by Steve Berman
“I concur,” Reece offered.
“Hi, I’m gay and I’m ...”
“Shaddup, Dave,” Tom and Reece replied together.
SWIZZLES, A BASEMENT BAR, STILL held old-school appeal, the kind of place closeted civil servants secretly frequented in the 1960’s or 1970’s, fearful of losing their jobs if they were outed against their will. It was nestled under a passable Chinese restaurant, and accessible by a side alley letting onto a concrete staircase, worn by years of grit and grime, that descended to the bar. A parking lot lay on one side, the whole works surrounded by blocks of government office buildings.
Dave, Reece and Tom approached the stairs, the head of which was, as tradition dictated, flanked by smokers. The local air was perfumed by darts and joints and vapes, oh my.
Tom’s phone buzzed on his back pocket. He checked a text message. “Guys, I need a minute. It’s Cindy.”
“Is your sister still living with those two bitches?” Dave asked.
Reece groaned. “I cannot believe anyone in their right mind would stay with wicked roommates always trying to steal your strang and making the place a sty—”
“—and making you clean up after them,” Dave finished.
“She was,” Tom said, “but she finally met the right girl at some sort of banquet thing—I guess she left the case for her phone there and her new friend returned it?—and got her own place. Turns out that the new girlfriend is some sort of duchess.”
“Good on her,” Dave replied.
“You guys go ahead,” Tom added, dialing his sister. “I’ll need a minute.” He wandered down the block.
Meanwhile, the smoker on the right, a vivacious blonde, eyed Reece through her halo of smoke. “Mr. Blais, as I live and breathe,” Dixie Landers gasped under her cascade of blonde hair, resplendent bosom displayed in a low-cut top. Not only were the local establishments nearly bursting. “My prince has arrived. I would say ‘has come’ but that would be presumptuous, Your Highness, my darling.”
She turned to the three sizeable gents she was chatting with, two across from her, and one beside her. Not leather-men, but all stout and well-dressed. “Fellows, I’ll catch you inside.”
They could not hide their disappointment. Halfway down the staircase, the last one turned back. He bore a cherubic face and handlebar moustache but no hair, beaming mischievously at her. “Just don’t let me catch you sleeping in my bed again.”
Dixie’s face reddened like lava. She turned to Dave and Reece with a huff of breath. “What? I ended up crashing at their place recently. I was partying. So first I raided their fridge, then I crashed in his bed. Made them all brunch, though, darling, to make up for it.” She waited a perfectly-timed beat. “Not jealous, are you?” She batted her eyelashes at Reece. “I have to pay to replace the bed now,” Dixie added with a wink. “Some bears like to do more than cuddle, you know.”
Reece turned to Dave with an imploring look.
“Uh … I’ll meet you inside?” Dave passed through the gamut of remaining smokers and headed down.
At the open door, an imposing bouncer watched his progress. Dave immediately recognized him.
“If it isn’t you,” Dave declared. He almost added the troll from under the bridge, but he really wanted to go inside.
The guy was larger up close, likely taller than Tom. Certainly wider. The smile was the same as before, one that demanded of everyone: Friend or foe?
“How did you get here so fast?” Dave asked.
“Told you I was going to work.” The bouncer glanced inside, then at Dave, in an up-and-down assessment so deliberate, it could have been in slow motion. “It’s quiet, though.” He moved closer, smelling slightly of coconut oil, of sweet deodorant, maybe Irish Spring, but also a trace of musky sweat. “Wanna go in the back with me? I could just eat you up.”
Back in college, one of his professors, a thick, bespectacled man Dave referred to as the Duke, would often treat him to coffee and advice. Dave still remembered much of it, including: You can’t fall asleep at the wheel if you bite down on it. And everyone flirts with the bouncer to get into a bar, but no one goes home with him.
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
The bouncer searched Dave’s eyes. “Oh, come on, now. A sweet thing like you. I could gobble you right up.” And then his gaze lowered until he stopped at Dave’s crotch.
“Sorry—not interested. Besides, my friend is, uh, bigger, shall we say?”
“Bigger, eh?” The bouncer’s stubbly smirk was not unpleasant. It was his approach, more of a crash landing, really, that needed refining. Maybe Reece could give him some tips?
“Sure is,” Dave said, and glanced behind him. At the top, Dixie and Reece were still talking.
“He’s very stylish,” Dave continued. “Likes a martini or a glass of wine, never beer. Doesn’t own a shred of denim. The kind of guy who wears dress pants while around the campfire. Also likes haute cuisine around the campfire.”
This was all true.
“Alright,” the bouncer said at last. “The cover is five bucks.”
“Thought it was three.”
The bouncer shrugged. “It’s discretionary. As in, you can think of it as a tip.”
Dave groaned and paid. Inside Swizzle’s, he went right to the bar along the back wall, and ordered the house red for Reece, a micro-brewery India pale ale with far too many hops for Tom, and a vodka and lime for himself.
Back at the top of the stairs, Reece hugged Dixie and jauntily climbed down, pausing only when he met the bouncer’s eye with an uneasy grin.
“Cover’s five bucks, but could be free for you,” the bouncer said.
“How does that work?” Reece actually had a good idea how things worked, whether in Ottawa or London or New York City or San Francisco or London. Human nature was ever so reliable: wherever you went, politics and sex following you everywhere you grazed, despite your best intentions.
“Well …” The bouncer leaned a meaty forearm against the door jamb, the sounds of a mediocre karaoke cover of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Under the Bridge” floating out from inside. “I am hoping for a bit of tail, and I bet you can swing that ass real pretty.”
“Is that so?”
Reece wondered how long this guy had worked the door? Two years? Ten? He looked like a prisoner, gone to seed, and now released from months of solitary confinement. But weren’t all of them like that? Freed from the pandemic, and trying to remember how to cruise again?
And this guy was rusty. And blatant. “I like your sense of style,” he said as he came close to brushing a palm along Reece’s collar. “No label polo shirt … beige slacks. Nice. Only, I’d get those messy right off the bat, by kneeling on the ground.”
“I’m afraid they’re staying on,” Reece answered.
“Dawling!” Dixie Landers hollered down, her six-foot-two figure looming even more impressively from the top of the decades’-old stairwell. “I’ll be down in a minute. There will be shots!”
“Absolutely,” Reece replied with a nod and a confident wink. He turned to the bouncer. “As you can see, my dance card is full.”
“Don’t waste all this … I’d love to just eat you up.”
“Not sure if I’m the meal for you,” Reece replied. “However, my other friend is the real dish of the night.”
“Oh?” The bouncer drew closer, close enough that Reece could spot a patch of hairs, perhaps bristles, on his neck that the razor had missed.
“Oh, yes. A bear who loves to bare it all. We’re talking just the right shape … handles on the sides just where you want to grab, beefy pecs, and a pelt that gets sweaty but tastes like honey.”
The bouncer looked up, saw Tom appear at the top step. “Glorious flannel,” the bouncer whispered.
Tom did indeed own the customary, Canadian plaid, red-and-white like the flag (with some black thrown in for variety, Reece supposed). Reece also suspected Tom’s boxers were flannel, likely white with a garish maple leaf right in
the front. Tom was smiling and nodding at Dixie, who whispered in his ear, to which Tom guffawed. The clutch of smokers was orbiting around him, planets around a sun, drawn in by his charisma. The bouncer’s observant face belied his growing interest.
“And do I need to add that he’s so well-endowed that his Prince Albert always makes the sweetest ‘clink!’ on the porcelain.”
The bouncer’s eyes widened. He licked his lips and added, almost as an afterthought, “Alright. Go on in, then.”
Reece smiled as he stepped inside the bar.
When Tom landed on the bottom step, he was startled by the troll blocking his way into the fabled Swizzles.
Apart from the troll’s profound belly, they stood roughly the same width, and height. Each was astonished that they were at eye-level.
“I remember you. From the bridge.”
“Guilty as charged,” the bouncer answered with a sweep of his arm, revealing some ink along the elbow that might have read, No one’s ever really ready.
“And now you lurk … here.”
“Only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Halloween.” He pulled at his beard. “Which makes me wonder, are you my trick or treat tonight, handsome?”
Tom rolled his eyes. “I guess your middle name is not Consent.”
“Maybe I’m tired of just lurking around the edges of life. And now I just want to eat it all up.”
“And I’m not on the menu,” Tom replied.
The troll blocked the door. “Then you can’t afford the cover charge.”
Tom raised his palms in surrender. “Okay, okay.” He waited a beat. “Your approach is not helping get in my pants, you know?”
“My approach?”
“All that gnashing of teeth. What’s your name?”
The troll blinked. “It’s Tony.”
Where was Reece to make an Anthony Trollope joke? “Well, Tony, I’ll tell you a secret.” Tom wiggled his finger for the troll to step closer.
“Some guys, we have this fantasy that we would just die to finally do with a hot … real … fox.”
“I can be a fox,” Tony the troll muttered.
Tom breathed in deep and whispered right into an ear thick with tufts of hair. “I’ve always wanted to …”
“Yeah?” The bouncer rubbed at the front of his pants as if there were a genie in that lamp tucked behind the zipper.
“Walk into some stranger’s apartment, go right into his bedroom, and just … prostate myself there. In his den. And just spend the night as his sex slave.”
“Yeah?”
“Your apartment clean, Tony?”
The troll blinked, swallowed. “Nah, my mom calls it a cave. I think I haven’t changed the sheets since Paul Martin—”
Tom reached past the troll’s leather vest and pinched a very hard, thorny nipple. “Then why are you still here? You go run home to that cave and make it nice for me. And I’m going to drink some liquid courage to get up the nerve to walk in there,” Tom suddenly snapped his jaws nary an inch from the troll’s lips, “and let you be a beast.”
Tony nodded, his tongue almost hanging out of his mouth. He muttered something that could have been a time or an address, and then, adjusting his pants, ran up the stairs, almost knocking Dixie over, as he moved out of sight.
Tom greeted his friends with a wide grin and outstretched arms and accepted a hug and then his ale.
“How did you get past the guy at the door?” Dave asked. “I hope you didn’t have to palm him around the corner.”
“Sorry to throw you to the wolves,” Reece said.
“If I could outlast a vicious virus, some troll doesn’t stand a chance to take me out.”
A crowd of men filled the space between the tables, ordered drinks, danced, or stood around inspecting the scenery. Glitter pervaded the men, magically so. The dancing princesses, or Ottawa Knights, had arrived in all their muscular, stout, leather-clad glory.
Someone down the bar noticed Tom shrugging, leaned in to get better look. He of the leather cap, vest, and wide chest. A welcome sight. The dancer he liked from the ferry.
“We get to roam whatever fields we want, friends,” Reece said, raising his tulip-shaped wine glass.
“To roam wherever we want,” Dave and Tom echoed resoundingly.
They clanked their glasses together and drank.
The Ferry Fairy down the bar stood to his full height. Tom decided, from the thudding of his heart, the rush in his limbs, the swelling in his groan, the denim uncomfortably restricting, that he more than liked what he saw. It was like looking at a Tom of Finland drawing come to life, from the robust moustache, flush cheeks, dark features and broad shoulders. The man, with a nod of his square jaw, raised his pint of IPA to Tom.
Tom raised his glass in return.
The man pushed off the bar and made his way over.
“My prince,” he called sweetly over the ambient noise.
Tom’s friends took the cue to go off dancing. The bar was filling up. Gay Party Time was the hour. Swizzles swelled to life in all its colourful glory. Tom was not one for bleating, but growling, so he did.
A man with lustrous hair wiped his bangs from his face and shimmied up to Dave, as another dancer tipped his leather cap before pirouetting around Dave in what could only be a trademarked move. Joy filled Tom’s heart at the sight.
“Your Highness ….” Tom’s princess from the ferry sang. Lust brought a ruddy glow to the fanciful fellow’s brow as he stood facing Tom.
It was obvious, even to Tom who bore misgivings about happy ever-afters that, on this fierce note of hope, tonight would have a happy beginning.
The Red Bear of Norroway
John Linwood Grant
1
THERE WAS ONCE A QUEEN, a mighty queen, with lands which stretched from mountains tall to the salt-sea shores. Her realm prospered; her people were fair and fine, and swords lay quiet in their sheaths. Besides the produce of field and tree, the market stalls held silks from Araby and sweet spices from the Eastern Isles, and none went in need. And though she clutched the small sorrow that her husband had passed away, she had three strong sons to brighten her days.
These sons were well-favoured, each in his own way. Erys, one hour the eldest, was a quiet man with a mind of spun steel, and saw always to the realm’s safety and defence, having no care for himself or the passing of his hours. Andrys, his twin, was blessed with a most nimble form; he was master of dancing revelries, the favoured child of the land’s many troupes, spreading the love of art to every corner of the land. And last there came the youngest by a year, named Justinian for his father’s father.
Justinian was neither as sharp as Erys nor lively as Andrys, but he held in his stout breast a heart that his mother loved, for it was a heart of dreams, of wonder at the passing seasons, and the whispers of both the North and South Winds. Of all three sons, Justinian had the broadest shoulders, the greatest girth, and the healthiest appetite—in these, he most resembled his mother and the line of kings and queens from olden days.
For many years the queen kept her sons close, but at last she gathered them in her hall, where shafts of sunlight gave the lie to shadows of stone, and she spoke of life.
“My dears, you are of an age, and more, to make your own way—to seek your own fates. Tell me what you would have, what you would become.”
Erys raised his head, and his eyes of silvered grey were narrow in calculation. “Mother, I care naught for bedchamber nor bold adventure. Let me remain, and see each border safe, each and every bothy free from danger. I shall be seneschal for you, and govern these matters, that you may ease your burden of the crown.”
The queen was pleased, for she loved Erys, and knew that his mind served only the realm’s needs. That her son was lacking in passions of the flesh was well-known, yet he would be content in his chosen life. She readily agreed to his request.
Andrys, whose eyes were dark with the dance, traced the cracks of stone floor with one boot. “I would marry, mo
ther, for I seek the Lady Aisha as a bride. She is most graceful. We have cut a gavotte these many nights, and she favours me.”
Again, the queen was pleased, for the fair Aisha had the fires of Araby in her veins; she brought strength, beauty and wisdom to the court. Moreover, she was a horse-archer of uncommon skill, and could lend her support to Erys should adversity arise—the land was not over-gifted with warriors. And so she smiled, and once more agreed.
“And you, Justinian?” she asked.
The queen’s youngest son seemed troubled. Tall and wide enough to be two men made as one, he had eyes flecked with the same golden glint as his tight-bound mane and thriving beard. He glanced at his brothers, and their eager faces urged him on.
Thus he spoke in his deep, even voice. “Mother, each night for a month, the same dream has visited me. In this dream, I stand in a great mead-hall, such as those of the Northern peoples, and brooding there on an oaken throne sits a man whose like I have never seen in all our realm. My heart pounds at the sight of him, and I know him to be the one whose favour I would gain. Whose favour I must gain.”
His mother sat back, her expression one of wonder. “Is this a geas on you, placed by some sorcerer?”
Justinian shook his head. “It is ... it is a thing of the heart, of that I am sure.”
“And do you know this stranger’s name?”
Her son looked away, his broad cheeks each with a spot of red upon them. “You will think me foolish, or mad.”
“I can judge neither, my son, unless you tell me.”
Justinian met her gaze at last. “I believe—I would swear—that it is the Red Bear of Norroway I see in my slumbers.
Now the queen held silent for a moment. Erys nodded thoughtfully; Andrys only smiled with affection.
“‘I will not lie in maidens’ arms; another one must have my charms,’” said Andrys, reciting a verse of his own making, and he reached over to pat his younger brother on the back. “Oft we have wondered when you would settle on one man’s embrace—but here you set yourself a hard challenge, dear Justinian.”