December 1977

Fiction

This is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress.

Note: The following has mature content and is intended for adult readers.

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December 1977

I spend a lot of time at the movies. Because of this, my Chuck Taylor sneakers are often sticky when I return home. Sticky from resting in spilled fountain sodas and popcorn butter. Grace always demands I take them off when I return home. All the teenagers who work at Northpoint standing around doing nothing, flirting with each other, stoned out of their minds, she says. The floors are the reason Grace won’t go the movies with me. This is what she told me last week, when I had to see Bette Midler’s rocker chic film, The Rose, by myself. A grown man sitting in a theater alone, watching Bette sing that maudlin song from the film that’s on the radio every five seconds. Also called The Rose.

The theater that day is full of couples: young and old, a single woman loudly and aggressively sobbing a few feet away, and a single man. I wonder if his girlfriend also hates sticky floors. Or if he’s a fag and he’s alone because he loves Bette. I understand she’s popular with fags. There was another teacher at school who I’m pretty sure was one because of the way he walked — sashayed as the bitches in the teacher’s lounge liked to say in a mocking tone when he wasn’t around. They hated him because he was a fag or because he wouldn’t fuck them. Maybe both. He liked Bette. He was fired a couple of weeks ago after crying when the song came on in the teacher’s lounge. He said the song reminded him of his ex-boyfriend. You can teach at school and be a fag, but you can’t talk about it. I hate the song now. It reminds me of Heath. Fuck those bitches in the teacher’s lounge who snitched on him because they can’t get dick.

Feeling my glance, the man in the theater turns to stare at me. His eyes are blonde and piercing. His hair is blonde, wavy, and neck-length, with a similarly unkempt beard. His muscles burst out of his t-shirt like the Hulk. He’s my polar opposite. My hair is brown, cut into a medium shag. Lightly feathered. Grace liked how Robert Redford’s hair looked in Three Days of the Condor. I have no facial hair to speak of because Grace hates that. My eyes are brown and anxious. My polo shirt hangs from my slender frame like it’s a department store hanger. His eyes don’t say howdy, they say, I want to fuck you. He wants me gripping the edge of a bathroom stall with one hand, biting down on the wrist from my free hand, so that no one will hear that familiar gay cocktail of euphoric moans and pain cries from a man’s dick sliding in and out of your ass with rapid succession. I don’t move as he confidently stands and exits the far-right aisle where he’s seated. He moves toward my aisle in the back center and slides into a seat directly behind me. I can feel his breath on my neck, and it warms my neck much better than the cheap scarf resting atop my peacoat in the seat beside me. I can smell Coca-Cola and the faint taste of the bourbon he spiked his drink with. I lick my lips, wanting to taste the bourbon as it lingers in the air. My lips are salty and they taste of the popcorn I shoveled down in the first fifteen minutes of the film before I accidentally spilled my bucket on the floor.

Men’s room, he says. His voice is rough, scratchy. The bourbon in the air dissipates. He’s already on his feet. For a few seconds, my hardened dick causes me to debate following him. The movie’s kinda shit, but I mildly enjoying it. I blank out for a few moments, thinking about the man, then return my attention to the screen where Bette is now on a stage caterwauling with a group of drag queens. My dick goes from hard to soft and I make up my mind, rising from my seat, snatching my scarf and peacoat, and hurrying out the dark theater. My eyes adjust to the outside hallway’s bright, fluorescent light and I scan for the men’s room. The hall is empty, no one will detect me entering the men’s room, but it’s only one door down from the theater I just existed. Clutching my winter clothing, the heaviest I’ll need for the west coast’s version of winter in San Francisco, I push through the door and enter the men’s room.

Heavy panting softly echoes in restroom, as if someone brought their thirsty dog with them and tied him up beside a urinal. Cruising is not something I’ve grown accustomed to, despite having done it more than a handful of times. It’s a regular hobby for most of the men in this city but as a high school teacher with papers at home to grade and a wife setting the table for dinner, the opportunity to dabble in this hobby doesn’t often present itself. I approach the three stalls, scanning underneath them for the stranger. Instead, I’m met with the sight of a man on his knees, back to me. The door to the stall is slowly pushed open, revealing the stranger already in the midst of receiving a blow job from another man. The man has neither my frame, nor the stranger’s. The fat around his waist protrudes from his tucked in dress shirt. His dirty blonde hair has a sizeable balding spot at its center. My dick manages to get even softer than Bette and the drag queens accomplished. The stranger makes eye contact with me. He says, I’d rather cum inside you. My head shakes out a no instinctively and I back away from the stall and hurriedly out of the restroom. It’s not until I’m standing outside on Powell Street, the sun setting over the glistening water on the Fisherman’s Wharf in the distance, that I realize I dropped my scarf at the scene in the restroom. I make the decision to abandon it. Sticky Chucks are one thing. A sticky scarf, and not one from spilled soda and popcorn butter, is another thing entirely.