It's All Relative (7 page)

A vacation home?

Suddenly I felt this overwhelming pressure—like the emergency door on a plane had suddenly been thrown open midflight over the Atlantic.

Gary furiously untied my bow.

“The box is
sooo
beautiful!” he gushed.

Gary unwrapped the tissue paper—dotted with hearts.

“It's so pretty!” he gushed.

And then he pulled out a three-pack of Hanes underwear.

Gary stared at me.

The waiter stared at me.

And then laughed, thinking it was a joke.

“Good one,” the waiter said. “Keep looking, sweetie,” he prompted
Gary, who began sifting through the box, gingerly at first and then furiously, like a dog in the trash. His actions said it all: There's got to be something better in here somewhere.

There wasn't.

No matter how hard he searched, Gary didn't find any bling.

“Hanes?” Gary finally gasped, fuming, very loudly. “Hanes
Her Ways
? Are you
kidding
me? You got me … 
underwear
? From
Penney's
?”

He yanked a sticker off the plastic bag.

I had forgotten to remove the price tag.

“They're boxer briefs,” I purred, trying to sound turned on. “In black. Your favorites. And they're very sexy.”

“Hanes ARE NOT SEXY!” he began yelling.

The entire restaurant was staring, as though we were a strolling mariachi band.

“What this says to me,” Gary continued, standing up, knocking his chair over, “is that you are the type of man who will buy me a vacuum for Christmas and a robe on my birthday. You are the type of man who will microwave anniversary dinners and buy used cars that smell like other people.”

“And travel to Mexico in July,” the waiter whispered.

“Shut up,” I said.

“You are not romantic!” Gary screamed, throwing his pack of underwear into my lap. “No, I take that back! You are not even … 
human
!”

And then he left.

To a smattering of applause.

And I don't know if I was more humiliated by the fact that everyone in the restaurant knew I had just bought my lover Hanes for Valentine's, or by the fact that he had summed me up perfectly.

When I got to the car, Gary was waiting. We drove home, not a single word exchanged.

When we walked in the front door, our silence was oddly amplified: Our new puppy, Marge—only a few months old—did not
charge the front door as usual, barking and whining, to greet us. Instead we found her passed out on the bed, literally in a coma, tinfoil spread all around her on our candy-inspired sheets.

“Oh, my God! What's wrong?” Gary said. “She's dead!”

“No, she's breathing!” I screamed. “Are you okay, baby? Margie, wake up.”

“What did she eat?” Gary said, studying what looked like dried poop all over her mouth.

Marge had eaten the two-pound chocolate bunny I had hidden for Gary.

We rushed her to the emergency room at the animal hospital, where we waited an hour to see if our baby was going to survive.

Finally, the vet emerged. “She's going to be fine. Give her two or three slices of bread tonight, more tomorrow, and then watch for uncontrollable diarrhea.”

And then, as if things could not get any bleaker for me on this Valentine's, the vet went ahead and added, “Marge is a very lucky girl. Just be glad it was cheap chocolate. If she'd eaten two pounds of the good, dark stuff, she'd be dead.”

On the drive home, Gary, tenderly nuzzling our moaning puppy, finally looked over at me and said: “I guess it pays to be an unromantic cheapskate every now and then.”

I opened my gifts from him late that night—cologne and clothes and concert tickets—and realized that the importance of Valentine's Day—any day, mind you—was not only heightened when you were a gay man but also when you realized you were finally, blessedly, in love.

The next year on Valentine's, I did two things: I bought a pair of kiddie valentines featuring kissing cupids and sent them to what I believed were the two addresses of my childhood bully and stalker. Inside each card, I wrote: “I hope you've found love. I have.”

And then I surprised Gary with a trip to Puerto Vallarta.

And he packed his Hanes.

“W
ade, get your ass out here!”

I inhaled deeply, peeked out my kitchen window, and saw four of my best friends, all in their thirties, sitting in an SUV, chugging beer.

It was seven
A.M
.

It was a Saturday in February.

It was Mardi Gras in St. Louis.

My friend Martin, who was driving, happened to catch a glimpse of my cheekbone through the kitchen shutter and laid on the car horn.

I flew out the door so the neighbors wouldn't get pissed.

“You're … 
ready
?” Martin said, somewhat in shock when I got in the car.

I was wearing funky jeans to show off my booty, a new leather coat, and a formfitting black turtleneck. Around my neck was an awe-inspiring array of high-end beads I picked up at a party store, including bejeweled alligators and mini–Mardi Gras masks, beads in blue and green and purple and yellow and silver, finished by a strand of pearlized white Barbara Bush beads that hugged my throat.

I was not out of the closet yet, but I was coming out in other
ways. I had lost weight, I was dressing better. Now I just needed to tell my boys that I liked boys.

Just not today.

Mardi Gras was one of my straight-guy rituals, one of the manly-man things I did to fit in with my fraternity brothers, like Super Bowl parties and fantasy football and watching
Entourage
.

I hopped into the SUV and looked at my straight friends: They were wearing baggy Levi's, tennis shoes, ball caps, and college sweatshirts.

“So … you're ready?” Martin asked again.

“Dang right, he's ready!” Mark yelled from the backseat.

Mark was already blindingly drunk, sipping Jack straight out of the bottle while gnawing on a bagel he had adorned with a layer of Doritos.

Mark was one of my insane college friends. Mark was
always
ready: ready to run naked and scale the goalposts after a college football game; ready to wander into strangers' parties, crap in their toilet, and not flush.

But now Mark was older. Mark was an accountant. Mark was married. Mark had kids. Mark and Mardi Gras now seemed a more unlikely combination than Stephen Hawking and
Dancing with the Stars
.

“Are we ready to see some jugs?” Mark yelled. “
Are we
?”

Mark was ready, it seemed.

He grabbed my shoulders and began poking his index fingers directly into my temple.

“And this, right here,” he said, the constant poking and shaking indicating me, “is the man to do that! Who wants a shot?”

Mark the accountant turned the bottle upside down and screamed, for some reason, “Fight the power! Who's with me?”

He handed me his bottle.

In college, I was a drinker of great notoriety. A twelve-pack
served as my happy hour. A case made me forget I was gay. But my mythical drinking did help our fraternity finish its first-ever keg during Greek Chug when two of our chuggers went out early after being disqualified for puking in their cups and trying to continue by chugging their own vomit.

But it had been years since I pulled sixteen hours of hard drinking.

“Drink! Drink! Drink!” Mark screamed. “Chug! Chug! Chug!”

I took a tiny sip, which immediately clashed with my recent coffee and OJ, and asked for a bagel. Mark handed me his.

It was seven fifteen
A.M
.

We headed downtown to St. Louis, blinded by the early-morning sunshine reflecting off the Arch, and parked in a lot miles from the parade, the roads blocked off in every direction.

Everyone emerged.

Except for Mark.

He was immobile.

“Mark?”

I nudged the accountant.

He was passed out.

Cold.

We left him in the car, just like we would have in college, with a note in his pocket explaining what had happened and a Bic-pen drawing of a dick going into his open mouth.

We hopped onto a bus filled with drunks and headed to the parade route.

The Mardi Gras parade in St. Louis was huge—second only in attendance, I believe, to New Orleans—and it took place in Soulard, the funky French district, akin to New Orleans's French Quarter, that butted downtown.

The bus bumped along Soulard's cobblestone streets, past its restored row houses, alongside its jambalaya of tiny bars and restaurants,
the constant, pungent odor of hops from the nearby Anheuser-Busch brewery tingling everyone's nostrils.

We were dumped off near the parade route, and my group of drunks fought our way through hordes of other drunks, eventually making our way to the front.

People were already screaming, “Beads!”

The overriding goal of any Mardi Gras parade is to accumulate as many cheap plastic beads as possible. Acquiring beads is of the utmost importance for straight men because they can be used later—when women are severely wasted—as bartering chips.

Beads for boobs.

Which was not a fair trade whatsoever in my book, kind of like the Indians selling Manhattan for twenty-four dollars' worth of trinkets.

And yet I knew that my expensive, store-bought beads provided me with a certain cachet and early advantage over other men—kind of like when an average-looking guy drives a Bentley. People think, “Who is he? How'd he get that? He must be someone very important!”

My beads served as a diversion. They were my manly fashion facade.

Which is why the entire duration of the parade, women begged me for my beads. They flashed their chests, they tossed their hair.

But those were all things I could do—with significantly more flair and drama—so their efforts went unrewarded.

That is until I ran, quite literally, into Big Red.

While standing in the alley of a bar waiting in line for the Porta Potty after the parade had ended, someone plowed into my back like a semi with failing brakes. I turned to find a very big girl with a crimson mustache. She was chugging a hurricane, which was a highly dangerous act, along the lines of putting out a fire with gasoline.

“I was here first,” she said, swinging her weight toward me, ready to rumble.

Her endless supply of hurricanes had turned the rim around her mouth red, like a kid who'd eaten too many cherry Popsicles. And then she stepped back and looked me over hungrily, ogling my crotch. “Oooh! Well, well, well … Bead me up, Scotty!”

Jesus Christ. It's not bad enough that she's a big straight girl who could throw me over her back, carry me away, and then sit on my face while she finishes off a chicken skewer, but she's also a Trekkie
.

“Good one,” I said as my friends popped into the alley and began to whoop and wail.

I was getting drunk, but not drunk enough for this.

“What'll it take for you to give me those alligator beads?” she slurred, licking her red-stained lips. “How 'bout you be Captain Kirk, and I'll be your Uhura?”

I would've murdered her on the spot, right then and there, and gotten away with it, too, if I had only known for sure that my case would be heard by an all-gay jury led by foreman Neil Patrick Harris and my verdict rendered by Judge Kathy Griffin.

Instead I said, “I have to pee … really badly.”

“Why don't we do our business together?” she asked.

Okay, I'm wondering if it's even possible for her to squeeze her own body into the Porta Potty, pivot and hover, much less for the two of us to “do our business together.” We weren't circus clowns trying to cram into a VW.

“Pee-shy,” I said.

“How cute! Okay, you can go first … 
if
you give me those alligator beads,” she said sexily, dropping her head, her brown hair falling across her face.

And then she reached down and touched my wiener.

Which immediately inverted, like a turtle's head.

Now, I paid twenty dollars for this single pair of beads—partly because the shimmery green of the alligator's scales matched my eyes perfectly—and I was not going to give them to a three-hundred-pound
woman who looked like she just got shot in the mouth.

“No deal, Spock,” I said.

My buzz hit me at the wrong time.

“Excuse me!
Excuse me!
” she screamed.

And then she grabbed me by the turtleneck and shook my head back and forth, like lion mothers do to their cubs. My feet weren't dangling off the ground, but it felt like it.

I began to get alarmed, mostly because
Excuse me!
was the catchphrase of an insane girl named Toni on the awful reality show
Paradise Hotel
, where whorish singles basically got drunk and slept around in order to stay in an oceanside resort paradise. Toni, like this girl, was always ready for a throwdown after a few drinks.

“Sorry. You can go ahead of me, no biggie,” I said.

“Are you calling me big?”

“No … ma'am.”

Big Red started kind of screaming, slurring, like drunks do, and I could just see her throwing the remnants of her saliva-strewn hurricane all over me, so I somehow worked my way loose of her meaty palms and bolted, down another alley—through which she might not fit—and then down the street, fighting to get through the crowds.

A few blocks away, I ran directly into Uhura's opposite, a malnourished woman with sketchier teeth than a rotting jack-o'-lantern. She was sporting jeans that fit like a second skin and a mangy halter, though it was roughly forty-five degrees out. She had a cigarette positioned in an empty slot where a tooth should have been, and I immediately thought:
Good for her. She's a glass-half-full type of gal
.