Tell Me It's Real by T. J. Klune
Of course, he understood exactly what I meant because over the years, Freddie Prinze Junior had become the most famous actor who ever lived, especially after portraying such memorable roles as Hank, the gay chimpanzee who fell in love with his animal trainer, and in a stunning revelatory performance, the title role in the biopic Material Girl: The Life and Times of Madonna. Madonna herself said that no one in the world had ever been more Madonna than Freddie Prinze Junior.
Two minutes later, I died of a heart attack, not yet having gotten to the refried bean buffet or my piñata.
I ascended into heaven and God was waiting for me at the Pearly Gates. He looked like a Hells Angel, which I thought was slightly odd. I didn’t know they had motorcycles in heaven.
“Hey,” I said.
“What’s up?” God asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing much. So, I guess I died, huh?”
“Pretty much,” God said. “Just kind of fell over.”
“Kind of a bitch way to go out, if you ask me. A heart attack? Really? Why not a blaze of glory?”
God rolled his eyes. “It could have been worse. I could have made your intestines explode. Are you going to whine the whole time you’re up here?”
I scowled at him. “Are you going to give me reason to?”
“You’re harshing my buzz, man,” God lamented.
“I don’t feel bad about that at all. I didn’t know you were allowed to have a buzz. Aren’t you supposed to be smiting people right now?”
“I’m God. I can do whatever I want.” He eyed me. “You want to go for a ride on my hog?”
I contemplated this. “Are you hitting on me? Because that means two things where I come from.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“Maybe. But I meant on my motorcycle, not my dick. But why don’t we see where it goes, and I could mean the other thing too.” God leered at me and my insides felt tingly.
“Why not? You’re, like, the ultimate daddy fetish.”
“Damn right,” he snorted. “All those ‘Our Fathers’ gives a guy a complex, let me tell you. You ready to rock?” A cloud descended and took the shape of a Harley. God slid a long leg over it and revved the engine. He looked back and winked at me.
“Do I get a helmet?” I shouted at him over the noise as I moved to sit behind him.
“Live a little,” he shouted back. “You’re already dead.”
And then I rode off into the sunset on the back of God’s motorcycle, clutching him as tightly as I could.
The end.
You still there?
Ha. I’m just fucking with you.
But I bet you totally got pissed, didn’t you? Come on, admit it. For a second there, you screamed, “Noooooooo!” and then thought about ways you could murder me and hide the body without getting caught. I’m honestly a little hurt that you’d believe that (and a little scared about how bloodthirsty you seem to be; do me a favor and get some therapy. It sounds like you need it so you don’t end up killing me or some hookers). Please. Do you really think I’d do something as stupid as cheating on Vince after falling in love with him over the course of a week?
Wait. Don’t answer that.
Let’s wrap this bitch up, shall we?
“SOMEONE obviously is going to ruin the surprise,” I moaned, staring down from the balcony at the group of people amassed below at the gay bar. “I don’t know why I thought I could pull this off.”
“No offense to your man,” Helena said, fixing her wig in her mirror, “but one does not think of the world’s greatest detective when thinking of Vince. He’s lucky he’s pretty.”
“Don’t be jealous,” I snapped at her. “Just because you haven’t worked up the nerve to admit you want to bone Darren doesn’t mean you can take it out on the rest of us.”
“Girl’s got claws,” Daddy Charlie said with a rumble. “He’s been dating Vince for six months and you’d think he was the fiercest bitch to walk the face of the earth.”
Helena rolled her perfectly blushed eyes. “Tell me about it, Charlie. Hard-core, confident Paul is definitely a sight to behold. And I don’t want to bone Darren. I’ve told you that like sixteen thousand times!”
“You are such a liar and a fat mouth,” I said. “The only reason two people snipe at each other as much as you two do is when they want to be inside each other. For days.”
“Or we could just hate each other. That could be a reason.”
“I don’t believe you in the slightest. No one in the world has that much unresolved sexual tension. Trust me, one day, you’re going to come crying to me about how much you lurve him, and I will make fun of you forever.” And I would. Forever. Vince and I kept devising ways for them to be alone together, and each time, it would start out okay, but then by the end, they’d be at each other’s throat. Vince thought it was because they were in love already. He was such a dopey romantic sometimes. He thought that just because he loved me at first sight (which still made me feel all fuzzy inside like I was being eaten from the inside out by rabid teddy bears that pooped rainbows; it’s really quite disgusting how awesome I thought that was) that everyone else in the free world should do the same. I tried to explain to him that it didn’t quite work that way, but this discussion happened two months after we met, when we were moving him into my house. It was hard to argue against love at first sight when I was carrying his crap into my house.
“That’s not going to happen,” Helena said. “Besides, he couldn’t handle Helena. And if you love me, you love both parts of me.”
“How Sybil of you,” Daddy said. “And I’m with Paul on this one. You go out of your way to snipe at him. That obviously means something.”
She glared at both of us. “Just that I’m a sniper,” she said. “Full-on, Grade A sniper. And besides, we weren’t talking about me, remember? We’re talking about how Vince probably already knows all about the surprise birthday party that Paul worked so hard to put together, which is now probably just ruined completely and everyone will hate him and be bored and talk about for years to come how awful of a time they had.”
“You scandalous bitch!” I hissed at her. “You told him, didn’t you!”
She smirked at me. “You’ll never know.”
“I think you will,” Daddy said. “Vince isn’t the world’s greatest actor. If he knows, he’ll probably say something like, ‘Oh, gosh, now this is a surprise! I sure didn’t know this was going to happen, no, I didn’t!’”
“Better than a cheese dice,” Helena muttered, straightening her falsies.
“I was a theatrical treasure!” I shouted at her.
“That is the gayest thing I’ve ever heard you say, boy,” Daddy said. “And Vince told me about what you like to scream when you ride him reverse cowgirl.”
“He did what?” I was going to murder him after wishing him a happy birthday and telling him I loved him and giving him the present that I was way fucking nervous about.
Helena’s phone chimed and she looked down. “Dare said they’re on their way here,” she said. “They should be here in ten minutes.”
I couldn’t resist. “Since when do you have Darren’s phone number? And since when did you start calling him Dare? Is that what you say to him? ‘Oh, hey, Dare. I dare you to sit on my face and do sexy-time stuff with my butthole.’ Or, you know, whatever else you would say to him.”
“I will break you in half,” she promised me darkly. “And I didn’t say Dare. You just heard me wrong.”
“No, he didn’t,” Daddy Charlie said.
“Even if Paul couldn’t get around to it,” Helena growled at him, “I will put you in a home, Charlie.”
I reached over and wrapped my arms around the old guy. “Don’t you worry, Daddy. I’ll protect you from the big, bad queen.”
He kissed my forehead. “Thank you, boy. It’s nice to know at least someone appreciates me.”
“I’m going to tell Vince you’re kissing and cuddling with another man,” Helena said.
&n
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you that,” she grumbled. “What else doesn’t Vince know about you that’s embarrassing so I can tell him? Does he know you really had a diary that you wrote about him in?”
“It was a journal!”
“It had Saved By The Bell stickers on it!”
“Hey,” Charlie said.
“That made it awesome.”
“That made it a diary.”
“Boys and girls,” Charlie said.
“I’ll tell Darren that you are in love with him and want to go out with him and that you borrowed my big black dildo and pretended it was him!”
“I’ll tell Vince that you really got hippo shit in your mouth that time you fell into the hippo exhibit, and you had to stay overnight in the hospital because they thought you’d get some kind of weird hippo disease in your mouth!”
“Hey!” Charlie said.
“I’ll tell Darren that you stare at the picture of him on your phone that you don’t think anyone knows that you have!”
“I’ll tell Vince what you bought him for his birthday before you give it to him, thereby ruining a magical surprise and depriving you of the look of wonder on his face!”
“Jesus Christ,” Charlie muttered.
I was slightly stricken. “Do you think he’ll like it?” I asked Helena quietly.
She came forward and gave me a sticky kiss on my cheek. “Oh, sugar. He’s going to adore it. How could you think otherwise?”
“It’s kinda dumb.”
“And expensive.”
“And crazy.”
“But still the greatest present ever.”
I looked up at my best friend. “You think so?”
“Baby doll, I know so.”
“Hey!” Charlie shouted.
“What?” Helena asked, annoyed. “You don’t have to shout.”
“We’re standing right here,” I reminded him.
“Your boys are about to walk in,” he said, rolling his eyes. “The bouncer just signaled they’re on their way up the sidewalk.”
“Oh sweat balls,” I groaned. I leaned over the balcony as the DJ cut the music. “Hey, shut up!” I bellowed down.
Everyone looked up at me: friends of mine, friends of Vince’s. Mom, Dad, and Nana waved up at me from where they’d cornered a Dom with his sub on a leash, obviously asking pointed questions about the bit in the sub’s mouth. They still believed I was a pony. I didn’t know what it would take to convince them otherwise, so I just let it go. It’s easier to neigh for Vince every once in a while in their presence than to explain that I don’t have a tail plug shoved up my ass when we’re at home.
“They’re about to walk in, so shut your faces! If any of you ruin this, I will scratch your motherfucking eyes out!”
People laughed up at me like I wasn’t completely serious. Assholes.
Helena went down the stairs quickly, pushing through the crowd as everyone quieted down around her. Once she took her place on the stage, everyone went silent and the lights went out, all except for little LED lights along the floors, illuminating the walkways. The barbacks had set up a little partition that blocked the main entryway from the dance floor so that Vince would not be able to see anyone as he went upstairs.
The DJ started up the music again to cover how quiet it was as the bouncer opened the main door. I stood near the top of the stairs, listening as they climbed, Vince and Darren talking about something that I couldn’t quite make out. My stomach was almost in my throat. My hands were sweating, and I felt like I was going to vomit. But vomiting was never sexy, and so I was able to choke it back down, which, now that I thought about, was even more unsexy.
“Hey,” Vince said, his grin coming out in full force when he saw me. “I thought you were supposed to meet me at home. Darren said that Sandy had a queen emergency and you had to be here? Is everything okay?” He didn’t even wait for me to respond; instead he crushed me into him, holding my face in his hands as he kissed me, parting my lips with his tongue. I gave a little groan and sank in his grasp, trying to remember that there were two hundred people standing in the dark only feet away and that it probably wasn’t a good idea if I whipped out his cock so I could suck him off right then. He sure wasn’t making things any easier. That was one of the things I loved about him the most: he kissed me every time he saw me like he hadn’t seen me in years. Man, did he know how to kiss.
I managed to avoid shoving my hands down his pants and pulled back, trying to get my breathing under control. “Everything’s fine,” I assured him. “You know Sandy. Little things become big things.”
He grinned evilly at me. “That’s what I keep telling Darren, but he won’t believe me.”
“I heard that,” Darren muttered.
“You have to do a shot with me,” Vince said. “And nothing fruity.” He narrowed his eyes. “But you can’t spit it on another boy and try to take him home with you like you did with me.”
“I don’t think that’s quite how it happened.” I grabbed his hand. “Come here. Helena’s about to go on and I want to watch.”
“Why is it all dark?” he asked as I pulled him behind me. “Hey, Daddy Charlie.”
“Happy birthday, boy. You ready for your birthday spanking?”
“I’m still trying to convince Paul to let me spank him,” Vince confided, much to my horror. Vince thought it’d be kind of hot. I thought I liked my ass without his hand marks on it. We both knew it was only a matter of time before I caved. After all, he’d been able to convince me about the dildos. Oh boy, had he convinced me about the dildos. I don’t know why all his little quirks had to be about things going on or going in my ass.
“Maybe I should spank you!” I told him quite loudly. And, of course, that was right when Charlie signaled to the DJ to cut the music, and so everyone in the bar below heard me telling my boyfriend kinky things.
“Are ponies allowed to give spankings?” I heard my grandmother almost shout in the dark above the laughter.
“I’m sure if he stays in scene, it’ll be okay, as long as he’s rearing up to kick his hind legs,” Mom said even louder.
“I don’t want to talk about my son rearing anything,” Dad said. “Especially Vince.”
“Mom?” Vince asked. “Dad? Nana? Why are you guys down there in the dark?”
The lights came on then, and the pictures that would be taken later would show Vince’s wide, happy grin as people shouted, “Surprise!” up at him. And, of course, me, standing next to him, my red face buried in my hands, looking like I was about to die or something. Which, to be fair, I really wanted to do right then.
Helena led the crowd below in a stirring, dirty rendition of “Happy Birthday,” which explicitly described the blowing of a gigantic cock. The fact that my parents and grandmother were singing right along with everyone else was enough to make me wish there were no such things as birthdays, and that it was possible for me to reach inside my own head to scrub my brain of the image. They all finished with a flourish and everyone cheered, and Vince turned to me. “You did this, didn’t you?”
I shrugged. “Everyone helped.”
“Paul did it!” everyone shouted.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“Kiss! Kiss him!” Nana screamed. “Kiss his face off!”
Everyone else picked it up and started chanting for him to kiss my face off. It was a little weird. I felt like a goat was about to be sacrificed to a pagan god. I grinned at him as I backed away a few feet.
“Lucky me,” I managed to say before I had a mouthful of Vince.
Lucky me.
WE MANAGED to escape later on, me having only taken a couple of shots so that I’d be okay to drive toward the end of the night. Vince was a little bit tipsy, but he didn’t like to get full-on drunk, so I didn’t have to worry about him passing out on me.
Besides, I was already worried out of my fucking mind about giving him his present.
So I stole him later, slipping quietly out the back, his hand in mine as we headed for the car. “Where we going?” he asked.
“You’ll see.”
And the night was perfect, warm and clear, even though it was October. We didn’t talk much as I drove, him content to hold my hand, me content to be freaking the fuck out. I told myself I was being stupid, that I didn’t have to be nervous, but it didn’t do a damn thing to help. I’d gotten better about myself over the past six months, thanks to Vince, but since he didn’t know a thing about this, it just made me all the more nervous.
He finally figured out where we were going and grinned over at me when we pulled into the parking lot of the park where he’d taken me after our first date. On the lookout for homicidal hobos with hook hands, we walked through the dark to what I thought of as our little patch of grass. He didn’t even need any coaxing and assumed his position on the ground, his stomach becoming a pillow for my head, making our T shape that we did so well. His hand immediately went into my hair and started rubbing my scalp. The stars were so bright, and for just a moment, everything was as it should be.
“Perfect end for tonight,” he sighed, echoing my thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So….”
“So what?”
I almost didn’t say it, but I pushed through. “So, I got you a present. You know, for your birthday.”
“Yeah? Is it awesome?”
“Uh. Pretty sure. I think so. I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe.”
“Covering all your bases?”