your Lorna dress rehearsal will be the night before the show in the Community Room,” she said. “I’ll make some refreshments and there’ll be a small invited audience so she can get the feel of the room.”
“Ma, when exactly is the show?” I asked, then held my breath.
“The eighteenth,” she replied.
“No!” I shouted, releasing my angry breath into the spiteful, spiteful air. “You have to push it up a week.”
“I can’t do that, December is completely booked. I have the Christmas tree lighting, the nativity play, the children’s pageant starring Lenny Abramawitz as Santa.”
“The gay Jew is playing Santa?”
“The children do not need to know!”
“Ma! Lorna won’t do the show unless it’s before the fourteenth, you have to rearrange your schedule.”
“It’s too late! I’ve already printed up the calendar of events. On heavy bond paper,” she replied. “We’re locked in until the end of the year.”
“Old people need to be flexible! Death is right around the corner.”
“I have no room for death in my date book,” my mother countered, then paused for effect. “Look, Stevie, just tell Lorna to have her girl call my girl and we’ll work this out.”
“I am your girl!” I shouted. “And I’m telling you we can’t work it out unless you change the date of your show.”
“Then get me somebody else. Not for nothing, but Lorna’s looking a little tired lately. She’s always clenching the sides of her eyes. She’s going to wrinkle if she keeps doing that,” my mother informed me. “Honey, Mama has to go. Coco, the seamstress, is here and she’s going to measure me for my Halloween costume. I’m going as Barbra Streisand.”
I involuntarily pulled the phone from my ear when my mother’s voice rose three octaves and twenty decibels.
“Come with me! We can be Barbra: Before and After! You can wear a midi-blouse and be Barbra from Funny Girl and I’ll be Babs from The Prince of Tides. I’m due for a manicure anyway.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Ma, I don’t dress up like a woman.”
“Oh come on! Our only competition for Best Couple will be Sheila and Vinny Caruso; they’re going as Myron and Myra Breckinridge. Vinny’s going to be Myra, he’s got less hair on his legs.”
Faced with the realization that my mother was living in a home for aged drag queens, I hung up the phone.
“Lorna,” I started. “The Christmas thing at my mother’s isn’t going to work out.”
“No biggie,” she replied. “Why don’t you ask my assistant? She might be available.”
Lorna turned from me in what seemed like slow motion, her bouncing and behaving hair whipping through the air and making her look like a brunette Heather Locklear in a vintage water-cooler moment from Melrose Place. Until then, I had thought I handled the mighty pretty assistant near-fiasco rather well.
“Kidding!” Lorna squealed.
Obviously I had.
“That bitch who picks up my dry cleaning might be a few years younger than me,” Lorna said, “but damn, I can act!”
Learning from my earlier faux pas, I remained quiet and gave Lorna one of my I’m-such-a-proud-producer stares.
“Tell your mother I’m sorry and ask Lucas to do the show.”
Lorna once again started a slo-mo turn away from me à la Heather, but paused to glance back, allow her collagen-improved lips to slink into a smirk, and add, “I hear he’s itching to sing.”
The Melrose theme music pounded in my head as I contemplated what Lorna’s smirk suggested. Could it be that hunky Lucas Fitzgerald—two-time Soap Opera Digest award winner for Best Male Lips, one-time contender for the coveted role of young Bob Barker in the E! original drama Is the Price Right? The Untold Story of Bob Barker—was gay? He did shave his chest, contour his eyebrows, and highlight his hair, but what guy didn’t these days? Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to play the gay guessing game because at that very moment there was a scene change and I saw Lindsay striding across the studio.
“Stevie!” Lindsay yelped. “Do you know how hard it is to get onto this set? Doesn’t anyone remember that I was once the star of this sinking soap?”
“You were a day player. No better than nine out of ten waiters in the city,” I reminded him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to take you to lunch,” Lindsay replied. “Rudy Galindo opened up a new restaurant in SoHo called Blade. Isn’t that a great name?”
“I give it a perfect six.”
“Ahh! Skating lingo,” Lindsay yelped again. “I am rubbing off on you.”
“Linds, I’d love to go, but we’re in a bit of a crisis mode here. One of the actors was rushed to the hospital.”
“Drug overdose?”
“No.”
“Alcohol poisoning?”
“No.”
“What else is there?”
“Inflammation of the eye,” I said, trying to make it sound deadlier than it was.
Lindsay leaned in confidentially and whispered in my ear.
“Is ‘eye’ a euphemism for ‘dick’?”
“No!” Now it was my turn to yelp. “Why is your mind always in the gutter?”
“Sorry. I’m pre-horny.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t just come here to invite you to lunch, I also got an invitation to a sex party tonight. Say you’ll come with me. I never go to these types of functions, but I feel like shaking things up a bit.”
I thought for a moment and realized a sex party might be just what I needed. Forget my troubles, come on get…laid. And Lindsay was actually the perfect person to attend a sex party with. He really just liked basic missionary sex, with him on the bottom of course, and wouldn’t force me to do anything outrageous. Plus he upheld the gay motto that what takes place at a sex party stays at a sex party and would never mention anything that took place ever again even if he and I were having a private conversation. Lindsay’s offer seemed almost too good to pass up, until I remembered the other man in my life.
“What if Frank’s there?” I asked.
“You can finally have sex with him.”
“I want more than sex with Frank.”
“Then what a perfect setting to discover if Frank is the right guy for you,” Lindsay rationalized. “Surrounded by a hundred hot, sweaty, horny men, you and Frank choose each other. If that’s not everlasting love, Stevie boy, I don’t know what is.”
“I can’t,” I said finally.
“Why not?” Lindsay said fitfully.
“Because I’d feel awkward and stupid if the next time I see Frank I’m standing butt naked with lube on my dick.”
“Wear a jock.”
“Lindsay, you don’t understand,” I replied. “And besides, if you’re going to a sex party tonight why are you eating lunch? You know your digestive tract is unreliable.”
“I was only going to lend my support to Rudy and sample the bar,” Lindsay explained. “I hear they have a drink called a Michelle Kwantreau. Served on ice, of course.”
“Of