Advances

A foray into fiction.

One

Quinten, the bulge in his boxers growing, hurriedly removed his shirt. “Let’s not waste any more time, boys,” he said, his broad smile revealing his uber white stock-trader-salary-treated teeth.  He flung the shirt to the hotel room’s corner.  “We all knew this was going to happen,” he continued as he moved onto the foot of the bed, crouching in front of Daniel and Tom, his stomach’s slight flab hanging below.

Daniel’s mind jolted to years before – college – when Quinten’s stomach was defined and taut, not the doughy flesh now pressed against Tom’s torso.

“Are you sure you guys are okay with this?” Tom asked before Quinten went to kiss.

“Oh, honey, yes.  We do this all the time,” Daniel answered, moving closer to them both and running his hand along Quinten’s spine.  Daniel was amused – no, perturbed – by Tom’s question.  Are you sure you guys are okay with this? As if it mattered who was okay with what.  By Daniel’s estimation, Tom had spent the weekend consumed with bedding Quinten, exiting the shower wearing only a perilously loose towel and offering Quinten a spoonful – Tom’s spoonful – of Crème Brulee at the restaurant the night before.  Among other obvious advances.

“Daniel and I aren’t married or anything,” Quinten, now fully atop Tom, breathlessly whispered.  “This is just fun.”  Quinten and Tom began to kiss.  Daniel, pressed beside them, watched:  hurried kisses, like fearful teenagers.

Daniel removed his shirt.  His mind again jolted to years before – college – when his stomach was exactly the same as it was now:  hairless, not fit, not fat.  There.

Daniel pressed closer to them still.  Quinten was now moving his lips along Tom’s neck, his hands adroitly unbuckling Tom’s belt.  Daniel assisted by tugging Tom’s jeans, squeezing them downward along the sheets.

No underwear.  The contrast between Tom’s tan torso and white crotch revealed that Tom was most definitely not wearing underwear.  Are you sure you guys are okay with this? As if this threesome had just been flung onto him, a present left at his doorstep.  Oh, I guess, sure, yeah, okay.  I could threesome.  But only if you’re, you know, sure about it and all.

“You know what guys,” Daniel began, rolling away from them, “I have a headache.”

“What?” Quinten lifted his head from Tom’s sternum.

“Yeah, seriously.  It’s been here all day, but now, it’s just…worse.”  Daniel moved to the corner of the room and put on Quinten’s shirt.  This felt right somehow.

“Well, I don’t want to…” Quinten moved off the bed and toward Daniel, his head titled, eyes sympathetic.  The bulge was larger.

“Babe, it’s okay.  You guys have your fun.”  Daniel paused.  Searching.  “I’m going to Starbuck’s to finish reading my book.”

Tom took this opportunity to fully remove his jeans.

“Are you sure?”  Quinten tilted his head the other way.

Daniel glanced down at Quinten’s boxers.  “I’m sure, yes, really.  No big deal.”

The coffee was bitter; Starbuck’s always is.  Daniel didn’t read his book, opting to call his mother instead.  Yes, San Francisco was as beautiful as the postcards; no, sharing the room with Tom wasn’t awkward, they were all friends, after all; yes, he would be home for Christmas.  So, when are you two going to finally tie the knot? she asked.  I’m ready to plan a wedding, even if it is a gay one.

“I don’t know, Mother, I’m not too worried about marriage,” Daniel answered, “what Quinten and I have, it just feels right somehow.  The way it is.”

Two

Patricia had three males in her life:  Pierre, whose hair had always been gray; Gordon, whose hair had turned gray eight years ago; Daniel, whose hair was brown and would probably turn white, like hers, but not for many years.  She was on the subway, seated beside a young mother holding a napping infant, when she realized she loved all three males, but to vastly varying degrees.

Daniel, her son, came first.  Her only child and the lasting remnant of her second marriage, Daniel was nothing like she had imagined.

Daniel was gay.

Daniel was materialistic.

Daniel was short.

He was also bitingly smart, and he addressed Patricia as “Mother,” despite her insistence otherwise.  She had suggested Mommy, Ma, Mom, even; signed his birthday cards thus; he was unrelenting.  She loved him for “Mother” and because she had grown him in her womb, for the knowledge he would be successful and would speak well of her long after her death.

Gordon, her third and (she was sure of it this time) final husband, came last.  Gordon was everything she had imagined her husband at 65-years-old would be:

Gordon was going deaf.

Gordon didn’t pressure her for sex, even when she wanted it.

Gordon like red wine.

He addressed Patricia as “Patty,” per her insistence.  “Patty” made her feel young and aspiring, as if one day she would be old enough for the solemn “Patricia,” but not today.  She did love Gordon, had loved him for twenty years, hoped to love him for at least ten more (that’s as much time as she gave his life), had travelled with him to France and felt warm when he wore that blue shirt that made his eyes, wrinkled as they were, sparkle.  But, she had not grown Gordon in her womb and he couldn’t hear her when she, drunk on red wine, embarrassingly whispered, “Let’s make love tonight.”

Pierre was dying.  He came second.  Patricia had just dropped him off at the vet.  “He has Hepatic neoplasia,” his vet (who was annoyingly named Kitty) had announced three weeks before when Patricia had taken him to address Pierre’ vomiting.  Patricia, like any sane woman, had responded, “What the hell would that would be, Kitty?”

Liver tumor.

Operable, but likely only six more months, maybe nine.

$2,000.

It was a small price to pay for her second-loved-male.  As Patricia sat in her subway seat, the infant beside her slowly waking up, she pictured Pierre, his stomach shaved, sliced, stitched.  She was terrified.  More terrified, exponentially so in fact, than she had been two years before during Gordon’s heart surgery.  Her terror was then replaced by repulsion.  Who loves their cat more than their husband, In-Head Patricia asked.  A freak, that’s who, In-Head Patricia answered.

Patricia cried.  An ugly cry – slowly released, her features twisted, her foundation splotched.  She removed a Kleenex from her purse, dried her eyes, and got off at the next stop, even though it was four more stops until her home.

Three

Rosa had three thoughts as the crying lady exited the train:

1. I don’t want her to see crying yet.  She’s only three weeks.
2. Do tears have germs?  That bitch better not get my baby sick.
3. I’m a mother now; I can’t think things like bitch.

Rosa looked at her baby, a round face framed by a mint-green fleece blanket and a clover-green cone-shaped cap, as the subway doors closed.  Eva was the name on the birth certificate.  Peapod was the name In-Head Rosa used.

“The green will be muy bonita, with that orange hair of hers,” Rosa’s mother had curtly said when presenting the handmade cap, her Dominican accent spiking the English.  Indeed, Peapod’s orange (Rosa preferred “auburn”) hair had shocked Rosa’s family and they had reacted as they had been pranked by God Himself.

“Maybe Conan will claim paternity,” Eric, Rosa’s oldest brother, had joked.

“Drinking Guiness while pregnant, I’m disappointed in you hermanna!”  Julio, the youngest, had chided.

“Cabeza de fuego,” Rosa’s father had shrieked in the delivery room, his index finger pointing and mouth agape, as he watched the nurses towel Peapod.

Peapod’s hair had also surprised Rosa, though, for her, the orange was less God’s prank and more God’s message.  For the eight months of her pregnancy, Rosa had convinced herself the baby growing in her womb was solely her descendent.  Not an immaculate conception – Rosa wasn’t that naïve (and there was The Truth) – but, instead, a miraculous rejection of competing genetics.

Rosa likened her three week relationship with Peapod’s father to a two-liter Coke left in the fridge for the same amount of time:  bubbly sweet first taste; quickly fizzling; disappointingly stale; undrinkable; finally, trashed.  Problem was, Rosa had already trashed Peapod’s father once she finally realized she was pregnant; hence, the convenient trashing of his genetics.

Peapod’s hair – His message – made obvious what Rosa had denied:  Peapod was made of two people and she needed both of them in her life.

Rosa moved the blanket up, loosely covering Peapod’s mouth.  No baby of mine is gonna get sick from tear germs, she thought.  Five stops later, Rosa carefully exited, holding Peapod close on the escalator and the brief walk to his building.  When she arrived, Rosa scanned the apartment listings for his last name – O’Malley – even though she knew he lived in Apartment 15.  He buzzed her in without asking her identity.

As Rosa made her way up the drafty stairwell, Peapod’s clover-green cap slipped, falling to the concrete below.  Peapod began to cry.  Again, His message.

Despite Peapod’s wail, Rosa could hear the violent hum of a video game when she knocked on his door.  Then, an electronic-clink-pause followed by slow footsteps.  Rosa brushed her hand over Peapod’s head, smacking Peapod’s auburn hair onto Peapod’s ivory scalp.

He – Kevin O’Malley – opened the door, wearing the gray sweats he’d worn their last morning.  Rosa watched his eyes meet hers and then travel to Peapod.

“Will you marry me?”

Four

Tom was annoyed to hear a crying baby in the stairwell as he tried on his Seersucker suit.  Fucking breeders, he thought; then, damn, this girl can sure turn it out, as he admired his reflection.  He knew Seersucker was ridiculous, but, so was the wedding he was dressing for.  He contemplated the gray suit last worn to his Uncle’s funeral, but he decided he’d rather leave when the baby’s cries grew louder.  Quickly.  Seersucker it was.

Tom filled the forty minute drive with three cigarettes and Dolly Parton.  The last ten minutes, he felt the fabric’s puckered texture begin to make impressions on his ass, strike-that, bottom (he considered himself a lady, after all).  Tom wasn’t wearing underwear; he never did; he knew it was inappropriate; he didn’t give two shits.

Quinten called.

“Can’t talk,” Tom answered while parking. “At my sister’s wedding.”

“Julie’s getting married?”  Quinten screeched, a fake optimistic disbelief in his voice.  Tom knew what Quinten was hiding behind this tone:  ‘tards get married these days? “How come you didn’t say anything?”

“Well, it’s not a big deal.  I’m not sure it’s even official.”  Tom was annoyed by Quentin’s question; they’d fucked, yes, but that didn’t obligate Tom to update Quinten on his family life.

The wedding, hosted by the Emmanuel House (which supported Julie and other adults with Downs Syndrome) was, in fact, official, as noted in the program a seated and obese black woman handed Tom as he entered.

“Name and relation, please,” she asked, her marker poised above a name tag.

“Tom,” he replied.  “Julie’s brother.”

“The twin!” the woman exclaimed, writing “Tom Twin” in bold capitals.  Tom grimaced.  He defined twins as two-bodies-one-soul:  unexplained pain when the other got hurt; sharing of ends of sentences; unintentional synchronization of life’s milestones (marriage, children, death).  Tom had never experienced this with Julie, though she was five minutes his senior sibling and by definition, his twin.

The Seersucker continued to claw during the ceremony; it took restraint to not inappropriately exit for a bathroom respite.  Tom’s mother, serious and seated to his right, would have killed Tom if he had done so (which, Tom observed, would cement the non-twin relationship:  Julie getting married the day Tom died).

When the Justice of Peace announced the husband and wife, Tom’s mother rose from her chair, shouting “Bravo Julie!  Bravo Matt!”  As if this is a play, Tom thought.

When newlyweds advanced down the aisle Tom stood, the Seersucker thankfully relinquishing its grip, joining in the applause.  The obese black woman, hidden in a corner, pressed play on a CD player.  “Walking on Sunshine” blasted throughout the room and the guests – staff, disabled adults, Tom and his mother – followed Julie and Matt into the reception room.

For the duration of the song, the crowd danced with abandon.  Tom caught Julie’s eye.  And don’t it feel good? He felt her joy.  I’ll say it again now. They waved to each other.  And don’t it feel good.