Chandler was still hiding in the bedroom, with the door locked. He could still hear everyone in the other room giggling and joking about what he had said.
Monica tried to shush everyone and speak to him kindly through the door, "Honey, calm down. It's okay; it was just a hypothetical question. I mean, Phoebe said that she'd date Rachel, but that doesn't mean she's a lesbian."
Phoebe interjected, "No, it means that I'm bisexual."
"What!" The whole gang reacted with shock.
Phoebe scoffed. "Duh, like you guys didn't know already!" When they gave her blank stares, she elaborated, "Please! I was in prison for stabbing that cop. I went home with that chick who hit on me at the lesbian wedding. And I told you which strippers I'd sleep with from that club we all went to."
Everyone murmured in confusion, having thought that Phoebe was more innocent, or only kidding on those occasions.
Monica stammered, "W-wait, so you really were hitting on me during your fourth month of pregnancy?"
"Well..." Phoebe said, "A cardboard cutout of Evander Holyfield can only do so much for a girl."
Distracted by this bewildering conversation, the gang naturally forgot all about Chandler for the time being.
He was glad, for he just wanted to be left alone right now. Lying back on the bed, Chandler closed his eyes and tried to remember the big lesbian fantasy he once had involving Phoebe, Monica, Rachel, and the strippers, but he couldn't concentrate on it.
Even worse, Chandler started remembering his dream instead, the dream that began with the lesbian fantasy but then turned disturbingly gay when a guy from the strip club started touching him. Chandler shuddered at the memory, trying to rid his mind of the image, but of course the harder he tried to dismiss the dream, the more it refused to go away.
Chandler pulled the covers over his head and groaned miserably.
Just then, Monica knocked on the door again, startling him. "Honey, we're all going out to dinner at that Japanese place. Meet us there if you want to, or you can heat up some leftovers from the fridge. Bye."
Chandler didn't answer her, but he peeked out from beneath the covers and listened to the gang leaving the apartment. After they had been gone for a while, Chandler finally let out his breath with great relief. Getting up from the bed, he decided to go and spend some quality time with the Playboy magazine.
But then he ran into Joey in the living room. "J-Joe! I-I thought everybody left."
Joey nodded. "They did, but I've got a date later tonight, so I stayed here. And, um, I hoped that I could get a chance to talk to you."
Chandler blushed and backed away. "I-I didn't mean what I said. I was just--"
"It's okay, it's okay," Joey reassured him, caressing his arm. "It was just a hypothetical question."
He calmed down a little and met Joey's eyes cautiously. "You think so?"
"Yeah. It was nothing." Joey looked perfectly serious and unusually mature about all this. Despite the strong temptation, he didn't make any jokes or tease Chandler about his gay quality, like their other friends had done just now.
Chandler felt grateful that he didn't have to defend himself. "Um, thanks, Joe."
"No big deal." Joey said, "So, uh, you wanna sit down for a second?" He took a seat on the couch and beckoned for Chandler to join him.
Chandler preferred to sit on the armchair instead. "So, who's your date tonight? Anybody special?"
"Nah, just some girl I met at the coffeehouse." Joey shrugged and changed the subject, "I don't know if you heard, but Phoebe's apparently bi."
"Yeah," Chandler nodded. "I heard her."
"It's weird, huh? Cool, but weird."
"Yeah. I mean, at the lesbian wedding, I thought Phoebe totally didn't know that woman was hitting on her, but I guess I was wrong. And I had no idea that she did stuff when she was in prison. What do you think that was like, huh?"
Joey sat back and tried to picture it. "I bet it's like the women's showers at the gym. You know, with everybody standing around naked, able to see each other. The hot steam rising up and all the women lathering themselves with soap..."
Chandler closed his eyes and really liked that fantasy.
"Oh, hey, remember that porn video we saw? With all the giggling and the slapping each other and the spanking..."
"Yeah!"
For a while, Joey kept narrating more sexy details from the video, getting them both quite hot, but then he abruptly broke off and gulped.
"Joe?" Chandler blinked, his breath ragged.
Joey frowned and looked completely stunned and speechless. Then he averted his eyes anxiously and got up. "Uh, I-I gotta leave for my date now."
"Oh." Chandler was disappointed.
"Yeah, so uh, see ya." Joey quickly turned and exited the apartment.
Left alone, Chandler grabbed the Playboy magazine and returned to his bedroom to continue the fantasy by himself, though he missed Joey's sexy voice that somehow made everything hotter.
Joey was still a little freaked out when he went on his date that night. He had actually stopped talking dirty because the prison shower fantasy had unexpectedly been invaded by the memory of Chandler helping him take a shower recently. Joey was shocked and especially disturbed when he realized that he was still turned on by the idea of Chandler in a shower with him.
Fortunately, Joey had plenty of sex with his hot date, so he easily proved to himself that he was straight. Everything was back to normal again, and he chose to not say anything to Chandler about it.
Other matters didn't go so well for Joey, though. Despite his new job at the coffeehouse, Joey still didn't earn enough money to pay all his bills, so he started sneaking across the hall to steal food from Monica and Chandler and watch their cable.
They knew all about this, of course, and told Joey so when he kept clumsily trying to hide from them. Chandler concluded that Joey had too much pride to take money directly from him, but he couldn't very well starve either. He was glad that Joey was willing to let them take care of him to some degree; this way, he didn't have to worry so much.
Chandler also noticed how tolerant Monica was being, even though Joey could be very untidy during his extended visits. Joey was just too lovable and childlike for her to get very mad, and she could always send him across the hall again if she needed to clean. Besides, Chandler usually bought most of the food and beer that Joey consumed from their fridge, and Joey was consistently making an effort to find other work, whether in a medical study, in an Al Pacino movie, or in the new Mac & C.H.E.E.S.E. TV show.
So everything was fine for a while, and when Phoebe and Rachel suddenly got burned out of their apartment, Monica proudly welcomed them into her newly redecorated guest room. She was the perfect hostess. (Well, she was still a little anal about crumbs and such, but at least her heart was in the right place. She was eager to please, much like when she had offered porn and cookies to the gang, and Ross said, "You're the best mom ever!")
With his birthday coming up soon, Chandler took all these signs as positive, so he tried to convince Monica to reconsider her earlier ban on the chick and the duck. Maybe the birds could come over for a visit, or, if she didn't trust them yet to be on their best behavior, Monica could join him whenever he visited Joey's apartment.
"I'm sure that if you hang out with them you could learn to like them, Mon, and they could learn to like you, and everybody could get along... I mean, you accepted Marcel eventually, didn't you?"
Monica shuddered at the memory of Ross's monkey peeing and pooping all over her apartment. She didn't even come to the airport to say goodbye to Marcel when Ross sent him to the San Diego Zoo. "No, Chandler! I just got the apartment the way I wanted it. They can't come over, and that's that."
"But Mon--"
"They can't."
"Why do they bother you so much? You had a dog when you were little, and those can be very messy and smelly too. That's the way pets are."
Monica stamped her foot stubbornly. "That's different! Chi-chi was a real pet, not some freaky monkey or poultry. I just don't want them around because... because I'm allergic to them. Yeah, I'm allergic to those birds."
Chandler stared at her in disbelief. "Allergic?"
"Yep." She nodded and felt superior because she had found something that he couldn't argue with.
Nevertheless, Chandler did try to argue. "But--but, Mon, they've been living across the hall for three years now. Plus, you weren't sneezing at all even when they were flapping all around the apartment the other day. Remember?"
"Well, it's not a sneezing allergy," she insisted. "It's a, a rash kind of allergy."
"Really? Where?" He didn't remember seeing any rash on any part of her body lately. He playfully came over to inspect her and tickle her.
Not smiling at all, she coldly pulled away from his grasp and clung to her feeble lie. "It's new. My doctor just diagnosed it, and he said I should never be in the same room as them ever again. Don't you know that, that allergies can develop quite suddenly even if you've been exposed to the stimulus before?"
Unable to call her an outright liar, Chandler just cleared his throat and gave up, muttering, "I guess so. Your--your doctor would know, wouldn't he?"
Biting back his resentment, Chandler left and went over to Joey's place to sulk a while. He knew perfectly well that Monica's so-called allergy was just an excuse for her unreasonable hatred for the birds, and he couldn't understand why she couldn't be more flexible.
Why must she always win every fight? Why was he the one who always had to back down? What happened to the old Monica who was reasonable and far more sensible than everyone else? The Monica who was maternal and sweet and only slightly neurotic? He had no idea.
Yes, I do love the birds a lot, and I think that Monica's prejudice against them is a sign of her being unable to treat Chandler with respect. In the seventh season, he claims to be allergic to dogs too, and yet Monica makes him feel guilty for not letting Clunkers the dog stay at the apartment. Thus spoiling another Thanksgiving for him. But everybody can read about this in "Why I Hate Monica" at Forever Fandom...