Oliver actually met Geoffrey at a Christmas party. It was Barbra's annual Christmas bash and he had just stopped by for a few minutes to ... well, he wasn't quite sure what had possessed him to stop by. Free booze? Loose men? Whatever the reason, he had just been turning to leave the over-crowed party (which was populated entirely by simpletons) when he turned around to grab his coat and saw HIM.

Whereupon Oliver dropped his coat, tripped on the rug, and unceremoniously landed in a heap at Geoffrey's feet. Geoffrey and the blonde that he was with looked down at Oliver. The blonde started cackling with the most obnoxious laughter that Oliver had ever heard in his entire life. Geoffrey leaned over, offered his left hand, and attempted to pull Oliver up.

This action ended with both of them nearly toppling over, but the blonde (who was still cackling Oliver noted sourly) reached out her hands to both of them and managed to get them upright again.

"I am so sorry," Geoffrey said to Oliver, offering Oliver his hand again and nearly smacking Oliver in the face in the process. "I'm Geoffrey Tennant." He leaned into Oliver's side and it was all that Oliver could do to keep himself from inhaling a large whiff of Geoffrey's aftershave. "I'm a bit drunk," he said confidentially to Oliver, "and I'm going to fuck her later." He gestured to the blonde, who had wrapped herself around the arm of a nearby chair.

"That's nice," Oliver said, the words not actually registering. He was wondering to himself if it would be possible to grab Geoffrey, take him into the nearest bedroom, and fuck him through the mattress RIGHT NOW when Geoffrey's words penetrated his lust fogged brain.

Oliver mumbled something as Geoffrey began to make out with the blonde (Leslie? Laura? He was fairly confident that he had directed her as one of the fairies in his first production of the Dream, but he didn't recall her being quite so fucking obnoxious) and made a semi-discrete dash away.

"The most gorgeous man I've ever met, and STRAIGHT," he groaned to Ellen, who he had run into mid-dash to the kitchen for a stiff shot of something, anything to keep his mind off of the horrible humiliation he had just endured. Ellen finished taking another sip of the cheap Chardonnay and grimaced. "Horrible," she said as she deliberately put the glass down on the counter and began hunting around the cabinets, muttering about how she knew that bottle of vodka had to be around here somewhere.

"Are you even listening to me?" Oliver demanded as Ellen emerged from the lower left cabinet, victorious with her bottle of Kamchatca grasped firmly in hand.

Ellen poured a shot and grimaced again. "I'm not sure which is worse, that vodka or the wine." She took another sip of her discarded wine. "You know, after that liquid piss which masquerades as vodka, this doesn't taste half bad ..."

"Ellen, can we please focus on my pain? He's in the theater; he isn't ALLOWED to be straight. Isn't there some kind of rule against it?"

She drained the wine, cracked her neck, and placed the now empty glass back on the counter. "Are you STILL talking about that Geoffrey Tennant? If I had known that you were going to be this dull, I would have pretended that I didn't know you." She stopped and considered this for a moment, picking the glass back up from the counter and twirling it in her hand. "You are my director, so I suppose you wouldn't have believed that." She put down the glass again. Oliver wondered, not for the first time since meeting Ellen, if homicide was too strong of a reaction. No jury in the world would convict him ... "He is the most arrogant man I've ever met and he is just not that attractive."

"The pot talking about the kettle darling," Oliver said into his fourth glass of wine, forgetting just how sensitive Ellen's ears were, especially to perceived insults. Thankfully, before Ellen formulate her response, or throw the glass, Geoffrey stumbled into the kitchen, vomited in the sink, and passed out on the floor, just barely missing Oliver's shoes on the way down.

Ellen and Oliver looked at each other. Without missing a beat, Ellen grabbed the bottle of vodka, stuck it under one arm and grabbed Geoffrey with the other. "This party was dead anyway. C'mon - let's get lover boy here home and we can find some other party to crash."

Between the two of them, they managed to get Geoffrey into a cab without dropping the vodka, a feat that they declared to be about on par with Canada beating those damn Yankees in the War of 1812. It was only when the cab driver asked where they wanted him dropped off that they realized the flaw in their plan.

"How should I know where he lives? I just met him tonight!" Oliver said. "Just go back inside and ask Barbra - she's your friend."

"But I stole her vodka!" Ellen said, triumphantly brandishing the bottle of vodka like it was proof of something deep and significant.

In the back of his mind, Oliver knew that this was not sound logic, but the world was starting to wobble and at that moment all he wanted was just to get home. "Fine then - you can both come over to my apartment, but you have to be out by two, because that is when I have rehearsal."

So Ellen and Oliver hoped into the cab along with Geoffrey, who was starting to come around at this point. Geoffrey peered blearily through his already bloodshot eyelids, moaned, and then shut them immediately. "The world is moving," Geoffrey moaned out from under his arms that he had crossed protectively under his head. "Can't you make it stop?" He cracked open one eye again; looked quizzically at Ellen and said "Don't I know you? I don't suppose that you would want to fuck me tonight, would you?"

Ellen started to smack Geoffrey repeatedly on the head and Oliver just started to laugh. Geoffrey might be straight, but Oliver suspected that this might just be the beginning of a beautiful friendship ...