"Cunt! Just fancy! I come home and see a cunt in our bed!"

Emmett spat out the word "cunt" so fiercely, that it almost could be seen - pancaked on the bar counter. Actually, Ted would not have been surprised by an eruption of something else. Sure, Brian had dismissed Ted's plea to be excused from the meeting with his usual derisive skepticism. Now, after midnight, it would be bold to claim that Emmett was able to keep everything inside him he had been accumulated there that evening.

"I hope you mean a Fleshlight?"

"I mean that right there, right in our bed, he was fucking…" Emmett choked on his tears and gave a dangerous reel on his chair.

"Because if you do not mean rubber vagina, as you taught me yourself, they are called women."

Holding his pal by the elbow, Ted sank into excruciating consideration as to whether this joke was funny and/or appropriate at all. No for both questions. Emmett's chin kept on screwing up with ghastly inexorability. Throw your sarcasm away, flush it down the nearest toilet. With yourself, if you fail. Certainly, the situation, albeit some nuances, is quite predictable. One of those which urge you to say: "Told you so!"

In recent years Ted had acquired enough wisdom for not saying this, neither before, nor after, but how difficult it is to refrain from a tiny drop of acidity. Damn, right you are: put your head into the toilet and slam it with the lid.

"Teddy! I am so… disappointed!"

"Of course, you are disappointed."

"And so angry!"

"Anyone would have been angry, Em."

No words to assuage all the sorrows at once were found into the profundity of Ted's wits, so he hugged Emmett and patted him on the back. Poor thing. Poor good beloved friend. Certainly, Emmett would start to cry. Then, undoubtedly, Ted himself would start to cry, and they would weep in each others' arms, bearing a resemblance to a picturesque postmodernist sculpture on a fountain. "The Tearful Queens".

 This cozy sight was so habitual for the guests of Woody's. Emmett would bring in a modicum of buffoonery: via barfing on his friend's favorite (and not bad at all!) jacket. Then Brian would come and say something that will make Ted barf as well. But any postmodernism must have some limits.

"Will you return to Debbie's place?"

"Done. Told her that…"

You'd better not let such pauses happen. You have to say something immediately.

"Do you need a hand with moving your stuff?" Ted made an effort to make his voice as warm as possible, but also firm, and started to ponder over a joke about an apparel of a fairytale princess. The joke refused to be conceived, and Ted began to mumble and stutter. "Furs, d-d-dildos…"

"Oh how the fuck I fucking hate all this fucking bullshit."

"Furs or dildos?"

Praise to Heavens, his kind, kind friend ignored the remark.

"Well, I would have understood, if… But…" Emmett sniffled, downed the remnants of his tenth jubilee cocktail and dropped the glass with ice to Ted's lap. "Do you know, why it all happened?" Emmett's slightly strained falsetto turned into muffled gruffish bass — and it was a very bad sign.

"Because Drewsie is a fucking asshole?"

"He's got such an ass!" That was it, the heavenly abyss burst wide open, and Ted's favorite jacket was irrigated by a somber manly tear mixed with some eyeliner. Emmett gained his breath, gave a grunt into a tissue and continued dramatically, "Hair."

"Ass hair?"

"My hair."

"You have no ass hair." Heavy silence was established. Ted thought, "Lord, why does nothing really amusing come to my head when I need it so much?"

Emmett ceased weeping and started shifting in his seat in gloomy drunk disorientation.

"At this rate, I will have no hair anywhere soon enough."

There was some truth in his words: Emmett started to lose hair. In one of his TV segments he had praised embracing one's baldness: sexy, non-trivial and brutal! The show was a great success, and the streets began to shine with masculine calvities of Queer Guy's fans. But it wasn't that brutality that was in the list of Emmett's priorities regarding himself. It looked disgusting with a pink shirt with a sentimental floral pattern. Either flowers, or brutality, one or the other. But until now Ted had never noticed that the dilemma had bothered Emmett at all, so he blurted automatically:

"On the bright side, you will be able to get a cheap deal on electrolysis!" and understood immediately that the joke was not worth a damn. Under a light bronzer, Ted blushed and even felt like breaking into perspiration.

Belated regrets! Emmett gave a muffled grunt and plunged into the dark. Ted produced the second tissue from his pocket and gave it to Emmett, ruminating whether the awkward situation could be alleviated by moderate reciprocity in weeping. And the weep, alien to any intellectual schemes, came up his throat against his will.

Naturally, just then Brian entered the bar and leader-of-the-pride-ly headed for some scheduled prey. Jumping into the miserable chance to leave without being seen, Ted grabbed Emmett in his arms and carried  him outside. In the car Emmett fell into a deep sleep of a drama-worn out person, so Ted (21 years in the gym! His physical fitness could have been entitled to buying its own alcohol already!) carried his friend to the upstairs bedroom of Debbie's house and put him on the bed.

 After a couple of minutes of sorrowful cursing, Emmett passed out again and started to snore. After some deliberation on how appropriate it would be to remove his friend's pants, Ted's pragmatism overcame his politeness, so the garments were removed, and his pal was covered with his blanket. Certainly, Ted's eye was arrested by the uncovered sights for a couple of seconds, but, after all, shall not we protect our psyche from hardships and our spirit from temptations? In the gross, it is high time to adjust the pillow and betake yourself to home.

At parting, Emmett murmured something like "love you". Ted kissed him on the forehead and wondered whether that remark was addressed to Drewsie.

***

It was an emotionally saturated situation. What an abomination! Especially when emotions are so mingled. To stop shaking this cocktail in his head, Ted decided to have a ride around the city. Was it reasonable to punch Drew in the face? He'd pop up to Drew, make some punches real quick and then lie down and brace himself for death. Was that not a truly sublime heroic deed? This man, strong in spirit and body, but somehow weak in understanding, sacrificed himself to save his best friend's honor. Ted imagined his perfect baritone carrying a primordial aria, recalled one that suited the occasion (it was easy, because Theodora was the heroine's name) and sang it. It made him feel a little better. Ted never could stand guilt. It used to turn him into a hideous stinking monster, something like a shit demon, swamping everything with feces.

But compassion was far easier to tolerate, because it always allowed him to conceive a rescue plan for miserable helpless folks and then enjoy the glow of his angelic wings, halo and, in most cases, calculator. Ted pictured himself as someone magnanimous and merciful, it embarrassed him, and he headed home, feeling very angry.

It's a good thing that there's been no one in his condo for a long time. Because guilt and shit demonism would always lead Ted into a vicious cycle. Supposing Blake were there, Ted would grumble at him, Blake would get upset, Ted would get angry, and so on indefinitely.

Ted had had more than enough of that in the last two months with Blake. One more feeling added itself to the emotional shake: pain. Ted recalled meeting Emmett at lunch about a year ago and telling him with a sad, but enlightened smile that he and Blake had realized they were growing out of their relationship. At first, their union had been founded on Ted's compassion for Blake, then on Blake's compassion for Ted, and afterwards - on their gratitude to each other. And this gratitude would stay with them forever, but it was not enough for a partnership, blah-blah-blah. Then Emmett patted Ted on his shoulder and said: "Good thing it was so painless." But there was an obvious excess of unease in his best friend's voice. In such amounts it went with this "good thing" just about as badly as brutality with a floral shirt.

About a week into solitude, Ted, who had got unaccustomed to being alone, sank into a stinky, color leaching, greyed out hell. Blake phoned him several times, asking in his tender, kind voice, whether he could give any support. Once he came to stand sadly on Ted's doorstep, sighing, as a little sad ghost. Then he disappeared. Ted found him and for an umpteenth time heard something like, "You are so gorgeous, I love you so much, we'd better not see each other." Obviously, Emmett had something to do with that, but Ted chose not to think about it - to avoid a new round of possession by the shit demon.

For some time, Ted was considering mending the situation by universally mending substances.  On the one hand, that would bring on much exquisite and macabre drama. And, on the other hand, those thoughts made Ted recall Emmett handing him a paper knife and yelling: "Kill yourself!" What is the use of exquisite and gloomy drama, if it makes you look like a complete idiot? And what is the use of suicide either by paper knife or by drugs, if you are such a bloody pragmatist, come what may in your lousy life?

As usual, the addiction was substituted by Emmett. Sweet caring Emmett who never (the shit demon started to effervesce) allowed himself to step into some new relationship ("Drewsie!" the shit demon murmured) and leave his best friend in the lurch. So, that time Emmett also accompanied Ted to cafes and shops almost every day, chose that not bad jacket for him. They even went to opera a couple of times. But that was a mistake. An attempt to discuss what they heard made Ted burst into hideous grumbling. A very unpleasant question made regular appearances on the margins of his consciousness: whether all that was having adverse impact on his friend's sex life. But Ted had already grown enough life experience to understand: he'd better not hear the answer and give rise to such thoughts.

Guilt started seething and overflowing. Certainly, Drewsie did not confine himself to the company of guys. He obviously did not waste his time, when Emmett yet again accompanied Ted to Babylon, Woody's, opera, whatever. Ted felt a lump in his throat. The cauldron of guilt was boiling on the flames, fueled by two comrade feelings. No matter how hard he tried to push them to the bottom of his conscience, they were bursting to get out, singing some nasty songs and trying to copulate sophisticatedly on the way. Inappropriate, infamous, too hideous to be paid attention to: joy and hope. Ted wanted to run somewhere immediately, to do something — either to thump people, or to weep on their bosoms.

With the hard drive of his head overheated completely, Ted despised the idea of going to his condo, turned around and drove to work; he would bury himself in  paperwork.