In "Switch," Martin, singer and guitarist of a popular L.A. band, succumbs to his first gay encounter when he is seduced by the irresistible magnetism of local literary luminary and dominant top Dario. Though ultimately a tender romance, "Switch" is full of my favorite dark pleasures, including the piquant pathos of people dealing with the fears and wounds of their painful pasts, along with plenty of play with boundaries and consent.
Warm thanks to habu, amoveablebeast and Robert Reams for giving me a firm hand and warm encouragement.
*****
I'd known Dario for a few years—three, I think, because I remember he was at Clara and Tom's wedding—but we'd never really gotten over the threshold to friendship. We just moved in the same circles, as they say. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that we moved in different but overlapping circles. His friends were mostly from USC, where he'd studied writing, or from the realm of penniless bohemians who were always putting on art shows in squats downtown or in the old industrial area that was gentrifying block by block, gradually pushing them north and east and finally squeezing them out altogether. Meanwhile, I was doing my precarious little dance, trying to find the time and energy to hang out with the musicians I'd known since I was fifteen, or from college, from all the bands that we'd started and abandoned before even playing at a party much less landing a real gig, and the people from the day job which, little by little, was consuming my time, my plans for the future, basically my whole life.
The truth is, I'd always been kind of intimidated by him. I could be accused of being shy, anyway, but I think the fact that he was so magnetic, that everyone who found themselves in a room with him seemed to go out of their way to stand or sit close to him, to talk to him, made me feel almost like a groupie in his presence. People always seemed to hang on every word of his as if he were Socrates or the Dalai Lama or something, unless the cluster of acolytes in his orbit was bursting into sudden laughter at some witty remark of his—usually profoundly cynical but never sarcastic or unkind—so I felt almost unworthy of talking to him. Which is dumb, because he'd always been friendly enough with me, though sometimes I thought that was just because of Clara.
But then he got the loft on 12th, a huge industrial space that he said he got for cheap because they hadn't updated the interior and it was all raw beams and exposed conduits, but which was probably not really all that much cheaper than was normal for that area (he'd recently published a short novel that had drawn a lot of hype, so my guess is he finally actually had some money). Then, more and more often, instead of attempting guerrilla art events in squats, the artists we knew were doing what they called "openings" or "shows" at Dario's loft, and pretty soon there was a kind of collaborative endeavor that we were all pulled into by Dario's gravity and by the increasing centrifugal force of the people in his circle, and almost every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night a different band would play, and two or three artists would show their work that weekend—paintings, sculptures that were sometimes what I would normally think of as a sculpture, carved out of stone or wood or molded from clay, but which more often were "multimedia" pieces incorporating or completely made out of things like Pepsi bottles or melted vinyl records or old sneakers or what-have-you. Everyone from the inner circle got in for free, but the general public had to pay ten dollars, which included two glasses of beer or cheap wine. Pretty soon it was a going enterprise, the artists were selling some of their pieces (not for a lot, of course, but fifty or a hundred, which no one was complaining about) and the money that was cleared after the purchase of the booze and the plastic cups got divided up between the bands that played each night. Dario never kept any of the money for himself, even though every now and then someone would say, "Come on, man, you should take something. You're the one paying the rent on the place," but Dario said as long as everyone was pitching in to clean the place up after each night's event, he was happy.
And I guess he was, because after a few weeks Tom told me that Dario had said we could rehearse there on Sundays and Tuesdays if we wanted to (the guys from Painful Friction were rehearsing there on Mondays and Wednesdays, so if we wanted to use the space it would have to be Sundays and Tuesdays). The place was so huge, Dario had even said we could store our gear there, which was the best part of the deal as far as I was concerned, because at that point we hardly ever had a gig anywhere but his place, which meant no more loading the gear into Jamie's van three nights a week for rehearsals and shows. Not exactly the attitude of a "true artist," I realize, but I'm practical that way.
Actually, it worked out even better than I would have guessed, because we started putting in about twice as many hours rehearsing as we used to. The first couple of nights we started at seven, and after an hour we said we'd call it a night so we wouldn't be taking advantage of Dario's hospitality, but Dario all but held us hostage, teasingly berating us for our lackadaisical attitude (okay, I'm sure he didn't actually use the word "lackadaisical," but some less dorky synonym) about our craft. I don't know how he could concentrate with us playing, half the time interrupting a song midway to discuss how to do a phrase better or to give Jeff shit about straying out of sync with the rest of us, but most of the time Dario would sit in his armchair with his laptop and write. At first I figured he was surfing the web or checking Facebook or something, but every time I happened to walk past to grab a glass of water or take a leak, if I caught a glimpse of his screen it was full of ever-expanding lines of black text on that white background. I guess I've heard of other people, other writers like that. Things are only quiet enough inside their head when it's noise and chaos outside. So in the end we were rehearsing three or four hours two nights a week, and we got to play at least once, sometimes twice each weekend for an ever-expanding crowd.
It felt almost like fame. Usually there'd be a hundred people or more, and half of them were regulars who'd gotten to know us and our music, and they'd dance (even though our stuff isn't what I'd call danceable) and sing along and beg us for their favorites at the close of each set. For reasons I still don't understand and probably never will, Avalyn broke up with me right as things were really getting going, and I guess I was lucky that's when she did it, because suddenly there were plenty of women eager to take my mind off my heartache. I was never as bad as Jamie, who seemed to fuck a different girl every time we played, but I was definitely getting more action than ever before, which took a lot of the sting of humiliation and self-doubt out of Avalyn leaving me.
But weirdly, through all those months of spending three or four nights a week in Dario's loft, we remained pretty much strangers. Well, friendly acquaintances. Polite hellos and goodbyes and small talk. It's not that I felt like he disliked me, even though it definitely seemed like everyone else in the inner circle—all the band members and artists who helped put on the shows at the weekend—had actual conversations with him, laughed with him, and I didn't. We just didn't click, maybe because despite everything I still hadn't gotten over feeling like he was, well, not better than me—of course not—but somehow on a different plane of existence, if that makes any sense.
So it was beyond awkward when, one Tuesday night I showed up for practice, and the other guys weren't there. I'd even showed up almost half an hour late, like usual, because I never wanted to be stuck in the situation of Dario having to make chit chat with me until the others got there. I was the only one coming from the valley, because of my job; the others always came together in one car, and they were always perfectly happy to have a beer or smoke out with Dario if I wasn't there by the time they'd gotten the gear set up. Dario buzzed me up and handed me a beer when I came in. He seemed a little odd, somehow. Not anything dramatically different, just ever so slightly ill at ease, which actually was dramatically different because he was always so maddeningly self-possessed. But he gave me a smile and clinked his bottle against mine.
"Cheers."
"Cheers." I took a swig, then told him he didn't need to play host—I'd go and practice a new song I'd been working on, because I wanted to let the guys have a listen and maybe add it to our set for the coming weekend.
"You didn't get Tom's text?"
"What text?" I suddenly knew without even touching my pocket—which I did anyway, a gesture of habit—that I'd left my phone sitting on my desk at work.
"He said rehearsal's off for tonight because he has to work late, and Jeff's car is in the shop."
"No, sorry, I missed it. I just realized I left my phone at the office. I'll head out. You can have your place to yourself for one night, for a change."
He grinned, as if I looked and sounded as awkward as I felt. "I've had the place to myself all day. Stay. Practice your song."
"Actually, I should get home. I actually almost canceled for tonight, myself, because there's a project I'm behind on at work."
"At least stay and finish your beer," he said, his smile so easy and so warm that I felt the pull of his gravity first-hand, instead of watching it act on other people, for a change. He sat in his armchair, the faux-leather upholstery already molded in the shape of his body, and I plopped down on the nearest sofa. I think there must have been ten sofas in that place, all decent vintage couches he'd gotten on Craigslist for cheap, but the place was so big and the furniture so well arranged that it didn't seem weird that there were so many.
"You must get sick of having us all around all the time," I said because I couldn't think of anything better to say.
