While I was picking up rolls of political stickers from Al’s Print Job, my eyeballs were focused on a curvy derrière. That delectable rump belonged to Robbie, the counter guy who’d bent to lift my order. Robbie’s ass was too much, and he was just as beautiful when he stood to pass across the stickers. His smile had more voltage than the computer screens flashing eye-popping screensavers behind the counter. As I inspected the work, each rainbow sticker reading “Out for Flanders,” Robbie’s flirtatious smile charred my bikini briefs—I’d worn the white ones with the little pink hearts in case I got lucky. I was on the verge of asking him on a gay-bar-hopping expedition followed by a weekend barricaded in my bedroom when Al emerged, swatted Robbie’s ass, and kissed his cheek.
My frustration knew no bounds. Robbie could’ve had his way with me; he could’ve taken me home, cooked my meals, washed my hair, wiped my behind, and spoon fed me (not-to-mention screwing me), but I gnashed my teeth, spoke a bogus “thanks,” and slipped out the door, facing another lonely night.
Still dreaming of Robbie’s sultry crevices, I strolled moodily along Water Avenue in the buttery September sun. A few doors ahead, Kim Flanders’ campaign office occupied a corner storefront. Covering the windows were red campaign signs with reverse white lettering that urged Portlanders to vote “Flanders for Mayor.” A rainbow pride flag draped from the pole above the door.
When I entered, I saw two unpaid interns and four volunteers gathered around the twelve-inch television. The TV sat on a folding table just outside the break room. Toward the back stood two offices, one belonging to the candidate and the other the campaign manager. Desks, computers, printers, photocopy machines, and telephones filled the remainder of the storefront. After hurrying to my desk (one of three occupied by paid staffers, Lisa Shaw, Neil Boyd, and I), and relieving myself of the stickers, I dropped my rump onto Lisa’s desk.
“What the fuck took you so long, Mike?” Lisa griped. “We finished the direct mail project while you were gone.”
That, naturally, had been the beauty of my trip to the printers—I escaped the pain of sticking address labels on envelopes—but I wisely didn’t mention that fact to Lisa. Instead I pointed to the small group in front of the television. “Why are the interns watching TV instead of working?”
“Unlike you, they’ve been working,” Lisa snapped, which made me chortle. “Now they’re waiting for the news.”
“Oh? Why isn’t Bill finding work for them?”
Lisa Shaw looked up at me, roguishness marking her face. “Bill’s been closeted with Kim for the past hour. With the door shut. What do you think—one of ‘em’s gotta be bent over the desk.”
An image flashed through my mind, a pornographic picture of Kim and Bill simultaneously bending me over the desk, but I told Lisa, “You’re cursed with an overactive imagination.”
She shook her head. “Speaking of taking it like a man, Mike, did you get a date with Robbie?”
Lisa was my age, about twenty-five, all of five feet tall, and somewhat round. She had a round face that she complemented with round glasses. She had long chestnut hair, and she looked like a pushover. Looks can be deceiving: Lisa was aggressive and strong-willed, not-to-mention militantly lesbian, and we’d endured some fierce planning sessions at the house she shared with another woman, an apolitical man-hater called Lou.
I shrugged like I wasn’t desperate to get laid. “No such luck. Another guy is beating my time.”
“You let that happen, Mike?”
“Robbie works for his lover. You know, Al, of Al’s Print Job fame.”
She shook her head again. “Doesn’t look good, Mike. You’re gonna spend another lonely night in the Jerkatorium.”
I winced when she maliciously poked that nerve. “Yeah.” After I’d once innocently referred to my bedroom as the Jerkatorium, the noun had taken on a life of its own.
“The news is coming on,” Kathy the intern shouted, and the candidate Kim Flanders emerged from his office, followed by his campaign manager Bill St. John. Lisa, Neil, and I moved toward the television, and I made room by bumping Spencer, a cute intern, aside with my hip.
“Hey,” he complained.
“Quit rubbing your buns on the interns,” giggled Neil, the swish computer geek.
“Shut up, guys,” Bill ordered. Bill St. John stood about five nine and his hair was straight and sandy. He had a buffed body and a pleasant face. He always dressed well. I’d twice groped him when he’d gotten close, but both times he’d stepped away. Apparently, he was faithful to his lover, a professor at Portland State University.
The news led off with a police chase ending in a car crash, the camera lingering over a lurid red spill on the asphalt. After a break for a few insipid commercials, the news anchors introduced a reporter standing before city hall. Max Ubaldo was a yellowish guy who held his microphone head close to his mouth like he was going to suck on it.
“Thanks, Tim and Gina,” Max was saying. “A few minutes ago, Mayor Justin T. Albee asked to clear the air about his opponent in the upcoming election.”
The picture shifted to reveal the craggy face of the fifty-five-year-old former Marine and current mayor of Portland; the sound caught up with him in mid-sentence.
“. . . can’t keep silent any longer. My opponent, Kim Flanders tells the world that he is ‘gay.’ He tries to make his disgraceful condition sound natural.” Albee’s voice dropped as if he were saying something dirty. “My friends, Kim Flanders is a shirtlifter.” He laced shirtlifter with such innuendo that it sounded filthy even to us. Bruce, a volunteer, gasped, and Lisa swore.
“Kim Flanders—I can’t dignify this ill-conceived degenerate by calling him Mister Flanders—such a masculine title would insult the good people of Portland—Kim Flanders wears scanty panties. He’s a namby-pamby pantywaist. A milksop, a pansy not unlike the flowered garden plant with petals of various colors—like the panties Kim Flanders favors.”
“This is sheer demagoguery,” Bill St. John fumed amid the gasps and stunned silence.
“He’s gone nuts,” Kathy said.
“It blows,” Lisa shouted, tiny missiles forming in her eyes. Neil glanced sideways at me, and I made a cocksucking motion with my hand and tongue.
Releasing his final bolt, Justin T. Albee concluded with a grotesque catechism. “Do Portlanders want a milksop as their leader? Of course not. Do the heirs of former Portland mayors Henry Failing, Bud Clark, George Baker, and Harry Lane want a slinky pantywaist in office? Hardly. Do the right-thinking people of Portland deserve a shirtlifter who would conduct city business while wearing scanty panties? Heck, no!”
“The man has lost his marbles,” Kim Flanders opined, his face ashy.
“He sucks big dicks,” Lisa howled, spittle foaming on her lips.
“And what’s wrong with big dicks?” Neil inquired.
Bill St. John shook his head. “Albee lost the gay vote, but the community wasn’t going to vote for him anyway. It’s the undecided voters who will decide this race, and I’m afraid he hurt us with them. We need a snap poll.”
“Good idea,” the candidate said, and I moaned internally.
Before Bill could issue the stupid order, I gripped his arm and placed my lips close to his ear. “We don’t need another silly poll; we need to bash the mayor worse than he bashed us,” I whispered. “Paint him as a bigot. Homophobes go bonkers when you point out that they’re bigots.”
Ignoring my excellent advice, Bill directed Neil to print telephone lists of three labor unions. While the printers hummed, Bill gathered us together. “Everybody is on the phones. Don’t say you’re with our campaign. Just ask them if they’ve made a decision in the mayor’s race. Then find out if they saw the broadcast.”
I took my list of twenty-five telephone numbers and tried to look eager. Everybody else was dialing, so I picked up my desk telephone and called my first respondent. “Hi. This is Mike Dodger with the Kim Flanders campaign.”
“Mike,” Bill reprimanded. “That’s exactly what I said not to do.”
“Excuse me.” I hung up. “Sorry, Bill.”
“Try the next one,” Bill suggested, hanging over my shoulder.
Nearly swooning over Bill’s essence, I dialed my next victim. I didn’t give my name but I did slip in Flanders’ name.
“No,” Bill snapped, considerably nettled. He looked cute when he got mad, and his faint Louisiana accent grew more pronounced with irritation.
“I’m trying, Bill. When I open my mouth, the truth flies out every time.”
Sneering at my confession, Bill grabbed the list from my hand. “I’ll call these myself. You get busy with your other duties.”
Skillful incompetence works every time: I found out long ago that pretending to be eager but incompetent will result in some helpful person doing my job for me. I reached into my drawer and rummaged through my supply of cell phones, selected one, and dialed Domino’s pizza.
“This is George Romney down at City Hall. We need five of your largest pizzas with the works delivered to the mayor’s office. Yes, we’ll pay the driver in cash.” I gave him the number of my cell phone to confirm. I then surreptitiously held the phone between my thighs and forty-five seconds later, it rewarded me with a pleasing vibration.
“Mayor’s office. George Romney speaking,” I answered (none of the pizza parlor employees recognized the name of the former three-term governor of Michigan and presidential candidate who became famous for his assertion that the U. S. military had brainwashed him into supporting the Vietnam War). As George Romney, I confirmed that the mayor had, indeed, ordered five pizzas. After hanging up, I dialed five more pizza restaurants that delivered in the downtown area and acted out the same routine. I wished I could see Justin T. Albee’s face when thirty pizzas arrived with six angry delivery boys and girls demanding their cash.
Governor George W. Romney, at the NSA Station Hospital, Danang, Viet Nam, December 1967
George Romney was the Republican front runner for President, until he switched his position on our Viet Nam involvement. Romney explained the switch by asserting that U. S. military officers brainwashed him.
The beauty of this scheme was that the phone calls were untraceable. A guy serving in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan had owned this particular phone. He’d let me take over his cell phone when he departed, and I had the phone bills sent to a post office box originally rented in the name of another departed acquaintance. The bills were paid with money orders purchased by Lyndon Johnson. However, as long as the bills got paid, nobody questioned why a long-departed Texas politician would want clear calls.
Satisfied with a job well done, I turned my attention to the poll numbers. My fellow staff members were finishing up, and the results were disastrous. “This looks significant,” Lisa howled. “Every asshole who saw the fuckin’ broadcast says they’re voting for the goddamn mayor.”
Kim Flanders gripped his head in his hands and his knuckles were white. “By tomorrow, everybody will have seen it. Count on the stations to keep airing it, and then The Portland Bee will have to write about it.”
Bill bent over Kim and whispered in his ear. I caught him saying something about not breaking down in front of the staff. Then Bill addressed us all. “The mayor made a tactical error. He should have held that speech until the last week before the election. As it is, we have time to overcome it.”
“Let’s call it a day,” the candidate suggested. “I’m buying the beer.”
Thirty minutes later we were assembled in Pixie’s Pub, the campaign’s favorite hangout. We’d pushed tables together so the whole dozen sat around large pitchers of Pixie’s Ruby Red beer, baskets of chips, nuts, pretzels, popcorn, and fried clams. Bill St. John was seated next to me, and his proximity made me hot. I’d have given the over-sixty-five vote to lay him out and pleasure him on the table in front of witnesses.
As if he read my thoughts, Bill spoke to me in a low voice. “”Mike, what’s this comedy you’re playing?”
Neil and Spencer the intern were sitting at our end of the table, both curiously awaiting my answer.
“What comedy?” I felt sick; how could Bill think my lust for him comical?
“You’re dodging work.”
Oh, that. “Bill, I’d do anything to get Kim elected.”
“Except do as you’re told. I believe you want our candidate to win, Mike, which is why you still have your job. However, I see how you inveigle other people into doing your chores for you.”
I put my mouth close to his ear. “I work, Bill. There’re lots of things I do well.”
“Yes, the things you think are fun. A campaign isn’t all parades and rallies, Mike. Look at Kim. He sits on the phone every day trying to raise money—the money that pays both of our salaries, I might add. Do you think he enjoys begging for money? He gets ten rejections for every contribution.”
From the far end of the table, Lisa’s raucous laughter filled the room, and Bill turned away in exasperation.
“Gawd, she sounds like Woody Woodpecker on acid,” I said.
Keeping his voice low, Neil confided, “I don’t think she’s getting any nookie.”
“That makes sense,” Bruce agreed. “She’s been acting weird.”
“She can’t act any weirder than usual,” I mumbled. “Why do you think she’s hard up?”
“She mentioned that Lou was having twin beds delivered,” Neil informed his rapt audience.
“That could mean anything,” Spencer whispered.
“Yeah, but they’ve been living together for a couple of years now, so they’ve gotta be out of the female mating cycle.”
“Female mating cycle?” I’d never heard of it.
“Yeah, my father says that it’s impossible for any woman to maintain sexual relations for longer than a year. You get married to a woman, and she puts out for about a year. Wham, bam, it’s over like rover, and the guy spends the rest of his marriage pulling his pud.”
“You think Lou’s tongue is broken?” Bill asked, getting interested in spite of his better judgment.
“I don’t pretend to know how a pair of dykes do it,” Neil claimed.
“They rub their pussies together,” Spencer offered. “Sometimes they use double dildoes.”
“That’s stereotyping,” I remonstrated, not wanting to hear in-depth speculation about lesbian action. “I imagine gay girls have different ways of doing it. Just like we do. Some guys like oral, some like anal, and some stick with jerking and squirting.”
“What do you like, Mike?” Neil asked. “What goes on in the Jerkatorium?”
“I’ve heard that some lesbians pop butt plugs into each other,” Bruce contributed.
“I’ll do anything,” I answered, ignoring Bruce and Spencer. “With the right man.”
“Who’s the right man?” Neil asked. “Any fellow with a dick?”
“You mean you want to be in love first, Mike,” Bill said, exposing my frustrated romanticism. “Like what I’ve got with Tom.”
“Do you own a butt plug, Mike?” Neil asked.
The arrival of a stately nemesis rescued me from that inquisition. Tall, slim, dark black, Stacy Sawyer was the mayor’s campaign manager and his most trusted aide, next to his chief-of-staff, Lance Hancock, a man I’d never seen. Among the gay community, rumors held that Sawyer’s personal closet was a walk-in. She had lived in Northeast Portland, sharing a bed with her Japanese girlfriend for the past fifteen years, but she denied being a lesbian, and every couple of years The Portland Bee ran photos showing her getting engaged to a man. Naturally, none of these sham engagements ended in matrimony.
“The enemy,” I pronounced in a stage whisper.
Sawyer sauntered toward our candidate, and without preamble, asked how our fundraising was going. Before anyone could blurt out information of value to our opponents, I piped up with the late Senator Everett Dirksen’s famous remark, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.”
My comment alerted Kim Flanders to his danger. “Fundraising has been highly successful, Ms. Sawyer. Many contributors are eager to get the old guard out of office. Were you looking for a job with my campaign?”
“No, sweetie,” said the stately black woman. “I was looking for George Romney.”
Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen
"A gentleman . . . relayed that he sat by Dirksen on a flight once and asked him about the famous quote. Dirksen re-plied, 'Oh, I never said that. A news-paper fella misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so good that I never bothered to deny it.'" (The Dirksen Congress-ional Center)
Bill and Kim regarded Sawyer like she’d taken leave of her sanity. The volunteers and interns buzzed among themselves, no doubt puzzling over who George Romney was.
“George Romney’s dead,” Bill finally answered. “He died at age eighty-eight while exercising on a treadmill.”
“That’s strange because he just sent three dozen pizzas to the mayor’s office.” (Either she was exaggerating or somebody else had sent another half dozen. The notion that somebody had tagged onto my prank bothered me.)
The volunteers and interns had broken into coarse guffaws, but Bill and Kim glanced in my direction, suspicion clouding their eyes. I smiled blandly until Kim turned back to Sawyer and affirmed, “My campaign doesn’t engage in dirty tricks.”
“You don’t, Flanders; you’re only an also-ran." Sawyer gave me a hard look. "But you’ve got a sly dog on your staff.”
I rose from my chair and took a seat beside Lisa at the other end of the table. “Why don’t you hit on Sawyer while she’s here?” I asked.
“She is scrumptious,” Lisa agreed. “She’s got tits like candy apples.”
“You should tell her.”
Lisa shook her head. “I can’t cope with closet cases. Besides, Lou would shoot my ass. How about you? Since you struck out with Robbie, why not try Spencer?”
“Cute, but not my type.”
“Bruce?”
“No way.”
“Neil?”
“A one night stand, only.”
“Bill?”
“Not a chance. He’s rejected me so often, I’m getting a complex. I guess I’ll go home and spank the monkey again tonight.”
“Give it a couple of swats for me,” Lisa quipped. “I wish I had a monkey to spank.”
Meanwhile, Sawyer had stomped out, dissatisfied with our response. When I slipped back into my chair beside him, Bill stabbed me with his gaze. “Were you George Romney?” He looked like he wanted to admonish me, but a pleased grin fought for position on his face.
I was the picture of falsely accused innocence. “Pizza Hut brainwashed me. Otherwise, I’d have pulled something with more finesse. Calling in false orders is a chickenshit tactic.”
“Just make sure your chickens never come home to roost, Mike,” Bill warned.
Maintaining an expression of utmost blamelessness, I gripped his thigh. “They weren’t chickens, Bill. They were pizzas.” Bill wordlessly lifted my hand from his leg.
“Why don’t you discuss it with your partner,” I whispered. “Tell Tom Knott I’d go for a three-way. I’ve heard stories about you guys.”
Bill shook his head as though grieved by my suggestion, and the party broke up shortly afterward. Everybody hugged goodnight, and Lisa and I walked through the fading light to my fifteen-year-old Honda car parked on a residential street.
“Do you think Neil’s getting any dick?” Lisa asked.
“Why wouldn’t he? He lives with a man. They’re both homosexual.”
“I think his roommate’s lost interest in him. He’s probably flogging his dolphin by himself—just like you.”
“Look. Can we get off that subject? You make me sound pathetic.”
“Your sex life is pathetic, Mike. How long’s it been since you had a big one stuffed up your ass?”
When I pulled up in front of her house, Lou was working in the yard under the setting sun’s last flares. I waved cheerily while Lisa was climbing out, but Lou brandished a jagged yard implement. The gesture seemed threatening so I drove off without further greeting and parked a few minutes later in the drive of my parents’ house in Ladd’s Addition.
Portland’s fourth mayor, William S. Ladd, envisioned a neighborhood of slow traffic, tree-lined streets, and visible beauty. The neighborhood he designed surrounded a central park filled with roses and other flowers, avenues extending spoke-like from the center to circle around four other diamond-shaped parks. Most of the grand scale, large-family houses had been constructed between 1910 and 1925, some three stories high and built of brick and stone in the Decorator Box style. Other houses in Ladd’s Addition had an Asian look or were Craftsman style or neo-Gothic, with a couple of Swiss Chalets added to the mix. The community had been planned so well that it resisted urban blight and remained much as it had been when the streets were first paved and the final houses built.
William Sargent Ladd
The sun had fully set before I entered through my private door (actually the door leading into the basement), descended into the dark, avoided the laundry room, turned left at the fruit and beer cellar, shifted right before reaching the furnace, and entered the apartment my parents had given me upon my coming out.
As my mother announced to the family, “Since Mike will be inviting his boyfriends home, he needs privacy.” My pop nodded his dubious agreement, and my younger sister Janet hooted and shrieked "Tinker Bell Fairy, Tinker Bell Fairy, Tinker Bell Fairy," until the entire division was ringing with her words. Janet, all of sixteen and a sophomore at Grover Cleveland High School, referred to me as Tinker Bell from that day onward.
My pop, Art Dodger (doubtless my paternal grandparents had thought their cruel joke cute), was forty-eight years old. My mom, Donna, was forty-five. Both had been born while Dwight Eisenhower was president, and they’d graduated high school during the Richard Nixon presidency. They’d given birth to me during the Jimmy Carter administration (all my life I’ve felt like I was in the boat with Carter the day the crazed aquatic rabbit attacked).
President Carter battles the Killer Rabbit
They’d hatched Janet during the last year of Ronald Reagan’s second term, no doubt the reason why the miasma of right-wing ideology and supply-side economics emanated from her.
Safe in my own apartment, I hung my striped necktie on my tie bar and threw my powder blue dress shirt, dark blue slacks, dark socks, and bikini underpants into the laundry basket, and showered the day’s political slime from my gym-sculpted body. After I dried, I pulled up a pair of dark green shorts, worn sans underpants, a faded orange tee shirt, and sandals. Then I stretched out on my bed and studied my creation.
The walls and ceiling of my bedroom bore a spectacle of male beauty, a salacious poem without words. For five years, I clipped photographs from magazines, men in sexy swimsuits, men in bicycle shorts, nudes, men in costumes and uniforms, whatever (or whomever) I found attractive. Over time I glued these pictures onto my plaster, even blending them atop each other, until every inch was covered with the gigantic collage. After I pasted in the final small figure, a football player the curve of whose butt had been deliciously captured by the camera, I covered the creation with multiple coats of a hard, clear shellac.
As I studied my masterpiece, awestruck by its magnificence, I felt the tickle of arousal. However, just when my prediction to Lisa was about to come true, I heard my sister’s feet thumping down the cellar steps, though slightly muffled by the white sports socks she constantly wore. An impetuous hand shook my doorknob, but I’d wisely locked it. A sharp rapping followed.
“Hey, Tinker Bell, what’re you doing? Why’s your door locked? Are you playing with yourself again? You wanna go blind?” Janet was a fresh twerp, but she thought herself witty. “Come on up as soon as the swelling goes down. Supper’s ready.”
I wrenched the door open while she was still shouting. I tried to push her back, but she slipped under my arm and, arms akimbo, studied my collage. “The pervert dungeon.”
“Scram.” I pushed her out and shut the door behind us.
When I reached the top of the stairs, Mahatma, our ninety-five pound golden retriever nearly bowled me over. Mahatma had a pink toy rabbit and two tennis balls in his mouth. I grabbed one of the balls and threw it into the living room. Mahatma roared after it, kicking up the throw rugs in his wake.
Mom and Pop were already seated at the table, so Janet and I took our places. We sat quietly while Mom recited, “As we pray for the peace and contentment of all living things, we offer thanks to the gracious animal and the bountiful plants who offered their bodies for our nourishment.”
We loaded our plates. The gracious animal was meat loaf with a gigantic dollop of ketchup and sprigs of chives. The bountiful plants were a big bowl of green peas and a platter of boiled red potatoes that we mashed with our folks and covered with butter, salt, and pepper. The entire family sipped from brimming eight-ounce tumblers of whole milk.
The Portland White House used as a model for the fictitious Ankeny Mansion (Photo by the author)
Bill had mentioned that he and his lover Tom had been invited to the Ankeny mansion for dinner. According to Bill, dinner with David Ankeny, Alex Skidmore with their family would begin with oysters baked in the shell, proceed to frogs’ legs, and end with a dessert I couldn’t pronounce. As I chewed my meat loaf and potatoes, I was grateful that my family ate real people food. I bet that Bill wasn’t getting fork-mashed red potatoes with his frog’s legs.
“We listened to the mayor’s speech, Mike,” Pop said. “Do you think it’ll hurt Kim’s chances?”
Janet made a gaseous sound with her mouth.
I chewed my food before answering. “Who knows. Sleaze can backfire, like it did on Pat Buchanan in 1992.”
“He’s a terrible man,” Mom declared, slipping Mahatma a piece of meat loaf. “What did he do?”
“He was tackling President Bush during the Georgia primary and he ran an attack ad showing scenes from Tongues Untied and claimed the film had been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts under Bush. The add showed a scene from the movie where semi-clad men in leather are dancing—with Bush’s face superimposed and words scrolling across the screen claiming the art Bush funded ‘glorified homosexuality, exploited children, and perverted the image of Jesus Christ.’”
“Bush wouldn't do that,” Janet flared.
“The public agreed with Janet. Buchanan's audience couldn't figure out why he was splashing the images he was attacking across their television screens. The backlash turned the undecided voters toward Bush.”
“Why are we talking about these people?” Mom asked.
“You asked him,” Janet said.
After supper, I hurried toward the stairs while Mom told Janet to wash the dishes.
“Let Tinker Bell’s gay ass do the dishes. It’s his turn.”
“Janet, don’t be bigoted. I don’t know what you pick up at that school. You should be proud that your brother’s gay.”
“Whatever. Why can’t he do the dishes?”
“You wash them so well, dear. Mike isn’t a good dishwasher.” Her voice dropped, presumably so I wouldn’t hear. “He leaves food stuck on the plates.”
“Tinker Bell does it on purpose,” Janet howled. “So he can get out of washing them.”
“Janet, your brother spends every day working on an important political race. It’s going to make a big difference in all of our lives if we can get Justin T. Albee out of office and Kim Flanders in. You wash the dishes.”
Grinning, I hurried down the stairs to my room.
An hour later, restless, bored, lonely, I went for a Friday night prowl. My triumph with the pizzas and the dishwashing hadn’t satisfied deeper urges. My nerves were jangling, and my body cried out for action.
After slipping into classic white jockey briefs, a faded tee shirt, jeans, and Nike running shoes, I shoved quietly out my private door. The night air held a touch of autumn, but not enough to send me back for my jacket. Striding quickly, I soon reached the corner and caught a TriMet bus heading toward downtown Portland. I walked toward Southwest Stark Street and found a couple of guys loitering in front of Skindive, a boy-boy bar popular with the young set.
“Any of you hotties have a wet hand stamp?”
A tall college boy poured into tight, white shorts pressed the back of his hand to mine. I blew him a kiss and proceeded inside. The bouncers were collecting ten dollar cover charges from a line of gay boys and girls, but I passed my hand under the ultra violet light and a bouncer admitted me without question.
Every table was packed with jabbering, feeding, and drinking mouths, and every barstool was plastered with a gay ass. I slid between two guys wearing sexy club wear. “Henry’s dark,” I called to one of the bartenders.
“Rosy Palms Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri is tonight’s special,” he shouted over the throbbing music.
I shuddered. “I’ll stick with Henry’s.”
I paid for my beer and stood with my back to the wall, watching the crowd. The line waiting to get into the bar was lengthening, and seemed evenly divided between boys and girls, though the crowd at the tables remained two-thirds gay male. Most were considerably younger than I, some looking like high school students. I wondered how many fake identification cards had bought admittance.
As I scanned the room, nearly yawning over the sad sameness, my wondering eyes lit upon a new object of my heart’s desire, like Tippecanoe first seeing Tyler or Ike meeting Bob Taft. (In 1952, Adlai Stevenson ran a blatantly homophobic ad in which an announcer with a falsetto voice whined “Ike. [Sigh] Bob. [Sigh] Oh Ike.”). The object of my heart’s desire was sitting at a table with a dark lady, and they were drinking reddish concoctions that I guessed must be the much ballyhooed Rosy Palms Frozen Strawberry Daiquiris. His thick red-blond hair was a combed mane, his skin was cream, and his build (what I could see of chest and shoulders) was divine. He glowed with mystic, almost feminine, beauty and though I only caught a glimpse of him through the milling crowd, my shoulders came unstuck from the wall and I propelled forward as though I’d been pushed.
Chicago Republican Convention of 1952
Presidential Candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower
with Senator Robert Taft
As I threaded through the crowd, spilling drinks and earning slurs, I saw my lust-object rise, and realized that his perfection continued all the way to the floor. He turned, and his exquisite business suit (out of place in that environment, but on him it looked swell) caught his form so I saw the curvaceous swell of his ass. Then his companion stepped in front of him and I froze, my heel digging into the toes of an annoyed stranger. The object of my heart’s desire had been sitting with Stacy Sawyer, Albee’s campaign manager. My hesitation was my undoing. Before I could shove through the crowd, my quarry had reached the exit door. Leaving the club was easier than entering, so they were gone in a heartbeat. I wormed my way to their table, arriving at the same time as their waiter. The waiter, a delicious morsel himself, but a moon pie in comparison to the towering wedding cake he’d served, was reaching for a credit card slip.
“Let me get that for you,” I offered, beating him to it. I raised it to my eyes, but Sawyer’s signature lay upon the paper. I gritted my teeth, handed the slip to the waiter, and dropped my ass into the seat the guy had vacated, still warm. His warmth aroused me.
“There’re groups waiting for this table,” the waiter said.
“Did you know the guy who was here?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen him before. He was a looker, wasn’t he? However, you can’t sit here.”
“I’ve got such an aching boner I can’t get up right now. Give me a minute. Unless you’d like to crawl under the table and help me out.”
The waiter laughed. “Thanks for the offer. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to soften before I bring the next group.”
The group he brought to the table was a posse of empty-headed, jabbering flight attendants, so I rose and left the bar. After spending the week trying to change the world by electing one gay mayor, I couldn’t handle inane conversations about shopping and restaurants.
As I walked down the darkened street, fourteen-year-olds begged spare change from me. Also teenaged prostitutes peddled their wares, many of them boys who’d been dropping chemicals of non-prescription street vintage to enhance their breasts and buttocks.
As I walked I tried to imagine why Stacy Sawyer would’ve showed up in Skindive, but I couldn’t figure it out. It didn’t make any sense that the most closeted dyke in Portland would haul her ass into a popular gay bar—gossip central in the gay community—when she worked for a homophobic politician who’d dump her on the spot if he found out.
I passed several gay bars, but they catered to youth (at least, younger than my twenty-five years), and besides they had guards outside searching the patrons before they entered. I couldn’t imagine allowing some hireling snoop to search me so I could enter a bar. Just beyond the pair of youth bars stood an ancient bar that catered to older drag queens. Those babes weren’t my speed either. At the corner, I encountered two members of the patrol.
After years of harassment and brutality against the sexual minority crowd inhabiting Stark Street, the gay community had established its own volunteer patrol. Armed with cell phones, the patrol traveled in pairs, confronted harassers, and reported incidents. Sadly, we’d learned we couldn’t rely on police protection. In fact, a couple of years earlier, two men caught beating up a man outside a gay bar had turned out to be off-duty police officers.
I stopped and talked to the man and woman wearing patrol armbands. He was an excessively tall and skinny candy ass with jet black hair and black fingernail polish. Had he been called upon to bring some homophobe to justice, I doubted whether the results would’ve been pretty. Any eight-year-old girl could’ve snapped him like a twig. His partner, on the other hand, was the muscle of the family. This diesel dyke looked like she spent twelve hours a day in the gym. She was only about five foot five tall, but compact; she was one solid muscle.
“Quiet night?” I asked.
“There haven’t been many occurrences since we started doing the weekend patrol,” the diesel dyke replied.
“Yeah,” the candy ass minced, lighting a cigarette. “We mainly call cabs for queers too drunk to drive.”
“When we get our homophobe mayor out of office, you guys can stop doing this.”
“I hope,” the diesel dyke said, stepping away from her partner’s side-stream smoke.
“When we elect Kim Flanders, the Portland Police Bureau will change,” I continued, somewhat repetitiously.
“I never vote,” the candy ass said.
The diesel dyke glanced at the candy ass with disgust. “You’re gonna vote this time, Candy Ass.” (Obviously, others shared my impression, or perhaps Candy Ass really was his street name).
“It’s important,” I assured Candy Ass. “Did you hear the mayor’s remarks tonight?”
“I heard,” the diesel dyke said. “Made me want to vote against Flanders.”
The diesel dyke’s comment discouraged me more than anything else I could’ve heard. I walked away and slipped into Gossip’s Den, a more age-appropriate gay bar. While I was watching a guy bending over the pool table to take his shot, the bartender called me by name.
“Mike Dodger.”
I recognized a guy I’d dallied with while I was a political science major at Portland State. “Hi, Keith. Are you bartending now?”
Keith placed his hand on mine. “Yeah. I couldn’t get a real job after I graduated.”
“That’s discouraging.” I told him that I was working for the Flanders campaign.
“Oh, you guys got trashed today.”
I didn’t get it; the gay community was identifying with the oppressor. “Didn’t the mayor make you want to vote for Kim Flanders?”
“Uh, sure.”
Keith was saying that to humor me. For reasons passing all understanding, gay voters had identified with Justin T. Albee’s homophobia. I glanced toward the bar’s front windows. A few days earlier, two of Kim Flanders’ political signs had stood in the front. That night, they were gone.
Keith brought me a bottle of Henry’s dark. “Are you still going to work here when this bar goes straight?” I asked.
“Straight?”
“Of course. Gossip’s Den is either going to have to go straight or close. Albee has promised the city that he’ll clean up Stark Street during his second term. He means to drive out the gay element. Maybe Gossip’s Den will become a sports bar.”
Keith’s face paled. “I don’t follow football.”
“You better start, Keith.”
I finished my beer and left Keith standing ashen faced behind the bar. I cruised down the street, but I didn’t meet anybody interesting. On my return pass, I observed Keith taping his “Flanders for Mayor” signs to his window glass. I considered going in for another beer, but I didn’t want to drink. What I really needed, I wasn’t finding. Getting the signs replaced had been a job well done, so I sauntered toward the bus stop and waited ten minutes beside a pair of twitching tweakers jacked on crank.
The tweaker's view of Stark Street
Back home, I stripped to my underwear and slipped into bed, alone again. My body was screaming for release, but masturbation hardly seemed worth the effort. I fell into an uneasy slumber and slipped from dream to dream. Deep in the watches of the night, I dreamed of the reddish-blond guy I’d seen with Sawyer.
In my dream, he enfolded himself into my arms, and as I embraced him and searched his strong back with my exploring hands, I kissed his hot lips. His tongue pushed into my mouth, a probing sting of mint and fire, and I sucked it. I nibbled on his ear and drove my tongue inside his ear canal. Next my mouth found his nipples, which grew hard under my flicking member, and I traveled down his abdominal ripples to his navel, a sweet golden bowl.
He was moaning with pleasure as I licked his body, but the best was yet to come. I traveled to his groin, and as my mouth found his shaft and explored its solid, wide head, my body throbbed and I crashed through the boundaries of orgasm, and the pulsing excitement of nature dragged me from the sexual abandonment of sleep to a twisting, squirming awakening as I ejaculated the human stream, unrelenting, into my white cotton Jockey briefs, alone.
