Note For Rent

Retroactive Perjury and Dancing On Platforms

I'm so full of different accents, so used to being confounded by local common sense, and being rushed over by languages I have no grounding in, that being close to home is a bit bewildering. I've been feeling a little strange, and not so at home with being home. Or at least I didn't, so I've left for a little while, to break up the return, and re-plant myself as a national. Home again, home again....

Some people are very happy to hear that I've decided to return to school this September; others almost maniacally so. I know that these are supportive responses, but really, come on, it's not like I haven't been doing anything with myself -- world travel is, far as I'm concerned, a grand endeavor, and one that few people really tackle on a significant scale. Pity that I'm unable to really publicly catalogue the skill sets that I've managed to tuck under my rather notched belt over this past year or so.

And now I get to contend with the fact that there are large portions of my life away that will never be shared with the people I love in my more regular life. The compartmentalization that many of my whoring peers have had to deal with--I had designed my immediate life to be exempt from that, while I was at it, and besides the flatmate and a few cordial acquaintances, I didn't really have to keep much secret from that many people. Besides lies of omission, I was relatively free of deliberate falsehoods. Now that I'm home, and out for drinks with old friends--folk that know me quite well indeed--I'm very conscious of the large blanks I have to insert to tell tales of my adventures, and the deliberate misdirection I sometimes have to employ.

Mind you, I'm also debt free, even after all my escapades, so I can't really complain.

In the meantime, killing time before I get back to the business of learning (and how I do love the mnemonic tricks and terrors involved with stuffing my head full of information), I'm back to go-going my bank account back into a respectable health. Shaking my money maker, as it were. I've forgotten how frightfully amusing it can be, surrounded by drunk, horny men, and the absurd things they try and get away with. Now, we're all aware that my boundaries are pretty broad, but things do come at a price, and statements like, "I'll give you sixty to come home with me right now," are frankly ludicrous. Bless them, though, and their fumble-y, slurry ways. At least they try.

In other news, I had sex with a small, pretty, bespectacled geek a few days ago, and I realized, with a bit of a shock, that it had been almost two months since I had had sex with anyone at all.

Horrifying, no?

Satisfaction, Part 4

Friends, Family, Strangers and the Fuzz

During small talk, like say, to the person next to you on the plane, what do you say your job is?

That answer usually depends on how creative I’m feeling at the time. Lately, I’m a trust-fund brat traveling to avoid commitment to the family or grad school. In the past I’ve relied on previous jobs to make me seem like an upstanding member of society, but I’ve most often played it safe and said I’m part of the service industry.

Do you pay your taxes?

I haven’t done my taxes in years, mostly because I’m lazy. However, I am set up to do them, should I ever be asked -- or threatened with an audit. I have a registered business number (that’s right, I’m incorporated), and an accountant who has experience getting money down on paper, in the smallest denominations conceivably plausible, mostly for ladies of the trade. He was slightly amused to meet me.

Are there any naked pictures of you floating around the Internet?

As of about a month ago, yes. All are decapitated or faceless, though.

Do your parents know what you do?  If not, what have you told them?

No. Although, I think they sometimes suspect that I’m up to something shady -- but they’re probably more inclined to suppose that it’s drug related. I usually tell them that I’m bartending or some-such menial, beneath my potential kind of thing.

Has anyone from your past (eg friends from high school, distant relatives) accidentally found out?

I have no friends from high school, so I don’t much worry about anyone from that era knowing anything about me at all. As for distant relatives, I couldn’t say, but I would be surprised if any of them had. I haven’t told my friends back home what I’m up to, either. They knew about the stripping, but haven’t been informed of anything beyond that. I’ll probably break it to them when I get back, but until then would prefer them not to worry.

Don't you have to worry about getting busted, or have I been watching too many police shows on TV?

I worry about running into unmanageable clients more than getting busted, but a healthy amount of caution makes either unlikely.

Water Sports

Another working boy and I attended a pool party. Our first concern was that we wouldn't be the most attractive in attendance; our second was that, since we only had a passing aquantince with the host, we might run into someone that had hired one of us. (This is one of the main problems with the gay community: it is small, and not quite as tight-lipped about The Sex.)

After arriving at the complex, elevating to the appropriate floor, storing our beverages and changing into our cheeky swimwear, we made our entrance and assessed the crowd. A quick scan assured us that our primary worry was unfounded, and I was feeling pretty good about the second when my companion stiffened beside me.

"That little Greek man," he said.

Not one of mine, one of his.

"Wanna jump in the pool and make out?" I asked.

A Difficult Matter

He came up to me so quickly, I took a step back on the platform.

"You're going to think I'm terrible, but I can't remember your name."

I looked at him: at the five o'clock shadow, ice-blue eyes, his smile, and I placed him locally, but I couldn't remember quickly enough how I knew him; or, why he was being quite so friendly and cute. Slept with? No. Work with? (There are a number of boys in the Confederacy who are only occasional appearances.) No.

Worse than that -- because of that -- I couldn't think of what name he knew me by. Without context, it could be any one of three. (I have three regular monikers, you see: the Work Name, the Fake-Real Name, and my Actual Name. Their uses are not, as their titles might suggest, always situationally appropriate; sometimes I bring out the non-Actual names for the purposes of distraction, or in the hopes that I'll never speak to certain individuals ever again.) After a strangled moment where I almost stuttered, I took a chance, and Actualised my choice.

"Oh, that's right!"

"I'm just as bad, I've forgotten yours as well."

"I don't feel so terrible anymore, then." He told me his, and it came back in a flood: how I met him at the wee hours at a new acquaintance's house, and what we talked about. I remembered where he was from, and that he has a boyfriend, and that as of last weekend, it's unlikely that I'll continue to be considered a friend of his flatmate. Oops.

"I'd give you a hug," he said, "but I'm all sweaty."

"Ditto."

"Gym, too hunh? When did you join?"

"Shortly after I moved here."

Cool. It's how I come across when I'm surprised. I don't mean to be thus, but making the leap -- internal to external -- takes a bit of energy for me, if I haven't steeled myself to make the effort. I was just out of the gym. I was laden with groceries. I had been humming, for God's sake. Plus, I had been woefully confused for a good fifteen seconds. Without a name to readily share with him, I must have looked off-put, maybe sour. I couldn't determine if he was feeling the cold shoulder that I'd unintentionally presented.

This is why people sometimes say they're intimidated by you.

I don't remember what other little conversation passed between us, but I remember how it ended.

Me: "Is this how I get to [where I'm going]?"

"Not unless you're going North. If you're going South, you want to be over there."

"Thanks."

And he gave me a hug anyway.