Dog Days
The dog days engender malaise even among us party people.
Day after day the air stifles, heavy in the lungs like stale cigarette smoke. The breeze, when it comes, is laden with the aroma of rotting pond scum that steadily accumulates upon the Harlem Meer this time of year. Open fire hydrants regurgitate their contents upon refuse-lined street corners while children frolic in the spray, smiling, yes, but nonetheless aware their days of freedom are numbered.
I can barely hear the birds anymore, so loud is the chirping of crickets in the late afternoon.
Perhaps I’m crabby right now because I’d rather be down in Myrtle Beach golfing and drinking beers and catching up on my reading and eating crawfish and shooting the shit with my father. That is to say I’d gladly trade in Carnegie Hall for the Carolina Opry, Balthazar for NASCAR.
We’d been out for a while, drifting aimlessly among the wretched watering holes of Morningside Heights. Emma was with us, along with her friend—a balding, mustachioed older man who had a pleasant, eternally-bemused demeanor. Les and I would have brought a date along but the chick, a girl who was supposed to meet us on the weekend we met Cara, flaked yet again—she would call Les at around 3AM and Les wouldn’t answer. And so we finally wound up at the lounge, Suite, where I’d so fabulously entertained my harem the previous Saturday night. Taking in the place, I observed that—hey!—there sure were an awful lot of guys around, and that—hey again!—at least a few of them were snogging up against the bar. The latest music videos flickered upon a large projection screen in the back. Some of the boys watched and made catty remarks.
“Was it—was it like this last week?” I asked Emma.
The girl was all smiles. “Oh, look! It’s Ophelia. You just have to meet her.”
The bartender was a tall, lean, muscular Asian girl. Waitaminute. “Is she a—”
“Yeah,” Emma sighed. Ophelia gave her a hug and we ordered drinks.
“Have you ever considered, y’know—” I cocked my head in the direction of Ophelia’s retreating form.
“Naw, I don’t like her that way. She’s just cool.”
“One day you’re going to meet a flamboyantly gay man who wants to have sex with you,” I told her, grinning, “and he’ll be the love of your life.”
I decided to do as the Romans do, and so I sat there and watched the videos and made catty remarks. Emma turned to me and said, “I don’t want to be that drunk girl who’s always coming home with you.”
“Then be that sober girl who’s always coming home with us.”
Leslie sat between us and Emma and I each had a hand down the back of her jeans. My fingers brushed Emma’s and she sort of wrapped hers around mine, a gesture that felt oddly intimate. The two girls began to kiss and I looked over at Emma’s friend. If he was distressed at all by these developments, he wasn’t letting on.
On the way out—what the hell—I gave Ophelia a hug and kissed her cheek.
“Don’t look now,” the cabbie said as we came to rest at an intersection, “but they’re having sex in the Mercedes.” Indeed they were, just not in the Clintonian sense: the woman’s head was planted in the man’s lap and that head was bobbin’ up and down. “In my country,” the cabbie continued, “that’s bad luck.” He was from Guinea, and we soon discovered nearly everything is bad luck in his country. He cautioned us most strenuously against meeting women in bars. Mucho bad mojo there: ‘tis much better to meet a nice girl in church. I poked Emma in the ribs and snickered.
Funny how I still notice things after knowing someone for the longest time. The faint little freckles on Emma’s shoulders, for instance, carelessly sprinkled here and there. And her aversion to beer, hers sitting, sweating, untouched upon the coffee table. Standing up to receive the women’s affections, each of them bringing a different technique to bear, I watched not directly but through the mirrors on either side of us and saw, one by one, their mouths open and their cheeks hollow from the suction.
The dog days really aren’t so bad I guess.
More: Threesome | Emma | Trannies | Voyeurism
