Husband Hunters

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

Matt watched Cody go with something akin to longing. Why couldn’t he just come out and tell his best friend he was in love with him? Oh, he had tried, in dozens of different ways on dozens of different occasions. But throwing your arms around a buddy when you were shitfaced in some bar and proclaiming almost tearfully, “I love you, man!” was rightfully viewed as the liquor talking. It was the kind of pronouncement that took its cue from a beer commercial.

Matt’s little acts of kindness—bringing Cody homemade chicken soup when he had the flu, buying him a copy of Armistead Maupin’s latest Tales of the City stories just because, calling him up late one night to share, over the phone, Barbra Streisand singing, “Some Other Time”—all were appreciated but never really viewed as acts of true love. At least not by Cody.

Matt chuckled. The Streisand over the phone was a gay moment if there ever was one. But Matt had just discovered the song, and it was so beautiful and plaintive that he could think of no one else he wanted to share it with. So he had wakened Cody from sleep after midnight one school night and played the song for him. He remembered Cody had been mad until he listened to Babs singing those lyrics that reached right in and clutched at your heart, the loss barely contained within them. By the time she was finished singing, Cody wasn’t mad anymore, and he had thanked Matt for sharing the song with him.

Matt still had the album, Love is the Answer. He had planned on giving it to Cody as a surprise. He remembered he had brought it to school the Monday after the weekend he had bought the CD. But then Cody had come into school that day all excited about yet another guy he had met and how this one was “different” from all the other men who had disappointed him in the past. “He’s really cool, you know. We have a lot of the same interests. And the s*x was great! Oh, man! Even better, the guy made me laugh. We’re going out on a real date this Friday. He’s taking me to Sky City,” Cody had told him, referring to the rotating restaurant at the top of the Space Needle.

Matt had held the CD in his hand as he listened to his friend that Monday morning in the teacher’s lounge. As Cody spoke with more and more infatuation and euphoria, Matt felt more and more sheepish at having bought the CD. When Cody had finally stopped waxing rhapsodic about this new guy, whose name was Nate, he’d glanced down at the CD in Matt’s hand. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Nothin’,” Matt had responded, stuffing the CD back in his backpack.

Now he recalled how Babs sang about “too many words unspoken.” He shook his head.

Cody was already gone, and Matt scanned the room, looking for someone else he might like to connect with, someone else to get hot for.

But there was no one. No, the man he was hot for, the one he wanted, had left the ballroom a few minutes ago. Matt sat back down with a sigh and stretched out his legs again, crossing them at the ankle. He folded his arms across his chest.

It was silly, really. He should just let go of his fantasy about Cody, about which Cody himself was clueless. For one thing, Matt thought, like Wayne and Garth in the old Saturday Night Live skit, he was not worthy of Cody. The guy was clearly out of his league, and Matt knew he should accept that and move on, find someone more on his own level—nerdy and quirky. Fun to be around. A guy you could bring home to Mother.

Cody was hot. Matt had no trouble picturing him in nothing but a pair of Calvin Klein’s on a Times Square billboard. Yes, it was not out of the question. And the best part was, Cody didn’t even know it. He was gorgeous and humble too, which was, to Matt’s mind, one of the most winning of combinations.

And even if Matt wasn’t drop-dead handsome, there was something between the two of them that Matt had seldom found. He wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was just an easy familiarity, a sense that he didn’t have to hide who he was when he was around Cody. He could simply be himself, and Cody seemed to value everything about him, his flaws as well as his virtues. When he was with Cody, he was home.

He asked himself once again why he had dragged Cody along to this audition, tryout, whatever the hell it was. It would seem to work against everything Matt dreamed of. Matt had come up with some crazy schemes in their time together as friends, but this had to be one of the weirdest.

It was almost self-destructive. He was leading the man he was in love with away from him instead of toward him.

And maybe that was the point.

Matt needed to get over Cody and keep their relationship fixed firmly where it belonged; they were friends and nothing more. Matt knew Cody didn’t have feelings for him, not those kinds, anyway. Cody loved him, sure, but like a brother. Like a best pal. It was to Matt that Cody always ran when yet another guy stung his heart, when he stood Cody up or failed to call. And Matt, ever dutiful, would always do his best to boost Cody’s confidence, telling him he could have anyone.

What he most feared saying, though, was that anyone meant Matt.

He was certain Cody would just laugh. Not because he was cruel, but because the idea was absurd. Men like Cody did not end up with guys like Matt.

It was that simple.

And maybe that was the reason Matt had insisted on coming here today. Maybe if Cody did find the man of his dreams, Matt could finally let go. He needed to move on, find his own man, one who was appropriate for him.

Maybe Husband Hunters would provide the right man for both of them. The show could kill two birds with one stone.

Why did the idea make him so sad?