When the water grew tepid, Danny crawled out and stepped into the adjacent shower to rinse off, shampoo and condition his hair, and masturbate again (he had a date that night, but needed to get through dinner first without any urgency in his groin). Stepping over to the sink, he slathered his face with an exfoliating emollient mud-mask and let it set while he meticulously brushed and flossed his teeth; washing it off with a toning astringent, he dabbed around his eyes with eye cream and patted his face with face cream, then rubbed himself down with body cream.
Back in his dressing room, he futzed around with his hair while waiting for all the creams to be absorbed by his skin, adding a moisturizing high-gloss gel and trying out different styles, pushing it back with his hands, then combing it back into a smooth poll, then pulling the curls out one one side and then the other. When the gel started to dry, he made up his mind and used a plastic pick to fluff the curls around his face in the usual halo, and shook it vigorously for a soft and careless look.
Since he was having dinner with an old friend instead of a new beau, he didn't feel that he had to try too hard to look his best, so getting dressed was fairly easy. A pair of close-fitting chocolate corduroy jeans with distressed brown leather stack-heeled motorcycle boots, a deep-cut sable silk sweater that left a good deal of his chest bare but covered his arms down past the wrist, and a narrow blazer of rubbed caramel satin completed the outfit, and were accessorized with a long brown and rose paisley cashmere scarf draped around his neck in case he needed to cover up, a small cognac-colored diamond on a gold snake chain, a gold Cartier watch on a natural ostrich band, and an intricately carved gold thumb-ring.
After a moment's consideration of his face, he decided to smudge a little dark mocha shadow around his eyes and tart up his already incredibly long thick eyelashes with a whisk of sable mascara...not enough makeup to look like makeup, but enough to make his eyes smolder. The man Danny was meeting was particularly partial to smoldering eyes, and the restaurant they'd agreed on was dimly lit, so he felt a little extra something would not go amiss.
Stopping at his lacquered Chinoiserie desk in the living room to take his smart-phone off its charger, then in the front hall to get his keys and wallet out of the little credenza by the door, he headed out through the kitchen and down the alley stairs to the garage in the basement. Though there were three other units in the building, he selfishly reserved the entire garage for himself, though only one very small vintage Jaguar roadster was parked there; the rest of the space was filled with extra furniture and out-of-season clothes. Of course, none of his tenants had cars, and Danny charged ridiculously low rents, so they didn't mind.
It was a warmish night, by San Francisco standards, so he put the top down on the racing-green 1963 E-Type before getting in and starting the engine, hitting the garage-door button, and pulling out into the quiet tree-lined side street on the outskirts of the Castro district that he called home. He crossed Market and zigzagged through side-streets to the foot of Nob Hill, where he left his car with a very pretty parking valet at Henry's Eight, a cozy little steakhouse off the tourist paths that was better known for its excellent bar and gorgeous staff than its food, though the food was especially good.
Danny was a long-time patron of the establishment, and had dated several of the waiters as well as the owner (and so was in a position to know what Henry's "eight" was), so he was greeted warmly when he entered the dim walnut-paneled restaurant, and was escorted to his usual table in the corner near the fireplace, where his dinner companion was already ensconced with cocktails, bread, and a ravishing sommelier.
"Why, Danny Vandervere, as I live and breathe!" Theo Ermengratz crowed in a fruity Southern accent, "And don't you look good enough to eat?"
"Poppy, you old goat," Danny leaned down to kiss the famous decorator on the top of his shiny head before taking his seat, "I hope you're ordering wine and not just buttering the boy up."
Despite his age (past sixty, though he wouldn't admit to how far past), his baldness (he cultivated a little laurel-wreath of iron-gray curls), his baggy Italian silk suits and fussy pinkie-rings, and his tendency to fly into camp performance pieces in public, Theophilos Ermengratz (né Poppadopalous, called Poppy by those he loves), is one of the sexiest men in San Francisco: bulging with muscle and hung like a bull, huge square hands and a large square head, with an epically handsome face and the prettiest cow-brown eyes, a deep growling voice, and an ineffable air of command that could make the toughest leather-daddies swoon like corsetted debutantes. He was the only man Danny had ever met who could say "Fan me with a tulip, Beulah" and "On your knees, boy" with equal authenticity.
"I was doing both, in fact," Poppy smiled brightly and winked lewdly at the sommelier, "I got a Mendoza Malbec and this charmer's phone number."
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907 Words
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