My misspent youth of folly: Part 5

Once I had fully come out to everyone and nothing seemed to change, I went through what can only be described as "the gayification". During this phase, one discovers that it is not only ok to be gay but that there are others like me... uh, one. This was the phase of my life when I wore clothing a little to tightly, I used concealer to cover breakouts and I might have been heard on rare occasion speaking with a slight lisp... SLIGHT!!

It was at this very vulnerable stage that I was introduced to my first gay friends... Matt Humphreys, Travis Rash and Dennis Ferriera.

Matt was an adorably and impossibly dorky boy that somehow managed to go home with Joey, the hottest boy in the gay bar OZ on our very first visit.

Dennis was the impossibly pretty Italian thorough-bred that was just about God's gift.

Travis, who joined the group a little bit later, was the flamboyant say anything, do anything queen that every gay boy knows and admires a bit for the openness with which they live.

Then there was me... the DUFF. Yeah, he did actually say it to me once or twice... that was the kind of pretty boy that he was. Mom, in case you never heard the term before, it means Designated Ugly Fat Friend. So, we have established that Dennis was the mean girl, and Travis was the only one who could out do him. I mentioned that I was in Orange County, right? I'm serious, I cant watch shows set there, it's all just... too real!!

Together with Stacey, Hala, April and sometimes Nikki, the eight of us would sometimes take over a section of the dance floor and just dominate. Hala was the crazy girl (Lebanese, by way of France), and she would be gettin thrown all over the dance floor. Dennis could always be counted on to be surrounded by cute boys, and Matt and Stacey would always play a game of pool with me.

Well, there are many stories to write about the group of us during that stage... and I think my Mom might be a little too scared to hear them all right now... I will write them soon, especially now that they are all swirling around in my head. This story, however, is about one very specific day. The last day, in fact.

By the time the end finally came, it was down to the three of us: Dennis, Travis and Me. Even now, looking back with the wisdom that comes with hindsight, I couldn't tell you if they were using any drugs. I never saw it, and their behavior didn't seem like they were impaired... I still honestly think that they were just bored... and competitive, even when it came to their meanness.

It began on a Saturday afternoon.

I was on one of my "breaks" from living under my parents oppressive thumb and couch surfing between Travis and Dennis' families homes. I was staying at Dennis' house that weekend and he had been berating me all day. You know how some people just think they are "being real" and "giving it to you straight", but in reality they are just using that as an excuse to be an utter asshole. He was like that... he would start by being friendly and cute, laughing and glancing at himself in the closest reflective surface... He would then start recommending facial products to deal with my horrible skin... oh, and if I wanted to use the workout equipment I could, because I should, because no one wants to fuck the fat boy.

All day...

I stayed because they were the only gay people I knew, they had a car, and because it wasn't home. Just like those goddamed housewives... ugh... anyways...

Matt and Travis showed up and we all got gussied up to go out... None of us were 21 yet, so our options were limited. OZ was 18 and over but only on Friday and Sunday. The other stand by was cruising down to Laguna Beach (back when it was still cool and gay friendly, and most certainly NOT on tv). We could usually get into the Boom Boom Room because they had a really limited door guy that had to leave the door often... and it was really easy to just slip in the back door and pretend like you belong there...

Or, and this trick worked more times than I care to admit (and it was the trick we used that night), get there just before the kitchen closed when they were still clearing up dinner and just go hang out in the lower bar til the club got going. We would start drinking around seven, get to the bar just before nine, drink until last call and dance and flirt and have an all around gay 'ol time.

Now I don't mean to make it sound like we were complete drunks. Remember, I was a bum with no job. The drinks we drank were either bought for us or bought for Dennis. While Matt and I danced and admired men from afar, Dennis and Travis were going AFTER men, and I mean aggressively going after. Like I said, competitive boys.

After the bar closed and the sidewalk sale had yielded no results for any of us, Matt decided to call it a night. He lived in Oceanside and had a half hour drive home in front of him. We hugged goodbye while Dennis and Travis secretly plotted the next move. I thought we would be going home... or at least to eat.

Alas, both of them were still priming to explode, and to a couple nineteen year old's, 2am meant just getting started. It started simple, as it always does, with giggles and dares and then the bold first step down the stairwell leading to the beach below. Which turned out to be almost as crowded as the bar itself. I went down with but behind them, I never felt completely welcome when these two were together as I often ended up the butt of their jokes.

However, there were enough guys on the beach that it made it worth it for the moment. Travis and Dennis flirted with everything they could make out of the darkened cliff, while I lingered closer to the one lamp that lit the beach at the foot of the stairwell. I've never been one for public sex, and honestly the idea of gettin down in the sand sounded more chaffing than hot to me. I wanted to meet a guy that wanted to talk... on the way back to his place!! HA!

Dennis and Travis were making asses out of themselves, and probably repulsing every guy on the beach in the process. Instead of following them and be associated with such people, I chose to climb back up the stairs and have a seat on the bench at the top. They would eventually tire and come back to the car, and I would much rather wait in silence than join them in their reverie.

It took about an hour, but they finally drove every guy off the beach with their high school freshman come-on's. When they finally climbed the stairs I had half a minute of hope in my chest that they would be done for the night, but as soon as they got to the bench, they said they were going to cruise the hotel that is attached to the bar.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Boom Boom Room in Laguna beach, here is a brief layout. The front door of the bar was on the corner, at street level. When you walked in, there was a large square shaped bar in the center of the room. Walk past the bar towards the back of the room and you come to five stairs leading down. This is the pool room, with a pool table and a couple video games and a couple small tables, then continuing toward the back you go down another five steps to the bathroom, another five steps to the back landing where the back door was, then another five steps down to the lower bar and dance floor.

Above all of this, were hotel rooms. If you went out the back door and down the sidewalk toward the stairwell of the beach you came to a gate that lead to hotel rooms on the back balcony's. There were three balcony's with about three rooms each. This place was usually full occupancy on a warm weekend, and the occupants could be found in the bar below, bringing hot men upstairs at all hours of the night...

Well... You can imagine where this story is going now, cant you... Mom... You may want to skip ahead a paragraph or two, but I promise, the ending will be worth it...

It started out by Dennis jumping the fence leading to the lower balcony's and opening the gate for Travis and I. I went along... mostly because I was bored of being alone and I could at least try to be the responsible one. I was completely sober after all. I wont lie, there was some hot stuff going on down on those balcony's, both outside and inside where people would leave their curtains open.

With the tag team of Dennis and Travis it wasn't long before we were let up into the main hotel over the bar, and we walked the hallway looking for "party rooms". I wasn't completely naive, no. But I was dependent on them, and not uninterested in the underbelly of my own culture. I was conscience and aware of my faculties. We somehow got into the grand suite overlooking the beach and all the lower patios below us. Appropriately this was the center of the party.

I'm not going to go into gory details here, I'll save that for my steamy novels that I publish under a pseudonym for bored housewives. I will however say that I was not a virgin at this point in my life, and I wasn't that night either. One of the unspoken and slightly uncomfortable facts about being chubby is that a lot of times, people just don't see you. Now you would think that would make things weird, but in all honesty I was done, and was just waiting for Dennis and Travis at this point. So I didn't mind blending into the background and simply observing.

When the glowworm started to show on the horizon I changed tactics. I knew if I could get Travis alone he would give me his car keys. So I waited until a break in the orgy, when Dennis strutted to the bathroom bare ass blowin in the breeze, I made my way over to where Travis was laying and asked him if he would mind letting me sleep in the car until they were done. He nodded his consent and slipped me the keys, and before Dennis could come back I slipped out the door.

When the car door opened I was jarred awake by Dennis' shrill laugh. "You look so silly sleeping there. Why did you leave? Didn't you enjoy the show?"

"No, I was done. I don't need to do it all every night."

He had a couple more snippy remarks but I tuned him out. Travis started the car and we pulled onto PCH headed toward Dana Point. Not really sure if we had a destination I asked Travis if he would mind stopping for cigarettes at the next opportunity. He pulled over into a gas station and I got out to grab a pack of Marlboro 100's.

When I got back to the car the plan had been set, we were going back to the Boom Boom Room which opened at 9:00am for breakfast. We only had about a half hour to wait. We got back and parked in front again. We all got out and I stretched and took a couple steps toward the beach. The other car doors slammed and tire wheels peeled out behind me. They were ditching me. And my smokes were still in the car.

After they had gotten around the corner and onto PCH I walked down to the stairwell and had a seat. I want to say it was an existential moment that forever changed the way I see life and choice and all that... but all it really felt like was tear stained breakdown. They came back 20 minutes later, dropped my pack out the window and peeled out again... I picked up the pack, pulled one out and lit one.

They were back before I was done with my second smoke. There were no more parking spots in front of the bar, so they parked in the dirt parking lot halfway down the alley. They said they were just joking around with me, wasting time until the bar opened. I asked Travis to let me sit in the car while they ate. Dennis protested and I looked at him and told him I had no money, did he want to pay for me?

He stomped off and Travis put my back-pack on the hood, and told me I could wait outside the car. They wouldn't be too long. I would have cried, but it seemed I was all out of tears. I lit another smoke. When I was done I noticed a really hot muscular guy that tends bar at the Boom headed my way. I'm not sure what to expect, so what he said to me just totally floored me.

"Dude, a couple of my patrons in the bar there say there is some guy harassing them and he wont leave their car alone. Is that you?"

"Wow. Really? That's what they told you? That I was some random stranger harassing them?? Dennis and Travis, right?"

"Yeah, I mean, you seem alright to me dude, and I don't know what drama you got with them, but they want to know that you're not going to do anything to their car."

"I'm not going to do anything to their car. I don't even know why I hang out with them at all when they treat me like this. This is their idea of a joke that your playing on me. I cant deal with this anymore."

With that I looked that hot muscle man in the big blues and I said "Dude, I don't know you, and you don't have any reason to help me, but I have to get away from those two before it destroys me. Can I borrow a dollar from you to take the bus back home?"

He took a minute, and looked me up and down. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar and handed it to me.

"I was there once too, kid... Get home safe." And with that he turned and walked back to the Boom. As I watched his amazing backside walking away I noticed movement in one of the bar windows. Dennis and Travis were watching from the window, they had seen him give me money, and the slack jawed looks on their faces served me as a fitting "last time I ever see those bitches" picture for my memory.

With that I flipped them both the bird, turned and began walking away.

I got to PCH and turned left toward main beach where I would catch the 91 to the mall, and then I would take the 277 up to my parents apartment. I walked, as my mom likes to call it, with intentionality. I got four blocks before I could hear them behind me, calling my name. I kept walking. At about six blocks they were just about 10 feet behind me and I needed to make the next light or they would catch up to me.

As if by fate, at that very moment a shirtless god on a skateboard came riding down the sidewalk in my direction. He was a bartender at the Boom Boom Room and I had seen at least one porn that he was on the cover of at the porn shack across the street from the bar. He was an Adonis and I had no misapprehension that I could flirt anything out of him... A guy that good looking could only do one thing for me, distract my pursuers.

And so as he sailed by me, I took a sideways furtive glance of longing at him and stepped into the crosswalk with two seconds left on the countdown. As I expected both Dennis and Travis stopped to flirt and admire the hot guy, and I got across the street without them. I then crossed again so that I was on the diagonal corner from them before they even turned back to chase me again. Like I say, these long legs move fast, and I was not about to stop my run from those two.

I don't know how much longer they chased after me, or if they even bothered to cross that street. I was done and gone. I got to the bus stop and for about five minutes I worried about them driving up, then I got on the bus, and realized that Travis had a car and Dennis taking the bus was just, well, it was beneath him.

I went home. I deleted both of them from my life, and moved on without them.

The last time I heard about Dennis and Travis they were jumping between balcony's on the 12th floor of a beach front hotel in the middle of a drugged out orgy. I heard after that, Travis got sent back to Eukiah, California to live on the farm with his parents. And Dennis was getting less and less attractive while continuing to chase after married straight guys.

That walk might be one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life. But it helped me become a man. I never saw or heard of Dennis again. Even the mutual friends we had started dropping him after a while, so I stopped hearing about what he up to. Travis tried to add me as a friend a couple years ago on myspace... I just, couldn't add him. I don't harbor any ill will towards him, I just don't believe he will add anything to my life that I cant live without. I closed that door years ago, and I have no reason to ever open it again.