THE BRO-MAGNET (20 page)

“But their storylines hardly intersect.”

“That’s the beauty of it. I could probably get fifty-to-one odds from your bookie on a Sonny/Elizabeth hookup. I’ll make out like a bandit.”

She says this like this whole scenario might actually come to fruition.

When the closing credits roll, Sam turns to me. “Shall we get our books out and study? I can’t believe we have to wait until Monday to find out what Lisa the surgeon’s got up her sleeve.”

Sam’s hooked.

“Just so you know,” I say, “my offer was strictly for this week only. If we start blowing off work regularly to watch GH, I am not keeping you on the clock for it come Monday.”

“OK, OK. So…the books?”

“I’ve already memorized the parts on ‘Getting Your Outside Ready’ and ‘Having a Way Cool Time.’ Actually, I had something else in mind for today’s study session. It has to do with that thing you said about Sonny, how if you weren’t a lesbian…”

* * *

“I am
not
kissing you, Johnny!” Sam says for the third time.

“We have time to kill. The poker game doesn’t start for another two hours and my date with Helen is tomorrow. Come on, you have to!”

“I do not. What part of ‘I am a lesbian’ do you not understand?”

“But that’s what makes it perfect. It’s not like you’ll get turned on or anything. I just need the practice, to make sure I’ve been doing it right, should the occasion arise that I get the chance to kiss Helen.”

“Of course you’re doing it right. You’re how old? How long have you been kissing women?”

“But that’s the thing. What if all these years I’ve been doing it wrong? What if the real reason I’ve never had a successful long-term relationship is that secretly I’m the world’s worst kisser?”

“Don’t you think you’d know that by now?”

“How would I know it? Would some girl ever actually say to me, ‘Gee, I’d like to like you…
if only you weren’t the world’s worst kisser ever’?
”

“Well, no, but – ”

“Are you that confident you’re
not
a lousy kisser?”

“Ooh, harsh.”

“I don’t mean to be harsh. I’m just trying to say, maybe we could both benefit from practicing together?”

Sam doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, Sam. You’re my best friend. If I were dying and I needed a kidney, you’d give me a kidney, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but if I gave you a kidney I wouldn’t have to kiss you.”

“Sam…”

“Oh, all
right
. But draw the blinds first. I don’t want anyone to see this.”

I draw the blinds.

“OK,” Sam says, “how do you want to do this thing?”

“I don’t know.” Now that I’ve got my way I’m suddenly unsure. “Should we do it sitting down? Standing?”

“How should I know? It’s your date.”

“Maybe it’ll happen after I walk her to the door, so I guess we’d be standing.”

“That’s an improvement. You wouldn’t just like to shake her hand again like you did last time?”

I ignore that.

“Or maybe,” I say, “it’ll happen earlier. There’ll be a naturally occurring opening – ”

“What is that, ‘a naturally occurring opening’? It sounds like something they’d say on The Science Channel about the aftereffects of a meteor.”

I ignore her and just start again. “There’ll be a naturally occurring opening in the date where we’re sitting down somewhere and I say something that’s funny and she laughs, or I say something that’s at least not totally asinine and she tolerates it, or maybe we’re both laughing at something happening around us that doesn’t even have anything to do with us and as we’re laughing our bodies just naturally fall toward one another and – ”

“You’re way over-thinking this, Johnny. If this is the sort of crap that goes on in your mind during an actual date, no wonder you never get around to kissing the girl.”

“Remind me again why you’re my best friend?”

“Because I’m standing here with the blinds drawn and I’m going to let you practice kissing on me even though I’m a lesbian.”

“Oh right. That.”

“Why don’t we do it on the couch?”

“Really? You think so? Because what if I learn how to do it in one position and we wind up doing it in an entirely different position? Maybe the opportunity won’t come until the end of the date when I’m walking her to the door and – ”

“The couch, Johnny, the couch. Let’s do it on the couch before I change my fucking mind.”

Geez.

We sit.

We sit side by side. My hands are on my knees, Sam’s hands are on her knees, and we’re facing the TV.

“We probably need to face each other to do this,” she says finally.

“OK,” I say, turning toward her. “Can you take your glasses off? Helen doesn’t wear glasses and – ” 

“ – and you’re sure that if you practice on me while I’m wearing glasses, even if your practice makes perfect, when you go to kiss a girl without glasses you’ll somehow go back to lousing things up. Have I got that right?”

“Pretty much.” It’s embarrassing how well she knows me.

“Fine.” She removes her glasses and carefully places them on the coffee table. “Now I’m blind as a bat, which could work to your advantage.”

“OK, now maybe we should try to create a natural conversational atmosphere so this feels like it will when it’s actually happening. Pretend I just said something funny and you’re laughing.”

“
HA!
” Sam barks.

Like a character in a comic strip, I’m practically bowled over backwards by the volume of that laugh. “Not like that. That sounds like you’re laughing
at
me.”

“I can’t help it. That’s my laugh.”

“OK, then just smile, like you
would
laugh, like what I just said is funny enough for a laugh, but you’re more restrained than that, more sophisticated, so instead you just have this smile on your face – you know, kind of Mona Lisa-ish.”

Sam smiles. Then through her smiling teeth, she says, “You mean like this?”

“Perfect, if a little spooky. OK, now I’m going to lean toward you and put my hand on your shoulder. But in a non-threatening way, of course.”

“Of course. We wouldn’t want Mona Lisa to feel threatened before you kiss her.”

“Now you put a hand on me somewhere.”

Sam pulls away from me. “I can’t do this,” she says abruptly.

“But you promised!” I can’t believe how much like an eight-year-old I sound, even to my own ears.

“I did not promise. There were no guarantees given here. I signed no contracts.”

“Fine, that’s all true.” I sigh. “But I need help here, Sam, real help. Who else can I ask to help me make sure I’m kissing right? Alice? Aunt Alfresca? Alice would yell at me again, like she did when she thought the reason I wanted to meet her for coffee was to confess my undying love for her. And Aunt Alfresca – ick. She’s a relative. Plus, even if she wasn’t a relative? Ick.”

“I take your point.”

“Thank you.”

“Maybe if we get drunker I can do it.”

“Aren’t we buzzed enough? We drank beer all through GH.”

“I need something harder for this.” Sam thinks. “You still got that bottle Mr. Papadopolous tipped you with at that job last week?”

“You mean the ouzo?”

Sam nods.

“Sure. You know I never drink stuff like that. Neither do you.”

“Well, we’re drinking it now.”

I get the ouzo, two shot glasses, put it all on the coffee table, pour. Simultaneously, we knock back the shots.

“Ugh!” Sam wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “That tastes like licorice!”

“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to.”

“I hate licorice.” Sam nods at the shot glasses. “Again,” she instructs. “Doubles this time.”

On the count of three, we knock our doubles back together.

Sam wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, then wipes the back of her hand on the thigh of my jeans. Fucking Sam.

“OK, I think I’m ready,” she says. “Let’s do this thing.”   

Finally!

A few more minutes of logistical discussion and we’re back where we left off earlier with my hand on her shoulder in a non-threatening way and me saying, “Now you put a hand on me somewhere.”

“Where somewhere?”

“I don’t know. My waist?”

“Threatening or non-threatening?”

“Non. OK, now hold the Mona Lisa-ish smile as our heads just naturally move toward one another and – ”

My lips make contact with Sam’s lips. Hers are soft and taste like potato chips and beer and licorice. I imagine mine do too. For the longest time, we just stay there with our puckered lips touching, not moving them around or anything. Then, figuring this is not the part of kissing I need practice on, I gently part my lips and wait for her to part hers too. She does, and before you know it, we’ve got noses crashing and teeth clashing and tongues smashing like mad. I’m not sure what this is but it feels like the kiss equivalent of when a cartoon character is thinking dark thoughts and the thought bubble contains something that looks like $*%(^)*&!

And then to make matters worse, smack in the middle of it, I think of what it would be like to have my lips touch Helen’s, to have it be her hand on my waist, and my boner pops
sproing!

Sam and I practically push each other away, wipe our mouths with the backs of our hands.

What the hell was that?

“Let’s never do that again, OK?” Sam says.

“Deal,” I say.

For a long moment, we just sit there, catching our breath.

“You know,” I say at last, “you’re a good friend?”

“I know.”

* * *

All during the poker game, things are weird between Sam and me, each of us barely nursing our beers, barely saying a word to one another. When the game breaks – early, because all the married guys need to head on home to their wives – Sam stays as usual to help me clean up. At least that’s the same as it’s always been.

“Listen,” I say as we head up the stairs from the basement, each holding several empties, “I wanted to apologize for earlier. I realize it was asking too much, to expect you to practice…
you know
with me.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Sam says, shrugging me off in an attempt to make like it’s no big deal. “It was no big deal.”

“But it was,” I say as we hit the kitchen, deposit the empties on the counter, “particularly for you. When’s the last time you kissed a guy?”

Sam blinks at me. “Never.”

“Never?” I blink back at her.

Sam shrugs. “I’m one of those lesbians who’s known I was a lesbian all along. There was never a reason for me to kiss a guy like that before.”

“Christ, Sam.” I pull my hair back with the palm of my hand. In some vague corner of my mind, I wonder if
this
time I look as hot as Sonny on GH with my hair like that. I shrug off the thought, let my hair go. “Then it really is a big deal. If I’da known…”

“Forget it.” Sam waves her hand at me. “It was just that, it wasn’t like it was
just
some guy
. It was you.”

I feel good again, on firmer ground, because now I know exactly what to say. “I know, right?” I say, almost too eagerly. “It was me, and it was you.”

“Exactly.” Sam heaves a sigh of relief. “It’s like we’re such close friends.”

“
Best
friends,” I amend.

“BFFs for sure,” Sam agrees. “But that’s what makes it so weird. Do you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean. It’s like when you have really close friends – like you, like Billy – it’s not like you ever think of…
doing stuff
with them. But because you’re so close, or maybe the reason you’re so close, there’s a different connection, a click you don’t have with other people that’s almost like its own separate category of attraction – ”

“Except it’s not, not like what you have with Helen.”

“Or what you’ll have with whoever you replace Renee with.”

“I hope that’s sooner rather than later.”

“You and me both.” I pause. “Anyway, when you tamper with that separate category of attraction that isn’t really an attraction, like we did earlier…” I pause again, not sure how to properly finish my thought.

But that’s OK, because Sam finishes it for me with, “…you disrupt the natural fabric of the universe.”

“Exactly!” I look at my best friend. “So, we good now?”

“Not exactly. I’m still a bit weirded out by all of this.”

“What can we do to correct that?” Before she can answer, it comes to me. “I know! We’ll do something normal together. We’ll get out of here, hit the bar.”

“You mean right now?”

“Why not? I’m sober again, aren’t you?”

Sam thinks about this. “Yeah. I could drink.”

“Great. We’ll go to Pockets.” It’s a local bar that has a pool table. “Besides, I’d like to take my new pants out for a spin.”

“The khakis? But I thought you bought those for Helen.”

“So?” I’m just so glad Sam and I are about to do something normal together, get us past this hump of weirdness between us. “If I dribble on myself, I can always wash them. It might even work out better. That way, when I wear them with Helen, they won’t have that just-purchased-for-this-occasion look.”

“You know you’re starting to sound like a girl? You sure I wasn’t kissing a girl earlier?”

Fucking Sam.

Yes! She’s insulting me!

We are definitely on the track back to normal.

* * *

Pockets is hopping. Or it’s limping along as much as Pockets ever does but at least it’s not completely dead when Sam and me hit it around eleven p.m. In the bar area there are maybe a half dozen people, there’s twice that out on the terrace, and the same around the pool table even though no one’s got their names up on the chalkboard.

“I’ll rack,” I say, crouching to put four quarters in the slot. “Here,” I say rising, pulling my wallet from the back of my crisp new khakis and handing a twenty to Sam. “Get me a Sierra and get whatever you want for yourself.”

As I rack the balls, I’m thinking how good I’m feeling, being out. I’m with Sam, my pants look sharp, and we didn’t have to wait forever to get on the table.

I’m feeling even better when Sam returns with our drinks and, as she nears, I notice two women seated on a couch under a neon beer sign eyeing me. They’re maybe in their mid-twenties, tight jeans, tight tank tops, tight figures, Jersey Shore hair, strong Friday night makeup.