Bombora (3 page)

I came to Palermo on the recommendation of my sister, Aurelia. Turns out she spent some time here while I was away at college, when her drinking got just a little too out of control. Our parents thought she went to Bali for a month, when really they were the reason she needed rehab in the first place. Not hard to see how that could happen, since dealing with our mother and father can be intense on a good day, but I’m the first to report that
not
dealing with them isn’t necessarily better. We all hate our families until they’re gone, or they ask us not to come back, and suddenly we realize why Donne went on about how no man is an island. Woe betide the poor asshole who discovers he
is
an island after all. Which is to say, I’m that asshole.

It took being disowned at thirty-two to realize how little I had going for me besides my family and my job. The other incident I don’t like to talk about, the one that put me here, was a rash and ill-advised way to break out of my dull existence in the Midwest. Gay love affairs, especially poorly planned ones with married men, never go over well when your family is oppressively Catholic. Turns out there’s a reason I’ve never been known as “the spontaneous one,” because all spontaneity had to offer was a broken heart, some frozen bank accounts, and a big fat nothing in place of the life I used to have. Probably not even Nate—that’s his name, the asshole—would take my calls anymore, were I to actually pick up the phone and dial.

Willa tells me I don’t show enough appreciation for the little things, like the fact that I’m alive and healthy and in full control of my mental faculties, but as much as I like the woman, sometimes I think Willa is full of shit. She
has
a family, and a gorgeous one at that—I’ve seen her husband at the pool enough times. Rumor has it she had an Oxy addiction before becoming a counselor, but now she’s all about the Zen and the
Eat, Pray, Love
. Elizabeth Gilbert she’s not.

But I’m not bitter, honest. I’m getting better.

However morbid this might sound, I wish I’d come to Palermo with a substance abuse problem—at least I would have stood the risk of having a little fun beforehand, or damaged enough brain cells to keep me from remembering everything in living color. Instead I’m stuck in the independent living program with all the other depressives and anger-management cases—talk about the amateur ward. It’s somewhere between an outpatient program and a retirement home, with my own private residence on the Palermo compound and the freedom to come and go as I please outside of my mandatory counseling schedule. I guess I’m kind of a sorry excuse for a crazy person—I barely even attempted suicide. Sure, a nervous breakdown is nothing to sneeze at, but I know the other patients probably look at me and think I’m just some melodramatic rich kid who can’t get over losing his trust fund. Maybe I am. Maybe I also have a bit of paranoia thrown into the mix.

That could be why I like Hugh so much, because he’s got his own issues and isn’t constantly on my case to talk about my feelings, or even about his. Occasionally I’m struck by the urge to ask him about his family and his dead girlfriend and anything else he’ll tell me, but Hugh keeps that stuff locked up tighter than Fort Knox. I know he has a brother somewhere at the opposite end of the country, and their parents are dead, but that’s about it. Part of Hugh’s reluctance to divulge information has to do with his celebrity, which I understand, and part of it has to do with not being ready, which I also understand. He’ll have to have it out with that stuff eventually, though. He’s too smart not to realize that.

The same goes for me. But I don’t feel judged around him. He knows all about what happened in Columbus—the short version, with names withheld to protect the guilty—and his first response was “The guy sounds like an asshole. I probably would have freaked out too, if a girl treated me like that. You were lucky you got out.”

Got out, yes. Came out—not so much, though I more or less agree with Willa that a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Still, it meant a lot that Hugh took my side without question, without even knowing the other half of the story. I have Willa to make rational arguments about how I should have seen the break-up coming, should have predicted it’d blow up in my face. Hugh is there to teach me surfing and be my friend and tell me that everyone bets on the wrong horse sometimes.

The whole thing with Nate started off in what I thought was a completely innocuous way. And if innocuous isn’t the right word, because affairs so rarely are, then at least it wasn’t anything sinister. I thought I had my money on Secretariat, and instead found myself with a Phar Lap. After the arsenic poisoning.

I was splitting my time between Chicago and Columbus, managing the Midwest offices of my family’s advertising business. For the obvious reasons, I liked Chicago a lot better, especially since that’s where Aurelia lives, but my attention was most often needed in Columbus, where the biggest number of things seemed to go wrong without someone to oversee the process. That the responsibility fell to me was just family obligation and bad luck.

It’s not a bad town, Columbus, just a little boring for anyone who isn’t a student or into tailgate parties, or who doesn’t start hyperventilating every time the Buckeyes come up in conversation. (No, I’m not one of those people.) My time in the city was spent either at our offices downtown or my apartment on Parkview Ave., not including places like the gym or the grocery store.

On that one particular Friday, I was actually getting ready to drive to Illinois the next day, happy to leave Ohio behind. I considered Chicago home; it’s where my friends were. There weren’t many people I hung out with socially in Columbus—nor in Chicago, being honest—and in retrospect, that was part of the problem. Desperation and boredom can make a fool of anyone. One-night stands were a common occurrence for me, because even lapsed Catholic ad men have needs, and I didn’t have much time for dating. Too much effort involved trying to keep my personal tastes hidden from my family. Honestly, Columbus was the last place I thought any of this would happen.

So of course, that’s where it did.

Sexual orientation isn’t something I ever had to think too hard about. I knew from a young age I was queer, and if my ultrareligious upbringing wasn’t enough to shake it out of me, probably nothing would. Disguising my lack of interest in women became second nature early on, and I bore the blind dates and family-arranged meetings with as much equanimity as you’d expect. Never was I anything but polite and friendly to those women. A few of them even figured out I wasn’t interested in them not because of their clothes or hair or personality, but for another fundamental reason—the lack of dick, for one.

My point is that, when I decided to go out for a couple of drinks and unwind after work that night, it wasn’t to some random breeder bar, but rather a gay local called Foxley’s. Their meal service was decent, but the real attraction was the down-to-earth crowd that flocked there on weekends. It encompassed neighborhood gays, businessmen, and the odd tourist in search of a quiet, old-timey pub atmosphere not overwhelmingly populated by OSU students, which was hard to come by in Columbus. In other words, Foxley’s was a place for gay men to paw at each other in a civilized way, without concern for straight judgment or public decency laws. I might like dick, but straight men have never interested me. Although I know plenty of guys who go in for the excitement of feeling they’ve “turned” someone, that’s not for me—I don’t want ambiguity about who’s checking me out and whether they might be a sexual tourist. The night before a short road trip seemed a perfect time to take someone home, since I could truthfully say I had to be up early the next morning. No muss, no fuss. Or so I thought.

The dinner crowd had mostly cleared out by the time I got there, replaced by those more interested in cruising than the nightly special. It was barely June, and during the summer months, Foxley’s always did good business. Things were starting to get busy at the front of the restaurant, which was crammed with men chatting in groups or more intimate couples, a familiar mating dance in full swing. I looked around and smiled at a few people I knew, particularly shy Adam, who was mixing up martinis and pouring wine behind the bar. By no means did I spot Nate right away—it was he, in fact, who spotted me, though not until much later. I settled myself a respectable distance away from the throng of people and ordered a Scotch on the rocks, something I didn’t really like but had grown up watching my father drink.

Three or four men paused to say hello or offered to buy me a beer, but for one reason or another, they didn’t compel me—this time
because
of their hair or clothes or personality. I started to think about leaving after I’d been there less than an hour. Either no one really appealed to me, or I wasn’t as motivated to cruise as I thought. But then this
guy
sat down a few seats away and ordered the same thing, except he drank his Scotch neat and didn’t seem to care whether it was top-shelf.

Now, I consider myself a man of restraint, for the most part. No doubt a lifetime of checking my flamboyance at the door saved me from acting like one of those silly fags who faints at the first sign of a hot body or a gorgeous smile. But the minute I saw Nate’s face, I would have done a striptease on the bar just to get his attention. After a few minutes, it became clear that wasn’t necessary, because Nate cast a lingering glance my way, holding eye contact when I returned his look. I remember thinking he didn’t seem altogether comfortable in this environment, then quickly dismissing the thought because he was hot, for one thing, and he was
here
. No one walked into Foxley’s without knowing exactly what he’d signed up for.

“All-American” was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw Nate. Tall, athletic, and so beautiful I actually started to feel insecure about my own appearance, Nate looked too much the meat-and-potatoes jock type for a place like Foxley’s. And yet, he still managed to turn every head in the place. On the one hand, I was flattered to have caught his eye, but knew I cut a fine figure of my own in my tailored gray Armani. (Seriously, Mom and Dad—how did you not figure it out sooner?) Nate’s own suit seemed plain by comparison, but it was dark and he’d already managed to lose the tie and jacket, anyway. All I cared about was getting him to stop staring and come talk to me, so I tilted my head and gave him my best come-hither smile, which Aurelia says could charm the panties off a nun. Or a priest. Whatever. Ducking his head as though to hide a blush, Nate smiled to himself and pushed away from the bar to wander over.

“Hey,” he said easily. With his arms on the bar, he leaned forward and met my gaze. Green, green eyes, like a cat’s, and no less sharp. His eyelashes were so thick they gave the appearance of eyeliner. Up close he was even more enchanting, tall and freckled and with the most voluptuous lips I’d ever seen. True, my own lips draw plenty of comments from interested parties, but Nate’s were as red and shapely as a Dürer portrait, all sharp Cupid’s bow and upturned corners. I noticed his fingers drumming a rapid tattoo against his glass and, sensing his nervousness, I smiled a little wider. He cleared his throat. “Can I buy you another drink?”

As far as pickup lines went, it was classic but effective, and I appreciated his directness. “You can,” I told him. “We’re more or less drinking the same thing anyway.” He signaled to Adam for another round, and I propped myself on my elbows against the bar, matching his stance. Allowing myself the opportunity to rake my eyes down his body and ending on a smile to show I liked what I saw, I added, “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

This drew a laugh, and in spite of myself, I blushed at the brilliance of his smile. Where did you even see teeth that white and perfect, outside of a fucking Abercrombie catalogue? I found myself wondering where the hell this guy had come from and what had taken him so long to find me. “I didn’t take you for the type that recycles tired pickup lines,” he chuckled.

“Coming from the man who opened with ‘Buy you a drink?’” I shot back.

Nate bit his lip around another smile and sighed in resignation, but didn’t argue.

I continued, “In this case it’s not a come-on, just a statement of fact. Foxley’s doesn’t get a lot of new faces.”

“So you must come here pretty often, then,” he observed. Something mischievous twinkled in his eyes. “Either that or you’ve slept with everyone already.”

I waggled my eyebrows and resisted the urge to contradict him the way my good Christian upbringing dictated—defend that virtue! Unfortunately, Nate was off, but not far off; there wasn’t much virtue left to defend, if by those standards queers had any to begin with. “Not everyone,” I eventually replied, and with a nod acknowledged Adam’s reappearance with two fresh glasses of Scotch. I took a quick sip and offered a handshake. “I’m Phel.” Those perfect eyebrows shot up, prompting me to frown and withdraw my hand. “Yes?”

He shrugged casually, broad shoulders momentarily fixating me as they flexed beneath the fabric of his button-down. “Oh, nothin’. That’s just not the name I expected you to give—you look more like a Jimmy or a James or something. Is Phel a nickname?”

“Sort of—it’s short for Phelan.” Surprised this failed to draw a bigger laugh, I added, “My parents had a thing for lavish names; my sister is an equally plain Aurelia. Maybe they just wanted to see how far they could push the envelope before I got the shit kicked out of me at school, who knows?”

“Phel is definitely better,” he agreed, “but still—I gotta admit Phelan’s pretty sexy. Definitely not a name you’d forget the morning after.” I savored his slow smile as much as the mental picture of waking up to a face like that. The way “sexy” rolled off his tongue was even more dangerous than the way he growled my name in a voice like dark brandy. “I’m Nate. Nate Smith.”

This time it was he who offered his hand, and I accepted it politely, noting the warmth and firmness of his grip, the slight awkwardness with which he gave his name. Probably a fake, but it’s not like I could judge—my last name was so well known I didn’t bother to give it out. The “Phelan” was a big enough risk to anyone who bothered to look at the society pages of
The New York Times
once every few months.