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We Regret to Inform You | Lamb ♣ 01
Crushing
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I’ve got to hand it to Lamb: the one time he went after a guy, he went all in. His courage that one time must have been a beginner’s faith because it was not long after we made a pact to come out for real in the spring of our sophomore year. Up until that point, we were only out to each other, but it was actually Lamb who suggested we make it official after we both moved out of the dorms, him at Cal and me at USC.
It was the summer I came up to visit and Lamb had been going to this little 18+ gay club called The Mix on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, where he met Fugie, that same trip when Fugie gave me that cockamamie story about being recruited by the Psychic fucking Institute of New Mexico when he was a kid.
Lamb’s friend Lindsey introduced him to The Mix and this extended group of Cal queens through this lesbian chick named Daria she met in one of her classes—they started hanging out and then invited Lamb to go out one Saturday night. Anyway, Fugie was friends with Daria, and between them they knew everyone.
This was around the time that Lamb started dying his hair crazy colors, and had a real, proper mohawk. Six-foot-six, and another nine inches to the tips of his spikes, he was too much for any of those baby queers to handle, and since he was still his shy, brooding self—a sort of morbid limbo after the explosion during our senior year at Wolcott—there was a lot of “look but don’t touch” going on when he first arrived on the arm of a straight girl. Everyone was friendly, but no one knew what to do with him.
“His name is Arthur.” That was the message Lamb left me one day on my answering machine. Nothing else, but I knew him and his little crushes well enough to guess that he was smitten, and I called him back that evening after classes for the scoop.
It was one of those beauty from afar situations: Lamb had seen this guy at The Mix a couple times that summer, and it turned out they had a class together in the fall—Econ 1, one of those big breadth courses that Lamb kept missing because there was always a waiting list jammed with business and econ majors who needed to get it out of the way before they took any other classes. Apparently, it took a month or two for Lamb to spot Arthur among the 800 other students in Zellerbach Auditorium not only because of the size of the class, but also because Arthur had a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde persona, on and off campus.
Arthur was without a doubt one the prettiest boy I ever laid eyes on, even when he was just slouching around Telegraph and hanging upstairs at Cafe Milano with Lamb and friends. He had this incredibly smoldering look about him, with perfect Latin skin and thick dark hair he wore long and messy, like one of the Lost Boys from the movie—we probably watched that a hundred times. In the bright light of day, Arthur was not super flamboyant—he was smart, and he seemed serious about getting good grades and stuff.
But out at the clubs? I had never met a guy who wore full-on makeup, like mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow, lipstick—other than drag queens of course—but when Arthur wore makeup he was devastating. Not a full face like foundation and all that, and maybe it was more of a tinted lip gloss than lipstick? I don’t know, that’s never been my thing, but Jesus, you never saw such a sultry spectacle when he was On.
I think that’s what caught Lamb’s attention from the get-go: while every other queen was trying to butch it up and blend in with the other clones, Arthur was G.L.A.M.—Dionysos incarnate. I totally get why Lamb fell for him, hard.
It was a slow burn at first because Arthur had an on again/off again boyfriend—they were off when Lamb was first introduced, and he was completely mesmerized until he finally laid eyes on Craig, the little gym bunny Arthur was screwing. Lamb couldn’t be more different. Was Craig even five feet tall? He was a pocket gay, for sure—Arthur himself was about six feet, and Lamb fretted that if he liked throwing a half pint around, then his doughy six feet six was probably not on the menu.
As Lamb started hanging around with that gang, he kept hoping every time Arthur and Craig had a fight that maybe he could turn Arthur’s head. He didn’t go crazy exactly, but there was a steady beat of little gifts and cards for birthdays and Christmas. I’d say they actually seemed to be best friends on the surface, to the point that I got tired of hearing about Arthur, but I knew that Lamb had an obsession simmering just below the surface.
The next Valentine’s Day, Arthur damned Craig to hell once and for all. He seemed to be finally warming up to Lamb, but when he asked if hooking up meant they would be exclusive and Lamb said he had no interest in anyone else, Arthur bugged out back to Craig and disappeared during the spring break Lamb had invited him to drive down to SoCal for a party week with me. Needless to say, that year, spring break was spring broke.
The following summer was a big one because me and Lamb were turning 21 and could finally get into the real clubs in the City—suddenly, The Mix was for kids. I spent a lot of weekends up in Berkeley, and we were going into the City Saturday nights to Colossus, then the End Up afterwards, back to Lamb’s to sleep during the day like vampires, and if I didn’t have to be back in L.A. early Monday, we’d be at Pleasuredome Sunday night too.
We still saw Arthur out and about most weekends, but Lamb was licking his wounds and I pushed him into the arms of whatever dude seemed halfway interested to try and get him over it. Unfortunately, this backfired, and turned into a series of one-sided crushes over the next year or two: Lamb would go home with a guy, and then obsess over him for the next however many months until he got ghosted.
“What happened this time?” I’d ask. “What did he say?”
Mark: “He said I’m too serious.”
Carlos: “He said he’s not ready to tie himself down.”
Jerry: “Sex wasn’t hot enough.”
Jeff: “Do I have bad breath?”
Grady: “Nothing, he just stopped returning my calls.”
Not too long after Lamb went to bartending school and got his first job at The Club, this hole in the wall bar South of Market, who shows up but Arthur. They were both a couple years out of school by then, and although Arthur was working the door at The Box or maybe it was Trannyshack, I don’t think he had a real job so I suspect he was dealing drugs and pretty much partying all the time.
Lamb still had no boyfriend, and so when Arthur started hanging around weeknights at the bar and acting all friendly and trying to reconnect, of course Lamb ate it up. I would stop in for an hour or two once in a while just to keep him company because it could be pretty slow, and Arthur would chat us up and slowly get more and more wasted.
What I noticed were the little strokes on Lamb’s hand (instead of tips) as he handed Arthur his drinks. Eventually, he started showing up without any cash (“Oh shit! I lost/forgot my wallet!”) and asking to borrow from Lamb, who meanwhile was talking again like he had a chance in hell and no idea that Arthur was just using him for free booze.
One night, the owner of the bar was filling in for another bartender, and was standing right next to Lamb when Arthur tried to take his Jack and Coke without paying for it. The guy yelled at him, “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” and Arthur turns back and glares at Lamb like he had betrayed him. I guess he only had a buck or two in his wallet and just threw it on the bar and dashed away with the drink, so the owner tossed him out and told him he was barred.
A week later, Lamb got a box in the mail; inside were all the cards and trinkets Lamb had given Arthur since they’d been friends, all torn up. A T-shirt Lamb had given him was ripped to shreds. He also started getting all these magazines, like a subscription bomb with all these invoices due, and we knew it was Arthur because the address labels all had the same wrong zip code he used on the “gift” box, too.
About a month after that, Lamb got woken up by someone ringing his bell in the middle of the night, and had to traipse downstairs to the front door of his building. There was some total weirdo looking at him through the glass like “I’m here!” and Lamb recoiled—he had no idea who this tweaker was, but the dude started yelling at him, banging on the door to be let in, and then he actually put his hand through the glass and cut himself!
Blood everywhere, neighbors popping their head out their doors to see what the fuck was going on—the guy took off, but of course Lamb had to explain he didn’t know who the guy was, and the old Mexican lady on the first floor made him clean up the glass and blood at one o’clock in the morning like it was his fault or something, while she stood frowning at the top of the stairs with one of her thin brown cigarillos, smoking and supervising.
Anyway, he called and told me about all this the next day at work, and I was like, “Are you sure you didn’t call 976-GOTSEX and change your mind when you saw what he looked like?”
He insisted he didn’t, and then he mentioned how he remembered another time, back in college, when Arthur and Daria had called one of those numbers and given out the address of a “friend” who pissed them off; the poor guy was up answering the door half the night fending off horny randos.
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THREAD: “What we talk about when we talk about ‘Song of Myself’”
Update: Click link above.
Oh I would have had the hots for Arthur too! But then...what an asshole with the emotional maturity of a six year old. How long does it take you to create a character like him, or does he simply waltz out of your keyboard and surprise you?!
I hope no one ever called a sex worker in the middle of the night and sent him to your house Troy!
Oh, what I’d give to sleep all day, party all night, and then curl up (like a creature of the night) and watch Lost Boys with Lamb. Your description of Arthur made me certain I’d met him, such is your way 💜💛🧡