Though the sun had been shining when I climbed into my Civic, thick clouds rolled in during my drive to East Multnomah County. Halfway to my destination, I switched on my lights and wipers. As I pulled into the subdivision where my friend Charles Charters shared a house with three other public school teachers, an ominous green cloud overhead dumped its load of ice. I parked at the curb, turned off my lights and engine, and waited while the hail rattled like machine gun fire. I called Charles on my cell, told him I was sitting in front of his house, and lingered impatiently. Though I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and gritted my teeth, a full ten minutes slipped past until the hailstorm ceased.
Slogging through the pellets of ice melting onto the sidewalk, I carried my briefcase to the door, which Charles swung open before I reached it. A man I’d never met was sitting on the couch, and I assumed he was one of Charles’s roommates.
Charles introduced me to Larry, also a third grade teacher. “I broached Larry on this subject, Mike, and he wants to help.”
I gave Charles a reproachful look. He shouldn’t have been bringing people unknown to me into the scheme. “Larry knows everything?” I demanded. I may have sounded insultingly apprehensive.
Larry grinned and spoke in an ingratiating tone. “Relax, Mike, I’m a gay man, pushed around and bullied my whole life. I want a mayor who understands me, and I’ll happily take a few risks to get Albee out of office.”
I gave Larry the once over. He was about the same age as Charles, about thirty-nine, and his face betrayed that sad, desperate look of a homosexual on the threshold of forty, the year the party ends forever. He was wearing Dockers slacks and a knit Izod shirt.
I shook my head. “Don’t get involved if you believe there’s a risk.” Then I saw his determination and bent to the inevitable. “Do you understand the consequences of our getting caught?”
“A trip to the state pen,” Larry answered soberly.
“Just so you know,” I said, opening my briefcase. “As it is, I’m glad you’re with us. I have eight hundred and four cards, and you have to get them finished Monday. Tuesday’s the last day to register for the November election.”
I handed over the registration cards, sat down on the floral print couch beside Charles, and asked if they had the morning paper. Larry tossed it to me. I pulled out the section I’d slipped into my briefcase at the breakfast table and compared it to Charles and Larry’s paper. East county residents didn’t get the Metro section, and their paper didn’t carry Lisa’s picture. However, they received the same editorial page, and the editorial board was demanding that Kim Flanders drop out of the race.
The anonymous editorial bewailed about and remonstrated over our dirty campaign tactics (if they only knew) with pointed comments about Lisa tearing up the mayor’s poster, the single dirty tactic they knew about, and that the mayor’s dirty tactic. The editorial made no mention of the lies the poster had presented or of how the mayor’s team had planted it to snag a guileless hothead from our staff.
“Kim Flanders and his staff conspired to violate Oregon’s campaign laws,” the editorial raged, and went on to call Kim a has-been baby-kisser, a boodler, a jackleg politico, and a muckraker. The writer must’ve ravaged his thesaurus for those terms, most of which the ordinary reader wouldn’t recognize, and none of which applied to Kim.
The editor had saved his big guns for the end. “This paper could support a gay candidate who eschewed personal perversion,” he sneered. “But ages of moral teaching and human experience have taught humanity that sex between men is evil. Anyone seeking a position of authority should rise above carnal and spiritual degradation. Mr. Flanders lacks the moral authority to lead, and should quit this mayoral race.”
“He’s had sex?” Larry asked mockingly. “He’s not only gay, but he’s also had sex with a man?”
“They make gay sex sound bad,” Charles agreed.
“The homophobic assholes,” I swore. “Name one politician who hasn’t had sex. How about that darling of the right, Strom Thurmond? Old Strom was a heterosexual—was he ever! You didn’t catch him rising above carnal and spiritual degradation; only he did it with women so editorial writers didn’t care.”
“Sex with women?” Larry asked, laughing at the mental picture. “How’d he live to be a hundred?”
“Beats me. The man had a reputation. Senator John Tower once said that when Strom dies, ‘they’ll have to beat his pecker down with a baseball bat in order to close the coffin lid.’”
“Did they?” Charles asked. “Beat his pecker down, I mean.”
“Who knows. I don’t know, but he once fucked a woman in the car transporting her from the penitentiary to the death house. She polished Strom Thurmond’s dick on her way to the electric chair. Everybody knew what a horny bastard he was. Thurmond once asked Lyndon Johnson’s daughter Lynda to go bike riding with him in the Washington suburbs, and Johnson absolutely forbade it.”
Strom Thurmond preparing a manifesto to keep African-Americans "in their place."
A. C. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, President Lyndon Johnson, and Lynda Johnson, Alexandria, 1964
“Johnson had his own affairs, didn’t he?” Larry added.
“Lady Bird Johnson walked in on her husband nailing one of his secretaries on the Oval Office sofa. After that, Johnson ordered the Secret Service to ring a buzzer whenever Lady Bird left the residence.”
Larry and Charles offered coffee and cinnamon buns, but I told them I was needed at the office. They promised to have the registration cards finished by Monday afternoon, so I ventured outdoors, which had grown colder, hopped in my car, and sped back to Portland.
The sky was dark, and grew darker still as I drove west. Lightning illuminated the horizon, thunderclaps rolled across the sky, and the rising wind buffeted my Honda. Lightning is a rare event in the Willamette Valley, and I hoped that Mom was home with Mahatma. Mahatma was a “Yellow Dog” in more than one sense, and storms terrified him. Also I thought about Pop soldiering along with his mail sack. Of course, considering where we live, Pop was used to rain. (There’s a saying that the Devil won’t take Oregonians because they’re too wet to burn). But lightning was another matter.
Since the day was a Saturday, I parked directly in front of campaign headquarters. Walking in, I passed pair of volunteers lugging lawn signs, mallets, and wooden stakes. By that time, the lightning had moved toward Mt. Hood, but the wind was driving a hard, slanting rain through my suit pants. I’d donned a waterproof raincoat to protect the rest of my clothes.
“Way to go,” I encouraged the volunteers. “Glad to see you’re not letting a little weather dampen your enthusiasm.” The volunteers, soaked to the skin after half a dozen steps, fixed their jaws, growled something at me, and passed on.
My cell vibrated, but Lisa Shaw cradled her telephone when she saw me. “Mike, I was calling you. Where’ve you been?”
I pointed to my wristwatch. “I had to meet a couple of our volunteers near Gresham.”
“Kim isn’t running in Gresham.”
“I know that. I said near Gresham. Why are you so edgy?”
She shook her head. “I’m worried about the City Club debate. This morning’s editorial tied Kim’s boxers in a twist.”
I grinned at her. “You think he wears boxers? According to the mayor, Kim wears scanty panties.”
Lisa stuck out her tongue at me. “How do you know? You haven’t gotten into them.”
“Not yet,” I said, shaking my head mock-tragically. “He’s playing coy.”
Lisa chucked. Then she gave me a sly look and dropped her voice to a confidential level. “What kind of underpants do you wear, Mike?”
I knew I was giving her ammo to heckle me with, but I let her have her fun. “Depends on my mood. This morning I’m wearing bikini briefs that match my suit.”
“Aha, I knew it. Scanty panties,” Lisa hooted, bringing Bill running from his office. “You’re a shirtlifter, Mike.”
“I’ll bet you’re wearing men’s Jockey briefs.”
“Fuckin’-A,” Lisa bragged. “Someday I’m gonna open the fly and take a leak.”
“What is the matter with you people?” Bill moaned, mussing his hair by pulling on it with both hands. “Mike, where have you been? Have you seen Neil?”
I gesticulated wildly behind Lisa’s back. “Neil never made it home last night. Now, he’s trying to get back into Bob’s good graces. He’ll meet us at the City Club.”
“What did you do to him?” Bill whispered, half-dragging me into his office.
“Nothing,” I replied, batting my eyelids.
Bill stared steadily as though he didn’t believe a word I uttered.
“I initiated him into the Stink Tank.”
Bill’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “No shit? Did he like it?”
“Oh, he sure did, Bill. He tasted the dark side and liked it.”
Bill shivered, whether with excitement or alarm, I couldn’t say. “You’re going to be the death of me, Mike. What evil scheme have you thought up for this event”
“First, I’m going to circulate through the crowd and chat with a few reporters.”
Chatting sounds too innocent for your subtle, Machiavellian brain. “What are you going to say?”
I declaimed passionately, “if an elected official wants to avoid a bad press, all he has to do is fuzz the controversial issues or carefully work his way around them.”
Bill squinted at me. “That’s a weird remark. What the hell does it mean?”
“Who knows. It sounds good when applied to the mayor.”
Bill grinned in agreement. “Did you make that up?”
“No, that’s Spiro Agnew.”
Bill’s smile faded. “Agnew? Former Vice President Agnew? That Republican crook?”
“He gave some great quotes—or his speechwriters did.”
Bill was so flustered that he forgot to ask me what I planned to do once the speeches started. Just as well. What he didn’t know wouldn’t make him worry.
The candidate himself drove us to the Multnomah Athletic Club on Southwest Salmon Street where the City Club of Portland was hosting a candidate forum featuring office seekers running in local races.
“I’m nervous,” Kim Flanders admitted, wincing as an earsplitting thunderclap struck nearby. “I need you guys’ support. After that editorial, it’s hard to face a crowd.”
“Some friend of the mayor’s wrote that editorial,” I said, gazing out at the unusually heavy rain. “I guarantee it. That editorial had Stacy Sawyer’s dirty fingerprints all over it.”
“Do you expect me to say that, Mike?”
“Not in those words. Hold up the editorial. Read from it. Then say that a famous person once said that ‘one of the great dangers of the media is the constant temptation of elected officials to use them to their political advantage.’ You needn’t name the famous person.”
“Mike, are you quoting Agnew again?” Bill demanded.
“Yeah,” I confessed.
“I wish you’d cut it out. It’s embarrassing.”
“Freedom of speech is useless without freedom of thought.”
“Another quote from Spiro Agnew?”
“Exactly. Spiro T. Agnew. He really let ‘em rip.”
The auditorium at the Multnomah Athletic Club was packed with City Club members and their guests, candidates and their staffs, interns, and volunteers, and the ubiquitous reporters and photographers. Some campaign staffers were standing in the rear, holding up their candidate’s political signs, and Bill directed Lisa to join them.
“Take both signs, Lisa,” he ordered. “I’ll make sure that Kim is situated, and then I’ll join you.”
“What about Mike?” she protested, fully convinced that she was doing most of the campaign work, and I none.
“He has his own assignment,” Bill said, while I thumbed my nose at her.
Every campaign had set up tables along the side of the room and was distributing campaign materials. Neil, looking pale and blurry-eyed, was passing out brochures, plastering lapel stickers on attractive men, handing out bumper stickers, and writing down the address of anyone who wanted a lawn sign. Bunny and the Buckaroo were pretending to be City Club guests interested in our campaign literature. I nudged Bunny and pointed my thumb toward the men’s room.
A dim-witted volunteer was sitting behind Justin T. Albee’s table. I stuck an Albee sticker on my jacket, proudly proclaiming myself a tireless worker for the mayor’s cause, and shoved another dozen stickers into my pocket for future misuse. The volunteer smiled at me so I helped myself to an armload of his campaign literature and stickers, struggled into the men’s room, and watched Bunny dump the load into the waste paper receptacle.
“Hang onto Albee’s bumper stickers,” I suggested. “We’ll plaster them on the windshields of cars parked in church parking lots on Sunday morning.”
“Driver’s side?” Bunny asked mischievously.
“Where else?”
I left the restroom, whistling softly. I hoped that Albee would drain his campaign account paying for new printing. Selecting a second row seat in front of the mayor’s podium, I draped my coat over the chair to reserve it. Once my strategic position was secure, I made a cautious circuit of the room to spy out anyone who would recognize me.
Spying a reporter I knew, I zigged when he zagged and avoided recognition. Soon I ran across a novice political reporter, The Portland Bee’s new hire straight out of journalism college, and blocked her path. She was fresh-faced, fair-haired, and eager—a perfect fly for my web.
“Will citizens refuse to be led by a series of Judas goats down tortuous paths of illusion and self-destruction?” I observed as she tried to step around me.
“Excuse me?” She looked at my Albee sticker. “What did you say?”
I repeated Spiro Agnew’s words, without attribution, and she dutifully penned them into her steno book. When she asked for my name, I faded into the crowd.
Abandoning the eager reporter to her doom, I glimpsed a green pastel suit topped by a head of red-blond perfection. He looked like the highest kicking fairy in the auditorium, though Neil, Bunny and the Buckaroo, Kim, Bill, and I set the bar fairly high. I wanted to run and kiss him, but he hadn’t spotted me. I intended to avoid him until the forum was over.
Bill was standing on the platform, wildly berating a bespectacled specimen who looked as if he’d been born in his brown suit. I saw Bill’s victim throw up his hands and move Kim’s name card to a podium on the mayor’s left. Bill checked how Kim looked in his new location, and when he was satisfied, propelled the candidate into the crowd. Kim Flanders began working the room. His mission accomplished, Bill jumped off the platform, shook hands with few friends, elbowed to the rear, and relieved Lisa of one of her signs.
I made my way back to the candidates’ tables. Neil was busily handing out stickers and flyers. “Make sure nobody takes too many,” I warned. “Lifting the rival candidate’s literature is an old political ruse.”
“Just one per customer,” Neil replied, plastering a sticker onto a well-built man’s chest.
Moving down the line, I noticed that the volunteer had restocked the mayor’s campaign materials, so I grabbed another armload and headed for the trash barrel.
The volunteer caught me after I’d taken two steps. “That leaves us hardly any left for the table.”
“That’s okay. You don’t need many on the table because I’m distributing them to the crowd.”
“Oh. That makes sense,” the poor boob agreed. “I’ll help you hand them out.”
“Somebody’s got to stay with the table. I can handle this.” I pulled away from him and dashed for the restroom. I handed the armload to Bunny. “That’s the crop, I think.”
Bunny dumped the expensive printing into the wastepaper container, unfastened the soap dispenser, and poured its contents over the brochures. He filled the soap container with water and dumped it in with the soap and Albee flyers. When Bunny had created a nice pulpy mass, he fitted the soap dispenser back into its mounting and returned the swinging lid to the trash can.
“Papier mache,” I said approvingly.
“Looks finer than cream gravy,” Bunny crowed.
As I emerged from the men’s room, I heard the moderator introducing the candidates so I rushed to my seat.
Each candidate had been allowed five minutes for introductory remarks. Then the moderator would read from a list of questions, some posed by reporters and others posed by City Club members. Each candidate had one minute to respond to the question. Naturally partisan members had sneaked in questions favorable to their own candidate and less favorable to the opposition, but that was an old game and Bill had Kim thoroughly prepared.
The mayor spoke first, and for the first minute of his speech I smiled at him. When I had him focused upon me, I changed my demeanor. I started to look worried, and I warned the mayor against his words with a tiny shake of my head. When he reached his main point, I assumed an air of alarm and shook my head more emphatically. “Don’t go there,” my gestures warned. “You’re alienating your audience. You’re going to lose the race.”
Justin T. Albee’s confidence faltered, but he had the presence of mind to stop looking at me. However, as his gaze wandered, he settled upon Bunny who’d taken a position far to my left. Bunny promptly signaled the mayor to check his fly. After receiving a couple of urgent messages, Justin T. Albee slowly dropped his hand to the front of his pants while still attempting to falter along with his introductory speech. He caught himself before his fingers actually reached his zipper, but he was a shattered specimen.
He next made the error of seeking comfort from the other side of the room. Unfortunately for him, he fixed upon the Buckaroo who promptly gave him the finger. The mayor’s voice trailed off, and he sat down and wiped his streaming brow. Grinning triumphantly, I witnessed Albee check his fly and swear to himself when he found it respectably closed.
Next, Kim Flanders spoke, and he delivered an eloquent and powerful message about the citizen’s needs and aspirations, and how the city government could best help. He sat down to applause, while the mayor had received nary a hand.
So the event proceeded, with Bunny, the Buckaroo, and I finding ways to distract the mayor every time he stood at his podium. However, during the mayor’s closing remarks, which I greeted with raised eyebrows, I felt a hand grip my shoulder.
“Mike Dodger. I should have known.”
“Oh, hi, Tad,” I greeted the reporter I’d avoided earlier.
Tad Manes wrinkled his nose like he smelled a rat. “What’re you doing to Albee?”
“What am I doing? I’m listening to him drone on until the whole roomful is ready to hang themselves.”
Tad laughed quietly. “In your dreams I’d print that statement. Maybe I should write an article about how you’ve been distracting him.”
“I haven’t done a thing, Tad,” I lied, meeting his eyes steadily and confidently. “Not a thing. That would violate a cardinal rule of political campaigns.”
“What’s that?” he inquired suspiciously.
“If the opposition is self-destructing, get out of the way.”
With a derisive snort, Tad slipped back to the press table, shaking his head in wonder or doubt, I didn’t know which. However, he’d distracted me from my mission, and the pause had given the mayor a chance to recover. That’s when Justin T. showed his stuff, because he did pull it together, and his conclusion launched another forceful attack on Kim’s sexual orientation.
“This pussyfooting, yellow-dog electioneer, this fallen man, this jaded homosexual, this whistle-stopped, bandwagon, public-teat-sucking buncombe, this mugwump of bafflegag wants to replace me as your mayor,” Justin T. Albee thundered, and I wished that Kim Flanders had his talent for invective. “Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to stand up for purity, righteousness, and the spirit of God. Do not elect a red-tape, backstairs, pink-ribboned porkplum in frilly panties to the highest office of our great city. Cast your patriotic vote for the God-given natural order and return me to our fine city hall as your duly elected mayor.”
Kim followed with a strong statement against homophobia but no words could assail invincible ignorance. I doubt that any bigot saw the great light of truth when Kim spoke because they were happily wallowing in the mayor’s pernicious rhetoric.
After the candidate forum we returned to headquarters. Lisa must’ve been gawking out the window when she should’ve been typing up a transcript of the mayor’s remarks. “Don’t look now, Mike,” she warned, meaning that I was expected to look.
I glanced up from composing anonymous e-mail spam imputing Justin T. Albee made incessant 1-900 calls to the psychic hotline before deciding city business. “Don’t look at what?”
“Don’t look now,” she repeated—annoyingly.
I rose from my desk and stomped over to hers, but she directed her eyes toward the street. The storm had passed before we emerged from the candidate forum, but the sidewalks were still wet. Between the window signs I saw Lance’s burgundy Saturn parked at the curb. My hesitant love was staring at our front door as though trying to make up his mind. Seeing him, my heart caught in my throat and I felt the same thunderbolt that struck me the night I first saw him.
“If this isn’t love,” Lisa crooned softly, “there’s no Glocca Morra.”
Lance was still wearing his green pastel suit, and he looked as yummy as a mint ice cream float with a cherry on top. Ignoring Lisa’s simpleminded Sapphic ditty, I rushed to the door before Lance could chicken out and haul ass.
“Coming to see me?” I trilled, and he whirled guiltily. He’d been opening his car door.
“You played a dirty trick on the mayor today,” he bellowed, attacking to cover his confusion.
“I don’t know what you mean, Lance. And, by the way, I’m glad to see you too.”
My hint was lost on him. Thoroughly vexed, he rounded his car and hissed, “You made faces at him.”
Faces? Was Albee such a dunce that he referred to my clever ploy as “making faces?” I snorted, “Albee must be confused. Considering his incoherent concluding remarks, I’d guess he was totally wasted. Did he smoke a little crack or was he drunk?”
Lance raised his arm in exasperation, and for a second I thought he might strike me. “Don’t fuck around with my candidate, Mike.”
He was truly peeved. To halt his accusations and threats, I stepped deftly under his arm and pressed against him. His thighs were firm, and I felt the heat of his crotch. “I’d rather fuck around with you, Lance.”
His self-control shot to hell, Lance gasped and a long, low moan escaped his lips, which I stifled with my own. I kissed him hard, and he responded with his tongue, forgetting he stood before the haunt of his fierce antagonist, forgetting his previous denials, forgetting his closeted fears. Forgetting all but his lust as a sharp bolt of love struck him and clung, mingling his life-force with mine, he kissed, and his hot, unthinking hands groped.
“Oh, Mike,” Lance whined as he pulled free, then turning about completely, threw his body against mine again. “I want you. Oh, Mike. I want you.”
I saw Lisa’s face pressed against the window, her eyes big and round behind her round glasses, and I let her see my hand explore Lance’s firm, round rump.
We stood for an eternity of time and space, but the timeless gold was rent by a city car roaring up the street and screeching to a halt behind Lance’s car, and the city car expelled a pair of brutish men, one short and hairy, the other tall and hatchet-faced, who slammed the doors behind them. Lance yanked away from me, hid his face, and stood furtively the inspectors bullied past and bowled into campaign headquarters.
“What the hell do they want?” Lance asked, offended by their brusque manners.
“Probably more harassment from your boss,” I replied. “He’s been using the cops to tear down our campaign signs. Looks like he’s playing with code enforcement now.”
Naturally, I believed I was exaggerating, so imagine my surprise when Lance and I walked into the Flanders headquarters in time to hear Short & Hairy pronounce “bad wiring” after ripping a map of Portland from the wall.
“You can tell that without looking?” Lisa demanded, her round eyes locked upon the remnants of the expensive map.
Bill St. John rushed from his office. “What is this? Who are you men? Give me your names.”
Refusing to answer, Short & Hairy sat at my desk and started writing a report. As his pen scratched across the form, he raised one buttock and farted. Lisa gasped and Neil wrinkled his nose. Bill stepped back a few paces.
Short & Hairy finished his report. “We’re gonna cite you buggers for faulty wiring. You got a week to rewire the building before we padlock the door.”
“This is outrageous,” Bill fumed. “If there really is faulty wiring, which I doubt, then talk to the landlord. We’re temporary tenants.”
“Yeah, temporary. You don’t know how temporary,” Hatchet Face snorted.
Short & Hairy handed Bill a pink slip. “Here’s your citation. We’ll be back next week to see if you fixed the problems.”
“Don’t ya think the plumbing might be bad too?” Hatchet Face asked.
“Yeah.” Hatchet Face and Short & Hairy yawned vacantly at the floor. “Yep. I see leaky pipes all over the place. Spillin’ raw sewage. A regular health hazard.” Short & Hairy planted his gaseous butt in my chair again and wrote out a second citation.
Laughing obscenely, the inspectors shoved off, leaving a heartsick crew in their wake. Lance appeared to be the most shocked, but Neil was the most vocal. “This is shit!” he shrieked, pitching a virtual hissy-fit and prancing around in a tight circle as he shrieked, “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Bill grabbed Neil by his collar and pulled him out of his spin. “It’s okay, Neil. We’re not shut down. Don’t get so excited.”
“Excited,” Neil sputtered. “Bob’s about to throw me out because I slept with Mike, and I don’t have anywhere to go.” He glanced hopefully around the room, and we all examined the ceiling tiles; except for Lance who studied me with hurt eyes.
“Why don’t ya move in with Mike?” Lisa suggested, causing Lance to stare even harder. Why they didn’t just tell Lance I was a total whore, I can’t imagine. My friends were going out of their way to ruin my relationship.
“Mike can’t take Neil in, Lisa,” Bill finally said. “His parents would object.” He turned to Neil. “If Bob throws you out, you can stay with Tom and me until you find a place.”
“Thanks, Bill,” Neil said. “I’m just pitching a tantrum, as Bob says. He won’t throw me out. It’s just that I got a rash on my thigh, and I think I’m losing a filling in my tooth.”
Wondering whether he got the rash before or after sleeping in my bed, I opened the supply closet, removed a spray bottle of Lysol, and fumigated my chair.
“Oh, fuckin’ hell, that fart,” Lisa blurted.
Lance was looking extremely pale. I slipped my arm around his waist. “Come on,” I suggested. “You need a glass of wine.”
Lance said nothing so I added, “Neil isn’t my lover, Lance. I’ll explain what they were talking about over a drink.”
Lance nodded, though distracted by Lisa’s sudden outburst.
“Those goddamn assholes,” Lisa suddenly screamed. “They weren’t even subtle. Pretending they had x-ray vision. Fuckin’ hell.”
“It’s okay, Lisa,” Bill said. “We’ll safeguard our campaign materials—in case those guys come back.” He shot me a significant look over Neil and Lisa’s shoulders, his eyes rolling toward my companion. Lance was, after all, a member of the opposition party, and no good could come from making him privy to our battle plans.
“Come on, Lance,” I coaxed, pulling him toward the street. “Let’s get that drink now.”
I didn’t drag Lance to Shove It: I wanted him to respect me in the morning. I took him to Pixie’s Pub, though we’d see little privacy there. My desire to find out what had transpired after we’d left was enormous. Bill had a lot on the ball, so he’d make certain that the campaign files were backed up and he’d secure the confidential information.
Anything can happen when a challenger faces a powerful and unscrupulous incumbent. Like in the old days, men running against Southern sheriffs got arrested on trumped-up charges, and some candidates even croaked in police custody. Of course, police investigations always cleared the officers of wrong-doing, and the local papers attributed these mysterious deaths to accidents, heart attacks, or drug overdoses. Sometimes the rival candidate hanged himself in his jail cell, using the traditional hemp rope he’d supposedly struggled in for that purpose. (Lisa would call me a sexist pig for using the generic h-word, but I’m only reporting the facts. In the past, political candidates were overwhelmingly male).
Justin T. Albee was playing rough, but I didn’t think he had the balls for pure brutality. I hoped not—I was standing on the front line (when I wasn’t sneaking behind enemy lines).
Meanwhile, Lance was eyeballing the bar, its open door revealing a mixed clientele of gay men, lesbians, and others of no discernible gender. Lance dragged down a deep breath, stiffened his upper lip, and preceded me into the pub. Every head swiveled on its neck as we walked to the bar against the rear wall.
“I don’t want wine,” he declared, studying the list of mixed drinks printed on the board.
“I suggested wine because you looked so pale,” I said. “Have what you want.”
“Frozen Pina Colada,” Lance told the guy in tight shorts and tee shirt behind the bar. He’d been drinking the Rosy Palms Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri special in Skindive, representing the stereotypical gayboy’s fondness for sweet, fancy drinks.
“My specialty,” bragged the bartender, blowing Lance a kiss.
I ordered a New Belgium Brussels Style Black Ale, and while the sexy barkeep was crushing ice in the blender to prepare Lance’s concoction, I handed out Kim Flanders’ fliers.
“Who’s this?” one tractor-pulling dyke slurred. Her lipstick lesbian lover rolled her eyes.
“Kim Flanders. He’s running for mayor.”
She squinted again at the photo. “It’s not you?”
“Hardly.” I was losing confidence in her. “Are you registered to vote?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“Well, if it turns out that you are, we’d appreciate your vote for Kim. Somebody’s got to stand up against the current mayor’s homophobia.”
“He’s a fuckin’ homophobe?” she demanded, ripping the flyer in two.
“Not Kim,” I shouted. “The incumbent mayor is a homophobe. The guy on the flyer is gay.”
Laden with our drinks, Lance loomed beside me and pulled me away. “Mike, stop politicking. You’re no good at it.”
“This from the guy who’s working for the man who suppresses us,” I muttered bitterly. People do get the government they deserve.
Doubt and hurt shadowed Lance’s eyes, and I feared I’d killed my chance of getting him into bed. I reminded myself why I was a political trickster—the open approach didn’t work. When I tried being forthright, I blew it every time. I was born to be the man in the shadows; push-polling, writing secret letters, spreading rumors, and voting the graveyard were my forte. Meanwhile, the object of my lust was sitting sullenly, his wounded feelings worn upon his sleeve.
“Your Pina Colada is melting,” I commented.
He took a resentful sip. I placed my hand atop his. “Lance, I’m sorry I snapped at you. That fake inspection got my goat.”
He shook his head. The inspection had bothered him too, bothered him far more than he was saying. “Let’s forget it. Maybe I should go home.”
“Don’t go; let’s put it behind us.” I hated the expression, but it worked. “It’s Saturday night. Let’s throw politics to the winds and have some fun.”
Lance looked steadily at me. “What kind of fun do you have in mind?”
I didn’t get to answer, because the Flanders crew chose that moment to invade the bar. Nor were my compatriots the least reluctant to interrupt our tête-à-tête. Lisa plopped her dykish butt on a chair to my left and punched Lance in the arm so hard he winced.
“Lance, the vulgar brute who bruised your arm is named Lisa.” Lisa held out her paw, which he grasped cautiously. I introduced him around the table to Bill, Kim, Neil, the interns, and volunteers.
“Feel free to discuss campaign strategy,” Lance joked. Lisa gave him a darkly suspect look, prompting Lance to grin like the cat who ate the cockatiel.
“Sure,” Kim said, “while you confess what new gags the mayor’s got up his sleeve—like that soft shoe team he sent to do a comic number about our wiring and plumbing.”
Lance reddened. “I’m feel terrible about those shenanigans. Some overzealous manager must’ve pulled that stunt.”
“Like Sawyer?” I interjected but Lance pressed on, “I can’t imagine Justin T. Albee knowing about it. He’s a good church-going man.”
I pounded Lisa on the back as beer streamed out her nose. Summoning the waiter, Kim ordered platters of nachos and fajitas.
“Do you go to church with Albee, Lance?” Neil asked, handing Lisa his napkin.
Lance laughed so hard he nearly swallowed his beer down the wrong pipe. “You sound like I’m dating the mayor.” He coughed. “I only work for the man. I haven’t darkened the door of a church since I left home. My parents were Pentecostal.”
“And you didn’t like being Pentecostal?” Lisa demanded sarcastically. My friends were needling Lance, but he was taking it in stride.
“I’m a big fan of a loving God,” he replied. “That wasn’t my parents’ version.”
“They were worshipping a pissed-off motherfucker?” Lisa asked meanly.
“Lisa,” Neil gasped, but Lance laughed good-naturedly and nodded agreement.
“We should introduce your parents to my mother,” I suggested. “She’d set them on a different path.”
“What’s your mother?”
“She’s into New Age. Whatever’s the latest trend. Right now we’re praying to the Hindu gods or Buddha before every meal. But in a few months, she’ll be off on astral travel, or Rastafarianism, or channeling, or the Star People. I wouldn’t be surprised to go home one night and find Mom building a Voodoo peristyle in the living room.”
“She sounds like fun,” Lance said wistfully, and my hopes rose.
“She is. Never a dull moment at my house.”
“How about the rest of your family?” He was getting personal, which meant he was interested.
“Oh, Pop carries the mail. After a lifetime working for the post office, he’s institutionalized and colorless. Nothing Mom does fazes him. He’s so passive he goes along with whatever she wants.”
“You have any brothers or sisters?” Lance asked, moving aside so the waiter could place the steaming platter of nachos in front of him.
Having met Janet at breakfast, Neil snorted until Fat Tire Ale streamed out his nose. Nasal disasters were common among my crowd.
“The fajitas will be along in a minute,” the waiter said, studying Neil warily.
“I have a sister,” I confessed, dumping nachos, cheese, olives, and stuff onto my plate. “She’s crazy as a shithouse rat. Best we don’t talk about her.”
Lisa was thumping Neil on the back, which didn’t go a long way toward helping him, but she gave it the old college try until Neil was red-faced and dripping. When he stood to clean his face in the restroom, Lisa propelled him in the right direction with a mighty swat on the ass.
“Bill, the staff are killing each other,” Kim Flanders warned, digging into the arriving fajitas.
Bill stood up, glanced after Neil’s retreating form, removed his suit coat, and loaded his plate with nachos. “Don’t worry, Kim,” Bill quipped cheerily. “When they’re dead, we’ll recruit new ones.”
Lance downed the melted remainder his strawberry daiquiri and ordered a second. He bought me another black ale as well. “With Justin T. Albee, we drink coffee or tea and eat maple bars. Then we sit in a circle of faith and talk quietly. Your way is a little different.”
“Circle of faith?” Lisa asked, eyeballing her plate. She grabbed the waiter’s arm. “There’s a greasy spot.”
The waiter examined Lisa’s plate, wiped it on his buttock, and set it back in front of her.
“Come over to the dark side, Lance,” Bill offered while switching his nacho laden plate with Lisa’s butt-wiped platter and stifling her outraged convulsion.
Lance raised his eyebrows at the offer, but he said nothing. Meanwhile, under the table my hand found his thigh. As I stroked, Lance gave me a quizzical look, though I felt his pants stretch.
“Lance, where in hell did the mayor get that speech he concluded with today?”
“He wrote it himself,” Lance said, stuffing a tortilla filled with strips of chicken, fried onions, sour cream, guacamole, and cheese into his mouth.
“That’s hard to believe.”
“It’s true. We used to write his speeches, but after he invented the pantywaist speech himself, he hasn’t trusted anyone else. He says that if Abraham Lincoln could write the Gettysburg Address, then other Republicans should write the words that come out of their mouths.”
“Everything Albee says is horseshit,” Lisa opined. “Fuckin’ Republicans.”
My hand advanced on Lance’s cock while I talked. “Fiorello La Guardia, the New York mayor who ousted the shady Jimmy Walker, was a Republican. But he once said, ‘I stand for the Republicanism of Abraham Lincoln, and let me tell you now that the average Republican leader east of the Mississippi doesn’t know any more about Abraham Lincoln than Henry Ford knows about the Talmud.’”
Lance giggled over my story. “That’s true, Mike, but geographically your story doesn’t apply to Mayor Albee.”
“So what?” Lisa said. “Albee is a homophobic asshole.”
New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia
New York Mayor Jimmy Walker 1927
I leaned close to Lance and whispered softly into his ear, “Here’s what I mean by ‘fun’: Want to spend the night with me?”
The table fell silent as though everyone had heard my hushed invitation. Lance looked at me, his eyes loaded with lust, fear, and doubt. “My roommate . . .” His voice trailed off.
Lisa watched us with a knowing smirk. Neil returned from the restroom and the gay men suddenly found other things to discuss.
“What about your roommate?” I asked, my heart in my throat.
“Nothing,” Lance stuttered. “She’s not important.”
“Come home with me,” I urged, gripping the tip of his dick with my thumb and forefinger.
“Yes,” Lance agreed, his face mottled cherry and chalk with passion and horror. “Yes, I’ll sleep with you tonight.”
