Gulliver Takes Five (34 page)

I wonder what might have happened otherwise
.

Well. No, I don’t
.

“You’re pretty wasted.” He laughs, shaking my shoulder. I almost face-plant, but catch myself on the bar. YouTube material avoided by the skin of my teeth
.

“I’ll tell YOU when I’ve had enough!” I say, slamming my fist on the bar, doing my best angry drunk impression—which must be pretty awesome, considering I’m already working with a baseline of being both angry and drunk
.

“You heading back to your place soon?”

Ugh. Home. I do NOT want to go back there. Not with the guys waiting to hear what I’m going to do about Benedict Gully. What the fuck can I tell them? That I’m going to let him stay in my apartment and they should all get over the fact that he’s done such a ridiculously shitty thing? Or that I’m going to kick Gulliver out, when I’m the only reason he left his old life behind and moved across the continent in the first place? He’s MY fucking responsibility
.

Goddammit. Is this somehow my fault? Did I do this to him? It was his decision to betray us, but he wouldn’t have made it if he weren’t in New York to begin with
.

FUCK Gulliver. Fuck you for coming between me and my friends. Fuck you for not acting like the you I knew
.

“No,” I say, swallowing the drink quickly. “I think I might stay with Xavier, if he hasn’t already filled his place with twinks.”

“He just left with four of them, actually,” Kenton says, pointing behind me. I don’t even bother turning around. That sounds exactly like my boss. The lucky fucker
.

“Fuck,” I say. “Can I have another?”

“Last one, then I’m taking you home.”

“Bitch, I just said I CAN’T go home!” I say, reaching for the big-boy cup as he refills it
.

Kenton yanks the cup away, my eyes following it, and says, “I didn’t say WHOSE home.”

“Wha?”

“You’re coming home with me. I’m not letting you sleep on the beach like a day-tripper who missed the last ferry.”

That’s not a good idea. It’s a TERRIBLE idea. We just snogged last night, and I’m even drunker now than I was then. I’m sure Kenton’s
digs only have one bed, since they stick all the Fire Island staff in single rooms at the Hotel Ciel. My feelings about Gulliver are complicated enough without adding a rekindling with an ex to the mix
.

Then again, if I’m looking for a distraction
...

“Nah, I’ll find somewhere,” I say, finally wrestling the cup out of his hands
.

“Okay,” Kenton says, raising his eyebrows like he’s saying
, You missed your chance, bud.
“Invite’s still open, in case you change your mind.”

An hour later, I do. Everything is spinning at this point, like I’m riding in one of those UFO-shaped things at the carnival in Central Park. I’ll probably fall off the fucking dock if I try to stumble home. Kenton’s place, meanwhile, is just forty or fifty feet away. And my friends aren’t there, waiting for me, like they are at my house
.

Thirty minutes after the party has ended and everyone else has gone home, Kenton and I are headed to his place. But not before we kiss on the empty dance platform, the waves now the only sound around us
.

“Pretty beautiful, don’t you think?” he asks, looking at the ocean, rubbing my dick through my bathing suit
.

“Yeah, def,” I say, thinking only of Gulliver
.

As I assumed, Kenton is staying in one of the hotel rooms that the staff get for free for working on Fire Island all summer. It’s a tiny,
un-air-conditioned room with a full-size bed and a chair and a minifridge. Just a hole in the wall where he can lay his head and take home his tricks. Tonight, that’s me
.

His door closes and our mouths open. All over each other
.

I stop thinking. Turn off my memory-maker. Dive into the blackness of the room like I’m being wrapped in a tarp. It’s suffocating. His hand goes here. My hands end up there. Our mouths flutter. Tongues come out. Cocks come out. My head spins and my stomach lurches. The sheets of his bed—warm, maybe even warmer than the room. I want to open a fucking door, run out of here. Dive into the water and swim back to Long Island. But that’s stupid. Every bit of that idea is retarded
.

I think we fuck. No, I’m sure we do. Who’s top and who’s bottom? Good question. Do we use a condom? Maybe. All I can think of is Gulliver and wanting to scream. And then I can think of nothing more
.

That’s all I remember the next morning when I wake up to find Kenton gone: Gulliver. Rage. Darkness
.

Shane still hasn’t gotten in touch with Brayden, but there’s something more pressing—Mikey Drama has had seven consecutive meltdowns on my voice mail since I popped into Servando and Rowan’s apartment. I delete them all, allowing him a single screamed syllable in each one before I send it to the trash.

I grab a bagel from a street vendor and chow down as I walk home. I’m nauseous, but my stomach is growling. Another not-fun thing that’s been happening a lot recently. This tasteless carby thing will hopefully shut it up.

The first bit of drama I’ll handle is editing the screen projections that will be all over the club tonight. The thought of giant projections calling my event partner “Mikey Dromo” is pretty funny, but it’s clear he doesn’t find the situation as humorous as I do. The change shouldn’t take long. Fifty minutes of Michael screaming will equal one minute of image editing. I’m not a graphic design genius, but I know my way around Photoshop. You have to when you work in nightlife, because if you don’t, you end up like Michael: pulling your hair out in clumps and praying that SOMEONE took the time to learn. Half the excitement of an event is how it looks on a promo ad. And when you produce as many flyers as I do for GuyTime, you quickly realize you can save a lot of time by making your own tiny revisions instead of sending it back to the designer.

The creator of GuyTime is Xavier. He’s short, handsome, soft-spoken, in his mid-thirties, with a head of closely cropped black hair. He’s done this shit for over a decade. I owe all of my nightlife superstardom to him, though he’ll hear nothing of it. Xavier wants nothing to do with celebrity. The first thing he found attractive about me is that I’m willing to step into the spotlight, go on TV and radio and speak on behalf of the company without running away with the fame he granted me and starting my own separate outfit. This is the first event I’ve done completely on my own, without any of Xav’s guidance and advising, because he’s on vacation in Europe for three weeks with a few of our regular
party boys. I would kill to be able to ask him what to do with Drama, who’s STILL blowing up my phone. But Xavier deserves this time off, and I want to prove I can handle a personality like Drama and a party as massive as eWrecksion on my own. Xavier has taught me everything, guiding me through the bumps and curves of nightlife for over two years, and it’s time to show him I was a worthy pupil. I owe him that much.

I wave to my doorman, who’s drinking a Diet Coke and reading the
New Yorker
. I take the elevator to my apartment. The living room smells like faded dog fart, and I gag at the scent. I run to the bathroom, grab the Febreze can from beside the toilet, and spray it all around the apartment like I’m tagging the side of a subway tunnel with my name. Now the room smells like dog gas and freshly laundered sheets, a significant improvement. Señor, the guilty gassy party, hops around and nips at me like he’s proud of his noxious contribution.

I park myself at the long wooden desk at the far end of the living room where I keep my computers—one a PC, for the boring day job, and a Mac, which I use for anything nightlife related. The clock on the screen tells me it’s already 1 in the afternoon. Time flies when you’re chasing rats.

Mikey Drama has clogged my inbox with forty messages. My head throbs seeing his name stacked on top of itself like that, pushing any other communication off the first page of e-mails.

Including Drama’s, there are 100 total unread messages awaiting me. Make that 105. Make that 110. This will not stop. I need to hire a secretary.

I ignore the incoming messages and sort through the pile to find the e-mail with the projection art files attached. They download quickly and pop open on my screen. The graphic is dominated by the boys of New York Screwniversity, a gay porn site that Michael tapped to perform tonight. I’ve never heard of these guys, but Michael swears they’re the next big thing, as far as jacking off to guys who aren’t you having sex with other guys who aren’t you is concerned.

He’s ballsy, I’ll give him that. I would never throw an event of this scale with a live sex show. That has “Health Board shutdown” written all over it. But Michael doesn’t care about being shut down. That’s why all of his parties are one-time only and change locations regularly. He’s developed a reputation for throwing big blowout events that are too hot for Bloomberg’s squeaky clean Manhattan. Each party gets dirtier than the last. To his credit, each outsells the last as well. He’s also very generous with “donating” to the local police precincts, which I’m sure helps his events along.

It only takes a second to fix “Dromo” and save the new version. It’s annoying that Michael didn’t even try—just delegated and began flipping out. Whatever. I send it back to him and sit back in my chair.

The boys on the projection graphic are cute. Not really my type, though—way too glossed and shiny. Hairless and boyish. I know that makes them just like everyone I bring to GuyTime events, but that doesn’t mean I want to sleep with them. I like my boys a little rougher, a little more human and a little less Bel Ami cyborg. But hey, clearly I’m representing the minority, since Michael has
sold twice as many tickets to this event than even I did to my big Fire Island blowout two months ago.

Fire Island—was that really two months ago? Jesus.

A clanging sound across the apartment breaks my thought process. It’s today’s mail, conveniently deposited through a slot in the door. The luxury is kick-ass, but the bills and shit stacked up on the floor won’t be as enjoyable.

I sigh again as I lift my heavy, tired body off the chair and trudge across the room. Señor, apparently exhausted from his gastric distress, is passed out on the floor by my TV, his tongue hanging out of his smiling face. Lucky bastard. The way I’m feeling right now, I could totally nap on a hardwood floor too.

I gather up the envelopes, menus, and magazines and take them into the kitchen. I drop them on the island and scrounge through the fridge again. I’m so fucking hungry and that bagel was a carb cock-tease.

I eat nothing but crap. Cap’n Crunch and rice milk it is! Pulling a stool up to the counter, I commence eating and opening.

So many bills. I gotta stop buying shit. Some new gay magazine is out, and they’ve taken the liberty of sending me their first issue. It’s the same shit: photos of cute boys at parties, interviews with club acts I’ve never heard of, ads in the back for massages with happy endings, personal ads for the idiots who think anyone still answers a printed personal ad anymore. More bills. New credit card offers (perfect credit and heavy spending = everyone wants a piece of you).

And something else.

In the center of the stack is an oversized novelty postcard. The kind you find on rusty spinning racks in all of the tourist trap gift shops on Eighth Avenue and around Times Square. It’s an old stock photo of the Statue of Liberty, the words
I LOVE NEW YORK
on the front in huge pink-and-white letters. I’ve gotten this postcard before, about two months ago. I flip this one over and read:

Todd
,

Miss you a lot. Hope you’re having fun in Hell’s Kitchen. Maybe someday we’ll be neighbors? I’m doing fine. Well, sorta
.

Either way, I love you. And thanks for covering for me while I stumble around this city and try to make it work for me
.

—Gully

Unlike the first postcard, this one has an address in the corner. And while I don’t know the address, I do recognize the name of the company he’s written above it. College Buddies.

I spin around on the chair so hard that I knock my cereal bowl to the floor, smashing it, sending milk to pool over where the coffee spilled before.

Shit.

I sprint back to the computer, waking Señor in the process. He barks and whines and tries to jump on my lap, but I ignore him,
pushing him off. I’m clicking into my Gmail. Opening my eWrecksion folder. Scrolling back a few days to the stack of invoices that Drama sent me and asked me to keep a record of.

The most important invoice (marked by many more exclamations than all the others) was the one we received from New York Screwniversity for their performance tonight. Except, their legal corporation name isn’t New York Screwniversity. It’s College Buddies, LLC. The address I sent the check to matches the one on Gully’s postcard.

I click back to the projection file I was just editing, to the cast of New York Screwniversity and Michael’s now correctly spelled name.