Chapter 3
Adonis
During their sophomore year, Adonis and his friends had started going to Drag Trivia every Tuesday at the Drugstore, a small bar on Main Street. It became a tradition: buckets of beer, baskets of fries, and more wrong answers than right ones.
The group changed, sometimes. Some weeks were skipped. Adonis and Clarisse Chopra, though, were religious in their attendance.
Clarisse was Adonis’s best friend and a fellow figure skater.
She was an elegant girl from northern Michigan who could’ve been a model.
Modeling was, in fact, her backup plan if her planned PhD in computer science and coding didn’t work out.
She and Adonis had become friends almost immediately in their first year.
She’d clocked his Indian heritage when she first saw him, and was shocked to learn he knew nothing about his father or his extended family.
She, on the other hand, came from a large family and had many relatives in the United States and in Delhi and Mumbai.
That night, after he met her outside her apartment so that they could walk to the bar together, she looked distressed.
“Robbie is coming,” she said.
“That’s why you dressed cute,” Adonis said.
She wore makeup, a small black shirt, and wide-legged jeans.
“Bitch. I’m always cute.”
“You’re always cute. Your clothes aren’t.”
“Rich coming from you.”
Adonis looked at his outfit: a white T-shirt and jeans. “This is a classic fit.”
“Fine.”
“Who invited Robbie?”
Clarisse grinned. “Jane is bringing Weston, and Weston invited Robbie. Jane and I set it up. We just have to make sure I’m sitting next to Robbie.”
“I’m sure we can manage that task.”
Clarisse’s groan was primal and spoke of endless yearning. “It has to be this year, Donnie.”
Adonis took her arm. “You know, it’s okay if he doesn’t like you.”
“Absolutely unacceptable.”
Adonis laughed and squeezed his best friend’s arm. “You’re hopeless.”
“You love me.”
“I do. Let’s hurry, or we’ll be late.”
In the 1980s, Weiss’s Drugstore on Main Street in New Liverpool, Massachusetts, closed.
It sat vacant for fourteen years. Shingles fell in, and graffiti went up on the windows.
In 2000, new owners bought it and turned it into a bar.
They kept the name and the old tiled sign above the door.
The pharmacy counter became the bar. Classic diner-style booths lined the walls.
There was an old pinball machine in a corner and a jukebox with real records.
It was cool, and everyone loved it, and twenty-five years later, it was still the same.
Adonis and Clarisse joined their friends at a booth in the corner after ordering their drinks. A glass of the house white for Clarisse and a gin and tonic for Adonis. He would switch to sparkling water after two G&Ts. That was his routine.
“You must help us solve a debate,” Jane said as soon as Adonis and Clarisse were situated. She was a junior on the figure skating team. She skated pairs with Hugo, who sat next to her now. They never seemed to get tired of each other.
“What’s the debate?” Clarisse asked.
“Is it weird to want to be choked during sex?” Jane said.
Adonis firehosed gin and tonic through his nostrils.
Jane slid him a napkin without blinking and kept talking. “I think it’s weird. Hugo says it’s fun.”
“I’m dying,” Adonis gasped. “My god. My nose.”
“You’re being so dramatic,” Jane said. “What do you think? Choking? Yes or no?”
“It burns,” Adonis wheezed. “Holy shit.”
“Try blowing your nose,” Hugo said.
“I’ve never been choked during sex,” Clarisse said. “So, no opinion. But I don’t think we should say it’s weird. Isn’t that kink-shaming?”
Adonis honked his nose into a napkin.
“I guess it could be,” Jane said, ignoring the tears streaming down Adonis’s face. She twirled a lock of red hair. “Donnie, have you been choked during sex?”
Adonis’s preferred level of submission was “pebble being thrown around on a trampoline,” but he could hardly articulate that with the burn in his sinuses.
“Breathe, honey,” Clarisse said.
Finally, Adonis managed to say, “Why do you think it’s weird?”
Jane pursed her lips. “It feels regressive. Like giving up agency, or like we’re backtracking on sexual equality.”
“All that tells me,” Adonis countered, “is that you’re not submissive.”
On a prefab stage, Ms. Jizzle, a local drag queen with a pink bouffant and a statement power suit, shuffled her cards for trivia and announced into her microphone that they were starting in five minutes, honeys.
“Wow. Quite the time to walk into a conversation.”
Robbie DeLaurentiis stood at the booth, holding a pint of Guinness. He was tall, muscular, and blonde. An All-American boy. Next to him was Weston, Jane’s boyfriend, a winger on the hockey team. He was red in the face.
Robbie smiled at Clarisse.
“Adonis was just going to the bathroom,” Clarisse said, shoving him out of the booth. “Here, take his seat.”
“Was I,” Adonis muttered. It wasn’t a bad idea. He should wipe his face after the gin and tonic geyser.
He was quick in the bathroom. His eyes were pink from the tears, and his nose was tender, but thankfully, no snot had gotten on his shirt.
“Welcome, gaydies, gentlethem, and my friends trapped tragically in the binary,” Ms. Jizzle said into the microphone. “We’ll be starting our first round of trivia. Geography.”
Adonis returned to the booth. Two more had joined their party: Weston, Jane’s brick wall of a boyfriend, and another boy who sat next to Robbie.
He was all shoulders, muscles, jawline, and intense blue eyes.
He seemed tall, even sitting. His hair was dark and perfect, and his black T-shirt revealed intricate blue tattoos covering his left arm.
“You know the Basher, right?” Robbie was saying to the group.
“Do people actually call you that?” Hugo asked, leaning forward on an elbow, a flirty look on his face.
“Yes,” said the Dutchman.
Robbie and Bash were giants and left no room on their side of the booth. Adonis squeezed onto the other side, next to Weston, who was a friend and made as much room as he could. Adonis was facing Bash, whose legs were long and crowded into Adonis’s space. Clarisse slid Adonis his drink.
“What country contains the Chernobyl nuclear plant?” Ms. Jizzle asked.
“Ukraine,” Bash said, pointing at their paper. Jane wrote it down.
“Glad I brought you,” Robbie said. He flashed a smile at the group. One of his teeth had a cap. “Bash had a rough day. I thought this would cheer him up. Thanks for inviting me, by the way.”
Bash scowled.
“Wes was just making introductions,” Robbie said to Adonis. “I’m Robbie. This is Bash. He frowns more than he talks.”
“I talk,” Bash said.
“Yes, and you frown more.”
Though the figure skating club and the hockey team shared the Rink, there was little overlap between the groups beyond voluntary activities like this and the occasional event thrown by the National Collegiate Skating Sports Union.
Adonis knew Bash by reputation only. He was a fierce and talented player, and rumor had it he had already been drafted by the Seattle Killer Whales.
Adonis introduced himself.
“You have skill,” Bash said, staring at Adonis. Adonis fought the urge to squirm.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’ve seen you skate,” Bash explained. He drank some of his beer.
“So, you were talking about choking during sex?” Robbie said.
“Good god,” said Weston. He was even redder in the face.
“We were,” Jane said. She took Weston’s hand. “Not because of anything we’ve done. Don’t get the wrong idea. We’re as vanilla as they come, and vanilla is a good flavor.”
“This feels like a very intimate conversation,” Hugo said.
“I’m taking the answer up,” Weston said. Adonis stood to give him space. The hockey player lumbered away. When Adonis sat again, he accidentally caught Bash’s gaze. Bash almost smiled, like they shared an inside joke.
“I think it’s anti-feminist,” Jane continued.
“I think that’s a bit dramatic,” Clarisse said. “Why is it anti-feminist to want to be tossed around?”
“Doesn’t it give men too much power?” Jane said.
“You’re assuming the man is doing the choking,” Hugo said.
Weston was back. “Honey, could I choke you during sex?” Jane asked.
Weston went to find the bathroom.
“It’s about power and trust,” Adonis said. “Dominance and submission. It isn’t about control or hurting someone. Though I suppose pain could be your kink. Sadism and masochism and all that. As long as it’s negotiated and consensual, why is that bad?”
“I agree,” Bash said. His voice was very deep. An action movie star, suave European spy voice. “The way you are talking about it is—ah, is this the word?—heteronormative.”
“In what European capital would one find a statue of the Little Mermaid?” Ms. Jizzle barked.
“Copenhagen,” Bash said without missing a beat.
“I saw it when I was four.” He turned to Jane.
“I think choking during sex is hot. I am dominant in the bedroom. I like to choke or spank my partners, and toys are fun, too. That does not mean I do not care for my partners. It is about trust, no? It is about the exchange of power. The dominant partner gets sexual gratification from the exercise of physical power over the submissive partner. The submissive partner, however, is also showing a level of power, too, no? They have power over the dominant partner because of how they have surrendered. Just because I might pin my sexual partner’s hands above his head while I fuck him does not mean that I do not respect him. ”
Adonis suddenly needed a fan, a tall glass of water, and a fainting couch.
“He’s European,” Robbie offered the table. “He doesn’t have American puritanical boundaries about talking about sex.”
“And why would I?” Bash said. “Sex is a very human thing. What do you say here? Birds do it, bees do it?”
Adonis needed air. He grabbed the paper on which Bash had scrawled “Copenhagen” for their answer. “I’ll take this up,” he said.
“No,” Bash said. “Sit. I’ll do it.”
It was silent around the booth. Adonis sat with a thump. He swallowed. Bash gently took the slip of paper, his long fingers brushing Adonis’s. Adonis’s pulse pounded, and he wondered if the others could hear it.
Bash stood in a powerful, fluid motion. The muscles of his shoulders, chest, and back stretched his T-shirt. His pants molded to the muscular curves of his ass and thick thighs as he walked with the steadiness of a prowling lion to Ms. Jizzle, who tittered when he handed her the paper.
“Well fuck me,” Hugo said. “He is dominant.”