escapist wishes

The phone rings around 11 o’clock.

“Hello?” I cradle the phone in the crook of my neck and continue rifling through papers on the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Just going over some old manuscripts.”

“On a Saturday night? You were working on that shit last night too.”

“I’ll thank you to not refer to my writing as ‘that shit.’ And anyway, I feel like I’m on the verge of something here. Like something’s going to happen soon.”

“A burst of inspiration, huh?”

“Something like that. I’m not sure yet. It could just be gas.”

“Well, in the event that it is just gas, how do you feel about a drink?”

***

I can quite easily be persuaded to drop everything for a drink, especially if I don’t have to drive. Mark comes to pick me up a half hour later, after I’ve had a chance to primp myself for the gay ghetto. As I close the door to my room on the way out, the piles of papers look more daunting than before.

“How’s the gas?” Mark asks as I get into his car.

“Still stuck in my gut,” I reply. “Unfortunately.”

“It’ll come out one of these days,” he chuckles, half sympathetically.

“I can only hope,” I reply, sadder since I realize what we’re really talking about.

“I told Wen we’d meet him outside the Honeybunch,” he says as we pull out of the driveway.

“Oh God, the Honeybunch?” I snap out of my minute melancholy and instinctively flip the visor down to check myself in the mirror, “Am I done up enough for that?”

Mark reaches over and flips the visor back up, “Stop being a shallow bitch, Will, you look fine.”

“I am a shallow bitch, aren’t I?” I lament, flipping the visor back down to look at my eyes in the mirror. “Just look what the gays have done to me.”

“The gays did not make you a shallow bitch. Might I remind you that I knew you in your pre-gay days? And you were always a shallow bitch. The gays just made you cute.”