with you. Now, things were virginal and needed to be taken slowly.
“So…” I said, “where do you live?”
“Upper East Side,” Greg replied.
“Nice,” I replied.
“Do you want to come check out my place?”
I was not really interested in his place but was interested in him so I agreed to check out his place. I later learned that “check my place out” is gay code for “let’s get it on.” As I was leaving the bar with Greg, Jason pulled me aside.
“I knew it!” Jason said.
“What?” I asked.
“I knew you were gay.”
“Jesus Christ Jason,” I replied, “I went to a summer camp for the performing arts where everyone called me Natalie because they thought I looked like Natalie from The Facts of Life, and I allowed them to do it. All the while performing in a production of Sugarbabies in nursing homes all across the Catskills. If that isn’t a fucking fag, then I don’t know what is. It doesn’t take a fucking genius to call a spade a spade.” Baby’s first gay tangent. I was making progress. Jason smiled as Greg and I left the bar, headed for the elusive Upper East Side.
Greg and I got into a cab and went up to his place on the Upper East Side. Once inside, we made the usual small talk:
“I remember when I was doing Bye, Bye Birdie at a dinner theatre in Rockville,” I said as Greg poured me a glass of Royal Vodka into a paper cup. “I got so nervous when I was on stage doing hurkies, I ended up falling on my ass!”
“That’s hilarious!” Greg said as he handed me an alcohol filled paper cup. “I once peed myself when I was doing a production of The Sound of Music as a child. It was super embarrassing, but I was only six.”
We both laughed. I don’t know if we were laughing at the fact that we had both humiliated ourselves in front of hundreds of people or that we were having the most ridiculous conversation two men had ever had but we laughed nonetheless. As the laughing subsided, Greg leaned in and kissed me thus beginning the most awkward hook-up that has ever taken place. Two eighteen year old guys who had never hooked up with someone of the same sex before attempting to be sexy. The result: something that would have been a classic episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.
“I really like him,” I said into the phone the next day.
Jason, who was relieved I had finally done something about my homosexuality proclaimed: “I am so happy that you finally came out of the closet. I knew it was only a matter of time, but damn did that take forever.”
“I think he may be the one,” I said.
“Mark, you hardly know him. You just hooked up, see how it goes.”
“I don’t know Jason, I am pretty interested in him,” I replied. I was acting like a straight up lesbian. I already had plans of moving in with him and raising his children.
“Just see where it goes, Mark. Don’t rush anything. You are just coming out of the closet,” Jason said. Then suddenly, the topic changed back to drinking, “hey, I know, why don’t we go out tonight? My father just gave me money for books, we can use it to get wasted tonight.” Jason decided my coming out was a good reason for us to get hammered together. Soon it would become tradition that everything from a good grade to a hangnail was reason to get hammered together.
“I can’t, I have to study. I have exams coming up,” I replied. School was definitely getting in the way of my social activities, but that was what I was in New York to do in the first place so I had to put forth some effort.
“Fine,” Jason said, defeated. “Call me this weekend, and we’ll go out.” I hung up with Jason and got to work.
A few days later, I was beginning to worry because I had not heard from Greg. It had been three days and I had not so much as heard a peep from him on instant messenger and began wondering what was going on. Finally, after five days of not hearing from him, I gave him a call, but it went straight to voicemail.
“Hey Greg, it’s Mark from the other night,” I said into his voicemail box. “You know, like Mark from Rent, ha, ha, ha.” What the hell is wrong with me? “Just calling to see if you wanted to get together sometime soon. Maybe we could catch a show or something. I would love to see Chicago or even Annie Get Your Gun. You know, that was the first show I was ever in and now Bernadette Peters is doing it on Broadway. I love the story of Annie Oakley.” I would continue with the rest of the message I left him, but I am afraid it gets a little too embarrassing even for me. I had no idea what I was doing so I continued rambling on until his voicemail cut me off. I could not remember whether or not I told him to call me, so I called him back and left another message reminding him to call me back. After a few days of not hearing from him, I began to worry so I called Jason and the two of us met at our favorite piano bar.
“I don’t get it,” I said as I sipped my Manhattan. I had upgraded from Whiskey Sours to Manhattans in a matter of weeks. “Why hasn’t he called me back?”
Jason looked at me as if I was a child who was just told the Easter Bunny wasn’t real. “Mark, honey,” he said, cocktail in hand, “I’ve been doing this a while and I have to let you in on a secret. What you did last weekend was a meaningless hook-up. Greg is not going to call you back because he was not interested in anything more than a hook-up. That’s how we gays do things.”
“Wait…what?” I replied.
“Mark, it was a hook-up. Get over it!”
Jason and I drank our cares away. We drank Goldschlager and White Russians for the rest of the night and I got sick off of alcohol for the first time. After getting loaded that night, I woke up the next day vowing to get over Greg and move on. He was my first hook-up after all and I felt it was going to take some time to get over. However, Greg had left me with a little present that was going to forever ingrain him in my memory.
“You have scabies,” Dr. Huxtable said to me the next day. My doctor in New York barred a striking resemblance to Bill Cosby and every time he walked in the room I thought he was going to do a stupid dance or offer me Jell-O.
“What the hell is scabies?” I asked as I itched every inch of my body.
“It’s like body lice,” Dr. Huxtable said with a smile, although I did not find his response charming or funny. “I will give you a cream that will get rid of it. You have to go home and wash everything. Every towel, every sheet, every article of clothing must be washed. Clean everything and use the cream I give you and it will go away in no time.”
I shrugged. Of course the first time I hook-up with a guy I get an STD. Just my luck.
“Just use the cream to make key lime pie,” Dr. Huxtable then said.
“What?” I asked quizzically.
“Just use the cream and you’ll be fine,” he said.
“Oh.”
I sat and stared at the doctor wondering what Phylicia Rashad was doing with her career. How had I come to this? That afternoon, I called Greg and told him to go fuck himself for giving me scabies and to lose my number, which he apparently already had done as I
