I headed toward the far east end of Seventeenth. For a Wednesday night, Rudy’s was busy. Cars crowded the curb and parking lot. I eased into an empty space, stepped on the emergency brake, wedged my hand into my back pocket. A folded envelope housed the acid tabs I’d bought that morning from Christopher. He’d written “Lead My Thoughts Unto Sensation” across the envelope’s front. I selected a square of paper that showed a tiny sailboat and dropped it under my tongue. It fit there perfectly, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle. “Mmmm,” I said to no one in particular. I sat in the car until the tape ended, then switched off the ignition.
The bar had no sign, just a yellowed piece of paper on the door, its name inked in capital letters. When I set foot inside, everyone turned to stare. I remembered a dumb saying from childhood: “Take a picture, it lasts longer.” Then I said that exact thing. In seconds, a tubby bald man grabbed my shoulder. He had shifty shark eyes and a wounded trout mouth. He wore a studded leather bracelet and a Rudy’s T-shirt: white logo across pink triangle. “Let’s see an ID.”
I handed it over. “Shit, you know I’ve been here before.” Fatso tried his damnedest to detect the ID as counterfeit. No such luck.
Rudy’s, the only queer bar in Hutchinson, always seemed caught in an extremely twisted time warp. I’d read somewhere once how trends and practices of the east and west coasts usually took three years to catch on in the Midwest. If that were true, Rudy’s lagged a decade behind. On that night, for instance, a late seventies tune pulsed from the jukebox. “I wanna disco with you all, night, long,” the singer wailed.
Another thing: the customers were perfect. Most were men I wanted, men I found myself picturing before I dozed off at night. They looked nothing like the guys that starred in the current pornos Eric and I saw on display at video stores, those poofs with blow-dried hair, shaved chests, glistening and steroided muscles. The guys at Rudy’s sported facial hair, beer guts, and expressions that weren’t practiced in front of home mirrors. Not everyone was attractive, but they were real. In the couple of weeks since I’d discovered the place, I’d already met several of them, had gone home with three, had even accepted fifty bucks from one.
On that particular Wednesday, most guys stood around in plaid flannel shirts and jeans. At the bar, the rips in the knees of their denims formed a straight line that resembled a row of singing mouths. For fun, I counted mustaches; divided the number by the total people there. Seventy-nine percent.
The air smelled like a mixture of smoke, spilled beer, the cedar chips that littered the floor, and a musky cologne that had probably been all the rage in New York one decade previous. Walking through that air felt like breaststroking through a murky lake. I ordered a Bud and reflashed the ID to the bartender. On the TV above the bar, a St. Louis Cardinal cracked a single over the shortstop’s head. In a water-stained poster on the wall, collies and Saint Bernards were involved in what looked like a pretty interesting game of poker. I snuck to a corner, holding the beer bottle like a magic lantern.
The jukebox light cast a liquidy pink over my face. I hovered in front of it, searching its selections for anything I might want to hear. Ever since I was a kid, Mom had craved a jukebox. She’d point to the TV screen when a game show host unveiled one. “When we win the lottery, we’ll dance around the house to that.”
Dancing with Mom was my earliest memory. I must have been three or four years old. We had been in the kitchen, the radio blaring. She had grabbed my hands and lifted me, standing my bare feet on her own, larger, sandaled feet. She had led me, stomping and twirling through the room, holding on all the while, moving me with her. There, in Rudy’s, I could still sense the rhythm of her movements, could still smell her perfume. Mom, who danced whenever she drank. Mom, who wanted to plug a jukebox into the living room socket. I wondered how difficult it would be to unplug the jukebox and carry it out the door.
I surveyed the crowd again. I recognized some faces; the guy at the end of the bar was one I’d slept with last week. Robin. Since I’d last seen him, he’d shaved his beard into a goatee. He wore the same ripped-sleeve flannel shirt and too-tight Wranglers.
Robin chatted with a guy who could have been his brother. The familiar way they watched each other and the casual positioning on their barstools told me they were just friends, not the night’s bed partners. Guy number two wasn’t bad-looking. I thought I’d seen him before at Sun Center. He noticed me staring, raised an eyebrow to Robin. His mouth formed the words, “You know him?” They looked over. Robin nodded his head. I slid through the cedar chips toward them, and the entire crowd rubbernecked.
“Robin,” I said. I acknowledged his pal by a jerk of my head. “Who’s this, Friar Tuck?” That was ridiculous, but I knew they’d love it.
Bingo. Both laughed, their heads thrown back. “Whatever,” the unfamiliar one said. “You can call me that if you want.”
“We rob from the rich and steal from the poor,” Robin said. He looked at Friar, apparently amused by the way he was gawking at me. “Are you rich, or are you poor?”
I remembered the Robin Hood tale, the one Mom read to me at bedtime, eons ago. “Very poor,” I said.
“Then we’ll have to give you something,” Friar said. They laughed again. I had to gnaw my lip to keep from rolling my eyes.
Robin plucked a pretzel from a basket on the bar and crunched it in half. “Neil here’s new in town,” he told Friar. “His dad’s an actor out in Hollywood, and his mom’s an international stewardess. They’e only in Hutchinson briefly.” I barely remembered telling him those drunken lies.
“An actor,” Friar said. He turned to me. “What’s he starred in that I might have seen?”
I hadn’t anticipated this. Lying’s best when it’s spontaneous, so… “He’s starring in an upcoming film called Blood Mania. Plot: tainted meat supply infects already-weirdo family. They go nuts, cannibalizing all who near the vicinity of their spooky, off-the-beaten-track farmhouse. The end. Mom and I are flying to France for its premiere next month.” I swigged the beer.
“Wow.” Friar winked. “Are you planning on starring in movies? You could do it. You look a little like, oh, who’s that cute star?” He sipped from a snifter of a thick and chocolatey-colored liquid in which two ice crescents tinkled like bells. I’d seen Mom drinking something similar, only she often decorated her glass with a mini umbrella she’d saved from a date with someone whose name I’d forgotten.
The jukebox blasted a country-western song from years back. Once, after the Panthers had won a Little League game, that same song had played as moms and dads celebrated in the parking lot with barbecued hot dogs and a cooler of beer. The space of pavement became a hoedown beneath the buzzing ballpark lights. My teammates and I watched, stunned, as the parents square-danced and sang along. I remember rushing for Coach. “Drive me away from this,” I’d said. “Now.” He took me to his house, not mine.
Robin hummed the chorus off key. “Work’s been hectic since I last saw you,” he said. I couldn’t recall any specifics about his life. I vaguely remembered a brown-paneled studio apartment on the city’s south side, next to the railroad tracks. I must have been really stoned that night.
I clunked my empty bottle on the bar between their elbows. “Need another?” Friar asked. He was already reaching for his wallet, a gesture I’d grown familiar with in men his age.
After three beers, I’d heard enough bits and pieces about Robin to remember he was a lawyer, owned a poodle named Ralph, had celebrated his thirty-ninth on the night before we’d screwed. Friar was his “business associate,” in from Wichita for the night. “You guys should get to know each other better,” Robin said, his eyes darting between our faces. I loved that sort of blatancy.