Page 80 of The King of Halloween
“Oh.”
“I was the boy who was too feminine, too proper, too careful. Some teachers praised my quiet demeanor while others questioned it. I also, um…” A flash of Adam sneaking one of the feather boas out of his dad’s store and wearing it to school thumped under the floorboards of his memory. Nope. He was not prying that one out. “I mean, in a family where my sister could scare the crap out of Wednesday Addams, I was the freak. It was my background. Taunts I didn’t understand. Ostracizing at lunch, the playground, just in general. It all came to a head when…”
He hadn’t breathed a word about his crush. By that point, Adam had known better than to let it exist anywhere outside of his brain. But somehow he’d found out, and he hadn’t liked it. At all. Being so cute, the boy had also been popular and had had a lot of friends who didn’t like the idea of the weird kid liking them either.
“Adam?”
The darkness fractured in his mind. He stared out at the grainy eighties colors of the movie as the monster lumbered across the screen after his victim. Adam didn’t buy the common trope that the monster killed people who had naughty sex because they’re all secretly puritanical prudes. The monster went after those who were in love and loved in return—something a hideous creature like him could never have.
A hand crested over his thigh, ripping Adam back to the present. His heart pounded hard in his chest, and he was breathing faster than a locomotive. Raj had to think he was losing his mind.
“Can we, uh, not talk about that right now? Dumping a garbage truck of trauma on you is not how I want the night to go.” He winced at the t-word. He’d meant baggage, but they were one and the same after all.
“It’s okay,” Raj whispered. “We’ve all got one of those.”
Adam shuddered and collapsed around him. He wished he could envelop him completely. Pull Raj inside, not to harm him, but to keep him safe, so their hearts beat together for all time.
“I didn’t go to New York to be on stage. I wanted to be a costume designer for big Broadway shows.”
“You can sew?” Raj asked with no malice. Adam didn’t realize he was bracing for it until it didn’t come.
“My mom taught me, and I used to make costumes for Dad’s shop. Some of them managed to get me an internship at a theater where I studied hard and lived in an apartment the size of my closet with three other people and five rats. But it got me out of here and into my dream.”
“What happened?”
Adam closed his eyes, not knowing why he had to tell him. “I got a break. The lead costume designer for a show had to drop out, so they called me on short notice. It was an off-off-Broadway production of Rocky Horror. I was ecstatic.”
He’d thought he could finally buy the name-brand mac and cheese instead of the generic stuff. “Everything was going well, until… A matinee performance. The actor decided to change up the choreography. During Sweet Transvestite he decided to do a chorus girl kick.”
If Adam closed his eyes, he could still hear the rip. “His costume gave out, and Doctor Frankenfurter flashed his frank and beans to the entire theater. People were mortified. Parents kept calling the theater demanding refunds and threatening to sue for emotional damages.”
“I’m sorry, they were scandalized by a swinging dong at Rocky Horror? Did they think they were at Annie?”
Adam barked out a laugh at the idea. Maybe they had, and he’d just caught the worst break of his life. “It was such a disaster, they had to fire me on the spot and make a big deal out of it too. Apologies on social media. I think a local news outlet made a story out of it about how they were grooming the youth.”
“Rocky Horror? If they’re that bothered by a cock and balls, they shouldn’t be there. That’s ours.”
That was the thing. Maybe it was once—a story about a monster and sex, and the wild freedom to be as you are instead of what the world demands. But not anymore. Every edge has to be buffed away. Every erotic, queer moment smoothed down until it was little more than an implied longing across the street.
“It may have been ours, but once the sharks smelled money in the water, they took away the spice and made it bland enough for everyone. So that’s why I left. I didn’t have a choice.”
“I’m sorry. They shouldn’t have done that to you. Do you still sew?”
“No. I haven’t had much reason to dust off my machine since. Besides…” Adam stared back wistfully at his closet, where he’d stuffed the worst of himself into a box.
“Besides what?” Raj prompted like a curious jay.
“I’m much too busy with my store. You know how it is. A haunt and a hotel.”
Raj’s curious voice softened. He scratched his ear. “Yeah. It’s a lot.”
The final girl got her car started and ran over the monster. Rather than drive over him a few times, she stopped the car and got out. That called for finishing his whole glass. Just as Adam put his lips to the rim, a thought hit him. “I can’t believe I told you all that.” He spilled his guts to a man he’d only taken on two and a half dates. “My previous boyfriend didn’t even know my last name for a year.”
Random hookup for eighteen months counted as a boyfriend.
Like a harpoon through the chests of two sexy teens, it hit Adam. Without thinking, he’d torn open his ribcage and spilled his guts all over a man he’d been at war with a few weeks earlier. Complicated feelings, an inability to hold a relationship past the new state, a mess of buried trauma, hints of heels and corsets hiding in the closet. He couldn’t blame Raj if he leaped to his feet and ran right out the door. At least he’d be smart enough to roll his car over the monster and keep going.
“Adam?”
