The dressing room was not as glamorous as the name might imply. Tucked in the dark bowels of the Copa, it was a tiny broom closet framed by 2 X 4’s and shingled with leftover sheetrock. It was an after-thought, a lean-to of a room where that night’s “star” could shimmy into her costume and apply her makeup. It was 3 walls and a flimsy door. No ceiling. Little more than a fitting room at Old Navy.
“Bella Bottoms” was printed on a sheet of copy paper tacked to the door.
“Hey handsome!” Vince said as Matt entered. Vince sat facing a lighted vanity mirror. Makeup, brushes, and tweezers littered the small countertop. His vodka bottle and Solo cup props stood sentry.
Vince’s voice conveyed warmth and affection. His face—halfway through its transformation into Bella, was frozen. His eyebrows were glued flat, covered by tape. A wig cap tugged his skin taut. Several layers of makeup smoothed the transitions.
“Still wearing Tucks pads from the bonings I gave you?” Vince asked, which was comical considering that the wig cap made him look like Dan Akroyd’s “Conehead” from the 1993 movie of the same name. It was hard to take anything a Conehead said seriously.
Matt shrugged as if he could barely remember the bonings, as if they were a mere blip on a crowded graph of his couplings. The truth was that Vince’s donkey cock had stretched him so much he’d worried whether he would need adult diapers.
“Does your clit miss me?” Matt asked in return. He could play this game, had heard variations of it ad nauseum in countless locker rooms over the years.
Matt understood (did not like—but understood) that since he and Vince were both Alpha males, man codedicktated that they pantomime their way through this dominance dance, ultimately bestowing Alpha-Alpha status on one of them, Alpha-Beta on the other. Never mind that they had flip-fucked their way through a long, sweaty, and drunken night. Only one of them got to be the Silverback who thumped his chest.
And, while Matt might have scored points for originality and delivery, while his cock might win Best in Breed here and there, Vince’s donkey cock won Best in Show, making him Alpha-Alpha.
Vince chuckled. “I thought of you the other day. I was watching TV and then, ‘Holy Moly Batman,’ your pissant college made national news!”
Matt couldn’t contain himself. His face sprouted a shit-eating grin. He had hoped that Vince had seen the news coverage. It would make it easier to sell him on the cockroach squashing plan.
Vince set down his makeup brush, eyed Matt discerningly. “That was your doing? Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric dissing on Midwest Christian Fuck-You-Niversity?”
Matt nodded. Who was the Alpha-Alpha now?
He remembered the moment, sitting on Debbie’s couch, when he’d realized that Nicholas Covington, one-half of the Nicholas-Bradley duo, was the gay man who had married and divorced Debbie. Nicholas was the reason, thirteen years after the fact, for Debbie’s getting sacked.
Matt hadn’t known Nicholas that well, but thought he seemed like the sort of decent person who would want to come to his ex-wife’s aid.
And then Matt had remembered the plaques lining the stairwell at Nicholas’s house, all the awards and honors Nicholas had earned in his career assistant producing the local television news…
And Garland Stone-Dancer, esquire: part-time face fucker, full-time attorney at law who, Matt knew from experience, was the kind of guy who could take charge of a situation, who was good at persuading people to do his bidding.
An idea had sprouted in Matt’s mind. He excused himself, left Debbie in the company of her cats.
Bradley had answered the door and invited Matt inside. They sat in the formal parlor with its grandfather clock.
After hearing the news about Debbie, Bradley had called Nicholas at work and suggested—emphatically—that he needed to come home: Pronto, Stat, NOW!
“Did I ever tell you what I majored in at MCU?” Bradley had asked Matt while they were waiting for Nicholas to join them.
“No?”
Bradley had chuckled. “Psychology. I wanted to be a therapist, believe it or not. I even started in a Master’s program at OU.”
“That’s interesting,” Matt had said neutrally. He didn’t see how this had anything to do with Debbie. And he wasn’t in a chatty mood.
“When I saw you at the door,” Bradley had said, “I hoped you were taking me up on my offer to be a good listener.”
Matt had felt suddenly claustrophobic in that small parlor. Same parlor where Garland had propositioned him for a face fuck.
Bradley had smiled disarmingly. “I’m not a counselor, and I don’t even play one on TV, so what I’m about to say is just a hunch. You don’t have to respond at all. Okay?”
Matt had nodded. Eyed the clock, willing it to tick faster.
“You’re an amazing person,” Bradley had said. “People talk, so I know how you stood up for Paul. How you stood up for that boy who attempted suicide…”
“Adam. His name’s Adam,” Matt had said.
