Kiss Me, Straight

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Our friend Marzipan is a formidable woman of extreme appetites and strong emotions. She never dangles merely one boy toy or even two, but usually has a solid dozen beautiful young artists, writers, actors, and other creative or athletic types in her orbit, from which she mixes and matches romantic partners, employees for her many business ventures, and blossoming Talents to nurture. These guys come and go; some in days or weeks, others in months or years, but she seems to have an endless supply, and they are invariably sexy and in her thrall. She loves to cook, loves to eat, loves to drink top-shelf cocktails and decadent wines. Nothing is merely funny when it can be uproarious, nothing ever simply sad; far better to be heartbroken.

She seems to have limitless financial resources, but she works very hard to ensure that her businesses succeed, and her money makes her happiest when she is spending it on others. Most of her businesses are, in fact, designed to help others or enrich the community. In addition to the café‚ and an art gallery in Hayes Valley, she owns and runs a second-hand clothing shop that employs (and donates its profits to) people with multiple sclerosis, and she directs a community theater group with programs specifically aimed at kids and marginalized artists. She even once apparently ran a school, Marzloo Academy, out of her home in Ashbury Heights that emphasized art and language skills for homeless kids, although she has since closed its doors and moved to Pacific Heights.

And while Marzipan flaunts her s****l appetite and wears her heart firmly on her sleeve, she surrounds her physical form with a mystique that few ever penetrate. She is never seen in public without a lavish hat, unless her hair is otherwise tucked up under another of the elaborate head coverings at her disposal, and from just her face it is impossible to discern her age. Her make-up is expertly applied to look absent, and she flashes her radiant smile at the slightest provocation. From her stories about her life, Katie and I guess her age to be between forty-five and sixty, but we could be off by as many as ten years at either end. She is never mistaken for willowy, but everything she wears drapes, surges, and billows around her as to effectively camouflage even the most wayward figure. Between her elegant dinner parties and frequent nights spent at the City’s most impeccable restaurants, she is usually in the throes of ever-more restrictive “diets,” and bemoans at length the sacrifices she makes for her health. We’ve seen her through the grapefruit diet, the Atkins diet, the popcorn diet, the all-garlic diet, the no-garlic diet, and some diets even she hasn’t been able to understand or explain. But whatever her curves, they are obviously in all the right places, because most of the men in her harem are enjoying their s****l peak, and she has them trailing her around like puppies, sometimes literally with their tongues hanging out. I’ve begged her to teach me even just one of her s****l secrets, but she always just laughs me off, saying she doesn’t need the competition.

“Marzipan!” we fairly squealed when she burst through the door to Katie’s shop. Almost everyone called Marzipan, Marzipan. A few of her intimates were allowed the use of the nickname Zip, but it was infrequently applied. Marzipan just didn’t lend herself to nickname-calling, and Marz was strictly forbidden. Nobody even knew if Marzipan was her given name or one she had chosen; either way, she had a certain dignity even in her craziest get up or when hatching her wackiest plan, which seemed to demand the respect of her full name.

She crossed the store in several strides, her feather-trimmed, sunshiny caftan swirling behind her, and I opened the hinged end of Katie’s counter for her to pass through. “Todd!” she gushed, gathering me into a hug. “It’s simply been ages. You look grand, darling, although you might consider a hat.” She fussed with my hair for a minute with a dissatisfied look on her face. “Hello, Katie.” They hugged as well.

Then to me again, “How ever was Paris?”

“Well, it was wonderful, of course.” I replied. “Had sort of a fun layover. Always glad to be home, though. We just ordered food, can you stay?”

“Well, I have a bit of a day planned, but when I saw you ordered for two, Katie, I did hope I could catch you both here. I have a bit of news. And voila, here you are! So I shall stay for a moment. Todd, darling,” she asked, as I was preparing to refill my mug, “would you be a dear and grab some of my tea while you’re over there?”

Marzipan was well known to drink one cup of high-octane coffee in the morning, the approximate color and texture of roofing tar, but never more. Until 5 P.M., when she felt justified in moving on to cocktails and wine, she drank cup after cup of an exclusive Netto Gyokuro green tea which she paid dearly to import from Japan. She usually had a small pouch of leaves up her sleeve, for emergencies, but Katie kept a small ramekin of the tea on hand, which Marzipan ensured was kept fresh. I retrieved this delicate vessel from its place on the shelf and delivered it to the table, then plugged in the electric kettle before pouring coffee for Katie, then myself.

I sat at the table, and Marzipan sat across from me, portioning tea leaves into her dainty cup, but Katie, as usual, remained standing, hip against the counter, one eye on the door.

“So,” I said, not beating around any bushes, “tell me about this new guy.”

“Oh, he’s wonderful!” she gushed. “He came into the café the other day, and we got to talking. He’s an incredible sweetheart, and I think he’s got some talent. So I offered him a job,” she told me. “I want for you to meet him. I think you and he just might hit it off, Todd.”

“Katie mentioned that you might have something like that up your sleeve,” I told her. She flashed the briefest cross expression at Katie for spoiling her big idea. “You’ve never had a man behind the counter that I wouldn’t willingly marry,” I went on, “and you know my taste, so I am sure I would be delighted to meet him.”

“Oh, Chris won’t be counter help,” she said. “He’s my new chef, and I have only the highest hopes.”

And he’s a chef. This keeps sounding better. “But whatever happened to your motto?”

Marzipan flashed another look at Katie, this one slightly guilty. “Which motto is that, darling?”

“‘Never trust a skinny chef,’” I reminded her.

“Todd, those are words to live by. Chris is no one’s vision of skinny. In fact, he’s rather…abundant.” It took her a second to land on the exactly right euphemism, I couldn’t help but notice.

“Abundant?”

“Abundant.” She sipped her tea, not meeting my eye.

“You mean he’s fat?”

“I mean he’s positively a treasure, and the more of him, the better,” she said, without contradicting me.

“But I’m into skinny guys,” I pointed out.

Groans from both Marzipan and Katie. “Todd,” Katie insisted on reminding me, “you’re into unattainable guys. You’re into torturing yourself over straight guys and men who live three continents away.”

It is a particularly prickly thorn in the side of many of my friends, including these two, that I spend much of my free time whining about being single, and yet I seem unable to break free of a counterproductive and irresistible attraction to straight men. I mean, I’ve been out of the closet for years, to all of my friends and my conservative small-town family, and I live in the city known throughout the world as the Center of the Gay Universe. I am more confident in my looks and comfortable in my skin than I was when I was a hunky twenty-two-year old new hire—in an industry, no less, where to even get close to a straight guy, I have to push three or four hot gay guys out of my way. And yet, surrounded by eligible gay men, I throw myself again and again at guys who invariably have to sit me down and explain how they’re flattered, but…

Ignoring Bobby Dutta’s taunts of internalized homophobia and Katie’s diagnosis of a Fear of Intimacy, I prefer to think I just like a challenge. After all, if a man’s worth loving, he must be worth some psychic torment, mustn’t he?

Marzipan arched an expertly-plucked eyebrow at me. “Do you suppose,” she asked, “you might be able to overlook something like your waist size preference if the otherwise-perfect man came along? I think you might really like this guy, Todd. He struck me. He’s handsome, sweet, funny, he’s an excellent cook.”

“And,” Katie chimed in, “unlike the last fifty guys you’ve chased around the world, he’s gay.”

Okay, she did have a point there. The idea of a lean, muscled straight guy renouncing women because he can no longer ignore his smoldering love for me has been my requisite for “Happily Ever After” since I set out after my first straight guy in high school. Traveling the world for a living, I have certainly had my share of one-night stands with straight (and “straight-acting”) guys, a couple of which were fantastically hot. And, at thirty-four, I am decidedly still single. A guy could do a lot worse than the men who usually surround Marzipan.

“You don’t have to become life partners just because I want to introduce you,” Marzipan continued, after I had gone several beats without responding. “I just thought maybe you’d like to sample a new dish from the man buffet that is your life. You can always go back for something else if it doesn’t satisfy.”

A dyed-in-the-wool monogamist, Katie burst out laughing at this description of my dating style. “And it sounds like this Chris guy might be all you can eat!” she cracked, getting into the spirit.

Annoyed, I furrowed my brow at her. “I don’t know,” I said. I purposely tried to sound more reluctant than I was starting to feel, largely to make it clear that Fat has never been a flavor I’ve even been curious to sample.

When the bell over the door rang out, announcing the arrival of our breakfast, I muttered to Marzipan, “If you must set me up with one of your employees, couldn’t it be one of the Hot Twins?”

“They happen to have their hands full striving to please their employer at the moment,” she murmured scandalously, before rising to lift the hinged end of the counter for whichever twin had just arrived with our food.

Like this fat Chris, the twins were relatively new on the Marzipan! scene. Impossibly identical, and so strikingly beautiful that it strained the eyes to look at them directly, Katie and I only ever called them the Hot Twins. Our original plan had been to conjure up the new guy, but as we were basically mid-sentence talking about my reasons (excuses?) for not wanting to date him, I was more relieved than disappointed to see someone familiar pushing through the front door. Besides, we have found that breakfast often tastes better when served by one of these delicious sibs.

There was much hubbub and several “thank you, darling”s from Marzipan while we cleared a spot on the table for Hot Twin A (or B) to set down our food.

“Put it on Katie’s tab, would you please?” I directed him, slipping him a five dollar tip. He looked at Katie, who rolled her eyes as confirmation that she would buy, then he headed back across the street as we all called out a final “Thank you!”

Katie opened the lid of the top container and slid it across the table to me. I got up for one more cup of coffee, refilling Katie’s mug and adding more water to Marzipan’s tea cup before I sat down to dig in.

“Well,” Katie observed, swatting my hand away as I plucked a morsel of bleu cheese out of her salad, “we’ll need a new plan to meet this Chris.”

“Not that it isn’t always a pleasure to see one of the Hot Twins,” I added.

Marzipan cleared her throat. “Actually, darlings,” she said, “I shouldn’t worry too much about devising a clever plan. For one thing, he’ll be at Marzipan! at dinnertime tonight. And for another…” She was wearing her best cat-who-swallowed-the-canary face, although, swathed as she was in yellow from head to toe, the effect was rather more the opposite. “I think you’ll be seeing a lot of him in the upcoming weeks.”

“Do you?” Katie and I asked together, intrigued by her delivery of this prediction.

“Well, I said I have news, didn’t I?”

“Actually, you did,” Katie remembered. I, of course, had been sidetracked by all the talk of men and dating, and had assumed that her “news” had been that she wanted to set me up on a blind date with a fatso.

“Chris isn’t just a wonderful cook,” Marzipan went on. “He’s also something of a writer.”

“Oh?” Just to show I was listening.

“He is. And he has written a positively electric play, which I want to put on at the playhouse this fall! He’s brought me the script today, and I’m hoping to start auditions quite soon.”

“Really?!” This from Katie.

“It’s a musical,” Marzipan announced.

“A musical?” I hoped I was keeping at least most of the incredulity out of my voice.

“A fabulous musical, which I know will take the gay community in this town by storm and hopefully be our holiday offering this season.”

This pronouncement definitely got Katie’s attention. “A ‘fabulous musical’?” she repeated. “Oh, goody!”

As chief costume designer and seamstress at the Zipper Theater, Katie got to have the most fun when words like fabulous, musical, and gay could be applied to a production. The playhouse had just finished a run of Sartre’s No Exit, which had been brilliantly acted but drably costumed, and I could see visions of sequins dancing in Katie’s head.

“See, it’s based on Judy Garland’s life story, but set in the Old West,” Marzipan began.

“Gee, that doesn’t sound gay,” I cracked.

She ignored this incisive interruption. “It’s called ‘Judy Get Your Gun!’—do you love it? Of course I was on board the second I heard the title!” She appeared quite carried away with the idea, and fixed me and Katie with a look that indicated we should adopt a similarly positive attitude for at least the duration of the discussion. We tried to look as game as possible, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes, as she elaborated.

“Apparently Chris is a huge Hollywood buff.”

“‘Huge,’ she said. He is fat!” I lamented.

Ignoring me again, “and he loves old movies, especially old black and white comedies (I told you you have things in common)”—this as an aside to me—“and I guess he’s had a thing for Judy Garland since the very first time he saw The Wizard of Oz, and his favorite movie is A Star is Born.”

I nodded skeptically. “Where does the Old West factor in?”

“Well, so, one night a couple of years ago he sees this special on Judy on public television, and he discovers that she was originally signed to do the film version of Annie Get Your Gun. Apparently they filmed two musical numbers and everything before she was asked to leave the film. He says they show her singing and she’s a million times better than Betty Hutton, and he says he had had a few scotches that night, and this idea just started ‘clunking around’ in his head.”

“And he already has a script?” Katie asked, having apparently decided a mildly incredulous expression was going to be the most neutral she was able to muster.

“Songs, too.” Marzipan gushed. “Well, lyrics. He wrote new lyrics for some of the original songs from Annie Get Your Gun, and then a few original songs he needs help with.”

Katie and I knew exactly how great an obstacle a songwriter would present to a producer in Marzipan’s position. If she didn’t already have a talented young songwriter in the most current edition of her Rolodex, she could rustle up half a dozen by the weekend, all of them looking like finalists in the most recent Talented Young Songwriters Beauty Pageant.

“I have a rendezvous planned this very evening with a young musical talent I know,” she went on, reading our shared thoughts, “and I am most anxious to hear what he thinks of the idea. I happen to know he’s looking for a project, and I’ve been wanting to use him around the theater. I’ve been looking for a way to get him out there. This could be perfect!”

“How exciting,” I declared.

“Do we know this ‘young talent?’” Katie inquired.

“Not yet,” Marzipan replied, “but you will.” The sly wink indicated that song writing was not the only talent the young man had shared with her.

Having imparted this news, Marzipan abruptly stood. “Well, now, I just wanted to share that with you. I have a day to get on with. Katie, I wanted you to know that I had a project a-brewing, and I think this one will be quite a treat for you to design!”

“It certainly sounds that way,” she enthused.

“And Todd, I insist that you at least meet Chris with an open mind.”

“Or as near as you can get to one,” Katie muttered, taking her millionth career dig at my famous inflexibility when it comes to men.

“At least drop in for dinner one night soon and say hello. I know you’ll at least be friends, and he will be a part of our little circle if we go forward with this project of ours.”

“If he cooks as well as all that,” I conceded, “I could at least give him the chance to make me dinner.”

“That’s the spirit,” Marzipan crowed.

Katie snorted sardonically. “Yeah, what a sport.”

“Katie, I’ll come back in a few days and we’ll talk costumes. Was a thrill to see you both. Todd, please at least change into a clean shirt if you come across the street. Cheery bye!”

With which closer she disappeared out the door, riding the same yellow funnel cloud that she had ridden into the store only twenty minutes before. Because she seldom lingered, a sudden eye-of-the-hurricane calm often came over a room after Marzipan’s departure. When she decided to vacate the premises, she did so without ado.

Katie and I resumed our places at the table, taking comforting sips from our mugs as we tried to gather our thoughts, so that we might mock the idea of a Judy Garland-inspired western musical in the least uncharitable manner possible.

“Wow,” said Katie.

“Yeah, wow.”

“I’d better order up some suede fringe,” Katie realized. “Judy Garland’s life in the Old West…I see lots of sparkly suede fringe.”

“These reviews I’ve gotta see,” I groaned, keeping as much unkindness out of my voice as possible.