Nari and I met with Stephanie in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village. She had hair as black as the darkest night and was disheveled in a manner that looked is if were deliberately styled to look that way. Nari referred to it as the “just got fucked” hairstyle.
She had pale skin, which stood out in sharp contrast to her dark hair, black eyeliner, black t-shirt and black leather jacket.
I immediately understood that Stephanie must be the influence behind Sophie’s new look. I wondered if that had something to do with my dad not liking Stephanie.
We sat down at a table in the back and Stephanie said, “So, you’re Sophie’s brother.”
“That’s me,” I replied, trying to sound friendly and approachable.
“Who’s the sexy blonde twink?” she asked, gesturing towards Nari.
“I’m his boyfriend,” Nari replied, “My name is Nari.”
“You’re gay?” Stephanie asked, “Sophie never said anything about having a gay brother.”
“I didn’t exactly have a gay-friendly childhood,” I said, “As a young person, I was bullied because I was a ballet dancer. I was called fairy, faggot, pussy, pansy, and more. Admitting to anyone-even myself- that I could be sexually attracted to boys would have been hazardous.”
“So, you never came out to your sister?” Stephanie asked.
“Not during my childhood,” I admitted, “but much later I did, I came out to her just this week.”
“It was sort of an accident,” Nari interjected, “She caught Scott and me naked in his bed.”
Stephanie’s face broke out into a huge girlish grin and she said, “Oh my God! Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Nari confirmed, “She took pictures.”
“Holy fucking fuck!” Stephanie hollered and then she exploded into a burst of hysterical laughter. I could feel my face heating up with embarrassment and I knew I was blushing once again. Patrons of the coffee shop were staring in our direction and I wondered how much they heard. Did everybody in the coffee shop need to know about my sex life?
“This is so cool,” Stephanie declared, “Okay, this is officially a good day. What did you guys need from me?”
Stephanie was in an accommodating mood after the story of Nari and me getting caught naked together, so getting her to talk was easy. I said that I wanted to act as a peacemaker between her and my parents and hopefully that would create some peace between Sophie and my parents. And I added that knowing why my parents hated Stephanie so much would give me some clues on how to put things right.
“Well, first off,” Stephanie said, “I don’t think your mom has any problems with me. It’s your dad and with white, male patriarchal attitude.”
“His white, male what?” I asked.
“I’ve been educating Sophie on historical facts that they don’t teach in the public schools,” Sophie said, “like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 and the highly controversial Compromise of 1877. These are historical facts I’ve been teaching Sophie, but they make the white male power structure of this country look bad, and your dad is all about protecting the reputations of the DWM.”
“DMW?” I asked.
“Dead white males.” Stephanie explained.
“So, this is all about politics?” I asked.
“Mostly,” Stephanie said, “Your dad wants to protect this romanticized, Walt Disney version of American history. He hates it when I teach your sister about the ugly, embarrassing truths about how things really happened.”
“Okay, I’m open to suggestions,” I said glancing over at Nari, hoping for ideas on how to get my dad to stop hating on Sophie’s one and only friend.
“If you’re serious about this, I’d try to prove that I didn’t steal Sophie’s book,” Stephanie suggested.
“What book?” I asked.
Stephanie took a sip of her coffee, gave me an assessing look and replied, “Sophie used to have this book, it was a first edition and it was signed by the author. It’s supposed to be valuable. Sophie kept it in her room on the same desk as her computer. One day it went missing and your dad accused me of taking it. That’s when he banned Sophie and me from being friends. I mean, he didn’t like me even before that day, but the missing book thing was the final straw.”
“Why does he think you stole it?” Nari asked, “Couldn’t it have been stolen by somebody else?”
“I’m a huge bookworm,” Stephanie confessed, “I have a huge book collection at home, Noam Chomsky, Molly Ivins, David Kertzer, Howard Zinn and whatnot. Sophie’s other friends don’t read. Because of my penchant for reading, your dad insisted I had to be the thief.”
“That sounds like a pretty lame legal argument,” Nari said.
“It is lame,” Stephanie agreed, “I think Josh took it.”
“Josh,” I said, “that name sounds familiar.”
“Josh was Sophie’s boyfriend,” Stephanie explained, “Sophie broke up with him right around the time her book went missing.”
“Right before it went missing or right after?” Nari asked.
“I’m not sure,” Stephanie admitted, “Right after I think.”
___
Stephanie grandbetting yeni giriş sent some photos of Josh to my phone, gave me his home address as well as a list of places Josh has been known to hang out. I eventually located Josh just as he was is walking out of a convenience store on Mamaroneck Avenue.
Getting Josh to confess to stealing Sophie’s book wouldn’t be easy. Getting him to return it would be almost impossible. All he had to do was deny that he ever took it and then we would be at a stalemate.
Nari had a crazy idea to scare Josh into giving the book back, he wanted to pretend that he and I had ties to the Russian mob. Nari was the son of Russian immigrants and he learned how to speak both Russian and English as a child. He thought he could use that to deceive and intimidate Josh.
I didn’t think it would work, but I didn’t have any better ideas, so I went along with Nari’s plan. I walked up to Josh, told him I was Sophie’s brother and demanded the return of my sister’s book.
“Are you a cop?” Josh asked.
“I’m not a cop,” I said, trying to sound tough, “A cop would inform you of your rights. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have any.”
“You’re not a cop, then I don’t have to talk to you,” Josh said, and he tried to walk past me. I stepped in front of him and then I made eye contact with Nari.
“Nari, Eto paren'” I called out and pointed to Josh.
Josh noticed Nari for the first time. Her looked at me, looked over at Nari, then he returned his gaze to me and asked, “What’s going on here?”
“My friend over there is in the Bratva,” I said, “You’ve heard of them?”
“The Russian mob,” Josh replied, but he’s not really part of the Russian mob, is he?”
I nodded at Nari. He nodded back, gave Josh a serious look and in a deliciously cold and malevolent sounding voice said, “U tebya ochen’ milyye yagoditsy.”
The tone of Nari’s voice was low and menacing. I was accustomed to seeing Nari as boyish and playful. The tone of his voice sounded like the voice of a ruthless killer. I had no idea what he had just said, but it sounded so brutal, I had chills.
“What?” Josh said, suddenly sounding concerned, “What did he just say?”
I had no idea what Nari had said, but Josh’s cool disdain for Nari and me was beginning to fall apart. I decided to lay it on thick.
“You don’t really want to know,” I replied, “He made some suggestions for how he could dispose of your corpse. None of the options are good. They’re all pretty disgusting.”
Nari took a step forward, raised one eyebrow and in a thick Russian accent, he added, “Yesli by ya zastavil otkryt’ tvoy anus, ty by vizzhal za menya.”
Josh had no idea what Nari had just said, but his eyes widened, and he took a step back. And then another. He ended up bumping into me and then Nari took another step forward. I couldn’t believe that my cute boyfriend with the pouty lips and the slender waist could portray so much menace. I mean, I’m sure that speaking a mysterious foreign language was part of it, but Nari’s whole demeanor had changed. Everything about him was different. His body language was closed off, he made a disturbing amount of direct eye contact and his facial expression was menacing. The playful, affectionate imp was gone, and in his place was a ruthless thug with cold contempt for other human beings.
“Call him off,” Josh said urgently, “I don’t have the book anymore, but I can tell you where it is. Call him off and I’ll tell you where you can find it.”
I held a hand up and Nari halted his advance towards Josh. Josh confessed to stealing the book and told me that he sold it.
“Who’d you sell it to?”
“There’s a bookstore on Lexington Avenue,” Josh said, “I can give you the address.”
Josh wrote down the address of the bookstore and Nari scowled silently. Nari is a chronic performer, but I’d never seen him perform the role of a villain before. He was surprisingly quite believable.
When we were getting ready to leave, a sadistic smile spread across Nar’s face and he said, “Eto veselo. Pokhozhe, on sobirayetsya razozlit’ sebya.”
“What?” Josh asked, sounding panicked, “What did he say?”
Without hesitation I replied, “He said, he knows where you live and if you’re lying to us, one night soon you will wake up on fire.”
___
“What was that?” I said to Nari when we were driving away and heading for the Bronx River Parkway, “You seemed really scary! You almost had me convinced!”
The menacing thug was gone, and the affectionate, playful boyfriend was back. Nari shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I just channeled some of the villains that I’ve seen in the movies, a little bit of Ivan Drago, a little bit of Thanos. Once I got into character it all just flowed out of me.”
“Wow,” I exclaimed, “If you ever quit dancing, you could easily have a career in acting. You scared the crap out of that guy, and you gave me goosebumps.”
“I grandbetting giriş took acting classes when I was a kid,” Nari explained, “I was getting really good at it, but my parents decided they’d rather have a ballet dancer in the family than an actor, so they made me go to ballet lessons instead.”
“So, ballet dancers are better than actors?” I asked.
“In my family they are. It’s a Russian thing,” Nari explained, “but I’m still a performance artist, I still have fans applauding me every time I perform.”
“You do love performing for an audience,” I observed.
“Everything is much more fun when there’s an audience,” Nari agreed.
“Narcissist,” I accused.
“More like an exhibitionist,” Nari corrected and he flashed me a playful smile.
___
The bookstore on Lexington Avenue wasn’t doing a brisk business when Nari and I went in. In fact, it was so quiet we could hear the scribbling of pen on paper. We located the guy who ran the place and showed the photo of Josh that Stephanie had sent to my phone.
“Did you purchase any books from this man?” I asked.
The guy who ran the place was a stuffy, middle-aged man who looked like a college professor from the 1960’s. He wore a tweed jacket and a bowtie. He gave a contemptuous glance at my phone and drily replied, “I cannot possibly betray the confidentiality of any of the people who transact business in my store. Now, if you would like assistance in locating a book, I could assist you with that.”
That deflated me a little bit, but I understood what I was dealing with. This guy was one of those serious academics with no sense of adventure. If I wanted to get anywhere with him, I’d have to speak his language.
“Okay, how about a first edition printing of Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice?” I asked.
“Signed by the author,” Nari added.
“Well, well, well,” the tweed-clad merchant said, “it seems you gentlemen know exactly what you want. Come with me”
The stuffy old guy didn’t have a sense of adventure, but he knew his bookstore like the back of his hand. He knew exactly what was in his inventory and exactly where it was located. Within a matter of seconds, we were standing in front of a shelf with a multitude of first editions by Anne Rice, including three Servants of the Bones.
They all looked identical until I opened each of them up and checked the front pages. And much to my delight, one of them hand a handwritten inscription that read, “Sophie, best wishes for the future, Anne Rice.”
“This is it,” I screamed, and then the store owner informed me that that particular book would cost me one-hundred dollars.
“One hundred dollars?” I asked, “For a book?”
“It’s a first edition, hard cover,” the tweed guy said, “It’s signed by the author and it’s in excellent condition. And the works of Anne Rice are very popular right now.”
Then Nari stepped in and said, “We’ll take it.”
Nari even managed to get the guy to giftwrap it for us. Nari’s plan was to give it to Sophie as a Christmas gift and to have the gift be from both of us. The story about how Josh confessed to stealing it and telling us where he sold it would be a bonus.
“This could be the best Christmas gift ever,” I said to Nari, as I agreed with his plan.
After leaving the bookstore I was going to drive straight home, but somehow I ended up making a wrong turn and we ended up driving through Chelsea. Now, Chelsea is a trendy Manhattan neighborhood especially popular with the gay community. We passed by trendy markets and art galleries before Nari spotted a strip club that catered to gay men.
“Pull over! Stop the car,” Nari demanded as he rolled down the window and stared at the club entrance.
“Seriously?” I said.
The name of the club was the Grand Spectacle and Nari insisted we had to go inside. Finding a place to park wasn’t easy, but it’s almost impossible to say “no” to Nari. When he wants something, I always try to do it for him, no matter how difficult it is.
“What is this about?” I asked after I had finally parked the car, “You know, you have seen naked guys before.”
“This is going to be educational,” Nari insisted, “I want to show you the sort of power exhibitionists have.”
I followed Nari inside and we melded in with the crowd. Most of the customers were male and around my age. There were a few women and a few middle-aged men, but they were in the minority.
“When the dancers are on the stage, don’t watch the performers,” Nari instructed me, “Watch the audience.”
His instructions sounded odd, but I did as I was told. Our timing was fortuitous, as a performer appeared on the stage less than fifteen minutes after we arrived. The dancer was introduced as Damian (almost certainly a stage name) and a techno beat began as he stepped onto the stage. Damian had a slender, athletic build and he moved his hips and pelvis in a suggestive way, as he began his dance routine. My natural grandbetting güvenilirmi inclination was to stare at the young dancer as he prepared to disrobe, but Nari reminded me that I was supposed to be watching the audience.
Okay, so I tore my eyes away from Damien and scanned the clientele in the club. It took me a few seconds, but I soon figured out what Nari wanted me to see.
“It’s like they’re in a trance,” I said to Nari, my voice barely audible over the insistent thrum of the techno music.
All the young men in the place were glassy-eyed and slack-jawed as they watched the young man on stage. It did seem as if he had power over his audience.
“When you have a body that’s so sexy it can distract huge crowds of people, it’s like having a super power,” Nari explained, “And it’s a fun power to use.”
“So, you’re a super-hero?” I asked.
“Shhh,” Nari said with mock seriousness, “Nari is my just my secret identity. In real life I am Captain Libido! The world must never learn my secret!”
Nari was having a wonderful time, which is what Nari usually does. We decided to stay at the club and observe the phenomenon of strippers using their magic powers to distract huge crowds of people. And at some point, we bumped into a guy who recognized us.
“Oh, my God,” the animated youth exclaimed, “You’re Sascha!”
I felt my face blush hot with embarrassment when realization dawned upon me. Sascha was the stage name I used when I did porn. This guy must have seen some of my work somewhere.
“Um, yeah,” I said, “I guess you must be a fan of my work.”
“Huge fan,” the young man said. The young man’s name was Steve. He had platinum blonde hair that was cut super-short. He also had an infectious smile. He introduced me to some of his friends as Sascha and regaled them with tales of my erotic performance in a pornographic video called “Bound to Please”.
“See?” Nari said, “The power of the exhibitionist! You can mesmerize crowds with this power!”
I then introduced my boyfriend to Steve and his friends, only I introduced him as Christophe. That was the name her used when he posed nude or performed in gay porn.
“Christophe,” Steve and his friends called out jubilantly. There was an exuberant mood in the club and Nari and I were introduced to dozens of people. We were celebrities of a sort, and people wanted to touch us, be part of our world and have some of our fame rub off on them. At some point people started buying us drinks and I ended up doing so many shots of Patron Silver that I lost count.
___
The next morning I woke up in a strange bed.
“Where am I?” I asked nobody in particular.
I looked around and saw that Nari and I were both naked and in somebody’s bed. The bedroom was small and contained little else besides the bed. I saw a laundry hamper and two doors. A quick inspection revealed that one door opened into a closet. The other door opened into a hallway.
“Hey, where are we?” Nari said as he stirred and finally opened his eyes.
“I dunno,” I said as I shut the bedroom door, “I don’t remember how we got here. Also, where are my clothes? I don’t remember taking them off.”
“Did we get kidnapped?” Nari asked, “Are we going to become sex slaves?”
I furrowed my brow at Nari’s question. We weren’t handcuffed, tied up or duct-taped and the door to the bedroom was unlocked. This didn’t feel like a kidnapping.
“I don’t think so,” I replied and then I opened the bedroom door again and walked down the hall. It appeared that I was in somebody’s apartment. There was a kitchen and a living room area. There was a couch, a television, a computer desk and a computer in the living room. The couch was old and battered but the computer looked new.
A few seconds later, Nari walked out into the living room. He was still naked and the sight of his naked butt as he inspected the kitchen island was hypnotic. His butt is firm, toned and perfectly shaped. And then to have that butt attached to those sexy dancer’s legs, was just too much. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
“Well, somebody lives here,” Nari concluded as he sorted through the mail on the kitchen island, “Some of this mail is post-marked for yesterday’s date.”
I ambled over and looked over Nari’s shoulder. All the mail was addressed to somebody named Steve.
“Steve,” I said as snippets of memory came bubbling back up to the surface of my mind.
“Steve,” Nari said in response.
“We drank too much last night,” I continued, “Steve let us crash here last night because we were too drunk to drive.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the apartment door opened and Steve walked in, carrying a laundry basket.
“Oh, good, you guys are up,” Steve said. It suddenly dawned upon me that I was very naked, and I attempted to hide behind Nari. Nari wasn’t having any of that and he wrapped an arm around my waist and pushed me in front of him.
“Um, what’s going on?” Steve said as he saw Nari grappling with me and roughly pushing my naked body out where it would be on display.
“It’s Sascha,” Nari said, “He’s the only porn star I know who gets embarrassed if people see him naked. Look at him, I’ll bet he’s blushing right now. Is he blushing?”