2
Revel, as it turns out, is a gay club.
A queer club, to be more accurate, as the crowd mingling out on the sidewalk is a mishmash of genders, not the standard flock of cis gay dudes I associated with places like this in LA. No, these are New York queers—painfully, effortlessly cool queers—and…I can’t relate. I tried the baggy jeans trend once, and it made me look like Gumby. The only style I typically muster is best described as “grunge meets cottagecore.” Not that my day-old airport clothes even rise to that level.
Diego’s brought a flask, which he surreptitiously offers to me as we stand in line. I shake my head and one of his eyebrows flicks up. “Don’t like tequila?” he asks.
“Not my favorite,” I say, because I don’t drink, period is always a bombshell to drop on people. As soon as you admit you’re sober, they start asking questions. Worse, they start insisting that you should loosen up. Have a drink. Or three. Or six. What, are you watching your figure?
Half the time they don’t let up until I lose my temper and snap that I’m clean, I’m in recovery, my brain literally wants to kill me and I cannot be trusted with the weapons of my own destruction.
Which tends to put a damper on things, and I want these people to like me. So, personal-disclosure hours can wait.
But to Diego’s credit, he just shrugs and passes the flask to Ophelia instead, and by the time we’re at the front of the line, they’re both slightly tipsy. I’m better than I used to be; I can be around drunk people now. Good thing, considering the nature of the photography social circuit out in LA, a booze-drenched, drug-fueled fuck fest where the quantity and lethality of the drugs you consumed while creating a given work were treated almost like accolades. I heard she went into rehab right after the gallery opening, someone would whisper. Heroin. And they’d all hum discerningly and make comments about artists and their vices.
We make it through the line faster than I expected. The bouncer up front barely even glances at our IDs before letting us in.
Stepping into Revel is like stepping into the past. Forty years into the past, specifically; the décor is firmly eighties chic, all neon lights patterned like the zigzag slashes on vintage dad jackets, everyone dressed in polyester and denim. Some guy with bleached-blond hair has taken over one of the poles and is doing an impromptu show up there, and he’s wearing overalls for some reason. The DJ plays a mash-up of Madonna and Hayley Kiyoko, and honestly, it kind of slaps.
Being here wakes me up, as if I’ve been underwater for years and have finally surfaced into the sun. It’s the feeling I used to chase with whiskey and drugs and the bodies of strangers. I take a breath and my lungs expand. My head clears.
And for the first time since I got off the plane, I think maybe being here—maybe New York itself—will be okay.
“Come on,” Ophelia says, and she grabs my hand, pulling me deeper into the club.
She and Diego get shots at the bar. I make an excuse to go to the bathroom, and when I come back, they’re already dancing. It’s easy to slip into the crowd alongside them, to let our bodies become fluid and anonymous. I end up with Ophelia, my hands on her plush waist and her hips grinding against mine. It’s not even sexual, not really; it’s the kind of hyperphysical flirtation queer girls get into sometimes, where movement becomes its own language. It’s special. It’s something I worried I wouldn’t find when I left LA and its queer-lit bookshops, as if people like us only exist in the spaces I’m familiar with. I knew I was wrong, of course, that this was just me being self-absorbed and navel-gazey about my own experience, but still.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to make friends anywhere else. That if I left the people who’d been putting up with me for the past eight years, I’d find I was in fact an intolerable person to be around.
We dance until the heat gets to be too much and I have to excuse myself to catch my breath and find something cold to drink. I end up at the bar, leaning in past the crowd of brightly colored gays, trying to get the bartender’s attention. Which is kind of difficult when you’re the only one present who isn’t plastered in glitter and glow stick goo. I’m starting to get low-key irritated about it, which probably shows on my face, because when I accidentally make eye contact with the guy standing next to me, he laughs and says, “Yeah, around here you need to be wearing about seventy percent less clothing to get service. Sorry.”
I feel my cheeks flush. The comment would have landed a lot differently if it had come from a different sort of guy—or at a straight club, where douches outnumber reasonable people four to one. But this man isn’t looking at me like I’m a piece of disappointingly overdressed meat. He’s smiling, has the kind of face that aggressively reads himbo despite his scruffy jawline and strong features. The thick Carolina accent certainly helps. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt, James Dean style, and I can’t avoid noticing the way his black jeans cling to his muscular thighs a little too well.
Statistically speaking, I remind myself, he is almost definitely gay, so there’s no point in fantasizing.
But holy shit. He looks like he could crush my head between those thighs, and to be honest, I would probably let him.
“I suppose I could always take my shirt off,” I say, and his grin widens slightly, revealing—fuck me—dimples.
“You could,” he says. “Or you could let me give it a go. I’m kind of a regular around these parts.” He rises up on the balls of his feet, which is necessary considering he’s around my height or maybe even a little shorter, and extends a heavily tattooed arm over the bar. “Greg!”
The bartender, presumably Greg, who has somehow heard hot guy’s voice over the throbbing bass line, glances over his shoulder at us and shoots my new friend a thumbs-up.
“There you go,” says my friend, dropping back onto his heels again. “All sorted out. Maybe I could buy your drink for you?” He pairs that question with an arch of a brow. I wish my arched brow looked that sexy.
My blush deepens, which is humiliating because I’ve never been an attractive blusher. My whole face tends to turn red, not just my cheeks, making me look more like I’m doing a lobster cosplay than flirting with a sexy stranger.
“Sure,” I say. “I mean…yeah. Okay. If you want. But you don’t have to actually…. That is, it won’t cost much. I’m just ordering seltzer with lemon.”
Something shifts in the guy’s expression. The way he looks at me isn’t teasing anymore; it’s more…considering. “You’re sober?”
I nod. I’m not sure where he’s headed with this. Some people—men, mostly—are really turned off by the realization that they can’t simply ply me with liquor and have me fall drunkenly into their beds. But this guy isn’t like other guys, apparently, because if anything, my answer makes him lean in closer, bracing one elbow against the bar and facing me more fully, as if I just became the most interesting person in this place. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a gay club, meaning he’s probably gay, meaning I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself.
He’s hot, but he needs to be hot in the way that fictional characters are hot. He’s unattainable.
“Me too,” he says. “A little over ten years now.”
“Four,” I say, a little shyly, which surprises me. But then again, I don’t get many opportunities to talk about my sobriety with people who actually give a shit. “A little more.”
“Four’s great,” the guy says. “Four’s awesome. Congratulations.”
A couple comes up to the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention; they sidle their way in behind my new friend, who has to shift closer to me to make room. I’m near enough to him now that I can smell the smoky, salty scent of his deodorant—or whatever that smell is, because I’m pretty sure this guy isn’t the type to wear cologne.
The bartender chooses this moment to finally show up, and the guy—whose name I still don’t know, but he looks kind of like Jamie Dornan, so I’ll call him Jamie—orders us both seltzers in martini glasses with lemon garnish.
“Cheers,” he says, and clinks our glasses together.
We each take a sip, and I can’t stop watching him over the rim of my glass—which he notices, apparently, because his grin when he lowers his drink is a little sharper than before.
“Here’s the thing, though,” I say. “These places always use well seltzer. When really, Sanpellegrino is the only sparkling water option worth considering.”
He rolls his eyes, slapping one hand down against the bar. “Oh, come on. I can’t believe you would shit on my boy LaCroix like this.”
“LaCroix? Are you a thirty-five-year-old mommy blogger?”
“Don’t knock Pamplemousse.”
“I will knock Pamplemousse. You know the ‘natural flavoring’ all these brands crow about comes from like…beaver anal gland expression or whatever.” Which is actually true. I didn’t think it was when Chaya told me, but then I looked it up—much to my regret.
His smirk tugs a little tighter, a crooked smile I want to kiss right off his face. “I personally consider myself a connoisseur of beaver butt juice. A delicacy in some parts of Brooklyn.”
“Sorry, my Sanpellegrino-trained palate must not be discerning enough.”
“Cultural differences,” he says with a sage nod. “They must not have a wide enough variety of anal flavorings where you come from. Where is this fabled land of milk and overpriced seltzer, by the way?”
He assumes I’m not from New York. Which I guess is fair; maybe I’ve fully assimilated into LA culture at this point by necessity, if not by intention. Not that I ever felt like I really fit in.
“Crown Heights,” I say.
“No way. I thought for sure you were gonna say some Chicago suburb I’ve never heard of.”
I make a face at him. “Please. With that accent, it’s not like you grew up on the hard streets of the Upper West Side.”
“North Carolina,” he admits, “but I’ve been here for thirteen years. Plenty of time to drink every flavor of LaCroix from every bodega in the tristate area.”
He’s standing closer to me now, somehow, even though I don’t remember either of us moving. I bend my knee slightly, and it brushes his leg; our hips are near enough I’m hyperaware of it, our proximity like a heat that only intensifies in the space between us.
“I’ll keep spending half my paycheck on overpriced seltzer. Better than spending my whole paycheck on bourbon.”
“Valid,” he says. “Do you want to dance?”
I can tell I’m blushing from the way my cheeks suddenly feel sunburnt. It’s dark enough in this place, though, that he probably doesn’t notice. “Yes,” I say. “But…”
One of his brows goes up. “But? I’m bracing myself.”
I’m not entirely sure how to put this.
“But…aren’t you gay?” I say at last, and punctuate it with a sip of my lemon seltzer. It’s a fair question. I mean, he’s in here. A gay club. “I mean, not that I won’t dance with you if you are. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page here.”
Jamie Look-alike laughs and shakes his head. “No. I’m not gay.”
“Bi, then?”
“Nope.”
I feel like there’s some obvious puzzle piece here I’m supposed to see that I’m somehow missing. I frown. “All right…cool, I guess. But why are you here if you’re straight? Please tell me you aren’t one of those het guys who thinks they can convert lesbians.”
“Are you lesbian?”
“Well…no, but that’s beside the point.”
He’s laughing again, and I’m still trying to decide if that’s irritating or not when he says, “I’m trans. That’s why I’m here. I’m a heterosexual trans man.”
“Oh.” Now I feel like an asshole. “That makes sense. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Seriously.”
My whole face is burning; I try to hide it with a quick gulp of water. I feel like some kind of weird gatekeeper now, interrogating him for being here, trying to figure out if he’s straight or not, like there aren’t options under LGBTQ besides gay and bi.
But Jamie Look-alike just offers me his hand, brows lifting. “You look like you want to disappear right now. Maybe instead of a vanishing act, you give me that dance?”
“Yes. Please.”
He takes my water with surprising gentleness and sets it aside on the bar. And then he’s leading me into the crowd, into the humid, sweat-scented, bass-thumping surge of human bodies. On the floor, the lights glitter silver and pink; they warm Jamie’s pale-gold skin and gleam along his sharp cheekbones, melding like watercolors among the tattoos on his forearms, his chest. I have no idea what happened to Ophelia and Diego, but the moment I would have spared to worry was subsumed by the man’s hands finding my waist, drawing me in close.
We fit together a little too perfectly: his firm body against mine, my hands on his broad shoulders, and his face close enough to mine that, even in this light, I can make out the faintest smattering of peppery freckles scattered across his nose. Something in my stomach coils just a little bit tighter—and we begin to dance.
Two hours ago I would have said I was a shitty dancer without liquor. Self-conscious, awkward, too aware of all the places my feet are and aren’t supposed to go. Maybe it’s that I know my partner is sober too, that we’re both inebriated by nothing but the music and each other, but it’s easier now. The beat finds its way into my bones, and I shift a little closer to his heat. His hands slide down to my hips, and I reach for his wrists and redirect them so his palms are cupping my ass instead.
He smirks, the cut of his lips knife-sharp in the flickering strobe lights—a blade I’d all-too-willingly impale myself on.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“What?” he mouths back.
It’s loud, the bass line a steady thrum that all but vibrates in my core. I repeat myself, shouting a little to make sure he can hear:
“What’s your name?”
The guy says something back, but it’s impossible to hear over the music.
I scrunch my brows together and say, “What?”
He says it again, and at this point it would be embarrassing to ask him to say it a third time, so I just grin and nod as if I understood him. Doesn’t matter anyway; I seriously doubt I’ll see him again after tonight, as he doesn’t strike me as the long-term-relationship-with-a-dog-and-a-rotating-chore-list kind of dude. I shout back my own name when he asks (or, well, I assume that’s what he was asking), and he grins at me too. Whether he heard me is anyone’s bet.
Normally, I start making my excuses to find a new partner around the third song. But I keep dancing with Jamie—or whomever—into the fourth song, the fifth, sixth. When his touch skims my bare skin, I feel electrified, the soft gust of his breath against the curve of my ear sends a thrill spinning down my spine. And then I’m kissing him, my hands slipping into his messy brown hair and his sliding down my ribs, pulling me in closer. He tastes like lemon and something sweet. Something sugary.
When the kiss breaks, he stays there, near enough that our lips graze, the tip of his nose warm when it brushes mine. And this time I can actually hear him when he says, “Do you want to go somewhere that isn’t here?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
I shoot off a quick text to Ophelia as we wind our way through the crowd toward the doors—texting one-handed because my new friend has laced the fingers of my left hand together with his, guiding us between strange bodies without losing that link between us. He picks up a backpack at coat check, and I shake my head when he asks if I left anything there.
The night air is cool when we step out onto the sidewalk, refreshing on the nape of my neck after so long in the overheated club. The guy is still holding my hand, his palm soft and his grasp firm, steadying, around mine.
“I live in Bushwick,” he tells me. “Are you any closer?”
I make a face. “No. Queens.”
And there’s something unbearably awkward about the prospect of an hour-long subway ride with a stranger I met at a random club. I don’t want the magic to dissipate under the fluorescent train lights, to see the sweaty lines and crevices of another human instead of…this, his eyes reflecting the amber streetlamps, his body still tilting in close to mine. Jamie like the perfect photo of a perfect man, or something out of an oil painting.
But I’m also fucking broke, so I’m about to open my mouth and suggest we split cab fare when he says, “We could get a hotel.” And before I can start calculating the impact of that on my grocery budget, he adds, “My treat.”
Well, I’m not arguing with that.