Broken Rainbows

by Rager, Bob

  The door had hardly closed behind the tidy man when he pulled the cock ring out of his fly. Then he laughed. He was laughing and shaking his head when the door swung open again and the large man who had accused him earlier clumped in, the air seeming to fly apart as he plowed his bulk into the urinal.

  “Oh you,” he said, his nose wrinkling like a little spoiled girl. “I bet you were something before electricity, before everybody this side the Mississippi had had you.” He turned away with a sneer, his jowls quivering.

  The words stunned him. A moment passed while his thoughts caught up with him. The light here was too bright, it showed every line, every blemish, the light shined on each pore, picked out the softening skin, the sags beginning to show. He fled into the twilight of the bar wanting to hide in the nocturnal mists, to lose himself in its shadows.

  Chapter 34

  He was still breathing heavily as he walked down the familiar hallway past the room of closed doors. He walked by an open door. A man lay prone on a lot inside, a towel hanging off a thigh and over the edge. Whoever he was he was stroking himself slowly up and down.

  He walked on, his breathing steady and deep again. And again as he had so many times before he stripped down to his skin. When he hung up his jeans on a hook on the back of the door he found the cock ring. He held it up as if it were something new, took a deep breath and wrapped it around his balls and his cock. He didn’t feel it.

  He lay down after closing the door but soon he felt alert and awake. He heard the moans, the laughing, the murmurs; and then he joined the men wandering the halls. Here a figure stood in a doorway peering into its darkness trying to make landfall.

  A door opened and a man emerged not bothering to wrap his towel around him but carrying it modestly across his groin in a gesture to hide his red, still erect cock shining with his just spent load.

  The air of studious concentration, the crucial modesty, the near silence of the pursuit, the boundless hope that their longing might at last be satisfied. Though satisfaction when it came, never lasted: what stayed was the longing interrupted now and then by an encounter so quick and passing it was like a dream he couldn’t remember.

  He stared into the shadows beyond the open door. Above a bulb burned with light as dim as an ember in a bed of ash. A figure posed for him, tall, long legs, broad shoulders. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light, the figure became solid, a delicately featured dark haired man wearing a lace trimmed bustier and stiletto heels, a furious display of defiance and hope.

  “It’s a long shot,” he thought as he lingered in wonder. Not to his taste, he preferred men that looked and dressed like masculine men; yet he took a step through the door into heavy perfume, thick with musk and cut by whisky.

  “Honey com’ere,” the brunette whispered and tottered towards him. He accepted an embrace from slender arms and a cheek rubbed his. He could feel the coarse texture, the rough skin and stubble. He couldn’t go any farther, he didn’t want to excite a desire he wouldn’t satisfy. He pulled away feeling like a tourist.

  “No, don’t go!” was whispered to him. “Stay with me a while.” The words floated in the air. “You can come to my place and stay with me. I’ll take care of you… And if you want to go off by yourself… you know what I mean, I’ll understand.”

  He backed out the door. “Oh it’s alright,” the words drifted toward him. “You can leave it open.”

  Restless he wanted to leave and hit the street again. He wanted to feel the power that came to him when another man wanted him. He was hungry again for someone for that moment, when a gaze lingered him, a gaze he would return with coolness. When that happened when he sensed someone’s desire, the edges of fear softened when he had the power to choose and accept or turn away.

  In the moments when he permitted the stranger to touch him, some so eagerly they seemed about to open his skin trying to reach inside him. He felt a jolt, a current flash through him; the instant before a bulb is switched off, the incandescence seeming even hotter and brighter before the plunge into darkness.

  Chapter 35

  He sat at the bar in Coattails, like the Nickel, a bar where night men hooked up with johns, but the Coattails aspired to style and flash with smoked glass mirrors covering the walls and deep banquets upholstered in imitation suede.

  The night men, as usual, wore jeans, but the johns wore pressed starched shirts some with cuff links and had the glossy features left of a haircut and a shave at a salon on Connecticut Avenue.

  Some of the faces were familiar; Mike a retired policeman and his boyfriend, a florist, their elbows on the bar. They would come in together and leave with a third, a night man to take home, the crackerjack prize at the bottom of their night out.

  Between them stood a clean cut lad in his twenties perhaps but these men carefully eked out another year, nursing their youth and then later their youthfulness, making the last drink last as long as possible. They talked more or less to each other though their eyes swung to the door each time it grew dark as someone entered.

  The young man wore an Oxford dock t-shirt and khakis, he might have been mistaken for yet another student or intern but he was just another hustler one who specialized in what he called “generous” men. He was not alone in his trade. Over there a small wiry black man smiled gaily as he chatted. His hair was cropped close; he wore glasses with black serious frames.

  “I found this wonderful Malbac,” he announced to no one in particular, his teeth a translucent cold white. “It’s the perfect thing for a night cap.” Then he carried on, “I just came from the spa, I had a pedicure.” He looked down at his sandals and held up a foot, the toes pointed down the better to see.

  The others raised eyebrows. Taking this as encouragement, the wine lover plunged ahead. “I was doing a project for a client, and he came late to our appointment so I told him he had to pay. So I made him buy me a set of luggage, and some shirts and a day at the spa. It was on sale so I saved him two hundred dollars.”

  The others nodded gravely. Inches away a bald man leaned in to listen. He was a retiree found here every weekend. At his shoulder stood a slim man, a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead. He wore a rumpled flannel shirt and jeans. He hovered to scare away would be poachers.

  “And look at the text he sent me,” he held a yellow green glow in his hand. “See,” he said. “‘I don’t deserve your love.’” He then basked in the silence that followed, receiving a kind of adulation, the recognition of his victory.

  Watching from the short end of the bar stood a tall fellow who sported a silvery bushy mustache. His eyes twinkled as he too listened. Not much was known about except that he was called “The Professor”. Rumor was that he was an anthropologist. He was friendly but kept a distance.

  The night men ignored him, it was said that he was a waste of time because he didn’t pay, he wasn’t generous.

  The bartender floated over. His eyebrows were striking; they were plucked into inverted vee's that made the high forehead and long face seem cartoonish.

  “What can I get ya?” he said in a gravelly voice ridiculous with his cartoon eyebrows and delicate nose.

  Next to him a man pushed the money from the bartender.

  “Here, lemme take care of that,” he said. He spoke in a warm baritone.

  He thought of a cello when he heard the man’s voice, a rich rumbling, a man’s voice that excited him just to hear it.

  Looking at the warm voiced stranger, then at the money just shoved back to him, he said, “a Scotch, two fingers, no ice.”

  He was an older man, in his forties which could mean he is in his fifties even 60. Already his shirtless tails are bunched inside the waist of his pants. He must have shoved them back down on his way back from the john. He hadn’t been bad looking, a solid jaw, a strong nose, full lips, what others might call handsome; he looked very masculine. His nails were cut very close to the bed. His hands were a man’s hands, square palms with blunt fingers.

  When the
drinks arrived they stared down at the bar without speaking as if they both sensed that small talk was now a waste of each other’s time.

  But someone had to make a move one way or another. Either leave the bar or go with the john.

  He sucked at the edge of his glass of scotch, feeling the sting he put it back on the bar with a small flourish of finality. Then without glancing at the score, he walked down to the john.

  The room is remarkably well appointed. The hand basins and counter are black marble, the urinals are black porcelain, the stalls are protected by doors of slatted louvers.

  He was looking at his reflection in the smoked glass as he stood at the urinal. He didn’t even try to pee, that wasn’t the point.

  Below his limp cock was a cake of disinfectant at the bottom of the urinal, a scent of cherry cough drops reached his nose. This wasn’t the subway with its rank, dingy ballroom; it wasn’t Grand Central station where the commuters, hiding in their raincoats jerked off in staggered shifts where they waited for their trains. But it was a men’s room in a public place, where men unzipped their paints and stood, chest held high pretending not to look at each other.

  He didn’t do public toilets. There were others who only tricked in public spaces, while someone stood as a lookout or the really hardcore sucked and jerked daring someone to discover them.

  He wasn’t into that scene. A scene played seemingly everywhere, department store lavatories, bus stations, rest stops on country roads, glory holes cut into the walls separating the stalls, the men’s room at the student union the men hardly more than boys.

  Just when he was about to give up, thinking that the score had just played him, he heard the squeaks of doors hinges.

  He glanced at the score and the score moved his eyes up and down. Then the score said “Whatever you want, I can pay it.”

  “Where? I don’t do tea rooms.”

  The score smiled back like he’s been told to keep a little secret.

  “No, it’s cool. I’ve got a room around here.”

  He watches the score leave, then a moment or two and then three passed before he zipped himself up and went out. The score stopped at the door to the street lingering long enough to be sure he is being followed before he pushed his way outside where he will wait a few feet away.

  “Let’s getta drink, over there at Platinums.” The score jerked his head to the street corner. The score not waiting for an answer walked off.

  He thought again about following; the score’s confidence is irritating. And Platinums?! It was a bar for men wanting mutual sex--for free. He remembered the laughing men at the restaurant, the men deep in conversations; and some Johns liked showing off taking that night’s hustler to some legitimate place like a kid showing off the new toy bought at the department store.

  He started walking to the corner.

  The bouncer at the door looked at the two men.

  He wasn’t afraid of discovery here; he didn’t walk this end of the Street. But the bouncer stared at him a fraction of a second longer than necessary and he realized then that the bouncer was making a mental note of his description, in the delay hardly more than an eye blink was the message, “Don’t try anything here, if you do I’ll run you out!”

  With prices for drunks twice as high as the other bars, this joint sucked in the young professional types who worked in offices along the mall, had the money to pay, to spend on clothes and weekends in Rehoboth. It was bad for business if word got out that hustlers were cruising around Platinums’.

  The men here didn’t pay for sex: they looked for boyfriends, even marriage, or just sex, but it had to be a mutual attraction.

  He said little except “yes” and “Scotch”, while the score looked over the crowd.

  A man nearby wore a lime green polo shirt and slightly carefully, delicately wrinkled chinos. Both the shirt and the pants fit but were maybe a size too small, the better to show off biceps made thick by hours at the gym. The man was in that age group broadly known as young; he could be in his late twenties, he could be 45, what mattered was he looked this side of 30. The professionally styled hair, expensively made to look as if he had just left his bed, was a young man’s haircut. When he smiled his teeth were a radiant white in his tanned face browned in a machine at his fitness club.

  The men here didn’t go to gyms, they didn’t go to barber shops, they didn’t drink beer. They worked out at clubs with oak lockers and machines. They went to salons for styling and manicures; they drank mixed drinks of spirits.

  The men rushed to each other. “I haven’t seen you forever!” said one to the other. Though one man’s hair was a honeyed brown and the other was taller and dark, they seemed like the same man, somewhere between 25 and 45, 165 pounds, machine built muscles. The two brushed cheeks together.

  The queens, Madame X and her sisters, didn’t come here; they knew they weren’t welcome, they knew everyone would ignore them, pretend they didn’t exist. And being ignored was death for a queen.

  In his t-shirt and jeans he would feel a glance then catch a glimpse at a quick turn of the head. The air buzzed with a steady chatter like water falling into a fountain. The men held their cocktails and talked and talked. They laughed and laughed and hugged and hugged one another.

  ‘Everyone is so goddamn happy,’ he thought. The air thick with the scent of desire held in check. ‘Well, what are they all waiting for?’ The one thing these men had in common was their hunger for each other, yet they studiously restrained their eagerness, the way some men grasped their cocks in a choke hold to keep themselves from coming, waiting a little longer, as if there were only so many orgasms allotted, so many bursts of joy before life all ran out on you.

  The John chatted with a man here and there as they pressed against the bar for drinks.

  He watched their eyes, the way they chatted, all the while watching someone else.

  Later as the drinks did its work a few would get lucky and leave together. It was luck, chance, the plaything of an idle fate.

  The unlucky ones, leaving alone, might try their luck at another bar, try the Nickel or Coattails. It was already warm and the season that drew many men to the park. They would try that too.

  He looked around wondering who he might see later at the baths. That one there, the one in the lime green polo shirt with big arms; you’d think that someone would be all over him. But now he was surrounded by an invisible moat of indifference because he was a Beauty, a man so extraordinary that even straight men looked twice. After all what was a movie star, a Beauty that everyone could gawk at without apology.

  This Beauty wore an oversize wristwatch. He looked loaded and his hair was cut too long for the average office worker bee. Here the search was for looks, spending power, an entrée into the fabulous world of art, fashion, design. It was said you stood a chance if you could claim two of the three; just one, forget it, if Fate had blessed you with all three you stood around like this Beauty and waited for the guy with balls enough to offer to buy him a drink.

  But sometimes the brave hearted white knight failed to show. The Beauty wouldn’t wait all night. Here adulation became derision in an instant. He didn’t want everyone to see him still waiting at the witching hour. As mannered were the boys early in the evening, come the witching hour, they threw caution away. In desperation and stupor, anyone would do.

  Deeper into the night, men made their way to a row house a few blocks too far away to be fashionable. Its door was unmarked except for the street number. Its existence was known to everyone, its location spread by word of mouth. These are the same men who had carefully ignored each other but now would make threesomes and foursomes in an unlit basement on a mattress on the floor. They would grope each other’s groins in dim corners and cubicles berths of carelessly joined plywood.

  Despite its location and squalor it was regularly crowded, a mass of searching men, men breathing down each other’s necks, the darkness obliterating the distractions of youth, beauty, of money, of fame
. In this jet void below the stairs everyone for a moment was equal, flesh against flesh, mouth against mouth, hands roaming muscles that never seemed to stop, the hot thick cocks endless, didn’t matter in this darkness, the inky world famishing the cruelties of a man’s passing years, blind to the whims of time; here the dark rewarded skill and experience and hunger found satisfaction.

  Chapter 36

  Ginger came around the corner, chewing licorice, the school girl in rebellion; naughty and nice, taking candy from strangers.

  It was too late to ignore her by heading off in another direction and beating her up wasn’t gonna scare her off.

  Looking up and down the street, Ginger dawdled, posed, she sucked on the licorice, her lips plump and shiny. She is rewarded with the sound of a car braking real hard, and slowly the licorice still in her mouth, she smiled, her eyes half closed.

  Another pause as she held the pose. Then with a shrug she turned her back to the car stopped at the curb.

  Madame X watches, thinking, ‘now she’s gone for sure.’

  “You see that?” Ginger wanted to talk; she took the licorice stick out of her mouth. It flopped in a limp upside down ‘U’ in her hand.

  “That’s a rush!” said Ginger. “That’s money in the bank…and that’s what it’s all about, baby, money in the bank! Ya see, I gotta plan.”

  Madame X pretended to listen, the story is always the same.

  “I’m gonna work this for a couple years, three, five years tops and save my money, and I’m gonna open a little restaurant. Real classy, white table cloths, real linen napkins and menus printed on paper; just like that restaurant in the train station, the one that model opened.

  “And my customers will be real gentlemen and ladies, they’ll be all dressed up in ties and gowns.”

  Ginger turned to sneer at the traffic. “Not like these slobs from the burbs.” Then she was to sucking the licorice, her eyes and face sleepy with the drug of her fantasies.