Chapter One
1970
Louie was, I swear, the
hardest-working woman in show business. Not like James Brown was the
hardest-working man in show business, although her splits did put his to shame.
As I watched her hit the floor again, like a drafting compass with a broken
hinge, I could almost feel my testicles parting company and landing like
finials on either side of my pelvis. The other men at Oliver Duncan’s bachelor
party must’ve felt the same; they all winced in unison, even as they cheered.
“Louie, Louie,” the dancer’s
none-too-original signature song, grated out of a battered 8-track player. I
amused myself by sipping a martini at the wet bar and watching Oliver’s
reactions to the bumping, grinding, and boob jiggling going on just inches from
his face. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Flushed to his hairline, he chortled
and squirmed. Then he teasingly stuck out his tongue as Louie began undoing his
necktie and unbuttoning his shirt.
That’s when I began to
squirm. Suddenly, the scene wasn’t so amusing anymore. I was watching someone
undress and fondle my best friend. I was watching Oliver behave in a sexually
suggestive way, which was something I’d never before had to witness. Seeing his
interaction with the dancer wasn’t the same as accepting the fact he was
getting married. The most I’d seen him do with Naomi, his betrothed, was put an
arm around her or give her a rather sanitized peck now and then. Louie,
however, was coaxing out his inner beast. Coaxing out Oliver’s inner beast was
something only I was allowed to do. In the privacy of my imagination.
I looked around the enormous,
handsome hotel suite for some distraction. None was available. I couldn’t even
engage in drunkenly senseless conversation, since every pair of eyes in the
room was trained on the stripper.
“Excuse
me,” I said to the bow-tied bartender. He was a little older than I, maybe in
his mid twenties, and none too shabby. But he, too, was distracted. I
leaned farther across the bar. “Excuse me.”
Yeah, the deaf SOB
was straight, like everybody else at this godforsaken bash.
His gaze flickered
reluctantly in my direction.
“Could I have
another one, please?”
Why the hell not? I
didn’t have to drive home. A limo was at the ready to shuttle around whichever
party-goers weren’t staying at the hotel.
Oliver’s father wasn’t only footing the bill for this suite at the
Pfister, the drinks, and the dancers, he’d arranged for safe transportation.
Christ, what a night. I glanced through
wreathing cigarette smoke in Oliver’s direction. Louie was sitting on his lap
now, her legs on either side of his hips, and doing a slow hump as Smokey
Robinson crooned, “Ooh, baby, baby.” I looked away. Nope, this wasn’t so much
fun anymore.
My gaze wandered to
the windows. Outside, city lights sparkled in the darkness of the August night.
I would’ve rather been out on the Avenue, cruising for sailors. Not that I’d
ever cruised for anybody, much less men in uniform, but I’d heard about such
things. The sailors came to Milwaukee regularly
from the Great
Lakes Naval Training Center
To me, anyway.
I’d often watched
them—cute caps set at jaunty angles above their dress blue jumpers, Vs of white
undershirts visible at their necklines, pants hugging their round asses—and
thought they looked like fuckable dolls. I had no clue how to interpret each
man’s swagger, no clue what it was that set the gay ones apart or how exactly
to go about approaching them. So I simply watched and dreamed and, back at
home, sometimes jerked off while I imagined a bold recruit smiling at me as he
took off his hat. The hat removal was, in my fantasies, always an invitation,
the prelude to an indescribably thrilling encounter.
“Hiya, cutie.”
Startled, I jerked
to the right. A dazzling, gap-toothed grin and cloud of perfume hit me. At my side
stood a woman in a neon-pink negligee. Her hand smoothed circles onto my back.
She had straight, bluish black hair only slightly longer than her glued-on
eyelashes.
“Uh…hello.” I had
to be polite. It was Oliver’s bachelor party, and his father had put out
beaucoup bread for it.
“I’m Krysti,”
chirped my unwanted companion. “What’s your name?”
“Ned. Just…Ned.”
Well, it wasn’t just Ned, but she didn’t need to know the Surwicki part.
As my attention
funneled back to the party, I remembered that Louie wasn’t alone. Oliver’s
older brother Darryl had hired a troupe of three dancers. Flame-haired Louie,
vivacious as she was, couldn’t possibly cater to all nineteen men in
attendance.
Krysti tucked some
stray strands of hair behind my ear. I tried as inconspicuously as possible to
inch backward.
“Wouldja like a
little something special, Just Ned? Want me to boogaloo down your Broadway?”
Her fingers danced down my shirtfront to the waistband of my trousers.
Uh-oh. A little
something special from the Electric Eurydice didn’t appeal to me whatsoever.
Not unless there was a sailor lurking beneath that lingerie.
“Woooo, go
for it, man!”
I tilted past
Krysti to look in the direction of the voice, although I already knew whose
voice it was. Oliver, who’d either slid or been pulled from his chair, sat on
the floor with his shirt open and zipper down, waving a beer bottle. His hold
on the neck was precarious. I worried the bottle might slip from his curled
fingers and thump him on the head. He was trying to point at me but couldn’t
seem to get his forefinger fully straightened.
From all
indications, he was rip-roaringly drunk.
I’d never seen him
like this. He drank, yeah, but never to excess. Considering the occasion, I
supposed overindulgence was understandable. He was only doing what a man was
supposed to do.
Being vulnerable to
the charms of scantily clad women fell vaguely into the same category. As did
getting married.
“Whatcha waiting
for, Schnickelfritz?” he called out with a sloppy grin I found disarming as
hell. “Get that cherry popped!”
Oh God, why did he have to holler about my cherry, and when was he
going to stop calling me Schnickelfritz? Each one of us was only half German. Besides, it
sounded so fucking silly. But I supposed there were worse names.
Krysti fired him a
look. “We don’t do that sort of thing,” she said with snippy indignation.
“We’re entertainers.”
“That’s okay,” I
mumbled. “My cherry’s already been popped.” Not by a female, granted…
Louie, now sitting
in the chair above Oliver and gliding her hands inside his open shirt, leaned
over and whispered in his ear.
Oliver lifted his
eyebrows and pulled down his mouth. “Pardon, mademoiselle,” he said to Krysti in
perfect, slurred French. He swung his raised arm to his midsection to affect a
bow of apology, but he swung it too hard. Beer shot out of the bottle and splashed onto Louie’s inner thigh. She yelped and fell backward, Oliver
toppled onto his side, and the room erupted into hoots and guffaws.
“Excuse me,” I said
to Krysti.
I hustled over to
the guest of honor to make sure he was all right. Kneeling beside him, I eased
the bottle out of his hand.
“Hope you’re
planning to replace that,” he said as I got him to sit up.
“Don’t worry about
it.” I twisted around and set the bottle on a cluttered coffee table. “Just
worry about one of these bozos tripping over your ass.”
More music cut a
tinny swath through the raised voices in the room. Stevie Wonder, “Signed,
Sealed, Delivered.” To me, the song was like a bad portent.
All three
entertainers were dancing now, slinking and shimmying from man to man, trying
to tease some reaction from their alcohol-saturated libidos. The third woman, a
blonde named Misty, let Curtis Orton pluck maraschino cherries from her
cleavage. Two guys on a loveseat pulled Krysti down between them, and Darryl
Duncan, Oliver’s older brother and the temporary holder of the family purse
strings, swayed with his hands on Louie’s hips. The fact he was married didn’t
seem to deter him.
“They’ll do it for
enough money, you know,” Oliver said to me. His hand rested on my leg.
“Do what?” I felt a
little foggy myself.
“Handjob, blowjob,
maybe even fuck. What’s-her-name just told me.”
Handjob, blowjob,
fuck. Those words alone, coming from Oliver’s mouth, made a barbed
tingle clutch at my groin. I wanted to lower him back to the floor, carefully
crawl on top of him, and kiss him for hours on end as I finished the undressing
that Louie had begun. Even disheveled, he was a knockout. His sable hair was
charmingly mussed, his heavy eyelids gave the rich darkness of his irises a
sultry cast, and his lips bore a scrim of moisture.
“I’m not
interested,” I said, trying hard not to focus on his mouth.
“Don’t be uptight about it. Money’s not an
issue. And I’m pretty sure Darryl brought along a box of rubbers.”
“I wouldn’t be
interested even if they were full-body rubbers.” It was the biggest hint I’d
ever dropped, but it fell unnoticed.
Shit, I’d wanted to
get cozy with Oliver since we were fourteen years old. After almost seven years
of longing, the most touch I’d ever gotten from him were playful shakes and
friendly hugs and an occasional clap on the back or shoulder. Buddy stuff.
Considering I’d had
a deep, dark, smoldering crush on him since high school, buddy stuff was more
tormenting than satisfying.
“Aw, c’mon, Ned,
loosen up,” Oliver said, his hand moving aimlessly on my thigh, driving me
crazy. “I want you to have a good time.”
“I’m having a good
time just watching all you preppies get stupid.”
“Please don’t use
that word. Ever since that stinko movie came out, I’ve been given enough shit
just because of my name.”
He meant Love
Story, of course. Ryan O’Neal’s character was named Oliver, and Ali McGraw
as his snotty bitch of a girlfriend called him “Preppie.” The reference made me
grin.
“I’ll lay off the
word,” I said, “if you lay off trying to hook me up with some Salome.”
“Deal. So, you got
a new secret love or what?” Oliver’s accompanying wink was so spazzy, I thought
for moment he had something in his eye.
“I might.”
“Yeah?” Smiling,
Oliver lifted his shirttail and daubed at a corner of my mouth.
Heat shot through
me.
“Piece of pimiento
from your olive,” he murmured.
“Thanks.”
He kept looking at
me. His besotted, beguiling smile had shrunk and taken on a different quality.
It made me feel way more than I wanted or needed to feel, especially on the eve
of the eve of his wedding.
A young man I didn’t know brought deliverance.
He stumbled into us, grabbed Oliver by the shoulders, shook him, and bellowed,
“Olé Ol-lie!”
I squinted up at
the numbskull. His cheeks puffed out as a belch apparently rumbled up from his
stomach -- at least I hoped it was a belch -- and his head wobbled a little.
The guy was one of Oliver’s friends from Dartmouth
As Numbskull
toddled away, Oliver suddenly clamped my face between his hands and gave me
both the worst and best kiss of my life. Impishly, his smile widened for
second. Then he bumbled off the floor like a sack of flour with feet, gave my
head an affectionate rub, and wove through the room to receive more olés.
My lips prickled. I
touched my fingers to them, trying to relive the feel of his mouth on mine,
that startling silky softness and humid heat, the subtle poke of his whiskers.
Of course there’d been no tongue. The kiss hadn’t been that kind of kiss. But
it still had sucked the air right out of my lungs. And the room. And the entire
atmosphere. If he did it again, I vowed, I would kiss him back and make it
last. Fuck what people thought.
A hand appeared in
front of my face, prompting me to look up. Smiling down at me was a clean-cut
blond guy whose name I couldn’t remember.
“Need some help
getting it up?”
I blinked at him. No,
no, you moron. Not getting “it” up, just getting up. From the floor.
“No, thanks. I can
manage.”
I bounced to my feet. The guy grabbed my shoulders to steady me.
“You look as out of
place here as I feel,” he said affably. “No offense.”
I tried to gather
my wits, but the effort wasn’t going well. “Yeah, well, I don’t go to Dartmouth
“I’m not a college
guy either. My name’s Russ. Who’re you?”
“Ned. A friend of
Oliver. From high school.” My attention finally found its way to Russ. He was
broad-shouldered and very well built, and his neatly combed hair was shiny as a
polished helmet.
We shook hands. His
grip was so firm it made me reel a little. More and more he reminded me of…of…
One of
those sailors.
“I don’t know
anybody here,” Russ said. “I just work for Blumenthal’s. You know, the
caterer.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “All I did was deliver the hors
d’oeuvres. Then Darryl invited me to hang out.”
“Won’t you get in
trouble with your employer?” Damn, my throat felt dry.
“Nah. I called him
hours ago. Long as I get the van back in one piece, Felix don’t care how I
spend the rest of the evening.” Russ looked toward the bar and the nearby hors
d’oeuvre table. “Can I, uh…get you a drink or some food or something?”
“Thanks, but I’m
set.” He was such a nice, simple guy and seemed so utterly guileless, I had
trouble entertaining the notion he might be hitting on me. So maybe he
wasn’t. Maybe he just felt obligated to earn his invitation to the party by
doubling as a waiter. “I’m leaving soon, anyway.”
Russ’s smile
collapsed. “You are?”
“Yeah. Oliver’s
father hired a limo…”
“Oh. So you live in
the city?”
“I have an
apartment near MSOE.”
Nodding, Russ
licked his lips. “I think I’ve seen you around.”
“Really? Where?”
More to the point, why would he even remember me? I didn’t exactly look like
Robert Redford.
Russ’s voice
lowered. “Castaways. The Rooster.” His sky-blue eyes fixed on my face.
My lips parted;
shock and germinal excitement had instantly made my breath go shallow.
Castaways and the Rooster were queer bars. “What’re you saying?” I asked in a
strained monotone.
“Just wondering if you’d like some company on that limo ride.”
“Just wondering if you’d like some company on that limo ride.”
[Chapter One continues from this point.]
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