I’m not sure why I went there. It’s not my favorite bar in town. The atmosphere is wonderful though – exposed brick walls, lighting that would make a set designer envious, tables and chairs salvaged from the dump piles and refinished, erotic art done by a local artist on the walls. The bartenders are all muscle gods straining against their t-shirts. In June they put fish bowls of Trojan condoms on the tables. It’s the guys who go there. Most are the kind who look good and know it. They have a demeanor that makes them unapproachable. Hell, I’m not the best looking guy on the planet, but I do okay – mostly because you can walk up and talk to me. These stallions of self-importance and hard wrought beauty don’t intimidate me. They make me cringe. I want no part of them and their attitude that serves as a poorly disguised pall for their self-inflicted inadequacies.
I find myself sitting in their midst because I have to sit someplace. With all the revelry around it’s one of those nights when I don’t want to be alone, don’t want to be with any of my friends, and wish I had a boyfriend, so I could ignore him. I get these moods sometimes. I don’t know why I just do. There’s no pleasing me. As my mother used to tell me when I got like this, I’d complain if I were hanged with a new rope. I’d rather not have an empiric experience, thanks though. Anyway, should some guy approach me, I’ll be fine with it. Maybe a sexual release would lighten my grey mood. I wouldn’t count on it, and chances are though, I’ll leave here alone with a little more Prussian blue on my pallette than before. That’s good though. It’s what I want. No, it’s what I need at this point. At least I think it’s what I need. Damn, I’m confused. I’m also sober. Clarity might not come with liquor, but la Fe Vert will, at least make my confusion understandable. Again, darlings, don’t try to make it make sense. It just won’t work.
A band on the small dias plays a blues arrangement of Gloria Gaynard’s “I Will Survive.” I wonder if a Judy Garland drag queen will come out and do a torch song. Probably not. And this crowd wouldn’t understand the irony anyway.
I take a slow, deliberate drink of the elixir. Always best to look poised and in control. You never know who might be watching. I notice him across the bar. He’s got hair done up in a bed head that must have taken an hour to get perfect, bronze skin he must have worked on for hours during spring break at the beach. He’s about a head shorter than I am, and while he’s not muscular, he’s not frail either. He’s wearing a black t-shirt with the logo from one of the local coffee houses, a pair of khaki shorts.. I could barely make out a tattoo on his calf and a silver earring in his left ear. I nearly salivated. Maybe it’s time to get my ass up and walk over to him. Damn. I blinked. He disappeared. It’s not crowded in here, but he’s managed to allude my gaze. I feel someone approach from behind. I steel myself.
“I’ll join you,” he says without asking. He sets another drink in front of me. “You’re drinking to free Cuba right?”
“Only because they don’t sell absinthe here,” I manage. How did he know my excuse for drinking these when I was like this? I never thought to ask him that.
“I’m Steve.”
“Jack,” I said. He eyed me giving me the assessment I’d given him. Now I could see the tattoo on his calf was a dragon. It was small and elegant–almost fragile. His eyes were different colors: the left one brown, the right blue. He raised his eyebrows at me and winked. I guess he liked what he saw. He stood from the table, and motioned for me to follow him. A tryst in the loo isn’t really my thing.
He led me down a hallway I’d overlooked before. We stopped in front of a recessed phone booth – quite quaint, n’est pas? We stepped inside. The seclusion, the darkness, and those odd doors make it the perfect spot for an assignation – and far more appealing than a lavatory stall. I leaned down to kiss him. I’m typically the aggressor, but tonight, I’d met my match. His tongue was inside my mouth before I realized it. His hands were on my ass kneading it like a potter wedging clay to get it right for him to craft on the wheel. He pulled away from me. “Come on,” he panted. He pushed the wall, and a door opened. “My apartment’s in the basement,” he said. It seemed convenient enough.
We could hear the band playing in his subterranean bedroom. “We’re right under the stage,” he told me. “I hope it doesn’t bother you,” he said pushing me backwards onto the silken sheets. I watched as he pulled his shirt over his head. He’d lost his shoes somewhere on our commute. I sat up. He pulled my shirt off and began kissing my chest – admiring the many tattoos that decorated me. I wanted to taste him. I rolled him over and began working my way down his chest to his stomach. I pulled off his pants. His stature belied the nine uncut inches he was packing. There’s nothing like some foreskin to make giving a blow job a better experience. I’ve had plenty of men’s dicks in my mouth, but Steve is the only one who ever tasted of jasmine before. It’s odd I know. I wondered if he used some flavoring there.
We switched places. It was his turn. He began at my dick and worked his way up to my chest. He couldn’t decide which nipple he wanted to work, but finally he made his decision. Circling it with his tongue while his hand toyed with my balls and occasionally slipped down to massage my perineum had me harder than the bricks in the wall. I was in near ecstacy when I felt a bite into my flesh. I’ve had guys bite before. It’s often quite pleasurable, but this was different. I didn’t cry out in pain. I nearly ululated in supreme pleasure. This was a form of ecstacy I’d never known before. He didn’t release me. Instead he placed his mouth more firmly on my flesh. I felt the unmistakable feeling of blood flowing, but it didn’t trickle like I thought it should, for Steve had his tongue moving to lap it as it poured forth. I groaned again in delight. My dick got harder than I’d ever know it get before. I tensed. I knew what was coming. My load poured from me. My eyes rolled back in my head. My orgasm was so intense I lost consciousness.
I woke on my couch the next morning. I guess I’d been out for hours. Had he drugged me somehow? I’d only had have of one drink, and I took it directly from thee barkeep. There was no wound where he’d bitten me. It wasn’t bruised or sore to the touch. I went back the club the next night. I didn’t drink anything stronger than a Diet Coke. He wasn’t there. I barely made out the hallway, and it too me half an hour to re-discover the niche. It contained no secret door. I walked back out to the club. A guy came up to the table. I’d seen him here a lot. He’d always ignored me before. We talked a little. Was he actually flirting with me now?
“I love that dragon tattoo on your calf,” he told me. I stared at him blankly. I have a whip on one calf and a scull and cross bones on the other. There’s no dragon on my legs. I looked down where he pointed, and there it was. A dragon tattoo exactly like the one Alex had. It was healed with the hair grown back, in less than twenty-four hours.
explained that the main reason for the pain was that it’s close to my collar bone. At one point, I thought he was tattooing on my neck. He wasn’t. And he said that the animals with fairly smooth coats would be less painful. He suggested a seal. “I’m thinking the fucking Cookie Monster,” I countered with a laugh. I do need one on the other side — for balance of course. I’m thinking about a sugar skull to commemorate the end of the world in a couple of years, but I’m open to suggestions.
