The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Nerve's TV blog: Dance, Hipster, Dance! Plus: our latest NewsCrush — and why one army brat is breaking up with Army Wives.
One crazy person after another showed up at our housewarming party on Saturday. First a fellow with blue hair on LSD who told long, unbelievable, animated stories and insisted on putting everything in our refrigerator into the blender along with half a bottle of vodka. Next a beautiful dissociative. She seemed like a nice, quiet, abnormally sleek person, but I happen to know she has waking blackouts and different personalities. Perhaps this was one of them. Rachel arrived early, staking her claim on the best porch chair from which she made caustic comments all night. My father showed up, glared at everyone from his scarecrow height, hovered, then was gone. Then a Nerve reader who looks just like Madonna in her single fragile moment (mid-1987) and a stand-up comedian who sat down and looked glum and then set up a tent in the yard and was not seen again till morning. More and more guests arrived with houseplants and cakes and diagnoses, and then, four hours late, all in velvet and a halo of pure, powdery beauty, came Sierra. Sierra is the drag queen whose flower-gartered thigh burned Dave's fingertips a few months ago at a club in Boston. I'd tracked her down and secretly invited her as a make-up present for all the fights I've been starting lately.
Upon seeing her, Dave sat down then he stood up then he talked a lot then he swallowed an entire glass of the blue-haired man's clove-and-honey-and-lime-and-vanilla-and-cherries martini. Throughout all this, Sierra was silent and lovely and tall. Finally Dave offered her a can of Red Dog, though she'd brought wine as a housewarming gift. He opened the can for her, watched her take a sip. "Uncommonly smooth," she commented.
What is it about her eyes? I was thinking. They didn't look — they gazed. She wasn't really there. They were green and gold, but somehow looked like a photograph, like she'd pasted a photograph of perfect eyes over her own.
Those two went from computer to computer — there are two in the house, and Sierra brought another in from her car — going on about artificial intelligence, not touching at all, while the party guests and I sat on the back porch with the mosquitoes, sipping Red Dog and making whispered conjectures about Dave and his special friend. I got sleepier and sleepier and finally at three a.m. I excused myself to my guests and said to the philosophical pair, "All right you two, let's go to bed." Without a pause they ceased their zip drive discussion and headed for the staircase.
I did not want to sleep with a drag queen. My ideal woman is loud, whorey, sharp-tongued yet ultimately very kind. Laura is my ideal woman, and I was leaving her behind with the crazy porch people. My ideal man is hairy, naked, maybe a bit of a paunch . . . I must admit, my ideal man is the garbageman! Yet I was herded to bed by altruism.
Sierra went to the bathroom first, and Dave kissed me desperately against the bedroom wall. "Thank you, thank you," he said. "I'm so scared! You won't think less of me, will you? What should I do with my clothes?" I told him to take them off, and he did, but then he put them back on, and then Sierra came in wearing just a corset and stockings, and Dave crawled into bed next to her with all his clothes on. They were under the I LOVE YOU DAVID graffiti. I went in the bathroom and when I came back, they were in the same exact position, in silence, Dave with his sweatshirt on, Sierra with the blanket pulled up to her chin. I don't mean to brag, but they looked like two dogs waiting for their master to come home. Just to torture them, I said I forgot something downstairs. I lingered on the staircase eavesdropping, and not a peep or a rustle came out of that bedroom.
Once I was in bed, it wasn't ten seconds before hands started roaming. I mostly just lay there; I was hoping Dave would take the initiative if I did nothing. But it was all so tentative and polite. We tried all sorts of configurations, and I don't really know how much anyone liked any of them. I found out later that Sierra has a website also, and what if she publishes a diary too? Her reportage could not be good for my reputation. I imagined her review: "These two are rather lackluster in the sack. Rather immobile. Finally the wife went to 'the drawer' and procured something with which to give me love, but she had apparently misplaced the Astroglide. They don't check their stock of Astroglide before a big date? Amateurs! She used mere spit — ow! I came all the way from Boston for this?"
Then to be a good hostess I went back downstairs to watch The Real World with everyone. And of course I told them what had happened. I said I did everything a woman can do to a man who likes men, and Dave did what he could, and then Dave did to me what a man does to a woman. And I assumed that Dave then did to a man what a man does to a man who goes for that sort of thing, because something caused them to blush and stutter in a completely different way when they emerged half an hour later. Dave's so cute when he's gay.
