Something in My Eye: Stories by Michael Jeffrey Lee Page A

ever meet, maybe you might take me in for a short while, help me get established in your town. I promise to be a gentleman and not try anything funny. I can keep myself entertained—you won’t even know I’m there.

Whoring
    O nce, on payday, a young man named Pate and a young man named Larsen sat on the edge of Pate’s unmade bed, eating dinner in Pate’s apartment. Neither of the men were handsome, though Larsen was the cleaner of the two.
    â€œThis food is pitiful and nasty,” said Pate.
    â€œI like spending time with you, Pate,” said Larsen. He stopped eating and put his food box down on the bed.
    Pate lifted his food box and tilted the rest of its contents into his mouth. “Sometimes you make me feel like a rose bouquet,” he said. “But that being said, I will never fuck you.”
    â€œI know,” said Larsen.
    â€œThe very thought sends me wriggling.”
    â€œYou don’t have to explain.”
    â€œIf you woke up tomorrow with the body of a woman, but somehow kept your winning personality during the transformation, we might be able to work something out. But as it stands now, no way no how.”
    â€œWe don’t need to sleep together to have a good time.”
    â€œGood,” said Pate. “So what the fuck are we going to do tonight?”
    Larsen stood up from the bed and sat down on the floor, next
to Pate’s legs. “Well,” he said, “There’s the bar. We could start there, have a few drinks, figure out where to go next.”
    â€œBut we were there last night, and the night before. The whole place is one big shit smear, if you ask me. It’s payday, for God sakes. I want to whoop it up.”
    â€œWe could go see a movie. There are a couple playing right now that I would consider seeing.”
    â€œMovies put a hole in your head. Jerk your emotions around.”
    â€œWe could go have coffee at a coffee shop,” said Larsen.
    â€œIf we go to the coffee shop,” said Pate, “we might as well go to the god-damned bar. At least at the bar we can whoop it up and nobody will look askance.”
    â€œOr, we could stay right here and talk,” said Larsen.
    â€œTalk about what?” said Pate.
    â€œWe could reminisce,” said Larsen.
    â€œFuck that,” said Pate. “Let’s focus on the present.”
    â€œWhat do you want to do, then?”
    â€œI say we go a-whoring,” said Pate.
    â€œCouldn’t we just go to the bar? You could find a girl to hook up with there.”
    â€œThere’s a god-damned difference,” said Pate, “between hooking up and a-whoring. You don’t go to the bar with the intention of hooking up. You go with the intention to get yourself drunk and be among the community. The hooking-up occurs on account of lonesomeness. Now, when you go a-whoring, you go to the whorehouse with the express intention of sleeping with whores. If you get a little tipsy while you’re there, well, that’s just a little sideline bonus. No way you’ve forgotten the feeling of walking into a whorehouse, seeing them whores all in a row: like eating cake, for breakfast.”
    â€œIt sure has been a long time since we went a-whoring.”
    â€œHaven’t been a-whoring since Sonny got himself a girlfriend,” said Pate. “Those were the good old days. Me, you, and Sonny, a-whoring till dawn.”

    â€œI miss Sonny,” Larsen said. “The old Sonny, I mean.”
    Sonny had met Bessy at the bar and had fallen in love. He refused to see either Pate or Larsen now apart from her. At the bar, he and Bessy sat in a booth. They drank the same drink out of the same glass with two straws.
    Pate rose from the bed and took off all of his work clothes, then walked naked into his closet. Several minutes later he walked out in casual clothes. “I’ll bet we can rouse Sonny,” he said. “Sonny has whores in his future.”
    Pate