By midnight, I had consumed half of my weight in alcohol, and by spacing it out over a whole day, I stayed right at the line between “cute drunk” and “gross drunk”, and I was having a little trouble walking it. Somehow Essie, Peaches, Dot, and Miguel were still with us, though Essie was probably the most blasted. His voice had climbed an octave over the course of the evening, and his flamboyance with it. At this point, I didn’t really notice. Essie’s nature followed the same principles as the frog in the boiling water. Once you talked to Essie long enough, you forgot his eccentricity and instead found yourself very comfortable and welcomed, which was a dangerous place for me to be, his arch nemesis.

            Essie’s arm was wrapped around my neck currently as we were attempting to walk down the sidewalk, but Essie was tall and heavy and kept dragging me off my feet. He’d ditched the stilettos a long time ago; now he wore sensible flip flops that he’d kept tucked away in the gigantic yellow purse tucked under his arm. The shoes only marginally improved his balance.

            “You have such nice hair,” Essie said, patting the top of my head. “Like Bob Ross.”

            “Who’s Bob Ross?” I slurred back.

            “Shut up, bitch, you know who Bob Ross is.”

            I reared back and frowned up at him. “Don’t call me bitch.”

            “I am queen and I’ll call you what I like. Right, Peaches?”

            “Mm?” Peaches looked over his shoulder, oblivious. He’d pretty much tuned Essie out by this point, and he’d imbibed just enough to make it somewhat possible.

            Two girls came careening out of a nearby bar, nearly knocking into us. When they staggered back, they blinked at Essie in amazement for a few seconds, as if they’d just come across a majestic elk in the wild.

            “Oh my God,” the one said, hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.” She stumbled forward, nearly running into Essie. “You look so… good!”
            “Mm, you too,” Essie replied without nearly as much commitment.

            “Oh my God, I love gay people so much,” the other girl slurred. “You guys are just the best! You, like, invented, like…” Here she trailed off, squinting in what looked like painful thought.

            “It’s sucks sooo much how you guys are treated!” the other one nearly yelled, leaning in too close to me. “Homophobes can fucking choke! You guys are so beautiful and I really want you to know that.”

            Everyone stared at them in a bit of bewilderment, but the girls seemed satisfied with their proclamation and headed back into the bar.

            “You know,” Essie said, “I vastly prefer drunk straight women to drunk straight men.”

            “Amen,” Josh agreed from behind us. Then suddenly he was next to me, leaning in to say, “You need help?”

            “Yes,” I muttered back. “Take your boyfriend please.”

            Josh chuckled and tapped Essie’s arm. It took several attempts at an explanation before Essie understood what was being asked, and then he happily removed his arm from the chokehold around my neck and used Josh as his anchor instead. Josh was sober and certainly more hefty, so he managed better. Free at last, I staggered to the edge of the sidewalk and leaned up against someone’s car, trying to catch my breath.

            “You alright?” I heard Peaches ask me. He’d had a few drinks but was otherwise pretty sober.

            “Mm, fine. I think Essie crunched my spine a little though.”

            “He does that.”

            I heard Essie’s signature laugh from behind me, and when I turned I saw Josh and Essie both seeming to have a good time together. Could they be fucking? The idea seemed so preposterous, and yet Josh was still hiding something from me and seemed unwilling to dish. Why would he want to hide it from me unless he was fucking someone he didn’t want me to know about?

            “You and Essie doing okay?” I asked out of the blue, because I had zero social skills at the moment.

            “I feel fine. Not sure about that one.”

            “No, I mean…” I let out a groan of frustration, shoving my hair back from my face and tilting to the side enough that I had to stagger to regain my balance. “Like, is your relationship okay?”

            Peaches looked bemused. “Yes? Why are you asking?”

            “Mm, dunno.” I wasn’t so drunk to blurt out my suspicions, because some part of me knew how ridiculous they were.

            “I’m thinking you’ve had enough for tonight.” Peaches reached out to steady me, putting his hand on my shoulder.

            “No way, I’ve been so much worse.”

            “Do you remember where you parked?”

            “I came with Josh. No clue where we’re parked.” I patted the hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Peaches?”

            “Yes, Justin?”

            “Happy Gay Day.”

            Peaches snorted, then grabbed my arm so that I could walk forward without tripping over my own boots. “Happy Gay Day.”

            I dropped my head to his shoulder with a pout, gripping his arm with both hands. “I miss my boyfriend.”

            “I’m sure you do.”

            “I want him to be here. It’s not Gay Day unless you’re having gay sex.”

            “Not sure about—”

            “It’s a rule! You must have gay sex on Gay Day or you die!” Then I snorted and started laughing. To his credit, Peaches gave me a few charity chortles.

            “Should I plan your funeral then?”

            “Fuck you,” I giggled, knocking my elbow into his waist. Even after bar hopping all day in the fucking brutal Los Angeles summer sun, Peaches still smelled good. Halfway through the evening I’d noticed the brush of glitter across his cheeks, probably Essie’s doing but possibly something Peaches thought of himself. He was like a grunge fairy—punk rock on the outside, sparkles also on the outside.

            For the three hundredth time that day, I missed Thad. I wanted to be using his arm to hold myself upright as we drunkenly made our way back to the car, watching his glitter shimmer in the overhead lamplight as I nuzzled his shoulder. Instead I had to feel sad about the fact that Peaches still smelled good and I still found him handsome even after all the shit that happened between us. Even worse, Essie was here, stumbling around in his sequin shorts, his butt impossibly perky. He’d been cordial to me all day and yet I still resented him. If I wasn’t angry about how hot he was, I was angry about how nice he was. And now I was angry that he had both arms wrapped around Josh, even though action was one of the few things I wanted for Josh. I just didn’t want action from Essie.

            “Are you jealous?” I whispered to Peaches, face still smushed against his shoulder.

            “Of what?”

            “Of that.” I jerked my head toward Josh and Essie.

            “No. Isn’t Josh your friend?”

            “Yeah.” I sighed. “I’m jealous.”

            “Why? You’re not dating either of them.”

            “Pfffft, okay, Mister Obserf—Observant.” I let out a little whine. “I just want what you have, man. Ya know? I want a cute boyfriend in very tiny shorts getting drunk with me on Gay Day.”

            “You have a boyfriend.”

            “But he’s not here.” I grabbed two fistfuls of Peaches’s shirt and tried shaking him, but I ended up staggering forward instead and only Peaches’s hand on my arm kept me from falling over.

            “Why don’t you just focus on walking instead?” Peaches asked.

            So I took his advice and watched my feet, which was a good idea because it meant I didn’t have to walk behind Essie and envy that fucking V-shape his back made. Eventually we made it back to where Josh’s car was parked. Sven and Carlita had already taken off via an Uber, so it was just Josh and I. Essie gave Josh a kiss on the cheek and an overly enthusiastic Bonjour! to me before shuffling away, this time with one arm tossed over the shoulders of his boyfriend. Peaches gave me a nod and a smile but that was about it, because God forbid he ever emote.

            “Did he really say bonjour?” Josh asked me once Peaches and Essie had joined back up with Miguel and Dot, who were waiting for them on the other side of the sidewalk.

            “Yeah.”

            “That’s French for hello, not good-bye.”

            “Wanna run over there and explain it to him?” I asked before ducking into the car and settling into the passenger seat. Josh soon slid in next to me, fumbling around in his pockets for the keys.

            “I mean, how hard is it to know more than one French word?” Josh asked. He accidentally dropped his keys on the floor, then swore, appropriately, in French. I did truly forget sometimes that Josh spoke French, and I was sure Essie had as well. It was kinda funny now that I thought about it. Of all the French words to fuck up…

            “He was very drunk, in his defense.”

            Josh found his keys and jammed them into the ignition. “How you feeling? Are you going to throw up in my car?”
            “No way. I’m nowhere near that drunk.”

            “Great.” Josh started the engine, and we pulled away from the curb. I curled up against the door and rested my head on the glass, watching the city lights scroll by. For a few minutes there was blissful silence, and I appreciated the absence of Britney Spears for once in my life. My head felt heavy, and my limbs were still a little tingly from the booze.

            I pulled my phone out of my string backpack and glanced at it for the first time in six hours. I noticed a message from Thad.

            Hope you’re having fun! :)

            Something pinched me in the chest, and I sighed. I wanted to type out a response, but my hands didn’t seem to want to function. It was way too late for Thad to get a reply now anyway, since he was two hours ahead of us and most likely asleep.

            “Thad text you?” Josh asked.

            “Mhm. He says he hopes I’m having fun.”

            “Are you?”

            “I was.” I closed my eyes. “Now I just want to go to sleep.”

            “We’re getting old, huh?”

            I smiled and looked over at Josh. “Guess so. Fuck, back in high school I could party until four and somehow drag myself to school that same morning.”

            “The coke probably helped with that.”

            “For sure.” I paused, twisting so that I could study Josh’s profile. “I think that one guy at that lame tiki bar was flirting with you.”

            Josh rolled his eyes. “You mean the middle-aged dude with the jean shirt?”

            I chuckled. “He wasn’t bad. He had all his hair still. Since when are you picky?”

            “First, he was not flirting with me. Second, I’m not nearly as attracted to men twice my age as you are, Justin.”

            “Gotta expand your dating pool. There are some hot silver foxes out there, and you might be exactly their type.”

            “Hmm.” Josh lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Scrawny twinks out of high school seem more those guys’ type.”

            “Ugh, you’re so negative.”

            “Stop trying to get me to hook up with guys I exchange five words with at a bar.”

            “Someone has to try! You won’t!”
            Josh sighed and shook his head and didn’t bother responding past that. Josh’s defeatist attitude about his love life pissed me off, but I wasn’t about to get into a fight with him about it when I was this exhausted and tipsy.

            I must have fallen asleep, because what felt like only seconds later, Josh was shaking me awake. Instead of taking me home, he’d driven to his place, which made sense, since Boyle Heights was a lot closer and I was ready to pass out on pretty much any surface. I grabbed my string backpack and staggered after him to the front door, resting my head between his shoulder blades as he searched for the right key. I then hugged him from behind, and he chuckled as he pulled me into the house.

            We headed upstairs to his small bedroom at the end of the hall, and we collapsed on his bed in a pile, like a pair of tuckered-out puppies. His chest made a good pillow and my back made a good arm rest, so that’s how we fell asleep, thus marking the end of our Gay Day festivities.