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  my worst date

  STONEWALL INN EDITIONS

  Keith Kahla, General Editor

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  My Worst Date by David Leddick

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  my worst date

  david leddick

  st. martin’s press

  new york

  MY WORST DATE. Copyright © 1996 by David Leddick.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission except in the case of

  brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Book design by Scott Levine

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Leddick, David.

  My worst date / by David Leddick. — 1st Stonewall Inn ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-18138-8 1.

  1. Gay youth—Florida—Miami Beach—Fiction. 2. South

  Beach (Miami Beach, Fla.)—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—

  Florida—Miami Beach—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3562.E28444M9 1996

  813’.54—dc20 9623004

  CIP

  First Stonewall Inn Edition: March 1998

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Adam Budzius

  I would like to thank:

  Steven Pressfield, author and very good and longtime friend, who was the first to read “My Worst Date” and assured me that it was really a novel.

  Jennifer Rockford, my agent’s assistant, who was second to read this book and whose enthusiasm convinced him that this was indeed a novel.

  Paul Gottlieb, the nicest neighbor anyone could have and President of Abrams Books, who sent me on my way to see other publishers with my infant novel.

  Michael Denneny of Crown Publishers, who was warm and friendly and made a bridge for this book to St. Martin’s Press.

  Darren Scala, who typed the manuscript so beautifully when I couldn’t face it anymore.

  Keith Kahla, my editor at St. Martin’s Press, who truly edits and has impressed me, which is not easy to do.

  Contents

  glenn elliott paul

  on the beach

  the bomber club

  iris’s soliloquy

  hugo nails glenn elliot

  bomber club 2

  sex with glenn—iris

  sex with glenn—hugo

  at the gym

  hugo’s sexual history

  iris mulls it over

  iris and glenn dine out

  macha and ken

  cold christmas

  hugo models

  deceit in the bathroom

  iris at the gym

  hugo’s pilot

  mr. korman

  hugo thinks about france and other things

  mr. korman visits

  iris counts the bodies

  glenn elliott’s worst date

  hugo sees magenta

  new york

  the bomber closes

  armani

  ken and hugo lunch

  henry rollins band

  viscaya

  viscaya 2

  miami by night

  eavesdropping

  butterfly world

  hugo thinks about stanford white

  father

  the strand

  roberto shaving

  the hooters

  the fleet’s in

  hurricane andrew

  iris’s hurricane

  fred’s hurricane

  macha’s hurricane

  hugo’s hurricane

  after the hurricane

  played out

  my worst date

  glenn elliott paul

  Here’s what I think of first. He was dark. Not too tall. With his clothes off he had beautiful definition in his upper body and his stomach was very flat.

  He came across the yard, not using the sidewalk, to my mother’s real estate office. She was out, showing Art Deco houses to some New York people who wanted to move to Miami Beach because they’d read it was chic in Time magazine. Estella, my mother’s secretary, said she was out but would be back soon. I crossed the room in a kind of businesslike way and stepped through the door, picking up some papers from a desk as I passed by. To make us look like a real office with things going on. Having nowhere to carry them to, I went into the storeroom, where we kept the typing
paper and the toilet paper, and realized I’d just have to stay there for a while.

  “Maybe that young man could show me something,” he said. “I’m just looking for a small house or a nice apartment to rent.” “That’s Mrs. Carey’s son,” Estelle said. “He’s just filling in today. He’s still in high school. Well, maybe. Why don’t you fill in this card and we’ll see how soon Mrs. Carey comes back.”

  While I stood in the storeroom he filled out his card. I looked at it later. Name: Glenn Elliott Paul. Address: Waldorf Towers, Ocean Drive. That was it.

  I came out of the storeroom. Estella said, “Find out what you wanted?” The bitch. She knew exactly what I was doing. She’s the smartest one in the office, and the best-looking, too. Fortunately, non-Hispanic men were of no interest to her.

  “Oh, here’s Mrs. Carey,” she said. Mother cut across the lawn, too. She was looking pretty good today. My mother had once been a famous model from Italy. With bangs and long straight hair and those dark blue eyes Italians sometimes have. Not blue at all like English people or Scandinavians. But that blue I call “contact lens blue.” Unreal looking.

  I was born when she was living with someone important in South America. I don’t know who he was. I’m not sure that he was my father. That’s taboo. But she left him, took me, and came back to the United States to model some more.

  Now we live in Miami Beach and her hair has those awkward kind of blond streaks they put in dark hair down here. So you’re sort of blondish but not in any way that fools anyone. That’s the Hispanic mentality. “Of course I wouldn’t want you to think that I was pretending to be really blond.”

  She came in the office and the man said, “Mrs. Carey, I’m Glenn Elliott Paul.

  “You seem to have a lot of first names,” Mother said.

  “Everyone says that,” he answered.

  Mother suggested several small houses she had for rent. The apartments would have to wait until tomorrow as she had to call the superintendents and set up appointments.

  “Why don’t you come with us?” he said to me.

  “He has better things to do,” Mother said.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like your homework for one thing. And aren’t you supposed to be learning that monologue for your entrance exam to Talent High?” Talent High is where I want to go next year, over in Miami. It’s a school for the artistic. Not the autistic.

  “You want to be an actor?” he said, looking at me directly for the first time.

  “I’m thinking about it,” I said.

  “You could be a model first,” he told me.

  “No I couldn’t,” I answered. “I’m too short.”

  “You’ll grow,” he said.

  “Six inches?” I asked.

  “Well, that would be a start,” he answered. Mother was looking at us both, jangling her car keys.

  “I don’t want him to be a model,” she said. “I was a model. It stinks. He can try to be an actor if he wants to, but a model, no. Let’s go, Mr. Paul.”

  They left and I got my bicycle. I tooled over to Ocean Drive and rode slowly along to see what was good.

  It was October. My worst month. Everything happens to me in October.

  There were a couple of really great-looking guys on roller blades. One had cut-off bib overalls with nothing on underneath. You know that look? The pecs under the bib top and the side buttons undone so you can see the white places on the hips that a bathing suit covers. Very humpy. He gave me that “I’m not gay, just good-looking” look models do. I thought, If you’re not gay why aren’t you wearing any underpants? Those guys.

  The girls are much better. They just pull their hair back, put on a T-shirt and jeans, and go. Only the ones who aren’t going to make it run around with their tits hanging out and wiggle when they walk.

  Ocean Drive has changed a lot. When I was fourteen there was nothing here but old folks stumbling around in the sun and drugged-out Cuban hoods stumbling after them. The beach was always great, of course, but nobody was on it.

  Except for that weird guy with the black glove, running every day. Nice body, but that glove. I think his hand is missing, and he’s got a plastic hand in there. And then he wears those black shorts and old-fashioned basketball shoes. It’s a little spooky, though you do have to kind of wonder what it would be like with a guy with a beautiful body and a plastic hand. I just gave myself shivers.

  As I turned the comer on Thirteenth Street to go home, there was Mr. Paul at the light in an old Volkswagen convertible. Very cool.

  He called out, “Where do you go to the beach?” I stopped beside his car and put my legs down. I’m not that short.

  “Here,” I said. “At Eleventh Street. That’s the place to go.”

  “Are you going tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I decided.

  “What time?”

  “Right after lunch. So I have some chance of getting cramps.”

  He smiled like he didn’t understand me. “Okay. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  The light changed and he zipped off up Collins. I went over to Drexel and on home. Up Royal Palm. Mother was already home when I got there. She was sitting on the couch with her jacket off and her shoes kicked aside. She looked cute. She didn’t ask me where I’d been.

  She said, “He took the first one.”

  I said, “Who he?”

  “Mr. Paul. That man at the office this afternoon. The first apartment I showed him, that one at Twenty-first and Michigan, he liked. He hardly looked around. He just said his furniture would fit fine and it would be fine and wrote me a check.”

  “And,” she added, “I’m going out to dinner with him tonight.”

  I did a long Bette Davis-style take. I walked across the room and looked out the window. That’s where the camera would be in one of those scenes so you can see my face in close-up and my mother behind me on the couch. Then I said, “Are you?”

  Mom had the Miriam Hopkins role. “Yes. I’m even kind of excited. He’s good-looking, don’t you think? And nice. Polite. Do you think I’m older than he is?”

  “Mom darling,” I said, “you aren’t older than anyone.”

  I went to the kitchen where the cats were screaming to be fed. Three girls and two boys, all brats. Mostly black and white. Phyllis, Fern and Alice. Ned and Ted. We’re quite a family here on Royal Palm.

  I heated up some frozen shrimp cannoli while she was getting dressed. I was eating it and studying my speech from East of Eden for my Talent High audition when he showed up to get Mother. You know, that one James Dean does with Julie Harris that makes everyone cry. I couldn’t get a copy of the script so I got the movie on cassette and copied it down. Everybody else does dip-shit stuff from Bye Bye Birdie.

  Mr. Paul was wearing a blue blazer and looked very smart. His hair was slicked down and he was wearing a tie. I wondered what he’d wear at the beach tomorrow. A seersucker suit maybe. He smiled and said hello to me. I smiled back as though very absorbed in my script.

  They left. Mom looked really great in her white suit. Her best one. And her hair pulled up on one side. Nothing gets past me.

  “Good night, darling,” she called out. At least she didn’t come over and kiss me. That would really have been overdoing it.

  “Good night, Mom,” I said. “Have a great time.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m going over to the Club Deuce later.”

  “You’re not. I mean it.”

  “Just kidding. I don’t have fake ID,” I said. “I’ll talk to Macha and go to bed. I’m fine.” They left.

  Macha is my best friend. She’s very cool and so are her parents. They have a place over on North Bay Road but they are excellent.

  I called Macha and asked her if she wanted to go to the beach the next day. They have a pool and she never goes to the beach. She doesn’t want her skin to age. I said, “I’ll buy the sun block.” She must have fi
gured I had my reasons and agreed to go. I didn’t tell her about Glenn Elliott Paul. I figured, what if he doesn’t show up? Plus, this is beginning to get complicated.

  The next morning Mom said Mr. Paul had taken her to dinner at Tiberio’s up in Bal Harbor and that he was a perfect gentleman. She thought he wasn’t new to Miami because the staff at Tiberio’s seemed to know him. And then they’d gone down to Ocean Drive for a drink at the jazz club in the basement at the Waldorf Towers. He obviously hadn’t tried to get her to go up to his room at the Waldorf Towers. The bed probably wasn’t made. And he didn’t want her to see the KY on the night table.

  on the beach

  This is how it happened when we met at the beach. Somehow something less than I thought would happen and somehow something more.

  Macha came with me. I wanted her to see him and I also wanted to make sure it didn’t get too heavy right from the start.

  We went to the beach right off Eleventh Street. That’s the cool part. I thought about what kind of suit to wear. I decided on short boxers. Not too brief, but brief enough. The models are all wearing long boxers. Like they’re not at the gym three hours every day. No, short boxers were right. You can see I’ve got a nice body but I’m not showing it off.

  Macha wore a big T-shirt and shorts. She was staying out of the topless competition all the girl models are staging down there. Who could compete with all that plastic?

  We threw our stuff over three of those kind of beach couches and paid for them so there’d be no arguing later. And got them at the end of the row. With the last one empty for him. Get that, Him! He shall remain nameless. Until I introduce him to Macha. I told her someone might show up.

  I went in the water. I love Miami Beach. The water was Jade Green. The sky was Baby Blue. The sand was Dusky Lavender. Every color a designer shade. Beyond the palm trees the Art Deco hotels in all their jagged shapes and pastel bands, zigzags, squares, circles. Like one of those cut-out walls in a nightclub with the lights coming up behind them.

  Overhead 1930s and ’40s airplanes are coming and going, hauling drugs in and out of Opa-Locka Airport. At the end of the beach the cruise ships parade out, one after another. High in the water with all those thousands of socially ill-adapted aboard. Heading for the ports of the Caribbean where the shopping is so fantastic. Or maybe just to go out and ramble around in the Atlantic for a few days, trying not to catch on fire.