by Chris Fink
No, says Fred. I would be shocked too.
Black leather chaps with silver studs. A black mask like the Lone Ranger would wear. Videos, some with Western motifs: How the West Was Hung. This is what Timothy finds in the closet in the third-floor attic. Snooping around, looking through some of Fred’s antiques, and then finding this little cache of carnal goodies. At first Timothy didn’t believe that Fred could be gay. Then he couldn’t believe he could be this kind of gay. By which he meant what exactly? So gay? Exactly what you would think of when you thought of gay.
Chip is another of the renters. He’s in his forties, according to Fred, though he looks Timothy’s age and has the face of a cherub and the body of a Greek sculpture. He’s also on SSI, Timothy has learned. Fred derisively calls him that boy toy. He has no job and spends most of his time working out at the Y. In the evenings, Timothy often sees him picked up by older men in luxury sedans, one night a Lexus, the next night a Mercedes. The men don’t get out of their cars. They pull up in front of Fred’s house and honk their horns, waiting for Chip to come to them. This seems like ghetto behavior to Timothy, announcing to the whole neighborhood you’ve arrived in your bad wheels.
Fred seems more like Timothy than like these other men. Fred even trusts Timothy, not his longtime tenants, to water the flowers when he’s out of town.
Timothy felt a certain buoyancy at moving to Milwaukee. From Fred’s house, you could walk to a theater, an opera house, art galleries, and ethnic restaurants of your choosing, or even an NBA game. Not that Timothy did any of these things. Who could afford them? But the fact that you could meant something to him. Timothy once walked under the ornate wrought iron portico of the old brick Pabst Theater after the shows let out. It was easy to convince himself that he too had just come out into the fresh air after the intoxicating dream of the theater. For the first time in his life, Timothy felt he was someplace he might belong.
It was at a little gallery with a foreign name—the Pesti Est—on Water Street beyond the Pabst that Timothy met Reka. Timothy was on an evening stroll and passed by the street-front gallery announcing the Milwaukee and Vicinity art show. The floor-to-ceiling windows beckoned, and Timothy watched all the well-dressed sophisticates inside drinking wine and eating grapes and dainty cheeses.
The door opened for him.
Don’t stand out in the cold. Come in. A high-pitched voice dressed in a foreign accent. It belonged to the blonde holding the door. She was a statuesque woman about sixty, Timothy guessed, dressed in a tight cashmere sweater that accented her large breasts, and a vibrant red sash that rested upon them. She held a glass of sparkling white wine, which she handed to Timothy. When she passed him the drink, Timothy noticed her withered hands, the hands of a much older woman. She wore designer glasses and bright-red lipstick that was a little smudged. She seemed like she might be half-crocked. She took him by the arm. Here was an artist if Timothy had ever seen one.
Of course, he had never seen one. It turned out this woman owned the place.
My name is Piroska and I come from Hungaria, she told him. Pesti Est is my gallery. When she said the name of the gallery, it sounded like she was shushing him. Peshty-esht. It’s a nice gallery, Timothy said.
Don’t be shy. Come, there are some people I want you to meet. Timothy could smell the liquor on her breath as she navigated the room, pointing out the bright paintings on the walls and the artists they belonged to. She led him past the oils to a wall of black-and-white photographs and finally to a brown sculpture that looked like soft-serve ice cream or a heaping pile of dung. There Piroska found the person—it turns out there was only one—that she wanted Timothy to meet.
Young man, this is my daughter, Reka. Reka, this young man would like to meet you.
Reka looked up from the sculpture she had been studying. On closer inspection, Timothy saw that it was a coiled serpent.
Hello there, she said. She seemed surprised, though not unpleasantly.
Just like that, Timothy thought, plucked off the streets of Milwaukee and fixed up with the best-looking woman in the joint. At an art opening, no less. This was Timothy’s first. No mistaking that Reka was her mother’s daughter, now that Piroska had pointed it out. She was also blonde, and similarly statuesque, but slimmer, and she wore looser-fitting, earth-toned clothing and leather sandals with her toes showing. Organic was the word that came to mind. Then the word his mother would have used. Earthy.
You two stay as long as you like, Piroska said. Then she said, Pussy dear, kissed her daughter, and walked off into the blotchy tableau of painters and paintings.
Did she just say that?
Puszi, Reka said. It means kiss in Hungarian.
I guess I like Hungarian, Timothy said.
Reka laughed. My mother is such a pest. Pleasure to meet you. She extended a hand. Not so young. Not so young as Timothy. But a beautiful hand. Timothy accepted her hand and for some reason, perhaps because it was so picturesque, perhaps because this is how he imagined one behaved at an art gallery, he kissed her hand.
My, Reka said, this one fancies himself a gentleman.
As he kissed her hand, which smelled of smoke and fruit, he noticed the scars on her wrist, thin filaments running both ways in a little crosshatch. Reka was a woman with many scars, he would learn.
Later that night, in front of his place, in the cab of his small truck, Timothy foraged for a goodnight kiss. Leaning in close to the wispy fronds of her blonde hair, he got a stronger dose of Reka’s strange musky perfume that had lingered about her at the gallery.
You live in a boardinghouse, Reka said. How cool.
Yeah, Timothy said. I guess it’s cool. It might be the last cheap studio left in the city.
You’re lucky, she said. That’s my new nickname for you. Lucky.
Well let’s see it, Reka said, excited. Both of her hands went to his neck when she kissed him. Let’s have a look at your little room, Lucky Boy. Don’t make me beg.
II
To get what you wanted, Timothy was quickly learning, you never really had to leave the snug harbor of Milwaukee’s east side. The freeway encircled the city on the west side, while Lake Michigan formed the eastern limit. There seemed to be a force field around the neighborhood that shielded Timothy from everything that happened at home. There were no visitors from Blue River. His place was too small for that. And he was far enough away that no one expected him to visit on a whim. He was safely hidden here, and all the news from home had to come by phone. If Timothy didn’t want the news, he didn’t answer his phone.
Timothy had landed, he found out from Fred and later from Reka, in a neighborhood that had been Italian. Then came the white flight and the black tide to fill in the vacuum. Two decades later, new condominiums began to rise from the ashes of the historic bungalows, and white-collar workers and investors began to leak back in. Marshall Street, perpendicular to an abandoned freeway spur, was still intact with its old Victorians, but most of these were boardinghouses, like Rooms for Men. So, the neighborhood had transformed into a mongrel collection of yuppies, gays, holdover blacks, and old Italians—and low-wage earners and SSI recipients who lined the porches of the Victorians not yet renovated.
Reka and Timothy sit now at the Y-Not II, just a couple blocks from Timothy’s new home, drinking seven and sevens and smoking Reka’s Camels. The advertising has done its work on him over a lifetime. There is nothing in the world sexier, Timothy thinks, than a woman who smokes. Reka has hands built for a cigarette ad. My God. Slender, white fingers tipped with red nails. Hands fragile, but also agile. Promising. A ring the size of a broach with a syrup-colored stone—amber, Timothy has learned—dazzles her index finger.
The Y-Not II seemed like a good neighborhood bar when they walked in, but Timothy wonders now if it’s a gay bar. There’s plenty of neon, and the clientele seems hip in a way that Timothy can’t quite be sure about. They wear tight jeans with the bottoms rolled up. Chuck Taylor tennis shoes. Others wear black on black wi
th heavy steel-toed boots. Reka calls them skull crushers. Many have silver chains attached to their wallets. Black horned-rim glasses. Serious-looking piercings in their eyebrows, noses and lips. Even the name of the place seems to invite subversion. Y-Not II. Why not what?
So, is this a gay bar? Timothy asks.
You’re so clueless, Reka says. You have no gaydar whatsoever. This place is industrial, not gay. Reka seems to know everything about what’s hip. She takes another cigarette from her handbag. Everything about Reka is sexy. Even the handbag. Leather, petite, classy, but slightly used. When she picks it up to put it on her shoulder, Timothy wants to be the handbag.
OK, but they look strange. Fred doesn’t even look strange. He looks like he could be from my hometown.
Oh, come on, Reka says. I knew Fred was gay the minute we pulled up to your place.
How did you know? Timothy says.
Painted lady, she says. Geezer fixing it up. He might as well have shouted I’m gay from the widow’s walk. He couldn’t be gayer in ruby slippers.
Painted Lady? Timothy says.
That’s the house you’re living in, Lucky. Victorian with the bright woodwork. You don’t get around, do you?
OK, says Timothy. I get the picture. But he was wearing blue jeans and a flannel.
Well, you said he was from Iowa. And where did you say you found the leather goodies?
Right, says Timothy. In the closet.
Reka grew up in one of the wealthy suburbs of Milwaukee. Elm Grove. Her father is a surgeon who flies his own plane for a hobby. Her mother is Hungarian. A refugee. Patron of the arts. Timothy hasn’t been to her place yet, though she’s living there with her folks until she finds her own place.
My mother thinks loneliness is a disease she must fight against daily, Reka says. Doesn’t matter if it’s her divorced daughter moving back from the coast or some single bumpkin walking around a gallery. She just has to cure them.
It’s true, Piroska had spotted Timothy on the street as a lonely new immigrant, a perfect playmate for her daughter, who was also new to the city. Rather, Timothy was new and Reka newly returned. She had lived in San Francisco for the last decade but had come home for what she called the Return Tour.
You’ll have yours someday, she says. You’ll see what it feels like to come home with your tail between your legs.
That won’t happen.
Oh, I say it will, says Reka. But first you’ll have to get a little more distance from the homestead. I mean, who runs away to Milwaukee, Wisconsin?
Timothy responds by sipping his drink.
That was a question, Lucky. Who does?
How do I know? Now he stares away at the entrance, his only escape.
You have a big secret, Lucky? You think being mysterious makes me want you more.
I guess so, Timothy says.
My Lucky Boy. Runs away from home and doesn’t even make it over the crease in the map.
Good thing the men at Rooms for Men don’t seem to mind Timothy bringing a woman home with him. After drinks at the Y-Not II, they return to Timothy’s, where they both cram onto the trundle bed that came with the place. Timothy teases her that she’s slumming with him, but she just laughs, in a way that makes Timothy feel belittled. The dismissive laugh tells Timothy she could teach him a few things about slumming. Already the feet of the trundle bed have worn grooves in Fred’s new tilework. Timothy will have to bring that up to his landlord, but how embarrassing. See here Fred, when I fuck my girlfriend on your bed, I leave marks on your new floor.
They’re entwined in the trundle bed nude. Fred’s metal fans clatter away on the floor. Timothy traces an areola with his finger. Scars surround both of Reka’s areolae. Each time with Reka he learns something new. He didn’t need to ask about the scars lacing her wrists, but these scars on her breasts are an enigma. This time he finally gets up the courage to ask, and he learns these breasts have been reduced.
Her ex-husband, she says, couldn’t get off with a woman with large breasts. He was very particular. First of all, Reka had to be on top, and from that vantage point her large breasts were evidently a distraction.
I never heard of anything like that, Timothy says.
Everyone has an ideal, Reka says, and I wasn’t his. All his life he’d been jerking off to nymphs with pert tits, and along comes a leggy blonde with D cups.
I think your breasts are beautiful, Timothy says. He tries to imagine the devotion one must have to undergo such a surgery on behalf of another. But what happened next? She had the surgery like he wanted. Why then the divorce?
Well, big surprise, she says. It wasn’t my breasts. There were all sorts of other problems. Problems on top of problems. Funny part is the world is full of men who love big tits. And I end up with the lone male who can’t abide them.
I’m sorry, Timothy says, retracting his hands from her breasts. It seems indecent now, to be touching them.
That leaves me where I am, she says. Back home in Momma’s house. Back on the market. Getting too old to play the game. My number one asset reduced by my own stupidity. Reka gets up to pour herself a drink of water from the little sink. When she comes back to bed, she puts the cool glass on his sweaty chest and offers this one bit of unsolicited information. Nobody will ever love me again like he did.
It shocks Timothy to hear this. How did he love her if he forced her to cut herself? Then, without thinking, Timothy says, I love you.
Thanks, Reka says. But you don’t love me. So don’t say you do. That’s cruel.
I’m sorry, Timothy says.
So, what did you do? Timothy says. After the surgery and everything. How long did you stay married?
Another three years. She hesitates, finishes her water, and then puts the empty glass back on his chest. We stopped having sex altogether.
What did you do? Timothy asks, driven by genuine concern but also morbid curiosity.
Jerked off, stupid. And went to bars.
Went to bars? Timothy couldn’t stop himself.
You like to play dumb, don’t you, she says. You keep your secrets but want me to tell all. You think only men can sport-fuck. Look, I wasn’t penetrated by my husband for three years. I went to bars to sport-fuck.
For a while Timothy is silent, letting this new information sink in. He doesn’t want to be judgmental. He doesn’t want to be cruel. What does he feel for her? Not love. Pity, yes. Lust. Anger now. Then he says, You don’t have to go to bars. You can go to your mother’s gallery.
I prefer bars, Reka says.
Ouch, Timothy says. Goddamn.
She picks up the glass and swirls an imaginary ice cube in its emptiness.
III
Reka was a kind of honky-tonk tour guide. She seemed to know all the eastside bars, and he noticed that if she didn’t know a man in each one, she usually met one quickly. This led Timothy to wonder why her mother thought to intervene. Reka could obviously fend for herself. What if she just left him one night, just decided to go home with someone else? Tonight maybe? Clearly, she could have her pick.
Tonight Reka chooses a bar called the Foundation, just over the river on a dark tree-lined street, nestled among a row of dark bungalows. You would never know the bar was here unless someone guided you to it. Crowd inside seems to be similar to the Y-Not II. If the Foundation were a new album, its reviewer would describe it as Edgy. Punk. Grunge. Eclectic. Like most of Reka’s choosings. And, Timothy can’t help noticing, everything that he is not.
They have a drink at the bar, the gruff bartender nodding at Reka like he knows her before moving on to the next barstool. The bar top is long and straight, salvaged from an old bowling lane, with a line of three-legged stools parked all the way down, some empty, some not. This place is darker and smokier than the Y-Not II, and without the suggestive neon. Most of one wall is given over to a faded mural in earth tones. The mural depicts short, heavily muscled men, hobbits or dwarves, spinning on whisky barrels in a roiling river the way loggers spin logs.
The dwarves embody varying stages of jeopardy, some in temporary command of their vessels, others about to be rolled. A waterfall down the river the dwarves can’t see tells you they’ll all lose it eventually. Underneath the old mural, a painted scroll reads, Barrel Riders. The barrels are at eye level, so you have to look up at the dwarves, which makes them seem giant. The dwarves look down at you peevishly. Clearly, the mural is from a different time. The script on the scroll is calligraphy. Maybe Barrel Riders was the original name of the place. Whoever renamed it the Foundation has tried for a more urban motif while still contending with the history. The hanging lamps are square and angular, and a few low-slung couches gather nonchalantly in the far corners of the room. Some tables scattered about hold couples and lone drinkers.
The gruff bartender, a gray-haired man with a deep, gravelly voice, pours them another drink. Reka introduces him as Garth.
Just as Timothy is considering how it came to pass that Reka knows this Garth, another man sitting at one of the bar tables beckons Timothy and Reka, waving as if he wants to be joined. He’s wearing a tan leather coat, which makes him about the brightest thing in the place.
There you go, Timothy says.
You go see what he wants, Reka says.
Timothy walks over from the bar, and the man says, Sit down, I’ll buy you a beer. One for your wife, too.
Girlfriend, Timothy says. Friend. The man looks drunk, but Timothy judges him harmless enough. He also looks familiar, but Timothy can’t quite place him.
Girlfriend, wife, the man says, gesturing as if to say, Same difference.
Timothy waves Reka over from her seat at the bar. Man wants to buy us a drink.
Why not? Reka says. She sits down next to the man and he puts his arm around her, just for a moment, like he has a secret to confide in her.
What did you say? Timothy says. He wonders how men know Reka is the kind of woman you can put your arm around like that.
He says his name is Jerry, Reka says. Jerry, this is Timothy. But you can call him Lucky.
Timothy is lucky, Jerry says. We should all have a nickname. My wife, my ex-wife, used to call me Old Fat Baby. You two can call me Jerry.