Between Boyfriends

by Michael Salvatore

Genres: LGBT Gay

Synopsis

In this sharp, entertaining, wry-but-tender debut, Michael Salvatore follows one man's search for the perfect boyfriend in a hilariously imperfect world. Single, slightly neurotic Steven Bartholomew Ferrante loves his sharp-tongued, loyal friends, his chaotic job as producer for the daytime soap If Tomorrow Never Comes, and his crazy Sicilian mother, not necessarily in that order. Yet at thirty-three, his life is a little like the peppermint mocha coffee drinks that are his favorite indulgence--fun, frothy, but only superficially satisfying. Four years after his boyfriend kicked him to the curb, Steven is still trying to find a replacement. There's been no shortage of casual couplings and one night (or less) stands, but while other body parts are catered to, his heart wants something more. Someone to share sexy Sunday mornings and shopping trips to buy unnecessary kitchen appliances. Someone he can trade knowing smiles with while dishing dirt with his crew at their favorite Chelsea haunts. Somebody to love. And maybe he's finally found it. Because if Steven's learned one thing from If Tomorrow Never Comes, it's that every storyline has its twists--and the beauty of living spoiler-free is that you never know who's waiting in the wings. . ."Outrageous and over the top, Between Boyfriends is the ultimate roller-coaster ride of the highs and lows of dating and mating." --Drew Ferguson, author of The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie The Second "Sexy, funny and drama-filled!"--Michael Thomas Ford, author of The Road Home Michael Salvatore is an award-winning writer and one of six playwrights whose career will be tracked by WritersInsight.com until 2010. He is a graduate of New York University, has studied at Playwrights Horizons and Gotham Writers Workshop, and has written several screenplays. Between Boyfriends is his first novel.

Release date: May 20, 2010

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 337

Sample

Four Years Ago

The greatest thing about being gay is that moment when you walk down the street holding your boyfriend’s hand and you forget that you’re holding his hand. Gay becomes natural. You don’t think about it anymore, you don’t question it or celebrate it; it simply is who and what you are. That’s the way it was for me and Jack as we strolled down Sixth Avenue to do some Saturday afternoon shopping after a morning of kissing, fondling, and HGTV-watching while munching on bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. At that time Jack DiRenza had been my boyfriend for three years, my live-in boyfriend for one year, ten months, two weeks, and six days of that time. I’m not counting, I just have a really good memory.

“Hey, Stevie B.,” Jack asked in between sips of a Starbucks grande mocha Frappuccino. “Do we need a new butter warmer?”

“Does anyone need an old butter warmer?” I asked in between sips of my iced grande skim mocha, which is my summer Starbucks drink as opposed to my most favorite Starbucks drink, which is a Venti skim, extra-hot, light-whipped peppermint mocha that I drink from Labor Day to Memorial Day. All my friends know that I like my coffee to be like my boyfriend—consistent.

“Your birthday is coming up and I’m planning a surprise lobster dinner,” Jack said. “And what’s a lobster dinner without warm butter?”

“Sounds yummy,” I said. “But honey, the surprise lobster dinner is only a surprise if you don’t tell me about it.”

Jack smirked like a Catholic schoolboy on the verge of committing a venial sin and said, “I didn’t tell you what I’m going to do to you for dessert.”

Smiling like the happiest gay in the world I held on to my boyfriend’s perfectly calloused hand, sipped my Starbucks, and entered Bed, Bath & Behind to buy an unnecessary kitchen appliance. Because that’s what you do on a Saturday afternoon in Manhattan when you’re gay and in love. Who knew that exactly two weeks later my perfect boyfriend would kick me out of his apartment and his life with barely an explanation and force me to take up residence in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of the single gay man.

On that terrible night, while the rest of the gay world went out clubbing or stayed in snuggling, I slept on my best friend Flynn’s pull-out Jennifer Convertible trying to figure out how I could shoot my ex-boyfriend without winding up on Rikers Island. When thoughts of homo-cide had left my brain, I wondered how I had gone from being deliriously happy to devastatingly miserable in less than twenty-four hours. Four years later I still don’t have an answer. All I know is my name is Steven Bartholomew Ferrante and I am still a single gay man living in Manhattan. Welcome to my world.

The bed was enormous, a California king squeezed into a Chelsea queen’s apartment. Unfortunately the adjective attributed to the bed could not be used to describe Ely, the guy who lay asleep in the bed. Not only was Ely not enormous, he wasn’t large, biggish, or even the thicker side of medium. Ely was small. And I’m not referring to his height or personality, I’m strictly commenting on his penis. And by penis I mean cock. Though I don’t think a penis no larger than an adult male thumb should be called a cock. There is a hierarchical system in the gay world and nowhere is it stricter than below the waist.

As I watched Ely sleep, I was filled with a mixture of sadness and awe. When I first met him in the wee hours of the morning of this very day, I sensed he possessed an ebullience and intelligence that I had not encountered for the longest time. I truly thought, as I sipped on my fourth cosmopolitan, this one with a bashful hint of mango, that this man who stood before me was brimming with PRM—Potential Relationship Material. It was for that reason alone that I decided to ignore my no-sex-until-the-third-date rule, a rule that naturally would have been ignored if Ely was a Puerto Rican Male, a PRM of a totally different color and, of course, size, and accepted Ely’s invitation to go home with him. I got excited when he whispered in my ear during the cab ride to his apartment that he was a dominant top, and was borderline breathless when his key finally opened his door on the third try. Within moments and without any further conversation, I yanked Ely’s pants to his ankles, then I yanked his underwear to his pants, and then I realized that there would be no more yanking. The reason Ely calls himself a dominant top is that the only way his thumb/penis can enter an asshole is to threaten it with execution.

I don’t mean to convey that Ely’s penis was a deformity on a par with the Elephant Man; it just wasn’t an invitation. And let’s be honest, we all like to be invited places. So while little Ely lay in his big bed, I quickly got dressed, rearranged his refrigerator magnet letters to spell out THANK YOU, and fled quietly into the midafternoon October sunshine. The morning’s attempt at a fling would need to be flung from my memory and I only knew of one way to do it successfully. It was Starbucks time. If a Venti skim, extra-hot, light-whipped peppermint mocha couldn’t erase from my mind the vision of Ely’s tiny penis, sheathed in a condom imported from Japan, trying desperately to enter the, by comparison, overwhelmingly enormous cavity that was my asshole, then I was a doomed gay. Yet as I clasped the gunmetal handle of the Starbucks door, I knew being a doomed gay was better than having to call your cock a penis.

From the first lip-smacking sip of my Venti skim, extra-hot, light-whipped peppermint mocha I knew I would be triumphant and Ely would permanently be part of my past. The caffeine-cum-heroin flirted with my throat in areas that Ely never could. The escapade with Tiny Man was officially over and I had reclaimed my life, yet again. It was time to begin another chapter in the saga of Steven Bartholomew Ferrante, thirty-three-year-old, Italian-American, former Jersey-ite, single-yet-looking-really-really-hard, soap opera producer. Thus began Chapter 822—give or take.

I was in mid-performance of a Star-turn, which is a complete, yet nonchalant, 360-degree turn at a Starbucks condiment station to check out the customers—or as defined in the Starbucks employee manual, the guest list—when I heard my name being shrieked by either my friend Lindsay Wilde or my great-aunt Matilda Barziano. I could never tell the two sounds apart.

“Steven! You look like you spent the a.m. with a dick up your a-hole!”

I still couldn’t tell who it was, so I was forced to turn all the way around.

“Lindsay,” I said, only partially relieved. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Really? Tell me. Tell me everything.”

An uncontrollable smile grew on Lindsay’s face, for he loved nothing more than to hear other people’s tragitales. And if the tragedy was sprinkled with a smattering of smut, his smile would grow even wider. Lindsay had been this way ever since I first met him on the set of If Tomorrow Never Comes, the long-running soap opera that I produce. It was 1994 and Lindsay had just lost his chance of winning a figure skating medal by coming in fourth at the Lillehammer Olympics. He had entered 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 so before I became a complete second grader in the midst of a schoolgirl crush, I focused on Lindsay and attempted to change the subject away from his Olympiphobia and toward a more manageable, non-blushable subject.

“Before you lapse into endless chanting of ‘Why me?’ let’s use this time productively and figure out what we’re going to do for Gus’s birthday. He’s going to be forty on the twelfth.”

Lindsay was instantaneously pulled out of his own misery by this news that he considered to be even more catastrophic.

“God, that’s sad. Officially forty-something and single and gay and living alone in the big, wormy apple that is the city. Why would anyone want to celebrate that?”

“Gus will be forty, not forty-something. He can’t be forty-something until next year, when something comes after the forty,” I explained. “And it’s not sad. He’s got the best apartment of us all in the Village, he made a mint on Wall Street before it went bust, and he’s got an accent.”

Lindsay pursed his lips, then formed a smile with only the right side of his mouth.

“But every night Gus goes to bed alone.”

“We all go to bed alone,” I retorted.

“But we’re years from being forty-something,” Lindsay cried. “We still have hope!”

He had me. I hate when Lindsay barks a truism, but sometimes amid all his rantings, non sequiturs, and sentences that start with the word I, there exists a kernel of truth. And turning forty in a city, or at least a gay section of a city that worships youth, is an unfortunate happening. But as with all happenings in the gay section of any city, it was a happening that would be celebrated. So even though all Gus’s friends were glad that he was the one turning forty and not them, all Gus’s friends would gather together and throw him a celebration worthy of a happier happening. It made no difference that during the celebration all of us would be praying that when we turned forty we looked as good as, were as successful as, and had the financial portfolio of Gus Aldwych. To his face we would simply call him old.

“Whatever you do, I’m in,” Lindsay said, “but remember I have that Fox retrospective on the third and I need you all there for support. This could be very lucrative for me.”

“I thought it was just for Olympic medalists.”

“They’ve expanded their coverage, okay? They’ve opened themselves up wider than a certain male figure skater did for the entire French bobsledding team!”

While Lindsay saw red, I noticed that the Starbucks Sunday Regular was still eyeing me from behind the New York Times Arts section. Only in New York is it possible to upgrade from toddler-penis to literate lover in less time than it takes for Lindsay to expose the sexual secrets of every male figure skater who ever lived. God bless gay New York. And God bless the chutzpah on the Regular, for before I could look away this time, he got up and walked directly toward me.

“I’m done with the paper if you want to check it out,” the Regular said.

“I’d love to check you…I mean it…out,” I stumbled, causing the Regular to smile crookedly.

“Page three has a great article,” the Regular said, maintaining eye contact with me. “It was nice meeting you.”

As he started to walk away he looked directly at Lindsay and finished his sentence, “Both.” He gave me one more knowing glance and, I think, yes I believe, he actually winked at me. I was too startled to wink back, which is a good thing, because I can’t wink, so I probably would have looked like I was squinting or suffered from an uncontrollable Tourette’s-like twitch. Neither would have been construed as flirtatious. So I just sat there with my mouth open, which he could have perceived as a response to his Sunday afternoon brazenness or an invitation from me to be brazen on a Sunday afternoon. Effective either way.

“Can you believe that guy?” Lindsay said, guzzling the last drop of soy ’n’ vanilla. “Caffeine makes people rude.”

I wasn’t listening to a word Lindsay said because I was staring at something much more interesting on page three of the New York Times Arts section. In between an article begging people to write a new musical for Patti LuPone and another article begging people to stop writing musicals for American Idol finalists was the Regular’s phone number. A real number followed by a real question—Call me? The Regular had actually managed to be forward and shy at the same time. And to top it off, all of this information was signed. The Regular had a name and it was Frank. A perfectly regular name for a perfectly regular guy.

I ripped Frank’s number and query from the paper, making sure to also rip out the entire Patti LuPone article, for I too believed it was time for the once-and-future diva to return to the boards in a brand-new musical and not a lame revisical, and told Lindsay I had to run. We kiss-kissed and he said he would hang around and boy-watch for a bit before heading to the gym. Luckily I have a degree in Lindsay-speak and understood that meant he hadn’t gotten laid the night before and was still horny.

As I was leaving Starbucks, who walked in but Ely. We looked at each other and without breaking our strides another understanding took place. He knew that I was not up for a sunlit encounter and I knew that he knew that he had a small penis. At times of necessity, gay men can understand each other. As I walked down the street toward my future I glanced back and looked through the window to see Ely and Lindsay exchange glances. How I would have loved to hear Lindsay’s reaction when he came face-to-face with Ely’s steroid-free mini-pee, but luckily I had better things to do.

An hour later I was still aglow with the possibilities of romance. It was therefore appropriate that I found myself at my second favorite location in all of New York City—the first, of course, being any Starbucks coffee bar. I stood on the southwest corner of 20th Street and Fifth Avenue, right in front of Club Monaco or more precisely the entrance to what I call Gay Men’s Shopping Mecca—or GMSM, which should not be confused with Gay Men’s Sado-Masochists, unless you stand at the entrance with a maxed-out credit card.

GMSM is so named because if you walk south on either side of the street you will stumble across Gap, Banana Republic, J. Crew, Zara, Kenneth Cole, Pier 1 and, at the lip of the retail river, Paul Smith. To be honest I have never bought anything at Paul Smith, but I did briefly date an androgynous Pan-Asian Paul Smith salesclerk, whom I christened Ho-Sale, just to get a few free Paul Smith multicolored vertically striped shopping bags that I absolutely adore.

So there I stood in front of Ralph Lauren’s Canadian bastard child with the number of my future life partner tucked into my pocket next to a credit card that demanded to be exploited. I always spend money whenever I feel my life is about to change in a positive way. I did it when I first got promoted to real producer at ITNC and not a yogurt smoothie–fetching, phone message–taking associate producer; I did it when my first, and only, case of gonorrhea cleared up; and now on the threshold of the most significant romance since Miss Barbra Joan Streisand married some former TV doctor, I would do it again. And although this was a spiritual celebration it was also a practical one—I needed a new wardrobe for my new life with Frank.

As is typical on a retail shopping excursion in the GMSM, you’re bound to run into people you know or see at the bars or have had sex with once or twice before. While I was deciding if I should try on a pair of distressed jeans, size 32, thank you very much, Frank’s face was momentarily pushed out of my mind as I noticed a familiar guy wearing the Chelsea Uniform: baseball cap pulled down low, light blue Abercrombie & Fitch zip-front sweatshirt, navy blue Nike track pants with a white stripe down the side. This particular guy was someone I affectionately called Fuck Counter. He earned his nickname not because his ass could double as a folding tray, but because he literally counts the number of times his dick enters you while fucking.

The first time Fuck Counter and I met was during Gay Pride in front of the Duplex Cabaret. Shaved down and horned up, we drank Bud Light out of plastic rainbow cups and sang Carol Channing’s more memorable tunes with a bunch of other drunken partygoers, mocked the physically impossible alien-spawn Splash employees who do nothing but tend bar and work out, then went to his apartment and tried our hand at conversation, but realized we both just wanted to have sex.

Like so many sexual encounters south of 14th Street it began with a promise and ended with a lie. “Great cock!” somehow always ends up becoming “I’ll call you.” Here’s what happened. Fuck Counter started fucking me and I was mentally airlifted to that place you think is only attainable for dewy Bel Ami models and their siblings and then I started to hear mumbling. I assumed Fuck Counter was being airlifted to the same place I was about to enter and he’d chosen to speak in tongues to the Bel Ami children. Then I realized he wasn’t mumbling words, but consecutive numbers, and by the time he got to twenty-five I realized he was counting the number of times he had entered my ass. I felt like a Tootsie Roll Pop and he was the Owl trying to figure out how many thrusts it would take to get to my center. I tried to turn off my ears, but the Owl’s counting only grew louder and my erection softer.

“Are you actually counting cock thrusts?” I finally asked.

“Forty-seven, remember that number,” Fuck Counter ordered before pausing, but not exiting. “I tend to ejaculate prematurely. So my therapist suggested I count thrusts to control my sperm and teach myself not to come until I reach a certain number.”

I digested this information like a sexual trouper who has seen much and done some.

“And are we approaching that magic number?” I queried.

“Well, my personal best is one-fifty-three, but your ass is pretty tight, so I don’t know if I can make it that long,” said Fuck Counter with a dopey grin.

In spite of my disappointment that he’d broken one of my cardinal rules and used the word sperm during sex, I’m a sucker for a challenge as well as a dopey grin. I felt my inner Mary Lou Retton grow along with my dick, and I tried to loosen up my inner ass. However, as my proctologist once told me, “Steven, you have the sphincter of a straight man.” I had to face facts: my asshole is tight. If I couldn’t help Fuck Counter by loosening up my ass, I’d have to help him another way.

“You want to count thrusts, boy?” I bellowed.

Fuck Counter was startled at first, but quickly realized I was totally on his side and willing to act as his sex coach.

“Sir! Yes sir!”

“Well, counting costs. And right here’s where you start paying. In sweat!”

I kept shouting like Debbie Allen instructing dancers whose only chance at fame would be as chorus members of the bus and truck tour of Fiddler on the Roof starring Eddie Mekka and it seemed to do the trick. Fuck Counter was energized. His hands gripped my ankles like two vises, his face became a mask of focused concentration, and his dick swelled.

“Fifty-five!” he shouted.

With each thrust his shouting got louder, so by the time he reached 178 I could swear I heard the parade watchers outside counting along with him. Soon he gasped, “Two hundred and ten,” orgasmed, and collapsed on top of me in a pile of muscle and sweat. His body felt wonderful and I rode an emotional roller coaster lying underneath him as I realized Fuck Counter could be a fun boyfriend if he wasn’t so fucked up. Once I resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t explore this relationship emotionally, but only numerically, I was able to shoot my load and rush back to catch the end of the parade leaving Fuck Counter to clean up.

Heading to the Club M dressing room with my size-32 distressed jeans I walked by Fuck Counter and gave him a smile that said, “Hey, how are you doing?” “You look great,” and “Glad to see you’re alive and well, but I have no desire to get naked with you again.” Comprehending my silent comments, Fuck Counter just leaned into me and whispered, “I’m up to three-twenty-five.”

As I entered the dressing room, I carried not only my merchandise, but also an unexpected erection. Shopping satisfies on so many levels.

By the time I got to J. Crew, I had five bags and felt like Joan Collins sauntering down Rodeo Drive, if Joan Collins carried her own bags, which everyone knows is an activity relegated to a paid employee, i.e., her husband. I clutched one side of the J. Crew door as another good-looking Sunday-strolling gay retail whore clutched the other. Much to my joy I realized it was my best friend, Flynn McCormack.

“Ahhh!” Flynn shrieked.

“Ahhh!” I shrieked back.

“Bad night?” Flynn asked, eyeing my bags.

“Yes,” I confessed. “But now I’m in love.”

“Ooh, baby got bounce. I want to hear all about it, but first Mama needs some argyle.”

Steven Ferrante and Flynn McCormack would make the perfect homo-couple if only we were in love. But, alas, some things are just not meant to be. I met Flynn when we were both at Boston University and he was an out-of-the-closet junior and I was a please-don’t-unlock-the-closet-door freshman. Mutual friends set us up on a blind date not so much because they thought we’d be compatible, but because they knew Flynn would rip open my closet door and fling me out into the real world like a skilled obstetrician ripping a baby from the comfort and security of its mother’s womb. And that’s just what Flynn did. He reached into my symbolic vagina and yanked out my true self. He was the first person who taught me what it really meant to be out and proud. And even though we physically looked like a couple you’d be jealous of—Flynn’s auburn hair, freckled cheeks, pale complexion, and six-foot-two swimmer’s body perfectly complemented my dark brown locks, olive skin, high cheekbones, and five-foot-ten nicely muscled frame—there were no real romantic sparks between us. We did engage in a hot make-out session that resulted in my first facial burn, which still makes me wistful whenever I think about it, but something better than romantic sparks grew out of our first meeting, a flame of friendship that still burns to this very day. No one knows me better than Flynn and no one knows Flynn better than me, so for better or worse we’re stuck with each other, which is just the way we both like it.

“Did you measure it?” Flynn asked in reference to Ely’s penis, as we walked further south on Fifth Avenue toward Washington Square, carrying multiple bags of queergotten merchandise.

“No, but when I went to stroke it, it got lost in my fist.”

“Ah jeez, poor guy. Perhaps I should send him this book I’m reading—You’re the Top: How to Be a Better Bottom in Twelve Easy Steps. It’s changed my life, it could change his.”

“Thank you, but I think it’s best if Ely and I go our separate ways.”

“Sometimes that’s best,” Flynn agreed, “like me and Andy.”

“I thought he was the new love of your life?”

“He was until I realized he’s a freak,” Flynn said. “Like every other man I’ve ever had, except you of course.”

“You never had me,” I corrected.

“I know,” Flynn said. “Just testing you in case this latest setback made you embellish your memories.”

“How thoughtful,” I said, then asked tentatively, “Did he get upset when you told him?”

“No, he was fine with that,” Flynn said.

“Good.”

Flynn has been HIV-positive for the past ten years and on occasion it has gotten in the way of a budding relationship. Fortunately, healthwise, Flynn has never had a serious problem. At first we were both frightened and devastated by his diagnosis, but those feelings quickly gave way to the survival instinct—we both wanted Flynn to live. So I helped him find a wonderful doctor who found the right combination of medicine; he got to the gym more often, started eating healthier and, most important, clung to his optimistic spirit. It’s what I love most about Flynn; he truly believes life is wo. . .