Come Down: II.2

On cloudy days, the light in my apartment hardly changed from sunup to sundown, a uniform grey dimness that was easy to ignore. I woke up and fell back asleep half a dozen times before finally fumbling for my phone on the old ladderback chair (one rung broken; rescued from the dumpster behind theatre department prop storage) that I used as a bedside table and occasional clothes-drying rack. 

I had far more notifications than were usual for me first thing in the morning, which made more sense when I glanced at the time and realized it was nearly two in the afternoon, but only one of those notifications mattered: Instagram informed me that @allforonewegage had, at 4:17 a.m., accepted my follow request and followed me back. I scrambled to open the app, but the follow was all. No messages, no comments, not even a like on my most recent post, which, to be fair to Élouan, was an approximately-aesthetic shot from outside the used bookstore back in Vermont, its one window lighted against the dark, that had received 19 total likes and was nearly two years old. I considered messaging them for a few moments before dismissing the idea out of hand before reconsidering it -- perhaps if I had something of value to say that wouldn’t look desperate? I checked their account, its mysteries accessible to me now that I was one of Élouan’s followers, and tipped headfirst into years and years of thirst-inducing costume shots against neutral backgrounds. There was one of their gauzy confection from the previous night’s Backwash. There were several revealing swaths of bedsheet that might have been togas or chitons or Jesus-inspired outfits that just tiptoed up to the line of blasphemy. Interspersed here and there were close-ups of reddened skin and fresh tattoos, some gracefully blurred shots that I discerned, after a moment, as capturing gorgeous Dolly in motion, and a few pictures of vintage cars, but the feed was almost entirely Élouan’s body clad in whimsical adornments that never quite deserved to be called clothes.

They kissed me last night. This person kissed me last night. 

Looking at the images they posted of themself and recalling, to the best of my ability, the sensation of their lips and hands on me, I felt a blush rising to my skin and kicked off my sheets. Their Instagram was a gallery of my immense good fortune, but it gave me nothing to build a message atop. I could hardly respond to any of those images without looking desperate.

I scrolled back up to their username. @allforonewegage. It sounded familiar -- or rather, it sounded like it ought to have sounded familiar. It was Shakespearean, but it wasn’t one of the lines I knew (of which there were, to brag for a moment, very, very many). So I looked it up.

The Rape of Lucrece is a deep cut, I messaged Élouan, and left it, through willpower I was impressed with myself for exercising, at that.

Concerned that spending any longer on Élouan’s Instagram would lead me to message them again, or at least to spend what remained of my day screenshotting their photos for personal use, I turned at last to my other notifications and discovered that Angus had texted me, unusually for him, three times. The first, around 10 that morning, apologized for the short notice but asked if I’d like to come over for dinner. The second, shortly before I’d woken up, informed me that he’d need my answer soon so he could do the “grpceru shpppong.” The third, moments later, apologized for his overlarge thumbs.

I hadn’t forgotten about Angus, exactly, only let him fade into the background of my awareness in favor of my rattling nerves the previous week, and the party, and the men pressing me between them, and the drinks, and Élouan, Élouan, Élouan -- but there he was, funny Angus, laconic Angus, big soft Angus, waiting in the wings to invite me around for dinner just when I needed a distraction from the fact that, at any moment, Élouan might or might not be reading my message on Instagram. I told him I’d be happy to attend and, if he wanted me to bring over a bottle of wine, I could do that, too.

Moments later: a thumbs-up reaction to the wine and a requested arrival time of 7:00.

So I had hours before I even had to consider getting myself ready, let alone be out the door. I swiped back through my recent apps to Élouan’s Instagram again and slid my hand under the waistband of my pajama pants. There were so many images of them wearing so little, and the fabric interruptions in the pale swaths of their skin were devastatingly easy to erase and replace with sharp-boned hips, with a tight ass, with whatever your preferred synonym for ‘penis’ is -- I’ve never liked any of them and I am loath to name one unless I absolutely have to. The backgrounds of the pictures were disappointingly devoid of any personal touches, just brick walls and off-white plaster, so I was forced to imagine them in my space although I would have preferred to imagine myself in theirs. Laying on the bed just as I was, but with them folded up between my legs, their feet dangling off the edge of the mattress, their clever tongue and that baritone resonating all the way up through my interior, peeling off the layers of decoration atop their skin until all that was left was the tattoos, and could I peel those off too? climb inside? feel what they felt and what I felt at the same time in a positive feedback loop, carrying us both further from equilibrium until we were caught in the endless and self-reinforcing cycle of each other’s pleasure, and --?

I fell asleep again shortly after that, and when I woke up it was still that same grey dim outside, so at least the sun had not yet set, and there was an angry red line cut into my forearm from the drawstring waist of my pajamas. I got out of bed and showered, running the water as hot as I could take it, until it stung. I had been out with Angus enough times that I was no longer more than usually concerned about dressing up, and climbing up onto my bed to reach and open the window told me that it was hot outside even as evening approached, so I rolled up a pair of jeans to the ankles and put on an old show tee (Pippin, senior year), whose fit I’d only begun to enjoy since top surgery, and called it a day. I rummaged around my cabinets and found an unopened bottle of something red that Rachel and Zach had brought over at some point or another and which I was sure would taste good by virtue of their having chosen it. I bustled around, fixing my hair and my eyebrows, checking my watch, conscious at all times of my phone sitting on the chair beside my bed, not wanting to let it get the better of me, desperate for it to get the better of me. I didn’t hear it buzz until I was sliding it into my back pocket on my way out the door. Just Zach sending me a link to a song he’d been listening to recently -- most of our text history comprised links without commentary; if I needed to plan something or have a real conversation, I went through Rachel -- but I couldn’t help myself. I checked Instagram again.

Three messages from Élouan, all sent twenty minutes prior. I didn’t know why my phone hadn’t alerted me, and I didn’t care -- I knew I would care, later, and would fiddle with all of my settings until I was certain I would be notified if Élouan so much as glanced at my Instagram -- but in the moment I lacked the capacity to do anything but read what they’d sent me.

The first: You Googled my username, didn’t you?

The second: I’ll see you later tonight.

The third: a post made by the Quartz Club, whose name it took me a moment to recognize before I remembered following my maps app there months earlier for Dragon’s Den. They were evidently hosting a Summer of Love-themed queer dance party from eight to midnight that night: splashy floral graphics and peace signs, “San Francisco” by John Phillips playing over the image, the arrogance of Élouan assuming that they’d be seeing me there just because they’d sent me the post, or possibly the kindness of Élouan assuming I already knew about the event and of course I’d be attending, but the idea of the kindness was so much less thrilling than the idea of the arrogance, not to mention less likely, and I discarded it at once. I could, if I really dug my fingertips in, still just about feel the ridge that my waistband had cut into my arm.

I am not going to claim that I agonized over the decision, not least because I doubt you would believe me. I did think about it, though, about Angus’ marvelous cooking -- anything he made a special grocery trip for must be, I imagined, doubly impressive -- and about not wanting to be the kind of person who would heartlessly abandon his handsome older paramour for a party. But I also assumed that a prerequisite of being someone’s handsome older paramour was accepting that you might every so often be heartlessly abandoned for a party, that I was playing my part as Angus’ hot, flighty young twink, and I texted him to apologize profusely that something had come up and express my hopes that the food would keep until the next day, if he was free, or that I’d see him again soon if he wasn’t, and I double-tap-liked the second of Élouan’s three messages, and I stripped off everything I was wearing (including the underwear -- I was not prepared to risk being seen in anything less than my best -- and the glasses -- despite my discomfort with contact lenses, I figured they were preferable to slippage) and began to ransack my dresser drawers for anything psychedelic.

~

I had only just made my way to Élouan (Dolly at their side, a smaller and younger posse than had surrounded them at Backwash -- none of them could have been over 30) and said hello and sipped my drink when a plump woman -- a girl, honestly, she was probably my age, if that -- with a long reddish-blond braid and yellow peace-sign-shaped plastic novelty glasses slipped through the crowd towards us. She and Élouan made eye contact for a second, and their eyebrows shot up, round eyes sparkling with some kind of anticipation, and she took the final few steps between them and her and slapped Élouan in the face.

At once their cheek turned violently pink and blotchy, and venue security made a move towards our little group, but Élouan held up a hand and shook their head. Though the force of the slap had whipped their head to the side, they appeared serene, unbothered, a little smile curling the corners of their lips.

“Did you enjoy that?” Élouan asked.

“What the fuck, Élouan?” she demanded, sounding more petulant than angry. The slap seemed to have taken some of the fight out of her. “I haven’t heard from you in months! You can’t just do that to people.”

“What are you talking about?”

We were watching it like a tennis match, Dolly and I and the rest of the posse.

“Oh -- come on, Élouan, don’t give me that shit. You know what I’m talking about!”

“Enlighten me anyway.”

“You ghosted me!”

“Nonsense.” Élouan’s smile grew wide, indulgent. “I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I?”

The girl’s mouth dropped open in furious disbelief, and mine did too -- whatever had happened between them might have merited the girl’s ‘ghosting’ characterization, or it might not have, but regardless of the circumstances it was such a brazen thing to say, impossible that it would satisfy anyone on the receiving end of such an answer, and yet Élouan, in their unruffled pleasantness, seemed to be challenging her to be satisfied anyway. I found that unruffled pleasantness hot, of course, and I pitied the girl. Not, I am sorry to say, because I empathized with her, but because her naked emotions in the face of Élouan’s calm seemed grotesque, and I worried that she would make a spectacle of herself and embarrass us all by proximity. The music was still blaring around us (techno remixes of strummy folk songs -- not quite as awful as it sounds, but close), but several moments seemed to pass in breathless silence.

And then, thank God, she threw her head back and laughed so hard that her plastic glasses knocked themselves askew on her face, and when she was finished, Élouan readjusted them for her, knuckles brushing her cheek. The rest of us laughed, too, Dolly in particular with such ease that it seemed she’d never noticed anything amiss.

“You’re the fucking worst,” the girl said, big smile. “Come on, buy me a drink and I won’t bug you again tonight.”

“Making no promises about tomorrow night, I see,” Élouan said, taking her by the elbow and leading her away to the bar. “Be right back.”

Once they were out of earshot -- not very far, considering the music -- a member of the posse with a shiny brown bowl cut and gigantic hoop earrings let out a long, low whistle. “Well then,” they said. “That’s a new one.”

“Not really.” Dolly took a sip of her cocktail. “At least she didn’t throw a drink at them. Bloody Mary stains are a nightmare to get out.”

“Might have just looked like part of the tie-dye,” the person with the bowl cut said.

“The drink-throwing has happened before?” I asked Dolly.

“A few times. Lou’s a charmer, you know that. But on occasion people get too attached and forget they’ve got a partner already, or else they sour on the whole actor thing.” She shrugged, an airy note creeping into her voice. “Luckily I think it’s very cute that they never stopped playing pretend.”

“Wild. Did we ever do introductions, by the way?” asked the person with the bowl cut, turning to me. “I’m October. Like the month.”

“Marco, as in Polo.”

The rest of the group duly offered me their names and accompanying comparison nouns. It was, I realized, a standard element of the club introduction, not just something Dolly did when I met her, and it made sense: I would certainly have assumed I’d misheard some of the names over the music had I not had them confirmed for me. In addition to October-like-the-month, there was willowy, dreadlocked Madonna-like-the-singer; chubby, freckle-cheeked Alder-like-the-tree; and Paris-like-the-city, whose mousy beard had actual oxeye daisies woven into it. Shea-like-the-butter, I was told, had developed strep throat and couldn’t make it, but I was assured that she was a riot and I’d love her when I met her. I couldn’t imagine what Élouan’s point of nominal reference would be (Élouan-like-nothing-else?), but it didn’t seem to matter -- I had yet to see them introduce themself. They seemed to know everyone already, or rather everyone knew them.

A few more minutes passed, the knot of us standing around at the periphery of the club making shouted small talk (my move from Vermont, an upcoming drag brunch that Madonna was nervous about hosting, where Dolly had gotten her impressively ass-hugging bell bottoms), when the DJ at last gave up on the premise of the night and put on something by Cardi B, I was fairly sure, that made Paris squeal and grab Madonna’s hands to drag her deeper into the dance floor, and October leaned over and murmured something to Alder that made him blush and nod, and then the two of them were leaving, too, in the direction of the bar (or the bathrooms, more likely). I craned my neck but couldn’t see Élouan anywhere, and when I looked back at Dolly, she was watching me out of the corner of her eye with a soft smile.

“And then there were two,” she said.

“So one of us murders the other now?”

She bared her teeth at me -- a little tobacco-stained, I noticed in the swirling yellow and white light -- and formed her left hand into a claw, long sharp ballet-pink fake nails on her thumb, ring, and pinky fingers, her index and middle fingernails clipped short and round and painted baby blue.

“I like your nails,” I told her.

“I like you,” she said. “Where did Lou find you again?”

I told her an abbreviated version of the story: working at the university, signing up for the tuition remission program, bearing up beneath the crushing mundanity of Professor Hannah Weiss, only to hear she’d been --

“Hit by a car!” Dolly crowed. “Oh my God, Lou told me about that. How awful. Lucky thing for all of us, though, isn’t it?”

“All of us?”

“Of course.” Those two fingers with the short nails alit softly on my wrist. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Do I mind? I considered the question. There was, in principle, no reason to mind, and even if I had wanted to mind I would have had a hard time coming up with a plausible justification. My engagement with her partner’s photos earlier that afternoon had whetted my appetite more than anything, and I was in no position to turn down a friendly hand. As evidenced by the fact that Élouan had already kissed me in full view of Dolly, the two of them were well aware of, and probably encouraged, each other’s extracurricular activities. Perhaps they participated in those activities together sometimes, and that thought alone would have convinced me even if, on top of everything else, Dolly hadn’t been so beautiful. So tall and finely-wrought, so dark-eyed and smooth-skinned. I couldn’t look at her for too long at a stretch; she was so perfect my eyes had nowhere to catch and hold. To turn down someone who looked like Dolly would have been absurd. Still, the idea didn’t quite excite me like I knew it should have.

“Why would I mind?” I asked. Not technically an answer, but I hoped she would interpret it as one anyway.

The pressure of her fingers was light as she ran them slowly up from my wrist to my forearm to my elbow to my bicep, so light it took me a beat to notice when the pressure was gone altogether and she was no longer looking at me. Élouan had appeared at her side and leaned toward her, saying something that I didn’t catch over the music.

But I heard it when Dolly replied, “Darling, it’s not like you called dibs.”

“True,” Élouan said, breezy, and I thought perhaps they weren’t talking about me after all, no matter how badly I wanted them to be. “Do you need your drink refreshed, my love?”

“No, but I’m going out for a smoke in a moment.”

“Then I’ll join you in two moments.”

Dolly presented her face for a kiss, which Élouan enthusiastically provided, and I watched them and thought of peacocks: one gaudy and shimmering, one sleek and dark. Élouan’s cheek, I saw when they broke apart and Dolly slid toward the exit, still bore the dappled suggestion of a welt.

“So did you make up with that girl?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, she’s fine now.” They leaned a sharp shoulder against the wall, their bare chest and all of its ink visible under their open suede vest, dripping with so much fringe I could hardly discern the shape of the garment underneath. Their floor-length skirt was tie-dyed with starbursts of indigo. “Just had to get that out of her system.”

“What happened?”

Élouan rolled their wide eyes, a gesture I was sure I’d never seen them make before. It gave them the look of a wild horse. “She and I had a thing a while back. I got busy with a show, and we lost touch. Evidently it upset her.”

“No, no,” I said. Although I had wanted to know what could drive a person to slap Élouan Gage in the face, I also did not want to be the kind of person who didn’t know already. There, with Élouan, at the second party in a single weekend to which they had sort of invited me, I wanted to have been slapped in the face myself once or twice.

“Hm?”

“I meant what happened just now. You bought her a drink, you sweet-talked her, and now you’re all square?”

“Just about.”

“Some sweet talk.”

“Oh?” They were giving me their I-know-you-know smile, and I stared at their marvelous, bony face and thought, I got off to your Instagram a few hours ago. Can you tell? God, you can tell, can’t you?

“Oh? ‘Oh’ what?”

“Oh, you want me to sweet-talk you.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It is.” They leaned down, put their lips almost to my ear. “I think you’re jealous.”

“You’re right,” I said, avoiding the denial that would have put me in doth-protest-too-much territory, trying for stagy instead. “Terribly jealous. If I had known all it took to get your attention was slapping you in the face, I would have done it ages ago. Maybe kicked you for good measure.”

Élouan chuckled, the sound low and warm and right in my ear, and the Quartz Club tilted and warped around me. I wanted it -- wanted them -- to swallow me up and keep me forever.

“No violence necessary,” they said. “You’ve got my undivided attention.”

“Do I now.”

“The question is what you’re going to do with it.”

I answered without thought, without hesitation. “Take me home with you.”

Élouan straightened up, one eyebrow raised. “Not tonight.”

The swiftness of their answer lit up the area around my ribs with a physical pain, but I breathed through it, focusing on not looking disappointed, on holding the same charming, coy smile that I’d kept up for the rest of the conversation, and consoled myself with the fact that not tonight was very different from no.

“When, then?” I asked.

Élouan laughed -- at me, I knew, but it didn’t hurt half as much as the turndown had, so I laughed along with them. “Soon. I’ll just be over at Dolly’s tonight.”

“You two don’t live together?”

“Why would we?”

I had no good answer to that. “Shouldn’t have assumed,” I said. “Well, I hope you’ll let me know when you decide what ‘soon’ means.”

“I will.”

I knew it was unwise to press my luck, but being so close to them -- to the person from those photos, to the person who had kissed me last night -- was making me dizzy, and the stab of rejection was already fading into a heat that prickled across my torso, and I leaned even closer to them, looking up at them through my eyelashes.

“You promise?” I said, half a smile to show that I knew I was being ridiculous, that I was doing it on purpose, that, above all, I was cute and charming and worth taking home. Soon.

Élouan wrapped their fingers around my wrist and tugged my hand up, placing it on their chest and pressing their palm against the back of it so my own palm was flat on their pectoral muscle. Between my fingers I could see the edges of a large tattoo, something complicated and spiraling and gear-toothed that covered much of their chest. Élouan’s skin was sweaty, a little clammy, but I was far too warm and it felt good, or something resembling good. I couldn’t feel their pulse even as they pressed their hand hard over mine -- they’d put my hand a bit lower than their heart, I think, and too far to the side -- but I could certainly feel their nipple under the heel of my palm. 

They grinned at me, cheeky, obvious, letting me in on the joke, as they said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

When they kissed me, they kept my palm against their chest, pressure until I worried the tiny bones in the back of my hand were going to splinter, like they were trying to absorb me. The blood rushed from my head; my stomach twisted; I was so turned on I felt like I was going to throw up.

My initial plan had been to follow them outside, if they would let me, and see if I couldn’t find out where Dolly’s fingers had been going and what Élouan thought of her interest in me, but after a closing line and a kiss like that I wasn’t willing to prolong the scene any longer and risk souring the promise Élouan had just made me. So instead when they gave my hand a final squeeze and made for the exit, I circled the fringes of the dance floor until I spotted Madonna and Paris and picked my way over to them.

We danced until I lost track of how many songs it had been. Paris would, every so often, give Madonna a theatrical twirl, and then he’d do the same to me, spinning me round and round until I was out of breath and Madonna was giggling at us both. He was a terrible dancer, just step-touching and flailing his arms in ways that half-resembled voguing, but Madonna was much better, fluid hips, perfect rhythm, and when Paris shouted something about her pole classes paying off she laughed and shouted back that this was all her, baby. I did what I’d done the previous night at Backwash, trying to turn ensemble dance steps into something looser, sexier, incorporating as many of Madonna’s ass-shaking moves as I thought I could get away with, and when the DJ threw another techno-folk monster into the mix -- perhaps people had begun having too much fun -- we decamped to the bar for tiny plastic cups of water poured from a bright orange youth-sports cooler, and both Madonna and Paris told me what a good dancer I was.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I admitted between sips. “Half of that was just a jazz square with extra hips.”

“Well it is working for you,” Paris said, slinging his arm around my shoulders and kissing me on the cheek. One of his few remaining daisies fell out, and I noticed only then that our path from the dance floor to the bar was littered with crushed flowers. “You’re such a little hottie.”

I liked the way he said it: complimentary, warm, even flirtatious, but without the barest hint of sexual or romantic intent behind it. The voice I put on for Rachel’s coworkers was the voice that seemed to come most naturally to him. They would love him, I thought, without any intention of orchestrating a meeting to see if I was correct. If I was to keep spending time with Rachel’s coworkers, I at least wanted to continue to monopolize the role of Gay Best Friend.

“You two caught your breath yet?” Madonna asked.

My hand was already halfway to my back pocket to pull my phone out and check the time when I stopped myself. I didn’t see Élouan or Dolly anywhere -- it was as likely as not that they’d slipped away into the night again -- but I was genuinely enjoying myself with Madonna and Paris, and, likely because I had overslept by so many hours, I was not yet tired. The folk remix had ended and the danceable music was back, and the lights and the volume were on the fun side of overwhelming, and the top of my head was strangely cold because my hair was sweaty. A curl was dangling in my eyes, and I raked it backward with my fingers.

“Ready when you are,” I said.

I had assumed that dancing the night away was just something one said, something that could literally occur nowhere but songs and 20th-century adolescent sock-hop fantasies, but in fact it is possible for real people to really dance away a real night. We spun and jumped and step-touched and jazz-squared and shouted along to the lyrics we knew. The rest of Paris’ flowers fell out. Madonna tied her locs up in a complicated knot to get them off her neck, and multiple people came up to her just to compliment her hair, at which point she pulled them into our little circle. Every time there was a choppy transition between songs when one faded imperfectly into the next, during the five or so seconds where it wasn’t clear which beat one ought to have been dancing to, Paris would fill the time by bending over and ‘twerking’ his washboard-flat ass, to increasing levels of performative annoyance from Madonna and laughter from the rest of us at the entire pantomime. It was the sweatiest I could, at the time, recall being in my entire life. Someone -- I’m not certain I was even told their name -- bought me a drink. Someone else bought me another. The Summer of Love was scheduled to end at midnight, but sometime in the elevens Paris jerked his head toward the door, and Madonna nodded, and without even asking each of them took me by one elbow apiece and then I was in the backseat of their Uber heading to another party, this one apparently marijuana-themed by the lighting, decor, and scent, already in full swing by the time we got there, and we danced for another few hours, and when that one, too, was on the verge of ending, the three of us swapped Instagram handles and caught rideshares back home, and I was sore-legged and chilled in the night air, warm though it was, with the evaporation of my sweat, and when I crossed my threshold I felt the last residue of the excitement that had been holding me upright finally drain out of my body, and I did not shower or change my clothes or brush my teeth or take any of the other cultivated steps of my cherished bedtime routine before connecting my face with my pillow. My last thought resembling consciousness was that this lapse was acceptable, since the following day, Sunday, was when I had intended to do laundry anyway.

My night -- and several hours of my morning -- with Madonna and Paris forced me to reconsider somewhat my conception of myself. I had never been averse to parties, but the parties to which I had not been averse had been very different affairs before that night. They had involved wine, and couches, and innumerable rounds of a Shakespeare-themed Cards Against Humanity ripoff called Bards Dispense Profanity. Or, where Rachel and Zach were concerned, they had occasionally involved beer and bars, but the prevailing spirit had still been mostly sedentary, dancing a sideshow to getting drunk, sexuality nonexistent. But, even considering the deep ache in my legs and lower back that had me limping around the laundromat like a caricature of an old man the next day, it turned out that I was also not averse to clubs, loud music, clear liquor, sweat, shouting, and -- imagine! -- dancing the night away. I wanted to do it again. I considered that I might want to do it again even if there was no possibility, no remote chance, that Élouan would see me doing it, although of course Madonna and Paris were their friends, so there would always be a chance if I was with those two. Which all meant that I was the kind of person who went to clubs on the weekend, who went out dancing. It was a departure, but not a far one; it comported with the young, hot twink who would have an illicit workplace affair with his much older colleague, who would seduce his theatre professor, who would, in fact, move down to Boston for the arts and the nightlife and the fact that nobody knew him there so he could start fresh, post-transition. The devil-may-care artist, the Gay Best Friend.

I could, I decided, more than work with that. But I was going to need new glasses, and probably some new going-out clothes, too. I risked wearing my one good tank top to shreds otherwise.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.