Authors: Marshall Thornton
Chapter Twenty-Two
That Saturday, I’d only had the bar open for about an hour when Pepper showed up grimacing like a witch who’d lost her magic beans. Storming over to the bar, she said, “We have to talk.” She came behind the bar and then went into the little storage room. I glanced at the four regulars I had sitting there and said, “Be right back.”
I slumped into the storage room, ready to lose my job. Apparently, simply not denying she’d given me a blow job wasn’t enough for Connie, she must have started telling people I was gay. Beginning with Pepper. This week wasn’t going especially well. No Dog, no job. Life was really sucking.
“So, Connie has been talking…” Pepper said.
“I’d hoped she wasn’t going to.”
“Connie? She’s got the biggest mouth in Southern California.”
“So, I’m fired?”
“Only if it’s true.”
I could continue the lie, but really, what was the point. My little experiment in being closeted had failed. “Yes, it’s true. I’m gay.”
The look Pepper gave me was withering. “Of course you’re gay. But why in the world would you let Connie give you a blow job?”
“What? No. No. She didn’t. She offered, but I said no. Actually, I think I said, ‘Get off me, bitch.’”
Pepper’s face unfroze. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“So I’m not fired? It’s okay that I’m gay?”
“You thought I was going to fire you for being gay?” Pepper burst out laughing. “I hired you
because
you’re gay.”
“You did? Wait, you never thought I was—”
“I saw you at The Bird one time. I mean, the butch act was cute, but mainly what I need is a day bartender who's not going to try to sleep with every piece of tail that comes in here. I want to attract more women, and creepy bartenders hitting on them all day long isn’t going to help.”
I wondered for a moment if she and Bob Grottoli had had some kind of business conference and decided gay guys working in straight bars and straight guys working in gay bars was the way to go. It was one of those ideas that made sense and didn’t make sense at the same time.
“So that’s why you didn’t call my reference?”
“Your fake reference you mean? I knew exactly what you were doing, so I didn’t waste my time. I did call Bob Grottoli, though.”
“And he gave me a good reference?”
“No, he said you were a mouthy asshole. I thought that was a quality that might come in handy at V-Bar.”
“So…should I pretend to be straight for the customers?”
“Do what you’re comfortable with.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. I don’t give a shit. Just no blow jobs in the storage room from Connie. Actually, no blow jobs in the storage room from anyone, okay? I don’t want to run that kind of place.”
I went back out to the bar and glanced at everyone’s drink to see who needed a refill. Bobby G. needed a fresh drink so I went ahead and made him a Smirnov and Coke. I set it in front of him saying, “By the way, I’m gay.”
“Does that affect my drink in some way?” That’s the thing about alcoholics, they have their priorities straight.
“Of course not. Although, I have no idea how you drink those. Did you have your stomach replaced with a tin can?”
“Ha!” Bobby G. laughed.
“Also, that one’s on me.”
That caught the attention of the others at the bar. Tran guzzled the rest of his wine and then pushed his glass toward me. I poured him another house wine on the rocks.
“What are we celebrating?”
“I’m gay.”
Tran looked across the bar and called out, “Hey, Walt, Leo here is gay. So no fag jokes.”
Walt, a regular I’d only met that morning, shrugged and kept watching ESPN. He didn’t look the sort who told jokes of any sort
The regulars didn’t seem too surprised to find out I was gay. Carlos was wrong, I wasn’t the Meryl Streep of closet cases. It used to bother me that everyone knew I was gay before I came out to them. But now I wondered if it didn’t actually make life easer.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and glanced down at it. Another text from Dog. I knew I should probably just block his number. In fact, I promised myself I’d do it. Tomorrow. Or Monday. Or maybe he’d just figure out I wasn’t going to respond and start leaving me alone.
I flipped through the texts he’d sent. He did seem sorry. I could imagine Carlos scolding me. Dog was embarrassed by me, that was so, so obvious. Dating someone who was basically embarrassed by me was not a good idea in any universe. Seriously, try to have self-esteem in the face of that. When I looked up from my phone, I saw that Connie had walked in. I began building her usual drink.
“So are we going to have as much fun as yesterday?” she asked, with a wink.
“You told Pepper you gave me a blow job, didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t help it. She came into the restaurant after the bar closed with three different guys trying to get into her pants. I mean, she could leave one or two for the rest of us.”
“Hey Connie, you hear the news?” Bobby G. asked. “Leo is a queer.”
“What? No. Why would you tell people something like that?”
I was kind of stumped. Could she possibly think it was wrong to tell people I was gay, but absolutely right to discuss her imaginary oral sex skills? Was that the upside-down world she lived in? I set her drink in front of her and said, “That’ll be three fifty.” She gave me a rather frigid look and paid. Three drinks later though, she started getting friendly again.
“Aw right, you know how they always say that gay guys give the best blow jobs? I want you to prove it. We need to have a suck-off.”
“Darling, I don’t think so.”
“We need a bisexual, though. You suck him off and he’ll say whether that was good, and then I’ll suck him off and he’ll say whether that was good. And whichever one is good-er, I mean better, is the winner.”
“And what do we win Connie?”
She chewed on that for a moment. “Well if the guy’s cute enough, we’ve already won.” That she found hysterical and guffawed loudly. “So where do we find a bisexual? Is there an app for that?”
###
Lionel wouldn’t answer my texts or my phone calls. I thought about going over to his apartment, but was afraid he’d just tell me to go away. Well, not afraid. I knew he’d tell me to go away. And I couldn’t blame him. I’d blown it. I wished there was a way I could fix it all, but I had no idea how.
After dinner with my family, I barely got any sleep. Staring at the ceiling, I kept thinking about what Maddy had said, that I was ashamed of Lionel. I said I wasn’t but…wow, maybe I was. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t feel anything like that when we were alone. But then I knew what other people would think. I knew what my dad would think. I knew what guys on the team would think. And I guess, that’s what I would have thought, too. Before Lionel.
But, why? I mean, what difference did it make? What was the deal with not liking femme guys? Yeah, for a lot of straight people it wasn’t surprising. Lionel was clearly gay, and if you had a problem with gay guys, you had a big problem with Lionel. But, what about gay guys? Why did we—
And then I had a weird thought. Femme guys scared us. They scared us because we were afraid of being like them. We were afraid of being obvious. And that was part of the whole being in the closet bull. Not liking femme guys was really about not liking ourselves. Wow.
The next morning, I dragged myself to work. I felt better after thinking things through. But, man, I was tired. While I dragged myself though the day, I got a couple of messages from Tim and Fetch. Both messages said that the team wanted to buy me a drink at The Bird after I got off work. I hoped that meant they’d buy me
one
drink. There were ten guys on the team. I didn’t want ten drinks. It was about six more than I really enjoyed.
Sure enough, when I got to The Bird, Fetch and Tim had a draft and two shots of tequila waiting for me. After our talk with Bob, I was pretty sure I was there to say goodbye to the team and maybe hash things over for a last time, but the first thing I said when I saw Tim and Fetch was, “I blew it with Lionel.”
“It’s probably not a bad thing,” Tim said.
“It was never going to last. Better that it ends now,” Fetch agreed.
“I don’t think that’s right. I think it is a bad thing. A bad thing I wish I could fix.” I was tempted to talk to them about the things I was thinking the night before, but that temptation faded by the time I finished my first beer. Very soon the entire team was there. I tried turning down additional shots, but it was a challenge. Larry Lamour was doing his act, so we couldn’t talk a lot. The team genuinely seemed sad that I wouldn’t be playing with them anymore.
I was blitzed when I heard Larry Lamour say my name. I spun around to look at him. I gave him a strong “Huh?” look, which made him repeat, “I’m going on my break now so I’m going to hand the microphone over to you, Dog.”
“Me?”
Fetch and Tim gave me a shove and I was on my way to the piano. Larry handed me the mike. I turned around and looked at the team and the other people in the bar. I didn’t know what was going on. What did they want me to do?
“I don’t sing so I hope that’s not what you’re expecting.”
The team laughed like that was a great joke. Then a couple of them started to yell, “Speech, speech.” The regulars who weren’t on the team started to clap, though some of them just looked confused. Almost as confused as I was.
“Well, I guess I should say that it’s meant a lot to me playing with you guys…” That brought a round of laughter. “…playing
softball
with you guys, I mean. I’m going to be a free agent, so I’ll still be seeing you all. We just won’t be on the same team.”
“No!” Fetch yelled. Then Tim followed with another “No!” And then some of the other guys on the team started. “No!” “NO!”
“Okay, okay…that’s really nice, guys, but there’s no way I can stay on the team. I think you all know why.”
“Get rid of Chuckie!”
“We already talked to Bob about that and it’s not going to happen.”
That brought a round of boos. And an idea into my head.
“Look, if you want to get rid of Chuckie, it will have to be his idea. Anyone know how to make that happen?”
The room went quiet.
What would have to happen in order to get Chuckie to quit?
I wondered. Nothing came immediately to mind. Chuckie was stubborn, the kind of person who didn’t let go. It was impossible to imagine him quitting. I wondered what he’d think of the team trying to figure out a way to get rid of him.
And then an idea began to come together. Chuckie hated the idea of not being liked. The whole way he’d handled the conflict with Lionel, he needed everyone to back him up, right or wrong. So maybe all we had to do was let him know we didn’t want him. Maybe if he knew—
“Hey guys, I might have an idea.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Lynette, you need to come to The Bird,” Carlos said, when I clicked on, barely giving me time to say hello.
“Darling, I can’t. I’m banned.”
“Lance isn’t going to pay any attention to that. You have to come. He’s going to give you a free drink.”
“Ah well, free alcohol…um, no. It’s Sunday, the Birdmen are going to be there. I’ll come another night.” The Birdmen and Dog. And I didn’t want to see Dog. That was a chapter of my life that was closed. A very short chapter.
“There’s a rumor going around they’re going to kick Chuckie off the team.”
“Did you start that rumor?” Most of the rumors Carlos talked about were actually ones he started.
“No, but I’m spreading it. Come on Lynette, don’t you want to see Chuckie kicked off the team?”
Did I want to see that? Did I care? No, I didn’t. Not really. Not if it meant having to see Dog. The last place in the world I was going to go that afternoon was The Bird. If I really wanted to witness revenge, I’d just re-watch
Mean Girls
. In fact, that was a great plan for a Sunday afternoon. Ice cream and
Mean Girls
.
“Carlotta, I don’t need to see them kick Chuckie off the team. You can tell me about it later in excruciating detail.”
“Maybe it’s not you who needs to see Chuckie, maybe it’s Chuckie who needs to see you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it, Lynette. Chuckie is getting kicked off the team. Won’t it be so much worse if he sees that you’re there, watching.”
That was actually a good point. Chuckie would hate that I was there. Dog might not hate that I was there, though. Of course, with a little effort, I could make him hate that I was there. Maybe a little real-life revenge would be more satisfying than
Mean Girls
revenge.
“Okay, if I’m coming over there, I have to figure out what to wear.”
“Hurry up, darling! You don’t want to miss the show.”
He can say hurry up all he wants. When it comes getting dressed, I will not be rushed. I went into the bathroom and took a quick shower, shaved, brushed my teeth and perfumed myself. Then I went back into my bedroom and threw the closet doors open. Oddly, Larry Lamour’s talking about how you had to figure out how to be yourself and not just the person you thought other people wanted you to be popped into my silly little head. Who was I being? Me? Or the me I thought I should be? Or was the real me someone who picked up personas and dropped them at will?
Of course, this is exactly the wrong sort of thing to think about when choosing an outfit. Especially when I already had other things I had to consider. I needed to wear something that said, “Fuck you, you’re getting what you deserve,” to Chuckie, and “Aren’t you sorry you screwed up,” to Dog, while at the same time managing to express the true, authentic me.
Skinny jeans came to mind right away. I had them in three shades of blue, burgundy, white, slate, black and lavender. Okay, that decision might require some thought. I looked down at my shoes. Aside from the red pumps—the heel of which was now wobbly—I had four other pairs of high heels. Black, bone, navy, and white sandals with a plastic daisy covering the toes. Unfortunately, even though my ankle was much improved, there was no way I was wearing a heel. Though the daisy sandal with the lavender skinny jeans would have made a bold statement.
But then, maybe a bold statement wasn’t called for. Maybe I’d just wear the black skinny jeans with my teal cashmere sweater (I’d had such excellent taste during the all too brief period when I’d had credit cards) along with my pink Chuck Taylors. That was pretty toned down. Or at least my idea of toned down. I got dressed and then spent another half an hour in the bathroom getting my hair to swoop in exactly the way I liked.
It was just about the time the Birdmen usually showed up at The Bird when I left my apartment. I wasn’t sure whether this was a good idea or a bad one, but it was now an idea that was going to happen. If it didn’t go well, I’d blame Carlos for everything. In fact, that should be my new motto: Blame others.
When I walked into The Bird, Chuckie was already at the bar. The dining room was empty and the bar area only had a few customers. Chuckie turned and saw me as I walked in. I ignored his stare and marched past him, choosing a stool at the far end of the bar. Lance started toward me. Chuckie tried to stop him, “Uh, Lance—”
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Chuckie. I’ve got a customer.” Chuckie’s face grew sour. Well, sour-er.
“What can I get you, Lionel?” Lance asked me.
“Sapphire Martini, straight up, four olives, whis—”
“I know, sweetheart, I haven’t forgotten.” He gave me a nice smile. I wondered if the fact that I’d never had sex with him was a big mistake. On the one hand, I hated being part of a crowd. On the other, I hated missing out. Since there was obviously no Dog on my horizon, perhaps fucking Lance was a good idea. It would certainly be an interesting way to end the evening. And if I had enough martinis, I could blame them.
Down at the other end of the bar, Lance was making my drink. Chuckie had moved down a couple of stools to sit in front of the service bar. He whispered intently to Lance, who smiled at him but kept making the drink.
“Lynette, there you are,” Carlos said as he approached me from behind. “I’m so happy you came.”
“Chuckie’s telling Lance not to serve me and Lance is ignoring him.”
“You know Lance. He always beats his own drummer.”
“That’s ‘walks to the beat of…’—never mind. So I’m not banned? Did Bob change his mind?”
Carlos shook his head. “We made up Bob’s mind for him.”
“How did you do that?”
“We didn’t tell him.”
That made me feel a bit weird. All Chuckie had to do was call Bob and I’d be thrown out. Worse, Lance and Carlos would be in trouble. Lance slid my drink in front of me. I reached into my pocket to get a twenty but he said, “That’s on the house.”
“No, that’s fine I can pay—”
“Professional courtesy. I hear you’re working at V-Bar. What is
that
like?”
Figuring he could relate to the unwanted advances of customers, I began to tell him the story of Connie and the non-existent blow job. The story was getting some good chuckles from him, and I wasn’t even embellishing—much—when suddenly I lost his attention. He was gaping at the front door.
I turned to see that the Birdmen had started walking into the bar. Fetch and Tim were in the front. The bar was quiet enough that I could hear the clacking of their shoes against the floor. Their shoes. My first thought was that they must be wearing cleats.
Did softball players even wear cleats?
I wondered. I had no idea. Then I looked down.
Oh my Gawd! My jaw dropped. I was lucky I didn’t bruise it on the bar. They were wearing red high heels.
All
five of them. Six. Eight. Nine. Nine softball players had just walked into the bar wearing red heels. It didn’t make any sense—except it did.
The Birdmen had chosen quite the variety: open-toed, sling-backs, sandals, ankle straps, wedge heels, strappy…all with course, un-manicured toes and hairy ankles sticking out of them. It was truly a lovely sight.
Dog brought up the rear. He’d chosen red patent leather sandals with ankle straps and platforms. He, or someone, had bedazzled them with some kind of glitter, as though he wanted to bring extra attention to himself. Even from across the bar, I could see that he’d bought the shoes too tight. His toes were flushed red, and spilled over the edges of the shoe. It looked incredibly painful and, foolishly, that made my heart bounce.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my eyes watered. Dog. Dog was behind this. He had to be. That was the real reason Carlos had called me to come over. Dog. My eyes grew damp and I stared at him, biting my lip. At that particular moment, I couldn’t imagine anything a man could do for another man that would mean more than wearing a very painful pair of sparkly high heels.
###
Crap. The shoes were murder. But they seemed to be sending the message I wanted to send. I mean, messages. Two messages. Lionel sat at the far end of the bar with a martini in front of him. His face seemed guarded the moment he saw me, but when he looked down and saw the shoes it softened. His eyes met mine and we just looked at each other. Really looked. It was the best feeling I’d had in a long while. And totally worth the pain shooting up my legs.
I pulled my eyes away from him and looked over at Chuckie. He was pale and looked like he might puke. He was doing some mental arithmetic. Every single one of the Birdmen was there. All wearing red high heels. He had to know that meant we weren’t going to let him bully us anymore. Slowly, he got off his stool and walked over.
“I guess this is your idea of a practical joke.” He was looking at me when he said it. Then he took in the other guys. “You all look ridiculous, by the way.”
That earned him a couple of smirks but mainly silence.
“Okay, joke’s over. Ha-ha. You can take those hideous things off.”
The bar got quiet—or quiet for a bar. Chuckie tried staring us down. Ten of us. Finally, I said, “Chuckie, we don’t want you to be team captain anymore. In fact, we don’t want you on the team.”
“But…I’ve done everything for the team. I mean, there wouldn’t even be a team if it weren’t for me.” For a moment, he looked genuinely hurt and I worried that the team might cave if he managed to make them feel sorry for him. Heck, maybe I was going to cave. But it was only a moment. Chuckie went on the offensive, “So this is how you repay me? By kicking me off the team? By mocking me? What a bunch of losers. That’s all you are, that’s all you’ll ever be.”
Then he threw a drink in my face and walked out of The Bird. The team immediately cheered. They were patting me on the back, nearly knocking me off my shoes. I pointed myself in Lionel’s direction and hobbled over.
When I got close to Lionel, I said the only logical thing I could think of to say, “Hi.”
“Hi. You need a napkin.” He scrambled to get a few cocktail napkins off a nearby pile. Handing them to me, he said, “Um, that’s quite the statement you just made.”
I shrugged. “It needed to happen.”
“Well don’t get all shy now, I think you deserve a few choruses of ‘Ding-Dong! the Witch Is Dead’.”
“Okay, that’s something I’ve heard of.” My sister and I watched
The Wizard of Oz
a lot when we were kids.
“You should be proud of yourself. I can’t imagine organizing a softball team into high heels was all that simple.”
“It wasn’t.”
Lionel looked down at my poor feet. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but those shoes aren’t really you.”
“Nope. Not even close.”
“It’s a sweet gesture.”
“It’s a painful gesture. My father would hate it if he saw me in these shoes.”
“Does that matter so much?”
“Not as much as it used to,” I said, without thinking. But that was the right answer. It still mattered what my family thought. It always would. But what mattered more was what I thought. And I thought wearing high heels on this particular Sunday evening was the right thing to do.
“You can take them off now,” Lionel said. “You don’t need to scare anyone else with them.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that so I bent over and undid the buckle on each shoe, then stepped out of them. It was such a relief. I could feel my feet stretching out again where they’d been strapped in. They felt like caged animals escaping from a zoo.
“Can we get out of here?” I suggested.
“Shouldn’t you spend some time with your team?”
“I don’t think they’ll mind too much if I slip out.”
But just then, Lance came down with a new drink for Lionel and a beer and shot for me. They were on Fetch and Tim. So, that settled that. We were staying for another drink.
Larry Lamour arrived a bit later and, since enough of the guys were still wearing their heels, started out his set with that old Bowie song about putting on red shoes and dancing. He had a lot of fun improving the original lyrics.
Different members of the Birdmen kept coming by and bringing drinks for Lionel and me. Well, sometimes just me. Shots. Lots of shots. Pretty soon, I’d lost count of how many. But I didn’t feel that drunk. Yeah, I was kinda hanging all over Lionel, whispering into his ear the things I wanted us to do to each other as soon as we could figure out how to leave.
That must have gotten to Lionel, because when the last round of drinks arrived he refused them, saying, “No, no, no, we have had enough. More than enough. Way too much.” Which was funny, because I still didn’t feel that drunk, you know? I could stand up almost straight and my words were too slurry, wait, I mean
weren’t
too slurry. Yeah, that’s right.
Then Lionel was leading me out of the bar. On the way out, I was sure I saw Fetch and Tim in the corner making out. About time, if you ask me.
If
I saw it. Maybe I didn’t see it.
Outdoors on the sidewalk, the night was cool and totally refreshing. I couldn’t believe how not-drunk I felt. It was like I’d barely had anything to drink at all. If there’s one thing I can say about myself, it’s that I can hold my liquor.
“Hey,” I said to Lionel. “This is just like the night we met. Except we’re sober-er. More sober. Not as drunk.”