Mahu Surfer by Neil Plakcy Page B

Hibiscus House.”
     
    Brad drove a gold Toyota Camry with rainbow bumper stickers and a broken antenna, and he followed me as promised. I was embarrassed to let him into my room, which was a mess. There was no housekeeping staff, the furniture looked like it had come from the Salvation Army store, and I needed to do laundry, which was evident from various items of clothing strewn around on the floor.
     
    “Are you sure you’re gay?” Brad said, standing behind me in the doorway. “My God, I’ve seen straight men who clean up better than this.”
     
    “Well, if I’m not, then I’ve just knocked a big fat hole in my life for no reason,” I said. “I guess I should jump in the shower.”
     
    “Not here.” Brad walked into the room and pulled open the half of the sliding closet door that actually worked. There were still a couple of clean shirts and pants hanging there. “OK, this, and this,” he said, pulling out a pair of Ralph Lauren chinos my mother had bought me and a black t-shirt that was almost a clone of his own.
     
    He looked at me. “Boxers, right?” Without waiting for my assent, he walked over to the flimsy bureau and opened the top drawer. “Bad,” he said, holding up a pair with tropical fish on them. “Horrible,” were a pair spattered with ice cream cones, and “Awful” were a pair decorated with Santas and Christmas trees. “Jesus, you don’t get laid much, do you?” he asked. “Who would want to sleep with a man who wears these?” I didn’t want to admit to him that I liked those goofy boxers, and frankly, the few times I’d had sex with other guys, they’d come off so quickly they’d never been an issue. He finally found a striped pair that met with his approval.
     
    I watched his whole performance with a kind of baffled amusement. He reminded me of Gunter, a gay man in Honolulu I knew, except that Gunter mixed his attitude with an athletic physicality that was as sexy as it was intimidating. Brad was simply a guy with no tolerance for bad fashion. He found a pair of loafers and a leather belt on the floor, and then said, “All right. You come with me now.”
     
    I was eager to get to the bar to meet these other people who had known Lucie Zamora, but I had to humor Brad. He drove me to his apartment, a one-bedroom a couple of blocks off the Kam Highway, and led me without ceremony to his bathroom. “Strip, soldier,” he said. “Get in the shower, and don’t forget to moisturize.”
     
    Brad’s shower was big enough for two, and I thought for the first few minutes that he might be joining me, which was a prospect I thought would be interesting—if I wasn’t in such a hurry to get to the bar and meet his friends. Instead, though, I was left alone with a shelf of grooming products. Lavender-scented bath soap, lemon moisturizer, shampoo, conditioner, shave gel, and a host of other products whose function I did not understand.
     
    I used a disposable razor and a fog-free mirror in the shower to shave, and when I stepped out Brad was there with an oversized bath sheet. “Feel better?”
     
    “Almost human.” I wrapped the towel around my waist and faced the mirror.
     
    “Give me your hand.”
     
    Brad squeezed a dollop of lotion into my palm. “Massage that into your hair, from the back forward.” When I finished, he handed me a comb. “You have good material. But if you don’t take care of it, it’ll never last. How old are you?” He turned me to face him. “Thirty?”
     
    “Thirty-two.”
     
    He looked me up and down. “You’ll do. Your clothes are on the bed.”
     
    By then, even though I knew I had to get to that bar and meet Brad’s friends, I was starting to be disappointed. I didn’t expect every gay man I met to want to drag me into bed, but Brad obviously liked me, or he wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. Yet… nothing was happening.
     
    I shrugged, and got dressed. Ever since I admitted to myself that I was gay—which had been