Circa 2000: Gay Fiction at the Millennium - Softcover

Roland Dott-who for years had been thinking about changing his name to Roland Montague or Rolando du Brul-drove to the Pasadena Athletic Club on an October morning. He had first joined the club before it moved into its new building on Walnut, when he still went by the name of Rol, sounds like a roll of mints. There was a boy, Charlie Emily, in his class at John Muir High who used to call him that. Watcha doing after the game, Rol? Emily would ask, tugging on his ear. Oh, you know, Charlie, Roland would answer. This and that. He was always too embarrassed to call Charlie Emily "Emily" even though that's what the whole school, even the football coach, called him. Emily. With his oily dark blond hair and his sneakers squeaking against the linoleum tiles in Western Civ and his habit of picking at the tunnel of his ear. Emily, whom every girl at John Muir wanted to date, or, to be more precise, screw; whom many girls-as Roland overheard through the aluminum air vent that connected the boys' room to the girls'-already had.

At the club, in the men's locker room, Roland took off his clothes and stood in front of the mirror. He kept his locker down a side aisle, where traffic was light; this allowed him to stand in front of the mirror for a long time. Once he was plucking the hairs from his nose when two men, sweaty from the squash courts, came upon him, his left nostril turned inside out. "Dig deep," one man said. The other laughed. And inside Roland, who by then had given up on the name Rol, smoldered a vicious little anger. But instead of saying anything, he fled to the steam room, hiding his face in the puff of wet heat.

But today was a Friday, mid-morning, meaning the type of men who sweat abundantly on the squash court were at the office, moistening beneath their stay-stiff collars and inside their khakis. Roland stood in front of his mirror, plucking the silver-white lining of his nostril. There was also the patch of hairs, like curbgrass, between his brow. And the strays that sprouted outside the neat little tuft that grew prettily between his breasts. Pluck, pluck, pluck. Already he looked better, Roland knew. He smiled, then thought about Graham because today was Friday and they'd fallen into the habit of having lunch on Fridays. "Roland, is it you?" Graham had said when Roland literally bumped into Graham nine months ago in the cologne aisle at Bullock's. They went for a cinnamon coffee across the street in a narrow shop that used to be Huggin's Shoes. They chatted about nothing important, although Roland admitted he had checked into a fat farm outside Cathedral City a few years back, when things weren't good for him. This had caused Graham to stop, his lower lip pushing out, and it was then that Graham proposed, "We should get together every now and then. For lunch." And Roland replied, the cinnamon coffee souring his breath, "And for a laugh."

He lived above a garage on Bellevue Terrace on the estate of an entertainment lawyer and his family of six. The garage apartment had sloped ceilings and windows that rattled nervously when the Santa Anas blew. It wasn't far from the club on Walnut, or from Pasadena's downtown, which was called Old Town, now that a group of concerned ladies had revitalized it and the stores specializing in casual clothes had moved in. Behind the Pasadena Civic Center was the Holiday Inn, which was there years before Old Town, and which still served a nice salad bar in its Rose City Lounge during the week. True, the booths could stand reupholstering, but the salad bar had a diet Thousand Island dressing that Roland-he told Graham every Friday-could just die for. Sometimes, during the week of the Emmy's, television people from New York stayed at the Holiday Inn and came to the Rose City for a bite. Of course, only technical people or junior costars would stay at the Holiday Inn, but Roland liked to sit in his booth, the one located behind the hostess stand, and watch the men with longish hair and horse-bit loafers come in and ask for tables for ten. A comedian who went on to win that year Roland once saw at the salad bar; he liked to think he'd seen George Clooney at the Rose City the year before he became famous, and if George Clooney had ever been fat, it was most definitely him.