“I still have your jacket, by the way.”

  “Oh shit!” I said, and even though Felicia was generally cool, I glanced back because ushers and ticket takers really aren’t supposed to curse. It frightens the old ladies. But Felicia didn’t seem to care, because she did the thing where she made one of her eyes go cross while the other stayed still. She stuck out her tongue and walked away.

  CJ went on. “I’ve been hoping against hope I’d see you again one of these days so I could return the jacket, which you clearly covet. I’ve made a shrine to you. Our Lady of Questionable Fashion Taste.”

  I reddened, aware our conversation was in public. He stood off to the side and allowed the line of old people to approach with their tickets. The lobby was chaotic, loud with conversation on our side and will-call tickets being picked up on the other. An old woman with a cane handed me her ticket with a shaking hand, and I tore it, trying to split my attention between the line waiting to get in and the guy I’d blown off.

  “CJ, right? Thank you, enjoy the show.”

  “Right! And you were Micah?”

  “Still am! To your left, up the stairs.”

  “Carlo, are you coming?” The decrepit, gravelly voice came from inside the theater. I turned to see a man with gray hair, small, round eyes, and a perfectly trimmed mustache. He was talking to CJ. “We should take our seats.”

  “Of course,” CJ replied. “I’ll be right there. I ran into a friend from AMDA. Would you be a doll and get me a gin and tonic?” The man winked, nodded, and walked away.

  “Carlo?” I asked. There was a lull in the line, thankfully.

  CJ shrugged.

  “AMDA?”

  “Academy of Musical and Dramatic Arts. I’m a student there.”

  “I know what it is. But you aren’t really a student there, are you?”

  He screwed up his face at me like I was asking a crazy question.

  A line was beginning to form again, so I gestured him inside. I thought of the weird, scary night we’d had, and I told myself, Just say goodbye, Micah.

  My mouth disagreed. “Maybe I’ll see you at the break?” I asked.

  He gave me this adorable full-toothed, exaggerated smile, which, combined with the pilot gear, looked utterly ridiculous.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t wait for intermission.

  * * *

  When the curtain went up, I headed down to the office.

  “Cursing while tearing tickets,” Felicia said. She had a wry half grin on her face, though, so I knew it was basically okay.

  “Blue-haired ladies running for cover,” I said, hanging my head. “Sorry.”

  “The guy seemed pretty smitten!”

  I blushed. “What? Naw.”

  “I don’t know. That could be your future lover.”

  Felicia wasn’t just my boss; she was the closest thing I had to a mentor. I think part of it was the fact that the typical usher was an aspiring actor, a headshot come to life. The thought of being on a stage terrified me. But there was still something about the theater that I loved. I was there to figure out what it was. Even though I was just a lowly usher, Felicia had made sure I’d met everyone associated with the production, all the actors, including Rosemary Prinz and Margo Martindale; the director, Pamela Berlin; and even Kyle Renick, the producer. “Can’t hurt to know people,” she said.

  She was also a mama bear, small as she was; when this creepy college-aged usher was with us for a week in July, she carved a wedge between us, making it clear to him that I was not available.

  “You’re better than him,” she’d told me flatly as she did her daily paperwork. “We’ll find you a boyfriend who will get how special you are.”

  So yeah, I kinda loved Felicia. Had a little crush on her, maybe, if a gay boy can have a crush on a lesbian. (He can.)

  My coworker Walter stuck his head into the room. “Concessions set up for intermission,” he said in his raspy voice. “Okay if you take it today? I think I need to get home.”

  Felicia nodded, then asked, “You okay?”

  He stepped fully into the room. His face was shrinking in, like a deflating balloon. He looked noticeably worse than he had when I’d first met him in June. You could kind of tell he had AIDS then; now he was cheekbones and hollow eye sockets, basically a skeleton with raggedy brown hair that was rapidly falling out. I made sure not to look away, though that was always my impulse.

  He was twenty-eight.

  He rubbed his belly. “Yeah. I think probably,” he said.

  “Go go go,” Felicia said, and Walter nodded and hurried out. He lived around the corner in a brownstone, so it wasn’t too far he had to go. Thankfully.

  Felicia gave me a meaningful look. We’d talked about AIDS, a lot. She and Raina, her girlfriend, pretty much harangued me with information. I told them it didn’t matter, that my only experience was with a straight guy. What I didn’t tell them was that we weren’t using condoms, because neither Napoleon nor Lucas nor I had ever been with any other guy. I knew they’d kill me themselves if they found out. Felicia had said, “A condom every time, hear? You think you’re the only one. You never are. Even some so-called straight jock.”

  I had promised myself: When I got my first gay boyfriend, things would be different and condoms would be used, every time, for sure.

  “So, this boy. Worthy of you?” Felicia asked. “How old is he?”

  I thought of the different versions of CJ that I’d met, weird as they were. I thought of his gray eyes and electric presence.

  “Eighteen,” I said. “And definitely.”

  I could see in her smirk that she knew I was hardly sure.

  “Just be careful. You boys go too fast.”

  I nodded, thinking about what Walter would say to that. Over the summer he used to joke about how lesbians just about got married as soon as they met. Then my mind got lost in what “too fast” might mean in actuality, with CJ.

  If he was actually interested, I was probably, against my better judgment, all in.

  Whatever that meant.

  * * *

  At intermission, he did indeed come to see me, and after introducing me to Irving, his … date?—who was my grandfather’s age, probably older—CJ sent him off to get him another G&T.

  “So … explain? Every time I see you, you’re a different person.”

  He ran his long, thin fingers through his wavy hair. “One personality cannot contain all of this.”

  “And you’re here with a septuagenarian because …”

  “A guy’s gotta eat.”

  “Okay …”

  He smiled and took his glasses off. “Over at Ty’s, this guy was asking a friend if he wanted his extra ticket for tonight. He didn’t. I did. So I turned on the charm.”

  “But … Carlo? Why?”

  “To get to the other side. Duh.”

  I laughed, remembering how that night, before things got out of control, my every nerve had been on overdrive with each unpredictable thing he’d said. (It had all gotten lost in the translation when I’d told Deena about him; she decided he was “dicey as hell.”)

  “I feel like maybe you’re avoiding the question?” I said. He shrugged. “And anyway, you don’t even look like a Carlo. I look more like a Carlo than you, and that’s not saying much.”

  “Well, what you don’t know is that Carlo’s mother is Portuguese. And a former Olympic figure skater, to boot.”

  “Is she?”

  CJ rolled his eyes. “You wanna do a scene study after the show?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I ditch the old guy, who is pretty sure he’s getting at least to gay second base with Carlo, and we go to David’s Pot Belly Stove and eat mozzarella sticks?”

  I was struck silent. The level of unnecessary deceit both repelled and compelled me. I found myself pulled in, as if this were a mystery I might solve.

  “Yes,” I said. “On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “I’d like to go with CJ.”

  He seemed to consider this. “I’ll check and see if he’s available.”

  * * *

  Cigarette smoke, sweet wine, and fried potatoes merged into a singular scent as we walked into David’s Pot Belly Stove. I’d walked by the restaurant many times, but I’d never gone in. All I knew was it felt vaguely descriptive of my midsection, and that made me feel annoyed every time I walked by.

  Kenny G played softly in the background, and the place was filled with adults, not another teen in sight. It was packed though it was nearly eleven. Same-sex couples sat in brown leather booths, eating omelets and drinking martinis. I excused myself and called my mom from the pay phone on the corner of Bleecker and Christopher. I was nervous that she’d ask a lot of questions, but frankly she was just glad I wanted to stay out late like a normal kid and gave me carte blanche to do as I pleased.

  “Just don’t get anyone pregnant, please,” she pleaded.

  I promised to do my best.

  CJ had secured us a table. When I sat down, he was gazing at the menu, perplexed.

  “I’m a picky eater. Are you?” he asked.

  I pointed at my belly and he frowned. He shook his head and said, “I’m not sure there’s an absolute correlation between girth and willingness to eat a wide array of foods. You wear it well, by the way. What I wouldn’t give to put on some weight, actually.”

  It was hard not to feel a little defensive, as I’d spent a lifetime dodging nicknames like Fudgie the Whale and Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from people who were blessed with CJ’s build.

  CJ ordered for us. Two plates of mozzarella sticks, which he claimed were the best in the world, and two pot belly burgers, which inexplicably had a pineapple ring and teriyaki sauce on them. Cokes, which surprised me, because he’d been drinking gin and tonics, apparently, at the theater. And a salad to share, so that we would, as he put it, “appear health conscious.”

  “How are we paying for this?” I asked. “That’s gonna cost like a week’s worth of ushering.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You took care of me when I needed it. I got you this time. And get a raise or something. They’re ripping you off.”

  While CJ arranged the salt and pepper shakers to be in perfect alignment, I drank him in. His face was long and thin, his jaw square, his mouth full. Not full of food, but full like substantial, like the mouth of a person who is worthy of existence.

  I wondered what that felt like.

  “Sorry I didn’t call,” I said, and he waved me off like he hadn’t even noticed.

  Then he went back to arranging the items on the table and not speaking, so I said, “Dale, Carlo, CJ, tell me all about you.” I sipped ice water from a mason jar.

  “Oh, you know. Long walks on the beach. Piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. I won’t cum in your mouth. The usual.”

  I spat water all over the table. He seemed pleased.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Drinking problem.”

  “One day at a time, my friend,” he said.

  “Right. But actually. Who are you, actually? I’m curious.”

  He reclined and sighed dramatically. “It’s so not interesting, you know? And really, this is about you, rookie boy. This is brand-new to you, isn’t it?”

  “Kinda,” I said. Truthfully, my body was almost too tingly. There was a gay couple, middle-aged and mustached, sitting next to us. Across the table from me was a completely crush-worthy—if somewhat unpredictable—guy who had actually befriended me, sought me, held my hand on the street.

  “So let me be your tour guide, okay? I feel like I should do for you what no one did for me.”

  When he said that last part, he averted his eyes, and for a nanosecond it was like I almost saw something real there. I wanted to know more.

  And somehow, I knew not to ask.

  Instead I said, “So you were in a gay bar before the show? Ty’s?”

  “Oh, puleeze,” he said. “I go to all of ’em. Boots and Saddle, which we call Bras and Girdles, or Beer and Sympathy. Julius’, Ninth Circle. Total chicken bars, which is good because we’re chicken. Uncle Charlie’s, which is total S and M.”

  I wondered if there might be a CJ-to-newbie dictionary I could ask for. I was doing my best to use contextual clues. But the last one stunned me because I did know what sadism and masochism meant.

  “An S and M bar? And you go there?”

  “Stand and model.”

  I smirked.

  CJ kept going. “Actual S and M places … I wouldn’t rule them out. I wouldn’t rule anything out. Try anything once, I always say. One time I went into Badlands on the corner of West and Christopher.”

  I remembered that one from driving home along the West Side Highway from my grandmother’s place in Brooklyn. I must have been thirteen, and on our right in the distance was a dark and dingy brick building with smoky (or possibly dirty) windows and a white placard that read BADLANDS. I somehow knew it was a gay bar. There was a sign in the window that read TUESDAY NIGHT IS DYNASTY NIGHT. A few men in leather pants milled outside. It took everything I had not to turn my head as we drove by, but somehow it was like my mother was seeing through my eyes.

  “That’s a gay bar,” she said. “Such a shame what’s happening to gay men.”

  My heart pulsed, and even though I didn’t know what was such a shame, I felt as though there was a life out there that I wasn’t living, and it was alive at that bar, where they might be watching Dynasty and drinking and laughing and talking, and I wanted to be there, too, I wanted her to stop the car so that for one moment I could step out of my little Micah Strauss bubble. I needed to understand how it all worked. How men met other men. How they decided to have sex. How that worked.

  “What was it like?” I asked CJ.

  “By the end of the night, I was doing a striptease on the bar. Guys were throwing hundreds at me. They have a signed poster of me in the corner of the bar.”

  I was disappointed that he was still joking with me. “How come I feel like this may not be entirely all true?”

  He raised his right eyebrow. “A boy likes to be mysterious.”

  “Is any of that true?”

  He shrugged. “It’s all metaphorically true. Some of it is literal truth.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me any more than that?”

  “Someday, maybe.”

  Over mozzarella sticks that were indeed amazing—the cheese beautifully melted and not chewy, the breaded vessel not greasy and with just a hint of salt—CJ told me he had the night off, and then, when I asked him from what, he changed the subject. Big shocker.

  “So really. What can you tell me about CJ?” I asked.

  “My dad was abducted by aliens. My mom died on an oil rig off the coast of Bora Bora last year. You know, the usual.”

  “Ah.”

  “I live with Tom Selleck in Tribeca.”

  “Ah. And how is that going?”

  “Ugh. All he wants is sex, sex, sex.”

  I cracked up. “Who do you actually live with?”

  “My mom had this boyfriend for a couple years before the oil rig mishap, so I live with him. His name is Jack. Jack is a part-time carnival barker and full-time asshole.”

  “Sounds fun!”

  “Oh, it is!”

  “What’s it like to live with a carnival barker?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath. “Do you have several hours?” he asked.

  “I kinda do,” I said.

  “Another time.”

  CJ toned it down over dinner and he got a bit more real, and we talked about our school lives. (Neither one of us was particularly popular, but we weren’t alone, either.) A little about how his coming out had gone at home (not well), and why I hadn’t yet. Favorite albums. His was Spring Session M by Missing Persons. I’d never heard of it, and that led him to nearly slap me again.

  “It’s about five years old and already it’s a classic,” he told me.

  “I didn’t get into music until freshman year,” I explained bashfully.

  This was an acceptable answer to him, apparently.

  “No shame in being a late bloomer, as long as you make the most of your bloom when it arrives,” he said. “So what’s your post-freshman-year favorite album?”

  I tensed up. Deena already gave me enough shit about my musical tastes, and I didn’t want more of that from CJ. So I didn’t tell the total truth. I picked something I thought would be less ridiculous.

  I was wrong.

  “Tina Turner?” CJ almost shrieked. “How old are you, Micah? Are you my long-lost mother?”

  “She has an amazing voice,” I said, defensive and wishing I’d just said my real favorite. “I like her. I guess I’m not as cool as you.”

  He cracked up. “Oh, please. I’m not cool. Liking Missing Persons gets me all sorts of shit, too. I’m just … of my generation, I guess. It’s cool that you’re different. You don’t know how to dress. You like yuppie music. You’re—oh, never mind. The point is that I like these things about you.”

  I wondered what the left-out part was.

  Again, I didn’t ask.

  As we finished our dinners, we fell into a comfortable rhythm of give and take as we talked about Steel Magnolias and which MTV VJ was the sexiest and the strange way straight people had become obsessed with the musical Cats. I explained Deena and he explained how ’Til Tuesday was not a one-hit wonder. There were plenty of delicious silences and just a hint of lingering eye contact. I couldn’t believe this was happening, finally: I was out with a guy. Of course, I was out with a guy who was out of my league, and who may have only flirted with me when he wanted something from me at the club. But still. Progress.

  I watched as he put his fork down, ran his hands through his wavy hair, cocked his head, smirked, and said, “You’re cute. I like you. You wanna go down to the piers after this and do perverted things to each other?”

  I put my hands on the table to steady myself; suddenly it felt like the restaurant was a Tilt-A-Whirl.

  “Oh!” I said. “Okay, um.”

  “God, you’re adorable. You’re so flustered.”

  I whispered, “I’m a virgin.”