a Naomi Ballington wanting to know if you’d seen the Web site yet.”
“Well, yes, Alex. I’m having someone handle my publicity. I’ve got a blog, Twitter account, and a possible upcoming book deal.”
“A book? About your experiences on the show?”
“No, not yet. This is a how-to.”
“How to get on the show?”
“No, a You-Know-You’re-a-Fag-Hag-When . . . book.”
“You’ve got to be joking!”
“I am not, Alex. My publisher thinks it will be a big seller. Think of the all the straight women who married gay men. Constance Lloyd to Oscar Wilde. Linda Lee Thomas married to Cole Porter. Liza to Peter Allen. Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera.”
“Diego was straight. It was Frida who had affairs with women.”
“Okay, but you get my point. Maybe Fran Drescher will buy a copy.”
“So when did this publicity machine crank up? I didn’t even know you were working with a P.R. firm.”
“An agent, actually. Vanessa Plant. Naomi is my Web site strategist.”
“You have an agent? This is shocking. You never mentioned it to me.”
“It happened just a week ago.”
“So how did you find this agent?”
“She found me, Alex. That’s why I went with her. She’s on top of things. A real shark. You gotta have an agent like that nowadays. Someone who wants to win. Aren’t you glad that I’m making all these changes in my life? Being assertive. Taking what’s mine.”
“Wow, I had no idea you had all these deals going on.”
“They’re not all definite, but my agent is working on them. Oh, and I’ve got a few product endorsements in the works.”
“Product endorsements?”
“You remember when I had the wardrobe malfunction with Gilles?”
“Booby Nights?”
“Yes, it turns out that several companies that make breast enhancement exercise devices want me to endorse some of their products. I could be the celebrity spokesperson for the BusterAll. It’s a bust-enlarging secret from Lithuania, heavily guarded for centuries and now used by the hottest fashion models from Lithuania.”
“I didn’t realize that your grandmother’s homeland was such a hotbed of fashionistas.”
“It is now. At least that’s what the advertising manager for this bust thing said. I’m not going too far with this stuff, am I?”
Alex hesitated for probably a nanosecond before he responded—something that would have gone unnoticed by anyone else, but to me it was like getting slapped across the face. “Uh, sure. It’s great. Milk it for all it’s worth. Make hay while the sun shines.”
I got it. The disappointment . . . a look I was used to all my life. From my parents. The nuns. From teachers. Countless dates. I could have found the cure for cancer, but all it took was one look from a disapproving scientist and I would have thrown the life-saving formula into the trash. I didn’t say a thing to Alex, but we were still soul mates: I could read his mind and he mine. A few words with just the right, but almost imperceptible, inflection spoke volumes to the other. He had telegraphed his concern to me about the direction my life was taking and I got the message loud and clear. But would I listen to it? That was the $64,000 question.
“Thanks, Alex. Thanks,” was all I could say.
CHAPTER 21
I Now Pronounce You Empress Dowager
When I took Knucklehead to the Bark Park behind city hall to see his dog friends and chase a tennis ball ceaselessly, people gathered around me. Celebrity was infectious. People who hadn’t seen Things Are a Bit Iffy on television or the Internet had been told by friends to watch it, or sent e-mails with links in them. It wasn’t just during the day either that I was really getting attention. On the Internet, hundreds of men seemed to have gotten hold of my e-mail address and flooded my mailbox with everything from well wishes to disgusting and gross proposals involving everything from watching me wrestle another woman in a pen of whipped cream to eating sushi off my body and vomit sex. On top of that, I started going out to the bars every night with Regina in tow. And on those nights when Regina’s seemingly endless energy level began to ebb—or I didn’t want her to cockblock me—I went out by myself, with gay men flocking around me when I went to gay bars and straight men circling when I hit the straight ones. And the men really started hitting on me. Men who had never given me a glance before were now trying to pick me up. Or marry me. One night, a businessman