The Yuletide display before me was a wondrous landscape of toy trains, elves, miniature houses, and tinsel-covered trees. Putting down my sadness, I welcomed the pure joy of Christmas into my heart. Laughing boys and girls had gathered there with mothers and nannies, squealing, pointing, and running to follow the path of the train around the foyer. The store had even rigged up a flying sled with a santa Claus that waved, while his reindeer carried him through the sky inside the diorama. Flakes of styrofoam fell over the miniature countryside, and a xylophone version of “o Come All ye Faithful” played on the speakers. I marveled at the delightful scene until my nose got numb. Then I decided to go on into the store.
I’m not sure when I admitted the real reason I decided to go in. Maybe a couple of attractive men passed by the display on their way in, and their reflections revved my drives into fifth gear. Maybe something in the display triggered me—even a cute elf or a reindeer with rounded haunches could’ve ignited my passions at that point. But even though I spent an hour searching through the forest of housewares (I convinced myself that Annie wanted a blender for Christmas) and itchy overcoats (I had just bought a parka), I had walked in to find the men’s restroom.
Every place I went, I noted the signs that led to the john and moved to a closer department. Finally, I spotted it. The bathroom was located down a short corridor in the very back of men’s outerwear, lit with a strange orange light—I pictured the gates of Hell. While I pretended to comparison-shop for coats, I could see in the corner of my eye anybody entering or leaving the bathroom. As I watched, my entire body became electric. Eventually I decided that I had to use the bathroom for real reasons. “I have to use the facilities,” I said aloud, to nobody. Maybe to God.
Huge snowflakes hung from the ceiling, glittering ornaments and mannequins wearing santa hats lined the main walkways, but all thoughts of God and Jesus left my mind. I felt like I had injected freedom directly into my veins. I feared doing what I wanted so much that I tried to pretend I wasn’t there. Then something strange happened—the fear bubbled over until it joined up with the sexual thrill, and I fell in love with the idea of being a sinner. I felt that I never wanted to stop engaging in guy stuff. Which I suppose made me a for-real homosexual sinner, instead of just a straight fellow with some problems, although I still couldn’t put the words to the feelings.
Full of swirling needs, I made a beeline for the restroom like I was mrs. Addison running out of church. Staring at the shiny floor to keep my face from view, I made a game of keeping my feet inside its checkerboard pattern. When I got to the door marked MEN, I noticed that somebody had added a crude drawing of the male organ to the familiar stick figure’s crotch. I swung the door open and it creaked with an almost human cry.
Despite how closely I had tried to watch the comings and goings of men walking toward the back of the store, I had calculated wrong. The restroom was empty, and as an added insult, it stank like human waste and lemony cleaning fluid. That nobody was in there relieved and disappointed me at the same time. I had imagined—hoped, feared, desired—that I would barge in on some immoral activity in progress.
I chose the farthest stall and drew the small bar across to lock it. Though I had been indoors for a while, my skin felt chilly and numb. Regardless, I took off my coat and hung it on the hook. I tugged down my corduroys, and then the long johns I had bought not long after settling in at the hotel. Then I took down my drawers to find that it really was colder in the bathroom than in the rest of the store. Maybe management had turned down the heat in there to save money. My exposed skin became tight, and goosebumps spread out all over my big behind and thighs. When I lowered myself onto the seat, it was ice cold, and I flinched. You’d think a department store with such a pretty Christmas display would have spent more on heating the bathroom.
I knew that men did things in public bathrooms, from having read the graffiti there, and from my experience with Dickie. Once I got used to the seat, I realized that I would have to wait awhile. A peephole had been drilled, or ripped open someway, between my stall and the next one. Somehow I recognized that this place had puzzling new rules and customs to learn. I had no idea what ought to happen next. Was I supposed to watch something happen in there? Did you pass the money through that hole? I checked my wallet. What would seven dollars get me?
I put my eye up to the hole, but I couldn’t see much of the tiny room next door. The things I imagined happening would probably have taken place nearer to the toilet seat. My body spasmed from the cold, so I made fists and blew into them to warm my hands up. Nobody came into the restroom for a long time, and my crazed lust started to wane. Maybe I’d done enough for one day.
Then the door squeaked open, and my spine tensed like it was connected to the hinge. I leaned away from the hole and heard dress shoes scratching against the tile. Somebody sat down in the far stall and did his business. It made me uncomfortable to hear that—it reminded me of the abnormality of homosexuality, how queers had to find partners in the same places where people relieved themselves. A third man walked in.
Between the echoing plops and squirts and the freezing cold in there, I decided I’d had enough. I reached down to pull up my drawers. But then the third person swung open the door of the middle stall. I could see his shoes under the wall, a pair of brown loafers with tassels attached at the tongue. He wore gray socks.
After a moment, his dress pants fell and a belt clinked against the floor. I heard the man sit down. The far toilet flushed and the first man left as the sound of rushing water roared through the room, then faded. For a while I listened to the dripping faucet, waiting for the man to make the normal sort of sounds, but he didn’t. The amount of time started to speak for itself. I figure he must have known I was there, too, and that I wasn’t doing anything either. Just waiting. I reckoned I ought to use the hole to communicate with the man, to whisper through it or something, but I wasn’t sure.
The hole was positioned far enough forward in the stall that you couldn’t see the person next to you unless you got up and deliberately looked through it. I tried to lean forward as casually as possible and see what I could in the corner of my eye accidentally on purpose, but it was pretty tough to get a view.
All that shifting around in the stall must have tipped the man off about my intentions. I heard the belt jangle, then his shoes disappeared and his knees came back in their place. A wide green eye looked through the hole at a sharp angle. It moved quickly from side to side, painting me with shame, then it disappeared. Even after the eye left, I wanted to cover myself. I thought of the evil eye and how it could kill you.
Somebody sighed from over the wall, and then a voice said, “Fucking fat nigger troll.” I was stunned. At first I didn’t realize the words had been directed at me. I just knew they weren’t nice words to say; all those curses and hurtful expressions jammed into one horrible phrase. I have to stop this fellow from being so rude, I thought. I forgot where I was for a second and knelt down at the hole to scold him. “How dare you!” I whispered. “You shouldn’t call people nasty names. You ought to be ashamed—”
As an answer, the guy shoved his man part through the hole, right into my personal space. I didn’t get the opportunity to complete the sentence. From the other side of the wall, I heard him demand something from me that I had already begun to do, in spite of my wounded pride, with a whole lot of gusto. I relaxed the back of my throat so that his entire self could fit in my mouth. I licked fast up and down to tickle him, and I tugged his nuts through the hole, too, and weighed them gently on my tongue. I wanted this rude fool to have the best experience he’d ever had from a Fucking fat nigger troll. How would he feel about chubby black men after that? I reckoned he wouldn’t be able to use such hurtful language about us anymore. I reckoned he’d most likely go out trying to find some FFNTs, like Dickie, who I guessed wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
If that man’s thing had been a Tootsie pop, I would’ve gotten to the center in no time flat. It d
idn’t take long before it took to twitching and spurting. I aimed it against the wall, but some still got on my shirt. So much tension had built up in my own body that I didn’t have to touch myself much before I finished, too. The man pulled himself in and zipped up his pants. I tried to get a look at his face through the hole, but I only saw his hand. Like me, he wore a wedding ring.
Bradley Foods soon made a big push to go national. My hours went later, and Mr. Price sent me on more trips. Annie wasn’t happy about that, but when I tried to bring up my status as a new dad with my boss, I found that I couldn’t say anything. Part of me knew that by working harder I was doing more to fulfill the duties of a dad. That meant bringing home more bacon, or, as Annie said, “bringing home the bacon-flavored snacks.”
With all our expenses, we sank further into debt. Being a responsible man meant I had to get us back on our feet. Unfortunately, this meant more man-on-man encounters.
Eventually it stopped making a difference, because I broke my rule about waiting until business trips. Whenever I could leave work before nine, I would go to parking lots and rest areas by 1-4 or 1-95, or parts of the Old Town area of Kissimmee. Men like me would sit idly in our cars, not really reading the paper, or making like we were having a beer. We’d sneak little glances at one another. Success in the game always depended on how well you could pretend not to want anything at all. It reminded me of fishing.
In time, if one of us looked good enough to the other, we would step out of our cars and into a nearby wooded area. We had to keep from doing anything definitely gay until we actually touched each other. We never knew who might be a cop. A man getting out of his car and going into the woods could say he needed to pee. A fellow loitering on a park bench could just be brokenhearted with no place to go.
On rainy days, I would visit the bathroom of a local department store. It was a popular spot for the sort of person I had become. After a while I started to see the same men there on a regular basis. I got to know their faces, and some of them I gave nicknames. Once, in the hallway of a company where I had a business meeting, I passed one of the men I had done things with in the woods, a man I called the Librarian in my head because of his crew cut and 1950s glasses. Our eyes met for a split second, and the Librarian’s eyelids flared. Mine must have, too. We turned away carefully.
One Friday at the end of a very tough week, Mr. Price let me leave work at about 5:30. I had spoken to Annie earlier to let her know that I would be working until nine. I always told her that I would be home later than I thought so that when I showed up early she would be happy and not suspicious.
The bathroom in the nearby department store’s basement was perfect for my needs. It was near the men’s department, and before you got to the stalls and the urinals there was a large room covered in old tile. That room must have had a purpose in the days when the building was built, but there didn’t seem to be a reason for it anymore. The old door creaked something awful when you walked in, and that noise would tell anybody in the stalls that somebody had walked in long before the newcomer could cross the first room and see what was going on. The urinals didn’t have metal blinders between them. That made it possible to see your neighbor and reach over if he let you know it was okay. The stalls were also old-fashioned, with doors that went all the way to the floor. Seemed like the more modern the design of a men’s bathroom, the more it tried to prevent the perversions of the male sex.
In my many trips there, I had figured out a special trick. I knew that if you opened the door real quick like a bunny, it wouldn’t creak. If you swung it open and then tiptoed across that big room, you could sometimes catch somebody in the act of doing something. Since I wasn’t attractive to most guys, I sometimes had to console myself by just watching the activities or sneaking in a little poke or a feel-up instead of jumping right in like some of them. Usually if you walked in on a couple of guys and one of them recognized you as a member of our little fraternity, they wouldn’t pay you any mind. They’d just go back to doing what they were doing.
On that day, I used my door-opening trick more effectively than ever. If somebody was in there, he wouldn’t have heard me coming in at all. I walked real slow, so that the sound of my footsteps wouldn’t bounce off the walls. I even held my breath.
One man stood at the bank of urinals. He was short and hairy and bald. He pretended to do his business, but he turned his eyes to me as soon as I walked in. He sized me up and then turned back to the charade. I knew something about me had disappointed him, but I didn’t know if it was my black skin, my weight, or something else. I could never tell for sure. Maybe I wasn’t a heavy enough fucking fat nigger troll for him.
As I went on into the main bathroom, I saw two fellows against the far wall. One of them was kneeling with his back to me. The other had his back against the wall, facing me. He was slim, with thick glasses and a neat beard. We made eye contact, recognizing each other as regular bathroom hounds. I had been attracted to him once, but he had snubbed me. He nodded slightly, with a gentle frown, embarrassed maybe, but still having himself a good old time. I noticed that the kneeling man was black. That might mean I still had a chance with the standing man. Maybe I had caught him on a day when he felt more open to somebody like me. My spirits lightened.
One of the stalls was open, so I positioned myself just inside. I unzipped my trousers and pulled myself through the layers of clothing. I could see just enough of the other men, and if somebody suddenly entered the bathroom without using my door trick, I would hear the creaking and lock myself in the stall before anyone knew what I had been doing.
The man at the urinal turned. He saw what I was doing and joined in from the bank of urinals. Then he moved closer, occasionally looking back toward the door. He stopped in front of the sinks for a better view. He looked into the mirror, where the angle probably made for a perfect eyeful.
Because of the tense atmosphere, the men were trying not to make any noise. The sounds they did make were intense and erotic because they had to whisper, even though they probably wanted to let loose. The body of the man leaning against the wall tensed up. He clenched his teeth and looked toward the ceiling. His body went through a series of spasms. “Oh God,” he said through his teeth. “mmm. Oh, sweet Jesus.” I didn’t like to hear the Lord’s name used this way, but I couldn’t deny that ecstasy was taking place in his body.
When the young man stood up, he turned toward me, and I recognized Minister Mike’s son, Chester, the gorgeous boy who had hugged his father the day Annie was born again. I hadn’t identified him immediately, because he had let his hair grow out. We were face to face. I couldn’t hide what I was doing, and he couldn’t hide what he had just done.
I covered my private parts and looked down, as if that would hide my identity. My first urge was to try to save him from this kind of behavior. I couldn’t tell if he recognized me from church, but he gave me a look like he was about to vomit and hurried out of the bathroom. I couldn’t help watching his powerful shoulder blades as he left.
The possible meanings of this chance encounter raced through my mind. I kept still for a while, letting a hundred fantasies come to a boil in my head.
“Hey, hey,” the bearded man whispered. “You. Blackie. I could go again, man.” He grimaced. I reckoned it was better to be called Blackie than Fatty. My opportunity with him had come, but at such a time! All of a sudden the idea of sex with the man made me so sick that I almost didn’t want it anymore. I stood there stunned, waiting for the sound of the door closing behind Chester, thinking that if I didn’t hear it, he’d turned back, maybe. But the door creaked shut, so I turned to the bearded fellow and kneeled.
Even though my one-year eval went well, Mr. Price came to me two months later to say that my performance hadn’t been satisfactory for a promotion. By that time I was doing the same work as somebody with a higher job description. I struggled to understand this turn of events. If my performance had been unsatisfactory, why hadn’t he given me a poor eval
uation or fired me instead of trusting me with more responsibilities? He had always treated me real well. He didn’t seem like somebody who would discriminate against me.
Later, through other colleagues, I learned that the C.E.O. Had told Mr. Price who to promote. Circumstances forced him to tell me that my performance was unsatisfactory, because he couldn’t admit that he had no power. Knowing this, I should have felt better. Brian, one of the people placed above me, was a former forklift operator who had gone to another company and come back. He had hit home runs for the company softball team, and he was white. I couldn’t help thinking that Bradley Foods hadn’t treated me fairly.
I spent most of Brian’s first day helping him. He didn’t understand such simple things as the proper way to prepare a fax cover page. Once I had introduced him around the floor, I brought him over to my own desk. I had him sit down so I could teach him the voicemail system. Brian had just learned how to transfer a call when a buzz began to stir in the nearby cubicles. Geoff Bradley, the C.E.O., was on his way. He rarely came down to the level of the account managers.
“Where is he?” I heard a voice say. “Where’s the softball star?”
As the training session continued, I lost patience with Brian. He didn’t understand anything. Normally it takes a lot for me to get upset, but I had to stop and recite the names of the disciples to myself at least twice to keep from raising my voice. Brian didn’t know the job, but he acted toward me like he already knew everything. He had a Yankee accent, along with the haughty attitude that Northerners sometimes have toward people from the South. But I wasn’t above him in rank, so I had to maintain a cordial attitude.
I left work feeling grumpy. The day was like my mood—chilly for Florida, and mostly cloudy. It had been that way all week. Because of my bad mood, I knew that I would probably stop off somewhere to be with men. It would make me happier, if only by releasing my frustrations for a few minutes.
God Says No Page 9