Page 14 of Come As You Are
“How’d you end up in SF?” I asked. It wasn’t like me to pry, but I was curious, and if we were going to be living together, I wanted to know more about him.
Vee moved away from the window and sat down in one of the chairs opposite me. “Not much to tell. Came out to my folks. Dad hit the roof. Mom didn’t say anything. Brothers said they knew it all along and didn’t want a…well, they didn’t want me as a brother anymore.” He shrugged. “They started hassling me over everything, and Dad gave me an ultimatum: stop being gay or leave. So, I left. About the only place I could think to go was here, and it took almost all the money I had to buy a bus ticket.”
“Sorry about your folks,” I said. “That’s shitty, but you’ll find a lot of guys who have the same story.”
“I know.” Vee sipped his coffee. “What about you?”
“San Francisco born and bred.”
“It must have been nice growing up in such a queer-friendly place.”
I laughed. “You’d think, huh? But ‘gay’ is still a taunt kids throw at each other on the playground, and it’s not in a friendly and supportive way. Although…” I smiled at the memory that had come to the forefront of my mind. “The mom of one of my middle school friends was great. She heard my friends tossing around ‘gay’ like it was the worst thing ever and told us that, given statistics, at least one of us in that group was going to be gay or bi, and that what we were doing could be making it harder for them to recognize it. Plus, it would be harder for them to come out, and if we wanted to stay friends, we should be supportive of each other. She also told us it pissed her the hell off to hear us using the word as a slur since she was queer as fuck.”
Shaking my head at the memory, I said, “I had no idea at the time she was talking about me, but when I had to write an essay in high school about what I’d like the world to be like in five years, she pulled me aside to ask if I’d been able to come out to my friends yet. She knew damn well I hadn’t, but I’d been struggling with that essay, and when she said that, I knew what I wanted to say. Got an award for that essay from some contest, actually.”
“Are you still friends with those guys?”
“Two of them. Most of us went to different high schools and lost touch, though some of us ended up at the same school. You’ll meet Liam and Josh at some point. They’re regulars at the club.” I wiggled my eyebrows at Vee. “Turns out, we were a bit ahead of the statistical average.”We both laughed, then drank our coffee in companiable silence.
Before I left for my shift at Illyria, I showed Vee how to work the TV and get on the internet, and reminded him that he was free to eat anything he wanted in the fridge. Then I was on my way, head full of Vee as I followed the familiar streets to the club.
When I got toIllyria, I discovered that Toby had stayed and finished up all the prep work for the bar. Monday nights were relatively quiet, but there would always be a crowd of people to watch the girls perform, so we still needed to be prepared.
As I stood behind the bar polishing glasses, it occurred to me that I had the time to do the inventory again. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t occur to me that something had changed from the time I left this morning after the meeting to now, but these were not ordinary times and something was definitely going on.
I’d made marks on the bottoms of all the bottles and taken screenshots of the inventory spreadsheet with how much was left in each bottle on the shelf as well as the number in the storeroom. Though I’d hoped to find everything exactly as I’d left it, almost all the top shelf bottles had been “swapped” for full bottles from the storeroom. I suspected they’d been refilled with either water or cheaper alcohol, even though a full bottle had been taken from the inventory. At least I had a better idea of how we were losing money on drinks even though the club was full most nights.
I took screenshots of the new spreadsheet tallies with the intension of talking to Olivia about my suspicions, but before I could head to her office, Maria wandered in and plunked herself down at the bar. She was dressed down for the day, which made sense. When she was the MC for the drag show, she appeared as the drag king, Dick Pics, a nod to her pre-transition self. I didn’t know much of Maria’s story, but she had an edge when she wasDick that she didn’t have at other times. Most AMAB trans folk I knew distanced themselves from that part of their identity, but Maria had turned it into comedy and taken power from the way Dick was a character she portrayed, a costume she could take off when she was done with the show.
“What’s new, hot stuff?” she asked as I passed her a bottle of water.
“Nothing much.” I picked up another highball glass and resumed polishing off any spots left from the dishwasher.
“Hm. Not what I heard.” Maria’s smile was lascivious.
“And what does that mean?” I asked even though I knew I shouldn’t engage.
Maria nodded at Toby as he returned from lunch and lifted the bar pass to join me.
“A little bird told me you left with the delectable young Vee in tow.”
I rolled my eyes and turned to Toby. “I suppose you were the little bird.”
Toby didn’t even bother to deny my comment, just gave me a crooked smile and picked up another glass.
“He needed a place to stay,” I said. “Roommates robbed him blind and took off while he was working, leaving him with no way to cover his next month’s rent. I was doing a good deed.”
“Yeah, you’re a boy scout for sure,” Maria said. “Just be careful with him, okay? The boy looks at you like you hung the moon.”
“The boy is definitelyhungup,” Toby agreed.
“Or down,” Maria countered, and the two of them were off with their puns about being hung and well hung and…I mostly tuned them out until they turned their attention to me and wondered if I was hung well enough to satisfy Vee, and if Vee might be suffering from a hangover the next time they saw him.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, but their banter had reminded me of something. I leaned toward the bar and motioned them tocome close. “This doesn’t go any further,” I said. “Vee could get into serious trouble if Mal found out he’d been sleeping in the storeroom for the past several days. That’s why I took him back to my place.”
They both nodded in agreement.
“Our lips are sealed,” Maria said. She started to lean back, but I motioned her to stay close.
