How I Know J.J. Dufresne, Why I Love Him

I've been outed. I was Brandi, the Spikey Hair Rocker Chick. However, as you can see from the picture, I am neither spikey of hair nor very rockery.

My connection to J.J. Dufresne is this: I was the one who had a crush on his best friend.

I have not slept in the same bed as his best friend, but I have slept in the same bed as J.J. Dufresne. I've slept in the same bed as J.J. Dufresne twice.

The first time was in Minneapolis. We'd just brought J.J. back to our hotel room after a night of drinking beer from paper bags and going to gay bars--that's a story for another time--and it was suddenly time for bed. There were four of us girls staying in our hotel room, and we were all in various stages of hoochery that night. We had on short skirts and scandalous tank tops. One of us was even so bold as to be wearing a long shirt that she passed off as a dress. Needless to say, J.J. enjoyed our company. He enjoyed that we bought him drinks during the drag show, he enjoyed that we rubbed up on him as we walked home. He enjoyed the chorus of our giggling and the ideas we came up with when we were drunk.

"J.J.!" we sang, "you get to sleep in the bed with us!"

It just wasn't in our hearts to let a fine boy like J.J. Dufresne sleep on a hotel floor when there was clearly space enough to fit three bodies in one of the gigantic beds--beds that were equipped with those sleep number controls. We made J.J. stretch out across one of the beds. We showed him how to use the remote. We watched J.J. inflate the bed and we watched J.J. deflate the bed.

"This is a pretty nice bed," he said, and it was a very nice bed.

So after we all had brushed our teeth and shimmied into our pajamas, Diana and I told J.J. to go ahead, climb on in our bed with us. We said he could sleep in the middle, so he would feel like a stud. We patted the space between us. We batted our eyes and smiled our best smiles. "Come here, J.J.," we said.

The other girls giggled from their own bed. J.J. looked a little overwhelmed. His hair was bushy and standing on end. He looked tired and whiskey-soaked. He looked like a man who had been kissed on the cheek by a drag queen hours before his night ended with him sleeping in a bed between two women.

"Okay," said J.J. He flopped down into bed between us. He plumped a wad of t-shirts under his head as a makeshift pillow.

When we woke up in the morning, J.J. reached over and put his hands on my chest and my butt. He squeezed as if he were checking to make sure everything he went to bed next to was still accounted for. "Yup," he said, "they seem alright to me."

The second time J.J. Dufresne and I shared a bed, it was a few months later. Diana was out of town on vacation, and I was staying at her house and dogsitting. Before she left, Diana told me to throw a party. She told me to use her house. She told me to be hospitable. She told me to get drunk, but don't forget to let the dog out. I didn't forget to let the dog out. I didn't forget to get drunk.

A few people came over one night. J.J. was in town. He'd been drafted into lawn care while Diana was on vacation, and he had plans to mow the lawn the following morning, weather permitting. So I went to the grocery store and I bought beef. I know how men are, and I know they like red meat. So I came home with plans to make J.J. a nice cut of beef, some scalloped potatoes, some sauteed squash. Other people came over, too, and I ended up making more beef and then fried chicken and an even bigger pan of scalloped potatoes. We drank bottles and bottles of wine. Then I decided to make chocolate chip cookies.

We ate and ate and ate and ate and ate. We ate until we were all fat and full and sleepy. There was baseball on TV, which the boys watched. We put on music and danced. We let the boys tell us silly boy stories. Then everyone left. Then it was just me and J.J.

He asked if he should spend the night on the couch. I said no, that wasn't necessary. The bed upstairs was big enough for both of us, of course, and comfortable, too. I told J.J. he would have to fight the dog for the place next to me, but if he was willing to do that, he could have the bed.

He was willing.

The next morning I woke up at sunrise. The room was slowly brightening, and there he was: J.J. Dufresne, lying next to me with his mouth hanging open and his hair spiked to heights unknown. I felt strangely untarnished and shocked. I'd expected to wake up with J.J.'s hand on my butt or his forehead burrowed into my spine. I'd expected his hands to be doing impolite things, unconsciously, like a tic, a fit, a seizure, a reflex. But his body was crammed tightly to the one side, and he had barely moved all night. I thought it was cute and sweet and nice. It seemed like some sort of innate chivalry. He would only take a squeeze if someone else were there to witness it. He would not violate a lady's honor when there wasn't some sort of comedic end available.

So I rolled over and poked J.J. in the side and told him I was going. I told him to eat some food, mow the lawn, drink some beer, watch some baseball. I was going out, I said. I'd be back later, and if he was there, I'd make him dinner and we could start the cycle all over again.