1143 PM Richie #2
A few seconds later, the joint’s tip crackled and popped.
Richie took a drag, feeling the smoke scorch his throat and lungs.
From a foot away Adam watched him, his eyes trained on Richie’s every move, and Richie found himself thinking back to when they’d hooked up, in the fall of sophomore year.
At the time, Richie was exclusively sleeping with closeted people who he found in upstairs bedrooms at frat parties, and hanging out around the bathrooms in the poli-sci building, and on the rowing team.
Was the sex good? No, not really. They came fast and hard, and often afterward Richie would have to sit back and listen as they reasoned themselves through a quickening shame spiral, waiting for them to finish and leave so he could finally jerk off.
Still, even that was better than what he got from the other openly gay kids on campus.
Talk about loser energy. Richie had thought the whole point of coming out was to sleep with other men, not talk about the politics of sleeping with other men, or the aesthetics of sleeping with other men, yet every time he took home someone from the LGBT Center, all they ever wanted to do was lecture him about Larry Kramer.
And nothing—not coke, or Nina Guzman, or a naked Nancy Reagan—could kill a boner quite like Larry Kramer.
Puff, puff, pass: he gave Sasha the joint. She took it into her long, skeletal fingers and brought it to her lips.
She said, “Maybe I’ll just stay stoned for all of 2008.”
He couldn’t remember where exactly he’d met Adam.
Probably in a Philadelphia chatroom—he spent enough time on back then.
Wherever it was, Adam came over to the house where Richie was living on Delancey Street, wearing a gray Penn hoodie.
Richie could still picture him, standing in the front door.
His hands were shaking, and when he introduced himself, he used some hilarious fake name, as if Richie didn’t already know exactly who he was.
God, what was it? Scott something? No, not Scott.
Sean. Yes, that was it. It was Sean Straub.
Richie had slid right over that one with a smile.
He’d said, “Nice to meet you, Sean,” then led him upstairs to his room.
Sasha reached over his head to pass the joint to Adam, who took a large drag, held it in for too long, and began to cough.
“Umbrella” thumped on the other side of the bedroom wall.
The world turned half a beat slower, and Richie decided to lie back on the bed, folding one hand behind his head.
Adam was still coughing, and now Richie turned so he could see him.
He had the joint held too low, pinched not with the ends of his fingers but between their bases.
He was not a natural smoker. Richie thought, Watching Adam Parker smoke is like watching a German shepherd ride a bike, and started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Sasha asked.
Richie propped himself up on one elbow.
“Nothing,” he said, then took the joint from Adam.
The sex hadn’t been that bad. After months of fingering reluctant rowers and watching frat boys cry, Richie remembered it being—on balance—actually pretty good.
They’d kissed, and when Richie took Adam’s shirt off, he saw his chest was smooth and covered with goose pimples.
Adam was pliant and let Richie do what he wanted, letting out tiny gasps as their bodies shifted.
When they were finished, Richie sat up, leaning back against the bed’s headboard while Adam tied his shoes and put his Penn sweatshirt back on.
Then with a grin, he’d said, “Bye, Adam,” and watched as his face went white.
Sasha was staring at her fingers.
She said, “Did I tell you that I saw Lisa Bonet riding on a scooter yesterday?”
“Are you sure it was Lisa Bonet?” Adam ran his hand over his cheek. “She doesn’t strike me as a scooter person.”
“In New York, if you think you see Lisa Bonet riding a scooter, then you get to say you saw Lisa Bonet riding a scooter. Those are just the rules.”
“Okay, Sasha. Whatever you say.”
Another cloud of smoke smoldered in Richie’s lungs.
“Umbrella” changed to “Gold Digger,” the beat pulsing and disrupting his thoughts.
Someone screamed, “No, Mike, fuck you,” and he decided to sit up.
Outside, Orchard Street was bathed in a soft, blue-yellow light.
He wondered what time it was, even though time had started bending into strange shapes hours ago, and then started thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his night.
Tomorrow was beginning to needle at him, even though in a matter of minutes tomorrow would technically be today.
The punishing glare of the morning, the guilt of sleeping past noon.
Adam said, “The last time I got high I accidentally rode the E train all the way to Jamaica.”
“I remember that.” Sasha was still staring at her hands.
“I was afraid if I stood up then everyone would know that I was super high, so I just stayed on until the very last stop.”
“Okay, but that’s not really an accident, is it.”
“No. I guess not.”
Was Barracuda still open? If it was, he could make it up there, see if there was anyone floating around.
Eric, maybe, or Nick from last weekend. Waking up next to someone posed its own set of problems, but on mornings like the one he was anticipating, it was better than waking up alone.
Nick from last weekend—that hadn’t exactly ended well.
Nick had been too drunk to do anything, and had made the appalling suggestion that they cuddle; when Richie went to take a shower, he slipped and tore down the curtain.
But Richie knew how to smooth these things over, how to lay the groundwork for something else.
It was all a matter of cultivation, of letting someone feel like they were drifting from your orbit, then tossing them the thinnest lifeline to keep them around.
It was why when Nick texted him on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, Richie had never texted back.
Sasha said, “Would you rather only eat grapes for the rest of your life, or have hooves for hands.”
“Those two things are totally different,” Adam said.
“Answer the question.”
Adam shifted on the bed. His hand grazed Richie’s knee.
He said, “In terms of the grapes, are we talking red or green?”
“Green. And something you might want to consider is that it would be hard to masturbate with hooves.”
Except: Barracuda was far. The sidewalks were crowded, it was too late to find a cab, and he was hardly wearing the right shoes for how cold it was outside.
He hated being cold. It reminded him, a little too vividly, of all the mornings he’d spent shoveling his stepfather’s car out from blocks of snow and ice—of the way his fingers would freeze until they burned; of how the beauty of a sunrise only lasted until his stepfather yelled, “Can’t you hurry up? ”
“Then I think I would go with grapes,” Adam said.
The joint made it back around to Richie, its tip burned and ragged.
He pulled, closed his eyes, felt his body get warmer.
Adam lay back, his shirt lifting to expose a thin line of skin above the waistband of his jeans.
“Gold Digger” ended, and “Let Go” began; Richie thought, Maybe I don’t have to go to Barracuda.
Outside, a car honked. Sasha pulled her hair back, tying it into a ponytail.
She said, “I can’t tell if we’ve been in here for ten minutes or ten hours,” as Richie filled his lungs with smoke, leaned over Adam, and blew it directly into his mouth.
Their noses brushed against each other. Richie grazed Adam’s lips with his tongue.
“Oh, okay,” Sasha said, and Adam opened his eyes.