* * *
×
San Francisco was not Provincetown, was not Iowa City, was really not New York. New York was punk, harder, more fatal. What bad thing could happen to a person in San Francisco? On the 33 Paul avoided the eyes of the wasting men who took the bus up to the free clinic in the Haight. Was he immune or did he want to die? Paul didn’t know, not at night when he drank shot after shot at the Eagle, welcome now as that scrawny kid with the horse cock, that staple of porn fantasy, no uniform needed. Paul opened his throat for the shots and the beers, drank them down then headed to the backroom or the bathroom and let some man touch him, suck him. Paul didn’t touch them, those professor-age men, or the jocky guys in their twenties, or the hardcore eternally forty leather guys with their graying temples, or the regular mustachioed clones, or the sideburned ACT UP clones. Paul went limp everywhere but his cock, like a Mustang in a car wash. You couldn’t catch anything from getting blown or fondled, he thought. No matter what the flyers said. He refused to fuck anyone (too much work) or to get fucked (still too much work) or to blow anyone (unclean). In the daytime at the bookstore Paul drank coffee after coffee to keep his mind fast. Just forward motion, go go go to the next night with the buzz in his forehead and then the shots to turn it off. In the mornings he emptied his pockets of the little slips of paper with phone numbers and names, shoving them into an empty tomato-sauce jar. The fuller the jar, the hotter he was. He never called the numbers, didn’t want to see those men again. After two months he was ⅓ of 14 ounces hot. He was 4.66666667 ounces hot. And he was completely supporting himself from the bookstore. Sometimes he let older men take him out to dinner, but they didn’t count toward hotness; they just helped him live within his means. He let these men—whom he met at the bookstore, usually—give him career advice, in the time-honored way of older fags. They liked to take a young guy out to dinner, Paul knew, and they liked it best when you didn’t have sex with them. That way they believed they were mentors, that the relationship was non-transactional. They believed Paul was baby-them and told him what they thought they would have liked to have heard: go to law school, don’t be so promiscuous, be more promiscuous, quit being a lawyer, your father loves you, start working out when you’re young. Most of them stuck to some variation on “follow your dreams,” and Paul took manly scavenger bites of rare steak and tried not to think about how cliché these men sounded, which he felt was inhospitable while he dined on their tab. As a point of honor, for the duration of each meal Paul made himself believe anything his host said, and only afterward—maybe watching a Bette Davis video with Ruffles—did he indulge his critiques.
* * *
×
Paul was five blocks from the Gang Way, an old queen’s dive, with an hour to spare before he was to meet up with his coworker Franky for their first outside-work hangout. Paul began to get himself obviously lost; he went so far as to remove a blank scrap of paper from his pocket and consult it elaborately while squinting at building numbers. Paul liked having an alibi. After a few turns around the blocks, he realized he was dangerously close to his destination. Nothing worse than hovering desperately in front of a place you’re going to have to enter later, looking like you’re too scared to go in alone or too much of a loser to have friends, a real greenhorn. So he avoided the street the bar was on. He had another forty minutes to kill. He began to hunt for a little black book, a pocket-sized address book—covered in black leather with gold-leafed pages—in which he might keep phone numbers for future use, like James Bond or Helen Gurley Brown. Paul knew an address book of this type would be essentially impossible to locate in the Tenderloin at 10:30 PM on a Wednesday night, but he broadened his circuit to include a gas station and a couple bodegas. At each store, he’d first look, then engage the clerk in his quest. He completely absorbed himself in this project, feeling such a deep invented need for this little black book that he eventually bought a package of three coverless memo pads wrapped in plastic in order to appease the last clerk, a helpful woman whose babushka’d hair reminded him, with a startling embarrassment, of his yaya, Kostas’s mother.
Paul strode more purposefully down Larkin toward the bar, packet in hand. A block away, the spell broke. Paul realized he couldn’t enter the bar with a packet of notepads, like some errand boy, some Bartleby. He set the packet carefully between the metal bars of a shuttered limousine service office. What would they make of this in the morning? He imagined all the things he could leave in the night, to be found by bemused but grateful morning people. Night-Paul the package fairy! Those morning people would feel but not understand the superiority of the night—who would leave such strange packages all around town, they’d think, berating themselves for their lack of imagination before returning to the soul-crushing jobs they didn’t understand they could just leave!
Paul was now only fifteen minutes early, which was exactly the amount early to be. He pushed open the flimsy door, performing a quick “Just looking for my friend” check of all the nooks and crannies.
No one particularly interesting yet. He bought himself a bottle of the sale beer, which he swigged while pumping quarters into the only game they had, Space Invaders. Video games didn’t showcase his ass and hips the way a vigorous game of pinball could, but Paul knew Space Invaders well enough to make two quarters last for five minutes (Level 6). He liked Space Invaders better than most games because you basically shot little sperm bullets at various moving targets. Pump pump pump! He also liked Ms. Pac Man, because of the name (Ms. Man! Ha!). Paul’s other bar skills included darts (decent), pool (mediocre), breaking up fistfights (okay), taking keys from drunks (excellent). He finished his beer and left the bottle. He took a place at the bar, so when Franky walked in, he’d see Paul just ordering his first beer. Paul preferred to keep his numbers private if he didn’t know a person. He remembered the after-bars in Iowa City, that fraternity of drinkers-to-excess. He thought in succession of a boy named Joshua who wore glasses, of the enthusiastic bisexual stripper from Dubuque, of the winter-long naked showering craze Paul had ushered in at a particularly banal condo party on the Coralville strip. He missed Iowa, where necessity had mothered such charming invention.
Paul ordered his next first beer, a nicer beer so Franky wouldn’t think he was cheap. Paul theoretically believed in starting with top shelf and switching to well when he was unable to discern the difference. In practice, however, when he was forced to buy his own drinks, Paul’s concern was for quantity; he privileged the always-full glass. Paul liked to know the right position to espouse on various topics. He had a store of drink-combining wisdom (beer before liquor, never been sicker; beer before grass, flat on your ass; beer before wine, feeling fine) and adopted opinions (blended Irish whiskey beat blended Scotch whisky; the only good bourbon was Knob Creek; single-malt Scotch could be drunk all night; good whiskey must never be diluted by ice or soda whereas bad whiskey can be salvaged with a little ginger ale; never drink well vodka or any gin because of the impurities; a Bloody Mary will fix a hangover better than whatever one had drunk to get there). And there was Franky, skateboard tucked under his arm, plaid shirt buttoned all the way up.
“Hey,” said Franky, nodding.
“What’s up,” said Paul, expansive with secret beer. He wanted to hug Franky but didn’t. Paul looked him up and down for girl, but couldn’t find any tells. Paul had never met a transsexual guy before Franky. He’d known his share of butches who passed and lots of young girlish queens and the occasional transsexual lady. But Franky was a guy; Paul wouldn’t have ever known Franky was anything other than a cute indie fag if Malcolm hadn’t gossiped. At first he wondered if Malcolm had lied, but then he’d seen Franky palling around with one of the Lusty Lady girls. And Franky had once mentioned that he’d seen Paul’s zine when he was at Santa Cruz. Paul wondered briefly if Franky was like him, but somehow he thought not. Franky knew what he wanted forever, Paul thought. That was the difference between them. Paul knew what h
e wanted at any given moment, for sure. Right now he wanted more to drink.
“What’s your poison?” he asked Franky, folding a ten-dollar bill and holding it over the bar so the bartender could see he had money for a tip. He mysteriously wanted to impress and treat Franky, even though they were the same age and had the same job. He wanted to extend the blanket of his hospitality so it enveloped Franky. This wasn’t necessarily flirtatious.
Paul followed Franky to an empty spot along the wall. The music was loud and bad and exciting despite itself, bassline pumping into Paul with every sip of beer. He was beginning to feel like himself again—there you are! The real Paul didn’t feel pain. He pushed away a nudging thought of Tony Pinto’s voice on his answering machine, the strangely formal message asking him to call. Paul considered the question of whether or not to have sex with Franky tonight. He thought not, but he could be persuaded. How had Tony Pinto gotten Paul’s mother’s address? They drank more beers and Paul focused his attention back on the important discussion of who was hot.
“Over there,” Franky said, lifting index finger from bottle to indicate a man with hair clippered to a 2, close-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, a single 12-gauge earring in his left earlobe.
Paul nodded supportively but lost a small measure of respect for Franky. The beard guy was a little perfect, too obvious. Paul scanned the room for the more unusual-looking people, the finds.
“That one,” he said, leaning into Franky’s ear.
Together they studied the big-nosed white boy gangling by the jukebox in a Stryper tee shirt. Paul always appreciated the jolie laide. Plus a good sense of humor, Paul thought. And bold fashion sense. Paul liked to pick out the secretly cool people, people too cool to flash their coolness. The cool people were not always or even usually the same as the shiny people. Often someone shiny was too conventionally good-looking to be cool but they were still compelling, in terms of sheer wattage. Paul knew he wasn’t good-looking enough to be shiny, but he could be cool in certain contexts. Cool was relational and conceptual; cool took work, cool was a meritocracy which, with all its flaws, he still preferred to the aristocracy of genetics.
As they made their evaluative way around the room, Paul enjoyed not knowing if he was Franky’s type, or vice versa. Underneath the cruising-buddy patter they held another conversation, a trading of clues about the future, hunter to hunter. Both could swing lots of ways, which they signaled to each other by indicating which men they found attractive or hideous.
“You only like older guys?” Paul said, knowing this was not the case. He swiveled his body so that his erection would brush Franky’s leg and held himself still for a moment. Yes. Electrical surge. He moved an inch away.
“No,” said Franky, his eyelids heavy like a cat’s.
“Let’s do shots,” said Paul. A shot would make them both officially drunk, which would be the abracadabra to open the door to the rest of the night.
They each did a shot, Franky sitting wide-legged on a barstool, and Paul standing sideways in between his legs. Franky stood up, curled his finger through Paul’s belt loop, and pulled Paul toward the black-lit backroom.
“I think you want me to fuck you,” said Paul.
Franky looked shy, like Paul might say such a thing and then not do it. Paul admired this pose. Franky was either really new or incredibly skilled.
“Yeah,” Franky said.
They made out for a while, Franky’s hands stretching all over Paul’s impostor man body. No one else was in the back. Paul knew what Franky wanted, to touch something uncomplicated. Not that he could tell Franky he knew this without ruining Franky’s good time. Paul felt something pressing on his thigh—Franky’s cock. He clumsily unzipped Franky’s pants until Franky took over, turning around, and Paul pulled his own hard dick out of his pants, nudging it up to Franky’s now-bare ass. He saliva’d a finger and opened up Franky’s hairy asshole, guiding his dick inside. The music from the bar pulsed in. Paul had Jägermeister in his veins, thought of mercury rising and his cum rising and he pushed into Franky hard and mannishly, to be nice, thrusted like a high schooler, which he thought Franky would appreciate, the realness—until Franky jerked to standing, squeezing Paul’s dick out of him. Paul stuffed his cock in his pants, felt a hot drip of pre-cum on his thigh.
“What the fuck, Paul?”
“What?” said Paul.
“Dude, were you just wearing a rubber?” Franky said.
“No, of course,” Paul said. “Of course I was.”
“Shit,” said Franky. “I’m sorry. I’m so drunk. Keep fucking me, man.”
“Let’s just go,” said Paul, cold with shame. “The moment’s passed.”
The light in the bar was different now, icy and blue. Paul ordered another bourbon, though he was already full. He controlled his gag reflex and let the liquid settle down his throat into its secret headquarters, from which it spread its message of world peace to all points Paul.
* * *
×
Paul woke up with drymouth and staggered to the bathroom to drink from the tap and to pee. He stank of cigarettes, old sperm, bar grime. Beer-sweat emanated from his pores. His mouth watered and he swallowed acid down into his stomach.
He surveyed the damage in his room—jacket and boots flung willy-nilly, balled-up plastic bags, dirty dishes, a mysteriously empty peanut butter jar. He picked his jacket up off the floor, reaching into the pocket to check for money (where was all his money?) and stuck his middle finger into what turned out to be a used rubber. Where had he gone after he’d ditched Franky?
He had to stop picking up random people. What he should do now was shower and walk to the bookstore to pick up his paycheck before his shift, so he could mail the check to his bank in Iowa City for deposit. It would take a week to clear and rent was almost due. But he couldn’t face work, didn’t deserve a shower. He had to stop going to bars. He would definitely stop going to bars.
He went back to bed to get warm for a minute before work then fell asleep. When he woke up again hours later, he was disoriented and late. He called the bookstore from the phone in the hall and told Divya he had food poisoning—which other people did all the time, so didn’t he get to do it once? but what if they fired him, what would he do then?—and crawled back into bed in his warm fermenting clothes. What he really should do was apply to SF State, but he had all those Incompletes. He would stop changing, stop picking up randoms. He would get his shit together.
Paul lay flat under the covers and listened to Ruffles and the roommates move about upstairs then leave the house in a loud happy group. The phone rang and the machine picked up. He rolled over and stared at the wall until sleep took him once more.
* * *
×
Paul’s mother had always said things would seem better in the morning. Paul woke up to another rainy day, which should have been romantic but just felt cold and clammy. He showered and pulled on clean jeans. He was okay. His mom was right. He just needed sleep. He borrowed Ruffles’s bike so he wouldn’t have to waste money on the bus, and sped up Market as fast as he could go. He saw a driver’s-side car door opening but couldn’t stop in time and took the door into his side.
“Watch where you’re going, faggot,” the driver yelled. “Or whatever you are!”
“Fuck you,” Paul said, falling half off his bike. The bar menaced his soft sad balls, the threat of pain as bad as the pain itself. He got back on his bike before the guy could come after him. He turned from a safe distance and hollered, “Asswipe!”
Paul biked more slowly now, stoned on adrenaline. The pounding ache in his side felt good almost, clarifying. The bike seemed a little wobbly, and he thought about how much it would cost to fix. He got to the bookstore and chained the bike to the fence out back.
He saw through the window that Franky was working. This day was just getting better and better.
> “Hey, Paul,” said Franky. His eyes had that soft look. What eyelashes. Paul hadn’t seen him since the Gang Way. This was why you don’t shit where you eat, he thought.
“Hey,” said Paul. Did Franky like him? Even after the other night? Maybe gay guys really all were masochists. Now he’d have that mess on his hands. He headed straight back to the office and pocketed his check.
“Glad you’re feeling better,” Malcolm said. “Food poisoning’s the worst.”
“Yeah,” said Paul. “Can I help with that order? I mean, if you want to go up front. I kind of want to learn.”
“That would actually be great,” said Malcolm. “You don’t mind being back here?”
“Nope,” said Paul. He settled into the comfortable office chair.
×
STORY NAME: The Uncanny Ex-Man
PAGE ONE
PANEL 1: Establishing shot. Medium shot. Cargo ship off the coast of Cyprus.
CAPTION: Off the coast of Cyprus, early summer 1985. A ship carrying a mysterious cargo makes its way from Europe.
PANEL 2: Close-up of two French-looking sailors on deck doing something reckless. Maybe a little gay. Wrestling? They jostle a barrel marked with skull & crossbones.
PANEL 3: Close-up of the barrel marked with skull & crossbones falling overboard.
PANEL 4: Below the previous panel. Close-up of barrel opening, mysterious radioactive substance seeping down to where a Moray eel is swimming by.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl Page 22