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I roll my eyes as I move to open the door. Brendon probably forgot his key again. He’s always doing that, relying on the fact that I never leave mine anywhere due to practically counting the seconds until we’re back at the hotel every night. We’re so dependent on each other sometimes that I almost worry we’ll never be able to function alone. But, then again, I don’t ever plan to need to function without him for more than a few weeks, so I’m not that concerned about it.
“You know, someday someone is gonna find that room key and break in here while we’re-” I stop dead in my tracks, smiling. “Audrey! Hey!”
“Hey, yourself, stranger.” She grins back at me, and I pull her into a hug. Everyone is always happy to see that girl, and I’m no exception, even when the possibility of sex is off the table.
“Come in, holy shit, what are you doing here?”
“Same thing you are, escaping domesticity,” she answers easily, flipping her unnaturally-natural looking hair over her shoulder as she sits on the second hotel bed we never use. I guess she finally stopped dying it to fit in with the PTA moms or something. The thought is a little absurd. She looks almost grown up, with normal colored hair and tame looking clothes, but she’ll never be boring. I don’t think she has it in her.
“My domesticity comes with me now, actually.” I throw over my shoulder, grabbing the first two mini bottles my hands come into contact with from the complimentary hotel alcohol. I offer them both to her, and she takes the Vodka. Good taste, that girl.
“Where is he?”
“At the venue, probably.” I shrug. I went right to the hotel after the show, giving him a long look that meant please don’t be too long , which he responded to with a smile and a nod. I won’t. “He’ll be here soon.” I drink whatever tiny liquor bottle I’m holding in one go, tastes like flavored tequila, maybe, and Audrey does the same. I go to get the big bottle of whiskey I bought earlier from my bag, and set it on the table along with whatever glasses I can find. She pours us both a generous amount, just like I expect her to. As long as I’ve known her she’s wanted to do 2 things: fuck and get fucked up, and I somehow doubt she’d be coming to be for the first one these days.
“How are you doing?” she asks me, pulling her feet up under her so her legs are crossed on the bed. I think about the stupid fight we had earlier this week that made me think Mike was going to kill us both, and the makeup sex we had afterwards, which Mike was also pissed about because our rooms were next to each other. I think about how tour always does that to us, makes us volatile but electric. I’ll probably never like being on stage, but he’s always taken the edge off.
“Good.” I smile. “We’re good.”
A few more glasses in and we’re laying on our stomachs, still on opposite beds, facing each other. She swings her legs behind her, and I’m reminded of teenage girls in the kinds of movies I never pay attention to, playing with the telephone cord as they pour over magazines. Talking about their crushes or shoes or whatever women do when men aren’t around. Women have always been a bit of a mystery to me, even when I still slept with them. They seem to communicate with each other on a whole different level. I think being a man who loves a man pretty much categorically excludes me from understanding it.
“We should have girl talk,” she says, as if she can see the mental images this situation conjures for me.
“I’m not a girl.”
“Oh, I know,” she says with a wink, “but gays get an honorary girl card.”
I’m not sure if I should feel flattered or offended by that. I really can’t tell if being included in “girl talk” is an upgrade or downgrade from being “some guy I might spend a week fucking on tour.” It’s Audrey, though. She’s always been the best confidante there is, so fuck it.
“Alright, fine. Shoot.”
Her eyes light up, and I find myself grinning back.
“Ok ok… craziest place you’ve had sex.”
“Umm.” God, where haven’t we had sex. “Maybe the original Eric’s record store? I’m not sure.” It’s not like I can name every place we’re fucked off the top of my head. Yeah, I think if you reminded me I could remember every time, but it’s not like I have them categorized by “level of crazy” or something.
“Like in the bathroom, or-?”
I shake my head. “The office. Right there on the floor behind the beaded curtain,” I clarify. She grins at that. “How about you?”
“Eiffel Tower.” She smiles mischievously.
“Shit, you win.” I laugh at her, and she smiles like she expected nothing less. She’s got a reputation as a person who has seen and done more than the rest of us can dream of, and she likes it that way. This doesn't feel different from any other conversation we’ve had. I cannot figure out what makes this “girl talk,” seriously, but I also don’t think I’m in a position to question it.
“Would you ever have a threesome?” she asks casually.
“Probably not.” I admit, reaching over to the nightstand to light a cigarette. “We did once, in ‘74, but I don’t think we’d handle it well now.” I smile a little sardonically as I pass her the pack and lighter. “If people think I can be possessive they should see him.”
“Aw, that's kind of sweet. You two are so devoted to each other it’s adorable.” My face feels warm, but she’s kind enough not to comment. I blame the alcohol. “Not even with Bowie?” She tilts her head, taking a long drag from her cigarette.
“Is he any good?” I ask. I hadn’t really considered that idea.
“Eight inches, and he knows how to use it, too.” She answers with a raised eyebrow, her cheeks hollowing around the cigarette.
“Shit.” David was always generous. Hell, he told me to go for Brendon before anyone else did, even though he could have had him for himself, which I think shows a remarkable level of restraint on his part. He’d know the score, and I know Brendon likes him, or at least he did back in the day. I hum, thinking. “Maybe.”
“We should call him.” She grins wickedly, but I shake my head.
“Not if we don’t talk about it first, don’t want a fight.”
“You? Asking permission just to proposition someone? Shit, you do love him.”
I snort. “Yeah. Weird, right?” She laughs, free and somehow a little conspiratorial. God, I should call her more, see her off of tour. If she lets me, of course. There's a very real chance she won’t, considering I belong to this part of her life, and her home belongs to another. Still, she may be one of the best friends I could ask for. I might have even decided to love her, once upon a time. The thought is funny now.
“You should tell me about it.” Her smile turns a little softer now, a little more secret. “Girl talk. Tell me about your boyfriend.”
I roll my eyes, half at the situation and half at the word “boyfriend.” I guess this is what makes this conversation different from any other: the fact that we’re acting like dumb teenagers. I wouldn't do this with most people, seriously. It’s ours, and it’s not like there’s many people I can talk about it with. All my best friends are straight men, and as much as I love them like brothers, they’re not eager to hear about my homosexual escapades. Maybe that’s why I want to tell her, I’m not sure. She collects stories, I think. Hers and other peoples. It seems to me like she’s trying to catalog the human experience, somehow. She used to sleep around for the pillow talk, for what it says about people, and now it seems like she’s settled down for the same reason. I’m willing to be another story in her long list.
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with… who said I love you first?”
“Me, technically.” Her eyebrows shoot up a little. “Don’t look so surprised, you saw how fucked up I was over him that winter.” I smile a little sardonically, and she nods like that makes sense, gesturing for me to continue. “We went to this cabin I had fixed up, used to be my dads. It was supposed to be just the band, so we could focus on the music, but then we decided to film some documentary footage there, and he came along as a plus one for that.” I don’t mention Shane, but it goes unsaid that he was the one bringing him. She knows that part, no need to dwell on it. “That night everyone else went to town for groceries, but he claimed to be tired, and I don’t need excuses to avoid socializing. They got trapped in town by the snow, so we had the house to ourselves all night. We slept together, actually slept, for the first time, and when I woke up I just knew. I couldn’t ignore it anymore.” I look out the window, off into space and time. If I try hard enough I can almost see him there, sunlight streaming through the curtains. “I fell for him in the back of a tour bus in 1974. Ever since then it was never going to be anyone else, we just spent half a decade dancing around admitting that.” I finish my cigarette, stubbing it out on the ashtray on the nightstand. “I think half of Wolf's Teeth is about him, honestly.”
“I can tell. You’re not nearly as subtle as you think referencing Auden.”
Someone knocks on the door. I turn my head way too fast for how much alcohol is in my system, stumbling a bit as I scramble to answer it. I can hear Audrey laughing behind me as I open the door with more effort than it would take sober. Brendons eyes are narrow when they meet mine, suspicious of the sound of a woman's laughter coming from our room. He looks so hot, god.
“Hi.” I lean heavily on the door as I move out of the way to let him move past me. Immediately after the door is shut I move right into his space, pressing my face into his neck. He smells like cheap soap from the venue showers. “I missed you.” I hear Audrey laugh again from the bed.
“What were you two doing?” he asks suspiciously, pushing me back a little to look at me. He’s sort of alright with Audrey, I know that. They’ve hung out at some point in the past, but he also knows we’ve slept together, and he doesn’t like that. It’s not like it meant anything, though, and he knows that too. Still, she makes him nervous. She represents a tie to the part of his past that he likes to pretend doesn’t exist. Luckily for him, she likes to pretend the same thing.
“Talking.”
“About?”
“You,” I answer honestly, clumsily brushing his hair out of his face. “Come on baby, don’t be jealous. I only want you, you know that. I’ll suck you off in front of her right now if you want.” He rolls his eyes, but I can see the smile on his face now. I don’t think I was joking, but I like his smile, so I’ll take it.
“Ok, girl talk over now. No boyfriends allowed, that’s the rule.” I kind of think she’s making these rules up as she goes, but I guess I’m not the expert. I am but a reluctant guest in this apparently sacred ritual, so I choose not to read too far into it. Brendon raises an eyebrow at me, moving to the minibar to presumably catch up with our level of intoxication.
“She says I get a ‘girl talk’ pass or something because I like cock.” I explain as I sit back down on the bed.
He snorts. “Fair enough.”
“We think you guys should have a threesome with Bowie,” Audrey says as Brendon sits down next to me. She really cuts to the chase with this shit, huh? He’s looking at me questioningly again, and I shrug.
“She asked if I would have a threesome, I said probably not again, then she asked about David, and I said I might consider it. Plus, he kind of set us up, I feel like I owe him one for that.”
“Really? I never knew that,” he says. They’re both looking at me expectantly now, waiting for me to elaborate.
“I was watching you guys dance on the table at that afterparty, and he walked up to me and said I could have you, cause he’d been kind of after you all night, but he saw the way I looked at you, and he put two and two together for me. I would have gotten it eventually without him, but I was being stubborn about it at the time.”
He seems like he’s not sure how to process that information. I guess that’s kind of fair.
“You don’t think you’ll be jealous?”
“Not of David, no. He’s always known not to get in the way of us.”
“Hm.” He kisses me, short but firm. Comforting. “We could talk about it.”
Audrey pumps her fist in the air from the other bed, making Brendon chuckle. “Fuck yes!” She grins at us. She is a horrible influence, and I should definitely hang out with her more often.
I lean my head on his shoulder, grabbing his hand. He lets me take it easily, stealing my half finished glass of whiskey. I study his hand intently, as if I haven’t memorized it a hundred times over. He’s got a hangnail, I notice. I try to avoid it. His hands are rough and masculine. I’ve always liked that. Mine are too, I suppose. They’re perpetually calloused at least, but his are wider, rougher around the edges. I love how the contrast looks when I lace our fingers together.
I think it’s hot that he’s stronger than me, I can admit that. I like that he lets me have control, even though he could overpower me, and I like it when he decides not to let me. I like him because he’s a man, not despite it. It’s a freeing distinction to make.
When I look up again Audrey is smiling at me a little. I’m only half listening to the conversation, she’s been telling a story about some musician, and I can feel Brendon nodding along, occasionally asking a question or contributing something. I smile back.
A few hours later, when Audrey and I have laid off the alcohol, and Brendon has caught up with us then slowed down in turn, Audrey announces that she’s tired.
“Were you planning to stay in here tonight?” I ask, secretly hoping she won’t say yes, but not wanting to kick her out explicitly.
“Nah, I’m not in the mood for voyeurism.” She raises an eyebrow suggestively. “Think I’ll go sleep with your manager.” Thank god. She’s fun, but not as fun as sex with the man I love. We didn’t get to do anything last night or this morning, and I’m getting antsy.
“Cool, he’s been really uptight recently.” Brendon says casually, watching her get up from the bed with more grace than she would have had an hour ago. I’ve gone from drunk to tipsy to pretty much sober, and I think they both have, too.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says with a wink as she leaves.
I flop heavily on the bed, dropping my body carelessly backwards on the mattress. My arms fall limply on either side of my head. “I think,” I give him a long look, “we should fuck.”
“You’re drunk,” he protests as he rubs my shin, but I can see his eyes darken.
“Not anymore, haven’t had anything in like two hours.” He hasn’t either. We don’t exactly have an interest in going all night anymore. He’s looking me up and down hungrily now. I stretch a little, just for the effect, grinning up at him. “Do you want me to walk a straight line for you first, or do you want to fuck me?”
He rolls his eyes, but finally takes the hint and crawls over me. He moves his hands under my shirt, against my ribs. Rough and strong. I grin against his mouth.