Jonas is wearing a knee length skirt with some kind of gaudy black and rose pattern on it, a filmy white blouse, and dark stockings. He's draped over our fat sofa, and I can see his crotch, just barely- his panties are hot pink. I've been glancing at them all night and I really wish I wouldn't. It's like a reflex, an old habit, and not even the ever present knowledge that Jonas is male, as noticed by his deep baritone, can break me of it. Oh well.

Jonas and I have lived here for about three years now. That's how long we've been out of college, too. I think the place was approaching it's three thousandth birthday when we moved in, and now it's three thousand and three. Smells like it too. I'm on the futon, covered with blankets and in my pajamas. I'm noticing the smell of the place again between commercials. I don't bother pushing fast-forward because it's just that, a bother. We're watching Les Miserables the musical. Can it get any faggier than this?

Maybe I oughta just up and be a fag. I'm in the middle of a great big fight with my girlfriend, Lisa, because I won't like any of her friends and the only reason I like her is because of the sex, which I want all the time and twice on weekends. This is almost true. Also, I don't even bother to bathe before I stalk over to her apartment in the middle of the morning, for chrissakes, and when was the last time I brought her flowers or took her to the movies or gave her a backrub? Last Tuesday, the backrub, that is, and if we didn't sound like the Ropers on Three's company when we fight I probably would have weathered the storm because man, I am horny. I always get that way when I watch or listen to Les Mis.

But I can't be a fag because men are hairy and they smell awful and they're masculine, usually. Even the faggy ones have that smell and those angles and for crying out loud, a penis. Once when I was drunk, and I do mean drunk, not tipsy or lit but balls-to-the-wall wasted, tanked, that is, I paid a whore fifty bucks for a blow job. first time ever, and yes the alcohol is supposed to be an excuse, but right when the pro got my pants unzipped I noticed her five o'-clock shadow and sobered up so fast I thought I'd puke out my own heart. She was hot, otherwise, kind of an oriental Rupaul, and probably an expert, but just the thought of letting some guy tickle his tonsils with Mr. Happy was enough to render me flaccid, sober, and, for the experience, fifty bucks shorter than before.

Besides, who would I get faggy with? Not Jonas, the most masculine male that ever walked around and beat up cowboys. Jonas has not only the deep voice, but a penchant for growing hair on his chin so fast he shaves, and I'm not making this up, twice a day, and always before going out at night. I don't know anyone else to get faggy with, and I'm sure as hell not going out and cruising for little boys, what with AIDS and rape running around the city like a kid at the fairgrounds.

Maybe I'll just do what Jonas does: put on my dockers and a nice shirt, splash some old spice on my back, hit the local bar and wait for someone to decide I'm good enough. Wham, bam, thankyou Diane, call me if you're ever hard up again, but not for a coupla months at least, okay?

The show comes back on, and Jonas gets up to go to the kitchen, inadvertently flashing a smooth silken thigh. He's always been that way. In college it was the same way. He'd wait till halftime was over to go get the beer, or the nachos, or visit the can. I asked him once if it was to beat the crowds. He said no, it just didn't occur to him until the break was over. Go figure.

Jonas started dressing that way when I was dating Samantha. Goddamn but she had a fine ass. Kind of a trailer park trashy type, though. Had chipped teeth and snorted when she laughed. But could she use those lips to make a man weep? Does the pope cross himself? We were in K-mart so she could get a bathrobe or some tampax or new dishes or some such shit. As we walked by the misses department, I noticed the cute denim skirt jumper over-all thing. I pointed it out to her. "Cute, huh?"

"Naw."

"You oughta get that."

She shrugged. "Too eighties."

She had about as much cultural savvy as a bear shitting in the woods, but I didn't press the subject. She thought I thought I was smarter than she, and I did, although I always denied it. But whenever she thought I was thinking I was smarter than her, she dried up like a prune and my left hand usually got sore. If you know what I mean.

I guess that jumper got stuck in my head somehow. I'd already tried her pantyhose on when she wasn't around (she and I shared a room, and Jonas was in the other) and even went to work one day with them on under my dockers. So I thought, what the hell. I went back one day and bought the jumper. A few days later, I tried it on, with some of her hose. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked ridiculous. I looked like a man in his girlfriend's hose and a twenty dollar k-mart special. I went into the bathroom and tried on some of her lipstick. I looked like bozo. No, I looked like the Monty-Python wives that the boys like to dress up as every now and again. My leg hairs were sticking up through the nylons and my chest hair was peeking over the bust of the jumper and I looked like a man in a dress. Then Jonas walked in.

He stopped, his hand on his zipper, and I had a bad moment when I thought he was going to whip it out and rape me right there. But then his face turned red. "Umm, Kurt? I need to, you know, take a leak."

It had never been a problem before, one of us in the bathroom while the other did his duty, or her duty, even Samantha got used to the fact that the mirror was about ten feet from the commode and when you had to go, you could do while your roommate was shaving. But my face turned red too, and I walked right out.

Come to think of it, if this had happened in college Jonas would have just giggled and started taking his whiz, no questions asked. But he had been acting strange of late, back then, weird things like being quite all the time, barely eating, ignoring his sketch pad and reading really really long books by Russian authors.

I took off the jumper, and Sam's hose, and got into my good old sweats and t-shirt. Then I went into the living room and pretended to watch TV Jonas came in. "Hey, Kurt."

"Hey."

"Look, man, I don't want you to think-"

"Forget get it, Jonas." I could feel my face getting hot again.

"Noway. You and me is buds. If you want to-"

"Jesus Christ, I was just kidding around." I flipped channels really fast.

"Yeah, well." he said, kind of looking at the TV, draped over the sofa like he always does. "You kind of freaked me."

I shrugged. "Just goofing, Jone."

Jonas looked up, which he does whenever he's "resolved," and took in a deep breath. "Right," he said. He stood up, and walked to his room. "You've still got lipstick on your. face," he said.

I wiped it off with the back of my hand, trying to play it off. After a while, though, I washed it off in the kitchen sink. As I was standing there, toweling off my face, Jonas walked out of the bathroom, wearing the jumper I'd bought and Sam's hose, and lipstick. And he'd put it on correctly. He sat down on the fat sofa, grabbed the remote off the table, and started clicking away.

"What the hell? Jone?"

And he's been wearing women's clothes ever since. That was two years ago.

If he was trying to make me feel less embarrassed, it didn't work. Not then, anyway. Now I'm used to it. If he didn't have a deep voice and flat chest and square jaw, it would almost be like having a sister. That, and we shower at the gym after racquet ball games, and I think he's hung lower than me.

Les Mis is over and I'm crying like a baby, again. How many times have I heard that CD, or seen it at the theater, or watched it on tape? A thousand? And do I cry every time? Does the pope speak Latin?

Jonas isn't crying, though. The first time we ever saw Les Mis, when our school's group put it on, and badly, I might add, I cried then, too, but Jonas didn't, and teased me, calling me a girl. That's a laugh. He's just gazing at the credits, like he knows what they're supposed to say and he's making sure they do.

"Hey, Jonas, 'member when we first saw this?"

"What, when you taped it last year?"

"No, back in school." I take off my glasses and wipe at my eyes.

Jonas leans back on the sofa, stretching. I can make out his lace bra-thing beneath his blouse. Jonas doesn't walk around with false tits or anything. He just likes the whole ensemble, I guess. "Yea, they pretty much sucked, huh?"

"'Member how I cried, and you teased me? Called me a girl?"

"Yeah-" Jonas looks at me. He has it all on: the clothes, the make-up, earrings, and perfume. He used to look they do on The Kids in the Hall when they dress up like women. But now, in the right light, one would be hard-pressed to guess he was a man.

I gesture at him with my hand and raised my eyebrows. "Well?" Jonas smiles. Then he laughed. I squirt a few more tears out and then blow my nose and laugh back at him. "You're still a girl. Kurt."

"Fuck you, Jone."

He sighs. "Let's go to Pete's."

"Yeah, Okay."

Down a block and then another is Pete Zaria's Peez Area, a pizzeria which no longer serves pizza, just drinks and soggy sandwiches. Jonas is wearing heels and has a purse. Once I asked him why he carried a purse. He flared his skirt. "See any pockets?" Made sense, I guess.

It took him a while to get used to the heels, though. Sam finally showed him how. She made him start out short, then work his way up. "It's a hip thing, you gotta have woman hips."

"What, I gotta walk like a woman?"

"I guess."

Jonas fell on his face.

"It takes practice, hon."

I laughed my ass off.

But now he's pretty good. He doesn't walk like a woman, though. But he doesn't walk like a guy in heels, either. He looks okay, not like a fish out of water, anyway.

We get to Pete's and grab a booth. Jim is behind the bar, and Jonas rolls his eyes. "Jesus, Kurt, you wanna get 'em this time?"

"Sure." Jonas hates Jim, and Jim doesn't like Jonas much either, thinks he's gay or a male whore or something. I used to watch Jim eyeballing Jonas and thought he was gonna get him with a baseball bat or something. That is, until I saw him checking out Jonas's legs and I figured it out. Jim is just a run-of-the-mill homophobe, scared of the little fag inside himself. He's puny anyway. I could take him.

"Coupla beers, Jim."

"And for the lady?" He thinks he's funny.

"You know, Jim, your mom's got the nastiest snatch in two counties." That shuts him up. Totally irrelevant bullshit. The bitch could be dead for all I know. Jim throws the beers at me and I throw money back and that is that.

At the table, Jonas is concentrating. I hand him his beer and he sips at it, eyes unblinking. I turn around to see what he's staring at and immediately wish I was unfettered and free.

Good god, she is amazing. Her face is sculpted, she has long straight blond hair, and her breasts seem to float between her shoulders and her waist. I exhale slow and turned back to my beer. "Too bad you're in drag, bud. She looks-" but this was the English language we're talking, and sometime, its vocabulary doesn't suffice.

"She's got a belly-button ring. I saw it when she sat down." His eyes never blink. Jonas has a thing for belly button rings. He once told me that he'd lick the thighs of a two-ton heifer if it was wearing a belly-button ring.

Just then, a guy walks over to our table. He's a black guy, skinny, with a denim jacket on and some kind of hat thing on his head. I'm thinking it's ethnic till I realize it 's one of those joke hats, just too dirty to recognize in Pete's low light.

"How's the young couple tonight?" he says, flashing white teeth made more white by his dark skin. I look into his face to see if he's putting us on, but he isn't. He thinks Jonas is a woman.

Fuck it. I'd given up explaining, or caring, a long time ago. "We fine," I say, trying not to smile. I'm not a racist- at least I don't think I am- but I'm a sucker for stereotypes.

"Tha's good." He says, smiling, looking around like we're spies and he's doesn't want the KGB to hear us. "How'd you like to be a little bit finer?" He pulls a baggie out of his front pocket, just a little, enough so we can see it and see the little buds of grass in it.

I'm just looking at him, trying to find a away in my head to tell him to fuck off, but politely. These guys are worse than beggars. They cannot believe that there are some people who don't sniff, shoot, or smoke. I sure as shit don't like the thought of fucking up my head. Alcohol does a good enough job for that, and it's been legal for the past four years.

Then Jonas says, "How much?" and the guy's face turns white. I'm serious- he goes from Miles Davis to Michael Jackson, his mouth droops down and his eyes go bright. You can read his thoughts, they're so loud: Shit! An Undercover Narc! It was Jonas's low voice. "Umm."

Jonas starts to giggle, kind of, and the guy turns whiter. I'm just looking at Jonas, trying top figure out what he's doing, and suddenly, the guy splits.

Huh. Giving in worked. Must be a lesson there.

Jonas laughs and sips his beer. In the light coming from the bar I can see lipstick on his glass, which somehow reminds me to turn around and look at the blond. What I see instead is my girlfriend. Great. All I need is my rap-sheet to have infidelity stamped on it.

But much to my surprise, she marches right up to me and plants a long wet kiss right on my face. I mean, it's a real knee-buckler, and I can't even remember what the blond looks like. When she breaks off and gazes into my eyes, I say, "I'll buy you a house."

Jonas says, "I'll drink to that." empties his mug, and goes over to where the blond is sitting.

"I just got off the phone with Sam your ex." Her breath smells wonderful- she must have been planning that kiss for a while.

"Yeah? You want the number of my other ex girlfriends?"

"She told me how you tried on women's clothes once."

My face turns a delightful shade of pink. "What?"

"And I think that is the sweetest thing in the world." She leans in and bites my lip. "Lets go back to the apartment and trade underwear."

I frankly can't believe any of this until I glance past her shoulder and see Jonas leaning in close to the blonde, kissing her, and she's kissing him back. I know Jone. He doesn't try to fake it. If he talked to her, she knows he's a guy.

"Yeah, okay," We get up and walk out. As I pass Jonas, i give him three raps on the shoulder, a sort of code for "I'll be using the apartment for a while."

"Later tater," he says, another sort of code for "I don't think I'll be home tonight."

Life is too fucking weird.