Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love (10 page)

And then Sparkle did something completely surprising. He got up from his side of the sofa and sat down next to me and put his arms around me and gave me a nice, warm hug. Then he said, in a really quiet voice just loud enough for me to hear, “Thanks.” I guessed that he meant
thanks
for letting him get that off his chest, or maybe thanks for me being his friend. I sensed he had very few true ones. Whatever it was, I hugged him back. There’s nothing quite like a nice, warm hug between friends, after all. And that’s how we were sitting when the front door popped open.

As the door swung in, letting in sheets of light, I had to shield my eyes with my hand to get a better look at our intruder. It only took about five seconds for them to adjust, but it was unmistakable who was standing in the doorway, looking mighty pissed.

“Lance,” Sparkle grunted, pulling away from me all at once, “how nice to see you again.  It’s been way too long.” Sparkle came off about as sincere as a used car salesman.

“Faggot,” his brother barked. “I seem to have a knack for finding you in these situations. Now get your faggot ass out of this house and take your faggot boyfriend out of here with you.”

“Or what?” Sparkle was now on his feet, and, thank goodness, was a good two inches taller than Lance and in a hell of a lot better shape. I mean, I don’t mind a little rock-em, sock-em action every now and again, but only if I know for certain that there’s little chance of me getting my ass completely kicked. I figured we had a keen advantage here, so I too stood up to face the prick.

“Or next time I see you I’m gonna take my gun and shoot your fucking queer ass off the face of this planet. Now get out of here and stop causing this family so much shame and grief.” The entire time, Lance was waving his arms and pacing back and forth. Ignorant straight people are so utterly silly that way. Making a big deal out of nothing. If anything, they should be grateful for the lack of sexual competition. As if they could compete against us anyhow.

Now Sparkle, to his credit, was taking all of this remarkably well. He simply stood there for another minute and shook his head. I, on the other hand, was not so calm. I’d finally come out to myself and most of my world, and here was this moron screaming at me and calling me a faggot. Who did he think he was, Anita Bryant?

I was just about to let him have it, too, when Sparkle, sensing my impending rush of venom, grabbed my hand and started to herd me out of the room. “Lance,” Sparkle said, in an even tone, “as always, it’s been a rare pleasure seeing you again. Please tell Mother and Father that I send my love and that I will see you all again during the holidays.” Sparkle was walking us out of the living room and toward the front door as he was saying all of this. I for one was surprised at his total calm demeanor. But, just as we got within about a foot of the door, Sparkle let go of my hand and jumped toward Lance, pinning him against the door and knocking the air out of his lungs at the same time.

“Listen, you little piece of shit,” Sparkle said, still in complete control. “This is not
my boyfriend
. This is my
friend
, Bruce, not that it’s any of your damn business. And I will bring whomever I want to this house, whenever I want. This, like the rest of our family’s wealth, was our grandparent’s, not our parent’s and certainly not yours. It belongs to all of us equally. So get over your ignorant self and get a fucking life. Besides, I don’t see a wedding band on your finger. Is there something you’d like to share with us, Little Brother?” Sparkle let go of his shaken sibling, who quickly backed into the house. We departed slowly and awkwardly. Needless to say, I was good and ready to leave by that point.

“Sparkle?” I said as we got into the car.

“Yes, Secret?” Sparkle was looking at me as his hands rested on the steering wheel. Clearly, that little melee had taken its toll on him.

“You okay?”

“Getting there, Secret. Now let’s get the hell out of here; I need a drink in a nice, wholesome gay bar.”

“Well, amen to that, my friend. And do you want to know something, Sparkle?” I asked. “I think I figured out what Gay Rule #4 is.”

“Yeah, Secret, and just what might that be?”

“That straight people and gay people
are
different.
We’re
better. Hey, that would make a great slogan:
We’re here. We’re queer. We’re better.
  Pretty nifty, don’t you think?”

“Needs some tweaking, Sweetie, but we’ll work on it.”

“Looking forward to it, Sparkle,” I replied, patting his back. “Looking forward to it.”

Chapter Three

From Fags to Riches

So I bet you’re wondering from the nifty little title above what I did exactly to go from my near state of destitution to the aforementioned
riches
. Okay, riches might have been a slight overstatement. Let’s just say that I was no longer broke. See, Sparkle did indeed take care of me, just as he promised he would. How, you are no doubt asking, did he manage to do that? Well, before you make any judgments, let me just say on my own behalf that this is going to sound much worse than it actually was. Okay, so here goes: I became Sparkle’s, um… Sparkle’s… well, his houseboy, if you must know. (For a while, we toyed with calling me Glint to his Sparkle, but that, thankfully, didn’t pan out. Besides, I had a feeling that Secret would be my name for quite some time to come.)

In any case, it was just temporary until something better came along, and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. And, hell, it paid much more than I could ever have earned at Joe Joe’s. Besides, as you’re soon to find out, it was just a stepping-stone to the next better thing that did indeed come along.

Basically, I cleaned his apartment, paid his bills (which were considerable), kept his date book (even more considerable), and ran his errands. All of this, believe it or not, kept me fairly busy, but it also afforded me a lot of down time. Probably the best part about it, looking back, was that I never had to go to work before ten o’clock, the hour at which Sparkle usually woke up. I also got to meet a ton of truly interesting, if not outright bizarre, people, because Sparkle, it turned out, had a lot more going on than met the eye.

My very first excursion into the wilderness that was (and still hopefully is) Sparkle’s life was the very first time I went to brunch with him and some of his friends. Brunch, if you’re new to the madcap world of queer, is to the gay man what church is to a Catholic: something you do every Sunday whether you want to or not. And, I was soon to find out, Sparkle never, ever missed brunch. He was like the mailman of brunch: come rain, or sleet, or even jail (followed by bail, long story… wait), Sparkle was at a brunch or throwing a brunch. This also was one of my duties: to put brunches together. (You should be able to include that on a résumé, by the way:
throws a fabulous brunch
. It’s not easy, mind you.)

Now that first brunch, it was a doozie. We went to Jellies, rhymes with nellies, which is just what that restaurant was full of that day. I’d never been around so many queens before in a single afternoon. Joe Joe’s was much butcher and more rugged; Jellies was pure zaniness compared to that place. And Jellies had something Joe Joe’s didn’t have: a full bar. Honestly, whoever had the idea to put a bar and a restaurant together, well, that guy should get a Nobel Prize or something. Because, I’m here to say, brunch without booze is like sex without coming.  Why bother?

If you’ve never been to San Francisco, there’s something you should know: space is at a premium here. Offices are cramped, apartments are tiny (with bedrooms that are closets), and restaurants have their tables so packed together that by the time you’re done eating you’ve just had your first date with a guy you didn’t even arrive with. Jellies was just such a place. As a matter of fact, if you didn’t have a twenty-seven-inch waist or less, you couldn’t work there. This, compounded by the situation we had, which was that there were six of us, made for quite an interesting and enlightening afternoon.

***

Sparkle and I arrived second to last, and were greeted uproariously by (now get this) Jim, Tim, and Slim. The three of them were roommates as well as frequent fuck-buddies, and each one was more outlandish than the next. They were also, not surprisingly, completely adorable. In any case, I sat down next to Slim, who had on hot pink nail polish and a t-shirt that had obviously been meant for a twelve-year-old girl, plus, on top of his head, big old Jackie-O sunglasses. He was glamour and glitz rolled up into a hard, little fairy body. I would’ve eaten him up alive right there and then if I wasn’t so sure that he would’ve given me cavities.

“Double Bloody Mary,” I implored the waitress.

Jim and Tim, though equally adorable, were working a different angle than Slim. They both had on army boots with the whites of their socks just barely showing. There legs were neatly trimmed with just a hint of hair on them and they both had on shorts that were shorter than any Daisy Dukes I’d ever seen. Meaning, when they stood up to great us, I saw nothing but bulge. For shirts, they both went with a classic white tee with rolled up sleeves. And both had striking blue eyes and raven-black hair.

“Waitress, is that drink coming?” I croaked out, because if it didn’t, I soon would be.

Suffice it to say, this was more like it: not a muscle clone in sight. The décor was also upbeat and not the least bit trendy.
Kitschy
, I would call it. None of the tables or chairs matched and neither did the plates, cups, or silverware. The walls were covered with old movie posters and faded pictures. And, best of all, when the drinks did show up, they were in huge hurricane glasses. This, I must say, was how a Bloody Mary was meant to be served. 

And then our last brunch guest arrived.

Number six was decidedly more butch. Her name was Millie, and she had on army boots that she wore over her baggy fatigues. She was wearing a loose white tee that said:
Nobody Knows that my Girlfriend Fists Me
. I couldn’t even begin to imagine (or didn’t dare try) how that one worked.
Blech
. And she had Lesbian Haircut #3. You know the one: feathered on top and short all around, with a rat’s tail in the back. I swear, there must be just one lesbian hairdresser that travels around the globe giving Lesbian Haircut #3, because you can go to any town in any country in the world and see this haircut on at least one dyke. 

Introductions and air-kisses were given all around, with Millie sitting down to my left. Apparently, this little group knew each other well and was already comfortable with each other, because the conversation turned raunchy almost immediately.

“So, Tim, how was your date with Randall last night?” Sparkle asked.

“Well, you’ll notice he’s not with us this morning,” Jim answered for Tim.

“Amen for that,” Tim added, nodding his head. “You just never know about some people.”

“Ooh, do tell. I’ve only heard secondhand accounts, and none of them were encouraging.” Sparkle scooted up his chair as he said this, even though the six of us couldn’t have gotten any closer if we were sardines in a can.

“Well, everything started off nice. He drove over from his house in Berkeley…”

“Oh no,” Sparkle interrupted.

“What?” I inquired, with the five of them answering in unison, “He’s geographically challenged”.

“Oh.” (Whatever.)

“Anyway, he does own. So points for that. And he did show up with a beautiful bouquet of wild flowers. So again, pointage for that. Actually, he was racking up the points all night long: dinner at Chez Moi, he paid, drinks at The Stud, he paid, and then back to my place, and…

“You paid.” This time it was Millie who interrupted.

“Boy howdy, did I ever. Everything started off nice and sweet. I fixed us some drinks before we sat down on the couch to do the whole chitchat thing. And chitchat quickly turned to lip-smack and, before I knew it, we were back in my bedroom and were naked as the day we were born. Sort of.”

“Sort of?” I asked.

“Well, Randall had some added features that I’m pretty sure he wasn’t born with. The tattoos were okay. I mean, that’s kind of sexy and everything, but he had both his nipples pierced with these two huge barbells.”

“Gross!” we all said together. (Remember, this was the mid-nineties; piercing was still fairly nouveau at the time. Not like today, where every Tom, Dick, and Mary has their dick, balls, butt, lip, nose, eyebrow, and bellybutton pierced. Back then, we were still squeamish about such things.)

“Gross is right. I mean, I had no idea what to do with them. Do you play with them or hang your shirt up on them or what? But, okay, I figured, let’s roll with it. He was just expressing himself or something, right? Plus, he looked and felt really hot, once I dimmed the lights and took my glasses off. Anyway, things were going well, lots of kissy-kissy and some sucky-sucky and licky-licky, but then he gave me this little punch on my chest. Okay, I can deal with that, I thought. No biggie. And then he did it again, but harder. I mean, look at me, y’all, I’m what, one hundred and forty pounds and just barely five seven. I’m meant for the gentle cycle, and he was rough and tumbling me.”

We all giggled and took healthy swigs of our drinks before he continued. “So, anyway, I decided to move my chest away from his fists and I swung my butt around for some sixty-nining instead. Big mistake. No sooner was my nice little rump in his face when he started slapping it, and hard, too.”

“So that’s what I heard last night,” Slim interjected, squeezing my knee. (Hmm. Things were starting to get interesting. Below the table, I mean.)

“Tu-huh. Sorry about that,” Tim replied. “Then I did the sensible thing and I removed my butt from his face and said, ‘Look, Honey, you’re no Chad Douglas, so would you please stop slapping my ass?’ (Chad who? I got that one later on when Sparkle showed me a video. Yikes!) Well, that stopped him, anyway, and he apologized and went back to some nice gentle rubbing and kissing.”