Say, do any of you guys know how to Madison?

“Wow.” See? There’s that witty articulation. Still it got a smile and a blush which was all to the good there. “You look amazing.” Ahh, there we go, brain back on-line.

“Thanks.” I could barely hear him (did he want me to think of him as her now?) over the noise of the club. I watched as his (her?) eyes swept over me, followed by a light pink tinge suffusing pale cheeks, “You look really good too.”

“It feels weird calling you Bob when you’re dressed like this. I hope that isn’t off-putting…”

“My given name is Robin… or you can call me Bobbi if that helps.”

“Robin… Bobbi…” I spoke the names like I was tasting them. “Which do you prefer? You’ll be the one responding to it.”

“I think Bobbi will be the easiest for me. It feels right.”

I let my eyes roam over the club as I mulled that statement over. As I did, the music shifted to a slower song. Fuck it I grabbed Bobbi’s hand and gave a tug. “C’mon. We’re dancing.”

She (yeah, we’re going with she) only looked uncomfortable until my arms were around her waist pulling her close to me. It was a little awkward at first, the way it almost always is when you dance with a partner for the first time, but she gradually warmed up to it and by the end of the song was pressing her body to mine.

I dunno what exactly I was expecting, I mean we’d already done some cuddling the previous week on the walk back to the theater, but this felt different. It was like something was restraining Bob, keeping him from letting go. This was more like Bobbi accepted that this is what was happening and that it was right. There was no reservation in her touch. No holding back.

Over the years I’ve had many partners in my arms, what equipment they’d had between their legs notwithstanding, but I’ll never forget that first dance with Bobbi. The song was Shriekback’s “Faded Flowers” (did you know that their “Nemesis” isn’t available through Amazon Music? Makes me sad). The weight of her in my arms, the smell of the Pantene shampoo in her hair, clean sweat and Teen Spirit deodorant intermingling with the smells of stale beer and the ghosts of clove cigarette smoke that permeated the club. She laid her head on my shoulder and just clung to me like a lifeline, bringing back memories of high school dances. I could feel her warm breath on my neck. It made me want to protect her and hold her forever.

Faded Flowers only runs three and a quarter minutes and was succeeded by something loud by Bauhaus, and unless it’s structured or slow, I dance like a one legged emu having a seizure, so I pulled Bobbi along with me over to the lounge area where I usually held court. Some of my crew were there and my date started to get cold feet when she recognized T and a few of the other Rocky regulars, but I pushed her through it, introducing her around. As I knew she would be, she was welcomed to the fold warmly. To this day, I don’t associate with the intolerant, and while most of my friends were in cis-het couples, none of them would be mistaken for traditional under any but the dimmest lights. Even so the situation made Bobbi feel awkward. This was her ‘debut’, being publicly Out for the first time ever, so I get that this was a lot. Maybe it was a little insensitive of me; I was young and stupid. The awkwardness only intensified by the fact that there was only one open seat, and I was still trying to chase that feeling I had experienced on the dance floor.

So I plopped down in the big overstuffed chair and pulled her into my lap. She immediately glomped onto me, trying to dodge Rissa’s intrusive questions about how we met by curling as tightly as possible into me. That’s when the real awkwardness hit. See, her ass, that ass that had drawn me to her in the first place, was now sitting on my obviously hard (and further stiffening as the moments passed) cock. She gasped at first, then surreptitiously reached down between her legs to confirm what she was feeling.

Now, this was not the way I’d hoped to introduce Bobbi to my primary decision maker, but after the initial shocked recoil she returned her hand for some tentative exploration. And it was nice. Really nice. So nice that I followed my instincts and brushed my lips against her neck.

This startled her a little, and I was concerned that I’d truly fucked the dog on this one. Instead, she leaned in even closer, pressing her cheek to mine. “Um… I need to use the ladies’ room.”

I helped her to her feet, and goddamn that ass looked phenomenal walking away.

I turned back to my assembled friends who were all looking at me speculatively. It was T that broke the silence. “Third Date?”

Yeah… that… the ‘third date’ cliché was around even then.

“I dunno man.”

Rissa was next. “If you don’t, I will” Rissa and I were twins from different parents for all practical purposes. Same taste in booze. Same taste in music. Same taste in ****. We shared a birthday separated by only a couple hours, born within 100 feet of each other. We also shared taste in boys and girls. A few years later I officiated her marriage, held her firstborn within minutes of his birth, and was named his godfather. She knew I was gonna make a play even before I did.

“I’m taking it slow. I dunno her comfort zone yet.”

T and Rissa shared a look, and I had the funny feeling that they were making a very quiet bet.

“Look, I’m the first guy she’s been with.” At least I thought I was (Spoiler: I was).

Marcia looked up from her seat on Nick’s lap. “Then she couldn’t have picked better.” Marcia was born 24 hours earlier and three years later than me. She, Rissa, and I all celebrated our birthdays together. In a month she and I would be sitting on the balcony at Chaos Central and passing a handle of Morgan back and forth as we watched the sun rise and the Cathedral of Learning dance lazily with its two twins (yeah, I was drunk enough to be seeing triple). Rissa and I would do the same thing 24 hours later, but from the tenement’s roof after an epic bar crawl, but that’s a story for another time.

I pondered this for a moment, which was just enough time for Bobbi to get back, looking a little flushed. “Gabe… can you walk me home?”