Free The Death of Friends by Michael Nava

from Bay Chandler on my answering machine when I got home. She’d left it that morning, before McBeth dropped in on me. She said, in worried tones, “Henry, this is Bay. I talked to a police detective after you called, a black woman named McBeth, I think. She told me something very disturbing about Chris that I need to talk to you about. Please call me as soon as you get this message.” There was another message from her, from around ten. “Henry, it’s Bay again. I really must speak to you. Could you drop by tomorrow morning, around ten? If you can’t come, please call me first thing in the morning.” This time, there was just a trace of anger in her voice. I could guess what she wanted to talk to me about. Chris’s lewd conduct arrest. I erased the messages.
    I went into my bedroom and popped the video into the VCR, got undressed and into bed and pushed Play on the remote control. An American flag appeared on the screen, flapping gently in the breeze, and a deep, masculine voice made a pitch for the First Amendment. “Remember,” he said, as the strains of the Star Spangled Banner played softly in the background, “censorship is un-American.” Then the flag dissolved to a scene of two young men fucking in the back of a pickup truck while the credits ran. I fast-forwarded, missing, I’m sure, the intricate plot and witty dialogue, until I came to Zack’s scene.
    He pulled himself out of a swimming pool and toweled himself off, then retired to the chaise longue where, conveniently, someone had left a dildo. He performed various autoerotic acts with it and then another boy, one of the two pink musclemen from the cover, came upon him. He talked streams of juvenile smut while he yanked Zack’s legs over his shoulders and began to fuck him without a condom. Except for their genitals, their bodies did not touch. The pink boy muttered things like “Take my big dick, faggot,” while Zack grimaced and blinked the sunlight out of his eyes. Otherwise, his face revealed nothing, but it was the nothing of someone whose mind was elsewhere. When they finished, they jumped into the pool, and then the film cut to the next scene. I rewound the tape.
    That night I had a long, complicated dream that ended with me being drunk. When I woke up, the only other thing I could remember about it was that Josh and Bay had both been in it. Afterwards, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. As I poured water into the kettle I glanced out the window. Across the street, a man sat in a parked car smoking a cigarette. I took my tea out to the terrace. The smell of jasmine seeped through the chilly air. I only dreamed of drinking when I was anxious, my unconscious seeking the relief that I no longer permitted my conscious self. I knew it was about Josh but also, thrown into the mix, was the guilt I felt over deceiving Bay.
    We hadn’t really become friends until after Chris had graduated from Stanford and moved to Los Angeles to work at her father’s firm, while she returned north to finish her last year of college. I was finishing my last year of law school. At first we saw each other because we had in common that we missed Chris, but then we discovered another shared interest: we both liked to drink.
    When Chris was still around, I would go out with them from time to time. The three of us went through many bottles of wine together, Bay and I easily outdrinking Chris. I never gave it a second thought. After Chris left, Bay and I were a little shy in each other’s company and it took a few drinks to relax us. Soon enough, drinking became a central, if unspoken, reason for our get-togethers. We released something in each other because, except when I was with her, I rarely drank, and from what she told me I gathered it was the same with her. Sober, she was a quiet girl of twenty who made self-deprecating remarks about her weight and her intelligence, but after a few