Between Boyfriends (3 page)

“Steven! It’s your mother! Are you ignoring me?” my mother’s voice bellowed even louder than before. Her tirade continued, each word hitting the air like the heels of an angry, post-menopausal flamenco dancer. “I called you almost an hour ago, why haven’t you called me back? Where can you possibly be on a Sunday? You said you liked to rest on Sundays. That’s why you can’t come over to have dinner with me. Are you lying to me, Steven? Have you become a son who lies to his mother? Are your restful Sundays an elaborate lie? I would really like to know so I can adjust my positioning on the chart of what’s important in your life. I thought I was in the first box, Steven, but obviously I am mistaken!”

Contrary to popular opinion, my mother is not Jewish, she’s Sicilian, which means she’s like a Jew, but has access to a gun. At sixty-seven, Anjanette Ferrante is a forceful woman who has only taken no for an answer once, when she asked my father’s doctor if the operation he suggested would save his life. I knew that if I didn’t call her back immediately she would be at my office tomorrow morning wearing a black mourning veil.

“Ma, it’s me,” I said after she picked up the phone before the first ring ended.

“Me who?” she countered.

“Your favorite son!”

“Paulie, how nice to hear from you,” my mother said over-dramatically. “I wish your brother Steven would return my phone calls as quickly as you do.”

“Oh shut up, Ma! I was out shopping. It’s how I relax.”

“Where’s your cell phone? What if I died, how would anyone contact you?”

“If you die, it doesn’t matter when I get the call. You’ll already be dead!”

“Don’t yell at your mother!” my mother yelled.

“Don’t leave crazy messages on my machine!” I yelled back. “I save them, you know. When I accumulate enough I’m going to use them against you in a court of law and have you committed.”

“Like your father didn’t try that a hundred times,” she replied.

“Anjanette, I’m ignoring you,” I said, then braced myself and continued, “Now what do you mean by ‘favor’?”

My mother’s tone of voice immediately changed from marked to telemarketer.

“As president of the Salvatore DeNuccio Tenants Group it is my responsibility to entertain the tired, the hungry and the poor of our small, impoverished village.”

“You live in a retirement community in Secaucus, Ma, not Ellis Island!” I said. “You have tennis courts, a pool, a bingo hall, and a piano bar. I can’t wait until I’m sixty-five so I can move in. I’ve already put my name on the waiting list.”

“We want more, Steven! We’re in the twilight of our years and we want more than a few laps in a heated pool and Sing-a-Long with Jerry Herman night,” she shouted back. “I ask you as a gay man who knows a thing or two about the musical theater, how many times can you sing about corn husks and bougainvillea?”

Finally my mother was speaking my mother tongue.

“All right, what do you want from me now?”

“I want one of your soap people to come here and sing for our Christmas party,” she said nonchalantly.

“Christmas isn’t for another two months,” I shot back without a trace of nonchalance.

“A good president plans early,” she responded with a trace of disdain. “So which star can I say is going to sing? The pregnant nun or the blind obstetrician?”

“You know I can’t help you,” I said, trying to reclaim my calm.

“Remember the songs need to be happy ones, nothing about Jesus freezing in a manger or wise men bribing innkeepers,” she said calmly, ignoring me. “Ideally we’d only like songs that Bing Crosby might have sung. Everybody loves Bing.”

“Ma, we’ve been down this road before. I need to separate my personal life from my professional.”

“Oh really?”

My heart missed a beat. I knew that this tone of my mother’s voice meant that she had found something out about me that she was about to use against me. It was the same tone of voice she used when she found the
Playgirl
magazine under my bed when I was seventeen and then asked if I wanted to hone my organizational skills by cleaning up the garage.

“Then perhaps you can explain why you are quoted in this week’s
Homo Extra
magazine as saying, ‘I’m thrilled that I was able to work out our production schedule so Lorna Douglas—one of the top stars of
If Tomorrow Never Comes
—will be the showcase of this year’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis holiday show. It gives me such real satisfaction when my professional life can merge with my personal.’”

My mother had so blindsided me with this stunning revelation that for a second I almost missed the obvious.

“Why the hell are you reading
Homo Extra
?”

“Lenny Abramawitz recently became homosexual and his granddaughter who lives in the city brings him gay materials to help him cross over,” she explained. “Loni is very sweet. Buck-toothed, but sweet.”

“Ma, the GMHC gala is a very high-profile gig for Lorna,” I said. “She wants to transition to Broadway and this is a great opportunity for her.”

“And what is the Salvatore DeNuccio Tenants Group Christmas celebration?” she asked. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s what the Secaucus
Herald
called ‘
The
annual holiday treat for mature adults.’ And they put the
The
in italics!”

“Ma, I really don’t think I can help you out,” I said, knowing full well that by the end of our conversation I would have committed to help her out and agreed to run the lights for the show myself.

“Stevie, you have to do this for your mother,” she began. “I already told my ladies that one of your soap people will be appearing live to sing and perhaps dance.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have committed yourself,” I said, exasperated. “You watch
I Love Lucy
every day. Have you learned nothing?”

“I was put on the spot! Paula D’Agostino started talking about her kid who works on that friggin’
Today
show. She said Katie Couric—who Paula said
still
talks to her daughter—is going to come here and demonstrate what a colonoscopy really is and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I told Paula, ‘Katie can shove her colonoscopy up her ass, my Stevie is going to bring us the gift of music this holiday season.’ My ladies cheered me on,” my mother added proudly. “You cannot make me disappoint my ladies, Steven.”

Before I could even utter a reason why Lorna could not perform at Mr. DeNuccio’s retirement villa, she continued.

“What did I tell you the day you told me you were homosexual when I found you trying to squeeze into my Easy Spirit beige pumps? What did I say?”

“You said you weren’t disappointed in me,” I responded sheepishly.

“That’s right. I was disappointed in your choice of shoe, but I was not disappointed in you because you were gay.”

“I know,” I said even more sheepishly.

“So don’t disappoint me now, Steven. I need you more than ever.”

“I will do my best to get someone to sing at your show.”

“That’s my boy,” my mother said proudly. “Now I have to go, bingo starts at seven and Mama need a jackpot!”

So many things raced through my mind after my mother hung up on me. Why it should never surprise me that I get sucked into her hijinks, how I secretly love to get sucked into her hijinks, and how Flynn and my mother both refer to themselves as Mama. I made a mental note to ask Lorna Douglas if she’d like to tour as I pulled the torn piece of the
New York Times
Arts section out of my pocket. I took a deep breath, happily realized that I hadn’t felt this nervous since I asked out Johnny Sanducci, the premed student who became my first boyfriend, and dialed Frank’s number. After four rings the machine clicked on. As I listened to Frank’s deep masculine voice assure me that I had called the right number, that I should leave a message with my date and time, and that he would get back to me as quickly as humanly possible, I thought that perhaps I should hang up and call him back later. But then I realized my number would be electronically saved on his machine so when I called him back later he’d know I had called him previously and hung up. Damn technology!

“Hi Frank, this is Steven,” I started. Then I coughed. “Sorry. This is Steven from Starbucks. You, um, gave me your number on page three of the Arts section so I’m calling. I’ll keep this short and sweet so I don’t scare you off before I ever learn your last name, which I swear is something I’ve only done to two other guys before. That was a joke. It was actually three guys. That was another joke. Sorry, I guess it’s not good to joke when you don’t have an audience. Makes you feel like Carrot Top. That was another joke.”

It was then that I remembered what Johnny Sanducci said when he broke up with me. “You’re a really sweet guy, but you should never try to tell a joke.” Taking a deeper breath I continued rambling on Frank’s voice mail.

“Please note that if I could erase this message I would, but I can’t so this, sadly, will have to count as our first conversation,” I said, stifling a nervous laugh. “Please don’t use this message against me and give me a call when you can or as quickly as humanly possible—you see I do listen, even though I have a tendency to ramble when I’m nervous. Okay, that’s all, I’ll talk to you later.”

I left my home number and my work number on his machine and was about to give him my cell phone number when I realized I had already blown it with Mister Devastatingly Handsome Regular Guy so it really didn’t matter if I gave him my Social Security number, he was never going to call and my love life, which had been so promising less than an hour ago, was now as infertile as Lorna’s character, Ramona, on
ITNC.

Two hours later, Frank still hadn’t called me. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror for about twenty minutes trying to figure out why I felt so handsome when Frank’s green eyes stared down at me and why I felt so ugly when I stared at myself. When I finally tore myself away from the mirror, I immediately picked up the phone and started to dial Frank’s number, then stopped. I started several more times, stopped several more times and once got all the way to the sixth digit before slamming the phone down in frustration because I realized if this relationship stood any chance of survival Frank had to return my first phone call. It was the least he could do.

For the rest of the evening, I putzed around my apartment, cleaned then re-cleaned my mini-kitchen, and finally watched an
I Dream of Jeannie
episode on TV Land, which simply made me long for a simpler, more magical time. But no matter what I did, I kept wondering why Frank didn’t call me back. A few minutes before midnight, I finally turned off the television and accepted that my day would end like it had started, with me being duped by a man. As I dragged my taut-yet-single ass into bed and pulled the charcoal gray Calvin Klein comforter and complementary pale pink sheets up to my chin, I clung to one saving grace: my full-size bed is much smaller than Ely’s, so chances were good that at least one other gay man in New York City was feeling lonelier than I was tonight.

M
onday mornings on the set of
If Tomorrow Never Comes
are like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory before the tiny Oompa-Loompas stick their tiny chocolate time cards into the tiny chocolate time card machine and man their tiny chocolate stations. It’s all boring book scenes without the jaunty yet repetitive music. And like Mr. Wonka’s factory it can also be a dangerous place to be. Unless you learn to follow the instructions from the network brass, ignore the phone calls from every actor’s agent, and stay far, far away from the show’s resident diva.

Miss Loretta Larson hates every morning, afternoon, and evening spent in fictional Wonderland, but she hates Monday mornings the most. Mainly because she spent Saturday and Sunday in a drunken stupor trying to forget that on Monday morning she once again has to take up residence as Regina O’Reilly, the grande dame of Wonderland. Loretta is a bitter, angry, lonely actress, but the fans adore her so even though she is also a bad actress, she’s one lucky lush. For the past twenty-eight years Loretta Larson has repeated the same facial expressions, vocal inflections, and cosmetic injections, yet somehow manages to keep the fans of
ITNC
entertained with her performance and obsessed with her persona. They worship at her 100-percent-proof, liver-unfriendly altar and, thus, everyone else who works with Loretta worships her as well.

“Loretta!” I exclaimed, clutching my Venti skim, extra-hot, light-whipped peppermint mocha (which I will refer to henceforth as my Starbucks Usual). “Love the poncho.”

“Some fuckin’ Mexican immigrant wanted to charge me fifty bucks for it on the Upper East Side,” she exclaimed in her trademark raspy voice. “I said, ‘You’re not even
allowed
on the Upper East Side!’ I tossed him a twenty and told him to give me the poncho or I was going to call INS.”

“Damn those leaky borders,” I replied.

Before I could tell her how the yellow angora of the poncho almost perfectly matched the yellow jaundice of her skin, the Loretta everyone knew, hated, and fawned over announced her arrival in typical Monday morning fashion.

“People!” she shouted very much like the male passengers on the
Titanic
when they were told there really were no extra life jackets. “Where’s my fucking coffee?!”

Experience had taught me that when Loretta screeched, you had to get out of the way or risk being trampled by the throng of interns, entry-level producers, personal assistants, and nervous executives who inevitably responded to her banshee cry the way the Oompa-Loompas responded to Mr. Wonka’s piccolo whistles. (Which I always believed was a nod to Captain Von Trapp’s ingenuous way of calling his children to order before Maria swooped in from the mountains and offered the captain two new favorite things to wrap his lips around.) My adrenaline kicked in and I, along with my trusty Starbucks Usual, sought cover in the first office I could find, which luckily was the site of the production meeting I was almost late for.

“Steven!” cried Laraby Simmonson, my boss
and
a closeted homosexual.

To be honest, no one knows if Laraby really is gay, but he is definitely gay-ish. And all that’s needed to start a rumor about the sexual status of a single man working in the soap opera industry is the
ish
part. Personally, I never understood the fascination about Laraby’s sexual preference because he looked like a cross between Dick Cheney and Jeff Stryker. Even if he did possess an incredibly long, thick and mouthwatering dick, he was also fifty-something, short, balding, pasty, and when he wasn’t being arrogant he was being charming in order to persuade you to believe in or do something you knew in your gut was false and evil. But in defense of all the “Is he or isn’t he?” rumors, Laraby is the only person I know who can transfeminate from frat boy to sissy queen in three seconds flat. And transfemination usually occurred on Monday mornings as a tonic to thwart Loretta’s hungover harangues.

“Dude!” Laraby shouted like my college dorm buddy. “We went up one-tenth of a point in the ratings!”

“That’s great news,” I said with a fake smile since I had already heard the news over the weekend.

Then Laraby shifted gears and sounded like my other college dorm buddy, who went to bizarre lengths to try and catch glimpses of me partially or fully naked.

“That’s
fabulous
news, Stevie! We should celebrate. Is it too early in the morning for canapés? What about a mixed fruit parfait? Chez Vouvez downstairs has the freshest berries all year long,
all year long
, can you believe it? And the chef, Roget, who I think is from Prague, puts them in the most darling parfait glasses that have slender necks and plump bottoms. They remind me of my mother. What do you say, Stevie? Should we do it? Should we celebrate?”

At that moment I realized even if Laraby was gay, I didn’t care. I was not the canapés, parfait, or Vouvez type. I like things simple. And he was a very complicated man.

“Why don’t we just raise our coffee cups in honor of everyone’s hard work?” I said.

A light mist appeared over Laraby’s eyes as suddenly as a San Francisco fog. My words had touched him.

“Your simplicity and honesty never cease to amaze me, Steven,” Laraby said as his eyes welled with water. “Perhaps one night we can go to dinner. Some place simple, and talk about the simple things.”

I took an extra-long sip of my Starbucks Usual (which I will refer to henceforth as my SU) and was contemplating how to articulate a response that wouldn’t get me fired or groped, when the rest of the production staff barged into the room. Perfect timing
is
a soap’s mainstay.

“Bitchola is in rare form this morning,” cried Lourdes, the continuity girl. “She got all up in my face crazy cuz I told her that hot coffee is only gonna make her hot flashes seem hotter.”

“Did she throw her coffee in your face?” asked Leon, the lead director.

“No, she spit it on me,” Lourdes replied, showing us her coffee-stained shirt. “I’m letting the stains settle, then I’ll sell it on eBay to one of her psychotic fans. Give me a bitch, I’ll make bitchinade.”

“Excuse me,” Laraby said as a cue that the Loretta-bashing should cease. “I’d like to propose a toast.”

With the same conviction that Brigitte Nielsen once adopted to convince Sly Stallone that she would remain faithful to him even if the
Rocky
franchise went bankrupt, Laraby explained that despite the harsh truth that the world of soap opera had seen much better days,
ITNC
was still able to perform a miracle every now and again. At least one-tenth of a miracle. And before we entered the madness that is Monday morning, he wanted us to raise our coffee cups and pay homage to all of those who helped make this mini-miracle come true.

While no one was looking, Laraby raised his coffee cup one-tenth higher in my direction and winked at me, just like Frank had at Starbucks less than twenty-four hours before. I smiled weakly; was this a sign from above that I should sprint to my office to call Human Resources, or to call Frank? Regardless of what signals I was being sent, the phone calls would have to wait; Monday morning had begun and all else, including my Frank, would have to be put on hold for the next nine hours. When I’m at work, I am all business.

A half-hour later I ran to my office to check my messages while there was a break in taping. Lorna and Loretta were in the middle of a crucial scene that was an extension of last Friday’s cliffhanger in which Lorna as Ramona reveals to Loretta as Regina, Ramona’s older sister, that she has always known that Renata, their baby sister, never died in the boating accident five years ago, but has been in a coma in a secret location somewhere near Butte, Montana. It was this final part that was holding up production. Loretta was having yet another emotional breakdown because unbeknownst to the head writer, Loretta was, in fact, born somewhere near Butte, Montana, but had been run out of town when she was sixteen years old after her father discovered she was pregnant by one of the ranch hands. She got a botched abortion, was told she could never have children again, and that she could also never return to Butte or the surrounding area as she had shamed and defiled her family’s name. Some people have every reason to drink. And when I checked my machine and realized Frank still hadn’t called me back I felt like I was quickly becoming one of those people.

Fortunately I’m obsessed with planning so my day wasn’t as horrible as it could have been. I had prepared for what I knew would be a HINE—which is pronounced
Hi-Nee
and stands for Highly Intense Neurotic Experience—and forwarded my home phone to my work phone so during the day I would only have to check the messages left on one phone and not two. Seven years of therapy had not taught me how to corral my uncontrollable neurotic thoughts, but it had taught me how to make them seem more controllable.

Three hours later, while the writers were trying to decide if Renata should be moved from her secret location in Butte to one near Boise, Idaho or Cheyenne, Wyoming, I raced to my office again. Still no message from Frank, just one from my mother asking if Lorna Douglas had agreed to sing for the Salvatore DeNuccio Tenants Group. Frank may have disappointed me with his inconsistency, but my mother never would. At four hours and counting, I made my assistant check my messages, but Frank still remained silent. Five hours later I couldn’t help myself and walked out of a budget meeting claiming a weak bladder. When I realized I was still in the no-Frank zone I almost threw the phone out the window. My mother, bless her heart, remained consistent and left two more messages of increased urgency about Lorna and her New Jersey debut. I wrote
Lorna & Salvatore
on a Post-it and put it on my desk to remind me to deal with this matter when my head wasn’t drowning in thoughts and images of Frank.

Seven hours later Frank still hadn’t called me. I didn’t care that Loretta was taking valium with a bourbon chaser or that Laraby kept winking at me, all I could think about was that rat bastard Frank and how if he didn’t call me I would trump every psychologically challenged actor who ever appeared in our show by having a petit mal seizure right on set. I knew I needed to change direction or else I’d spiral out of control quicker than Jackée Harry’s career, so I counted to ten and reacted the only way a normal, red-blooded American gay man would: at five o’clock I sent an emergency e-mail to the boys and told them to meet me at Starbucks at six. I had to vent over a Venti.

“Why hasn’t he called me?” I questioned my friends as well as the universe.

“Why are you shaking?” Lindsay asked. “Are you hooked on Dexatrim again?”

“It’s my fourth Starbucks today,” I replied shakily.

“Honey, did you eat?” Flynn inquired.

“I had some baby carrots around noon.”

“Mama need starch,” Flynn said, tossing me a Yogurt Honey Balance bar. “It’ll absorb all that caffeine.”

“Not to mention the shock that your Mister Regular is probably just another regular two-timing, phone-number-tossing, no-good Chelsea boy with a killer smile and a cold heart,” Lindsay added.

“Sounds like someone’s channeling Patsy Cline
after
the plane crash,” said Gus in his perfect British diction that always sounded vaguely pompous and condescending, but because it also sounded more intelligent and superior than any American voice ever spoken, it was a sound that we all loved. “It’s only been one day, Steven.”

“Could you stop thinking rationally for a moment?” I asked. “I need your support.”

Gus ran his manicured fingers through his close-cropped, gray-speckled ebony hair as he pondered this request. He took off his titanium and matte black-framed Modo eyeglasses and stared at me with eyes so blue they would have humbled Paul Newman.

“Can’t I do both?”

“No, Gus, you can’t!” Lindsay replied. “The only time
both
works is when the Russian pairs figure skating team wins the Olympics because some Russian judge bribed a cash-poor French judge and the Canadians get robbed of their gold medal and the only way to make things right is for the Olympic Figure Skating Commission to give gold medals to
both
teams. If you haven’t noticed, that is not happening now. Steven does not need rationality
and
support so stop thinking old-man thoughts and pony up some positive vibes.”

“You know, Lindsay, Steven isn’t the only one who could benefit from rational thought,” Gus said, sounding completely pompous and condescending.

As always, Flynn decided to moderate this impromptu gay men’s group therapy session.

“Boys, there is no
I
in gay. But there is a
Y
. So let’s remember
why
we’re here,” Flynn said with a remarkably straight face. “We’re here to help Steven.”

As expected, Lindsay spent the next several minutes apologizing for his outburst and explaining why some words like
both
make him relive the injustice that is the modern day Olympiad. We all told him that we understood. We didn’t specify that what we understood was that he was psychologically damaged from the events in Norway and every four years when the Winter Olympics rolled around his skates had to be confiscated or else he would use them as razor blades to end his pain finally and symbolically. That was something that was simply understood.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with his phone,” Flynn offered.

“Maybe he got called away on a business trip?” Gus blurted out.

“Or maybe he had a family emergency,” Lindsay added. “You love family oriented guys.”

This show of support was catching on faster than a daisy chain among out-of-work actors in West Hollywood.

“Ooh! I know!” Flynn shrieked in a higher octave than normal. “Maybe, just maybe someone in his family tragically died. That would be wonderful.”

“That would be horrible,” I said.

“Yes, but no,” Lindsay interrupted. “Horrible for Frank, but a wonderful way for you to show how comforting and consoling you could be to the grief stricken. It’s the perfect Boyfriend Test.”