Peaches and I were both a little drunk, but it worked in our favor, providing grease to a conversation that had a rough start. Eventually Peaches was spilling everything: his rocky childhood, his time spent in foster care, his homelessness stint, his recovery through music, and Essie. He now kept calling him Eddie, who I assumed was the same person. When I asked, Peaches struggled to clarify.
“He uses both names. I’ve always called him Essie; he seems more comfortable with that name, since he chose it for himself. But… there are times he prefers Eddie, depending on his mood.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It’s not really. He’s just… Essie. That’s how he’s always been.”
I felt bad for Peaches. He sounded totally wrecked, and I couldn’t help but envy Eddie, because I doubted any guy sounded so broken after breaking up with me. Most of the dudes I had dated cheated on me.
“So tell me again why you broke up?” I asked, because it had sounded convoluted the first time.
“I’m a psycho, and Eddie… God, he doesn’t know what he looks like. He doesn’t know how people see him. You’ve met him. He’s attractive, right?”
“Yeah.” No use denying that Eddie was a hundred percent California jock: tall, blond, fit, tan. I had no idea why Eddie would go for Peaches. Not that Peaches was ugly, but to a shallow queen, he wouldn’t make the cut. I liked grungy rocker dudes, so I was willing to forgive his baggy dark clothing and his bumpy Roman nose. In fact, that nose was very quickly growing on me.
Maybe he had an enormous dick. Size queens could forgive anything for a huge cock.
“And it drives me crazy, because there’s this guy who he’s been hanging around who is so obviously into him and Eddie won’t admit it. He thinks I’m overreacting, which is bullshit. Eddie’s not an idiot. He dated around before me. He knows what sexual interest is like. So because Eddie’s so nonchalant about it, I keep worrying they’re fucking. And then I realize that they should be fucking, because this guy is also gorgeous and takes very impressive artsy photos of Eddie—”
“A photographer? Jesus Christ.” I’d met a lot of “artists” in my life, and I hadn’t found anyone sleazier than a photographer, at least the kind interested in artsy photos of attractive people.
“I know, right? Nude photos, by the way.”
“They’re totally fucking. They have to be.”
“Thank you! Everyone makes it out to seem like I’m some paranoid weirdo for assuming something else is going on, but I’m not crazy. The guy wants to fuck Eddie, and Eddie denying it drives me nuts. He turns it around and makes me think that I’m at fault for not trusting him.”
“Dude, I would not trust anyone with a goddamn nudey photographer. I don’t care how faithful the dude is.”
“I know I can get jealous, but it’s not that I don’t trust Eddie. It’s that I don’t trust my own ability to keep people’s interest. I spend my life with the constant anxiety that Eddie will finally figure out how terrible I am and move on.”
“I’ve met a lot of terrible people, okay? You are not terrible.”
“How terrible?” Peaches asked.
I started to tick off my fingers. “Okay, so my first boyfriend was twenty-eight. I was fifteen at the time.”
“Shit.”
“He cheated on me two months into our ‘relationship’, if you can even call it that. Then there was another guy who cheated on me, and after him I briefly dated a guy who committed suicide.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“And then, when I was seventeen, my first real boyfriend was a drug dealer. Also about ten years older than me. Once he tried to throw me off a balcony.” When Peaches just stared at me, I continued. “So unless you’ve done any of that shit, you’re not terrible.”
“You… dated a drug dealer.”
“Oh, yeah. My first boyfriend got me into cocaine, actually. Spent all of high school snorting coke and blowing dick to get more of it. I nearly flunked out of school before my parents staged an intervention and put me in rehab. I had to go to summer school to graduate.”
“Wow. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Dude, your dad murdered your mother. I can’t top that one. Is he still alive?”
“My dad? Yeah. He’s in prison for thirty years before he’s up for probation. I hope he never gets out. He wasn’t physically abusive to me, but he was a shitty father and I almost preferred foster care. And foster care was hell.”
“Look at us, swapping sob stories,” I joked, taking a swig from my drink. “This is great. I like this.”
Peaches gave me a half-smile, which was something.
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