I tried to remember if I’d drunk my mandatory eight glasses of water for the day. My throat felt dry. My skin itched. I held off as long as I could, but I finally got up to slink into the kitchen. I wasn’t afraid of waking Roberto, but I didn’t want to draw Kendra or Morgan out of their room.
I drank a bottle of water, then made it back to my bed without having to deal with my roommates. A half hour later, still wide awake, I got up again to go to the bathroom. Kendra waylaid me in the miniscule hall.
“Did you get the money from your friend?” she whispered. “Because if you didn’t, I’m totally screwed. I wrote a bad check today.”
“I didn’t have a chance to ask him,” I said. Her face fell. “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.”
“No, it’s not your problem. Maybe I can get my boss to loan me money.”
According to Kendra, her slimy boss at Manhattan Cable was always making passes at her, so I didn’t think that was a good idea. “He’ll take it out of your paycheck. Then you’ll end up short the next time rent is due. Just give me another day, okay?”
She nodded and furtively dissolved into the Snake Pit.
After crossing Martin off my emergency loan list, I decided to call Jeremy. As Daniel’s ex-boyfriend, he’d be just as effective as Martin in getting the news about my destitution to my uncle. I’d only hesitated to call him in the first place because Jeremy’s opinion mattered to me more than any of Blaine’s other friends.
Jeremy shared a big farmhouse with his lover, Adam, in Eau Claire. It was hard to believe my parents lived in the same town; their worlds couldn’t have been more different.
My father worked long hours to be able to afford golf and alcohol on the weekends. My mother worked to be anywhere but with him. Neither of my parents was ever at home. The last time I’d gone back to Wisconsin for a holiday, I’d overheard Tony making fun of Chuck for living at home while he was in college. Chuck explained how sweet the setup was. He and his buddies had the run of the house and all its features. The monster TV, DVD player, stereo, computers, pool table, fully stocked kitchen, and my parents’ housekeeper to pick up after them. Girls came in and out, and kegs were set up on the deck. My parents generally steered clear as long as Chuck didn’t break too many things. It was like living in a frat house without the hazing or the lumpy mattresses.
Adam and Jeremy, on the other hand, both worked from home. Adam owned his own business and put in as many hours as my father, but he was always doing things for other people. He designed free Web sites for artists. His computer company sponsored stuff like AIDS walks or breast cancer benefits.
Jeremy was an actor. He’d even starred in a sitcom in the nineties. But when he moved to Wisconsin to be with Adam, he went to graduate school so he could be an instructor in UW-Eau Claire’s theater department. He also took classes in counseling and mentored teenagers.
That was how I’d met him, when I was still in high school. I was part of an acting workshop that gave peer support to at-risk teenagers. The only way I was at risk was possibly dying of boredom in Eau Claire. I hadn’t turned into an actor, but I had eventually come out to Jeremy. He was the first adult I trusted with the truth, and he’d never let me down. I didn’t want him to think I’d turned into a big loser.
Unfortunately, when I called the farmhouse, I only got Adam’s assistant. Adam and Jeremy had escaped Wisconsin’s winter to go to some friend’s wedding in Acapulco. Great for them; bad for me.
I muttered a few vile things about Kendra under my breath and began gathering up my dirty clothes. For the cost of a cab ride to Hell’s Kitchen, I could use Blaine’s washer and dryer and get that bit of drudgery out of the way. By the time my uncle got home from work, maybe I’d be mentally prepared to throw myself on his mercy. Again.
Blaine and Daniel lived in an apartment in an eight-story building on Fifty-seventh. It was actually two apartments combined—one on the seventh floor, and another directly above it. There were two bedrooms upstairs: the master bedroom where Blaine and Daniel slept, and the room that Blaine’s daughter, Emily, used when she stayed with them. The dining room had been converted into their shared office. They rarely used the kitchen, unless they entertained. A terrace garden that had originally been accessible only from the master bedroom could now also be reached from their living room. The area provided the ideal setting for the small dinner parties they sometimes had.
I preferred the downstairs area. My bedroom had been there, as was Gavin’s. That living room had been turned into the entertainment room and included theater seating and a stereo system with speakers wired to every room on both floors. Gavin and I cooked meals in the downstairs kitchen, and Blaine and Daniel ate with us whenever they didn’t have other plans. The dining room table was the hub of the apartment. It was where everyone caught up, where all of us read over coffee or hot tea in the mornings, and where everyone but me had cocktails in the evenings. Even though there was a desk and a computer in my bedroom, I’d often done my homework or sketched at the table to keep Gavin company. His boyfriend, Ethan, was there a lot. It was fun to watch them flirt with each other, and they both spoiled me, so we were all satisfied.
“But it’s not real,” Fred had once said to me after we spent a Saturday afternoon battling each other on the PlayStation 2.
“That’s why they call it a game.”
“Not Ultimate Ninja. Your big gay family. The men are flawless. Their smiles gleam. Their eyes sparkle. The apartment is fantastic. Nobody’s broke. Everybody’s buff and healthy and white.”
“Ethan’s Native American.”
“You know what I mean. You never see anyone paying an overdue bill or taking a crap. It’s like a TV show about two gay couples and their rebellious teenage son. Except your rebellion is mostly limited to multiple ear piercings and slouching around in clothes they wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. Every problem will have a happy resolution in less than thirty minutes.”
Fred was wrong. We had problems, and they didn’t get worked out to a laugh track. But living with Blaine was still a million times better than my life in Wisconsin, right up until I told him I was moving out.
I walked into the lobby of his building with the duffel bag of dirty clothes slung over my shoulder. The concierge, a big hulking Greek named Stratos, smiled and waved me toward the elevator. At least Blaine hadn’t told everyone to keep his bad-news nephew out of the building.
When I reached for the number pad, my finger hovered briefly over the THREE. That was the floor where my little cousin Emily lived, and I hadn’t seen her since before I moved out. Then I chose EIGHT. Blaine and Daniel were never home during the day, and I could get the lay of the land before I went downstairs and faced Gavin.
As I shut the apartment door behind me and heard the synth-pop music pulsing through the apartment, I wondered if Stratos had called Gavin to let him know I was on my way up. I leaned against the wall and listened for a few seconds to what our household of men with very different tastes had called our peacekeeping music.
Daniel liked the classic divas: Cher, Madonna, Barbra, Judy, Bette, and Liza. They’d provided the soundtrack for his gig as a female impersonator when he was younger. Blaine preferred music without words. Techno, drum and bass, classical, jazz. Music that he could work or work out to. Only Blaine would endure Gavin’s tendency to put on New Age music. Even Ethan, who’d made a career of doling out spiritual advice and wisdom, preferred to indulge his inner sister and wail along with Aretha, Mary J., Queen Latifah, Oleta Adams, and Erykah Badu. Unlike Gavin and Blaine, Daniel liked Ethan’s music, but could barely tolerate anyone else’s.
Then there was me. When I’d first moved in, none of them wanted me to control the tunes, because they hated Eminem, Marilyn Manson, and Ozzy. Later, they refused to let me play Gorillaz. I could barely even get away with the Foo Fighters, White Stripes, or Bush.
The only music all of us ever agreed on was the Pet Shop Boys, and it was their Behaviour CD that Gavin