The Stranger in the Mirror by Steven Kerry

Author:Steven Kerry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub

Chapter 6: Coco Palms and Mr. Queerly

The next morning Ren was jolted awake by the phone. It was as if the projector had broken down in the middle of a movie, his dream interrupted by a reality he despised. The answering machine, which he always left on, was of course off on this, the morning he was not to have awakened to the world at all. He stared at the ceiling, grimacing in disbelief.

Oh, shit, he thought. I’m supposed to be dead. I am supposed to be DEAD!! I blew it. I totally blew it. This was light when all he’d wanted was the dark; this was sound when he’d sought only silence. Fuck! he thought. What happened? Why didn’t the damn pills work??

He tried to move, but felt like a rag doll. He hadn’t had a hangover like this since The White Party in 1988. Finally, with the greatest of effort, he answered the phone.

“I’m not here,” he croaked. “But a vague facsimile is.”

“Ren? You sound like shit.” It was Audrey, his dearest friend.

“Oh…that’s just my Harvey Fierstein voice.”

“What did you do? Get drunk last night? You can barely talk.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, kind of. I was gonna go somewhere but I ended up getting bombed here instead. Cinderella didn’t make it to the ball.”

“You were gonna go where? You haven’t been going anywhere for weeks. That’s what you told me anyway.”

Ren sighed. “Never mind. Let’s talk about you. How’s yer burnin’ hunk o’ heterosexual love doin’?”

“Oh, what you mean to ask is ‘what of Art?’ Let’s just say I got a little attention in bed this morning, and I do mean a little. I don’t know what to do to inspire that thing between his legs anymore. What do I have to do? Dress up like Carmen Elektra? I’m lost. I swear we’re getting to be more and more like roommates than a married couple. We need help.”

“Or Viagra. I told you if you crushed some up and put it in his coffee he’d be much happier. And so would you, dear.”

“Oh, stop, Ren. You know men with heart flutters can’t take Viagra. That’s what I get for marrying a man older than myself.”

“‘Heart flutters?’ That sounds more like something a gay man would get. Why, our hearts would never ‘attack.’ They would ‘flutter.’ Anyway, you could always buy the herbal form of Viagra. I forget what it’s called. ‘Testostero-Boost’ or something. One of those funny, clinical names they give fake products.”

“Well, jeez Ren, erectile dysfunction is a clinical condition, isn’t it? What are they supposed to call it?”

“Something fun. Something that implies sex is fun. Something that suggests it’s about more than ‘performance’ anyway. How come women get to just have sex, but men have to ‘perform?’ What are we, dolphins at Sea World? That’s one of the benefits of being a gay man. We don’t think of having sex as ‘performing.’ It’s more like our way of shaking hands with someone.”

She laughed. “God, are you ever ‘on’ this morning.

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