the Bar Studs)

by Levinson, Len

  “I’m glad you did.”

  Mark smiled. “I’m surprised I got this far. I thought you’d already have a date for when you finished work.”

  Teddy put his arm around Mark’s waist. “It just goes to show you—you never know until you ask.”

  “Sometimes it’s difficult to ask. Nobody likes to get put down.”

  “You should have more confidence in yourself. You’re a very handsome guy.”

  They turned left on Washington Street and walked with their arms around each other past huge trucks parked for the night beside warehouses. The street lamps were bright and the sidewalk littered with debris. Gay men prowled in the shadows, trying to attract each other’s attention.

  “Do you live in the Village?”

  “No, I live on Long Island. I’m married and I have a son.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a tax lawyer.”

  Teddy looked impressed. “Maybe I’ll have you do my income tax returns this year.”

  Mark hugged Teddy closer and tongue-kissed his cheek. “I’d be happy to.”

  Teddy lived on the fifth floor of a walk-up on Horatio Street. He climbed the stairs first and Mark followed, Mark’s head level with Teddy’s ass. The hallways smelled of decayed wood and old cooking odors. On the fourth floor a record player thumped rock and roll through the walls.

  Teddy opened the door to his apartment and saw the red glow from his table lamp. He lived in a small studio furnished mostly with a blue sofa that he thought went well with his hair, and a color television set. Mark followed him into the apartment and Teddy shut the door behind them. In the vestibule they faced each other, embraced, and kissed. They rubbed pelvises and felt their cocks get hard as they licked each other’s tongues.

  “Let’s take our clothes off,” Mark suggested.

  They walked to the main area of the room and in the red glow undressed before each other on the white flokati rug. Teddy was naked first because he never wore underwear, and he stood with his erection in his fist, squeezing it slightly and watching Mark’s muscular body emerge from his clothing. When Mark let his slacks fall, Teddy could see the huge bulge emerging from his boxer shorts. After Mark stepped out of his slacks Teddy dropped on his knees and pulled down Mark’s shorts. Mark’s big cock popped out and Teddy caught it in his mouth and sucked it back into his throat.

  Mark rolled his hips as he held Teddy’s head in his hands. Slowly they dropped to the rug and lay side by side, sucking each other’s cocks. Teddy felt exhilarated and wild with this handsome young lawyer inside his mouth. In his frenzy he kissed Mark’s balls and tried to work his tongue back into Mark’s asshole. Obligingly Mark rose to his hands and knees, and Teddy maneuvered behind him. Teddy lapped the crack of Mark’s ass and masturbated himself and Mark at the same time. They came together this way, moaning and squirting onto the rug. When they were both drained they fell and lay quietly in each other’s arms, nuzzling and cuddling.

  “Have you Vaseline?” Mark asked after a while.

  Teddy pointed to the bathroom. Mark arose, walked inside, and turned on the light. Seconds later the light went out and Mark returned with the small tourmaline jar. He lay on the rug beside Teddy and rubbed Vaseline onto his cock, which was stiffening and thickening again.

  “I want to fuck you,” Mark said huskily.

  Teddy rolled onto his stomach, eager to have that big cock inside him. He spread his legs and waited.

  Mark looked down at Teddy’s narrow waist and powerful ass thrust in the air. A peculiar smile played on Mark’s lips as he reached over to his pile of clothes lying nearby on the rug. Silently his hand entered the pocket of his jacket and came out with a heavy rusted railroad spike, about eight inches long. Mark raised the spike high, took a deep breath, and smashed it down on the back of Teddy’s head.

  Teddy groaned and went flat on the rug.

  * * *

  Leo Anussewitz took a taxicab home from Bartholomew’s Pumpkin. At his building the doorman let him in and Leo walked quickly to the mailroom, where he opened his mailbox and withdrew his spare set of keys.

  Then he waddled around the corner to the elevator and pressed the button. It thrilled him to think that Dorrie Caldwell was waiting in his apartment. When the elevator arrived he rode it to his floor, got out, and almost ran down the corridor to his door. He first turned the top lock, then the bottom one, and pushed the door open.

  There was a lamp on in the living room, but he couldn’t see her.

  “Dorrie?” he asked softly.

  She didn’t answer; she must be in bed already. He looked at his watch and saw it was quarter to four in the morning. He closed and locked the door and walked deep into the living room. One of his Playboy magazines was open on the coffee table, she must have been reading it, and beside it was a piece of paper. He sat on the sofa and picked up the note which read:

  Dear Leo,

  I was sleepy so I went to bed. You forgot to tell me where you wanted me to sleep, so I’m in the bed that was all made up. I hope that’s o.k. Thanks for letting me stay here. You’re one of the nicest guys I ever met.

  Love,

  Dorrie

  Leo dropped the note back onto the coffee table and hoped she thought he was nice enough to fuck. He stood and was drawn across the living room into the corridor. First he passed the kitchen on the right, the bathroom on the left, and at the end of the corridor were the two bedrooms. The one on the right was his, and its door was opened. The door on the left was closed; that’s where she was.

  He had to see her. If she woke up he’d just tell her he wanted to make sure she was all right. Slowly and silently he turned the doorknob, and when it would turn no more he pushed open the door. When it was widened about six inches he could make out her form in the dimness.

  He opened the door wider and on his tiptoes entered the room. She was lying on her back and left cheek, with her face pointed away toward the window covered with his mother’s frilly white curtains. The room was fragrant with the strong musky perfume Dorrie used. He tiptoed around the double bed where his parents had slept and looked down at her. The blankets were up to her chin and her long blonde hair spread over the pillow. Her left hand was curled up near her face.

  He suppressed a mad urge to crawl under the covers with her. Gobbling her up with his eyes, he could see the swell of her breasts and curve of her hips. Her lips were parted and air whistled through her upturned nose. Her bruised eye was a big shadow; Tony Catarella must have really clobbered her. Leo wondered what she did to deserve that. Maybe Tony caught her screwing somebody else.

  After lusting for several minutes he turned and tiptoed out of the room, silently closing the door behind him. He was anxious for morning to arrive. Maybe they could have breakfast together and she would let him lick marmalade out of her cunt. He walked down the corridor to the bathroom and switched on the light. His eyes became attracted to two bikini underpants hanging wet on the rod that held up the shower curtain. Her perfume permeated the humid air; she must have taken a shower, her gorgeous naked body right in there under the shower nozzle. She had peed over there on the toilet, her little cunt winking at the water in the bowl.

  The bikini underpants on the left were pink, and the ones on the right, yellow. Both were trimmed with white lace. Leo stared at them for several seconds, and then couldn’t hold himself back. With his shoes on he stepped into the tub and leaned toward the underpants. His face drew closer and closer. Then he reached up and pressed to his nose the damp silky crotch of the yellow ones.

  * * *

  “Awright, get outa here, you fuckin’ bums!” Jake Griffin yelling, pacing back and forth behind the bar. “It’s closin’ time—everybody out!” He pointed his sausage finger at the big round clock above the bar. “Out!”

  The bums groaned, sighed, and drooled. Some were paralyzed from drinking too much and others were completely unconscious. Before Jake, a bum slept with his grizzled cheek in a puddle o
f wine on the bar. Jake grabbed him by his filthy matted hair and lifted his head. “Out, scumbag!”

  The bum blinked his damp eyes. “Whataya mean, out?”

  “Gotta close the joint! You want me to lose my license?”

  “I useta have a license to practice medicine.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “How come you’re so nasty?”

  “How come you’re such a dirty fuckin’ bum? Out!”

  Jake looked around and saw a few bums totter toward the door, but most weren’t making any effort at all to move. “Okay, you cocksuckers—here I come!” He climbed onto the ice chest, jumped over the bar, and landed with a loud slam on the dirty wooden floor. Then he marched to the front door and propped it open with a chair.

  The closest bum was sitting hunched over on a bar-stool. Jake put his lips near the man’s cruddy ear and screamed, “Let’s go!”

  The bum tried to draw his head inside the collar of his mangy topcoat. “Whatsa matter?”

  “You’re whatsa matter—out!” Jake pulled the spindly bum off the bar stool, dragged him across the floor, and threw him like a bag of garbage out the door. “Next!” Jake charged a bum sleeping beside a glass of beer on the bar. “Out!” Jake poured the beer over the bum’s head, and the bum moved and yawned. “It’s rainin’ beer outside, fuckface!”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh, your old lady’s snatch! Let’s go—out!” Jake hooked his fingers inside the bum’s collar, yanked him off the barstool, and hauled him out the door to the sidewalk, where he let go and saw the bum collapse. “Next!” There was a bum passed out at a table with his head cradled in his arms. Jake bent over and pulled the chair out from underneath him. “Out!”

  The bum tumbled to the floor and rubbed his eyes with greasy fists. “You din’t haveta do dat.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what not to do, vomit-face! Out!”

  “Hold yer goddamn horses.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “Hold my goddamn horses?” He bent over, grabbed the bum by his ankles, and pulled him out the door. “Next!”

  The other bums were getting the message now, and those who could walk were trying to escape before Jake got to them. Jake smiled; you had to scare the shit out of the bastards. The ones who couldn’t move were heaved out the door one by one. He had to go through this routine every night and he was used to it.

  The last bum had a scraggly beard and wore an Army field jacket. He sat sprawled in a chair with his head leaning back against the smeared wall. “Hey, fucknose—let’s go!” The bum didn’t open his eyes, so Jake slapped him twice across the face. “Out!” The bum didn’t budge. Jake grasped the front of his field jacket and pulled him through the door, dropping him on top of another bum lying in the sidewalk. Jake looked to his left and right on the sidewalk and saw bums slouching through the night toward fleabag hotels or favorite alleys. The ones who had no steam huddled together like chickens underneath the window of Jake’s bar. On the Bowery cars rolled uptown and down, their headlights beaming on the black pavement.

  Jake pulled the grates over his windows and locked them, and then locked the front door. He walked the full length of the bar and bolted shut the back door, checked out the toilet and kitchen, and went behind the bar to close out the cash register. When he pressed the No Sale button the bell gonged and the cash drawer slid open, revealing a .38 caliber Colt Police Positive Special revolver lying in its special compartment behind the ten-dollar bills. Jake jammed it into his belt, counted all the money, and took fifty dollars for himself, leaving an I.O.U. for his brother Larry who’d open up again at eight o’clock in the morning. He pulled out the cash drawer completely and locked it in the thick iron safe bolted to the floor beside the ice cooler. On a shelf behind the bar was his mackinaw and big apple hat, which he put on. He clicked off the bright lights, clicked on the night lights, and left through the front door, locking it and the grate behind him.

  He walked uptown on the Bowery past bums who drifted like dark ghosts through the night.

  One of them stumbled toward him, dirty arthritic hand outstretched. “Hey, buddy—you got a quarter so’s I kin get somethin’ to eat?”

  “Get a fuckin’ job, scumbag.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Up your ass.”

  Around the corner on Rivington Street was a small lot where Jake parked his old green Buick for thirty bucks a month. The lot was littered with old newspapers, wine bottles, garbage, and there were a few other cars. Jake looked around as he reached for the keys. Every night he expected to get held up in this lot, but that’s what the Colt was for. Anybody who messed with him would get a noseful of bullets.

  As he opened the door of the Buick he was startled by a white flash. He stepped back and reached for the Colt as a squirt of adrenalin entered his bloodstream. He was relieved to see it was only a dirty skinny white kitten that had jumped onto the front seat and was meowing at him.

  “What in the fuck do you want?”

  The kitten meowed again, opening its big mouth wide. It had a triangular face and needle fangs.

  “Get outa my car!” Jake reached for the kitten, but it bounded away and crawled under the front seat. As Jake bent to capture it he realized that someone could come up from behind him in the dark lot and crown him on the head with a lead pipe. “Get the fuck out!”

  The kitten meowed underneath the seat.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” Jake decided it would be safer to drive uptown and throw the kitten out in a good neighborhood. He got in the Buick, started it up, turned on the lights, and backed out of the lot.

  As he drove uptown on the Bowery, the kitten hopped up on the seat beside him. “Don’t get chummy,” Jake said. “As soon as we get uptown you’re gettin’ eighty-sixed.”

  The kitten meowed, stretched, and lay beside Jake’s leg. Jake reached down and petted its sticky fur.

  “You’re a filthy little bugger, you know that?” He raised his hand to his nose. “And you stink, too!” He petted the kitten some more. “And what’s worse, you got no fuckin’ class. If you had some fuckin’ class you’d go up on the East Side and get some rich crazy old lady to take care of you. Instead you’re on the Bowery with all the other losers. I’m a loser myself, and you gotta get in my car? Well, all you’re gettin’ from me is a lift uptown, asshole. Then you’re on your own.”

  The kitten purred and Jake petted him all the way to Gramercy Park, where he steered the Buick into a parking spot beside a fire hydrant. “This is the end of the road, shitface,” Jake said. He reached over, pushed open the passenger door, and picked up the kitten with his right hand. The kitten meowed in protest and clung to Jake’s hand and sleeve, but Jake threw it like a football onto the sidewalk, where it landed on its feet facing away from him.

  “See ya, champ.”

  Trembling on his matchstick legs, the kitten turned around and looked mournfully at Jake.

  “Go find yourself an old broad!”

  As Jake reached to pull shut the door, suddenly the kitten leapt onto the front floorboard and scurried underneath the seat.

  “You little motherfuckin’ traitor!”

  Jake bent over, thrust his hand under the seat, and felt for the kitten. His fingers scraped fur, but when he grabbed he caught nothing. He stretched his neck and looked under the seat, and saw the kitten on the floor in back. He realized he could spend the whole night chasing the kitten around the car, and he didn’t feel up to it.

  “You win, peckerhead. I’ll take care of you later.”

  Jake pulled out of the parking spot, drove uptown to 59th Street, and took the bridge to Queens. The East River glittered in the moonlight and Jake had a thought: maybe we could keep the kitten in the bar and it might catch some mice or rats.

  “Hey, schmuck—you think you can handle a rat?”

  A rat would probably down him in one gulp, but maybe not. He might grow up to be a big mean cat and earn his keep. He’d be worthwhile even if he just killed a few
cockroaches every day. One cockroach bred thousands of others.

  On Roosevelt Avenue in Astoria, not far from where he lived, Jake stopped at an all-night bodega and bought some dry cat food, a container of milk, and a bag of Kitty Litter. When he returned to the Buick and got in the front seat he said, “I think I’m gonna call you Khrushchev, but don’t ask me why.”

  * * *

  “Are you married, John?” asked Mr. Dunwoodie, who was holding Miss Winchester’s hand.

  “I’m a widower, sir, but I was married for twenty-six years and it’s true that the first year is the hardest.”

  “Any children?” asked Miss Winchester.

  “I have a son who’s an accountant. He graduated from CCNY.”

  “That’s a very good school,” said Mr. Dunwoodie.

  “Which school did you attend, sir, if I may ask?”

  “The Wharton School of Business.”

  “Ah.”

  Miss Winchester sipped her glass of champagne, holding it with thin white fingers. From what John could see, she had no breasts whatever underneath her pale green dress. But she had that special something that rich people have, that magic glow.

  “John!”

  “Yes, sir.” John excused himself and walked down the bar to Mr. Wilson. “Another one, sir?”

  “No, I think I’d better be going. How much do I owe you?” His eyes were droopy and his voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a barrel of bourbon.

  John tabulated the check, told Mr. Wilson the amount, accepted his money, and made change. Mr. Wilson gave him two dollars.

  “That’s for you, John.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Would you call one of the bellboys to help me get to a cab? I’m drunk as the lord.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  John walked to the telephone beside the cash register, dialed the bell captain, and made his request. Then he returned to Mr. Wilson. “He’ll be right here, sir.”

  “Thank you, John. The world needs more like you.”