The Party-Part Four, Open Up

I wasn’t sure what to make of the phone call, the invitation, what to wear, exactly. I’d been compulsively cleaning my house, had bought the industrial stuff that eats away at anything organic, put on gloves and attacked the layer of grease that he had, I imagined, laid upon my kitchen. The windows were open and even though a storm was catching on, I left them open, let the organic residue of him hit the air and speed away as soon as it was given the suggestion. The phone rang then, though it hadn’t in two weeks, I snicked the gloves off and left them inside out on a counter, hoping this shit didn’t do something horrible to marble.

And here we are. With all these fucking straight people. He’d said to me about three weeks ago, just after the be-quoop sound of the TiVo, fast forwarding through a scene in a reality show we just happened to catch, “You know what the problem is? You can’t tell who the gay guys are anymore.” He’s right. A while ago, they got into all this metrosexual stuff, all perfect eyebrows and good clothes, and then we said, oh shit, I guess we’ve gotta grow beards or something and now everyone’s got a beard. And here are all these straights, and everyone’s wearing the same damn tuxedo. Carlos doesn’t seem to see the irony of being here three weeks later. It’s not unusual. He contradicts himself all the time.

I’ve been compulsively smelling my hands, as unbecoming as that sounds, convinced that that many-syllabled chemical had gotten through the gloves and was currently breaking down the fiber of my skin. Any other time, I’d have Carlos smell them. Watching a straight couple go at it, this isn’t one of those times.

“Why are we here?” I ask him. He doesn’t say anything, implying that it’s obvious, and the old gay campfire story, the one about your boyfriend deciding to give up men, zips up my spinal chord before rational decision making has cleared the kidneys. Is he looking more at the man or the woman? I risk a glance at him. He’s not looking at either one.

A straight man, or at least he is right now, has become inspired and takes a woman by the top of the head, dropping her to his knees. He has her hair twisted in his fingers and parts of it fall into her face. He holds her away until he has his zipper unzipped and holds his dick out in front of her face. He forcibly rubs her lips with it, her mouth open and ready, and he finally pulls her in. I’m surprised to find my knees bend a little, a flash of imagination at a truly gay man taking a girl and using her. I’m sure that’s not what happened, but the idea cuts across me hard.

Maybe it’s because I always felt for sure that Carlos wanted to try straight.

I put my hand at the bottom curve of his back. He leaves it. I exhale. It’s the first time I’ve touched a man in weeks. I want him to turn and kiss me, or even just look at me, but he won’t. My hand lays there stupidly.

A pretty, and by that I mean just-quite-too-much-like-a-girl-pretty man dressed in nothing drifts by and lays lips on a similarly naked girl. I watch them, trying to decipher my reaction to the other straights, but nothing’s coming to me. My eyes still become heavy watching them, maybe some old, embarrassing desire to be straight switched on its track to perversion. I remember a day, not very long ago, when a friend of mine was stabbed by a group of suburban kids who were pretending to pick him up. It wasn’t even reported in the papers and no one expected it to be. Just a bad mugging in a parking lot, even though he retained his wallet. I can’t quite believe that all of that animosity just vaporized. And there’s part of me too, because you imitate the world in microcosm in your mind, that still feels that the friend of mine had it coming. It’s a horrible thing to think.

The girl who was kissing the pretty boy appears out of somewhere in my left sleeve. She doesn’t wait, turns her head and simply presses into my face hard. And I try it. I use all the force I ever use, a swipe of tongue and tickle of breath, her hips pressed thoroughly into mine and a few whimpers escape me. That I want her is a thought taken and found limp. That I want to be her is all that ever rings true. She reminded me of that and I smile in the kiss, leaving her with a little bit of grateful, which is all I have. She turns and moves into Carlos, but instead of kissing her, he picks her up like a doll and leaves little, affectionate nips on her neck. He watches me as he does. I want him. When she is put down and moves onto the next, Carlos takes my face in both hands and smiles for a moment before he, wet-lipped, kisses me like he never has before. I sink in my own quicksand. I reach up and take him by the top of the head, unzip, slap his lips, which are carved and crushingly dignified, with my cock, forcibly open his chin and fuck his mouth.

My eyes close, but when they open, I finally notice all the men with each other in the room. It was happening before, but I’d erased it. The pretty boy is now holding a man gently by the small and spine of the back, nibbling his neck. Carlos has changed speed, pulls my foreskin out and squeezes it between his lips. There in the corner, by one of the laughably small balconies, two men have dropped clothes altogether and rub at each other furiously. A server carrying a tray of sample lube bottles on silk offers them a selection. They’re choosy too. Carlos sucks hard, the tip of my dick battering his throat, turning on every other pull. I’m losing it. On the floor, surrounded by a large crowd shedding clothes, I make out a woman straddling another woman’s legs, her neck bent in the air. When I come, yelling out because I’m not afraid to, the microcosm rearranges itself, and my heart pours out to everyone. It pours out especially to Carlos. He brought me here to bring me here, and I am.