Angry Management Read Online Free PDF Page B

might not get one if we change rooms,” she says.
    “There’s only one bed.”
    With her finger she draws a line down the middle and says, “Cross that line and die.”
    “Right,” I say, “and besides, we probably don’t have the same sleep number.”
    “Let’s unpack.”
    I’m sleeping with a girl tonight.
     
    My parents brought me to Reno about eight years ago, but it was a whole different experience. They were walking down the sidewalk four abreast, holding hands with me trailing as far back as possible. The sidewalks on the Strip are wide, but you haven’t seen wide until you’ve seen my biological parents. People were walking over the tops of cars to get around them. I spent thenight shrugging. People would gawk at them, then back at me, and I’d just shrug, like, who the hell are they?
    My parents told me in the old days how dangerous it was to come out of the closet, how often they’d been threatened or belittled. They were so happy to be here in Reno where no one knew them, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Well, even though prejudice against gays and lesbians has been on the decrease since Ellen DeGeneres smiled sweetly and told the world to kiss her ass, it ain’t all gone, and I still take my share of hits for having parents so far to the left on the bell-shaped sexual curve. So I just tried to stay below the radar that night.
    But now it’s Sarah and me walking down the strip and she’s burned and I’m fat and it’s possible I’m feeling a little of the release my parents felt here. I grab her hand.
    She doesn’t punch me in the gut.
    “Think we should look for her tonight?”
    Sarah bumps me with her shoulder, a little aggressively. “Let’s do it tomorrow. Last time Ms. Lemry and I caught her on the morning shift in a restaurant in the Sands. Let’s take a time out for now.”
    “You’re not sure you’re going to do this, are you?” I ask. “The deal is still on, you know. Say the word, and we’re burning rubber outta here.”
    “I need to sleep on it. I’ll know in the morning.”
    We crawl into bed in our sweats. The lights are off but for the dim glow of the TV. Sarah draws the line down the middle of the bed again, though she’s laughing. Her side. My side. Never the twain…all that. It reminds me of those stories I used to read about the Puritans or some other way too uptight folks “bundling” before marriage. The groom- and bride-to-be would put a board down the middle of the bed, get in with their clothes on, and rack out. It was supposed to be a test; see if they could reign in their horns and prove they believed sex was for procreation only. The way I’m thinking now, I’d have been feeling along that board for the knothole.
    Sleeping in one’s sweats is not the order of the day for a man of Bethunian girth. I carry my own down covers under my skin and if I bundle, I sweat. We’re not talking minor seepage. We’re talking rain.
    When I think she’s asleep, I slip off my sweatshirt ever so carefully, then my sweatpants. Monster boxers I can handle. I crowd the edge of the bed, a good foot from Neverland.
    The twain meet. Sometime in the middle of the night, her foot touches my calf. Innocent enough; she’s facing the other way. I push my calf into the pressure. Her toe runs up to the back of my knee.
    I cannot recount the sequence of events, I don’t care to remember the details, lest I discover some way crazy indiscretion I committed, like maybe she was asleep except for her foot, and I took advantage. But somehow her sweats end up in a monster wad at the bottom of the bed with mine. I don’t know how to proceed, and she doesn’t either, but evolution takes over.
    I won’t speak a word of it. Our secret dies here. I don’t know if it was good sex or bad sex, because those terms are relative so you have to do it at least twice to get a measuring stick…I mean, standard. I only know that when it’s over, everything I thought about her,