervous system. If not, she would succeed in leading me to an early grave. “God must be so proud that he created you in His image.”

“I’m done!” Audrey shouted, entering the community room. “I’ve restored Jesus to his former glory.”

What she did was turn the statue of Baby Jesus into Al Jolson’s offspring. His entire body was covered in cigarette ash. Regardless, my mother’s demeanor softened.

“He’s beautiful,” my mother sighed. She then put her arm around Audrey and whispered, “Only a few of us know that Jesus was really a little mulatto boy.”

An hour later, the room was as unrecognizable as my mother’s revisionist views on religion. She might be maniacal, but she got results. The community room where the tenants played bingo, poker, and harmless mind games as they regaled each other with hyperbolic stories of their glory days was transformed into a winter wonderland. A seven-foot Douglas fir was propped in the corner of the large room, its branches adorned with an array of red and silver decorations of every shape and size imaginable, and topped with the porcelain red-robed, white-haired angel that sat on top of every Christmas tree we ever had growing up. She, like my mother, was a little frayed and tattered at the edges, but still the queen of the holiday season.

There were also red and white poinsettia plants on every table, mistletoe hung from the ceiling (one was conveniently thumb-tacked to the top of the doorjamb at the entrance of the community room), and one entire wall was covered with hand-crocheted stockings—one for each resident of the Salvatore DeNuccio Towers. On opposite sides of the stage where Lucas would make his New Jersey debut in less than an hour were near-life-size figurines of the Christmas season’s two opposing figures. Stage left was the Nativity, complete with the blackface baby Jesus, and stage right housed fat Santa in a semi-airborne sleigh being pulled by two of his slavedeer. I would be sitting stage left because in my book mulatto beat overweight every time.

And openly gay beat closeted hands down. Finally, Lucas had figured that out for himself. When he arrived—sans eye patch and arm cast—he didn’t seek me out first, nor did he wait to introduce himself to my mother; his eyes scanned the room until they landed on Flynn.

“I need to talk to you,” I heard Lucas tell Flynn.

“So talk,” Flynn replied.

“In private.”

“So you’re still afraid to be caught in public with me?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Lucas said. “Please.”

An emotionally conflicted Flynn studied Lucas’s face to determine if Lucas was acting or acting real. He decided it was the latter and led Lucas to the bathroom. The residents were so excited to see a bona fide soap opera star offscreen that they didn’t even comment on the fact that two men just entered a bathroom with seating for one. I pushed an elderly woman wearing reindeer antlers out of the way so I could press my ear up against the bathroom door. I heard nothing except the bathroom fan whirling and the bells on the woman’s antlers jingling.

A few minutes later the door opened and Lucas came out looking as if it were the most wonderful day of the year; Flynn looked more like a traumatized Margaret O’Brien after Judy Garland sang the completely depressing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Whatever they had talked about ended with a difference of opinion.

“He told me he has not stopped thinking about me since the first time he saw me in Starbucks.”

“I knew it! They should rename that place the Love Café!”

“And despite the fact that his agent wants him to keep his homosexuality hush-hush, he asked me out to dinner tomorrow night,” Flynn said. “And then he gave me probably the most romantic kiss I have ever received in or out of a men’s bathroom.”

“Then why do you look like you just had a mouthful of figgy pudding?” I asked.

“Because, Steven, once I tell him that I’m HIV-positive all romantic kisses and dinners will be a thing of the past.”

“Flynn, you don’t know that.”

“I know that he’s a celebrity.”

“Demi-celebrity.”

“Who is anxious to move up in the ranks. One surefire way not to do that is to date a man with a non-glamorous disease.”

“And there are diseases with hints of glamour?” I questioned.

“Diabetes, any cancer in remission,” Flynn said.

“You’re nondetectable, that’s just like remission.”

Flynn gave me a patronizing look. “It’s not the same thing and you know it.”

I didn’t know what to think. I felt like my mind was split in two and one half of me was Heat Miser and one half was Snow Miser. The snowy part of me was happy that Lucas was actually gay and had finally asked my best friend out on a date. But the hot, enflamed part of me was sad because I wasn’t certain that a happy ending would ever be part of Flynn’s future. Sometimes I was more scared about HIV than Flynn, and he was the one living with it. So I decided to act snowy.

“This isn’t a time to be scared,” I said, more for me than for Flynn. “This is a time to be joyful.”

“I am,” Flynn declared. “Right now I’m as joyful as a lord a-leaping in a field of other naked lords. But once I admit my status to Lucas I’ll be as depressed as a lonely, pear-hating partridge.”

I took my friend’s hand and peered into his eyes. “At least you’re not pear-shaped.”

Flynn laughed, but then Sebastian and Gus entered and Flynn tried to turn his laughter into a cough because Sebastian’s face was as long as his dick.

“Hey, Sebastian, why so sad?” Flynn asked. “Isn’t your
navidad feliz?
”

“He’s just a little…irritated,” Gus giggled.

“Gus, you promised!” Sebastian shouted.

Sebastian was so superficial that it was very easy to read between the lines. “I guess the bottom couldn’t rise to the top of the occasion,” I surmised.

Gus smirked. “Something like that.”

Ah! Clearly Sebastian had tried to fuck Gus and couldn’t get it up. It was the perfect comeuppance for Señor Sluttyslut. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to bust Sebastian’s chops for not being able to bust a nut all over Gus’s butt, because my mother was announcing that the concert was about to begin. We all sat down next to Paulie, Renée, and Trixie, and I saved a seat for Brian, who was going to come here directly from the airport.

“Hello, everyone, and welcome to the fourth annual Salvatore DeNuccio Tenants Group’s Christmas Celebration,” my mother shouted into the microphone. “I would like to thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for celebrating the spirit of the season and making this year’s party the best ever. And by
season
I am referring not only to Christmas, but to the lesser holidays too like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.”

It was finally clear why there was a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. next to a menorah.

“This year is extraspecial,” my mother continued, “because as I promised you so many months ago, tonight is not only a celebration of family and tradition, but also a celebration of music. Thanks to my son, Steven, we will be entertained by a major actor from the television community whose soap opera gets much better ratings than Katie Couric’s nightly news program.”

Even without a microphone, Paula D’Agostino could be heard cursing under her breath.

“Making his musical debut tonight is none other than Lucas Fitzgerald, that handsome young man who is the star of the TV show
If Tomorrow Never Comes
, which my son—another handsome young man—produces.” My mother beamed as the DeNuccio denizens applauded wildly. “Steven, why don’t you stand up and take a bow.”

Begrudgingly I stood, but I drew the line at bowing. I smiled and waved at the crowd shyly, which made the applause grow even louder. At that moment I saw that Brian had finally arrived, still wearing the baseball cap he always wears when he flies. As the applause died down, he sat in the seat next to me and then all the joy that I was feeling suddenly died too. I saw green. And not in the symbolic, envious way. I literally saw strands of green hair peeking out from underneath Brian’s baseball cap.

“I’ll explain later,” Brian laughed nervously. “It’s really kinda funny.”

My heart fell to my feet faster than Yukon Cornelius fell over the side of an arctic cliff. But unlike Yukon I didn’t have a bouncing Bumble to break my fall. So while my heart lay squashed and hemorrhaging on the ground, all I could do was maintain a quizzical gaze and pray to Baby Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. that my expression came off as sincere and not sinful. I leaned back in my chair to give Flynn, Renée, and Trixie a clear view of Brian’s greenery and they were less successful in hiding their expressions. My mother, for once, interfered at just the right time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give it up for Lucas Fitzgerald!”

Flynn, Renée, and Trixie’s sounds of horror were drowned out by the applause. We exchanged glances that said, “How the hell did Brian’s hair turn green?” “What the hell are we going to do now that Brian’s hair has turned green?” and “Are we on a one-way trip to hell because we turned Brian’s hair green?” The string of nonverbalized questions would have to wait to be answered, since Lucas was already asking the musical question, “Do you hear what I hear?” All I heard was a voice deep inside my head telling me “I told you so.”

The next hour was more painful than the time I volunteered at the Lower Hudson County Special Needs Institute to help out with their holiday party and got stuck singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with a kid who had a severe stutter. He couldn’t get past five golden rings without me slapping him across the side of the head. Although the kid was grateful, I was never invited back to the school and I had a feeling that Brian would never invite me back into his life once he found out I was the one who was responsible for his green locks. But then it hit me like a ton of green bricks—why was Brian washing his hair with Rodrigo’s shampoo?

My intestines wrapped themselves around each other even tighter as I imagined Brian naked in Rodrigo’s shower as Rodrigo massaged dime-store Suave into his scalp. The dread I felt that my secret would be exposed was quickly being replaced by anger. I couldn’t believe that my original fear—that Brian was cheating on me with Rodrigo—was coming true. I also couldn’t believe that Lucas was a damn fine songstress, but that was also true.

At the same moment that I was consumed with fright, hatred, and/or remorse, I was able to hear Lucas singing a string of holiday classics in a beautiful tenor voice that would have made Bing Crosby proud and brought tears to the eyes of many of the senior citizen spectators. When Lucas sang “There’s Always Tomorrow” directly to Flynn I saw a rainbow of hope that this yuletide would truly be gay. Flynn saw something else.