The Santa Barbara Weekend (part 2)

So me and Joyce were invited a couple weekends ago to this super rich dude’s house up in Santa Barbara. We got the invitation through Adam and Allan, who decorated the dude’s house (his name’s Justen Hunnycut.) Justen is crazy for playing bridge, so he’s always on the lookout for people who can play after dinner, like in 1930s English mystery novels. And, since Joyce plays bridge, we were invited up. Adam and Allan were invited as well, in addition to Justen, his boyfriend and three other couples. Two of those were straight, which came as a relief. I was a little afraid me and Joyce would be the only guy-and-girl couple there…and it would have been super weird for Joyce to be the only woman.

The other gay guys there (besides Adam and Allan and Justen and his boyfriend) were an English lord, who everyone referred to as Lord Malcom, and his boyfriend or partner or whatever he was. I didn’t get close enough to them to find out. They were totally gayass…like waving their hands around in the air and making all kinds of smartass comments about everything. They both thought they were real clever. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they were way too obvious about what they thought about me. When the boyfriend (his name’s Christian) shook my hand, he put his left hand on top of my right and held it there for way too long. I’ve told y’all a bunch of times that I don’t mind it if a gay dude is attracted to me…but I do mind it when he puts his hands on me. So I did my best to steer clear of them. Luckily the only time I really had to deal with them was at dinner. Although they were English, neither of them played bridge. I reckon Joyce was right when she said they were there because Justen has a thing for titles. It goes with his whole English thing.

One of the straight couples was a celebrity couple.  The husband’s an actor (I’m only going to give his real first name, which is Jonas…I’m not going to show off that I met a movie star.) I reckon he was around 60: there was plenty of grey in his beard and what was left of his hair, but he looked like he was in good shape. I knew him from playing an awesome supervillain in a couple superhero movies, but Joyce remembers him from when he was younger and (she says) hot. He was one of the bridge foursome. His wife goes by only one name, Sabrina, and she’s a famous artist. Like she has paintings in museums famous. I didn’t know who she was, but I know even less about painting than I do about wine lol. She looked at least 20 years younger than her husband, and was pretty hot in her evening gown, which was low-cut in both the front and the back. (I later found out that she’d actually painted the gown. Maybe that’s why I noticed it.)

The other straight couple were probably about Joyce’s age, but they looked older. The husband (Tom) was a screenwriter who wrote a couple big movies a while ago, and, since then, hasn’t had a lot of success. He’s one of those dudes who start drinking in the morning and stay drunk all day. He’s a very quiet drunk, so you don’t notice right away, and he didn’t have much to say to either me or Joyce. But if you watched him for a while, you’d see how he always had a glass nearby and it usually wasn’t empty. His wife (Daisy) was the fourth of the bridge players, and was the one who had the money in the family – she was from old Santa Barbara money. Joyce told me that. She also told me to mention that, while she (Joyce) and Sabrina wore the same gown to dinner both Friday and Saturday, Daisy had two different “designer original” evening gowns. She even told Joyce that one had a name: “la sirene”. That means the mermaid, and I guess it looked a little mermaid like with a lot of green sparkly things on the front. It might have looked hot on a chick with a body worth looking at. Joyce totally hated Daisy: she hated her dresses, she hated the way she played bridge, she hated the way all she did was talk about herself, she hated the bitchy way she treated her alcoholic husband, she hated her taste in art…basically she hated everything about her. I sat next to her at dinner the first night, and thought she was just some boringass rich old lady. Joyce spent a lot more time with her than I did, since they played cards for hours, so she had more to base her opinion on. It was kinda weird, though: Joyce doesn’t usually dislike people that much.

So much for the other guests. Our host, Justen, was 55, and I was told had gastric bypass surgery a couple years before. He looked okay for his age and like the surgery worked, and he still had most of his hair, which was still mostly dark brown. He was a shorter than me, so maybe 5’9”, didn’t act all gayass most of the time, and was a great host. The house was full of all kinds of breakable things that must have cost a lot of money, but he didn’t make you feel like you needed to be careful like you were in a museum. He even did something super super cool at dinner: very early in the meal, after they’d poured the first wine, he knocked his glass over what I’m sure was by accident on purpose…so we wouldn’t feel bad about spilling anything on the tablecloth.

Justen’s got a boyfriend, Luke, who’s a year younger and an inch taller than me. Dark hair, blue eyes…and the kind of dude even Keaton would have admitted he could tell was super good-looking. Luke came to LA from North Dakota to try and be an actor, but he couldn’t break into the business and became a personal trainer at a West Hollywood gym. He met Justen at a party, they hit it off, and they’ve been together for two years now. I’m sure people think that he’s a kept boy toy…but I reckon Joyce has meanass friends who think I’m a kept boy toy too. But he isn’t (neither am I lol.)  Luke and Justen are having a pretty cool relationship from what I can tell. Luke’s taking classes at Santa Barbara City College, although he already knows a whole lot about art and music and stuff like that from living with Justen. It was Justen who said he should try and get his college degree.

Luke was great at playing “hostess” (that’s what he calls it…although the way he does it isn’t gayass at all), and was in charge of making sure we were all happy in the “drawing room” after dinner when the bridge players had gone to the special card room.  (Yes:  Justen has a whole room just for playing bridge. But then the house is super ginormous.)

The coolest part of the weekend turned out to be Luke, who’s this totally awesome dude. I was prepared for everyone to be around Joyce’s age, which, except for Luke, they all were. I get along with people in their 40s just fine, but it was great having someone else my age to talk to. I started getting to know him after dinner on Friday, although every time we started talking to each other that jerkoff Lord Malcom called us the “two Ganymedes”. (The jerkoff probably thought I didn’t know what it meant.) But I didn’t know that Luke was super cool until I excused myself to go upstairs to bed and he came over and asked me if I wanted him to send a couple beers up to my room. Before I had a chance to get undressed the short Philipino dude who I reckon was the butler turned up with a tray with two ice cold Pilsner Urquells on it. With only wine to drink with dinner, I was dying of thirst and gulped the first one down.  I had the second a little more slowly, but you get an idea of just how good a host (I’m not calling him a hostess) Luke is by the fact that he sent me two bottles and not just one.

But Saturday was the day I really had fun.