#e.ray

Far away from #metooLand

I was recently gay, and my girlfriend and I weren’t hard on the eyes. That’s what Cowboy had said when we walked into the apartment the linemen were sharing together: “Mindy, I’m glad you found someone as good looking as you, it’s just sad, you know, when that doesn’t happen.”

Cowboy had just moved into the place, and wanted us to see his room, and asked us, kind of like a little boy, to touch his bed, so he could say we were the first two on it. Mindy said had said, “No,” and then walked out of the room. Cowboy hadn’t looked abashed at all, just seemed cheerful, and followed us back to the kitchen, where there wasn't any silverware out, so everyone was eating the BBQ from paper plates with their hands.

Another guy, Ryan, asked me my name, and I told him Jessica, so he immediately called me Jess, and then, like it was normal, which it seemed to be in the house, he asked me whether I liked to lick buttholes. No one batted an eye really, but all the men—Cowboy, Ryan, this quiet guy with a mousy face who kept pointing out every time someone used a multisyllabic word, and a tall guy, who owned the house—they all seemed pretty interested in my answer.

I wanted to be nice, and also cool, because Mindy had to work in the office where the men checked in and out with paperwork every day, and I didn’t want them to give her crap or the cold shoulder, and we were at this dinner because of a person she actually liked at the office, Lola, who was sitting in the corner next to the quiet guy, but was already slumpy and quiet from drunkenness herself.

“I take the fifth,” I said.

“The fifth means you do!” They all said, in pretty impressive unison for how generally disorganized and how many beers and vodkas in they were.

“She’s not going to answer that,” Mindy said, sounding bored and forceful, and they all accepted it, and I felt jealous she’d figured out how to make herself sound so alpha.

Ryan went on, talking about how, of course Mindy and I licked buttholes, because when he did it, women orgasmed pretty endlessly, screamed a lot, and since Mindy and I had the same plumbing we must know it was a good idea.

He stopped talking, and then Mindy changed the subject.

*

A little while later, Mindy had gone over to give Lola some water, and Ryan had kind of cornered me to tell me this story about when he’d been diagnosed with colon cancer, and I wondered to myself whether that was part of his fascination with buttholes, but decided not to ask.

“I told my boss I was taking a week off,” Ryan told me, “And he was like, ‘are you coming back?’” And I said yeah, just I couldn’t wait the week before the results came back, so I was going to Vegas.”

So Ryan tells me he went to Vegas, took $30,000 dollars in a duffle with himself, but not his debit card because he didn’t want to spend any more than that, and the first night he gambled $5,000, and somehow tripled it, and bought $15,000 dollars of cocaine, and got a hooker and a penthouse suite for the week.

“The cocaine dealer asked if he could stay and do some with us, and I said I was the only cock allowed in the room, and he said it'd be fun to do together, and I told him to get the hell out.

“And then the hooker asked if she could call her friends, and I said yes as long as they had pussies, and so she called them, and we had a great week of it. On the plane ride back, I didn’t have anything in my pocket but my cell phone.”

I just sat there, listening, sometimes saying “wow” or nodding, but he seemed to be looking through me more than at me, so I wasn’t too worried about him liking me for Mindy’s sake.

“And then the doctor called and it turned out I didn’t have cancer.”

“Wow, that must’ve been stressful,” I said.

“Best week of my goddam life,” he said. And that kind of upset me a little because I like to think there are more fulfilling things in life than cocaine and hookers, but when I pressed him a little he said it was true.

*

Mindy was still by Lola, she’d given her the water, but Cowboy was talking to them about how the Canadian linemen had started calling him Golden Cowboy because of his sunglasses, and he’d put them on and kept them on to demonstrate his point even though it was night and we were inside.

“They call you that because you’re a faggot,” the quiet guy said, and Cowboy had explained, no, it was because of the golden sunglasses.

“It’s fagotty, it’s because you’re a fucking faggot,” Ryan said. “No offense to faggots, everyone is so sensitive nowadays, I’m just saying it because it’s true.”

Ryan was mixing up what he called Mexican corn, which was BBQ corn mixed up with Hellman’s and paprika, as he said this and I decided it wasn’t a good time to point out that Mindy and I were literally faggots, it just didn’t seem like it would do much good.

And then the room quieted and we were left to talking again, and Ryan started telling me how he hated when kids had cancer, it wasn’t right.

“I bet you think I’m just an asshole,” he said, “And I ride a Harley, but people like me have big hearts. Every time I see one of my friends’ kids has cancer, I sell one of my guns.

“I sell them on Facebook, and my friends have said I can get in trouble, but I say if someone wants to arrest me for selling guns to give money to kids with cancer—well, they won’t do that.

“So you see, I’m a good guy.”