Blind hearts-ManxMan-boyxboy

Blond fluff

Parking was another fifteen minutes of circling and two minutes of parking, and they came to Pedro’s house was entombed between two serious-looking apartment complexes. Dimov waited patiently through Pedro, Joachim, and Miguel crowding over Charles and Gilda with kisses on their cheeks and ululations of Charley, Charley, Charley, and this Charley himself, redder, bubblier by the moment.

“Amigos, let’s get this thing started,” Charles said, his gaze cascading down the corridor to a bronzed fellow in a jersey and jeans, his head a dome of long blond curls.

“You were standing there all along.” Miguel welcomed Dimov with a weak hand on his shoulder and an astringent mist over his face, and Dimov had a mephitic revelation of the rest of the evening.

“Finally Dimov, we get to talk,” said Pedro smiling at him and taking his arm in his. And his excited jabber guided Dimov through the murmur and the laughter, the jeers of good beer and the salutations that wished good health and better days, but not everlasting love.

Talking consisted of Pedro walking him around and introducing him with Spanish-flavored hoarseness, “Hola, meet Charley’s roommate.” Dimov persevered all right with a glass of seltzer. With Pedro warm at his side and glittering with sweat and smiles, he was assured of the hidden pearl of the evening when they could finally settle into the dark.

Then one man was amused enough to reply, “Hello Charley’s roommate,” which made Dimov take a distinct dislike of his metallic rimmed glasses and his sleek black ponytail.

“I’m Mike,” the man said, shaking Pedro’s hand too long and too vigorously.

Pedro was more engrossed in Mike’s introduction: an animator for the movie studios, connoisseur of cigars, how at twenty-seven he felt a little old for house parties.

Pedro enthused, “Animation like Bambi?”

Mike’s laughter was a trite scolding. “Something like that, more like special effects to supply the right atmosphere in the most boring movies you can think of.”

“Dios mio, movies are all fake,” Pedro said like Archimedes discovering his principle.

“Well yeah ...”Mike narrowed at Pedro’s hand limp and lithe over where Dimov’s heart lay.  He excused himself and floated away to a trio of women united in praise for pop star tenors.

 “There are a lot of people here,” Dimov said disappointingly. But Pedro’s gaze was far away to Miguel downing the contents of a cup then stumbling back into the wall.

“The party was more Francis’ idea,” Pedro said absentmindedly.

Must be one of the six tenants of the house, Dimov thought. The surroundings beamed the décor choices of uninspired bachelors: the large screen television, lonely and rudely out of place in the expanse of the living room, the chairs with ratted ends and the floor, hardwood presumably, but squishy with each footstep. The notion of six men, six young men living a house in Brentwood, was a little abusive.

In another hour, Pedro was skittering off histrionically to attend to Miguel micturating into a flowerpot by the television. And Dimov was the frightfully somber sentry languishing by the door to the garage—the intoxicated den of half-spoken wishes, slurred assertions, and piggish chatter. The garage was cooking with pot smoke. Getting stoned by proxy was a near impossibility, not when he could hear Charles’ high assents from somewhere in the far beyond of the living room or the verandah.  No one in the garage took to his dry grits of sense in the bauble of frolic. He did not know anyone, and yet in the fragrant blur simmering under the glowing bulb, they all seemed to be a natural part of him, the lost souls of his childhood. The woman, bending over a bong, assumed the same long, round profile as his first love. Immediately, her moody smile was vivid over the powdered face, and yes, how could he have forgotten her only memorable line before leaving him for the high school wrestling champion, “He just grabs you and takes you and won’t let go. So, so exciting.” Her combative efforts at fellatio, her impenetrable air over lunches, the interminable panic over the symmetry of their phone calling came unbidden, belligerently. Dimov turned away from the garage, clucked. He was hungry.