[Mystery]

[Government Gay cover]

An Excerpt from Chapter One of Government Gay

By Fred Hunter

I don't do bars. It was only a fluke that I happened to be there at all. My mother had some British Film Institute thing to attend: my mother is a Brit twice removed, once by geography and once by time. She came to America before I was born and stayed after she divorced my father because . . . well . . . the weather's better here. Anyway, she was seeing the latest in British film, and Peter was working. Peter is my husband. He refers to me as his husband, too.

Like I said, as a rule I don't do bars, but like everybody else I get bored when left alone on a Friday night and I don't mind looking at the well-groomed masses when I get a chance. Which is what brought me to Charlene's. I always cringe at the decor. Black walls, which I assume make it easier to keep clean, or keep dark, which those kind of places seem to insist on, and a huge pair of pink neon lips on one wall. Why, I don't know.

I was on my third bottle of Bud Light before anyone besides the bartender spoke to me for any length of time, which I suppose means I've let myself go. A voice just below my left ear actually said, "Is this your first time here?"

I looked to my left -- and a little down -- and saw a brown-haired man, younger than myself (thank God I haven't let myself go as much as I thought), who fell just short of handsome: his nose was a little long and his lips a little thin. There was one other problem that I hazard to mention: he seemed inordinately interested in my shoes, which would have made me nervous even if I'd been available.

"No," I said, "I used to come here before I got married."

So it's not sanctioned by the church or by law. As my mother says, "It's all the same to God." He got the point. He smiled in that way that said there was no longer any need for anxiety and we could be friends, and then went on to somebody else. I could have added that I used to come here before Charlie became Charlene, which would have opened a potentially interesting conversation, but there hardly seemed any point. Within seconds he looked like he'd found somebody who might be able to hold his kind of conversation.

Speakers were bolted up at opposing corners of the ceiling and were blasting, at a level one decibel short of ear shattering, a string of hits from the seventies. There were couples o f every shape and size dancing, but Charlene's is thankfully free of the ever-popular swimming lights that seem to be such a stable of this kind of bar.

I was more than halfway through my current beer when the front door swung open and this big doughy guy walked in who looked like he'd just witnessed a mob hit. ("Mob hit" is the kind of thing that just springs to mind when you're from Chicago.) He made his way through the dancing throng and pushed up to the empty space beside me at the bar. I had long since grown used to the endless supply of arms that jutted past me, tight fists brandishing money and barking orders at the bartender, but it was still a relief to have one opening stopped. It slowed the traffic a bit.

He sat down without looking at me. I could see him reflected in the mirror behind the bar: he had dark, stringy hair and large pockets of flesh under his big, startled brown eyes and he smelled of the type of cologne you'd expect to find at Woolworth's. When he ordered a beer, above the din I could hear a thick accent that was Polish, or Russian, or German, or from one of those other places I'm not interested in. I was beginning to think that the startled look was because he'd come in here not realizing what kind of bar it was, and was too embarrassed to just turn around and walk out. It happens. And although, if my brothers and sisters will forgive me for saying it, he didn't look gay, he did look like he badly needed a drink. The bartender put a bottle in front of him, and he took a long pull at it, which when he finished left only the sludge at the bottom.

The door opened again, and two men walked in, stopping just inside. They looked like they were used to disappearing into the wallpaper and climbed out of it when they wanted to kill someone, like the clay people in Flash Gordon. I didn't pay them any attention, and neither did anybody else that I could see, but the guy next to me was sweating, and I hadn't noticed that before. He looked like the sweaty kind, though. It wasn't attractive.

I pulled a cigarette out of the pack in my breast pocket and almost jumped out of my skin when the doughy man struck a match and held it out to me.

"Here," he said, his accent and his breath growing thicker.

"Thanks."

I drew in the smoke, and he tossed the glossy red matchbook in front of me. Being a gentleman, of course, I pulled the pack from my pocket and offered him one, hoping against hope that he would not take the action as a sigh that I was welcoming any unwelcome advances. He took the pack, shook out a cigarette, and handed the pack back to me, and I stuck it back in my pocket. Then he lit his cigarette and tossed the matchbook back in front of me. I felt like I was in the middle of a smoker's mating ritual.

The tune playing overhead -- I think it was "Disco Inferno" -- seemed to pulse for a few minutes on its own and then changed to "That's the Way I Like It." If I remembered correctly, that was playing the last time I was in a bar, only then it was a current hit.

"Is it always this noisy and crowded in here?" said the doughy man.

I had the sinking feeling you get when you suddenly think that someone is going to start hitting on you and is going to be embarrassing about it. I said a simple "um-hmm" and looked the other way, hoping that would make it clear I wasn't interested.

I watched the teeming masses yearning to be laid pump to the beat, then turned back to my beer. A glance at the mirror showed that the two men by the door weren't there any more. I couldn't see them anywhere else. I listened to the music, drank my beer, and pretty much minded my own business -- which wasn't too easy at the rate I was being jostled. I smoked the cigarette down to a stub, then pulled another one out, and glanced down at the bar. The matches had vanished, and so had my sweaty neighbor. I looked at the cigarette for one of those moments of decision, and the not yet completely extinguished one in my other hand, and decided that at my age a monkey-fuck was unseemly and made you look like a die-hard chain smoker.

I scanned the room and didn't see any sign of my former neighbor. Dorothy's words to Toto came to mind: "People come and go so quickly here."

I was reluctantly feeling the need to give up my own place at the bar. I had to pee. I hate public bathrooms. I just hate the idea of going into some public place and exposing my most tender asset while other people meander in and out. In order for me to work up the nerve to use a public bathroom, I have to go real bad. Especially in a place like this because, again with apologies to my brothers and sisters, you never know what you're going to find going on in the crapper in a gay bar.

Thank God there was nobody else in the bathroom, especially since it was about the size of a walk-in closet, with two urinals and one stall. Fortunately I was finished and all zipped up when I heard the door. I turned, and there were the two clay people I'd seen come in earlier. They advanced on me before I knew what was happening and grabbed my shoulders and slammed me against the wall.

I was saying something really effectual, like "What the fuck?" when the taller clay person barked at me, "Where is it?"

Since I thought they were after the usual and, well, they had to know where it was, I said, "I'm not interested."

That's when I learned that this was not your usual bathroom encounter. The shorter clay person balled up his fist and gave it to me full force in the jaw. My head snapped back and slammed into the tile wall. My brain felt uncomfortably like the clapper in a bell.

"What?" I sputtered.

The tall one, who had used my disorientation to take a pincer-hold on my throat, said, "We saw him talking to you!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. The worst part about this was I really didn't know what he was talking about -- I mean, I'd talked to a half a dozen guys since I came in. I could taste the blood from my split lip.

The tall one took the palm of his hand and slapped it hard against the side of my face. I could feel my sinuses clearing and actually felt a moment's embarrassment that my nose was going to run and might drip down on the guy's wrist.

"Really! I don't know what you're talking about!" I said, and though I would like you to think I'm brave, I could actually feel panic rising in my throat.

"We saw him give it to you!"

I thought maybe if I looked as confused as I felt, it might get through to them that I didn't know what the hell was going on, but I'll never know. Before I could say anything else, the short one pulled out a switchblade, and there was a look in his eye that told me he'd been sharpening it on his grandmother's back. Now I really panicked.

"Help! I don't know what you want!" I shouted, while disco music pumped my words away.

It was at that point that the door opened. I've never done anything like this before, but adrenaline does crazy things to you: there was just a split second when their heads turned to see who was coming in, and I used it to grab their shoulders and push them hard back out of my way like a human saloon door. And I ran. And so did the guy who was coming in to use the john.

Sure, they took off after me, but they weren't as adept at plowing through a dance floor of gyrating faggots as I am.

I ran about two blocks up Wells Street before I realized that I was so panicked I didn't know which way I was going. So I flagged down the first cab I could find that would stop for me, jumped in, and babbled my address.

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