Taking Chances (22 page)

“These girls had no idea you were gay, and you dated them?” she asked again.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I did do that.”

“Kind of a shitty thing to do, don’t you think?” She leaned forward with the same intensity I had seen Barbara Walters give in interviewing mob bosses.

There were several different ways I could have answered that, but I opted for the one she probably wasn’t expecting. “Yeah, it was shitty. In fact, one of the things I most regret about growing up was lying to people about who I was. I felt like shit every time I led a girl on, which is one of the many reasons I just sat down and accepted I was gay instead of trying to continue lying.”

You could see by the look in her eyes these were not the words she expected to come out of my mouth. In fact, from the way Matt was looking at me, they were not the words anyone was expecting.

“I didn’t know you hated it that much,” Matt told me.

I shrugged and took another drink. “You didn’t ask.” I wished I didn’t sound as bitter as I did, but I couldn’t help it. There had been so much ground Matt and I hadn’t covered over Christmas that it seemed impossible for either of us to know anything about each other. I wondered again why I was here and trying so hard.

“Yeah, right,” Sophia said after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. “You just felt like crap every time you nailed a girl. Like there was a gun to your head.”

“It wasn’t a gun,” I answered as calmly as I could muster. “It was something much worse I was afraid of.”

I could see her opening her mouth to ask what could be worse than a gun to my head when Matt answered. “Having people find out you were gay and treating you different. I think getting shot would have been better than having to go to school with everyone knowing I was gay.”

“Oh please,” Sophia said as the lights began to dim for the movie. “Plenty of people out there are gay, and they are just fine.”

I lowered my voice, but it was hard since I felt like screaming at her. “It isn’t that easy in a place like Foster,” I hissed at her. “Especially if you play sports.”

She didn’t even look at me, instead waving me off with one hand. “Closet cases always have an excuse.”

Now I wanted to jump across the table and throttle her, no matter how much I hated guys who put their hands on women. I looked over at Matt, who gave me a small, apologizing smile. “Wasn’t making an excuse, was answering your question.”

She just looked over at me with a condescending smile and said, “Your movie’s starting.”

I looked at the candle-filled jar that made the table’s centerpiece and wondered if I could just crack her across the skull with it.

They started with
Pretty in Pink
, a move that did not go well with Sophia because she sighed and muttered. “Awesome, two hours about a perfectly fine girl who ends up choosing the douchebag in the end.” She looked across to me. “I have seen this story way too much lately.”

Matt threw his napkin at her. “Knock it off,” he grumbled. She settled down some as the movie began.

We got to the computer lab scene when they brought us our first dish. The menu had a variety of items from burgers all the way to Italian food. It wasn’t fancy, but I had never eaten dinner in a movie theater before, so it was all new to me. I’m sure no one is surprised to hear Sophia did not like her meal at all.

“Well, you can really see where the sixteen bucks went in this dish,” she said, pushing the plate back. “It’s like being in a Gordon Ramsay show while they play John Hughes.”

Her boyfriend said with his mouth full, “I kinda like it.”

She batted at his arm. “No you don’t.”

He paused, a noodle halfway out of his mouth. “I don’t?” She shook her head no. The end of the noodle slipped into his mouth as he looked down at his plate sadly.

“It’s not bad,” Matt said, taking a bite of his burger.

“Which is a way of saying it’s not good,” she countered.

I had already lost my temper a while back; now it was just a battle to keep my tongue in check. A task that I was failing at badly. “Then order something else,” I said to her.

She turned back to the movie. “No use. Not sure what I was expecting, ordering food in a place with sticky floors.”

We sat in relative silence for the rest of the movie. Matt and I picked at our food, too upset to really enjoy it, and the other guy just looked down at his plate from time to time like a kid who was being punished. The lights came up as the credits rolled and a good number of people got up to stretch or use the bathroom or even go outside and smoke.

Sophia took it as her cue for round two.

“So explain to me why we aren’t somewhere fun, like a club. A gay club,” she added for emphasis. “Like normal gay guys do.”

“Normal?” I asked with skepticism in my voice. “So normal gay guys who are lonely go to clubs to celebrate?”

“They do in my world,” she said, finishing her glass of wine. “The only ones who don’t have issues with being gay.”

“I don’t have issues with being gay. I’ve been to plenty of gay clubs before, I just don’t find they are the best place for a date.” My voice was rising with anger, but I was way past caring.

“And bringing another couple is a good choice?” she asked me.

“That was my choice,” Matt interjected.

She ignored him. “I just think you don’t want the competition a gay bar brings.”

I laughed out loud before I could stop myself. “Competition? You think I brought him here because I think someone better-looking is going to hit on Matt?”

“Someone who doesn’t have issues with being gay.”

I leaned forward “I don’t have issues with being fucking gay.”

“Prove it,” she said with a smile.

Forty-five minutes later, we were walking to a gay bar.

A
S
WE
filed into Strut, I kept yelling at myself to turn this date around and leave.

Sophia had been nonstop on Tyler the whole night, and I couldn’t get her to let up. I admit I wasn’t trying all that hard because I know talking to her is a wasted effort most of the time, but her goading him to take us here was a mistake. I’ll try to explain.

There are gay bars. And there are
gay
bars.

Meaning there were bars gay guys went to and hung out in, and then there were bars that had an attitude. I’m not sure what your personal level of interaction with gay bars has been, but believe me when I say if you’ve been to one of the places with attitude, you know from your first step inside. Everyone is pretty, well-dressed, young, and likes to show off. What few clothes they are wearing are stylish, and of course let’s not forget the very best in designer drugs. Places like Strut make things like Ecstasy not just popular but somehow glamorous to others. I wasn’t a fan of Strut and others like it, but Sophia loved them and had always assured me if I was going to find someone, it would be in a place like this.

We paid the cover and walked in and were assaulted by a thundering backbeat from the music.

Tyler screamed something at me, but there was no chance of me hearing him. We followed Sophia and Whatshisname upstairs where there were tables available. The music became a little muddled up here, making some forms of conversation possible. Tyler offered to grab us some drinks, and I took the moment to pull Sophia aside.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked her over the music.

“I’m just looking out for you,” she screamed back.

“You’re attacking him.” She nodded with a smile. “Why?”

“To see if he really is into you,” she answered, which just made me more confused. “If he’s willing to put up with me, then you know he’s serious about being here for you. It’s like a test.”

I hated to admit it, but she was making some sense.

“You spent the last weeks chasing him—let him chase you for a while.” I shouldn’t have believed her, but I did. Tyler came back and put our drinks down before sitting next to me.

“So is this better?” he asked her across the table. She just shrugged and said something to Whatshisname. Tyler turned to me and asked, “Did you want to come here?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, since we would have most likely have ended up here if he hadn’t shown up, but
want
was a little too strong a word for my desire to be here. This was just what Sophia and most guys around here did. We went to Strut, we drank, we danced, and we pretended not to be that interested in any one guy. This was the gay life I had grown to know. It wasn’t about like or dislike, it just was.

“Do you like it?” I asked him, curious what his answer would be.

He didn’t even think about it. He just said “No.” and took a sip of his beer. His eyes scanned the room in the same manner I had seen cops size up a room as they walked in the door. He was distrustful, almost hostile. In other words, he was everything I had been when I first arrived in the city. “It’s a fun place once you get used to it,” I tried to tell him.

His gazed moved to me, and I swore it was as if he was just staring though me. I could almost hear him lip through the possible responses to my statement; instead he just gave me a small smile and nodded. “I bet.”

This was miserable.

No one talked. We sat there, nursed our drinks, and watched the chaos move around us. The upstairs was basically a pit stop for the club, a place where you could drag the guy you met on the dance floor to so you could talk or just make out. More than a few couple were opting for the last choice, and it was hard not to stare.

I was about to turn to Tyler to say we could leave if he wanted to when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

It was Coffee Shop Boy.

Now, I name him that for a couple of reasons. One, because no matter how many times I had gone to the coffee shop and noted he was cute, I had never once caught his name. Hence the Coffee Shop. The last word is the important one, though. Boy. This guy was in no way a man yet. I mean, it wasn’t like I was the old man of the mountain or anything, but he wasn’t a day over twenty-two, which meant he was still smack in the middle of his “I have no idea who I am and could honestly give a fuck” phase—that space of time in the early twenties all gay men go through where they become a complete mess and then vow never to return to once they’ve outgrown it. Some guys phased out of it fast; others were well into their forties and still stuck in the middle of it.

I honestly hadn’t realized I was past it until I looked up at him and realized he was not an actual person to me but in fact just Coffee Shop Boy.

It seemed a million years ago I had hit my head on the table because I was so flustered by his presence. Now he was just one more can of gasoline on the bonfire that was tonight. I smiled automatically but wasn’t sure if I should stand up. To be honest, my first reaction was to yell “Go away!” at him, but since he had done nothing to warrant that, I just smiled and shook his hand. “Hey, you,” I said lamely.

“Never seen you here before,” he said, taking the one empty seat left at our table. He looked over at Sophia. “Hey, girl, what’s up?”

They gave each other air kisses on the cheeks, and I knew this wasn’t a disaster—this was a setup.

I turned back to Tyler, who was watching the exchange with the same look cops have when trouble walks into a room they’re patrolling. “He works at the coffee shop we go to,” I explained, trying to minimize his importance.

Coffee Shop Boy was faster than I gave him credit though. “Hi, I’m Cody,” he said, reaching across me and extending his hand to Tyler.

Tyler gave the boy a smile that didn’t reach all the way up to his eyes and shook the hand. “Of course you are.”

I’m pretty sure Coffee Sho… Cody couldn’t hear across the table, ’cause he just smiled and nodded before looking to me. “So, funny seeing you here,” he exclaimed, overjoyed.

I glanced at Sophia before nodding. “Yeah, it’s random.”

He looked around the bar for a moment, reminding me a dog that had stuck its head out a car window for the first time. I wanted to try to explain to Tyler who this guy was, or better yet who he wasn’t, when the boy, er, I mean Cody, looked back at me. “Hey, you want a drink?” I held my beer up, showing him I already had one. He didn’t quite understand the gesture, because he nodded and stood up quickly. “Got it.” Looking to the table, he asked, “You guys want anything?”

Sophia held up her drink, and he bopped off to the bar with a smile.

Turning back to Tyler, I tried to explain quickly. “He’s a kid that works where we get coffee. I have no idea what he’s doing here; and I swear to you it wasn’t planned.”

He wasn’t looking at me, though. He was looking at Sophia.

She looked back over at him and gave him the same smile the Cheshire Cat would give if he was a few pounds overweight and had learned to put his makeup on from drag queens. “Problem?”

Tyler put his beer down and said to me, “I need to use the head” and got up abruptly. Whatshisname got up at the same time, saying he needed to as well. They walked off, leaving Sophia and me alone.

“What did you do?” I said as soon as I was sure they were gone.

She leaned toward me so I could hear her better. “I just wanted to show you that he was not the only game in town. There are plenty of guys who would date you, Matt!”

I pointed to where Coffee Shop Boy was buying our drinks. “
That?
You want me to date that?”

“He’s hot,” she commented.

“He’s a zygote,” I countered. “I’m probably ten years older than him. What in the world could we talk about?”

“If you’re with that boy and you’re talking, trust me, Matt, you’re doing it wrong.” She sounded like some lame
Sex and the City
wannabe, and I lost it. I just lost it.

I pounded my hands on the table, making the bottles jump. “This isn’t a fucking game,” I screamed. “This is my life.”

“You don’t have a life,” she shot back. “You have a job, a gym membership, and me. The closest thing you have to a relationship is with your TiVo, and it is sad. I’m trying to help you here.”

I could see it in her face; she really thought she was helping. This wasn’t spite or some weird way of her trying to inflict harm on me. She honestly thought she was doing me a favor. Which just made it all that much worse. “Do you even know me?” I asked her. “Do you even know who I really am? What I dream of? What I truly desire? Am I a person to you or just some gay guy you hang out with because you think gay guys are fun?”