Boy Toys

A month after Chad and I broke up, my friend Barry called to check on me. “Just making sure you’re still alive,” he said with a laugh that was anything but funny. “Chad’s moved on, why haven’t you?”

“You called to ask me that?” I countered. I stood at the French doors that opened onto my apartment’s tiny balcony and fiddled with the vertical blinds as I listened to Barry breathe in my ear. I shouldn’t have answered the phone. Chad and I were together for almost a full year, my longest relationship to date—I couldn’t understand why everyone thought I should get over him that easily. “I’m hanging up.”

“Wait!”

I frowned at the blinds and waited. Just when I thought Barry didn’t have anything else to say, he said, “I’m sort of having this party.”

I rolled my eyes. “A Christmas party?”

Like I needed another reminder that I’d spend the holiday alone this year. With only a week until Christmas Eve, I didn’t even have a tree up yet and the few cards I had received lay unopened on top of the TV. “Count me out.”

Barry hurried to explain. “It’s not reallya Christmas party. It’s just a few guys getting together, you know? Some food, some music, what do you say?”

“I think I just said no.”

But Barry wouldn’t hear it. “Jason, listen. I need you to come, please? For me?”

Suspicious, I asked, “Why?”

Silence. I knew it—Barry had something up his sleeve, something he thought I wouldn’t like so he only wanted to tell me enough to entice me to come, then he’d drop the bomb when I arrived. Like the time he said he had a pair of front-row tickets for an off-Broadway production…and it wasn’t until we pulled up to a local high school that I realized just how far off Broadway we were. “What kind of party is this?” I wanted to know.

“Boy Toys,” Barry said, talking fast so I couldn’t interrupt. “It’s really couples only but Greg’s cousin Marty wants to come—”

“Okay, stop.” Greg was Barry’s on-again, off-again boyfriend and by the sound of things, they were currently on. I wasn’t ready to mingle with couples again, not when I was flying solo. Plus, I reminded my friend, “There’s a reason Marty’s still single.”

“He’s not that bad,” Barry started.

I shook my head, a futile gesture he couldn’t see. “You don’t see me chasing him down,” I pointed out. “I am notthat desperate.” Then, if only for my own benefit, I added, “Chad just needed some space, you know? He might still come back—”

“Uh-huh,” Barry said. “You keep telling yourself that. In the meantime, forget him and come to this party.”

Pissed, I asked, “As Marty’s date? No thank you.”

Barry’s voice rose shrilly. “I’m not asking you to fuck him!”

I waited for his breathing to even out before I asked, “What kind of party is this again? Boy Toys, what the hell’s that?”

“Come see for yourself,” Barry told me. “Next Saturday, my place, seven-thirty. If you find your own date by then, bring him along and I’ll kick Marty to the curb. You don’t have to buy anything…”

Now I got it. “This is a sex toy party, isn’t it?” I asked. When Barry didn’t answer immediately, I knew I’d guessed right. “Oh no. That’s not my scene, Barry, and you know it.” The only sex toy I owned was a gag gift Barry gave me years ago, a dildo shaped like a gigantic cock. It would take a bucket of lard to get that rubber dick inside a man’s ass…it was a good ten inches in diameter, no lie. Just looking at it gave me hemorrhoids.

Chad had been the one into toys. He used to like bullet vibrators—he carried one in his pocket at all times, it looked like a small silver pill case but when he turned it on, it hummed with a tinny sound that made me wonder why no one else heard it. With one hand in his pocket, he used to thumb on the vibrator and press it against the front of his underwear, usually while waiting in line at the store, or driving, or watching TV.

I always knew when he was using it—the sound gave him away, and he’d get a dreamy look on his face with his hand shoved deep in his pocket. Just thinking of his silly grin made my heart ache. I couldn’t imagine sitting in a room full of gay couples giggling over similar toys. To Barry, I said again, “No way.”

With a dramatic sigh, Barry told me, “Think about it. You show up for a half hour or so, laugh it up with the guys, then slip away when the product host arrives. You don’t have to stay. But word gets around that you were there and the next thing you know, Chad’s on the phone wondering when you got so damn kinky. He’ll begyou to take him back, am I right?”

Sad thing about it, he wasright. Chad was always into trying something new in the bedroom—for me, exotic meant doing it doggie style, a position I didn’t much like. I wanted to look into his eyes when we made love, to feel his arms around me as I felt him move within.

A sex toy party would be the lastplace he’d ever expect me to go and knowing Barry’s friends, those damn gossipy queens would be on the phone spreading the word the moment I walked through the door. “Fine,” I muttered.