Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now, or Whenever You Might Have a Spare Moment

I’ve always been soft-spoken. Even in bed. “Are you having a good time?” is a question I’ve heard a dozen times by various men, always with the most disappointing timing, such as immediately following a bout of what I think are obvious noises of my approval. I go through life speaking, and groaning, at volume level 9, while the world hears me at 3.

If ever there was a case of opposites attract, it’s the Workout Partner and I. Talking, and volume, are not a problem for my hot, manly fireplug. Even with his mouth shut Joe’s communicating, like the first time I saw him, sitting across a crowded room from me, wearing a t-shirt that read: “I Make Boys Cry.”

That was four years ago. Frankly the t-shirt scared the shit out of me, and led me, in a burst of self-protection, to mentally cross him out as candidate for My Next Husband. But still I found him, and the t-shirt, and what the t-shirt implied, compelling. My attraction ran hand-in-hand with my fear, skipping and careening through the landscape of dirty daydreams. Some of us are simply cursed with a need for Bad Boys, God help us.

Three years ago my barber died, and I started taking my buzzcut compulsion to Joe. Every two weeks I’d sit in his chair, where he’d manhandle my skull and whisper in my ear sweet prescriptions for my current love ailments. “You just need to get fucked,” was one of his favorites. “Really hard.”

It was a good set-up; I could flirt safely with him, (he had a boyfriend, after all) for a good thirty minutes, and then run back to my quiet, reserved life. Of course my idea of flirting with Joe was to simply turn red for a good twenty minutes; I never came out and told him any of the things I pictured us doing together, because, well, that just wasn’t me.

Then I went to New York, and grad school. Joe opened his own shop, and mailed me an invitation to his Grand Opening. I stuck the invitation on the fridge, where it remained for my entire two-year stint in Manhattan. Three months ago I came back to San Francisco, and to his barber’s chair. Both of us were now single. We started hitting the gym together several times a week, where we exchanged playful, sick banter. Sometimes, emboldened by my time in New York, or my years at school, or some strange alchemy of both, I could match his filthy talk, both of us engaged in a kind of extended foreplay that only delayed the inevitable.

He challenges my reserve. A few weeks ago, in bed, he said, “What do you WANT?”

“Huh?” I said. “What? What do you mean?”

“What do you want?”

“What? When? Now?”

“Yeah”

“In sex?”

“Yeah.”

And for a moment I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t say what I wanted aloud. I hemmed and hawed. I blushed.

“This,” I finally said. “I want this.” Meaning he and I, together, and what we were doing.

“Good,” he said. “What else?”

Again I stalled. We already had our clothes off, but his questions, and the answers I couldn’t give, stripped away more of my cover. We don’t raise our voices. We don’t say certain things aloud. We are taught modesty, and humility, and prudence.

“Fuck that,” he said. “Tell me something sick.”

I stammered, scarlet, for a second or two, before I revealed a long-held, deeply private fantasy. “Well,” I said. “picture us on a boat. And I’m the cabin boy…”

And that seemed to work, for both of us.

But his challenge was not confined to sex. Later, after dinner, after the plates and silverware had been tucked into the dishwasher, we stood necking in his kitchen. And he asked the question again; “What do you want?”

“What?” I asked. “In sex?”

“In life.”

My eyes focused on his chest. I don’t say my ambitions out loud. We are taught humility, and superstition; to say dreams out loud is to lose them. So I keep mine modest.

“I want to make a living doing what I love,” I finally said, mumbling against his neck.

“Fuck that,” he said. “You want to be famous.”

“Um…”

“You want to go on all of the talk shows.” He grabbed my chin and locked his eyes with mine.

“Um…”

“You want Matt Lauer to fawn.”

“Um,” I said. “Um…yeah.”

And in my head strange things happened; I heard my voice crack open walls, which crumbled to the ground.

He kissed me. “Good. Keep going.”

“I want to change people’s lives,” I said, before I had time to think. The sky darkened, and a hurricane swept through a city.

“Good.” Kiss.

“I want to matter.” A string of cars exploded.

“Good!” Kiss.

“I want people to say, Finally, someone put that into words!”

“Yeah!” he growled.

“I want to make money.” A stadium full of innocent people, all of them screaming in fear, trembled.

“Yeah!”

“I want more money than those assholes who walk around the gym like they own the place.” Tsunami, thunder, terror.

“Fuck yeah!”

“I want to be invited to parties.”

“Yeah!”

“And say, No!”

“Oh my God,” he said, and stuck his tongue down my throat.