(***All New***Updated***)

Last night I dreamt that I was making out with Quincy's younger brother Joey.

I haven't seen Joey in probably six years. When Quincy and I were roommates back in Austin, I used to see him all the time. He's one of those cocky good-looking guys who's super-smooth, super-alpha male and super-contemptuous of women. Unless they're helpless and gorgeous, of course. When I knew him he headed up this little crew of DJ boys, did lots of ecstacy and Special K and hung out at Proteus, the only techno/rave club in Austin. This was during the whole crazy club kid era, and though the scene was chock-full of insanely over-the-top queeny queers, Joey and his gang were the music-makers, they were spinning, man. Also, the fact that all the hot young Yellow Rose dancers hung out there after work, in scanty club-kid fanceria was somewhat of a draw, I daresay.

I can't even remember when we first met, though it was hatred at first sight. His smug sneer coupled with this easy jeering swagger literally made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

I was never sure what exactly fueled the mutual distaste. Something about tension over who Quincy "belonged" to was certainly part of it. Something about him thinking I was a man-hating bull dagger, I guess. But most of all, mostly because he was an asshole and I don't suffer assholes. (I'm sure he would have a different story.) We would often spend full minutes glaring at each other with cold gleaming hostility. We loathed each other to the point where it became sort of sexual.

One time Quincy and I came home late at night and found a wet towel crumpled on the floor in the bathroom. The room was still steamy and the soap was still slimy. I was seriously pissed. The audacity... I got raging mad. I couldn't figure out how he had gotten into the house, until another time when I got home and he and his buddy Tim were cooking in the kitchen with the living room window pushed open and the screen leaning up against a chair. I remember just looking at him -- innocently stirring a pot of tomato sauce on the stove -- with disbelief. I shook my head at him with disgust. I told him he was not welcome into the house unless someone else was already here. He was furious. I think that he was living with his mom at the time. I don't even remember if he even had a job.

Sometimes he would leave his crates of records at the house and I would flip through them when he wasn't around. Being an indie rock kind of girl, I didn't quite know what to make of it all. I remember that he had a lot of Sade and Cowboy Junkies records which I thought was kind of cool because it was so uncool.

Sometimes Q and I would hang out with him and his posse. Some of the guys were nice enough. Still, they were all very much Joey's boys, and thus irritating. I think they all had gone to high school together. Just the pack of boys I would have hated and/or fucked. Now, they were kind of like grown up Kids: all casual sex, casual heavy drug use and casual shirtless heterosexual homo-erotic tension. We smoked pot with them, and sometimes when we were pretty stoned Joey and I would almost like each other. But then he would do something -- or I would, who knows? -- and the hardly-veiled snarliness would return. I remember one time, he and some of the guys all circled me, kind of silently staring me down. I returned the stares unblinkingly. Joey said, "There's no way you're really a lesbian." WTF?

Joey had this sweet ex-girlfriend named Leslie who was always hanging around him wanting to get back together. She was a thin pale frail-looking redhead. She was barely 19; she worked at the Yellow Rose. She was very pretty, in a neglected and trampled kind of way. Joey was blatantly cruel to her, taunting her and berating her for coming around. He made her miserable, but like an ill-treated dog, she was pathetically grateful for even the negative attention. She made me sad, and I told her so.

Through Leslie, Joey eventually met this other dancer, a beautiful Mexican girl named Lu. She was the kind of pretty that makes other girls (including me) feel howlingly insecure -- all long lean legs, tiny waist, huge breasts, perfectly complected skin and long shiny dark hair. She was barely conscious of the world around her -- some combination of drugs, self-absorption and a kind of blinding lack of intelligence. Well, that's not exactly true. She was shrewdly crafty about getting what she wanted. Men fell at her feet -- which she was clearly so used to that she treated them as an annoyance. Every time I was around her I had to reintroduce myself. She would look past me with complete disinterest, running her french-manicure tipped fingers through her glossy hair, and, since I was of no use to her, forget me immediately.

Everyone was telling Joey to stay the hell away from Lu, but of course he didn't.

It happened that right around this time, I went to Israel for a month. I decided to sublet my room while I was gone to cut expenses. Of course, Joey was very interested. With a good bit of hesitation I agreed, though I was somewhat repulsed with knowing that he and she would be fornicating all over my room. I was careful to hide all personal valuables.

A splendid time was had in Israel, but upon my return I knew that things had not gone so well. Quincy was still scrubbing the crusty grease from the stove when I came home. The house was filthy and felt desecrated. The sheets had, of course, not been washed. They were crusty. Quincy was miserable and though she kept a tight-lip on what exactly had transpired, it was clear that our sub-letters had been inconsiderate, dirty, irresponsible and generally despicable. A few days after, while we were both cleaning the bathroom, Quincy turned to me with a mischievious grin. She said that she had learned to hate Lu so much that she had resolved to extract some sort of revenge. Her solution: every morning when Quincy got up and took her morning shower, she would briefly insert Lu's toothbrush into her (Quincy's) ass. At this we both busted up laughing. And I am still laughing about it to this day. We burned much sage to clear out the rest of the bad energy.

Soon after, it emerged that Lu was pregnant. I couldn't help but think about her conceiving in my bed. Surprisingly, Lu's Catholicism prevented her from having an abortion and Joey got a bit of a desperate edge. Lu continued to work at the Yellow Rose until she was obviously showing. She also continued to use speed. To Joey's credit, once he reconciled to the reality that he was going to be a father he stepped up to the plate. I think he even had some kind of revelatory dream about the baby.

The details are a bit hazy for me b/c I was so disgusted by the whole sordid drama that I kind of avoided thinking about it. It was everyone's favorite topic of conversation for a while. Later, it developed that Lu actually already had another baby. She had abandoned it and it was being raised by the father's (some local skater hero) grandparents. it was all so horrendoulsy white-trash, and yet none of the players actually were.

When Joey found out that Lu was still using, I think he went so far as to get a court order to make her stop. Eventually, she had the baby and as expected, she bailed. Joey applied to get sole custody of the baby girl, Zoe. Then there was some messy Judge Judy type dramatics when Lu came back to town all repentent and insisting that she was going to be Zoe's mom, after all. I think she was granted some form of partial custody, but when she eventually split town again, Joey succesfully stripped her of all parental access.

Around this time I moved away to San Francisco so I ceased to be witness to the situation. But Joey got a job selling couches and with his mom's, the incomparable Dinah, help things settled down. Since then Joey married a sweet young girl and Zoe, by all accounts, is wonderful and beautiful and loved.

None of this changed my relationship to Joey. In fact, he recently asked me to be his friendster and I couldn't resist writing a full-on snarky assed testimonial for him. Which I could tell he loved. And I loved it that he loved it.

The point here is that sometimes having a worthily repulsive adversary can be a real turn on.