Love Has Reasons

Chapter 3: Danny-1

Chapter 3: Danny

What did he have to lose? It was just dinner, and a guy’s gotta eat. And probably a couple glasses of wine, which he was gonna drink anyway. He hadn’t actually agreed to marry anybody, although he had readily agreed when Monica suggested Candelaria as the venue. He’d been dying to try the stylish new outdoor eatery that all but abutted the Cathedral at the east end of the Plaza. He’d noticed the appealing twinkle of their patio on more than one evening stroll home from the office, and he’d heard great things about the food. He’d called, but hadn’t talked to Ashok for more than a few minutes—he’d been about to go to a movie or something; “getting ready for a show,” he’d said. They’d hammered out a Thursday evening meeting at Danny’s suggested six o’clock, an early enough hour to be casual; they weren’t necessarily committing to the entire night if there wasn’t any chemistry, but late enough to open up an evening’s worth of after-dinner activities if there was.

Nestled just at the base of the hill, the restaurant was practically the midpoint between his work and his house, so Danny planned ahead. The snazzy gray suit he’d worn to Thursday morning’s deposition would have been appropriate for the after work hour, but he didn’t imagine that the grown son of a career legal secretary would be impressed by stiff and lawyerly. The firm’s main building had a bare-bones gym in the basement, the locker room of which had long been Danny’s bathroom away from home. He frequently biked to work, and the locker he ostensibly shared with Schwartz was well stocked with necessaries. He showered, shaved, massaged on a department store après-rasage. He slid into his ass-huggingest jeans and his favorite green V-neck t-shirt, the one that highlighted the heft of his chest and the slightest bulge of his biceps while completely glossing over the bump of his belly. He always opted for flip flops if there wasn’t snow on the ground, but he zipped into a light hoodie before he lit out for the short walk across town.

He’d long since given up noticing any but the most craven gawking—he’d been six-ten since high school, and you play the hand you’re dealt—but he knew his size was a novelty to passersby, and on a night like this, as long as they were going to be looking, he made an effort to give them something to look at. His hair was shiny and close-shorn, he smelled great, and he smiled when all heads turned as he made his way up the stone path between Candelaria and the Cathedral, lest Ashok’s be among them.

“Well, hello,” said the little black dress at the hostess stand.

“Hiya,” Danny said.

“For dinner?”

“Yes. I’m meeting someone.”

“It’s someone’s lucky night,” the hostess said.

“Hopefully mine,” Danny said. Pink rose to the hostess’s cheeks, and he threw her a wink. He’d never been straight, of course, but he had been married, and he knew how to flirt his way to a free piece of pie or the best table in the house.

“Play your cards right…” said a voice at Danny’s elbow. He turned around and failed utterly to suppress the prizewinner’s grin that sprang to his lips.

“Are you Ashok?” he asked.

“That depends,” said the most gorgeous thing ever to squeeze into a size Medium black t-shirt. “Are you Danny? Cuz if you’re not Danny, and you’re waiting for someone who’s not named Ashok, I’m that person. William? Or Stephanie? Whatever it takes.”

Danny’s grin grew. “No, I’m Danny. Appreciate the can-do attitude, though,” he said. “I like a man who can roll with the punches.”

They shook hands and allowed just a moment for a frank and open appraisal. When their eyes met, both men smiled.

“My mom said you were tall,” said Ashok, neck slightly craned.

“What an eye for detail,” the hostess piped up. “Shall I show you to your table?”

They followed her through the jewel-toned sunset air across the patio to a small table under a large tree, close to the awning-covered bar but tucked intimately away from most of the other tables. Danny had stood chivalrously aside to allow Ashok to follow first, the better to cop a quick rear view of the small, ripe melons that bounced around the seat of his snug pants. His hips were narrow, but the moon was definitely full, and Danny did not doubt that without the total eclipse of his pants, gazing directly upon it could lead to trouble.

Danny didn’t have anybody’s jungle fever fetish for dark-skinned boys, mind you, but nor had he ever kicked one out of bed for eating crackers. Monica’s skin tone was a dusky olive, and Danny didn’t remember her husband as being especially exotic, but the most recent of the babies they had made was a burnished beauty indeed. If his tone put Danny in mind of a strong and fragrant tea, it was largely because he wanted to skip the cocktails and the meal, and cut straight to the portion of the evening’s program where he could curl up on his sprawling sectional sofa and drink up his deliciousness. His midnight hair shone purple, the occasional stray gray highlighting the crest of a wave like moonlight flitting across a tropical sea. His tummy was snug and flat, and the plank of his body was narrow and tight, but his lats dutifully flared into a champagne flute silhouette. He was lean, muscled, and smooth, a physique that had clearly not been cultivated on the couch or behind a desk.

“Your mom said you were handsome,” Danny said once they had settled around the table, at ten and two, like maybe the hostess was a driver’s ed instructor by day.

Ashok flashed a facetious grin. “Top of her class in Mom School,” he said.

Danny chuckled, but shored up his observation. “I don’t know,” he said, “your mom doesn’t seem real big on the gratuitous compliment. If you were goofy-lookin’, she probably would have said so.”

“A fine saleswoman that would make her,” Ashok said.

“Don’t worry,” Danny said. “You don’t exactly look like the Clearance Rack.”

Ashok laughed. “You old honey dripper. What are you, a poet in your spare time?”

“You recognize my work?” Danny teased.

“It stands out,” Ashok said.

A willowy, bearded hipster sidled up to their table with a paper cone of bread sticks and a non-committal “Good evening, gentlemen.” Water glasses were filled, generic restaurant formalities dispensed with, and shortly wine was procured. They had agreed on sweet and white to suit the gold-imbued sunset hour, and locked eyes when they raised their glasses.

“To all the goofy-lookin’ sons in the world,” Danny said. “May their mothers find homes for them.”

“To the Clearance Rack,” Ashok riposted. They clinked, held eyes for a beat, then smiled as they sipped. “I could drink that,” Ashok said as he set his glass back on the table.

My thoughts exactly, Danny leered inwardly, revisiting his tea theme.

“I’m not always a blind date guy,” Ashok said. “The guys my mom digs up, I wonder how she ever found herself a husband.” He smiled. “But this evening holds promise. I’ve seen you around, right?”

A line Danny invariably heard from any local guy who’d ever been to a gay bar or Santa Fe’s tiny Pride celebration. It wasn’t a big city, and he was the tallest faggot in town by at least six inches—he was nobody’s celebrity, but if you were gay and on any kind of prowl, you’d probably at least noticed him.

“I mean, my club kid days are over,” he joked, “but I go out a little bit.”

“Did a lot of clubbing when you were in law school, did you?” Ashok asked.

“Well, maybe my club kid days are ahead of me, then,” Danny said. Ashok laughed. “What about you? You go out a lot?”

Ashok shrugged. “Little bit,” he said. “More than I did five years ago, less than I did ten…”

“Where were you going ten years ago?” Danny asked. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.” Ashok laughed. “You should have seen my fake ID. I found it behind the grocery store, some redheaded guy, he was like thirty-one. Any doorman had ever even glanced at it, he’da called the cops. Thank God for these eyelashes,” he said, setting them abat.

Danny made a man-in-windstorm grimace and pretended to rearrange his crew-cut hair. “Any doorman would be powerless to resist,” he agreed.

Breadsticks and banter ensued. The bearded hipster waiter took and then delivered their order, starting with a round of Nouvelle-Mexiqueaine appetizers like chile relleno wontons and jalapeno hummus with sopaipilla chips. As the sun sank behind the hill, paper covered electric votives sputtered to life around the patio. A wisp of a busboy materialized beside their table to set a flickering candle in the middle of it, and a nearly circular man with a guitar and a wooden flute began picking his way through the 1970s American Songbook under another large tree across the way. The lightest breeze lifted and teased Ashok’s shimmering hair, both cooling the evening and inflaming Danny’s attraction, which neither sputtered nor flickered, but rather gleamed so bright he worried it might shine out his ears.

Dinner was light, spicy, and delicious, although plates were only picked at intermittently. Ashok invited Danny to sample everything on his plate, following each first bite with, “Mmm, you should try this.” He held Danny’s eyes with each offering in such a way that Danny felt he was tasting Ashok. Crispy, saucy, tender, spicy—every flavor that visibly excited Ashok was shortly in Danny’s mouth, an unexpected and titillating intimacy. Sitting naked at the table, Ashok would obviously have exposed more of himself to the world, but less of himself to Danny than he did by sharing this elemental pleasure. “I like spicy food,” any old body could say on first date, garnering, at the most, a polite, “Me, too.” Here, I want you to feel this burst in your mouth the way it just did in mine established a sensual and private connection in a public arena in a way that made it difficult for Danny to sit still.

Ashok had a mischievous, pleasant face and a disciplined, appealing body; he smelled of clean-cut, hard-working man; his voice was light and lilting, his unselfconsciously queeny inflection revealing a manly confidence. He looked good, he smelled good, he sounded good, and anybody who passed by could easily observe and appreciate these admittedly charming qualities. But, without sweaty balls or oniony armpits, without using his feet or his tongue or the salt on the back of his neck, without so much as lifting his shirt or dimming the lights, he let Danny in on a secret. Sitting here listening to the guitar and flute version of “Rocket Man,” he might not know exactly what Ashok would feel like in his mouth, but he knew what Ashok’s world tasted like, and, like a dog escaped from Pavlov Labs, Inc., he’d begun to salivate over the mere fact of Ashok across the table.

“Your mom says you work for the city?” Danny asked, groping for casual conversation.

“I do.” Ashok nodded, chasing a spoonful of peppery polenta with a swallow of wine.

“In like ‘resource management’ or something like that?” Danny said, trying to pinpoint a department he remembered never having heard of when Monica floated it.

Ashok laughed. “Is that what she’s calling it these days?” he asked. He rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna run that by my boss, it’s much more glamorous. I’m a ‘Municipal Waste Management Partner.’”

“What, like some kind of consultant? What does a ‘Waste Management Partner’ do?”

“He rides around town and empties trash cans into a big truck,” Ashok said. “I’m a garbage man.”

Danny laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know that, or I wouldn’t have made it sound like your mom tried to glamorize it.”

“She tries hard to glamorize it,” Ashok assured him. “Believe me, I know that. Just seeing me in the kitchen in the morning makes her uncomfortable, like who might be watching? ‘Must you insist on wearing those same coveralls to breakfast every morning?’ Cuz me grabbing a bowl of cereal and a banana is such a champagne brunch.”

“It’s one of the things we love about your mom, Schwartz and I,” Danny said. “She will keep up appearances. She knows how to make a guy sound like a big deal. Representing our office, that’s a great quality.”

“Yeah, well, hassling me in the morning, it’s not one of my faves. But whatever. I’ve been with the city for seven years. It’s pretty good money, we’re outside all day, and I work with my best friend. We do our own thing and we get weekends off. I didn’t go to college or anything. I don’t know what she thinks all my better options are. Most of the guys I know that did go to college are working in retail or waiting tables, and I’m here to tell you, this is a way better gig.”

Danny was at a loss for a comment that didn’t sound condescending. I don’t mind that you’re a garbage man would have embarrassed him more than Ashok, even if it was true. He didn’t mind, but of course he knew it wasn’t up to him to “mind,” or otherwise pass an opinion. He was a lawyer, for Heaven’s sake—like maybe there weren’t jokes about that? Like maybe people didn’t form baseless opinions about him because of what he did for a living? He felt like the fact that he had ratted Monica out for trying to camouflage Ashok’s chosen career mandated that he say something at least kind of supportive, though. So he said, “And you smell pretty good for a garbage man,” with a wink.

“There’s that poetry again,” Ashok said.

When the bill arrived, Ashok had his wallet on the table, but Danny handed the waiter his credit card without even opening the little leatherette folder; he couldn’t conceive of a number that would have been higher than he was willing to pay for the pleasure of having Ashok at his table.