He told us all about his loft around the corner, how his uncle’s realty company had offered it to him virtually for free if he could convert it into something livable, how he had spent the summer remodeling it.

  Loft Boy invited us to come check it out.

  We left the red-walled cave of the bar and walked the block to his place.

  Under the street lights, I could see Loft Boy had dark circles under his eyes. I wondered if he had poor circulation.

  As we climbed his stairs, I thought about what Loft Boy and Donovan would look like in bed together naked, their blond locks intertwined on the pillow.

  The loft was on the second floor of a former meatpacking plant.

  “It took forever to get rid of the stench of rotting meat,” Loft Boy said. “But forty gallons of paint did the trick.”

  The space was well lit and airy, with a slim view of the Hudson. Loft Boy went over to his Mac workstation and put on some MP3’s. He had his CPU rigged up to a surround-sound system, so the speakers filled the room with a mellow Portishead track. His dog Sebastian, a chunky basset hound, licked our hands appreciatively.

  “Let me just take him around the block to pee,” Loft Boy said. He poured us two glasses of white wine. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Donovan busied himself by flipping through Loft Boy’s CD collection while I looked at a book on industrial design. I noticed his bed was surrounded by scented candles.

  I wondered if something was going to happen between the three of us. I still wanted to sleep with Donovan, to prove I could have him, to prove I wasn’t only worthy of guys like Xander.

  Maybe this just made me a loser. But I was horny, and I didn’t care.

  Loft Boy came back and I asked him about the candles.

  “I like to give massages,” he said. “The candles set the mood.”

  “I want a massage,” Donovan said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Okay,” Loft Boy said. “Then take off your shirt and lie down on the bed.”

  “I want one too,” I said. Mainly, I wanted to see Donovan with his shirt off.

  “Then you’ll both get massages,” Loft Boy said.

  We both took our shirts off and lay on the bed face down, though I tried to crane my neck so I could check out Donovan. Loft Boy turned the lights down low and lit a few red candles.

  He started massaging Donovan’s back with oil, and then did mine, with long broad strokes that eased out the tension. After several minutes, I heard him unzip his fly. He took my hand and moved it to his penis. I grabbed onto it, rubbing the skin back and forth. I touched something metallic. Was he pierced?

  After we turned around, he leaned over and kissed me and then Donovan.

  Was this really happening?

  I had been in a threesome one other time, in college. While it visually satisfied every fantasy I had ever had about sex with more than one person, the reality was a big bother: you had to pay attention to two people instead of one, and inevitably, one person was always left out of the action. I didn’t want that person to be me.

  After we all stripped, I reached over to kiss Donovan, but he pulled away.

  “I can’t,” he said. “It’s too weird.”

  He could see how disappointed I was, though I didn’t say anything. Maybe he needed more warming up.

  Loft Boy’s dick was pierced with a Prince Albert, a ring that dangled lazily over the head of his cock like a silver talisman. Donovan and I looked at it, then at each other’s naked bodies. We started laughing.

  Donovan suddenly became serious. “We tell no one about this,” he said.

  Loft Boy started going down on Donovan. When he removed his mouth, I tried to do the same, but again, Donovan said he felt uncomfortable. “You do him,” he said, pointing to Loft Boy, “and he can do me.”

  As I reluctantly went down on Loft Boy, I felt the piercing tickle the back of my throat. It felt like I was about to swallow a wedding band.

  I kept looking up at Donovan, watching him as he squirmed in pleasure as Loft Boy blew him. I was getting a kink in my neck from the awkward angle.

  Loft Boy took a break from Donovan and lay down next to both of us. I knew I would kick myself if I didn’t take this opportunity, so I repositioned myself and began to suck on Donovan. He looked up, realized it was me, and grinned. I could see he was happy, but he didn’t want to take responsibility for it happening.

  Donovan’s body was lithe and toned, though even from this angle, I could see faint traces of stretch marks on his waist. He had lost a lot of weight since college, he had once told me.

  It felt good to suck on something that didn’t have hardware attached to it.

  I lay down next to him and gave him a kiss.

  “I’ve wanted this to happen for a long time,” I whispered to him.

  “You’re so sweet,” he said, and kissed me back.

  It wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I felt a knot rise in my throat.

  Loft Boy was now jerking off furiously as Donovan and I lay next to him. The moment had passed. We realized what we were doing, and it seemed ridiculous.

  Loft Boy finished, and Donovan and I made half-hearted attempts at getting off, though we eventually gave up. Without Loft Boy’s libido to cheer us along, it seemed pointless.

  I knew I wanted Donovan, but it couldn’t be within the context of friendship.

  We were sweaty and slick with massage oil, so Loft Boy offered us his shower. Donovan and I stepped into the large tub together, as naturally as if we were at the gym.

  “Can you imagine if our friends saw us now?” he said.

  It felt incredibly normal to be standing there naked with him, water running over our bodies. I wanted to remember the moment.

  I asked him to kiss me again. Even if it never happened again, I needed something to give me closure.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Please.”

  “Toby, I can’t. We’re friends, okay?”

  As I put on my clothes again, I felt angry and unfulfilled. Why did Donovan have to be a tease? Why did he get to decide when we would be intimate and when we wouldn’t?

  The two of us said goodbye to Loft Boy and walked down to the street.

  “I can’t believe we just did that,” I said. I knew he didn’t want to talk about it, but I needed to hear what he thought, if he liked it, if it would happen again.

  “It stays between us,” Donovan said.

  But I wanted to tell the world. I was proud of it, even happy. It meant Donovan found me attractive, that he could be with me if he wanted to. But I knew he would never admit it, that my silence was the price I would have to pay.

  We walked up Gansevoort Street in silence, past green dumpsters filled with trash, past the Christmas tree lights dangling outside of Restaurant Florent, past Hell. On the corner, three black trannie hookers were waving down customers. The one closest to us wore a vinyl mini-dress with flames running up it.

  . “You know you want it, baby!” she catcalled to a passing car. She turned to her companions, flipped her ebony mane. “But ain’t nothin’ in this life that come for free.”

  The next day felt surreal. I had finally hooked up with Donovan, but nothing had turned out the way I wanted it to. I was having trouble concentrating as I mechanically went through the day’s tasks.

  Cameron stopped by my cubicle in the afternoon.

  “I’ve called a few people about you,” he said. “We should be able to get you some meetings soon.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s really cool of you.”

  “You know something?” he said. “You and I should really hang out. Ariana always speaks so highly of you.”

  “That’s nice of her.” I had no idea how someone I barely knew could speak highly of me, but I found it gratifying nonetheless.

  “I feel like I don’t really know you that well. Let’s try to do something soon, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, though I was confused as to his intentions. Surely he wasn’t interested in dating me; he had already made that mistake with an assistant. Maybe he really was interested in promoting my career. After all, if I sold a script, it would make him look good. I decided Cameron was on my side after all.

  That night, I told Jamie about my experience with Donovan. I had to tell someone. If I kept it to myself, it would feel like it hadn’t happened.

  Jamie was indifferent. He had just returned from a road show, assisting with presentations in six states in four days, and he was exhausted.

  “Don’t you have anything to say about this?” I asked.

  “Toby, I’ve got other things to worry about.”

  I realized how stupid I was being, gleefully announcing last night’s hookup after I had told Jamie to abstain from sex. I was a hypocrite. But I also wasn’t the one who potentially was HIV positive.

  Then again, we were all potentially HIV positive.

  The next night, I was meeting all the boys for dinner at an Upper East Side Belgian place that had dark woodwork and walls painted a deep red. Between work, dating Xander, and worrying about Jamie, it had been almost two months since I had seen David, Alejandro, or Brett. I worried that our group was falling apart, that our friendship was part of a time in our lives that would soon be ending.

  I noticed Brett looked different. While previously he had been muscular, he now looked artificially pumped. His arms were like ham hocks, with thick veins running along each of them.

  “I think he’s taking something,” Jamie whispered to me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Uh, steroids?”

  “Shouldn’t we tell him to stop?”

  “What can we do, Toby? People like him never listen anyway.” He paused for a moment and then sneered at me. “It’s no worse than shoving white powder up your nose.”

  I kept my opinions on Brett’s drug use to myself after that.

  Before David and Alejandro arrived, Jamie told me they had recently decided to make their relationship an open one. I didn’t understand. If they had each other, why would they need anyone else? David seemed happy about it, but Alejandro was not pleased. Unlike his usual bouncy self, he sat in the corner of the booth looking sullen.

  The other person who was quiet was Donovan. He didn’t look at me or speak to me during the entire dinner. A few times I asked him a question, and he pretended not to hear me. When he got up to use the restroom, I followed him.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “You haven’t spoken to me all night.”

  “I told you not to tell anyone, Toby, and you went and told Jamie. You might as well have told all of downtown.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not very good at keeping secrets. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.” Suddenly, my guilt turned to anger. “But why does this get to be your secret? It happened to me as much as it happened to you!”

  “People say enough things about me,” Donovan said. “I don’t need them gossiping about one more thing.”

  “You know something?” I said. “I think you have an inflated sense of your own importance.”

  I knew people could say the same thing about me, but it felt good to tell it to Donovan.

  I went back to the table. My cheeks were hot.

  “Are you okay?” Brett asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Too much red wine.”

  At the end of the meal, I went to the restroom again. Alejandro was already inside, washing his hands. He was wearing a long-sleeved designer shirt, one with slashes down the sides. As he stood at the sink, his wrists were exposed, and I noticed several red marks on them.

  “Jandro, what happened to your wrists?” I asked.

  He quickly pulled down his sleeves so I couldn’t see them. “Oh, that. It’s nothing.”

  “Come on, it’s not nothing. It looks like you were tied up or something—”

  I realized what it was, and he knew it.

  “David likes to mess around, you know, in bed, and sometimes it gets a little, what’s the word . . . ?” He fixed his perfectly styled coif in the mirror in an attempt to distract me.

  “Rough? Like with rope?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes with these leather straps he has.”

  “Do you like it? Why do you let him do it?”

  He turned away from the mirror, towards me.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “But if I don’t do it, David will leave me.”

  I shook my head sadly. I would never put up with someone treating me like that.

  “It’s simple, Toby. Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be alone.”

  Everyone had different commitments after dinner—David and Alejandro to have sex, Brett to meet some college friends downtown, Donovan to avoid me—so Jamie and I went to his place. It was rare to have a night when we weren’t running around like crazy.

  I was glad to be visiting Jamie’s apartment under less stressful circumstances than the last time I was here. I sank into his couch.

  Jamie went to check his messages on his beat-up answering machine. For someone who always had the latest technology, he was too cheap to get voice mail.

  The first message was from Donovan.

  “He must have left it right before dinner,” Jamie said.

  He turned up the volume and went over to the kitchen table to sort through his mail.

  “Hey, Jamie, it’s me,” said Donovan on the tape. “Uh, listen, about the whole thing with Toby, I don’t know how it happened. It was a huge mistake, I just—”

  Jamie ran over to the machine and pressed STOP. I jumped up and tried to press PLAY.

  “You’ve got to let me hear it,” I said. “I need to know why he’s acting this way.”

  “Okay,” Jamie said. I knew part of him wanted me to hear the message.

  The tape continued: “I didn’t realize what was happening, and I’m sort of disgusted by it now. Anyway, I guess I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Disgusted?

  “He was disgusted?” I said. “He certainly enjoyed it while it was happening.”

  “Toby, don’t take it personally. Sometimes he says things that—”

  “Don’t take it personally? He just said I was disgusting. The guy I’m in love with said I was disgusting.”

  “Toby, you’re not in love with Donovan. You’re in love with the idea of Donovan. There’s a difference. Donovan as a person is a pain in the ass. You’ve created this whole fantasy about him, just like you did with Xander and—”

  I wanted him to shut up, because I knew he was right.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “That little bitch! How could he say something like that? I’m calling him.”

  I got out my cell phone and started scrolling through memory.

  “No, you’re not!” Jamie said. He grabbed the phone from me and ran into his bedroom.

  I tackled him on the bed and took my phone back.

  “You can’t let him know you heard the message,” Jamie said. “He’ll kill me.”

  “This isn’t about you,” I said, placing the call.

  I reached Donovan’s voice mail: “Hey, it’s D. You know what to do.”

  “It’s Toby.” Suddenly I didn’t know what to tell him. “You can forget about being friends,” I finally said. “Next time you want to talk shit about someone, don’t do it on an answering machine.”

  I hung up.

  “Brilliant,” Jamie said. “I’m sure he’ll hang on every word.”

  I didn’t hear from Donovan for the entire next day. Every time I picked up Cameron’s phone, I was sure it would be him. We usually spoke regularly, so now that we were in a fight, wouldn’t he rush to resolve things?

  That evening, Ariana’s firm was hosting a launch for a new fragrance to be held, predictably, at Mirror. Since a group dinner with Donovan and the boys was not an option, I accepted Cameron’s invitation to go with him that night.

  We stayed late at the office, grabbed a bite to eat on the way, and arrived at Mirror around 9 P.M. The fragrance was called Harem, so the club was decked out in an Arabian Nights theme that Ariana had orchestrated: potted palms, enormous silk throw pillows, gold tablecloths, candles, and incense. The club’s many mirrors had been draped in filmy, shimmering fabric. Ariana had hired a handful of club kids dressed in harem outfits for the event, and some of the guests had taken part in the theme as well, but it was mostly a suits crowd of fragrance buyers and fashion professionals. Jordan Gardner, who was attending as a favor to Ariana, made the biggest splash of all when she arrived in a pair of gold harem pants and a midriff-baring top. The photographers snapped away, certain they would be able to sell a photo of an Arabian Jordan to any of the top newspapers and magazines.

  The club had decided an orange-infused martini spiced with cinnamon had a vaguely Middle Eastern flavor to it, and the crowd—which was composed of people who wouldn’t know, anyway—seemed to agree. I tried the specialty drink, but decided to switch over to vodka cranberries. I wanted to forget about everything that had happened, even if it meant being whisked away to an incense-clouded world of fragrance buyers for an evening.

  I ran into Cameron in the restroom and he offered me some coke, which I accepted. I didn’t care anymore about what was right or wrong, what was appropriate or not. I just wanted to escape.

  After doing several bumps in the toilet stall, I felt more alert, more focused. Things were right with the world. I was supposed to be at this party; I was supposed to be hanging out with these people.

  Cameron and I ran into Jordan outside the restroom. She had a new film coming out the following week, a thriller co-starring the hunk on the cover of this month’s Vanity Fair.

  “Hey, I know you!” she said to me, pointing wildly. She was clearly fucked up. “Your mother lent me that, that dress. I got a lot of press out of that dress!” She threw her head back and laughed. “Someone spilled soy sauce on it, though, so it was ruined!”

  My mother hadn’t told me Jordan had trashed her dress.

  Cameron led me to the VIP area, where Ariana was standing with one of her employees. She gave me a suspicious look and then forced a smile.

  “They’re fine,” she said. The rope was drawn open.

 

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