Night Town

by Cathi Bond

  And it was. The tall, thin man jerked off to twenty minutes of naked calisthenics while I jumped up and down to “Tumbling Dice.”

  Lily brought home pizza, but Gabe just stood in the window, watching the freighters out in the lake, hands thrust deeply into his pockets. He wanted to go to the Dominion. The Dominion was an alky bar where Gabe’s buddies hung out.

  Lily set the pizza box down on the glass coffee table. “You’re not supposed to be drinking.”

  Gabe turned to me and Helen. “You want to take old Gabe out for a beer?”

  “Sorry,” Helen said. “Lily’s house –Lily’s rules.”

  Gabe grunted, turning back to the window. Lily came up behind him and tried to hug him, but he walked away. Gabe wasn’t the same happy guy anymore. I grabbed two slices of pizza, handing one to Helen.

  “Want to go out?”

  “No.”

  Frustrated, I chewed on the crust. “You swore. You swore that when it was safe you’d take me to a gay bar.”

  “I didn’t swear.”

  “You promised.”

  “I didn’t promise. I said maybe.”

  “I guess your maybes aren’t good for much.”

  Helen picked up another slice of pizza and took a bite.

  The cab pulled up in front of a commercial building at the corner of Gerrard and Carlaw, a tough part of town near a railway overpass. The building was long and low with grey brick walls and a Canadian flag draped over the door. Pickup trucks, a yellow Chevy Nova and a couple of old Pontiacs were parked to the side. It reminded me of the tall, thin man’s description of a tool and die shop.

  “This isn’t a bar. It’s a garage.”

  “It’s The Blue Jay. It’s a hall,” Helen said. “The dykes rent it every Saturday night.”

  A couple of women wearing men’s pastel polyester suits passed us by.

  “Why don’t they just open a bar?”

  “The cops are always trying to shut them down. Liquor licenses, underage drinkers. Anything to put them out of business.” We reached the entranceway. “Plus, when the straight guys find out there’s a dyke bar on the block…”

  They’d get drunk and decide to show the dykes what a real man was. Helen yanked open the door. Country music twanged.

  “Have a good time,” she said.

  I told her that dumping me wasn’t part of the deal, but Helen wouldn’t budge.

  “You wanted a gay bar. You got a gay bar,” she said, shoving me through the door.

  A barrel-chested woman with a silver brush cut, wearing a three-piece men’s suit sat behind a red card table. Her hands rested on a steel cash box. She looked so much like a man that I’d never have known she was female if her hands weren’t so small.

  “Two bucks.”

  The woman didn’t appear to have any breasts. What happened to them?

  “Two bucks!” she repeated, getting pissy.

  “For what?” I asked, trying not to stare, searching for any sign of tits.

  “Admission.”

  I passed her the money. Maybe she wrapped them in tensor bandages to flatten them down.

  “How many tickets?”

  “What?”

  Patrons were bunching up behind me.

  “Are you a retard?” she asked. “Beer tickets.”

  “Two.”

  While the dyke made change I looked around. Faded red and white bunting hung from the ceiling. Hurricane lamps threw up flickering candlelight and the tables were draped in red and white gingham. Stackable chairs lined the wall. Mom would have said it was tacky and backward –the kind of show hillbillies put on.

  Dykes in men’s pastel suits and rented tuxedos foxtrotted with fancy ladies dressed in frilly skirts, high heels and puffy beehives. Others sat around the gingham-covered tabletops drinking beer and pounding their fists. Some of the frilly ladies sat on the dykes’ laps, playing with their ties, running manicured fingernails through brush cuts and oily ducktails. The candlelight was so low I ran into a chair. The women on stools, if you could call them that, turned, giving me suspicious looks. They knew I didn’t belong and so did I.

  The bartender’s stiff jeans were hiked up under her tits, held in place by a thick black leather belt, the kind Granddad wore. A pack of green Export A’s peeked out of the breast pocket of her tee-shirt and her hair was slicked into a rigid jellyroll. A blue tattoo of a Hawaiian girl wearing a purple lei swayed on her bicep. The bartender grinned at me the way the customers at the body rub did.

  “What’ll it be, sunshine?”

  “A Blue.”

  Too scared to sit I leaned against the wall, watching the crowd. Nothing seemed real. Frilly ladies flitted around the candlelit room like country and western fireflies while the dykes, thumbs shoved through belt loops, strutted through the smoky haze. A pool cue cracked against the side of an old billiard table and the dykes roared. Another one put money in the jukebox and a Hank Williams song began. The dykes rose, swaggering across the dance floor, bending gallantly to ask the ladies to dance, and when the ladies consented, they pulled them to their feet, sweeping them out onto the worn linoleum floor. One dyke picked her girlfriend up in her arms, and as the frilly lady kicked her heels in delight somebody touched my arm.

  “Dance?”

  The bartender was standing in front of me, a cigarette dangling between her lips.

  I ran out the door. Helen was sitting on the curb. She jumped up. “That was quick.”

  I stormed by her. “That was mean.”

  “Butches and femmes. Butches and femmes,” Helen sang, skipping along behind me, thoroughly enjoying herself. “You did say you wanted to go to a dyke bar.”

  I sped up. “Some friend.”

  Helen ran after me. “I wouldn’t have left for real. I would have come and got you.”

  A couple of butches climbed out of a car. One of them looked at me and horked. I started to cry. I’d never find a girl. Helen turned me around.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. It was a joke.”

  “Not funny.”

  She touched my cheek. “I mean it. Don’t cry.”

  A red and yellow streetcar pulled up. Helen grabbed my hand, yanking me up the stairs. We sat in the back and stared through the window, watching more butches walk into The Blue Jay. Once the streetcar pulled into traffic they vanished from sight, but I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

  “What are they?”

  “Stone butches. They act like men in every way.”

  “Why?”

  Helen pulled out her compact to check her lipstick. “Because that’s the way they are. They don’t even get naked because they don’t want to spoil the illusion that they have dicks.”

  “So they hump the femmes with their clothes on?”

  “I guess so. I do know they don’t use dildos because that would be fake.”

  Why did everything have to come down to penises? The streetcar’s wheels squealed as the doors hissed open. A couple of punk rockers got on, giving the driver a hard time about paying their fares. They were obviously new to the scene, trying to look tough, but they weren’t. You could tell by the way they stood. The girl was probably wearing her father’s red suspenders and the boy’s black Doc Martin boots were still new and shiny. Just like his recently shaved head. Why did everyone need a costume?

  “Why do the femmes dress like that?”

  Helen shrugged. I lit a cigarette even though it was against the rules. The streetcar crossed the Don River, following the tracks up Parliament, towards John’s Open Kitchen. Was Hermann in there? I didn’t duck. The driver yelled for whoever was smoking to put out the damned cigarette as I took another drag. The punkers looked at me like I was okay. I didn’t want to be okay to them. I wanted to be okay to a pretty girl.

  Helen took the cigarette from my hand, took a puff and dropped it onto the floor. “You’re right,” she said, her hand settling lightly on my thigh. “I shouldn’t have taken you there. It was mean.”

  I didn’t
want girls like the ones in that horrible Blue Jay place, and there was no way I was going to spend my life dressed like John Wayne. What was I going to do? I’d have to move to another city, but I didn’t have any money. After rent, food and clothes, there was never anything left. I always spent it all.

  “Where did you meet girls? I mean before you went asexual.”

  Helen reached up and pulled the bell cord. The bell rang and the streetcar stopped.

  Disco pounded down as Helen and I climbed the stairs to a club called Jo Jo’s. Guys leaned against the railing and walls, drinking Labatt’s 50 beer, playfully grabbing each other by the ass. Two boys tugged one another down the stairs out the door into the alley. I asked Helen where they were going.

  “Sex in the bushes.”

  “In the winter?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wouldn’t you get cold and dirty?

  Helen and I entered the club. There were sofas, club chairs and a long mahogany bar with a polished brass rail. The dance floor was raised, covered in brightly lit tiles flashing primary colours that pulsated with the music. Jo Jo’s was nothing like The Blue Jay. Jo Jo’s had style.

  Most of the guys were dressed the same: skintight Levis 501s with folded cuffs and yellow construction boots, checkered work shirts with rolled up sleeves to show off Popeye biceps and multicoloured handkerchiefs dangling out of their back pockets. They wore their hair short and moustaches long. Helen signaled for a couple of beers while I asked her why they all dressed the same.

  “Clones. They want to look like sexy blue collar guys.”

  More costumes.

  “What’s that?” I whispered, pointing at the handkerchiefs, not wanting to sound ignorant.

  “Red means S. Black means M. Yellow means water sports and pink just means gay,” Helen said, ordering two beers. “That way if a trick is cruising them, they know what the guy’s into.”

  I looked at the yellow handkerchiefs. Water sports? Older men dressed in black leather motorcycle jackets and chaps leaned against the bar, eyes peering out from beneath black motorcycle caps, cruising coy boys who slithered by.

  “When you’re too old to be a clone, you become a leatherman,” Helen said.

  “That’s weird.”

  A leatherman hissed, “Then get the fuck out.”

  “We’ve got as much right to be here as you,” Helen said loud enough so everyone at the bar could hear. She turned to the bartender. “Isn’t that right?”

  The bartender, a cute clone, nodded, setting down our drinks. New gay bars were opening, busy gay bars filled with younger patrons who refused to hide who they were. To bump up cash flow, the owners were integrating dykes and fags. The older homos didn’t like it, but they didn’t have a choice. Things were changing and it excited Helen who started talking about the power of being out and being proud.

  “I thought you were asexual,” I said, not really wanting people to know about me. My sex life wasn’t their business. It was private, between me and my girlfriend.

  “Just while I’m working at The Green Door,” Helen replied. “Then I’m proud to be gay again. You’ll get into it, Maddy. I promise. It’s infectious.”

  I knew all about infections and didn’t want one. I didn’t care about the politics. I wanted Jo Jo’s for girls. There were a couple of cute ones up on the dance floor, and sure, the rest of the women were young and fairly butchy, but at least they were dressed in jeans, tees and motorcycle boots instead of the polyester suits. There were hardly any frilly femmes. Thank God. The femmes freaked me out more than the stone butches did. The music was different too, and when David Bowie screamed, “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am!” Helen asked me to dance.̘A golden rope around the dance floor held us in the ring. For once Helen didn’t talk –we just danced song after song with other gays. None of us were pretending to be straight. We were who we were and nothing ever felt so free.

  Then the floor tiles began to vibrate in gold and the music slowed. My hair was slick with sweat and I felt like I was on the Yellow Brick Road. Helen and I stood –awkward because the song was slow –but when I took a chance and put my arm out, Helen moved into me, settling the side of her head against my neck.

  Halfway through the song, the beat picked up and the bass boomed. We seized each other by the hands and spun, heads thrown back, faces tilted up to the mirrored disco ball that flashed diamonds of dazzling white light. We whirled in endless laughter until something crashed, the record skipped and an enormous butch in a checkered shirt jumped up from her table, grasping a beer bottle by the neck.

  Helen’s grip tightened. “That’s Easter. She’s the meanest dyke in the city.”

  The bar went eye of the tornado quiet as Easter glared across the bar. Then, lightning fast for a fat woman, she shot up onto the dance floor, pushing us aside and vaulted over the rope, nearly landing on top of a table where another butch held a girl’s hand.

  “You’ve been fucking my old lady!” Easter bellowed, smashing the beer bottle and lunging.

  The other butch flipped the table to avoid getting a slice of glass in the face. Beer bottles started to fly. Glass shattered. One girl turned to run away. Another girl tripped her. Down she went. When she came up, she sprang –all claws and spit. Energy rippled through the bar. A couple of fags shrieked, “Dyke fight!” and dashed for the door, while one by one the women got caught up in the spirit of the brawl.

  Helen and I tried for the exit, but the stairwell was blocked with runaway fags, so we pushed through the crowd, heading towards the bathroom. A beer bottle bounced off my back and Helen nearly got punched in the face but we made it. The bathroom was filling with scared dykes hiding in stalls, locking doors behind them. Easter staggered in, hand to her forehead, blood seeping between her fingers.

  “Let me see,” I said.

  “Fuck off.”

  I grabbed Easter’s hand and pulled it back from the gash. The wound was deep and nasty. I told Helen to go tell the bartender to call an ambulance and get me a bunch of bar towels and a bucket of ice. I soaked paper towels in cold water and told Easter to keep it tight against the wound.

  “You’re going to need stitches.”

  “I don’t want no stitches,”

  “That’s your face and you’re going to take care of it.”

  And so it went. Helen returned with ice, towels and bandages, playing nurse while I tended to other wounded dykes. Most of them weren’t really all that tough. A few cried. Easter even agreed to go to the hospital. A chubby young woman in a denim jacket and green checkered shirt asked me where I learned how to do this.

  “My Dad’s a doctor,” I replied, looking carefully at her cut. “If you keep an eye on this you shouldn’t need stitches. But make sure you change the dressing every morning and if it gets red or inflamed go to the hospital.”

  The living room was cold and there were no extra blankets. Helen shivered. The apartment was dark and quiet. Lily was out looking for Gabe. Harbour lights flashed in the distance.

  “You were really good at that.”

  Everything I’d learned from Dad just came back.

  “Your father’s a doctor?”

  I grunted. She wanted to ask how a doctor’s daughter ended up working at the body rub, but for once Helen had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.

  “How about yours?” I asked.

  “Baker.”

  I couldn’t imagine Helen anywhere near a kitchen. All she ever did was order out.

  “Where?”

  “By the airport.”

  “What does your Mom do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  How could she not know what her mother did?

  “Does she take care of the house?”

  “She never took care of the house. Go to sleep.”

  Pillows were fluffed and adjusted as quiet lay down again.

  “Does she work?”

  Helen sat up, light blazing on.

  “I don’t know! She left years ago and my fath
er is still waiting for her to come back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Helen shut the light off and flopped back down. “What are you sorry for? It’s not your fault. Go to sleep.”

  We lay there for the longest time, but too much had happened for my mind to slow. I’d been to two gay bars, seen a dyke fight and danced all night with Helen. Even a slow one. Especially a slow one. How could she dance with a girl all night if she was asexual?

  “Helen?”

  Nothing. I tried counting boats in the harbour. It didn’t work.

  “Are you asleep?”

  A rustle.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Sigh.

  “As long as it’s not about my mother.”

  Why didn’t Helen want to talk about her mother? I guess a runaway mother was worse than a dead one. At least the dead one didn’t have a choice.

  “How come you’re asexual?’

  “Because I am.”

  I rolled over to face her.

  “I mean it. How come?”

  She rolled towards me, eyes only inches from mine.

  “I already told you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  Something in her was weakening; her resolution wall was falling down.

  “Because you can’t have sex with men and love women at the same time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it will fuck up the love.”

  “But we’re not really having sex with them.”

  “If we were lovers, could you jump up and down for that pervert and then come home and get into bed with me?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “Because it’s not right.”

  Helen was wrong. I was just jerking them off to try to save up for a nest egg. She wanted to buy a makeup kit. How could that be bad? Helen squeezed my hand and rolled onto her back.

  “Let’s go to sleep.”

  Helen’s head rested on the pillow, eyes closed, pale skin glowing white in the night. She looked like Sleeping Beauty who needed only one thing to be brought back to life, and I had to do it. I leaned over and kissed her, and then Helen’s lips parted and she kissed me back.

  My heart flew around my chest like a bird as Helen took my face in her hands and kissed my lips, my nose and each of my cheeks. I could see her face. It wasn’t in the dark like Ginnie. Then Helen pulled me close and her tongue touched mine. They danced and I made love to a girl that night, her fingers twisted into my hair, pulling my face deep inside her. It wasn’t a perversion. It wasn’t sick. It’s who I was, and I knew it in my heart that it was right.