Kiss of Death

When we last left off, I had given up on dating in Los Angeles, so I set my sights on the beautiful city of Long Beach, California. But first, I took a trip to the Motherland.

I was flown to San Francisco to consult on logistics for a fashion show by a respected designer. When I arrived at my hotel, I was surprised by the number of gay men roaming the corridors, like hot zombies from Dawn of the Dead looking for brains. (In retrospect, maybe they WERE looking for brains.) When I stepped into the elevator, I turned to face the mirrored door and the guy behind me started rubbing his crotch and asked, “What’s up?”

I turned around and responded, “Are you serious? Haven’t you seen Dateline? There are cameras in here.”

He looked familiar, though I couldn’t place him. I panicked, quickly running him through the one night stand database in my head. He didn’t ping there.

“You going to the show tonight?” He asked.

“The show?”

“The GayVN Awards,” he replied mispronouncing the show's name by call ng them the 'Gavin Awards'.

“Gavin Newsom has his own awards show?” (Try picturing THAT statue. Hottest trophy ever.)

“No. The porn awards.”

Then it hit me. He was a porn star that my ex, Adam the Third, was obsessed with.

“Oh, the GayVN awards,” I corrected. “No,” I said as I turned back around.

My distain for porn is well documented. Porn makes me laugh. The dialogue is atrocious andWest Hollywood treats porn stars like they are royalty. In fact, Adam the Third and I were forced to break up over a “film” called Dangerous Liaisons (and I'm not talking about the one starring Michelle Pfieffer and Glenn Close)because while I was convinced that one of the film's stars was a bartender at the Abbey, Adam tried to convince me that the “talent” in question was in fact a serious actor and not a bartender. Anyway...back to San Francisco.

After my elevator encounter with the porn star, I showered and dressed and met up with my old high school friend Hal for what I thought was going to be a nice quiet evening of sushi and sake on Market Street.

Sadly for me, Hal had already decided we were going to the GayVN after party, where his morbidly obese, straight female companion had already planted herself with a vodka cranberry and a straw.

Hal received a message on his iPhone and squealed like a schoolgirl.

“O.M.G. You’ll never guess the tweet I just got.”

I hate Twitter. I hate the word “tweet.” Twitter is for people who don’t want to have any real communication with another human being. Twitter is also for people who are trying too desperately remain relevant. (I’m talking about you Demi Moore and Soleil Moon Frye). And don’t get me started on Heidi Montag’s hourly “I love Jesus” updates.

So Hal had just received a message (or “tweet”) telling him that an Oscar winner was in our very presence and had just been spotted touting his statuette to a couple of porn stars (a real life couple). Allegedly the Academy Award winner told the gay porn couple that, “the Oscar is back in my hotel room. Do you want to see it?” Seriously, who uses that line? And who travels with an Academy Award? I mean, I carried around my pinebox derby trophy (for best design) for two months at one point in my life, but I was in kindergarten.

I was more shocked that the person who SENT him the “tweet” was standing ten feet away from us.

“Seriously? She couldn’t have just walked over here and told you?” I asked.

“I use Twitter all the time. It’s great for hook-ups. I can just send a message saying “what’s up?” and thirty minutes or less, I’ve got sex delivered to my door.” (But does it come with hot wings and ranch? Doubtful.)

“What’s up?” We’ve moved to a time in our culture where dating can be altogether by-passed with two words and it’s faster than ordering Pink Dot.

Realizing that I was de-evolving into a character on Gossip Girl, I left.

After the fashion show on Sunday, I was back in the 323, but setting my sites on the 562.

I had a feeling about Long Beach. I mean, the town’s biggest attraction is a big girl named “the Queen Mary” and it is, after all, the busiest seaport in the world. A lesser writer would make a joke about the seamen coming in and out of Long Beach, but not me.

I perched myself at The Library Coffee House and waited for my soul mate to walk in. Approximately five minutes after I sat down, a tall, strapping cowboy type walked in.

“That’s a whole lot of hell yes,” I (apparently) said quietly out loud.

After grabbing his coffee, the cowboy turned, and smiled.

“Anyone sitting here?” he asked, passing all of the other available sofas and chairs.

I shook my head, damn near giddy that it took five minutes to meet a guy in Long Beach when it would have taken an impossible missions force team and three months working deep undercover in West Hollywood.

“You’re new here, right?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure what about me gave that bit of truth away, but before I could answer he quickly followed with, “I mean, I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“Are you the town welcome wagon?” I asked.

“Something like that,” he replied with a big grin as he extended his hand. “I’m Ben.”

After some small talk about the weather, the neighborhood, and the season finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race (Shanelle was ROBBED), I asked, “What do you do, Ben?”

He was elusive, but I was finally able to glean after a short game of 20 questions that he owned his own business, was involved in bedding, worked with people and never had the same client twice.

I was in no mood for games and was beginning to wonder if he was just a terrible prostitute. “Just tell me. What do you do?”

“I’m a mortician.”

It took a few seconds to register what he said, because I thought I heard, “I’m a Morticia.” As in Addams. I was about to joke, “I’m a Gomez” when I realized he meant he worked in a funeral home.

“Uh… oh,” is all I could manage. Then, “Really?”

“Yes. Really.” He started to climb out of his seat, grabbing his iced coffee as he prepared to leaver before I grabbed his forearm.

I could tell I had offended him and instantaneously felt bad. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out that way. What I meant was… I’m just in shock… because I’ve always wanted… to have sex in a casket.”

I don’t know why – when caught and trapped like a mouse in the cage of a python – I begin to sing and dance and spew stupidity. I have no idea where that stranged admission came from. It was like I was momentarily possessed by the spirit of an idiot. I even grabbed my own mouth in horror. And NO, I have NEVER wanted to have sex in a casket.

He grinned. I hadn’t lost him completely, so I continued: “I was just so… you know, shocked because here you are… day in and day out you’re around all those… caskets.”

Caskets. Day in and day out, you’re around all those caskets. Idiot.

He smiled. I smiled and said, “I don’t know why I just said that. Out loud.”

“So we should make a date,” he said.

I did the “ahyeahsuregreat” and smiled as broad as possible. “Why don’t you come down to the funeral home tomorrow after noon. You can help me embalm a body.”

If I’m lying, I’m dying. No pun intended.

I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. The next day, he took me on a tour of his mortuary, which ended in a tiled room containing a dead body.

I screamed (nay, yelped energetically), backing out of the room and shrieked, “whoa, whoa, whoa… you don’t just lead someone into a room with a dead body.” Even Jeffrey Dahmerwouldn’t have introduced embalming fluid on a first date.

“I thought you wanted to…”

I cut him off: “Have sex in a casket! Not play drain the stiff!”

It sort of hung there in the air and I finally said, “I mean… I can think of other stiffs to…” (I couldn’t even finish saying “drain.”)

We went to lunch at a local diner and I spent the entire time staring at his hands, wondering if he had washed them. He walked me to my car, told me he had a “lovely” time, gently caressed my face (while inside I screamed, “oh my God, he’s touching me and I pray to God he washed his hands”) and kissed me.

The one thing I neglected to consider about searching for Mr. Right in Long Beach, would be the number of miles I would put on my car. In the week that Ben and I have been together, I’ve put an extra 350 miles on my car.

But it’s good. It’s strange. It’s fun. Maybe it’s more of the novelty at the moment, but I’m having a good time. Plus, there’s something sexy and dangerous in knowing that the man I’m sleeping with can cut my carotid artery and drain me in the middle night.

And for the record, we have not had sex in a casket. Yet.

Sunday night, I woke up one night in a cold sweat, having a nightmare that Ben and I had taken over a bed and breakfast in Long Beach and turned it into a funeral home. In my dream, I ran through the house searching for our beautiful eight year old adopted twin boys. I found them standing in the embalming room in rubber gloves and bloody operating gowns. One of them turned to me and asked, “Why won’t you play with me, daddy?”

I sat up, waking Ben. He told me to go back to bed. As I laid back down, I noticed the blinking indicator light on my blackberry. I checked it to see two text messages from Rick (the actor inNew York): “Coming to L.A. Must see you.”

The second one simply said: “What’s up?”