Real Live Boyfriends

I was out with a college guy, I suppose I should have known I was going to a college party, but I was so intent on getting away from Dad and his misery that I hadn’t really thought about where Gideon was taking me. It turned out to be a the apartment of this guy Ted Hsaio (pronounced Shaw) who’d been in Gideon’s year at Tate and was now a junior at the University of Washington.

Hsaio lived just off the Ave in the U District, in a studio apartment. As we walked down the hall, I could hear the roar of voices coming from his place, and when Gideon opened the door we saw a wall of people, all in costume, jammed up against each other and smoking, plastic cups of beer clutched in their hands. “Van Deusen!” Hsaio yelled when he saw Gideon. They fake-sparred, the way guys do when they don’t want to hug, and finally Gideon threw his bloody rubber hand at Hsaio. Hsaio was dressed as a fisherman in waders and a hat. He carried a fishing pole and had several plastic fish sticking out of his pockets. “Who’s your new girl?” he yelled at Gideon over the din.

“What?” Gideon yelled back in Hsaio’s ear.

“Who’s your girl?” said Hsaio, even louder.

“This is Ruby.”

I waved.

“Cradle robbing?” Hsaio asked Gideon.

“Shut up.”

“Dude, we’d all do it if we could.”

“Same as ever, huh, Hsaio?”

“Why change what’s working?” Hsaio laughed.

Gideon grabbed my hand and pulled me to the tiny kitchen, where a cadaver and two lady pirates were filling cups from a keg and mixing some kind of drink called a kamikaze. Two girls in slut costumes were sitting on the countertops and a guy in a gorilla suit leaned against the fridge. It smelled of sweat and booze.

Gideon handed me a cup of beer, which I didn’t want, and then grabbed a guy dressed as Jackie Onassis into a bear hug. “DuBoise!” he cried. “What the hell are you doing here?”

DuBoise.

DuBoise? I sloshed half my beer down my dress.

“Van Deusen,” the Jackie O said. He was wearing a pillbox hat and a black bouffant wig with a sweet purple vintage suit and heels.

Noel’s brother, Claude.

“Who knew you were home?” Gideon said.

“Came back last week.”

“Isn’t it the middle of the term?”

Claude nodded. His eye makeup was running and his lipstick smudged down his chin. “New York was …” He shook his head. “I came back for a while is all.”

Claude had been in Gideon’s class at Tate. That was how come I recognized him, even though he’d never been home to Seattle in all the time I’d been friends with Noel.

In high school, Claude had been golden. He’d gone out with several girls. He’d been a soccer player and a rower, a model of Young American Manhood. I knew from Noel that when Claude realized he was gay, freshman year at NYU, some of his old high school friends had been jerks about it—which was why he didn’t usually come home in the summers.

Now here he was, back in town and wearing full drag at a party full of Future Doctors of America and other kinds of prepsters from his past. As if to say, Up yours if you don’t like me. This is who I am.

Which was cool. I mean, Claude clearly wasn’t worried about becoming a roly-poly. He didn’t care what people thought anymore. He was out and proud.

He wouldn’t recognize me, I thought. Though he probably knew my name from Noel. I’d been a freshman when he, Gideon and Hsaio were seniors.

Part of me wanted to meet Claude, talk to him, find out anything I could about Noel—whom I saw at school but never spoke to anymore.

The other part wanted to run, for fear Claude would tell Noel he saw me out with Gideon.

That part won.

I pressed out of the kitchen into the main room of the apartment and squeezed through a mass of sweaty, makeup-covered bodies to a spot near an open window. I leaned my back against it, feeling the cool breeze trickle into the hot room.

Everyone was tipsy, and many people had taken off bits of their costumes in the heat. Hats and bunny ears and capes were piled on an armchair. Everyone was at least three years older than I was and they all knew each other. The guys had broad shoulders and stubble on their faces. A few people were familiar from Tate, years ago, but most were probably Hsaio’s U Dub friends. It seemed—just way more advanced than high school parties. Everyone was smoking; no one had a curfew.

I was standing there, trying to look relaxed and as if I went to college parties every day and oh, yeah, I’m just leaning on this windowsill here because it’s so completely comfortable, I always do this at parties—when I saw Noel. He was dressed as Johnny Rotten, which I could tell because he had a Sex Pistols¹ poster in his room. His blond hair was dyed electric orange and spiked up with even more than his usual amount of gel. He had on tight black cigarette jeans, a heavy black leather jacket, combat boots and an old plaid flannel shirt. He wore a fake earring in one ear and had a mole drawn on the left side of his cheek.

And he was talking to a girl. A pretty, pretty, pretty girl. Taller than me, slim, with short dark hair and makeup that said: Sexy Vampire. A tight black T-shirt, a fringed skirt and high red heels.