Laundry Day
Deus and I roll our suitcases out of the Port Authority into the blinding white light of the sidewalk
“Wait until you hear about my morning!”
Deus raises his eyebrows and I get right into it.
I woke up early, packed my things, and showered, leaving myself a solid cushion of downtime before my ferry left. I was feeling fully on top of my shit.
My hosts were having a midday cocktail pool party and the terraces of the Historically Important house were once again teeming with the same set of men in a new set of bathing suits.
I threw myself back into the pristine white sheets completely naked. The air conditioning was on point and I could hear every word from the terrace so I just lay there relaxing every muscle and eavesdropping on gay men.
I just love listening to gay men talk. I think a good gay conversation is one of culture’s greatest achievements.
Part of it is the words we use and another part is the rhythms and the tones our voices hit. Another is the staggeringly varied ways that sincerity and insincerity are utilized. You can speak your mind with earnest enthusiasm (rarely used and ill-advised) or you can practice ironic detachment and maintain the hint of a giggle or a snicker or a sneer underneath every little thing you say. every little observation you make.
With one foot in the real and the other in the fake your options are wide open, and now you can smoothly glide into the third option, which is getting your point across by saying the exact opposite of what you actually mean. It also sets the stage for teasing and belittling and other such banter.
Once you master that you can level up to the third flip where you swerve back and forth between real and fake then spread your little gay wings and soar to the realms of the double real and the real/real/fake or even the fake/fake/fake which is reserved for your closest friends or the people you are trying to squash. Keeping track of which is which becomes more and more challenging, though, the better at talking you get.
Every gay man has their own little spin on it, even the ones who don’t sound “gay”. One voice can flavor everything with laughter and bemusement but another indiscriminately infects all conversations with a vibe of sour irritation.
When a gay guy says he hates his voice, he usually means the way that it sounds rather than the words that it speaks. Maybe He’ll pitch it down or make it scratchy, and it won’t be 100 percent successful but I actually like those voices too, and the tones they add to the soundscape.
Sometimes in the middle of this splatter painting of voices, there will be one cuts through, a guy who’s really drilled down and done the deep, deep work. He hasn’t mastered just the intonations of masculinity but the syntax too. His sentences are short, active, confident declarations. He doesn’t slip into the passive voice or use too many adjectives or admit to being acted upon. He doesn’t think, he knows and he isn’t chosen, he chooses. Things don’t Seem to this guy, they either Are or they Aren’t. And loathe as I am to admit it, that’s the Fake/Fake/Fake/Fake/Fake voice I’m looking for.
An alpha phony. That's the man for me.
And so I was lying there naked on the clean white sheets, all neural circuits engaged with this goofy train of thought about gay men's voices, just as relaxed as relaxed could be, when I felt a medium-sized bubble of gaseous pressure descend from my gut to my colon, and I fearlessly pushed down on my sphincter to let the fart out.
And that's when the shit hit the fan.
I literally crapped the bed. All the way through my wealthy hosts' expensive white sheets. And I had 45 minutes to resolve this catastrophe in a house full of fire islands finest before my ferry departed.
Fortunately, my room had a separate entrance to the side of the house so I was able to dress, slip outside, and assess the situation.
I knew there was a washing machine on the other side of the house, accessible via an outside door. Between that washing machine and myself were two decks, one on the front and one on the back, and both were packed shoulder to shoulder with bitchy queens who were looking for something to gossip about.
No way could I walk through this crowd carrying a pile of shit-stained sheets without dooming myself to the most lethal kind of notoriety. I might as well set myself on fire.
But the rear deck was elevated about 2 feet above the earth, just high enough for me to commando crawl under the cocktail party, pushing the sheets ahead of me, to the other side of the house and the washing machine.
So that, my friends, is exactly what I did.
Have you ever seen a man pick a wedgie out of his ass from an underneath perspective? I have.
There I was sneaking my shit sheets right below all of these fools on the deck, sliding belly first through god knows how many years’ worth of Historically Important mulch. The gaps between the planks of the deck were wide enough for me to get a real nice look at some beautiful spandex-wrapped testicles but If I could see them they could see me and I was not there to get caught.
I made it to the other side and slipped out from under the deck undetected. The door to the basement laundry was right in front of me
And it was locked.
Under the voices, behind the locked door, the rhythmic banging noise of a dryer taunted me.
Fully defeated, I ducked back under the deck. Perhaps there was a way to smuggle the sheets out of the house without contaminating my wardrobe. In this cold world of imperfect options, it’s better to be remembered as a thief than a bed shitter.
All the voices that had sounded so beautiful ten minutes ago, in the before times, now vibrated with threatening malice above me. The nature of my Historical Importance to this island and this house was starting to reveal its hideous face. I was doomed.
BUT.
There to the left of me, built into the wall, is something i missed on my first pass: A tiny Alice in Wonderland door with an unlocked latch, just wide enough for me to squeeze through into the basement. i pull it open and wiggle into darkness.
A rectangle of light to the right guides me to the laundry room, and the banging sound intensifies. the rhythm isn’t quite as consistent as before and as I get closer I hear other sounds under the banging. Grunts and moans.
The dryer isn’t on. My host is bare-assed in front of it power fucking someone who isn’t his husband. A woman. Im standing four feet behind them, covered in dirt, with a pile of shitty sheets in my arms, watching his plump little butt flex and thrust into her.
The way I understand it, there are four basic fear responses: Flight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn. In that moment I discover a fifth F: Fuck it.
I step backwards into the shadows, crouch behind a pile of junk, and take in the show.
It’s a quick show.
More of a public service announcement really, and even as I know the clock is ticking part of me is a little disappointed that these people aren’t hotter because if they had been I might have been inspired to make this the story of stories. The accidental shit that led to my first appliance-based MFM threesome
But I decided to leave that path to the multiverse. I stayed in my place, patiently witnessing climax, disentanglement, and a sweet little nose boop between the two before they pulled on their bathing suits, picked up their solo cups, and fled.
The sheets went in the washing machine. I scooched back to my room under the party deck. I didn’t have time to shower but I did what I could with a washcloth. It wasn’t enough. I ran all the way to the ferry and halfway there the handle snapped off of my rolling suitcase. But I made the boat. And the connecting bus and both connecting trains to Manhattan. In the history of Fire Island my name, thus far, is written in invisible ink.
The whole way back I’m thinking “Wait till Deus Hears about this”
It takes me the whole walk back from Port Authority to Our hotel to get the story out, from the Butch party to the sexual assault to the great shart adventure.
We’re face to face in the hotel room when I finally finish. He’s been attentive but pretty non-responsive the whole time except for a few slight facial twitches when I got to the shit story. Does it repulse him?
No. he smiles at me. “Ok.”
“What?”
“Come here” gently
I lean in for the kiss and smile
“What?”
He reaches up and rips a stray hair out of my nose. It hurts and it makes me sneeze immediately. I don’t even have time to cover my mouth
“that was driving me crazy,” he says with a grin in his voice, and he turns to unpack.
