Crap-My-Thong

I feel old. Not crazy old, but old enough.

I mean, I’m not that old. But, Thanksgiving Night on Long Island, after the turkey is ‘et, I’m old enough to realize that the reason there’s no other people my age in the bar is because people my age are old. Or, rather, they are at home. Doing nice things. With their spouses and children. And their parents, who are really, very seriously old.

Anyway, dinner was nice.

My mother had accidentally double dosed on her Selexa, so she wasn’t fussing about anything, really.

My father was more concerned with the rewards of his newest hobby – garage sale scouring – and was pretty heavily involved with a lamp he’d bought whose shade, incidentally, was made of hand-carved, peach-colored marble. Mmm!! Delicious!!

My grandfather was getting all Memento down at his end of the table:

Him: “So. You happy?”

Me: “Yeah, yeah I am. Pretty happy.”

Him: “Great. So. You happy?”

Me: “Um – “ (looking to my mother, then back to Him) “Yeah. Really, really happy.”

Him: “Very nice, very nice. Ahh, yes. So. Are you happy?”

Me: “Yeah, yeah. Well. There’s good days and bad days.”

Him: “Ha. Mmm. That’s too bad, dear. So. You happy?

Me: “Yes, frankly, I’m so fucking happy I could unleash a fountain of shit from my tear ducts at any moment!! WEEEEE!!”

Him: “Ha-ha. Ha. Mmm. So. What’s for dinner?”

My sister was there, too. From time to time, she received a “phone call,” or at “text message,” and would have to leave for “half an hour.” But, for the most part, we got to share. And that is what siblings do best, isn’t it? Share and share alike?

Right after my mom’s college roommate and her commonlaw boyfriend of twenty-five years – a Vietnam vet, who battled his shell-shock when my mom laid out the figs, and managed to be as unnerving as humanly possible – right after we’d spent twenty minutes with them, my sister and I shoved off to the bar. Just to see who was around.

It was right then that I started feeling old. Not way old like perforated brain old, but old enough to go to bed at one, without worrying that I’d “missed something.”

So. Anyway. It’s just hit one, and we’ve been at the bar for like an hour. There is a LedZeppelin-cover/Dead-inspired/Phish-ish band playing. There is a posse of twenty-something Long Island PhishKids dancing around like crazy, arms flapping and waving in a manner I guess I'd call 'groovy.' I’m feeling drunk, but also a bit growly and cantankerous. My sister, who did her time among the PhishKids, is talking me out of a big old grumpus. She gets me up to dance. For a brief moment, I feel a little twitch. A little tingle. A little of what it was like to flap and wave groovily. I felt free!! We had a hop around. We played dancing baboon. We played Who’s A Big Grouchy Geek. It was great.

And then, the moment passed. One of the several girls with smelly pits and a long, silkscreened skirt danced over to us, trailing aromas which took several moments to catch up with her.

“Hey, you guys.”

“Hey.”

“So are you guys coming to Dave’s or what?”

(looking at each other, then her) “Yeah, totally.”

“Yeah. Nice. Awesome. It’s totally right next door.”

(looking at each other, then her) “Cool.”

My point is that somehow, through this off-the-cuff little exchange, we ended up at Dave’s. We sat on the floor next to the silkscreen girl who had invited us. A boy wearing a pancake-like macramé hat played enough acoustic guitar to sate my hunger for the Black Crowes for a lifetime. The dreadlocked drummer from the band at the bar sat on the carpeted stairs, nodding knowingly at the panelling.

We sat there and, I regret to say, that I got fucked-up enough to be unable to engage any of these nice people in conversation. My sister reported to me the next morning that I spent the whole time trying to “make some guy laugh” with “corny jokes.” The most upsetting part of this is that, in my memory, that same guy had given me a blow job. Rats!!

Whatever. It was no worse than Thanksgiving Eve.

The night before, I'd headed out solo to the town gay bar. There is only one gay bar around, and it serves a large swath of Long Island, so please. Some Mad Props, if you would.

In any event, they charged me ten bucks to get in, then drew a sloppy circle on my wrist in Turquoise Magic Marker. This ten dollars and disfiguring earned me two Coronas, and the right to stand between the comb-over guy and the spiky-gel-haired-tweased-eyebrow guy as they subtly fought over who would get to stand closer to the Exotic Dancer.

Ahh, the Exotic Dancer. Now I won’t say that he wasn’t cute, because he was – with his lip ring and pout and all. The problem was, this boy couldn’t have been older than twenty!!

Talk about feeling old. Since when have I cared that the Exotic Dancer is too young to buy a drink in this bar? Since when have I cared that the Exotic Dancer should probably be at home studying. Or at least wiping out his lip piercing with a cotton swab. Poor thing might get an infection!! Since when??

AAAHHHH!!

I’m getting old.

I thought getting back to the city would help. I went to a dinner party tonight, fighting every line of my inner-hermit’s code. I went there and I didn’t feel old. I felt lame.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’ve got to go. Sorry, y’all. Got to work in the morning.”

“WHAT??”

“Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s true. No, I’ve got to go.”

“NO!!”

“Yeah. I know. I’ll see you soon, though.”

“ALRIGHT!! BYE!!” (continued partying)

“Yeah.” (starts walking) “Yeah.” (keeps walking)

I mean, what the fuck? You really can’t win, can you? I mean, ultimately, considering the time, I probably could have stayed. But I couldn’t. I can’t. I won't. Besides, it turned out that the only hot guy there had just got engaged. Plus, the Beef Wellington was taking an age.

Point is, I feel old. Not like crap-my-thong old, but old enough.

Dirty Birdy

This year, timed to butt cruelly up against Thanksgiving, our former class president is throwing a 15 year high school reunion at the local golf course/country club. What better time than Turkey Day to get together with people from a long forgotten era to compare achievements and male pattern baldness. Particularly when set against a backdrop of urbane, upper-middle class living. A country club? Not this underachiever!!

I do not plan to attend this gathering. However, I do plan to return to my parents’ home for some holiday cheer. Since my hometown is a small one, I now must worry that I will accidentally bump into a reunion-attendee at, say, 7-11 and will be forced into a mini-reunion over the rotating hot dogs. Suddenly, what was to be a pleasant and brief trip to Long Island for some home cookin’ is now a perilous journey, fraught with social anxiety, further impulses toward reclusivity, irrational paranoia and fear of rotating meat.

“So, just bought your second house, did you? Well, good for you. I just acquired a second roommate. One who doesn’t mind living in the closet at the end of the hallway. It helps to keep expenses down. Yep, I’m young at heart. That’s why I choose to live like an undergraduate. Excuse me, I’m just trying to reach the cheese pump.”

“Awww, what a cute little baby. That’s so sweet. You keep its picture in your wallet. You must be so proud of it. Her. Ha-ha. Ahh. That’s the mission, isn’t it? Populate the world. Me? No, no kids. No, no, I’m not married. I do like to pick up boys on-line for sex sometimes, though. Would you like to see a picture of my penis? It’s right here on my phone.”

“A promotion and a raise? Well, aren’t you clever!! I’ll bet you don’t spend much time on your hands and knees looking for spare change in the sofa cushions. Wooo!! I’ll bet you don’t max out your credit card trying to buy a pack of cigarettes. Ah-ha-ha-ha!! Boy, I’ll bet you can go to the doctor any old time you like. Just for fun, even. AH-HA-HA-HA!!!”

Of course, comparisons are unhealthy, and one shouldn’t bother with them. If one does, though, I find it healthier to compare oneself to somebody who is far worse off, or is in some way disadvantaged. For this reason, when I get off the train in my hometown, I am going to seek out Dirty Birdy.

Dirty Birdy is our town bum. Or was, when I was growing up. I don’t know if he’s around anymore. Anyway, he was thin as a stick, wore a snowsuit year round, and got where he needed to get by rickety old bicycle. When he walked, he walked with a cocksure strut, and talked to himself rather relentlessly. He had a grizzly face and a big old mustache. Some people said he lived in an abandoned school bus by the railroad tracks, and once there was a rumor that some local teens had burned down Dirty Birdy’s bus. I’m not entirely sure how one burns down a bus, but that was the rumor. He lived on a steady diet of grape cola and macaroni salad, purchased with a fistful of nickels – bottle return money. He was affable enough; he’d always favor you with an off the cuff, “Cool,” if you caught his watery eye. Plus, he called everyone “Jim,” regardless of gender or context. “Cool, Jim. Cool.”

For his ubiquity and uniqueness in our affluent little suburb, he became something of a cautionary tale for my generation. “Make sure you study hard or you’ll end up like Dirty Birdy.” “If you don’t finish those college applications you’ll end up like Dirty Birdy.” “Get out there and mow the lawn, or you’ll end up living in a burnt down schoolbus. Like Dirty Birdy.”

Of course we had a couple of other town bums. There was Fat ‘n Smelly. He was basically just that – he was so fat he leaned on a shopping cart to get slowly around, and he generated a nimbus of literally uncategorizable body stench. There was BoDean, a former Hell’s Angel and epic drunk who lived in the park. There were Frick and Frack – an unlikely pair of mentally ill men who had been turned out of an institution when it closed and sent to live in a halfway house in our town.

Yet none of these captured the imagination in quite the same vivid fashion as Dirty Birdy. And as the time for accidental convenience store comparisons with my former classmates rapidly approaches, I find myself more in the Dirty Birdy camp than in the country club camp.

What went wrong?

As a kid, I was one of those creepy little egg-heads that gets put into all sorts of advanced programs. I was taken out of normal class, and sent to resource rooms to demonstrate my ability to read, recognize patterns and complete sequences. I was grouped with other little egg-heads to play competitive games on Commodore PET computers. We were sent on field trips to measure saline content and pH balance at a fish hatchery, or to hear some Mussorgsky at Lincoln Center. Of course, one doesn’t really know what to make of it at the time, but, ultimately, these classes serve to alienate. Sure you get your little brain teased, but mainly you are trained to think that you are different because of the way that you think.

The attempt, I imagine, was to show us wee egg-heads that we were different as in “different and special.” This is a bitter pill to swallow when the non-egg-heads shove you into a locker or yank your gym shorts down. I can promise that the feeling of your head being flushed in the boy’s locker room toilet can not be described as “special.”

Now that there is some distance between me and my constant pantsing, I understand that a mind is in fact a terrible thing to waste. I have taken that sense of Otherness, and turned it into the semblance of a career in art. I try to find confidence in the fact that, in some marginal way, I am able to entertain for a living. I no longer judge myself according to the narrow yardstick of high school popularity.

However, before I get too hip-hip-hooray with myself, I must admit that I do judge myself by the big fat road markers of Success in America. Pimped Rides. McMansions. Wall-sized televisions. Pocket contraptions linked to satellites. Surrounded as we are with opulent images of just what $100 million can buy you, and the sense of shame that underachievers are supposed to feel, it’s hard not to wish I owned something more than a laptop and a few pieces of mismatched furniture.

All of this said, that is not why I am skipping the reunion. If anything, I am probably skipping the reunion for the opposite reason.

Over the years and as a byproduct of so much travel, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down for a cocktail with a handful of former classmates. Invariably the conversation goes down the slippery slope of what we’re all “doing.” Invariably I hear the same old stories of “feeling trapped by my career,” and “I can’t believe this is really it for the rest of my life,” and other such things. Invariably I am told, “wow, you’re really living your dream.” Every time I hear this, I become instantly nauseous.

Yes, I like my job. Yes, I can’t last more than a week in anything that involves desk time. Yes, I’ve always wanted to meet people and travel and be paid for it.

But I can assure you. Living single just above the poverty level in a shared apartment in Brooklyn was never the dream of this particular egg-headed kid.

So, what will I do? I will get off the train. I will take a cab to my parents’ house. I will eat dinner with them and hear about their trip to Sedona. I will spend hours driving around aimlessly. I know all the roads out there like the back of my hand from having spent so many hours driving around aimlessly. It soothes. I will avoid the golf course/country club. I will go to 7-11 to buy beer and a cheese dog.

If I see a classmate, I will be affable and courteous and feign interest in their children and house and career. They will think that we have caught up.

“Gosh, it was good to see you. Yeah, it’s been too long.”

They will think that they have seen me. But they have not. They have seen Dirty Birdy.

“Cool, Jim. Cool.”




(P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!!)

The Goat

For some reason, no matter how many technological advances arise to drive us further into creepy electronic solitude, the act of getting on a stage and playing pretend continues to bring us social misfits together all across this country. People still go to see plays. We still scrape together all of our resources to put them on. Foolish rich people and corporations still donate tons of money to projects that will never return on their investment – barring the odd singing cat, disfigured singer, or sexy revolutionary.

It’s whistling in the dark. It’s spitting in the wind. And yet we persist.

Visiting rural South Carolina one fine autumn night, I found myself sitting around a table with the local cast of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” They were doing what all show people do, no matter where they play. They were having a post-show drink, and exhaustively re-capping, second by second, every single thing that had transpired on stage that night.

Sadly, their production wasn’t great – alright, it was appalling – but, to a certain extent, that’s not the point. The point is that the insurance salesman with the chinstrap beard (in tandem with his combover, he actually appeared to have a white circle around his face), the jittery married gay man, and the clinically depressed woman have somewhere to go. Something to do. A common goal, a unique cause. A story to tell which, certainly in the case of “All My Sons,” is simultaneously more horrible and more, I suppose, glamorous than their own.

As we sat there dropping peanut shells on the floor and pouring out pints of lager from dirty pitchers, we created a little wall around ourselves. We talked about our favorite musicals. We talked about the genius of Neil Simon, though the effeminate married man prefers his earlier work. We talked about that time they took a theatre tour of New York. For the record, they saw “Miss Saigon” and a play whose name nobody could remember.

Meanwhile, the ten people in the bar who were not in the theatre party stared at us mistrustfully.

What did they make of us?

I remember the years that I was involved in community theatre out on Long Island. Was it any different? We went to a seafood place called “Popeye’s” after every show, and dissected every detail of that evening’s “Run For Your Wife” or “Lend Me A Tenor.” The bar patrons had stared at us mistrustfully, as if we had crawled out from under Faggot Rock. Of course, most of us had. We were a happy bunch.

There was Brian, who was in his sixties and was in charge of all costumes. He had platinum blonde hair, diamond earrings, and was always surrounded by a thick cloud of Paul Mitchell cologne. Every Christmas, he designed his own greeting cards with a naked picture of himself. The year I received one, he was naked in the woods, wearing a Santa hat and feeding a deer. When we went to the beach that summer, he wore a neon orange thong, on the crotch of which he had personally bedazzled a glittery peace sign.

There were Darren and Richard. They were a Committed Couple, also in their sixties. Darren was tall, and affected an English accent at all times. He worked sales for a publishing house but had, in younger days, published a couple of his own science fiction epics – something to do with creatures that were half boy-half horse…and the troubles those rascals find themselves in!! Richard was tiny and silent, a Teller to Darren’s Penn. They often had me over for dinner parties. Inevitably, these parties were attended by Darren, Richard, myself, and some boy they wanted to fix me up with. This would have been nice if it hadn’t come with overt suggestions of a foursome.

Then there was Mikey. Short, squat and very sweet. Mid-fifties. Always inviting me out to his car to smoke a joint. I would always go. He never quite had the nerve to pull any shenanigans, and I liked his weed. We had an understanding. Once, when he was going away on a vacation, he asked me to house-sit. As he was leaving, he gave me the tour. Here’s the dogfood. Here’s the alarm code. Here’s the porn collection. Here’s the video camera. In that box up there are the ‘toys.’ “Oh, by the way,” he said. “Feel free to make a video of yourself watching porn and playing with the ‘toys.’”

As for me, I had just turned twenty one and didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground. What I felt or thought at the time I can't imagine, apart from delight in being desired sexually and being regularly encouraged to dress up in costumes.

Hm. I've just noticed that none of my Community Theatre reminiscences include any actual theatre. And I guess that's just it. The same shows come and go. “Guys and Dolls.” “Evita.” “Noises Off.” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.” “The Odd Couple.” “The Female Odd Couple.” “South Pacific.” Over and over and over again. Every once in a blue moon, somebody gets brave and takes on “The Crucible,” or even “Romeo and Juliet.” And it doesn’t really matter. It just matters that a group of passionate people find each other. And film amateur pornos.

To a certain extent, I suppose, the same thing is true of the commercial theatre. It’s cliquey, full of ego, hell-bent on recycling the same old thing over and over and over again. Every once in a while, somebody gets brave and puts Martin McDonough on Broadway again. But for the most part, it doesn’t really matter. Between the two, the only real difference is that the commercial theatre hopes to make a profit.

I just wanted to meet people. On the first day of high school, I mustered all of the gravitas I could find at fourteen, marched into the office of the drama teacher and announced my availability for upcoming "projects." And miraculously, he didn't laugh in my face or call the police. He gave me a part. I became Frank Sterling in "The Creature Creeps."

Of course, for people like me, for the lonely and the alienated, for those of us who have at one time or another taken solace in the theatre, we find that it doesn’t always work that way. You really can’t show up and be given a part just because you’re a boy. You actually must throw away any hopes of having a conventional life, or any sort of security. You must embrace poverty and ridiculous day jobs and humiliating auditions and exploitative agents and managers and the hunger and drive it takes just to tread the boards at all. And suddenly that fun thing you did for comfort doesn't seem like so much fun any more.

For lots of us, this realization leads us to subvert our glamorous dreams. We take a boring job, live in the suburbs, and do our fifth consecutive production of “Carousel.” This is why I have such affection for Community Players. The dreams are still there. The passion is still there. They just also have money and houses and cars and other nice things.

Dr. John was another Player out on Long Island. He was a dentist. Because he was a solid actor and had a decent singing voice, he was considered a hot commodity. He would pull up to the theatre in his BMW wearing a leather jacket and mirrored shades. He was every inch the star. Who was deluding who? He was what he projected himself to be – and isn't that the essence of theatre?

Meanwhile, in the pub in South Carolina, the married gay guy and the white-hair-circle guy were telling me about their latest ambition for their troupe of Players. They wanted to take on Edward Albee’s “The Goat.” This play’s central conceit, by the way, is that a happily married and established man’s life comes undone because of his passionate affair with a goat. He has pictures in his wallet. His enraged wife throws dishes. His gay son kisses him.

Long and short of it; it seems unlikely that this will go over too well in South Carolina. But they hope and they dream and they fantasize.

“We’ve developed a sort of code,” said the married gay guy.

“That’s right,” said white-hair-circle guy. “Everytime somebody brings up scheduling the next season…”

“One of us makes horns with our fingers…”

“And bleats like a goat!!”

In unison, they put their fists to their temples with forefingers held aloft, and began bleating at me.

“BAAAAA!!!”

The patrons at the bar shook their heads and stared into their beers.

“BAAAAA!!!”

I smiled and poured us all another pint.

Halloweiner

Visiting Saint Louis was never a great life ambition, but finding myself there, being driven around by my host, the gregarious red-headed Chuck, I decided to give in and try to enjoy myself.

I’d seen the arch on the way in. I’d seen the enormous Anheuser-Busch plant. I’d seen what there was to see in the way of a skyline. And now Chuck was driving me along a street lined with oaks and hickories and a row of huge old ivy-covered houses.

“Million and a half, that one went for,” he drawled. He had a rich baritone that sometimes skittered up to a tenor when he got excited. “Can’t believe they got a buyer to go that high in this part of town.”

He bounced a few times in the driver’s seat. He was ludicrously tall, at least 6 foot 3, and his orange weather man-style hair crinkled on the ceiling of his SUV. There was a precise air about him; his seersucker suit was crisp and pressed, and he wore clear shiny polish on his clean square nails.

“That won’t impress a New Yorker like yourself, but this area’s really coming up,” he said. Then, in the giggly whisper of a much smaller man, “This area used to be a real shit hole.”

“Really,” I said. We’d been driving in a fairly aimless way for about forty five minutes, and I was anxious to get to my hotel. We passed a huge mansion that looked a bit like a wedding cake sitting proudly behind a wrought iron fence. “That one’s pretty,” I offered.

“Well, they spend a lot of money here in town. Not much isn’t named after them around here,” he said with a weird mix of pride and shame. “But all this real estate stuff must be boring for you. Why don’t I show you where the gay bars are?”

It was a blindside. He’d been sniffing me out since he picked me up at the train station and now here it was.

“Sure,” I said.

He bounced a few more times and got very chirpy. “Well, then. Here we go,” and we zoomed off across town. “We’ve got more here than you might think,” he beamed. “We’ve got Rainbo’s End, The Complex, Spanky’s. Something for everyone. Oh, look! There’s Novak’s. And a little further up there is Freddy’s.”

Suddenly, I spotted my hotel. He noticed me noticing.

“Oh, I’m just being a big silly. Why don’t I drop you off so you can freshen up.”

“Thanks,” I said. As we went around the corner towards the entrance, I noticed a little brick building with tinted windows. In the windows were neon hoops in rainbow colors. “What’s that one?”

“Oh. Ha-ha. That’s Attitudes,” he said. “They usually attract a younger crowd.” Chuck was in his mid forties. I was early thirties. “You know, the twenty-somethings. The university crowd.”

He dropped me at the hotel and we said our goodbyes, planning to get together later on. I knew already that I would probably skip it, and go out on my own. Chuck seemed like he also knew, but was the type of guy who wasn’t about to get too bothered.

I laid my things out in my hotel room – it was nice in a generic and anonymous sort of way – and realized that I should at least try to do something fun. It was Halloween, and I was on my own in a strange city. I went for a walk.

The air was crisp, and if one concentrated, one could smell something of the Anheuser-Busch plant in the background. There were a surprising number of trees for a metropolitan area and the leaves were red and yellow and orange. Some leaves had fallen already, and there was a pleasant crunchiness underfoot.

As evening fell, a handful of solitary grownups walked past, each with two or three little kids in costumes. A chick. A robot. A fairy. A bee. Each kid with a bag full of loot. Each grownup with a weary expression of forced cheer. I went into a restaurant and had a solitary dinner.

The restaurant was totally empty, save for me and two incredibly old women. They sat in silence, their heads bowed towards their plates, staring at their food, not moving. I ate mechanically, wishing I had something to read, or someone to talk to. It was oppressive and silent.

It felt like hours had passed by the time I paid my bill and walked back out into the chilly night, crunching away at the dried leaves underfoot.

I walked, somewhat inexorably I suppose, towards Attitudes.

I was amazed by the silence in this city, and by its emptiness and chill. The only sound was the leaves; then, as I approached, the buzz of the neon rainbow lights in the window of the bar. I couldn’t see in. I couldn’t tell if there was anybody looking out. I saw my own reflection, and didn’t like seeing myself that way. I went in.

It was a smallish place. Circular bar in the center, manned by a rail skinny punk boy with floppy blonde hair and tattoos on his arms. Above was a wooden balcony where one could look out over the crowd. Or rather, one could if there were a crowd at all. There were maybe fifteen people in clumps of two or three spread out about the place. If they were wearing costumes, they had all chosen the same one: Gay Man. Tight pants, sleeveless shirts, a couple of neck scarves, bare chests. Some of the boys looked at me, gave me the once over, and went back to gossiping about who was fucking who. I headed for the bar.

The punk boy slapped down a damp coaster in front of me. It had a Bacardi bat on it. “Happy Halloween, sweetie,” he said, looking past me at somebody else. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a pint of Bass, please,” I said.

Without another word he went to go draw my beer. I glanced around. They’d decorated for Halloween. There were black and orange streamers and balloons. A couple of identical plastic skulls with red fairy lights in their eye sockets. The stretched-out cotton of fake spider webbing in which a rubber rat was caught. I wondered if the punk boy had done this himself, and if he was disappointed that nobody had shown up for his party.

“Here you go, sweetie.” The punk boy put my beer on the coaster. He had pierced ears and was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt that said “Interpol.” His tattoos were multicolored swirls. I think I saw an ankh. “Three dollars.”

I gave him five. He vanished again, soundlessly. Time passed. Nobody came to speak to me, and I spoke to noone. A bland techno drum and bass riff pulsed along quietly. I was boring myself.

Across the bar, I spotted someone. He looked to be mid to late twenties. Short, brown, messy hair. Thick rimmed glasses. Small up-turned nose. Thin red lips, nice strong jaw. Thin and wearing a wool blazer and button down shirt. He was alone.

For a little while we stared pregnantly at and pointedly away from each other. Then I smiled. Then he smiled. He came over and stood beside me at the bar.

We had a chat. He was from Chicago. He’d come down for a couple of weeks to look at schools and to see his brother, and the brother’s wife and little girl. He showed me a picture of the little girl. He told me she had dressed as a bee for Halloween. I said that I was deathly afraid of bees. We had a laugh.

The conversation ebbed as it does from time to time. It got quiet, and I heard the pulse of the techno music again. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just quiet. He seemed nice. I took a sip of beer.

He cleared his throat, and I looked over at him. He had nice eyes.

“So,” he said. “Can I touch your weiner?”

I nearly choked on my beer. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. His nice eyes were staring into mine. I’d heard him right.

“Um,” I said, treading water. “Sure. I guess.” I figured there was no harm in that, whatever that was.

I assumed he would sort of put his hand on the front of my jeans for a moment, like a sort of handshake. Or like testing a melon you might buy.

Instead, he put his hand down my pants, past the waistband of my underwear, and sort of juggled me. His hand was cold. He’d done it so fast, I didn’t really know how to react. After a moment, he removed his hand.

“Nice,” he said.

“Um. Thanks,” I said.

It got quiet again. The pulse of the techno music again. Now it was very uncomfortable. I looked for the punk boy so I could order another beer.

The guy next to me tapped me on the shoulder. Lightly, with his index finger. I turned.

“Yes?” I said.

He looked down. I looked down, too.

He had his own penis out. It was short and thick and fully erect. He looked back up at me and smiled.

“Ah,” I said. I had no idea how to respond to this. “Yes. Very nice. Well done.”

“Do you want to meet me in the men’s room?” he said.

“Ha. Yes. Sure. I’ll be right along,” I stammered.

“Cool,” he said, zipping up and scurrying off to the men’s room.

The punk boy came over. “Another?” he said.

“No. No thanks. Happy Halloween,” I said.

“Happy Halloween, sweetie,” he said looking at somebody behind me.

I got out of there, quickly. I beat a hasty retreat to my anonymous little hotel room. I shut the door. Then locked it. Then bolted it.

The little red message light on the hotel phone was flashing. I dialed in. There were three messages from Chuck. He wanted to know where I was and why I hadn’t called him. In the third and final message he sounded hurt.

It was Halloween, and I was all alone.