Read Online It's All Relative by Wade Rouse - Free Book Online Page A

hair …
    something pink and swollen that looked like it had teeth …
    and some sort of wound/cut/cyst
.
    â€œYou wanna touch it?” she asked.
    â€œNo. Fair’s fair. We haven’t bartered for that.”
    I looked over and saw that her boyfriend was hard and rubbing himself vigorously, like he was trying to release a genie from his bottle. He was holding me now rather tenderly, not at all in a threatening way anymore.
    My life flashed before me again, and I pictured myself being dragged into a back alley and forced to videotape a Mardi Gras threesome—being pounded by Jerry Mathers while sixteen pounds of beads slammed against my chest—after which I would contract hepatitis, if I were only so lucky.
    I panicked and started running, my beads bouncing into my teeth, fighting through the crowds, until I could no longer hear the couple’s hacking and heavy breathing.
    I was winded, still scared, still needing to pee but desperately in need of a drink—one of those giant ten-dollar hurricanes that come served in a vase—so I headed what I thought was north, to a bar where my friends said they would be if we got split up during the day.
    But as I zigged and zagged through the crowd, I became disoriented.
    Geography has never been one of my strongest skill sets—along with filing and organ transplant. In fact, I thought north was up until I went to college.
    As a result, I found myself off the main thoroughfare and directly in front of the infamous Drag Race, the annual gay Mardi Gras competition where drag queens race each other down the street wearing high heels.
    Considering I had been in the closet longer than my dad’s letterman jacket, I typically would have been too scared or ashamedto stop and watch such a spectacle. But there was a large crowd, I needed a drink, and I’d had my fill of breeders.
    â€œNice ass,” a mustached man in crotchless leather stirrup pants said to me as I tried to get in line for the bar, which wrapped all the way around the block. “Need a beer? You’ll never make it inside.”
    I looked at the man and then at the can that he held in front of me. The beer hadn’t been opened and didn’t show any signs of tampering. “Thanks,” I said. “Nice pants.”
    â€œI’m up for Mr. Leather this year,” he said.
    He smiled proudly, like I was supposed to know the prestige this bestowed.
    â€œGood for you!” I said. “I was once up for Snow Ball King!”
    And then a very cute guy—that dreamy college-jock fantasy guy, the kind who always looks as if he just got finished playing baseball—stopped in front of me and asked what it would take to get a strand of my purple beads.
    I stammered.
    â€œWanna play ring toss for it?” he asked, smiling seductively.
    I immediately got harder than rebar.
    He stood by me as the drag racers began to line up, and I stood breathless—heart racing, adjusting myself like a rapper with Tourette’s—next to a hot guy who wanted to play ring toss. With me.
    I slammed the leather man’s beer—buzz fully restored—and watched a group of drag queens in dangerously high stilettos sprint down the streets. Some were crashing and burning, ripping their stockings, bloodying their knees; others were an amazing mix of speed and dexterity, like Miss America meets Marion Jones.
    When it was over, I looked over at what was surely to become my new boyfriend, the love of my life, the man who would teach me to toss a football, hold me, and have that trail of hair running down his navel that drives me insane.
    He put his hand in the center of my back. I got dizzy.
    â€œWade?”
    He knew my name?
    I turned. Standing before me was a fellow coworker and his wife.
    â€œSo, what’s going on?”
    I fumbled for words. I was standing outside a gay bar, with a boner, between a man who had his arm around me and a man wearing crotchless