“Hurry up,” Seth snapped and led me into a dressing room where costumes were stored for the club’s weekly drag shows.
Once there, Seth cut up three lines using the back of his electric guitar as a table—my allotted dosage—while I paced the small room and watched with impatience as Seth divided up just the right amount. I stood over him, waiting for the straw to snort them, when suddenly he changed his mind and swiped the powder back into the little plastic bag.
“Seth, what the fuck?” I asked, my body reacting in a violent way, like a car backfiring.
“You can wait for me,” he said coldly. “I’m not your fucking dealer.”
Rage tunneled through me like a supernova and I snapped at him, “You just love to watch me suffer, don’t you?”
He stood and gave me a look of utter disdain. “You know, Hiroku, you should really be more careful. You’re starting to act like a real junkie.”
Then he strutted out of the dressing room and took his place on stage for the show. He tapped the mic a couple of times to signal to the band, even though they weren’t set to start for another twenty minutes. His bandmates all scrambled to join him.
The fury inside me was unlike any other I’d ever experienced. I was so angry that I couldn’t see straight. I wanted to go break Seth’s guitar to show him what it felt like to have something so critical taken away from him.
Instead, I stormed out to the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender gave me a look, but he knew me, and I only had to smile and say please for him to serve me.
I sat with my back to the stage, shoulders hunched and tense. I did it to piss off Seth, knowing how much it would drive him mad to not have me in the front row hanging on his every word. Most of the patrons were on the floor watching the show, so I sulked at the bar with a tear in my beer like some sad cowboy in a country song throughout most of Petty Crime’s first set. A big guy with a short, well-kept beard sat down next to me at some point. He was in his late-twenties, early-thirties. I figured he was one of Sabrina’s Libertarian bros, so I didn’t pay him much attention until he struck up a conversation with me.
“What do you think of the band?” he asked. I glanced over. He was angled toward the stage while leaning casually against the bar. I noticed the muscles in his arms, solid with a layer of meat on top of them. A big boy and strong too. Not built like Seth at all, but I still found him attractive, which surprised me a little. He glanced from me to the stage, motioning with his hand like he expected an answer.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Seth crooning into the microphone, aiming his seduction at someone else. Perhaps he was avoiding me, his junkie of a boyfriend, as well.
“They’re all right,” I said noncommittally. It was a novel experience to interact with someone who didn’t already know me as Seth’s property.
“Singer seems like he’s trying too hard,” the guy said, tilting his head and eyeing Seth with a slightly put-off expression.
I turned a little more in my seat and tried to see Seth as this guy saw him. Perhaps Seth was a little over-the-top with his come-hithers and flirtatious looks, but he still had a magnetism that made it hard to look away, not to mention his talent as a singer.
“Do you think he’s attractive?” I asked the stranger. We were in a biker bar that hosted weekly drag shows, so even if this man wasn’t gay himself, he could probably still make a judgment without his world being shaken to its core.
He shrugged. “Maybe to some. Not my type though.”
This conversation was getting more fascinating by the second. I angled myself toward the man to better gauge his reaction “What’s your type?” I asked out of sheer curiosity. I seldom had the opportunity to converse with other gay men about their personal preferences. The man’s big brown eyes slid from the stage over to me. It seemed he liked what he saw.
“I prefer the shy, quiet types,” he said purposefully.
My eyes must have gone wide at that because he only chuckled. “My name’s Robert.” He stuck out his hand. “Or Bobby if you’d like.”
“Hiroku.” I clasped his thick, meaty hand. His handshake was solid and warm and surprisingly reassuring.
Petty Crime finished up their set and said they’d be back in a few minutes. I expected Seth to come claim me like lost luggage, perhaps while also getting a drink from the bar, but he only retreated into the shadows backstage without so much as a glance in my direction.
“Do you get high, Hiroku?” Bobby asked in a furtive voice, still with that low rumbling tone I associated with a manly man. “I have a stash in my bike.”
This biker was some sort of fairy godmother sent to me by the blessed angel of individuals in want of getting high. I swallowed down the last of my warm beer and told Bobby with an enthusiastic nod that I was most certainly interested.
Bobby led me to the alleyway behind Eileen’s where his bike was parked. I thought when he’d said getting high, he meant the good stuff, but he actually meant a joint of some rag weed, the type that burns your throat going down and tastes like dirt.
Still, it couldn’t hurt my present disposition to indulge in a little marijuana. Whatever it took to take my mind off the fact that my body was trying to eat its way out of my skin thus demonstrating that I may well be a junkie.
We smoked Bobby’s joint, and he told me he was an electrician in Austin. I wondered if he might know Caleb, but I didn’t ask. Electrical work required some deftness and attention to detail, which made me wonder a bit about the dexterity of Bobby’s big hands. I asked him if he ever got his wires crossed, and he chuckled and said no, he was always pretty careful in that regard. Despite my own mental tangents about what Bobby might look like naked, it was a chill conversation—nothing too flirtatious or suggestive. I was getting silly off the marijuana and laughing at something Bobby had said when Seth rounded the corner of the alleyway and glared at me like his head was about to explode.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?” Seth demanded. Perhaps because I was presently high, I didn’t take him too seriously or notice the menace in his voice.
“I’m getting high with Bobby,” I said with a goofy smile and passed the joint back over to him.
Seth stormed up to us faster than a guitar lick, reared back and hit me. Hard. Across the face. A total bitchslap—there’s no other way I know how to describe it. I didn’t even realize at first what had happened, just that the side of my face was on fire and my jaw felt slightly out of place.
