The Loss of Leon Meed. Josh Emmons
said to the cat, which stared at him mercilessly. “Lots of straight people like Oscar Wilde. He has big crossover appeal.”
He shaved again and applied antioxidant cream to the worry lines on his forehead and put on the sweater he’d cleaned, which was casual and said I’m approachable. He really hoped he would meet a girl at the party.
He looked in the mirror and raised his eyebrows and saw with a sinking feeling that the worry lines weren’t fading despite the diligence with which he daily applied the cream. And the hairline at his temples was getting uneven. And that stain on his sweater hadn’t gone away! What did he have to do, cut it out? Put on a patch? Bleach the whole sweater? He ran more water over it and said to the cat, who had followed him into the bathroom, “Last night didn’t happen so I wish you’d stop thinking that.” He’d been roaming around on the Internet and had paused to graze in a pasture that wasn’t his preferred pasture, not his oriented field, and the stain was proving impossible. “I was just looking around,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything.” The cat sneezed. “Do you understand? Nothing.” The image of loving a man and touching a man and intimate urgent kissing and reaching down to grab an erect cock and his grabbing yours … Tonight he would meet a girl and impress her with his observations about Rainie and the ridiculousness of Longaberger parties—twenty adults all swapping stories about how they use their Longabergers?—but that it was a good excuse to be social without getting drunk or sitting through a dumb movie. He would be supercharming. There was to be an eclectic group of Rainie’s friends with names like Elaine Perry and Sadie Jorgenson and he didn’t know how many of them would be single. But how long can you call it accidental grazing when in your heart of hearts it thrills and excites and fills you up with a longing so pure, so real, so intensely overpowering that you could turn your back forever on the prospect of a tepid marriage to someone you have to constantly tell yourself you’re attracted to, and for what? Social approval? A military stint if he ever so chose? Freedom from fear of Faggot! You like to suck dick, huh? How you like to swallow blood? And bashed skull and helplessness and shame—oh God, the unutterable shame—and self-censure and the imprisonment in a life, a position, a love that dare not speak its name? Barry took off and folded up his sweater and placed it on the dry-cleaning pile. Then he put on another sweater and strategically ruffled his hair so that the thin parts weren’t visible, making perfect his beauty. He felt good. He started crying. Tonight, maybe, he would meet someone.
A few hours later he was ready. The map to Rainie’s house that came with the Longaberger party invitation unfolded on his couch like an origami flower bud, and Barry would have left it sitting there if he hadn’t thought in the back of his mind that he might bring someone home later. Everything in that case should look neat and inviting, so he took the four-square-inch paper to the recycling bag. Then, with basket in hand, he met his neighbor Amphai in the hallway outside his apartment and gave her a light one-armed hug.
“You all set?” said Amphai.
“I feel like one of those Saint Bernard rescue dogs,” said Barry, lifting his basket to his chin.
Within fifteen minutes they were at Rainie’s, where a man neither of them knew welcomed them in. Barry shook his hand and—was he imagining it or did the man thumb-press his palm significantly?—walked into the living room, where he set down his Longaberger next to the fireplace and a cast-iron tool stand in which were slotted a mini-broom, fire poker, and extended-reach tongs.
“Amphai and Barry!” Rainie said, emerging from her bedroom in a knee-length yellow dress tied at the waist, her hair freshly released from curlers. “You’re the first ones. Have you met Alvin? We used to work together at the Cutten Nursery. These things usually start on time, so the others should be here any minute.”
“Hi, again,” said Barry shyly, Amphai and Alvin nodding around the triangle.
“I had cucumber slices over my eyes for two hours today,” Rainie said. “You want coffee? I’d peek a little and it was like I was actually inside the cucumber, you know you get cucumber juice deposits around the corners of your eyes. And what do you think of this dress? I got it and a hoop skirt at the Hop-Hop last weekend for only forty dollars, tax included. The guy who owns that store was in our year at Eureka High, Amphai. Jason with a Spanish last name. Who’s got psoriasis or some really unfortunate skin predicament, but it turns out he went with Sandrine, remember that French exchange student our junior year who everyone thought was a lesbian, well according to Jason they were getting it on for three months.”
“She left a used rag in the toilet once in the gym and I went in right after her,” said Amphai, stirring her coffee. The spoon-on-porcelain nrr-nrr-nrr sound driving everyone a little crazy once they tuned in to it. “There it was like an aborted fetus.”
“That continental charm,” said Rainie. “The exchange students were always so gauche, to use one of their words. Except the German boys and oh God do you remember Claude?”
“With the big cock.”
“Ladies, ladies,” said Alvin, who had a thick, well-trimmed beard and curly black hair styled into a pompadour that Barry thought becoming. “Some of us haven’t had our dinner yet.”
“Sorry.” Rainie poked him in the ribs. “Making you hungry?”
“I refuse to dignify.”
“Then the three of you should sit down and the others will literally—oh, that’s the door. Hold on.”
By six fifteen, twenty people were standing or sitting in the living room, ranch-dipping celery sticks and saying, “the farmers’ market in Arcata is a spent force” and “appalled by my mom’s Tupperware parties and thought I’d have to be lobotomized before doing anything like it” and “broken condom is how she described it to me, not that they won’t love it with all their hearts.” Of the twenty people, eighteen were women.
“Welcome to those of you who it’s your first time at a Longaberger gathering,” said Rainie, pushing a cart stacked with baskets to the center of the room and smiling at everyone. She unpacked the baskets and arrayed them in crescent formation with their identifying name tags in front. The 2002 Ambrosia Combo. The Small Harvest Blessings Combo. The 2005 Founder’s Market Basket Combo. “As most of you know I’m Rainie and I’m a Longaberger independent sales associate, which means that I’m licensed to sell Longaberger products by the Longaberger company itself.” The first of the coughs and sneezes and body mutinies from the audience. “I’m going to give a little historical background and then show you some of the more fantastic models and give you a chance to buy the ones you want. I know that stocking up on holiday Longabergers is one of your main reasons for being here, but I think it’s also important for you all to enjoy yourselves and get to know one another. I’ve made some of my best friends through attending Longaberger gatherings just like this one.”
During the ensuing report on Longaberger history—the inspirational account of an epileptic and stutterer named Dave Longaberger whose learning disability prevented his finishing high school until he was twenty-one, a man who then founded and, against the advice of friends and creditors, sold two successful small businesses to finance his dream of creating the largest basket manufacturing company in the United States—Barry scanned the faces around him hoping to alight on an interesting and attractive person—woman, he meant—whom he might approach after the demonstration. His eyes kept hiccuping on Alvin’s, who for some reason was looking at him, so that he had to yank his gaze elsewhere and settle on, say, Sadie Jorgenson, a generously built therapist with frosted hair and a thin silver necklace buried in the folds of her neck.
The history segued into an in-depth basket-by-basket examination of Rainie’s wares, taking time for questions and for-examples and personal testimonials. Then there were three guest presentations, among them Barry’s, about which he was nervous, though you’d never know it to watch him pull out his Prairiewalker’s items, sandwich and book and blanket. In fact, to most observers his was the most accomplished basket packing, certainly the most comprehensive. With these items you could spend an entire day at Sequoia Park or the Willow Creek River or on a drive in some picturesque part of southern Humboldt.