The Blow Job(Part 2)

   It was late summer.  MJ, The Bastard King, was all but a distant memory.  Instead of dialing  *67, then his number 7 times a day, I’d reduced my stalking itinerary to a single anonymous attempt in any given 24 hour period. It was me, and not some desperate telemarketing house-wife in Bombay that dialed his home number from a blocked ID several countless times every afternoon when he might be home since his blue hussy-mobile Honda Accord with the driver’s side dent was clearly parked in front of his Eastern exposure Studio City apartment. But he didn’t need to know that. By not picking up the telephone, Ass Face unwittingly preserved my memory as the non-needy, non-clingy, non-psycho that he agreed to go on that ill-fated first date in the first place.
   But I wanted closure, dammit! The first season of Sex and the City that I’d started watching to get over my last stalkee was all about closure – at least that’s what I told myself as I sought that magical moment when MJ and I would sit across from one another and he’d say the magic words that would allow me to release him into my sordid past and advance to my next hapless victim. This was well before the questionably fucked “He’s Just Not That Into You” philosophy that would appear somewhere in season 3 or 4 in the TV show I’d substituted for the trained psychologist I needed but couldn’t afford, and I just wasn’t there yet. Closure was what I needed, and by God I was gonna get some fucking closure, even if my impending phone bill threatened to kill me.
   One warm afternoon, I succeeded. MJ, the illusive white elk, picked up his phone.
“Hello?” he crooned, as if he were some innocent virgin who didn’t deserve the guillotine for severing the strings to my still beating heart.
“Hi,” I generously offered…”it’s Moe.”
“Moe…?....Moe…? Oh, hey!”  The nerve of almost earnest enthusiasm was too much to bear. I wanted to scream, to bleat like a lamb sheered too close and too young.  A homo scorned, hell and fury, rage and bile - if MJ had been vaporized right then and there it wouldn’t have been enough because I wouldn’t have been present to see it. My heart yearned for a web cam…
“Where’d you go?” I asked.
   MJ just wasn’t that into me. He felt no spark, no umph, no je ne sais quoi. He didn’t want to do me in a utility closet at the airport. He – gasp – felt no attraction to me. Not only that, but the jaded pessimist destroyer of love said he was leaving for graduate school in less than a month and didn’t want to date me, get engaged, and have a shotgun wedding in Vegas before he left.  Dear sweet baby Jesus, would there be enough cake to heal this wound? Was there enough gateau on the planet that I could rub all over my body and make the pain go away?! I set about to find out.
   First I marched to my car, and then I drove it over the hill. I fought traffic all the way up and over, before circling 4 blocks 7 times for a parking spot, and then I found an expired meter. I jay walked across the street and heaved my exhausted, humiliated body through the front door to the café of drowning sorrow. I stepped up to the counter- the same counter I’d made googly eyes at MJ over- and I settled into my perch atop the uncomfortable high chair by the cash register. This place was mine. It was mine before MJ, and it would be mine long after he left for grad school to study psychology and go on to help the rich and mentally disturbed.
   MJ wasn’t there. Content with giving me the fucking closure he had no idea I sought like a detoxing heroine addict, he’d cut his shifts back to prepare for his impending move across state lines. I’m still convinced he was fulfilling a parole requirement that he was too embarrassed to talk about.  Either way, he was gone, and there were sweet cakes to be had.
   BJ greeted me, as he usually did these afternoons.
“Sup?” he said, as he placed the largest broken and therefore unsellable piece of apple pie I’d seen in my life in front of me. An intimidating tower of apples and cinnamon goo stood before me, sandwiched between thick dripping layers of baked buttery crust. Something was off today. My best new straight friend BJ never gave me this much pie – not even when I’d come in near tears after one of my shifts at the infamous deli. Ours had been a friendship in name only, and even that was purely in my own lonely head. I was the guy that came in with a sketch pad and tipped 300% on cake and coffee, and BJ was the cute straight guy behind the counter that took my money and spoke to me in 2 word grunts. And he had always, always given me the standard portion. This mountain of pie was a statement, a turning point. Dare I say it – it was flirting!
   I sat there, stuffing bite after ever loving bite of straight to your hips goodness into my mouth. Every consecutive morsel sliding into the abyss of my gullet brought me a little closer to closure-apparently deeper and more cavernous pit than I’d first anticipated.  Half chewed apple bits said he didn’t love me. Spiced sugar tingled on my tongue that he probably didn’t even like me, and butter dissolved into tiny bits of “what the hell were you thinking, you idiot?” I was felling ten times better, and the pie was almost gone when BJ shoved a mound of molten lava cake before me. Steam billowed from the top, and liquefied chocolate oozed between the crevices of solid cocoa walls under the weight of half a can of whipped cream.
   “Eat,” he said.
   I obeyed, though I had to request a spoon for the undertaking when my fork proved too porous and too apple slimed for this new endeavor. Whatever my emotional state, I had standards, and the purity of the chocolate had to be preserved. That, and it’s easier to shovel lava cake into your mouth that way. I took a breath, said three Hail Mary’s, and took the plunge.
   Three minutes in, and I’d numbed the pain. Though something altogether new was moving into that hollow space in my chest- Intrigue, and the tiniest bit of ill-advised lust bathed in chocolate. A couple more bites in, and that tiny spec of lust had turned into half chub. I was grateful for the high counter top at that moment, shielding my excitable nether region from prying eyes and unfortunate commentary. I clung to calm dignity with a facial expression that betrayed little, if any of the circuit party that commenced in my pants while I chewed, and watched straight, T & A loving BJ working across the counter.
   I finished off the pile of chocolate death as slowly as I could, savoring every moment its presence afforded me with my new BFF and caloric enabler, BJ. When I finally remembered the ill-used sketch pad I carried in as camouflage, it was already dark outside.  I’d pissed my muse off enough by ignoring her for three hours while I gorged myself on sugar and dirty thoughts. The effort that should have gone into creating an immortal masterpiece in blue ink was instead spent mentally undressing BJ’s sweet Adonis body.  I traced the muscles I knew lurked under his bulky t-shirt with my eyes. I imagined him with a better hair cut and three day scruff that would have taken him a solid month to grow had he the taste or the inclination. I put him in designer jeans with the top band of 2xist briefs showing above the low rise belt loops. 
     Panic set in. I had to stop eating lava cake immediately if I had any hope of retaining the waist line that might confuse him after the 6 pack of beer I’d use to lure him over the short fence to the land of happy homo bliss. Sure, I’d sworn off conversion therapy after those three guys in our college theatre department that never saw the light and left me sexually frustrated, but this time would be different. I was now armed with years of self-knowledge and Carrie Bradshaw wisdom. This time, I would succeed. This time, my wounded heart would heal. This time, the straight boy would go gay…