~~~ GAYNET PULP FICTION PRESENTS~~~ " S I X M I N U T E S T O S I X " A Brief and Intriguing Gay Love Story SSSSSs Ss S s S s S s S SSS S ix minutes to six, said the clock over New York's Grand SSSS Central Station. It was a talking clock and spoke in a clipped Yankee accent. They called it the "Yankee Clipper." The darkhaired young actor tilted his sunburned cheekbones and narrowed his verdant eyes to note the time. His heart was beating like a teenager with a box of Kleenex. In six minutes he would meet the man who'd filled such a special place in his life for the past 37 months, the man he'd never seen yet whose e-mailed words had sustained him unfailingly. "Chet Blandford" remembered one day in particular, the worst of his acting career, dress rehearsal for his Toronto HAMLET when he'd been caught stuffing his tights with tube socks by a pack of vicious Thespian Avengers who said his Shakespeare wasn't up to speed. In a e-mail, he'd confessed he had stage fright, and only days before opening night, he received answer: >"If you think you're afraid of playing Hamlet, > imagine what the audience feels!" >Next time you doubt yourself, hear my voice reciting to you: >Yea,though I walk through the valley of Death, >at least I'm wearing red pumps." ....He remembered and it renewed his strength. Chet had never really heard his voice. He imagined he sounded like Harpo Marx. If only he knew what Harpo sounded like... does anybody? He was going to hear his voice now: "Four minutes to six." No wait, that was the talking clock again. Damn! A guy passed close to him, and Chet Blandford saw he was wearing a flower, but it was not the little red rose they had agreed upon. Besides, this boy was only about eighteen, and the man had told him he was 30. "What of it?" he had answered, "I'm 21." He was pushing 27. His mind boomeranged to the book he'd read in Uta Hagen's Actor Concentration Camp: "Of Human Bondage," illustrated by Robert Mapplethorpe. He never learned to concentrate, but he remembered that book peppered with handscrawled captions over the photos in calligraphy: "Ouch! I bet that hurts!" He had never believed a man could see into another man's heart so tenderly. He had never believed a bullwhip could fit into a man's tender... The initials on the bookplate: A.O.A. He found an e-mail address on the internet. He wrote, AOA replied. Next day Chet had left on a tour of Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT's DREAM. He was "Bottom." Which was fitting. But they'd kept writing. For 37 months AOA had faithfully replied even though he had 25,999 letters to tend to. Chet now believed he loved him, and him loved he. But A.O.A. refused all pleas to send Chet his photograph or even an autographed "CyberIcon Mousepad" like select members of the fanclub had received. He philosophized: "What I look like doesn't matter. Suppose I'm "beautiful." I'd always be haunted that you'd taken a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me. Well maybe not for the first 500 times... Some people think Tom Cruise is ugly. Some think David Geffen is cute. Beauty's in the eye of he ticketholder. "What if I'm plain, like Conan O'Brian, then I'd believe you only wrote because you were lonely and had too much time between motor cycle rides. Don't ask for my picture. When you come to New York, see me and then decide." One minute to six... Chet Blandford flipped through the pages of the book he held. If he did it fast enough, the little cartoons he drew in the margins looked like they were really aliv... Blandford's heart lept like a Pentecostal on a pogo stick! A young man was coming toward him: His figure was average, yet humanoid; his blond hair fell back in curls from delicate ears that spiralled in a mathematically perfect fractal pattern like a Nautilus shell. His eyes were like big brown circles with two black dots drawn in the middle. Or where they... hazel? His lips were the color of summer mellon kissed with Prosciutto. In his olive green Armani knockoff suit, he was like springtime come alive. No, he was like Harpo Marx's "Duck Soup" colorized by Ted Turner. Chet crept toward him, not noticing that he wore no rose, but mesmerized by a small, provacative smile curling back to reveal a row of Muppet white teeth. "Hi, sailor! Wanna go to heaven for a dollar?" he murmured. Chet made one hestitant step closer like a barefoot Valentino tango on redhot thumbtacks. Then he spied ANDREW OF AMERICA, eclipsed behind the blond guy, a man well past 40, his graying hair tucked into a worn Coco Channel hat. He was past plump. His thick-ankled feet were stuffed into red high-heel shoes like pigs-in-a-blanket. A feather boa coiled round his shoulders. He looked like Larry "Bud" Melman in drag! But he wore a red rose on his besequined coat. The man in the green suit scurried away. Chet Blandford felt split in two like a Lender's Bagel buttered with Horseradish. His desire to follow the blond was keener than a Checkered Cab at a Church carwash, yet deep was his longing for the wit that had upheld his halfwit. There he stood. Chet could see his/her face was gentle, sensible and unshaven. His/her gray eyes had the warm twinkle of a Pewter teapot. Chet did not hesitate. His fingers gripped the sticky, stained, dogeared copy of "Of Human Bondage" to identify himself. This was not love, but something special, the kind of friendship Brandon Lacey could write reams of poetry about. He squared his shoulders, circled the block, cubed the square root of pi, triangulated the distance made and made a Hawaiian "Hang Ten" salute toward the Drag Queen, feeling bitterly disappointed at the deception of fading cyberglamour and calculated, musical seduction of excessive alliteration. "I'm Chet Blandford, and you're ANDREW OF AMERICA. I'm so glad you could meet me. I love your Top Ten Lists on the internet. They're the only reason I have electricity. Wanna get a bite to eat at the Quilted Giraffe? May--may I lick your shoes?" The fat faux femme's face oozed into a smile like a baby with gas bubbles. "I don't know what all thith ith about," she hissed like a steam locomotive in heat, "That young man in the green thuit begged me to wear thith rozth. And thaid if you athked me to go out, I thould tell you he's waiting for you in the RuSSSSian Tearoom across the thstreet. He thaid it wath thome kind of tessssssssssssst." "You mean that blond guy *is* ANDREW OF AMERICA?! Wow! The first time I meet him and we're gonna do it in a tearoom! Lucky I brought my lysol!" "Chet" raced across the street with his pretty head so full of what could almost be classified as thoughts to a Chimpanzee that he failed to notice the tinkling of a cufflink falling to ground, the one given to him by David Geffen. --Sissy Kisser "Not another prettyboy!" A N D R E W O F A M E R I C A Is dying to meet YOU face to face in Cyberspace! NEW ADDRESS, NEW STUFF, N E W B O Y F R I E N D [Apologies to S.I. Kishor] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~