#TBT

Originally published April 21, 2009

When I was a kid I was left to go out on my own with my teenaged cousin--to the movies, to the grocery store, sometimes to the mall if my cousin was ok with being seen with me. One day she took me and a friend out and left us by ourselves at a movie theatre so she could sneak off with a boy. While we waited outside to be picked up a man walked out of the store across the street. He had bleached hair, pastel plaid pants, and a Prince t-shirt on. I'm not sure what compelled me to do it, but I yelled the word faggot at him. I remember my friend laughing and asking me how I knew he was a faggot. I think my answer was something along the lines of a man wearing a Prince shirt. I liked Prince, I liked him because he was pretty and frilly and I knew I wasn't supposed to know what most of his songs were about.  I also knew (or mistakenly thought) that an adult man liking Prince the way I did was off somehow.  At that point in my life I don't think I really understood what gay was, but I would learn a little later that some of the people around me every day were.  I'm not even sure where I ever heard that f word. And even at that age I knew there was something inside me that knew how that man was different. Maybe I taunted him so no one would ever suspect it.

I think of him often. I remember the exact moment and what he looked like as if it happened this afternoon. I wonder what kind of life he's had, if he is/was an activist, if he is/was married, if he got struck down by AIDS which was such a headline grabber a few years later, if he ever did/does drag. I wonder if he remembers the shitty kid who yelled faggot at him, or if I was just one of many. I'd like to meet him today, and tell him that childhood friend I was with so many years ago stopped talking to me when it came out that I was a faggot. And in my head somehow that would vindicate him.  It's one of the few things I'm ashamed of.

Waitin' for the Train That Goes Home Sweet Mary...

I have a confession.  I hate weed culture.  I know I'm supposed to be one of the cool kids but I just can't get down with fashions and home decor provided by Spencer's Gags & Gifts.
Everybody smokes weed.  Every. Body.  OK, I actually prefer edibles just because smoking usually makes me cough and the coughing gives me a headache, and then I just end up in bed which is a waste of perfectly good, and sometimes expensive, weed.  My point is--that lady at the office in her 60s who still goes on girls' trips with her college friends?  She smokes weed.  And so do her Clark's sandal wearing friends.  That conservative guy in middle management who wears pink polo shirts? He smokes too, and in his day probably did his share of blow around a card table with his boys talking about what bitches they "let" give them head. And anyone wearing a beanie inside a building in April (who isn't a Jew or a Muslim) is smoking weed right. fucking. now.  So I don't care about your THC themed t-shirts or the pot leaves on your ball cap.  I get it, you're grown, so you probably smoke weed.  Which is mostly legal now anyway. I can walk around in Washington D.C with two ounces right now.  I don't need Afroman in my earbuds to do it.
I was acquainted with a couple who got married on a Thursday. They got married on a Thursday because it was 4/20.  They were both fat.  The bride always wore pigtails. And the groom had a very sketchy tooth rotting situation. So these are the kind of people who celebrate 4/20.  Do you want them to be your people?  I didn't think so.
If you really want to be out and proud about your extra-curriculars, what you really need to do is get yourself a collection of faux white guy reggae.  Because nothing says "I'm totally counter-culture and edgy because I know what marijuana is" like a bunch of translucent complected 24 year old guys from Huntington Beach wearing bajas and trying for dreads.  I got talked into going to a 311 concert once (I don't know if they're from Huntington Beach, but same schlock...) and it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.  Including the time I had to sit through Counting Crows and Fiona Apple with the flu.
I can't even get started on black lights.  So I won't.
This is why I think my favorite pot smokers are the ones who roll joints in secret in the bathroom when their toddlers go to bed.  They don't advertise--although most parents of toddlers still have to make questionable music choices.  Actually there is an exception to this.  I had a childhood friend who's weird bandana wearing step dad smoked in secret--obviously, because step dad.  I didn't know that's what he was doing, but he would sneak off in the evenings and hang out in his bedroom. One night my friend's baby sister barged in on him, and I went chasing after her. There he was, enjoying his evening toke. Startled by all the commotion, he started coughing violently and swung around to face us.  And his penis fell out of his out-dated shorty shorts.
Basically what I'm trying to say is, I hate weed culture.

And When You're Feelin Macho You Can Crush Em Like a Man...

I finally crossed something off my list some time ago and haven’t gotten around to telling the story yet.  Partly because I lived to tell it.  The experience was a little anti-climactic but somehow exactly what I expected.

There’s a stretch of road on the wrong side of town (P.S.  I live there) littered with dive bars that advertise meatloaf and Allman Brothers cover bands, their parking lots usually full of motorcycles and pick-ups.  I’d wanted to bar crawl my way through them forever, and I finally found someone as dumb as I am to accompany me.

Bar # 1 welcomed us with a group of grizzled old men chain-smoking and drinking Budweiser from cans and black coffee.  It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon on a weekday.  From the overflow of butts in their ashtray, they’d been there a while.  I’m not knocking this life of leisure, I’m sure most of them were retired.  But it’s a good bet at least one of them was on “disability” from “wrenchin’ his back at the job-site”.  The bartender was lovely though.  She smiled at us a lot and complimented my hair.  She herself was still holding on to a home perm with the poof and claw bangs that probably got her a lot of attention at one time.  She served up my draft in a plastic cup with a fresh red manicure. 

We’d picked this place as the first stop for its likelihood of having food that did not contain fecal matter.  I had visions of a buttery, thick Kraft singles style grilled cheese with those fat crinkly fries like the kind you got at the pool as a kid.  I was sadly mistaken.  Because the lady who I assume was the cook—the disposable plastic apron gave it away—sat at the end of the bar with her cigarettes and soda making small talk and watching her stories.  I sized her up and decided I could wait. 

So there we all sat, admiring the tall boys lined up neatly and upside down (?) in the cooler, my friend and I marveling that Ice House and Coors with the gold label are still a thing.

The next stop was a little less new to me.  I’d actually been there before.  It’s the kind of place where people still slow dance on Saturday nights.  Indoor/outdoor carpeting, a bathroom that looks like sepsis and has condom vending.  Same fog of cigarette smoke, same beer selection as the first, but it was the twin brothers and cousins of the first group of men we met taking up the seats at the bar.  We were just settling in when I saw a familiar face.  A redneck gay I’d once rescued from an actual flea infested crack house at 5 a.m.  He used to serenade me with Prince songs in coke fueled fits of impending stardom.  I can’t tell you how much time I spent hanging out in his bathroom.  Someone even proposed to me in there once. I declined.
With him in charge and knowing we were in good hands, we ate fried pickles and cheese, did a few shots, got to know Debbie—who possibly worked there?  She didn’t have a tooth in her head and wore a sweatshirt with a duck painted on it.  She danced like she had zero fucks to give.  (I like her style.)   I looked at all the good ol’ boys and wondered how many of them had had a go at her in their day.   I was in the process of confirming that the answer was all of them when a sign caught my eye:  “Sexual harassment will not be tolerated but it will be critiqued and graded”

Nicely buzzed, it was on to bar # 3. A tiny little house on a gravel lot that always reminded me of the kind of place in a movie where a car full of pretty teenagers from out of town stop in bad weather just before they get slaughtered.—Oddly enough, when I later shared this experience with my Dad he told me he had a gig here as a teenager and someone was beaten to death in the parking lot.—Anyway, the boys in this bar were decidedly younger and all house painters from the looks of things.  Lots of white pants and paint splattered work boots and bad tattoos they were pretty proud of.  There was no commercial cooler here, just an old Frigidaire with a sticker that read “Smile, it’s the second best thing you can do with your lips”.  So we had to ask about the beer selection.  The bartender was immediately suspicious of us.  We’d obviously never been here before, and were clearly there to steal the attentions of all the good timin’ heart throbs she usually had all to herself.  We tried to make small talk and even gave her a compliment but with that she probably pegged us for full on bulldaggers and tried her best to ignore us from then on.
The music was loud here.  All the boys had to yell their hellos.  One of them wanted to dance and ordered us a round of Jager bombs (because we’d time travelled back to 2006) but the bartender was having none of it and called him over to her.  He came back with a sheepish “sorry ladies”.

I’ve never feared for my vaginal safety before, but a bit of an uneasiness set in with me here.  There was something sinister at this sausage party.  Like the not so calm before the storm.  Why had we been surrounded by men all day?  Where were the women?  (They were probably all at Olive Garden on fancy dates with guys in car clubs.)  So we finished our bucket and left forever—but not before discovering there was no lock on the ladies’ room door.  But there was a brick to use as a doorstop.  Or maybe a weapon?

The fourth and final bar led us to a shopping center, abandoned aside from a flea market that sells only socks and iPhone cases, and a Family Dollar.  Other than a table of blue hairs who all turned to look when we walked in the crowd here was more like what happens in real life.  A mix of young and not so young, boys and girls, people were eating real food on plates, the music was good, there was pool and darts and bar stuff.  Granted everyone looked like they were about 10 years behind, but this was a place where I felt like I could find some trouble and get properly drunk.  And that I did. And probably made some friends.
At some point I turned and saw a gigantic, full wall sized confederate flag that I’d missed on the way in. I’m not sure why that was my que to leave, but I decided it was time to go (before I ended up in a room at a Best Western smoking Camels and drinking Pepsi from a 2 liter bottle with someone wearing only a Mossy Oak t-shirt asking me if I needed a cuddle buddy—wait, what?) and I was home safe and sound by 10:30.  P.M.  With nothing really to tell.