Free Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love by Rob Rosen Page A

preparing our lunches again and was shaking his head.
    “Dickhead,” I said, under my breath.
    “What was that?”
    “Huh? Nothing. Hey, Sparkle, did you ever notice that there are girls named April, May, and June, but never July?” He stopped putting the lettuce on the sandwich for a second to contemplate that. “And, Sparkle, did you ever notice that there are girls named October and December, but never November? Why do you suppose that is?” Again, he stopped for a second before putting on the tomatoes. “And then there are girls named Summer and Autumn, but not Spring, and only rarely Winter.”
    Then he put the knife down, propped his hands on the counter top, looked me deep in the eyes and said, “You win, Secret, I’ll tell you why I don’t get along with my parents if you’ll stop with the Jerry Seinfeld routine. Deal?”
    I merely nodded in the affirmative and told him to finish with the sandwiches first. (Score one in the plus column for yours truly, by the way.)
     
    ***
     
    Five minutes later, with plates in hand, we made it into the living room. Sparkle ran back to the kitchen for napkins, silverware, and, thank goodness, a full bottle of red wine. I began eating half the sandwich and drinking a full glass of wine before even two words were said.
    “Ready,” I announced as I poured my second glass of wine.
    “Sure?” he asked, still on his first glass and only two bites into his sandwich. “I can wait for piggy to finish his meal.”
    “Nope, you may proceed.” I motioned for him to start with a grand flourish of my hand and a bowing of my head. It’s amazing how doing gay things like that comes naturally. How many straight men talk like that I wonder? I mean, did you ever hear a conversation between two gay men and realize that only gay men could ever have that exact same conversation? Case in point: I was with Kiki the other day at Home Depot (or as we like to call it, Homo Depot) and we were arguing about which color to paint his bathroom. Kiki wanted robin’s egg blue and I was arguing for a mix of powder blue with a touch of vermilion. Now, you tell me, could you ever, in your wildest dreams, hear two straight guys having that same conversation? They would just say blue and leave it at that. What a drab life they must lead. But I digress. Where were we? Oh, yes…
    He nodded and began. “I already told you, Secret, that my parents were almost never around and that they left me in the care of the house staff. Well, honestly, that really wasn’t so horrible. I mean, it was the only life I ever knew. Lance, my brother, and I were only a year apart and, even though I was older, we were about the same size and liked pretty much the same things growing up. When school was in and my parents weren’t home, the house staff did all the same things any parent would do, raising both of us to be fairly normal boys. And that’s pretty much how it went until we got too old for looking after, when Lance and I took divergent paths.”
    Sparkle stopped to catch his breath, finished his first glass of wine, took a couple of bites of his sandwich, poured us both some more, and continued. “By the time I was sixteen and Lance was fifteen, our interests were suddenly nothing alike. Lance was playing J.V. football, basketball, and running track. I, on the other hand, was into more ethereal pursuits such as drama and reading. My one and only athletic ability lay in swimming. Not team swimming, mind you, but swimming in our pool at home. Lance could never beat me at that, you see. As he bulked up and I lithed down, I would out-swim him in distance and in speed, time and time again. He hated me for that, Secret, really hated me. I mean, he couldn’t care less that I wasn’t into any of the activities that he was into, but the fact that I was better than him at even just one sports-related thing really ate him up inside.
    “So, in order to get out of racing my brother and inevitably making him angry with