Page 100 of The Holy Grail
She followed suit. “Is that a fancy way of saying a threesome?”
“No. A threesome is usually temporary, like a one-night stand. A triad is more long-term, like a committed relationship in which the three people involved are choosing to be together. It has stability, respect, and mutual affection.”
He abruptly got up and disappeared again, and upon returning, had a small pad of paper and a pencil. “There’s several kinds of triads,” he explained. “One is a closed, romantic to one partner triad. What that means, is one person is romantic with the other two partners, but those two partners aren’t romantic with each other.” He stopped to draw three triangulated stick figures on the pad of paper, the top one with long hair, one on the bottom with short hair, and the other one with wavy hair and facial scruff. When he saw her amused expression at the rudimentary drawing, he gave her a bland look. “I’m a bartender, not an artist,” before tapping the pencil on the top figure. “This was Gwen, at the top of the food chain, so to speak, with all the power, because she got all the attention.” He then tapped on the short-haired figure. “This was Mal.” He finished by tapping on the one with wavy hair and facial scruff. “This was me.”
“Okay.” Then, probably because of the alcohol, she added, “You know, it might have been easier to just write the names underneath each stick figure, instead of going to the trouble of drawing hair and stuff.”
He blinked at Jules, and as her logic sunk in, he closed his eyes for a moment. “Shit, you’re right,” he agreed, releasing an embarrassed chuckle before getting back on track. “So, anyway, Mal and I were both ‘with’ Gwen—”
“Every time I said her name, you made a face. And now you’re making a face whenyousay her name. It’s almost like you don’t care for her very much.”
“That’s because I don’t. I did in the beginning, but she killed it in the end. We’ll get to that later, but for now, Mal and I were both with Gwen—” he broke off to draw arrows going from the Malcom and Evan figures up to Gwen, as if visual clarification was needed. “So, while we weren’t exactly in a true closed, romantic to one person triad, because there wasn’t much romance involved at first, it did have some characteristics of being one … and it started to feel like there was real potential to become one after a couple of weeks.
“They were both fun to be with, and easy on the eyes. Gwen was a beautiful woman, but Mal was actually the big draw for me, so when she struck up the conversation at the bar about experimenting with them for a while, I accepted. I knew Mal was supposed tobe only watching and not participating, but that first time together, I decided, fuck it, and told him to join me and Gwen on the bed and play with her tits or something like that. I really just wanted to get him involved, partly because I was beyond attracted to him and partly because I wanted to see if I could get him to venture out of the closet for a while. Or maybe even permanently.”
Jules hadn’t missed the familiar use of ‘Mal’ instead of ‘Malcom’, and it sidetracked her for a second, so she was slow to catch the part about him being in the closet. “What do you mean?”
He looked at her for a long moment, then leaned forward and poured a single shot of tequila. “I mean Mal was in the closet—well, he probably still is, with a couple of deadbolts on the inside of the door keeping him safe—but I knew the moment I met him he was bisexual,” he answered, then finished off his shot.
She tilted her head in surprise. “What made you so sure of that?”
“I’m a bisexual man and have very accurate ‘gaydar’. Yes, it’s a real thing, and I don’t think I’ve ever been wrong, to be honest. Now, I will say that gay men are easier to spot, but I can usually pick out bisexual men pretty easily, too, unless they’re really good at code switching—”
“What’s that?”
“Faking or hiding who you are.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Anyway, depending on that, it can sometimes take a little longer to get a true read on someone, but not that long. There’s always a ‘tell’, like a mannerism, or something in their voice. If they’re a particularly hard nut to crack, then I’ll ask them what kind of music they listen to, and that usually does the trick. Men who are into men almost always have a favorite pop star, like Madonna, Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey, or Lady Gaga—who happens to be my favorite, in case you were wondering. Anytime I need a little extra emotional support, I listen to her.”
Jules poured a shot of tequila for herself, even though she was really starting to feel the effects of the previous shots.
Evan watched her with sharp eyes. “You’ve been thinking he was straight this whole time?”
“Well, I’ve had no reason to believe he wasn’t.”
“You’veneverhad any suspicions about him?”
She drank the shot and set it back on the coffee table, twirling the little glass as she thought about things that might have been ‘signs’ she’d overlooked, like Malcom’s pink shirt in high school, his love of Donna Summer, his self-proclaimed sensitivity, and his drive to appear more straight to his father. Slowly, she answered, “Nothing … concrete. Anything that seemed remotely ‘suspicious’ also seemed very stereotypical, and I’ve always tried to not give too much credence to stereotypes.” She paused, then added, “Plus, there was one night when Mal and I talked about his dad, and how his dad had questioned Mal’s sexuality and masculinity when he was sixteen. I told him about your issue with your father—without naming you—and told him you were bisexual and one of the most masculine men I knew, and I thought you were hot. I told him you being bisexual didn’t make you any less hot, and it wouldn’t bother me to be with a bisexual man. I also told him it wouldn’t make any difference to me ifhewas bisexual, so that would have been the perfect moment to tell me he was, wouldn’t it?”
“Not if he hasn’t really accepted it, yet,” Evan countered. “And I’ll bet he hasn’t.”
Despite his conviction, Jules didn’t know if Evan was right about Malcom and decided it didn’t necessarily matter at that particular moment. “So … obviously the triad didn’t work out like you’d hoped,” she prompted, getting them back on topic.
“No, but I did try. Every time we were together, I made sure Mal was involved. Again, part of that was because of my attraction to him, and part of it was to get him out of the closet. I thought by making the encounters more interactive for him, it would loosen him up, get him comfortable enough to be himself. Now, you might be thinking I should have just left him alone, but the way he looked at me was not how a straight man looks at another man—”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Any time he was in ‘watcher mode’, his eyes were on me, not on Gwen. A lot of times, when he hung back from the action, I think it was so Gwen couldn’t see him checking me out—maybe he knew she wouldn’t like it. So, anyway, being me, I pushed him to jump in, and even though he was kind of shy, I got him to engage. One time, I convinced him to get undressed on the pretext of having Gwen suck him off while I took her from behind, and I got to enjoy his amazing body, not to mention his cock. Honestly, most of my orgasms were courtesy of him—I doubt he ever knew it, but every time I came, I was thinking of him.
“The three of us had chemistry, and like I said, it started to feel like there was potential for us to go further.”
“Further?”
“To become a closed, romantic triad,” he clarified, before grabbing his notepad. After ripping the top page off, he quickly drew three stick figures again, this time with names underneath, and no embellished features. “I call it the Holy Grail. It’s when all three people are romantically and sexually attracted to each other, and are fully interactive with one another.” He punctuated this description by drawing double-sided arrows between each person. “Does that make sense?”
Feeling very loose, she said with exaggerated seriousness, “It does now, since you added in the arrows.”
