The best there is

Dear Diary; Something amazing has happened. Was out at bar with Ryan last night. Let a smarmy man with greaser-style hair buy me a sex-on-the-beach.

As he passed it to me he smiled gold and sighed, “I hope you never know what you are. You’ll ruin it.”

“Ruin what?”

“That.” He grabbed my face in his hands. His wet glass on my jaw. “That look of total innocence. You’re like this blank slate. So naïve.”

So I get up and make to go. Don’t know why. Hadn’t even sipped the drink.

Bussed home. Blah blah. Was just thinking I’d fall asleep when lovely-roommate Chris arrived.

A loud thwump on the other side of the door. Chris hollered “Fuck Me!” and then came a slow scraping sound as he apparently sank to the ground.

He goes off to the Pit Pub every Friday. His friends come by and collect him-all large, well-made men. They punch each other, and smack each other’s asses, and rowdily crowd in and then out of the room. In a hurry to get sloshed.

But I get to be the nurse.

I padded in my slippers over to the door and opened it slowly. From the waist up, Chris poured limply into the room. He’d fallen on the way home and his khakis were muddy up to the knees.

“Chris.” No reply. He just lay there, prostate (sp?). The only way of knowing he hadn’t passed out was the slow worming of his stretched-out body across the doorway.

I waited ’til he was most of the way in before I got sick of it and bent down to grab his wrists. Dragged the rest of him in.

Chris flipped into uncomfortable looking arrangements on the floor, like a rag doll. I tugged him nonchalantly onto his bed.

Breathing heavy, cheeks flushed, legs spread wantonly like some come-to-life statue of a drunken satyr-Chris. Thought briefly about pulling his pants off. Nothing sexual. Just good friendly help, so as to be sure he was comfortable. And besides, that mud was going to stain his sheets.

His shirt, too, it occurred to me, would probably get all stretched out of shape if he slept in it. It was that orange one, his favourite. He would thank me tomorrow if I propped him up and just slid it over his tired head.

If he was wearing tighty whities, then those should probably come off also. If you sleep in tight underwear it lowers your sperm count. It would show my respect for everything straight if I took off Chris’ underwear. In fact, he would probably guess that I’m gay if I didn’t strip him down and take off his briefs.

And maybe even give him a rub down, too. Straight guys give each other quick massages on the shoulders sometimes. Only a fag would be afraid to give his drunken buddy a quick naked massage, surely?

Even, really, to be perfectly safe, I would have to jerk him off, as a friendly, straight, buddy-buddy gesture of camaraderie.

All this I thought to myself in a few seconds. It all bucked recklessly through my mind in the space it took Chris to draw in one sleepy, thick-tongued breath and let it out.

Stood over him for a second, looking at his belt buckle. Argh. Decided was best to leave it alone. Then his eyes snapped open. And he was watching me. Intently. For a drunk.

My reverie was interrupted, though, by its subject. Chris shook himself out of his daze for a moment. Propped himself up on his elbows, looking lazily from left to right, trying to figure how he had managed to move from the doorway without noticing.

“Did you get me into bed?” He asked this question as only a straight boy could have. The double entendre is a distinctly queer device. He was sincere, thankful, bewildered, pure. Almost virginal. I nodded and pushed him back onto his pillow.

But Chris was adamant about expressing his thanks. “I love you buddy,” and he put his hand, warm, behind my head. He said it. For that drunken moment, in the fuzz of vision, and the dizzy spin of our tiny room in rez, he loved me then.

Or said he did anyway. And why not take that, if it’s the best there is?

Then he threw up on me. On us. But I didn’t care. Not one bit. The only thing I could think was that now he’d have to come and sleep in my bed.

But he didn’t, of course. No. Chris slept the night away, perfectly content in a tiny pool of his own vomit. And I slunk back to my own bed, on the other side of the room. I stared at the ceiling for an hour, and finally fell into dreamless sleep.