Chicago Noir [Anthology]

DEATH MOUTH

BY AMY SAYRE-ROBERTS

Roscoe & Broadway

Turn at Cornelia. Follow the scent of fresh bread and sidewalk heat, the stale belly breath of the city. It raises a slight glow on the upper lip, a contagion like an unseasonably warm September. It will lead you to Dahlia’s. I like having espresso here at the end of the day. There’s always someone to meet at Dahlia’s; you never know what you’ll discover. I met Matthew on a night like that, a humid, Ciabatta-scented evening. Geographically, it’s easy for a straight boy faking his way around Wrigleyville to get “lost” and end up on Halstead or Broadway. He will say something like, “This is Boystown?” A beat. “I didn'’t realize.” Sure.

I sat a few tables in from the door to observe the comings and goings unnoticed; like a praying mantis, I court stillness and wait for an innocent to walk into my grasp. Sebastian, my favorite waiter, sidled by with drinks for another table, “Cover girl, 12 o’clock high.” Matt stood in the door, a young blond woman clutching his arm. The creative ones like to bring along a girl, someone to hold their hand. The boys want to check it out on the down low. They might as well be holding a Kewpie doll.

Let me just say, in terms of the market, Matt and his little doll were prime real estate located conveniently near the intersection of virginity and Vine. They wanted the same thing—someone to be gentle with them. He was looking for a door, and what can I say? I’m a gentleman. I held it wide open.

We made eye contact several times. I was RKO classic in a black cashmere turtleneck and chinos. Absolutely turned out. I get a color every four weeks, r4 with a touch of 3 to set my eyes. Armani Fatale. I wrote StephenLaFraise@hotmail. com on a hundred-dollar bill and waited for him to pay. I bumped into him at the counter and let the bill fall from my pocket. He picked it up and held it forth like a daisy.

“I think this is yours.”

I looked at his eyes.

“No, I think it’s yours. If you want it.”

Reading the bill from his palm, his mouth puckered a red oval.

Ciao, bella. I turned on heel and walked away. Really, I only speak Italian in coffee shops and where otherwise appropriate. French is my native come-on language.

I handled him like silk. He emailed me three days after the hundred-dollar night. We played around—friends, not for long, but at first. It took about a month. I love slow seduction, the foreplay, the gradual building of an orgasm. He was such a baby, a kitten learning about claws.

Matt’s foster parents were a loving Christian family who could not even comprehend the idea he might be gay. Denial. He became depressed. Denial. He considered killing himself. Denial. Blah. Blah. Blah. The first night we made love, he gave me a suicide note he wrote. A note he kept, anticipating opportunity.

“It helps me, you know, relieve the pressure just to keep it around, like I have an escape.”

I used to buy that bathos bullshit. I thought I was everything to him. I told him he didn'’t need it anymore. He gave it to me. The ultimate submission, admitting I was his father, his lover, a conqueror on a stolen horse. I held onto it, like a relic to Matt’s innocence. Proof apparent on the bride’s bloody bedsheet.

Problem is, you can’t count on virgin loyalty. At first it’s all doe-eyed devotion, but then he got confident and curious. A month ago he broke up with me.

I was tri-folding the new logo Ts when my lost boy sashayed into the store and dropped bullshit all over me like it was a shower. He knew I hate distraction when I’m arranging displays.

“He’'s punk,” he said. The second thing Matt told me about Eduardo, his new boy off the boat from Săo Paulo.

Matt has balls. We’ve only been apart one month and He’'s regaling me with tales of his new lover like the wounds are licked and clean. Curiosity again, why does no one learn from the cat?

I said, “What does that even mean?”

“I mean He’'s Sex Pistol, old-school punk. Jesus, he has a bi-hawk.”

Trés chic. If there’s anything better than a mohawk, it surely must be two. “You’re joking. He sounds like a walking hygiene issue.”

“You know, Stephen, this is exactly why we broke up. You are so judgmental. I mean, get an edge already. You are so limited in what you find interesting.”

“What are you now, the minister of high culture? I’'ve known Labrador Retrievers more discerning than you, Matthew.”

He pulled a pout, the one I used to find irresistible. The pout that used to signal make-up sex. Now used for effect, could it have been less effective? But I’m not even sure to what end.

“So when’s he coming in?”

“To the store?” Matt laughed out loud. “Eduardo would not be caught dead in here, He’'s totally anti—”

“Anti-what?”

“Exactly. Anti-everything that relates to consumerism. He makes his own clothes, with all these patches and stitching, you really can’t imagine.”

True statement: I really can’t. I once orchestrated a series of Italian silk suits with fishing line and mobile footlights that became a pilgrimage, a Via Dolorosa to couture devotees. Working at a clothier does not equate to being a fabric waiter; Dress Accordingly is the hottest clothier in Boystown. I’m twenty-eight and still going strong, ageless really, born on the tide of my talent for tailoring. I can take you from gruel to cool in less time than it takes to steam milk. Show me the derričre I can’t make smaller, the thighs I can’t camouflage, the legs I can’t lengthen. They don’t exist. I feel like Warhol.

“Stephen, I so want you to meet him,” Matt says. “I mean, come on, we’ve not been together for almost two months. We’re friends. Aren’t we?”

I sigh. One month, but who’s counting?

“You really should know him, he has something. It’s intangible.”

“How strange, considering you do such a good job describing it.”

The purpose of the pout was soon to be revealed. He couldn'’t actually think I would meet his Neanderthal lover. I don’t play children’s games, not even when I was a child. Matt Burton didn'’t know which way his dick was pointing until he met me. I made him in this community and here he is, a born-again fag sporting his red Italian tennis shoes and instructing me as to the finer points of his new lover. All that improvement and the best thing he could catch was a Mad Max wannabe with Portuguese subtitles? Where did I go wrong? After all, I had shown him a way out.

It was a door we all sought at one time or another. I remember finding my own. Mr. Gautreux, my high school French teacher. It might have been the easiest coming out in history. Born in French Guiana, he was a sleek panther moving about in a man’s body. Married with two children. For me, it was evolution, a shadow seeking skin. I had nothing to admit, merely to accept. We spoke a new language and parented a new race. Our own silent society, one eye watching for a signal and swollen lips needy to speak.

Matt’s voice is a buzz in my ear.

“Stephen, are you listening to me?”

Yes, back to now. Was he always this petulant?

“I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“Scars are becoming art, Stephen. Eduardo is so beyond the tattoo. I mean, some of his friends were talking the other day. They say the most heinous righteous things. Anyway, one guy, Martin, He’'s from London and wicked smart, he says, ‘The gunshot wound is the new tattoo.’”

“Jesus, what kind of barbarians are you involved with?” I flubbed a fold and had to start over.

“Seriously, Stephen, I have not been able to get that idea off my mind.”

“Well, get it off, that is fucking insane. Not to mention illegal, dangerous, and plain stupid. There is no bliss in your apparent ignorance.”

“He’'s a Brit. They have a radical different perspective. Scars are art.”