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On the sidewalk, Paul’s hand drifts near mine again. I shove mine into my pockets.

At the ticket desk, Alby and Brad perform a tragedy about being late.

The guy in the vest appears like he’s been waiting for his cue. “We can do half-price for the back row.”

Alby gasps. “Well, aren’t we lucky?”

Mateo catches my eye.

I snort. Paul nudges me with his elbow, fighting a smile of his own.

Mateo sweeps an arm toward the curtain. “Come on, guys. The cheap seats await!”

The theater is dark red and colder than outside, with fog rolling low enough to touch my shins. It’s like walking into a vampire’s bachelor party.

A man in a fluffy blue shirt leads us down a narrow aisle. The room is mostly heads and shoulders, mostly men, all turned toward a stage where two guys hang upside down from twin poles with a bathtub between them.

Classy.

Paul sits on the far end. I take the seat beside him before anybody can rearrange me. Mateo drops into the seat on my other side, then Brad, then Alby, who whispers something that is not whispering and laughs into the back of the stranger’s neck in front of him.

The music swells. One of the upside-down men slides down the pole in a position that can’t be good for the balls.

I sit stiff, knees together, hands on my thighs. This is public, it’s sexual, and not at all like dancing at the bar or playing on cam. I can’t see the crowd well enough to know who is looking at what, and somehow that helps.

Then Paul’s hand settles on my knee. This time, I reach for it. His fingers close around mine, warm and sure, and I can breathe again.

The show makes no sense for about five minutes, then starts making a different kind of sense. “Men of the world” seems to be the theme, though every nation seems to contain oiled Latino abs and a planned underwear reveal.

A sailor loses his pants. A cowboy produces a lasso from somewhere that does not seem medically advisable. A businessman rips open his shirt to reveal glitter suspenders and the smallest briefs God allows.

The crowd laughs, whistles, claps. Not hungry exactly. More like they’re in on the joke.

I laugh when everyone else does at first, then I laugh because it’s funny.

Maybe looking isn’t always the problem. Maybe the problem is thinking seeing something means owning it.

Paul leans closer. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I whisper.

And I am—for a while.

Then Mateo’s leg presses hard against mine. At first, I think the seats are too narrow. Then I hear the tiny sound he makes.

I look over, and Brad’s hand is down the front of Mateo’s shorts. Moving, rubbing.

Mateo’s head is tipped back, eyes half-closed, mouth open just enough for a moan to slip out under the music.

I look away fast. My stomach drops straight to the floor.

Onstage, the businessman is now in a bathtub with the cowboy. The crowd roars. Alby laughs beside Brad like nothing is happening in the seats between us, or like it is supposed to happen, or like not noticing is part of the game.

I shift closer to Paul. His arm comes around me immediately, and I squeeze his hand so hard his knuckles must hurt.

The rest of the show blurs into skin, music, red light, and the side of Paul’s chest against my shoulder. I pretend not to hear what I’m hearing beside me. Try to pretend I don’t know what it means when Mateo tenses and groans as the stage goes dark.

The theater empties us onto the narrow sidewalk with everyone else, sweaty and laughing and blinking in the streetlight.