Beautiful Losers - Part Twenty

Post-afterglow, I had to rummage through the bottom of my closet to find something to wear on my butt. Not for the sake of modesty but because, even with the old furnace going full tilt, it was still nippy in the house. Sebastian looked at me quizzically as I pulled on a ratty pair of flannel pajama bottoms.

"Don't look at me that way! If you hadn't ejaculated all over my skirt, I wouldn't have to wear these."

"Hey, don't assume you can read my mind. Actually, I was thinking you look kinda cute; love the little bunnies." Sebastian at his sarcastic best.

He hovered in the doorway to my room assessing everything. It drove me crazy. I thought about telling him to go home, but there was one more thing I wanted to discuss - something that was still bothering me about our little family arrangement.

"Have a seat," I said, settling onto my unmade bed with my back against the wall.

For a moment, I thought he'd balk, but he didn't. He came over to the bed and sat on the edge, as if it was going to give him cooties. "You need to move. You need to come live at my place. I've got lots of rooms and none of them smell like cat piss."

I decided not to take the bait. "What about Jean?"

"What *about* Jean?"

"Sebastian, please let's be honest: I love Jean, Jean loves me, but not sexually. I don't turn his crank. I wish I did, because he sure turns mine, but there's no point in pretending that it's not an effort for him to look past the fact that I'm female. So," I gnawed on my lip, thinking for a bit, "we share you - is that the deal?"

"God, how banal! Why does that have to be the deal? It's flattering but so unimaginative. And anyway, it's not as if Jean can't be physical with you - he can. It does work," he said, grinning. "I know, because I heard you at it. Remember?"

"People shouldn't fuck each other just because they can, physically. That's awful!" Just thinking about it turned my stomach.

Without thinking about, Sebastian leaned sideways on the bed, his head propped up in his hand and eyed me in a disconcerting, assessing sort of way. "Well, I have a theory about that. Want to hear it?"

"Sure."

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Most people sit somewhere on the line of the gay-straight divide. Sure there are a few people at the far ends of the poles, but most of us are floating somewhere in the middle. We grow up deciding we're gay or straight because of the experiences we have - both the good ones and the bad ones."

I'd seen this side of Sebastian more than once, but it always surprised me. Most of the time he was busy trying to come across as jaded, superficial and flighty. I nodded to let him know I appreciated that he was taking the conversation seriously.

"You think Jean is wired as a gay man because he acts like a gay man. Well, I think he's just following a role model that suits him. I'm not saying he's straight - he's not. But I've met people at the extremes of the sexuality poles, and Jean's not one of them."

If there was one thing I was learning in all this, it was that I knew very little about Jean, and I was willing to consider Sebastian's read on him. Still, I was bothered by something intangible, something more than just labels. "Well, even if he isn't at one end of the spectrum, that doesn't mean he lusts for me. I can tell he doesn't. When he kissed me last night, it was different; I could feel the heat of it. He'd forgotten who I was - he was still kissing you. It was like a chemical storm."

"Mmm. Chemical storm, I like that." Sebastian grinned. "Well, role modeling goes deep. And you have been friends for a long time. You've always interacted platonically, set up this paradigm and lived with it a while. That's not going to change overnight."

He rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. "Anyway, I think you're mistaking gender and sexual orientation for something else. Jean might indeed be somewhat gay of centre, but he's far, far more sub of centre."

"Sub of centre?" I had no idea what he was going on about.

"I'd say that Jean is much more affected in his sexuality by his submissiveness than he is by his orientation. He's not tentative with you because he's gay; he's just very submissive and you don't dominate him."

I burst into laughter. "Like spiked heels and leather and a whip?"

Sebastian shot me a testy look. "Don't be so fucking literal, Shirakins. I'm not talking about the dress-up theatre sort of shit. I'm talking about taking or being taken. He gets off on being dominated, physically and mentally. He doesn't like being in control. He's just - well - very submissive."

"So why isn't he just upfront about it?"

"Shira, if you think it's challenging to come out to the world as a gay bottom, can you imagine how much harder it would be to come out to the world as a submissive heterosexual man? Men are supposed to be strong, forceful, commanding, in control, sexually dominant. Society doesn't have any time for *weak* men. At least if you're gay, you get a parade once a year."

I was silent for a long time, thinking about the implications of what he said. It brought back memories of the night we came back from the club and Jean was demanding to know if I thought he was a man; it still haunted me - that aching, desperate tone of his question. These were all things I'd never really thought about. "Then what am I?"

"Well, you're a little subby yourself. But not entirely." He reached out and stroked a fingertip over my cheek. "I think that's something you're going to have to figure out for yourself."

"And in the meantime? Where does that leave me with Jean? I love him, you know. I always have."

"Well, if you want him to respond to you sexually - I mean, really respond - you have to dominate him. If you did, I doubt he'd give a flying fuck what gender you were."

I brought up my knees and hugged them to my chest. "I don't know how to do that."

"Have you ever even tried?"

"No. Well, I don't think so." I climbed off the bed. The laundry needed attending to, and I needed to think.

"If you love him, Shira, you'll give him what he needs."

"How do you do that, Sebastian? How do you know what he needs?"

He s got off the bed, brushing himself off as if he'd been lying in garbage. Funny, considering he'd been on the basement floor and it hadn't bothered him at all. He shrugged. "It's a gut thing. If you're looking for it, you can just read it."

"You're going to have to help me with that."

* * *

After much cajoling, Sebastian took himself off in the late afternoon, taking a good portion of my clean clothes with him. He was very insistent that he and Jean were going to dress me up for the gig on Thursday, so the stuff I planned to wear went into the bag, too.

I wasn't sure how I felt about having a large chunk of my life appropriated, and Sebastian walking off with my clothes felt like that. Promising that I would call them after my band finished rehearsing that night, I watched him leave with most of my identity.

"You have a phone now, Shirakins. Turn the fucking thing on," he yelled, walking down to the sidewalk.

* * *

The rehearsal space was freezing when I arrived. Everyone bitched and complained that their fingers were too cold to play well, but actually, after running through the set a second time, we'd all warmed up and were being a little rambunctious.

Max, our manager, dropped in for the second half of the rehearsal. The truth is, no one liked Max very much and, behind his back, we all called him 'the asshole,' but no one wanted to be manager, so no one actually called him that to his face. He got us gigs, he did our promotion, and he took a paltry 10% of the door for doing it. Frankly, I never understood why he was even interested in the band - it wasn't as if he even liked our music. He'd given me a ride to a gig in his car once, and had a CD of the Eagles playing on the stereo; it was very hard to trust him after that.

But Tom had known him from high school. Apparently he'd been something minor at one of the major record labels for a while, and he knew his way around the music business pretty well. I just wished he'd stop trying to tell me how to cut my hair or what to wear.

When we'd finished working on just the intros and the endings of each song, trying to knit them together as tightly as possible, Max did that irritating thing he always did before a gig, gathering us around like a fucking football team and trying to give us the big pep talk.

"So, this guy coming up from Unvarnished Records, Winton - this guy's serious. The company just got a shitload of investment. They're looking to sign bands and he's coming up here just for this gig, so don't be fuckheads around him, okay? At least try and act like professionals."

Max's psychological strategies astounded me. If there was one sure-fire way to get everyone in the band behaving badly, he'd probably found it.

Tom shrugged and nodded obediently. Matt sniggered and made a wanker gesture with his hand behind Max's back. Yup, I thought, this was going to work out real well.

"Tom says you have a guy working on something for back-projection for the gig?" Max asked me.

"Well," actually, I wondered whether Sebastian had forgotten about the whole thing. I'd been too preoccupied to ask,"I think so. He said he would."

"Free? Because we absolutely don't have any money to pay him. The posters cost me an arm and a leg to print."

"Oh, sure, totally free," I said, which was another thing I wasn't really sure about. Sebastian hadn't said anything about money. I thought I'd better hedge my bets. "But I haven't seen it yet. It could be great, or it could be crap. If it's crap, we just won't use it."

Matt snorted. "It's Sebastian Delacroix. It's going to be porn, for sure."

"No it's not!" I glared at him.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Max tilted his head. "Porn would be good. It's not like it's an all ages gig. Nice if it was a little edgy."

My jaw dropped. Mr. Eagles wanted us to play in front of porn? I'd never understand that side of the business. It was just so fucking sleazy.

"Well, I'm not playing in front of plastic people having unrealistic sex," I snapped. "We're supposed to be selling our music, not giving fifteen-year olds something to beat off too." I looked over at Lindsey for support.

"Hey, I like porn," she responded. Nope, no support there.

"It's *not* going to be porn." And I made a mental note to cut off Sebastian's balls if it even came close. "I'm not performing in front of something that exploits women."

There was a collective groan from the room.

"Okay, okay! Whatever. I haven't even seen it yet. We'll just have to wait and decide when we get a look at it."

It was Dave who asked the only really intelligent question. "If we do get signed, what happens then?"

Max looked at him like he was an idiot. But the truth was everyone wanted a contract, but none of us knew the first thing about what would really happen if we got one. Would everything suddenly be different? How much control would the company have over what we played and what we recorded?

"Let's just not count our chickens before they're hatched, okay?" he said finally. "Let's just say that, if we get signed, we won't be having to practice in freezing rehearsal spaces anymore."

A murmur of agreement went around the room. Then Lindsey spoke up. "Where would be record the album?"

Shaking his head, Max started to button his coat up. "No idea. Look, let's just get the band signed first, and worry about everything else later. See you all on Thursday. Sound check is at five," he warned, and walked out the door.

"Asshole," three of them said in unison.

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