Norway as the three-time U.S. men’s national figure skating champion and left a bona fide loser. His devastation was only a few notches deeper than that of the American figure skating audience. And since roughly the entire American figure skating audience also watches American soap operas, my executive producer asked Lindsay to visit Wonderland, the fictional town of If Tomorrow Never Comes or ITNC, as Soap Opera Digest has acronymed us. It was on that day, after take sixty-seven, that Lindsay realized he had absolutely no talent as an actor. Well, he realized it after I told him. At first he was upset that a mere mortal like me would point out that a god like Lindsay could have a flaw, but then I told him that the star-crossed lovers on the show used to be lovers in real life until one gave the other genital herpes. We’ve been friends ever since.
Brimming with the joy another person’s tragedy would soon bring him, Lindsay flopped his bubble butt onto a chair and flipped the New York Times that was on top of the table (presumably left there by some Starbucks Sunday Regular as a table-saving device) onto the floor. He took a sip of his iced grande soy vanilla latte—Lindsay drank an iced grande soy vanilla latte all year long, iced because he said he was hot enough without help from fluid and vanilla because that’s how he liked to fuck—tossed an unruly lock of unnaturally blond hair from his unnaturally sun-tanned forehead and gazed at me with the steely determination that defined him as the former figure skating champion he was.
“What happened?” Lindsay demanded.
“I broke my rule,” I confessed.
“Which one? You have more rules than Dick Button.”
“My no-sex-until-the-third-date rule,” I mumbled, knowing full well the Wilde-wrath that was about to come.
“That rule is as outdated as Dick himself!” Lindsay growled at precisely the same time the Starbucks Sunday Regular came back to what he thought would be his saved table.
“I enjoy Mr. Button’s commentary,” said the Regular.
“And you probably rooted for Nancy Kerrigan!” Lindsay shouted back. “Now get the hell away from my table!”
I couldn’t really concentrate on the next few things Lindsay said as I was trying to steal glances at the handsome sort-of-Italian, could-be-black-Irish Starbucks Sunday Regular collecting his New York Times from the floor. However, I did hear Lindsay mention something about the genius of Tonya Harding never being fully understood by the elitist figure skating community or something of that ilk. And even though I thoroughly enjoy Lindsay’s outbursts, at this moment I was more interested in the crooked smile the very handsome Starbucks Sunday Regular beamed in my direction. But was he smiling because he was self-conscious after Lindsay’s public scolding, self-confident that Lindsay was a deranged former figure skater, or self-content that his feelings for me were real and had to be expressed in the form of a Jake Gyllen-haalesque shy, yet seductive, smile?
“Are you listening to me?” Lindsay said with an exasperated air.
“Of course,” I answered, startled out of my reverie.
“And you agree?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, stretching the word into four syllables since I was not at all sure what I had agreed to.
“Good,” Lindsay said. “Because I hate to think I’m the only one who feels Peggy Fleming should fly solo. It’s just not fair that Dick gets to commentate on the men’s and the ladies’ competitions, while Miss I-Reinvented-Modern-Day-Figure-Skating-and-Conquered-Breast-Cancer has to share the microphone with Mr. Button. Did Dick ever have his own TV special? I think not. And don’t even start me on Dick’s protégé, Peter Carruthers.”
“I like Peter. He’s hot.”
“You’re just like all the others. All you want to do is watch the pretty boys do figure eights in sparkly sequined costumes! Figure skating is hard work. My ass might look beautiful, but it’s covered with scars from years of practice.”
“As are the asses of every gay man in Chelsea,” I observed. “And before you go into a tirade over why you should have won the bronze in Lillehammer, lille man, don’t you want to hear about my night?”
“Do you know how frustrating it is to come in fourth?” Lindsay spat.
“Do you know how frustrating it is to hear that you came in fourth for the forty millionth time!” I spat back.
“They compound the misery by awarding you a pewter medal. Did you know that?”
“Yes, Lindsay, I know that,” I said. “You told me.”
“The fourth place loser gets a pewter piece of shit,” Lindsay continued, obviously ignoring me and transported back to the Olympics next to, but not on, the third podium. “Worst award I ever received for the most humiliating experience I ever lived through. I gave it to my mother.”
“Are you done reminiscing?”
“Yes. Thank you for listening. I can’t keep the bile inside all the time; it’s destructive.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I replied. “To collect the bile.”
“Now tell me, Steven,” Lindsay said, much more calmly now that the bile was released. “Why didn’t you spend the a.m. with a dick up your a-hole?”
“Got socially acceptably drunk, went home with a PRM, took off his pants, and silently screamed for my mother to whisk me away from the horror that I saw inches in front of me.”
“What was he? Pre-op?” Lindsay asked.
“Worse.”
“One testicle, lots of scar tissue?”
“No,” I said. “Toddler-penis.”
“Damn those ’roids!” Lindsay shouted as he slammed his fist onto the table. “I can deal with hair loss and acne-back, but toddler-penis is unforgivable. Steroidables should live at the gym and never leave!”
“He wasn’t on steroids. His affliction, as far as I could tell, was perfectly natural.”
Lindsay’s mocha-chocolate eyes grew two inches wider, which made him look as if I had just told him Starbucks had gone bankrupt and was selling its chain to Folgers.
“Then for crissakes why doesn’t he just do the steroids and at least have a conversation piece, a point of blame?”
“Who can understand these people?” I said. “The kicker is he said he was a top.”
“Of what? Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree? Why can’t gay men assess themselves the same way they do every other gay man who crosses their path? Small penis equals bottom. Big cock equals top. It’s simple, it’s math, the universal language,” Lindsay explained. “A deaf-mute from Ukraine understands, and I’m not being geographically random: the son of one of Oksana Baiul’s coaches was a deaf-mute and very well endowed. There was never a problem in the bedroom. If Nikolai could understand, why can’t a Chelsea boy?”
“Everybody wants to be what they’re not supposed to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Steven? That I’m not supposed to be an Olympian? That my bare, chiseled chest was never meant to bear anything more than Olympic pewter?” Lindsay fumed.
“Loser boy! This isn’t about you.”
“Sorry. You know how I get when anyone mentions figure skating or the Olympics.”
“You’re the only one who ever mentions figure skating or the Olympics!”
Lindsay stared at me for a moment as the truth settled into his heart, then his mind, then his voice: “It’s all I know!”
I allowed Lindsay several seconds of uninterrupted fake tears during which time I checked out the Starbucks Sunday Regular again and to my surprise he was checking me out too. Color me bashful as I felt my cheeks flush and my eyes dart away. I could see him smile at my involuntary response and