The Chase Ends

Chasing Austin - Part III

It’s just after midnight and the amateur strip contest is finally underway.

The first guy looks like Ben Foster with half-inch spaces between each tooth, and he’s dressed the way I assume someone from the Mid-West dresses. Persana Shoulders stands to his left in a red, sequined pillbox hat with a long peacock feather sticking out from the top and six-inch eyelashes — looking at him the way I look at Taco Bell. Fulfilling her role as the Effie Trinket of the New Orleans gay club circuit, Persana leads him by the hand to the front of the stage where she slaps him on the ass and commands him to dance. The music roars and he immediately wrenches his faded t-shirt over his head and chucks it onto the floor before tearing at his belt buckle. Then he lunges from foot to foot, grinning and bouncing, while the rest of us stare with our mouths open. He suddenly stomps his legs together and pulls his carpenter pants to his ankles. When he stands upright again, one of his balls pops out from around the band of his Hanes briefs and jiggles like car keys on one of those elastic, coiled key chains. I almost drop my drink in shock and John doubles at the waist in hysterical laughter, quickly snapping back up to finish the Vine video he’s been filming. Oblivious, the guy throws himself around the runway like one of those little kids you see at wedding receptions. Then, his song ends and everyone is disappointed. Persana relegates him to the upper platform where he will stand and wait while his competitors take the runway. He is followed by a professional go-go boy, a middle-aged Brazilian man, a barely legal black boy who clearly performs in drag based on his posing skills, a heterosexual construction worker, and a twink with the same haircut and facial composition as Julia Roberts in Hook, who I refer to as Twinkerbell for the rest of the night.

Persana introduces and fondles them, and they dance terribly, except for the go-go dancer and the out-of-drag black boy who are each bringing it, respectively. John and I leave before a winner is crowned — walking across the street to The Pub where we will sit for hours, together captivated by clips of musical performances edited together from famous movies and TV shows including: The Sound of Music, Glee, Beauty and the Beast, The Wiz, Chicago, Smash, Dreamgirls, Grey’s Anatomy, Cabaret, The Brady Bunch Movie, Behind the Candelabra, Rent, and Pitch Perfect. John returned home from his scouting trip to New York yesterday, which means it’s been 12 days since we left Austin. And speaking for both of us, what we're chasing has changed considerably.

In New York, John would FaceTime me throughout the day to show off rooftop views of Hell’s Kitchen or to consult on which shirt he should buy off the sale rack at H&M. He was on a seven-day mission to secure a job, or at least con his way into an interview before moving there permanently in August. I’d be sitting at my desk when my phone would ring and he’d appear on the bow of a ferry ripping across the Hudson River. We’d chat, hang up, and then text one another about what we were doing later that night. He would be headed to some party in Brooklyn and I would go over to that guy with the foot fetish’s house to cringe and maybe ejaculate somewhere. Later, I’d wipe my stomach with a damp washcloth and think, adventure is where you make it, I guess.

Even then, Austin seemed far-removed and trivial. I needed to finish writing the story for my blog, but so much had happened since, and I just wanted to write about other things. This guy I used to date sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn and I’m severely conflicted about how to handle it. Also, I recently had sex with a guy who demanded I call him “daddy” in bed, but who is only nine months older than me, which didn’t seem logical or fair in my opinion. The Austin experience spins away from me — no longer something from which I can draw lyrical prose about transformation and transcendence. Life is happening right now, and other things are molding me, and my best friend is leaving, and I’ll be fine, and I’ll go to Austin again, and I’ll see rooftop views of Hell’s Kitchen for myself. I’ll chase guys, and I’ll chase different versions of myself, and I’ll chase dreams of my own. And not every story will end neatly, or teach a lesson, or have a hero.

The guy on the bar stool next to me is rubbing my elbow with his and asking me what I do. I pretend like he's not there because he might not actually be there. On the TV screens above us, “Take Me Or Leave Me” from Rent is playing out. John turns to me and asks, “Do you think it would be funny to make shirts that say AIDS SHMAIDS?”

“What?!” I yell over the music. “H. Maids?”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s funny, right?”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “What does the H. stand for? The name of the show is Devious Maids. Wouldn’t the shirt say D. Maids?”

“What?!” he says, “What the fuck is DEEM AIDS?”

“I can’t fucking hear you,” I say.

He shrugs and we both shotgun whatever’s in our plastic cups before dismounting our bar stools and leaving through the front door and into the sticky, Bourbon Street ether. On Royal, we find my Fiesta right where we left her. I take us down Canal and then to Tchoupitoulas before ascending the Crescent City Connection towards home. I flip my visor open to look at myself in the mirror and a cream-colored envelope floats down onto my lap. Inside the envelope is the card I bought at Whole Foods on the last morning in Austin. John was asleep and I snuck out to buy our hosts a bottle of wine, and while I was there, I bought a card with a black and white photograph of Hippie Hollow on the front and a blank interior. I didn't write a long, maudlin message in the card, just something short that'll make him cry. I meant to give it to him before he left the first time, but I'd forgotten. I stick it back into the visor and remind myself to give it to him before he leaves again. 

In the passenger’s seat, he’s snoring, and I’m lost in a river of memories that stretches across Texas and Louisiana before carving its way up the East Coast and emptying into the Hudson River.