romance, mf, sexless, series

December 31, 1989. New Year's Eve. 11:59 PM, the last minute of the decade.
Maria and I were walking very very fast through the biting cold in order to
reach a big house on Mentor Street. There was a party there, a New Year's
Eve party -- apparently it was one of the longest running New Year's Eve
parties in Clemson's history. Lots of brothers and sisters, Clemson natives
who also went on to attend the university, renewed the same lease over and
again and their end of the year bashes had become such legend that it became
THE place to be for every Clemson High graduate or anyone else who happened
to return to school before classes started the following week.

""So," I said, "am I going to know anyone here?"

"Probably," Maria told me, "at least the odds are very good. I'll probably
know a lot of people. There's so many people I want to introduce you to."

"I know," I said, "I'm excited about it."

A brash gush of wind thrust down the street and I pulled my coat closer to
me and yanked down my hat to keep it from blowing back the way we had come.
The house, our destination, set up on a little hill rising >from the street,
was still a thousand yards away.

"Have I told you about Jo?" she asked.

"I think so," I said, "which one is she?"

"The one in New York. The artist."

"Oh, the one with the green hair?"

"It was green the last time I saw her," she said.

A rousing cheer of human voices rang out from the house. Everywhere there
was the sound of people yelling, fireworks being set off, and further in the
distance we heard the discharge of shotguns.

"Hey," she said, "happy new year!"

"Come here," I said, and stopped her in the middle of the street. I grappled
for her puffy coat and we both smiled and pressed our faces into the other.
Small, playful kisses and one big tongue wrestle, her hot spit warming the
inside of my chilled head.

"Welcome to the nineties," I said.

"Strange, huh?" she said.

"I have a feeling they're going to be better than the eighties," I said,
"with you in them."

"Hmn," she said, grinning wildly. And we headed up the hill to the house.

Parties. Such unpredictable chemical events. If I know everyone at a party,
and I'm feeling good, it can be like Hollywood. Lots of kissing and talking
and drinking and it's a time to be magnanimous.

"Hey what's up? How's the project? You look FABulous, baby."

Then there was the party I met Maria at, last July. It was a cast party for
a how I wasn't in. I was only running props and no one there, except the
host, who had invited me personally, knew me.

I put a six-pack of cheap beer in the fridge and took an import sitting next
to it for myself. I looked around the room. It was too bright in that
apartment, I could see everyone too clearly. No one said hi. Everyone was
sitting about, talking quietly. The music was on low. I saw a familiar face
(one that had been pointed out to me, not one I knew personally) sitting on
the couch, and an empty chair next to it. I took the chair.

"Uh, hi," I said.

"Hello," she said.

"You must be Maria."

"Yes," she said, for indeed it was.

"I'm a friend of Thad's."

"Oh," she said, "yes, I know you, you're, Kael is it?"

"Yes," I said, "Kael Goodman."

"That's a strange name."

"I'm a strange guy," I said. "Kael Goodman, the Irish Jew."

She just stared at me.

"Ha ha ha ha ha," I said.

Awkward pause.

"You make a very good bird," I said, "in the show."

"Thank you," she said. "You go to school here?"

"Yeah, I'm in theater."

"How do you like it, I think I might have to spend some time here." She said
it like it was an impending prison term, but hey, she grew up here, her take
on the place was probably different from mine.

"Oh, it's great," I started, "I like to think I've learned a lot. I mean, I
hope I have after three years but sometimes I think I'm doing all the
learning myself. That sounded stupid -- what I mean is, it's like you can
just skate through most of these courses, almost all of the profs are, like,
complete dummies and they'll give you at least a passing grade no matter
what shit you sling at them, excuse me, I meant excrement, but, I mean, do
you see what I'm saying? I'd like to think I'm a pretty intelligent guy, you
know. I mean, I read for God's sake, how many people can you say that about?
I guess the point is, I'd like to think this is all going somewhere, oh, I'm
sorry, did I get any of that on you, I'm sorry, and who knows, maybe when
it's all said and done, I'll have made something...of...all...this."

Death.

"That's very fascinating," she said, and turned to speak to someone else.

Oh, and did I mention all of the assholes I've met here?

This party, however, was something else. It looked like the kind of shindig
where someone could have swung from the chandelier, though no one did, and
had there been a chandelier, which there wasn't. (Oh, great, and now I'm
Douglas Adams.) The place was packed with teenagers and twenty-somethings,
all drinking and smoking and shouting and laughing and eating and drinking.
It was bright, sure, not dingy enough for my tastes, but the music was loud,
the floor was filthy and the company was young and degenerate.

"Hey!" Maria was saying. "God how are you? You look great! Yes -- not since
-- you were there, too? Oh my GOD!"

I just followed on behind, and it wasn't such a bad place to be.

"Have you met my boyfriend? This is my new boyfriend. Kael, I've got someone
for you to meet, Frank, Bob, Jim, this (dramatic pause) is my new boyfriend,
Kael."

Boyfriend. I hadn't been called that, excuse me, I hadn't let myself be
called that in a few years. It felt nice. It had a pleasant ring. Kael,
Maria's new boyfriend. My coat was still on as she took me by the hand and
led me through the streaming crowd of immediate post-midnight revelers. She
introduced me to a skinny guy, about her age, with a wild mop of
frenetically curly blonde hair.

"Kael, this is Lewis."

We shook hands. I smiled.

"Hey!" he said. "Heeey, I know you -- you were in, whatsis, 'Balm in Gilead'
last semester, weren't you?"

"Yeah," I said, "that was me."

"Oh Maria," Lewis said, "oh hey, he was fantastic, you played that, what, he
was a dope addict --"

"Well," I said, in my studied 'demure', "they were all dope addicts."

"Dopey," Maria said.

"Yeah!" Lewis said, "you were fuckin'-A fantastic, man, let me shake your
hand!"

"Oh, we just did," I said, "I don't want to peak too soon."

"Ha ha HA!" Lewis laughed. "Oh Maria, I love him, he's hysterical!

Lewis was a fun drunk. I would like to have had him around at all my
parties, if only to laugh at everything I said.

"Hey you," came an unfamiliar voice behind me, and Maria cried out in
surprise and rushed past me to hug the new arrival. I turned to see a small
woman dressed in a black, second hand coat, but that was what I noticed
first. It was her electric pink hair that stood out like a neon beacon
crying "NOTICE ME."

She was almost a whole foot shorter than me, and once she and Maria
disengaged I could see her face. She was thin and small. Small nose, small
mouth, and HUGE glasses that were perched on the very tip of her nose, dying
to fall off.

"Kael," Maria said, "this is Jo."

"Oh THIS is Jo," I said, "I would never have guessed. It's a pleasure to
meet you."

"And you as well," Jo said, "Maria's told me a lot about you."

"I've heard a lot about you, too," I said, "I thought your hair was green."

"Well," Jo said, not blinking, not looking away for a moment, "you know,
Maria hasn't seen me for a while, what has it been, a year?"

"'Bout that," Maria said.

"And after all," Jo said, "it is the nineties."

"Hell," I said, "I would have guessed 1983."

"Not in Athens," she said.

"But you live in New York City," I said, giving particular weight to those
last three words and letting my eyes bulge.

"Big sigh," she said, "why must people always fear the unusual."

"I apologize," I said, "my own flavor was black, black hair, black
eyemake-up, and that was only a few years ago."

"You don't strike me as the type."

"You just met me," I said, "what would you know about my type?"

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of English cigarettes.
"Mind if I smoke?"

"It's not my party," I said, and I leaned in to whisper in her ear, "and I'm
dying to join you, but I told Maria I quit."

"Did you?" she said, sticking a smoke in her face, making her already quite
stuffed up voice even more so.

"Uh, yes," I said, "it's been almost a month. I don't want to be a slave to
anything in the world I live in."

"Except Maria," she said, and struck a match.

I blushed and smiled tightly.

"Except Maria," I said.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What did you think of my friends?" Maria asked. It was an hour or so later
(maybe three, we were looped) and we were stumbling our way through the
brick paved Clemson streets back to my, uh, our apartment.

"Wonderful," I said, "all of them, just charming."

"You were getting pretty bold back there," she said.

"I was?"

"Sure, when Jo and Lewis and us, when we were all standing around there,
weren't you feeling me up?"

"Ha!" I said, "no."

"Oh come on." She looked at me to see I wasn't lying. "You were squeezing my
ass."

"I'd know if I was squeezing your ass."

"Shit!" she said, "it must have been Lewis!"

"Probably," I said, "it wasn't me. I don't think it was Jo, either."

"You two hit it off?" she asked.

"She's just the type of lithe, androgynous pretentious art-fag I would have
loved to try and nail when I was a sophomore," I said. "I think she's
great."

"I knew you'd like her."