Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia

When I first met him, Chris played bass in this eyeliner band called Ether. (Later they moved from New Romantic/ new wave to a more death/Goth style and changed their name to the Select and then, after Chris left, to Crown of Thorns. After that they moved beyond death/Goth to life/bright wave and then to Romanesque edge metal and changed the name to Leviathan until they finally broke up or faded out or quietly kept going in someone’s garage.)

They were not good.

He played bass and he sang in an uncomfortable nasal tenor. His singing didn’t match him — he should have been short and slight with missing teeth and a dirty mohair sweater. He was too pretty for his voice, for the band, and way too pretty for the scene. 1980 was a tiny window of a moment when pretty boys were suspect. Chris was more suited to be an actor than a singer. For one thing, he smiled all the time, his huge brown eyes clearly discernible despite the hunk of brown hair that he used to comb over half his face. He wore tons of kohl on his eyes, and he wore earrings and even feathers in an unlucky pirate/Indian amalgam.

Despite all his miscalculations, he was beautiful.

I was one of those girls who loved boys who looked like girls. As far as I was concerned, the gayer a guy looked, the better. A guy couldn’t be too gay-looking for me at that point. Gay, gay, gay. It was my version of anti-sex, I suppose, to be in love with gay boys. But I really did love them and want them. I had spent from sixteen to nineteen having a lot of sex. Most of it wasn’t great. I don’t even remember all the men I had sex with in those days. It used to make me cringe, but now I sort of admire my shameless promiscuous period. I would go out and get wasted and then wait until someone made a move on me. I usually had a few to choose from, but I was pretty ecumenical in my selections. I would go to their house or, I’m afraid, their car. And if I liked the sex, I would stick around and see the guy again. Sometimes, like with this one seemingly sweet guy, Brad, the feelings between us would disappear after sex. He asked me home after we shouted into each other’s ears for an hour over bourbon and room-shaking bass. We both agreed the band was great, or awful, or boring. We made out in the parking lot behind the club — I think it was the Starlight, or Van’s, or the Velvet Pony. He drove us to his studio apartment in Silver Lake. He looked younger in the light of his kitchen. We smoked a joint. We had tender stranger sex, his broad hand guiding my lower back. A sigh in my ear. And I remember feeling that we worked well together, we lacked the common awkwardness and the itchy discomforts of new bodies. Afterward — right afterward — he unpeeled himself, sat up, and lit a cigarette. He wouldn’t speak or look at me until I left. I had to call Nik for a ride.

Other times, like with this other guy whose name I won’t recall, we started out almost nasty in bed — he whispered all the porn things he could think of into my ear as he held me down. Of course I discovered this was the kind of guy who ends up falling hard: calling all the time, then following me, writing notes and then letters, until I actually had to hide from him.

My sex life often felt complicated and unpleasant. Then, after one too many postcoital waves of despair, I had a change of inclination. I became what some people call a fag hag.

I used to think I liked gay men because I could remain safely undesired with them. I wanted to avoid sex. That was an aspect of it. But now I realize it was also because I loved men too much. I loved being around them before they played with their band and after, I loved joking with them, and I loved getting high with them. I loved how they loved music and pool and how they harbored secret ambitions. I loved the size of their hands and, truly, I loved how they all wanted sex all the time. Somehow (perhaps mistakenly) I never perceived this as predatory; I thought their constant desire made them needful and secretly vulnerable. I felt almost sorry for them. What I learned after a couple of years as a hard-core free girl is that if I really liked a guy, I shouldn’t have sex with him. One of us (unclear who beforehand) would want more than the other one did. It is weird, and lovely, how sex changes everything, how there is no predicting what will happen until you’re there on the other side with your swollen lips and unrolling your underwear from the bunched top sheet. Except you could predict that you wouldn’t be friends afterward. It was extremely unlikely that it would feel the same to both of you. Therefore, if I really liked a guy, sleeping with him would ensure he would not be in my life very long.

So why didn’t I just stay friends with straight guys and not sleep with them? Because even if you didn’t sleep with them, sex came up and interfered. For example, I didn’t want to sleep with my friend James: he was my good buddy; he made me laugh; our sensibilities matched perfectly; and we could and would stay up all night talking. We even watched movies together over the phone, adding constant commentary as we watched. Eventually, the moment came, as it always did. He’d had a few drinks. He clutched my hand. I knew what was coming. I could feel how he wouldn’t forgive me. He thought I didn’t sleep with him because I was shallow and wanted only aloof, unattainable men. I could feel, and see in his face, as his desire quickly slid into resentment. Now I was using him, getting all the companionship without giving up any of the goods. Then I was a tease, and finally, of course, a bitch.

But with gay men it was all different. They were not trying to get on you or even thinking about getting on you. You were not trying to get on them. You were not waiting to convert them. Not at all. Gay men you could love without hesitation, without jeopardizing your friendship, without art or guile. I still kind of feel this way. True, I never got actual sex from them, but I got to dance, I got to lean against them, I got to hold hands, I even got to sit in a lap or two. We could ironically ape straight couples. I could still admire the large hands, or the curve of a shoulder, or the way a male back looked under a T-shirt. Contrary to the fag-hag cliché, we did not merely discuss male movie stars in salacious terms. We might have shared an appreciation for the male form, but that was only one small part of it. It really was about pure male companionship, something I couldn’t get from straight men or women of any tendency. Who knows what they got out of it (perhaps easy friendship and a little comfort), but gay men became my default favorites in those days. Aside from my brother, they were the only men whose desire I didn’t have to worry about.

I knew right away Chris was gay. The way he coquettishly leaned backward against the bar behind him, pushing up the unbuttoned cuffs of his white rayon shirt. It was actually more of a blouse than a shirt. He asked me for a cigarette. I watched him as he lit his cigarette and took a drag. I could see a triangle of taut flesh where his half-tucked-in blouse fell open at the hem; it created an inviting slide of rayon each time he moved. Although he was skinny, he was more muscular than the average rock guy — he probably did push-ups every day (GAY). He teetered on the heel of a boot and slouched sleepily to one side. He glanced at me as I stared at him, and he smiled broadly, a real grin. In contrast to him, I wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans and boots with a vintage crepe dress pulled over the whole ensemble. Between my makeup and clothes, I didn’t show an inch of flesh or form. I liked it, me covered and desexed, him revealed flesh and smiles. He was near enough to me that I could smell sandalwood incense and, faintly under that, soap. Just another gorgeous gay boy. He was even a little bit tan, which was completely recherché for straight rock boys in those days. But mostly I located his gayness in the artifice of his presentation, his shameless and flamboyant poseur-tude.