Between Boyfriends. Michael Salvatore

      Four Years Ago

      The greatest thing about being gay is that moment when you walk down the street holding your boyfriend’s hand and you forget that you’re holding his hand. Gay becomes natural. You don’t think about it anymore, you don’t question it or celebrate it; it simply is who and what you are. That’s the way it was for me and Jack as we strolled down Sixth Avenue to do some Saturday afternoon shopping after a morning of kissing, fondling, and HGTV-watching while munching on bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. At that time Jack DiRenza had been my boyfriend for three years, my live-in boyfriend for one year, ten months, two weeks, and six days of that time. I’m not counting, I just have a really good memory.

      “Hey, Stevie B.,” Jack asked in between sips of a Starbucks grande mocha Frappuccino. “Do we need a new butter warmer?”

      “Does anyone need an old butter warmer?” I asked in between sips of my iced grande skim mocha, which is my summer Starbucks drink as opposed to my most favorite Starbucks drink, which is a Venti skim, extra-hot, light-whipped peppermint mocha that I drink from Labor Day to Memorial Day. All my friends know that I like my coffee to be like my boyfriend—consistent.

      “Your birthday is coming up and I’m planning a surprise lobster dinner,” Jack said. “And what’s a lobster dinner without warm butter?”

      “Sounds yummy,” I said. “But honey, the surprise lobster dinner is only a surprise if you don’t tell me about it.”

      Jack smirked like a Catholic schoolboy on the verge of committing a venial sin and said, “I didn’t tell you what I’m going to do to you for dessert.”

      Smiling like the happiest gay in the world I held on to my boyfriend’s perfectly calloused hand, sipped my Starbucks, and entered Bed, Bath & Behind to buy an unnecessary kitchen appliance. Because that’s what you do on a Saturday afternoon in Manhattan when you’re gay and in love. Who knew that exactly two weeks later my perfect boyfriend would kick me out of his apartment and his life with barely an explanation and force me to take up residence in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of the single gay man.

      On that terrible night, while the rest of the gay world went out clubbing or stayed in snuggling, I slept on my best friend Flynn’s pull-out Jennifer Convertible trying to figure out how I could shoot my ex-boyfriend without winding up on Rikers Island. When thoughts of homo-cide had left my brain, I wondered how I had gone from being deliriously happy to devastatingly miserable in less than twenty-four hours. Four years later I still don’t have an answer. All I know is my name is Steven Bartholomew Ferrante and I am still a single gay man living in Manhattan. Welcome to my world.

      Chapter One

      The bed was enormous, a California king squeezed into a Chelsea queen’s apartment. Unfortunately the adjective attributed to the bed could not be used to describe Ely, the guy who lay asleep in the bed. Not only was Ely not enormous, he wasn’t large, biggish, or even the thicker side of medium. Ely was small. And I’m not referring to his height or personality, I’m strictly commenting on his penis. And by penis I mean cock. Though I don’t think a penis no larger than an adult male thumb should be called a cock. There is a hierarchical system in the gay world and nowhere is it stricter than below the waist.

      As I watched Ely sleep, I was filled with a mixture of sadness and awe. When I first met him in the wee hours of the morning of this very day, I sensed he possessed an ebullience and intelligence that I had not encountered for the longest time. I truly thought, as I sipped on my fourth cosmopolitan, this one with a bashful hint of mango, that this man who stood before me was brimming with PRM—Potential Relationship Material. It was for that reason alone that I decided to ignore my no-sex-until-the-third-date rule, a rule that naturally would have been ignored if Ely was a Puerto Rican Male, a PRM of a totally different color and, of course, size, and accepted Ely’s invitation to go home with him. I got excited when he whispered in my ear during the cab ride to his apartment that he was a dominant top, and was borderline breathless when his key finally opened his door on the third try. Within moments and without any further conversation, I yanked Ely’s pants to his ankles, then I yanked his underwear to his pants, and then I realized that there would be no more yanking. The reason Ely calls himself a dominant top is that the only way his thumb/penis can enter an asshole is to threaten it with execution.

      I don’t mean to convey that Ely’s penis was a deformity on a par with the Elephant Man; it just wasn’t an invitation. And let’s be honest, we all like to be invited places. So while little Ely lay in his big bed, I quickly got dressed, rearranged his refrigerator magnet letters to spell out THANK YOU, and fled quietly into the midafternoon October sunshine. The morning’s attempt at a fling would need to be flung from my memory and I only knew of one way to do it successfully. It was Starbucks time. If a Venti skim, extra-hot, light-whipped peppermint mocha couldn’t erase from my mind the vision of Ely’s tiny penis, sheathed in a condom imported from Japan, trying desperately to enter the, by comparison, overwhelmingly enormous cavity that was my asshole, then I was a doomed gay. Yet as I clasped the gunmetal handle of the Starbucks door, I knew being a doomed gay was better than having to call your cock a penis.

      From the first lip-smacking sip of my Venti skim, extra-hot, light-whipped peppermint mocha I knew I would be triumphant and Ely would permanently be part of my past. The caffeine-cum-heroin flirted with my throat in areas that Ely never could. The escapade with Tiny Man was officially over and I had reclaimed my life, yet again. It was time to begin another chapter in the saga of Steven Bartholomew Ferrante, thirty-three-year-old, Italian-American, former Jersey-ite, single-yet-looking-really-really-hard, soap opera producer. Thus began Chapter 822—give or take.

      I was in mid-performance of a Star-turn, which is a complete, yet nonchalant, 360-degree turn at a Starbucks condiment station to check out the customers—or as defined in the Starbucks employee manual, the guest list—when I heard my name being shrieked by either my friend Lindsay Wilde or my great-aunt Matilda Barziano. I could never tell the two sounds apart.

      “Steven! You look like you spent the a.m. with a dick up your a-hole!”

      I still couldn’t tell who it was, so I was forced to turn all the way around.

      “Lindsay,” I said, only partially relieved. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

      “Really? Tell me. Tell me everything.”

      An uncontrollable smile grew on Lindsay’s face, for he loved nothing more than to hear other people’s tragitales. And if the tragedy was sprinkled with a smattering of smut, his smile would grow even