The feather boa.

I was at Larry's party, and I'd just gotten through having an argument with this guy who got mad at me once a year ago and stopped talking to me entirely, without filling me in on anything that had happened.

The argument was overdue and probably unnecessary, but I was sitting next to the guy - and he was being all nice to me and praising my writing (because I'd done a reading of the Waffle House piece that was generally well-received), which struck me as fake - so I brought up the one thing he didn't want me to bring up, our "supposed fight where no one told me anything" from ages ago.

Frustrated with the guy and at an impasse in the argument, I retreated to the computer room to find a random moment to, I guess, bitch about him on the blog. (This guy is different from the creepy guy who flirts with me. This guy doesn't talk about stuff that bothers him.)

Anyway, so I'm in the computer room for less than a moment when someone inside the party changes the music station from bluegrass, which was annoying and completely weird for a big gay party that had no hayseed theme, to techno-dance crap music.

"Who's going to start the dancing?" someone asked.

This is so not a dancing crowd. This is a crowd that hires people to come and dance. They do not usually dance themselves. I was the youngest guy there, after all, and the guy closest to my age who attended the party (who told me that he liked my "poem," to which I said, annoyed, "It wasn't a poem," and he looked at me, wondering what the hell difference it makes what he calls it because he's in forestry) was there with his mother.

People don't dance at Larry's parties. Someone could break a hip. Lupo, attending one of Larry's parties, asked me where the older guys had parked their Rascals. It's that kind of crowd.

Larry's partner, David, who's intelligent, able-bodied and relatively young amongst the crowd himself, spoke up to answer the crowd's question.

"We got Benjie a feather boa," he said. "He can do the dancing."

Hearing my name and talk of the rainbow-colored feather boa that Larry and David brought me for my birthday, I went into the other room.

"It's in my car," I said to the crowd. "Do you want me to go get it?"

I just needed to get out and breathe. I was still upset. So I went to get the rainbow-colored feather boa out of my car.

Someone later asked me why the boa's in my car, and I told them it was because I'd just moved. That's not the real reason. The real reason is that I don't know what the hell to do with my rainbow-colored feather boa. I'm just not a feather boa-type guy.

So I'm going out to get the feather boa, and this cute, thin and very, very attractive mixed-race guy walks through the parking lot past me.

"How are you tonight?" he asks me as he walks past me, for of course I'm watching him as he walks by.

"Oh, I'm shitty," I said. "How are you?"

"What?" he asked me.

"I said I'm shitty," I said. "Why is it that people ask you questions that they don't expect you to answer, and then they get surprised when you actually do answer them?"

I walked out into the middle of the parking lot.

"What happened?" he asked me.

"Oh, I just got into a dumb argument with someone, and, even though I had legitimate reasons for being upset, I felt like it was my fault for just not getting over it," I said, more to myself. "I don't even live here. We're just having a party."

"Which apartment are you in?"

"I think it's 419 or something," I said. "It's Larry's apartment."

"Oh," he said. "I live right above that. My name's Chris."

He had a shaved head, I think, and a day's growth of beard. His skin was the color of caramel, at least that's how it looked in the dark. His eyes seemed to reflect actual concern for me. It was weird and stirring.

The apartment right above Larry's is the place where the drug suppliers live, the place where the loud arguments occur. Larry says his upstairs neighbors are both wanted by the police for some reason.

"You're Kevin Allen's roommate?" I asked.

"You know Kevin?" he asked me.

"I know Kevin, and I know he's trouble," I said. "Isn't he a drug supplier?"

"Trouble?" Chris asked. "Why do you have to go and hear rumors and jump to conclusions like that?"

"Because he offered me drugs before," I said.

"You shouldn't judge people like that," Chris said. "He's not a bad person."

"Um," I said, "I can judge Kevin Allen because he's tried to get me to go down on him a couple times, even though he doesn't ever remember my name and treats me like I don't exist whenever I see him."

"Oh," Chris said to me.

"Sorry," I said. "I really shouldn't have said that."

"It's OK," Chris said.

"It's just weird sometimes," I said. "Kevin Allen struck me as someone who wasn't worth concerning myself with because he seemed uninterested in fixing his own problems."

"Yeah," Chris said. "But, sometimes, he's nice."

"I shouldn't have said that," I said. "I just had an argument. It's one of those moments where I feel like I need a hug."

So Chris hugged me.

"Thank you," I said.

I changed the subject awkwardly.

"You're nice," I said. "And very cute."

He laughed and muttered thanks, but I didn't hear what he'd said, so I just kept talking.

"I am not cute, distinctly not cute," I said, for it is my habit to fill an uncomfortable silence following me being overtly flirtatious with a complete stranger with the sound of me insulting myself. That night, in that lighting, I was probably at my cutest, actually, for I was mildly drunk on wine with blond highlights, hair product and geek-chic glasses.

"No," he said. "I said thank you."

He told me he was 26 and a waiter at Houston's and that he'd lived with Kevin for about a year, which is when Kevin's old roommate Dusty moved out to attend grad school.

Chris kept saying we should talk about "people" but that he had an issue with Kevin's car tag that he needed to take care of, so I told him that I'd meet him on the steps outside his apartment in about 20 minutes and we'd keep talking.

And that was when I thought that we'd end up not talking and completely making out or something on the steps outside the apartments. But I told him that we could keep talking.

He seemed attracted to me, but maybe I was misreading it. Maybe Chris just liked, you know, making "people" happy, the sort who'd agree to do anything you'd wanted to do. Maybe he was just being polite.

As he ran back to Kevin's apartment, I yelled out at Chris, "Hey, would you think it was funny if I told you that I came out here to get a feather boa???"

And he laughed.

So I go back inside with the boa, passing it along to one of the women in attendance, and I tell Larry that I met Chris and asked him to fill me in.

"You met Chris?" he asked. "Run. Run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. He's dangerous."

"Really?" I asked. "He seemed nice."

"He's a car thief. A couple months ago, I swear David and I saw him out in the parking lot switching car tags."

"Car tags?" I asked.

"Yes," Larry said.

"I think that's what he was in the middle of doing when I saw him," I said.

"He disappeared with Kevin's car for weeks at one point," Larry said. "He'd switched the tags on the car and just disappeared."

"Oh," I said, thinking to myself that now I wouldn't get to make out with him on the steps outside the apartment because I probably caught Chris when he was mid-getaway.

Larry told me to be careful.

"Larry," I said with a degree of cockiness. "You know how good I am at keeping myself safe from bad people."

"You're terrible at it," Larry said to me bluntly.

And he was right.

I looked outside on the steps 20 minutes later. He wasn't there. I went back inside, waited 10 minutes, then I went back to the steps.

No Chris.

During the party, I'd actually managed to do two loads of laundry at Larry's, and, in the middle of all this, I went to go put the baskets back in my car. (Also, I went to check and see if my license plate was still on my car, which it was.)

Someone was sitting in the darkness in the empty parking space where Chris' car (actually, it was Kevin's car) used to be.

"Chris?" I called out. Then, I looked closer. "Oh, it's you, Kevin. How are you? I thought you were Chris."

"Hey," he said.

"I'm Benjie," I said. "We've met about a million times."

"Yeah," Kevin said. "Hi. You saw him?"

He looked sick. Like he was barely holding himself up out of the gutter. Literally and figuratively.

"Are you OK?" I asked him.

"Oh ... I'm fine. Just hung over. And pissed as hell."

"Chris told me he'd be back in about 20 minutes," I said. "He said he was going to take care of some license plate thing, which I thought was odd. I mean, why would he need to drive somewhere else to take care of that? And why do that in the middle of the night? He said he'd be back soon."

"Oh really?" Kevin asked me.

"Yeah," I said. "Not sure if I believe him."

"He didn't tell me that he was taking the car," Kevin said. "And he has switched license plates on a car that I got him once before. But this time, he's just putting the license plate I had in the backseat window on the car."

"Really?" I asked. "He's stolen license plates before?"

"He's a mooch," Kevin said. "I need to get him out of my apartment. He's already cost me $20,000."

"$20,000???" I asked. "It seems like maybe you should've gotten him out of your apartment a while ago. And why the hell did you buy him a car?"

"I don't know," Kevin said.

"He seems really nice," I said about Chris.

"Oh, he's very nice," Kevin said. "But I need to get him out of my apartment."

Shortly after that, Kevin went back inside his apartment - not before telling me that I should come up and "visit" him when the party ended, and I went back inside Larry's. I stayed there another half hour or so, then I walked back out to my car to go home.

I'd just pulled out of my parking space and made my way around the cul-de-sac area when I saw Kevin's car pull back into the parking lot.

So I reparked my car and got out.

"Hey," I said to Chris. "He's looking for you."

"Did you get me in trouble?" Chris asked.

"What?"

"Did you knock on the door?" he asked. "Did you get me in trouble?"

"No, I didn't knock on the door," I said. "I wouldn't knock on Kevin Allen's door. He was sitting out here in the parking lot."

"Oh," Chris said. "Are you feeling less of the drama now?"

"What drama?"

"You were dramatic before," he said.

"Oh, I'm always dramatic," I said. "It's what I do. It seems like Kevin's ready to be dramatic."

"He is?" Chris asked, still looking good. He took a screwdriver out of some packaging. He put a car tag on the top of the trunk of the car, then kneeled and began to unscrew the old tag. (The two tags had different numbers and different stickers for each year. The old one he was taking off had a '03 expiration sticker. Chris was putting on a new one with an '04 sticker. Both were set for the month of July.)

"Kevin always buys a new one," Chris said. "I told him all he needed to do was get a new sticker."

"Isn't it less expensive to get a new sticker?" I asked.

"He wouldn't listen to me," he said, probably lying to me. I mean, I didn't even realize buying an entirely new tag with entirely different numbers on it was even an option. (To be honest, I still don't think it is.)

"I feel like asking you a dumb question," I said, though I felt like asking him a lot of dumb questions.

"What is it?" he asked, looking at me once again. I felt warm. Really warm.

"It's stupid," I said. "I don't know you."

"You can ask me whatever you want," Chris said.

"OK, well," I said. "No one's kissed me since January, and I ..."

"I'll kiss you," he said.

"OK," I said. "Why? I shouldn't even ask you to. The last guy I slept with didn't even ..."

"I like making people happy," he said to me.

"All right," I said. I kept staring at him, waiting for something. I felt cool, for I sorta had a verbal commitment with this hot possible car thief or car tag thief for a kiss. And he seemed to like me or like people or something.

So Chris finished switching the tag, and I finished asking questions, and he said that he had to deal with Kevin upstairs.

"Give me about 20 minutes," he said. "Then you can come upstairs to my room, and we'll talk."

"I can't really go back inside to my party," I said, switching gears while considering what we'd "talk" about in his room. "I really should head home."

Kevin had already invited me up. Now Chris was inviting me up. And they were going to argue about potential car theft before I was supposed to come in for chats or "whatever."

"OK, give me five minutes," Chris said. "I'll talk to Kevin, and then you can come in."

"I should go," I said, and I moved toward my car.

Chris started toward the apartment, so I followed him.

"Hold on," I said.

He kept moving.

"Hold on," I said. And he stopped, and I was standing right close to him, looking him in the eyes. And he knew why I was chasing him, and I did too. And it wasn't spontaneous. But it so didn't matter.

"It's not going to be fun up there with Kevin," I said. "He seems like he's in a really bad mood. So I just want to wish you luck with that."

And we kissed. He had chin fuzz. It tickled.

He headed toward the apartment. And I started to get in my car.

"What's your number?" he called out to me.

"I'll give it to you later," I said.

"Come on," he said. "Give me your number."

"You can get it from Larry downstairs if you need it," I said to him.

"Come on ...," he said.

I thought about it. I thought about how nice he was, how cute he was and how he seemed to like me. And I thought about how easy it would be for him to rob me, hurt me, lie to me. Either way, I figured I'd get sex.

"Um, I'll see you later," I said to him.

And I got in my car and drove away.