And I smiled because it’s hard to be mad at someone who misses you when you’re apart.
Chapter 9
First Date Jitters: The Only Thing I’ll Be Blowing Is Chunks
“WHY are you nervous?” Sandy asked. “You’ve already made out with him at work and at home, seen him almost naked, slept in the same bed, and spent an entire day with him in your lap. What could you possibly be nervous about?”
“I don’t know!” I wailed, tearing through my closet trying to find that one outfit that would say, Hi, my name is Paul. I’m confident, sexy, and I a
m not sweating gross buckets under my armpits and at the back of my knees. So far, I was without any luck as every piece of clothing I put on either made me look like an obese rhinoceros or a Vietnamese hooker. Sandy said he couldn’t quite see the Vietnamese hooker, but I assured him that I looked like my name was Pham Dao Lin and I worked at a brothel called the Lotus Flower where I offered hand jobs to men with rubber glove fetishes.
“Well,” he said, frowning at a pair of chaps that came from my wannabe-cowboy-BDSM days, “I would give you a Xanax, but chances are you’d pass out and drown in the soup appetizer. I don’t know if Vince would think that’s attractive. Or maybe he’s got some really weird kink and would think you’re really hot with minestrone dripping off your face.”
“Oh God,” I moaned. “What if he does have weird kinks? What if he wants to put things up my pee-hole while he makes me dress up as Sailor Moon?”
Sandy stared at me. “What the fuck have you been watching?”
“I accidentally googled the word kink,” I told him, finding a pair of Crocs in the back of my closet. I didn’t know where those came from because I was pretty sure I wasn’t a lesbian who owned a bookstore in Ohio. “I thought I could find some slightly sexy things to do just in case… you know.” I couldn’t look at him.
“Uh-huh. And what did you find?”
“So many things,” I muttered. “There are some seriously fucked-up people in the world. Then I started to get turned on and that scared the crap out of me, so I looked up regular porn like normal people.”
“Thank God for regular porn,” Sandy said. “Baby doll, please understand that I love you with all of my heart. I really, really do. But we need to take you shopping in the worst way. I’m pretty sure I just found corduroy, and I’m seriously reconsidering our friendship.”
“Hey, it made a comeback,” I said. “In the nineties.”
He waited.
“The early nineties.”
He waited some more.
“Okay, in March of 1992. But you know I have a hard time throwing anything away.”
He sighed. “I know. But I also know I’m going to turn on the TV one day and find you starring in an episode of Hoarders, and I’ll wonder if I could have done more to save you. By then, I’ll most likely be super famous and living in a palace with a harem of Iranian men who lick my balls whenever I ask, and you’ll be here with your piles and piles of corduroy. I’ll think fondly of you, but your memory would most likely be accompanied with mild disdain.”
“I hope your dreams crash and burn,” I hissed at him.
He probably wasn’t even listening. “Okay, you’ve got thirty minutes before he gets here. Go get in the shower, and I’ll figure out what you’re going to wear.”
“This was probably the worst idea I’ve ever had,” I said, looking around at the disaster that was now my room. “Why the hell did I say yes?”
“Because he was wearing a black jock strap while standing in your living room and you did absolutely nothing about it and this is God’s way of punishing you,” Sandy said. “You must be the only gay boy in the world that would have been able to resist that. If I were you, I’d give serious thought as to what you can do to rectify that situation.”
“It was really hard,” I admitted.
“I bet it was,” he said with a smirk.
“Not like that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It was so black.”
“How big was his cock?”
“Sandy!”