Meet The Tooth Fairy

If you haven't picked it up yet, I'll be blunt: I fucking love gay men. I know this is a sweeping generalization and could probably be read as an offensive stereotype (um... mostly by people just looking to be offended at something), but here's the thing: I - and lots of Susies out there - really enjoy both:

a) male company
b) not getting hit on

Where does a Susie find this combination? If you're immune to potential wife-drama you can find the rare Honest Married Man-Friend (a.k.a. Magically-Rare Unicorn), or if not: ze gays. Love it or leave it alone - I heart Billies. (To be fair, because of an affinity for Roller Derby, my social circle also happens to include a fair number of Suzzys, if you know what I mean, and they're all pretty rad too).

(Everyone should have one.)

So, possibly because I missed the cohabitation magic that was living with Billie Beautiful, when I moved into a larger house in West Billy Beach, I set out to find myself a new Billie housemate. I threw a very non-orientation-specific ad out on Craigslist, and then skimmed the shit out of all the respondents for telltale signs that they were the right gay for me. It came down to two final candidates - a fashionably-bespectacled cubano male lactation aide at the nearby hospital, and a young dental student with a dazzling smile.

I met the Milk Man out for drinks with my girlfriend Liz, who gave him tentative approval based on his well-groomed facial hair and polite-with-an-edge sass. He really did have the sort of personality-plus that sets you at ease instantly (as you might imagine a dude tasked with helping new mothers learn to nurse would need). But, in the interest of fairness and a widely-cast net, I forwarded the Tooth Fairy's initial-inquiry email to Punchin' Judy, since he had seen fit to attach a photo of himself and OK fine, I mostly just wanted to rub Judy's face in all the beautiful gay impending in my life.

The Tooth Fairy was not a broadcast-Billie, but he won out because swagger. I sort of last-minute texted him about meeting up for a happy-hour beer, and within 30 minutes he was there (the location of the house made it a ridiculously easy sell for me, and a tight market for anyone looking), striding up with a half-smirk, the sun backlighting him in gay golden glory. Some pertinent details:

• Carefully-carelessly mussed/styled hair? Check.
• Casual v-neck of precisely-appropriate male plunge? Check.
• Perfectly-unfittedly-fitted designer jeans worn at the exact correct hipbone/abs v-muscle-thingie height? Check.
• Top-brand wayfarers accentuating ridiculously blessed facial bone structure? Check.
• Lip-bite-inducing 3-day stubble? Check.
• Fucking knee-bucklingly brilliant smile? Check.
• Immediately comfortable, non-flamboyant, non-lady-killer Billie vibe? CHECK.

(I played it coooool.)

The Tooth Fairy was in. He got the part on the spot, and signed the lease the next day.

Within the first few weeks, here is where our housemateship went:

The Tooth Fairy, highly interested in his physique (duh), instituted household P90X yoga days, where we sweated it out side-by-side on our living room hardwood.

He joined me (shirtless) for runs along our neighborhood shoreline, during which if I dropped back a few paces I could easily have been following an already-airbrushed Men's Health cover-photo.

We went to go lay out in the downtown park together, just suntanning and mocking the poor fashion parading past on any given Sunday.

He called on his way home from the dental office to see about dinner plans, and then we'd make something stupid-amounts of healthy together, like baked salmon and quinoa or garlic-sauteed shrimp on avocado salads.

We went grocery shopping together, like taking-turns-pushing-the-cart, jointly-choosing-ingredients shopping together.

We had co-kitcheneering adventure nights where we did Betty Crocker shit like canning the fruit from our backyard tree or making it into pies.

We made it a mission for him to master one new mixed drink a week from my bartending library, which included downing a semi-obscene amount of practice rounds.

We cracked wine and then sat on our front steps cracking each other up in the evenings.

I started teaching him guitar chords and we'd duet whatever song he was trying to tackle together.

We made coffee and drank it in the sun on our porch swing before parting ways in the mornings, me in my office skirts and heels, him in his scrubs (gah *swoon*) and trendy sneaks.

Even his sense of humor, which was just downright messed up, meshed with mine like twisted peas and carrots, people. Except for the fact that he was gay, it was maybe the most perfect turn-key relationship ever. In fact, it was a damn good thing he was gay, because - let's be honest here - otherwise I would surely already be shamelessly gunning for his bedroom and making everything all kinds of yearlong-lease-hell awkward.

And then, one happy-hour as I was gushing about all this new-found faux domestic bliss to Liz, a slightly suspicious look crossed her face.

"Susie, did you do any sort of background check on him or anything?"

I had not. "But seriously, Liz, I would *special-order* this Billie if he hadn't delivered himself."

"You should at least Google him," Liz countered, one eyebrow up over her half-raised martini-rita glass. And she had a point.

So, later that evening while the Tooth Fairy was at the gym, I threw his full name into quotes and hit "search." And discovered that the Tooth Fairy wasn't just an aspiring dentist with an incidentally-nice waist-to-shoulder ratio.

He was a legit. Male. Model.

(Guess who?!)

He had never breathed word one about this facet of his income - which, per his online agency profile and general related image-search results, was clearly ongoing! Which baffled me a little bit, because come on! You're a freaking model, Billie? Out with it!!

I waited until we were half a bottle of Syrah and at least an hour of Ella Fitzgerald into the night before slyly bringing up that I might have found something pertaining to him online. Immediately, his eyes rolled, he sighed heavily and dropped his head to his hand, middle finger and thumb spread temple-to-temple, shielding his eyes.

He was... embarrassed? Waitwhat?

"It's just that people automatically assume that model equals gay."

Well yeah. I mean of course, you're a male mod--wait. WHAT??

(Well now this... is... awkward.)

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh NO!! The Tooth Fairy was not, as I had so quickly assessed, a Billie? He was an imposter?? He was a Billy?? Never before has my gay-dar failed me so completely, and now... and now... I am single, and in a yearlong lease with a straight male model. Who I'm already pretend-married to most nights. Who already regularly comes downstairs to watch movies and fall asleep with me in my bed?

Oh. NO.

This bait-and-switch is how the Tooth Fairy became Billy Barbizon - after I was already completely settled into the role of his weekday beard wife.

Stay tuned - there's a whole lease-season of episodes left. Heeeeere we go.

(No popcorn in the bed, Billy.)

Billy BurningMan: Cold as Ice (Cream)

Sometimes one fateful decision can make or break a Billy. To wit: Billy BurningMan.

This guy and I met at (you guessed it) Burning Man, and it turned out that we lived within feasible proximity to each other, in near-neighboring Southern Billyfornia 'burbs, and so:

I went out a few times with Billy BurningMan, the early episodes of which involved that really fun, heady feeling where you might, if you were a Susie of less refinement and class than I, find yourself in a full-on half-hour carside street makeout at midnight on a weeknight.

What was his hook? Well if, as Vonnegut suggests, the sharpest understanding of human nature belongs to the person able to make a joke the quickest, Billy BurningMan was like a triple fucking Ph.D. of People. Humor goes a long, long way with me, and guy was funny. It didn't hurt that he was a super-charmer of all strangers in our vicinity regardless of setting or gender or age, a shameless performer (who had actually snagged a few real "Oh, I've heard of that show!" one-off parts), and just cute as all the aspiring actors' naive glamour-headshots a meat-grinder place like Los Billgeles chews up and spits into the gutter with subsequent lifelong substance abuse problems per day, all put together.

(Haha! No really, Billy. The tab's here.     ...*ahem.*)

So after a few days of post-makeout-OD recovery via constant Chap-Stick application, Billy BurningMan came over to partake in one of my favorite activities: co-kitcheneering. When Billy BurningMan called, I'd already been tasked to whip up some bake sale goodies for a certain group I belonged to (no, not a PTA - Jeezuhs, have you ever even read this blog?; and yes, without being a total homo about it, I can bake like a motherfucker!). I told him this, and he was adorably game to throw on an apron and jump into the mix(ing-bowl).

So we measured and poured and cracked and stirred and spilled and I laughed like I forgot how to breathe, over the course of a few baking sheets' oven-time. And here's the part where Billy BurningMan raked in extra-credit points: in anticipation of a warm cookie or two as reward for our labor, he'd spontaneously brought over a pint of salted caramel ice cream.

Not just any old.

No, this stuff was from a semi-legendary little Los Billgeles place, the kind of place folks won't tell you about when they first meet you because it's like the local magical secret, where people will stand in line forever. And it was aaaaaaammmaaaaazing.

(See? I *am* capable of wholesome dates. Just as long as that's not whole milk.)

Billy BurningMan had dished it out, and in so doing he had just heaped the whole pint into two bowls. I loved it - and made no secret about that - but I did end up putting a small, unfinished portion of my bowl back into the freezer. After all, it was late, we'd already had cookies, and there was no need to just gorge myself in front of a new Billy. That could wait.

We were both operating on a weeknight schedule and Billy BurningMan had a bit of a commute ahead of him to get home, so after the cookie-sundae action, we wrapped up and I went to the front door with him to bid him good luck on the battlefield freeway home. A kiss, a squeeze, a good night, and I closed the door. And then my mind immediately downshifted into reptile-brain gear.

See, as the night tapered off, I had found myself having a hard time concentrating on what Billy BurningMan was saying and doing, because due to being a lifelong honorary fatgirl ("fat" being the honorary element), my capacity for higher thinking was being hijacked by a big, booming voice coming from a tiny little bowl in the freezer.

Quick backstory: Punchin' Judy and I - and Billy Boulangerie, by virtue of also not only being an honorary fatgirl  ("girl" being the honorary element, in his case) but also by having just absorbed our lingo through his social proximity to the both of us - refer to this phenomenon as Kirstie-ing - as in, infamous-for-her-weight-fluctuations Kirstie Alley, but expressed as a verb:

Kirstie ('kər-stē) v.1. Uncontrolled, often compulsive, inevitably disappointing fatgirl eating behavior characterized by a rapid and excessive consumption of food, often due to late hours, too many drinks, the urge to eat one's emotions, or a combination thereof, almost invariably performed solo. (Exception: Kirstieing may occur in the presence of another girlfriend who enables due to saboteur motivations, as in the case of individuals such as Punchin' Judy and Susie Solo together. See also: Kirstie-fest.

 (Watch some news sometime, ignoramus. It's a real thing.)

No sooner did I turn back toward the kitchen, headed straight for the freezer to immediately Kirstie the remnants of abovementioned ice cream to clean up and get to bed like a responsible adult, than Billy BurningMan knocked again. Figuring he forgot his keys or a hat or something, I scanned the living room on my way to answer the door, but I saw nothing of his to turn over. This was because Billy BurningMan, I quickly discovered, had returned for what was in the freezer.

The remaining ice cream.

(Are you fucking kidding me?)

Of course, I wasn't about to admit it to an actual human being in the moment, but I wanted that ice cream. I wanted that fucking ice cream SO BAD. Here are the situational elements that made it, technically, mine:

• There was maybe half a serving left. HALF A SERVING.
• It was in *my* freezer now (possession really *is* 9/10ths of the law - I mean, everyone knows if you bring beer to a party, you either finish it, or leave what's left. Same. Rule. Applies.)
• It was dished into *my* bowl! Like MY-my bowl.
• I was already mentally fixated on those last four bites. I was prepared for them. I could feel them coming. I was almost there! Getting short-Kirstie-circuited is the new blue-balls!
• ...and Jesus Christ, it's not like it's going to make Billy BurningMan's 40-minute trek on the 405 in solid form. Seriously, what the hell?

For the love of god, I brain-screamed, just leave it, Billy! I NEED THIS!!

But Billy BurningMan, straight-faced for the first time in the night, heeded none of my telepathic pleas. With a spoon I bewilderedly handed him upon request, he shoveled the dished-up ice-cream back into the empty pint container, long abandoned on my kitchen counter. He seemed almost heartlessly unaware of my unreleased frustration and pent-up ice cream needs as I curtly wrapped the re-packed carton in a plastic bag for him to enjoy. And then, while I was handing it over, Billy BurningMan, suddenly with a revived hint of his impish jokester persona, coolly asked if he could borrow the spoon for his drive home.

(Know what? The ice cream's not even appealing! YOU'RE NOT EVEN APPEALING!)

Except it wasn't a joke. He really meant it. This was just too much.

I snatched the spoon he was currently holding out of his hand, fished an odd plastic pho takeout leftover from out of the drawer, and slapped the outcast into his palm. Right then and there, watching that ice cream slip out of my clutches, I knew the conditions were never going to align for Billy BurningMan to have the opportunity to return my silverware.

Because if I ever saw that ice cream stealing Indian giver again, Kirstie I would Eat. Him. Alive.

Billy Basement's Crazy Ex Story

My bent for musicians didn't end with Billy Ballroom.

I met Billy Basement at a festival where he was playing with two different bands, which couldn't have been more night-and-day, musically.

One band was a sheer sonic-assault sort of metal supergroup, made up of fairly rough Billydelphia all-stars from various concurrent well-known punk and metal outfits; the other was a melodic, cello-and-piano driven group fronted by the adorably absentminded, heart-throbbingly tall-dark-and-handsome Billie Beautiful (yes, Billie - you know, Billies who are into other Billies), which was wildly popular in the artsy, alterna-hipster skinny-jeans Billie-friendly scene. By virtue of being a really talented musician, Billy Basement somehow bridged the gap between the two extremes.

On-stage with the metal band, playing to a headbanging crowd that was producing so much shoulder-to-shoulder sweat the walls were basically dripping with condensation, Billy Basement stood out because, despite the obvious genre-based expectations for dark-and-angry stage-persona, he was smiling. Like hugely smiling, projecting an unabashed grin for miles, just having a ball up there.

("No no, like moshpit-mad, not insane-mad.")

So I set the hook and we went out a few times, and then he invited me to his place for a cooked dinner. He did proactively prepare me for one quirk - he had a cat (errr, singledudewithcat reservations). He did not prepare me for the other - cacti. 

OMFG cacti. 

Outside, he had xeriscaped much of his front and back yard with chollas - the goddamn most aggressive, ill-tempered motherfucking plant in existence. I'm not kidding when I say, those evil shits are like the Bouncing Bettys of the succulent world. And inside his house, which he had purchased specifically because it featured an add-on sunroom, a veritable cactus coup had occurred. 

The house was filled to the gills with cacti: short cacti, tall cacti, fat cacti, wispy cacti, feathered cacti, hook-spined cacti, cacti that looked like snakes-nests, cacti that looked, to me, like small turds in a cup only uglier - but all of them freaking cacti. Literally, in the sunroom, he had constructed a shelving system out of grates and 5-gallon buckets, which flanked all available window space and provided tiers of cactus storage (when just one plane of cacti is not enough!). He had a tripod and DSLR set up in there, in case he had to take pictures of one that flowered only one full-moon night out of every twelve years or whatever. He had special little cactus-sex paintbrushes he used to pollinate them, when they bloomed. Though for blog purposes, I'll stick with his nom de Billy, it should be stated for the record that in the real world, Punchin' Judy referred to him as Cactus Jack, a not-to-his-face nickname that proliferated like wildfire amongst my own inner-circle assholes.

(Imagery taken directly from Punchin' Judy's brain, exactly as pictured every time I talked about Billy Basement.)

Billy Basement was a very stand-up and worthwhile character in quite a few ways, into which I invested a couple years including some cohabitation-time to figure out, but here is the final, distilled ingredient list:

a) Obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence (hence the cacti).

b) Huge stoner. Huuuge.* (possibly hence item a)

c) Spent so, so much time in his basement, which was a full-on studio, composing, playing, recording, editing, mixing, mastering, and otherwise producing music (possibly hence item b)

d) Identity based on musicianship (obviously hence item c)

*(To his credit, he was also by far the most functional pothead I've ever met - well-employed in an actual career, super-responsible, not an idiot when high - in fact, I couldn't even really tell the difference, which was a good thing, since he was literally stoned for about 16 of every 24 hours.)

Billy Basement wasn't a bad dude, and we had a pretty good run. But in the end, things fell apart because I got tired of having every weekend from here to eternity pre-booked with band shit; because Billy Basement wasn't into much of anything physical and because of aforementioned pre-booked band shit, it was like pulling teeth to get him outside and/or out of the city with me; because Billy Basement sort of despised drinking and, for better or worse, that is one of my most favoritest hobbies (I was a bartender when we met, so not sure what else he expected there); and because - at least to-date - I'm a shitty girlfriend after right around a two year half-life, when boredom sets in. I don't mean the whole "from boredom springs whoredom" equation - but more like, "from boredom springs GodDAMN Susie why are you such a fucking bitch all the ti--HEY!! DID YOU GET RID OF ONE OF MY BLOSSFELDIA LILIPUTANA AGAIN? BECAUSE ANOTHER ONE IS MISSING FROM SHELF 11-B, SECTION H!!" (It was dead. Or at least it looked like it, which, as it turns out, doesn't indicate much for some of those turd-looking ones because Nature Fact: they go dormant and shrivel up for long stretches).

(Check the trash, Cactus Jack.)

So I called it, and we split. 

It was a bummer in a few ways, not the least of which was that I was the one who had to physically move, since I had taken up residence in Cactopia. During most of the time we lived together, Billie Beautiful was our third roomie, too, and I immediately missed the awesomeness that was coming home from a shitty day at work and finding Billie Beautiful on the couch, two bowls of (low-fat, because superfit gay gymrat stereotype) ice cream already dished up, looking for a partner to marathon-watch the season of "Teen Mom" or "RuPaul's Drag Race" or "Honey Boo-Boo" or whatever rot he had queued up on Netflix. (If it's trash-TV completely devoid of any social value, Billie Beautiful is shamelessly all. Over. It.)

But the biggest downer of all was that I lost all access to Bomber, the cat, in the breakup. Yes, the cat.

I am a huge lifelong softie for dogs, but never really thought I would be very into, let alone fall nose-over-tail in love with, a cat. I mean, they shit in your house habitually. But this little dude was just constructed of one part run-to-greet-you-at-the-door, one part little-piggy-who-tried-to-snag-your-spoon-on-its-way-to-your-mouth, one part constant-vocal-conversation, one part purr-n-drool-n-rub-face-to-face-for-hours, one part stand-up-on-your-leg-and-ask-to-be-picked-up-like-a-toddler-on-the-regular, one part jump-on-your-back-if-you-bent-over-at-the-fridge-or-a-cupboard, and about a million parts just pure fucking love for everyone, and I missed him from the first night away.

(Man! I was in the middle of training him to do great things, too!)

***

While we lived together, I had to put one of my two beloved old dogs to sleep, and she was buried in Billy Basement's garden. A handful of months after I vacated, the full year mark since her death rolled around. Billy Basement and I were in loose touch still - not entirely friendly contact, but he had come to my new place to take my other still-living dog for a couple walks. So I fired off a text asking if I could come by sometime, just to be in the garden and, y'know, sit for a little bit. He told me he'd be at work, but I was welcome to just let myself in the back yard and do my thing.

I had kind of hoped Billie Beautiful might be home, but when I knocked, he wasn't around either. So I chatted with my old neighbors for a minute, then slipped into the back yard.

Sitting in the garden, even on a beautiful fall day, made me suddenly sad. Yes, there was the general ache of seeing my faithful longtime running buddy's grave. But beyond that, the garden itself, which Billy Basement and I had built up from scratch three summers ago, composted for, planted, tended, and which would have just been hitting a great third-season established-soil stride this summer, was in complete disrepair. The gate latch was nearly rusted shut. The raised boxes were splitting apart. Tall grass had taken over the walkways. Last fall's leaves, blown in over the winter, had never been removed. Weeds and neglect ruled over what used to be a riot of vegetables - the return on a huge investment of labor and love. And now, it was quiet, unvisited, full of ghosts. To get uncomfortably honest for a sec: it kind of completely knocked the wind out of me.

I might have unconsciously expanded the garden metaphor to all the time Billy Basement and I had spent together, and gotten nostalgic. I mean, I didn't then, and don't now, and never did for even one single post-breakup day regret actually ending things. But sitting among the ghosts in the garden, I was struck with a heavy sense of disappointment, faced with the tangible demonstration that those invested years would never be more than a fallow field, looking forward. Starting a garden, so to speak, is hard fucking work and it takes sustained effort to hit the full payoff.

I had to go. I pulled myself together, said my goodbyes to my girl, buried with her Frisbee under the unwatered skeleton of what had been her favorite-to-browse squash plant a year before, and headed out.

But I didn't get far, because coming through the backyard, I glanced at the big sunroom windows, and there, swimming in the standard sea of goddamned cactus, was Bomber. He was meowing at me from the other side of the glass. He was raising a paw at me. He was being his adorable loving self at me. The urge to pet him, to scoop him up and have his little kitty face in my face, to have his little kitty tooth poking me in the chin when he headbutted a little too aggressively, to just feel his fat kitty body rumbling my chest with a purr, was heartbreakingly. Fucking. Unstoppable.

And this is the part of the story where shit really starts to fall apart.

(And applicable second-degree criminal trespass statutes.)

You can probably see where this is going, so I'm just going to throw out all the mitigating factors right now:

• I used to live here.
• I'd broken myself into this house as a legit locked-out resident before, so what's the difference?
• I helped install that dog-door from the sunroom to the backyard.
• If Billie Beautiful had been home we'd have likely been sipping margaritas and catching up in the kitchen anyway.
• BOMBER WAS TELLING ME TO DO IT!

I tried the back door, just out of curiosity, but of course it couldn't be that fucking simple. So then, because I was clearly in the process of losing my goddamn mind, I cased the sunroom windows, which involved getting impaled on a few cholla bayonets and subsequent cursing, only to discover that Billy Basement had apparently made them more secure than they used to be. I tapped on the dog-door, now approaching full-on fugue state insanity, but he had it blocked off from the inside, what with having no resident dogs any more. And throughout, Bomber was following me from window to window, meowing, standing up on his back legs against the glass, completely TELLING ME TO DO IT!

(Temporary-Insanity Susie swears, that troublemaking Bomber was even wearing a little hat, like so.)

Desperate measures, dudes. I forced the blocking panel out of the dog-door. I snaked myself through. Once inside, on hands and knees, I chased a suddenly-horrified Bomber down and hugged him and maybe cried a little and brushed him with the dog-brush I'd actually left behind for him when I packed up, because he loved it so much, and sat with him and come to think of it, now that he's no longer issuing questionably-legal instructions to me through the window, waitwhat holy shit what am I doing in Billy Basement's place? Did I seriously just commit a class 2 misdemeanor because I wanted to pet a cat?

Right then and there, with Bomber driving his face into my cheek and purring like an Evinrude outboard, it became crystal clear: everyone has at least one kinda hilarious, WTF? Crazy Ex story and, if he were to ever know what I'd done, I had just without a doubt become Billy Basement's.

Regaining sentience by the minute, I gave Bomber one last squeeze and a couple kitty treats, put the brush away, and shat myself hurriedly back out the dog door into the harsh light of reality, carefully replacing the panel behind me. It was all a little fuzzy, as soon as I was outside. No way, no way did that episode just happen! Right? I mean Jeezus Christ, Susie! I straightened up, got the eff out of the back yard, and drove away, never to return.

(No, I didn't let Bomber drive! Haha! That would be cray!)

That evening, literally as I was telling Billy Black-Ops the story (because who better to appreciate my covert maneuver skills than a highly-trained Green Beret, amirite?), a text came in from Billy Basement:

"Why did you enter my house?"

Whaaaaat? Heartstop. How the eff? Did I forget to clean the brush? Was the dog-door fucked up and I didn't realize it? Was there a go-pro set up somewhere filming me? (OK, if that was the case, I sincerely hope some day I can see the footage of me being awkwardly breech-birthed through the dog-door, because I guarantee it is pure. Comedy. Gold.) Did Bomber tell on me?!

I never responded, because just No. No no no no no. There is no coming back from that.

And we've never spoken since.