Lunch with Gullet and Jim at the smarmy little Mexican place where Lowell and I used to go. I mentioned that, and Gullet said Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. but then he saw I was smiling, and took it back.

Heavy burritos, bursting with good stuff. Gullet sat on my side of the booth and poked me in the side and in the back and in the ass. I’m not going to stop poking you until you can guess what I want. I got up and we played warm . . . warmer . . . no, colder   until I figured out it was a straw.

Jim is moving next week and only wants to talk about the new house, which is cool because of the way he tells it. Jim is a little elf and he gets all eloquent and his hands go all over the place when he talks about things he likes. When he talks about his wife I’m afraid he’s going to hit the guy in the booth behind him.

Gullet is taking a day off work to “lay tile” with Jim. Gullet is a notorious fag and likes to say “lay tile” in a husky lascivious drag queen voice. Seriously though, they are just tiling the bathroom. Gullet is pretty sure this is funny and he is right.

After lunch I get to hang out alone with Gullet for a while, odd and rare not to have a dozen other people crawling all over his attention. We have a long what have you been reading? conversation. He shows me the book about famous lesbians and the book about brokedown skyscrapers and the book about treehouses. He gets very excited when I open the falling down buildings book right to his favorite falling down building of all time. He sits next to me and whispers in his sweet delicate natural-sashay voice,   This one, Alice saw when she lived in Detroit and she knew I would love it so she took a picture of it for me. See And I’ve been to this one too, it’s on the junky side of Chicago. See how the bricks are all crumbling out of the tops of the arches and you just know they’re going to splatter some poor old lady on the sidewalk way down below. I’ll be right back sweetie I have to answer that goddamn phone.   I always forget how much I adore Gullet and then I remember it again every time we are in the same room.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.