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He had a green thumb and tended to a couple of dozen plants he stationed throughout the bathhouse. When he believed no one was within earshot, he whispered loving encouragement to his devil’s ivy, rubber figs, succulents, and jade plants.
It was past two in the morning. I was eighteen. Maybe my mindset can only be understood by people who’ve been in similar scenes at a tender age at the wrong hour: I felt like rules didn’t apply. Everything I knew about danger and consequences abandoned me.
He kept sneaking glances at me as he thumbed his way through the thicket of file folders. He was in his mid- to late thirties and by no means conventionally handsome: pockmarks along his left cheek and jawline; a prominent nose that was angled to the right, possibly from a break that didn’t heal correctly; and eyes that were set a smidge too far apart. All the same, I could imagine him outside of this staid branch and his buttoned-up librarian’s uniform. Strip him of that tweed sports coat, the collared shirt and argyle tie. Put him in a tank top and short shorts and discover that his arms and
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I would see someone I suspected of being queer and wonder how deep undercover they were. Did they hide it from everyone in the office, or were there a few coworkers in on the secret and equally dedicated to keeping the boss in the dark? When they went out to party, did they style their hair, apply makeup to their face, and wear clothes so foreign to their nine-to-five appearance that they could pass a colleague without being recognized?
Gregory was fucking a congressman. Gregory was fucking a Republican congressman in our apartment on Election Day. The Republican congressman that Gregory was fucking in our apartment on Election Day knew I had seen him get sodomized.
I hated the idea that I was going to let down Peter, Angie, and Walton because I was too weak, too clumsy, too much of a panicking sissy under pressure, too much of all the slurs I’d grown up hearing. Fuck that noise.
Wearing nothing but a pair of silk boxers, Erik was reclined on his couch with his ankles iced and elevated on pillows. I was sitting on the floor at his side, and our take-out order was around me in Styrofoam containers. As I ate, I lifted the dishes Erik was hungry for when he pointed at them.
“It was all luck. There is no secret formula. Just be lucky. Everything between us was so easy. We hardly argued. Loved the same movies and plays.” He flipped through the pages to find the Rehoboth photo. “We were young, and we didn’t have a lot of money, but you didn’t need a lot of money to have fun in those days. Every night, there seemed to be a party, and he and I were everyone’s favorite guests. Rooms would cheer when we entered. ‘Barney and Neil are here!’ Honey, I loved being us.”
At last, Theodora Divine, a Black, trans woman who was also the best waitress at the Have Mercy Fish Shack, climbed on top of an overturned garbage can and shouted, “If we doin’ this, let’s do it now! Hit the street, bitches!”
