I saw LOST IN TRANSLATION last night, which was very, very good. And it put me in the mood for a glass of scotch at a lonely bar, but I couldn't find any lonely bars near my apartment and settled on a gay one - Burkhart's, where a gospel-infused drag show was going on. (Who knew drag queens considered Shirley Caesar and Mahalia Jackson influences?)
I had my one glass of scotch over in the corner of the room on the top floor, then I walked around and caught some of the Emmys on the overhead TVs. And I guess guys were looking at me.
My friend Jonathan apparently works at Burkhart's now, for he was behind the bar. So I went up and ordered another scotch - mostly because I wanted an opportunity to tip him. And I told him that he looked gorgeous but that I'd had two glasses of scotch and that we were standing in low lighting, so that could mean anything. He smirked at me.
So I tried to escape drag queens screaming about Jesus by escaping to a quieter room in the bar. And I sat, realizing that I was then rather tipsy, and I watched the Emmys - scarfing down loads of popcorn in an attempt to lessen the effect of the scotch.
I talked up this one kid wearing a suit who was acting like the gospel queens' agent, and he told me that I'm cute and all. And he started talking to me about his new record label, so I turned my attention back to the Emmys.
And that was when this other, hotter guy, someone I'd seen outside, walks into the bar and sits a couple chairs down from me. And he's staring at me. So I was drunk and use that as an excuse to look over my shoulder at him. Like, three times.
So he moved to the chair next to me. And he still hadn't said a damn thing. So I started talking about the Emmys, munching still on popcorn. He smoked a cigarette.
So I started talking about other stuff, asking questions.
"What's your story?" I asked. "What do you do?"
He didn't talk. He smiled. And he stared and stared. I swear to God, I thought he was a mute.
Eventually, he proved me wrong.
"Don," he said is his name.
"Yeah sorta," he said when I asked him if he was nervous.
"Visuals," he said is his job.
"Paper Affair," he said is his company.
"37," he said is his age. (The only time that he showed any sort of animation, other than staring at me longingly, is when I jokingly asked him how the '80s were because "I'd missed them." He looked all pissed off then.)
Of course, he said these things in the midst of long periods of silent staring. I totally had the upper hand in this one, but I didn't know if I wanted it.
"What's with people not talking anymore?" I asked him. "Do you talk?"
He smiled at me.
"Well, that's a problem," I said. "Talking's, like, what I do best."
He smiled some more.
"Do people not need to talk anymore?" I asked him.
I think he smiled at me and said, "Well ... um ...," then he kept staring.
His hair was messed up, so I fixed it. (It was so "90210" Jason Priestley, gelled-over mushroom cut.) And he kissed me. Then he kissed me again. And he still wasn't talking. But, damn, it was good, fun, heavy kissing.
"I feel like I'm making out with Marcel Marceau," I said to him.
He looked at me blankly, staring at me more.
"Do you even know who that is?"
I broke away from him and went to the bar to talk to Jonathan about the ethics of kissing someone who doesn't know how to speak.
Jonathan offered me another scotch.
"I don't think I should have another," I said. "Another one, and I'd end up kissing that guy some more, and he doesn't know how to talk."
Jonathan looked over at Don in the other room and said, "OK, this next scotch is on me," but he didn't approve of me macking the Mute Stranger. Jonathan just thought it was funny, I think.
The ever-helpful Jonathan even gave me a whoop of "Go get him, Girl!" as I walked away from his whiskey offer.
And I kissed Don again. And again. And again.
So Don and I go to the outside area, and I mack on him some more. But that's when this weird feeling started to hit me, a mixture of shame, regret and confusion.
OK, have you ever been kissing someone and then looked over your shoulder at anyone else walking by, thinking "Get me out of this as quickly as possible, even though it's not bad because it's just not what I think I should be doing ..."
So I sneak away, saying I'm going to get something more to drink.
And I sit at Jonathan's bar, and Jonathan's got this eye-shadowed, wigless drag queen hitting on him, and there's this other flip-haired, college-aged kid sitting with a sidekick girl there at the bar trying to chat him up.
The kid's looking at Jonathan as though Jonathan was some shiny thing in a window display.
This isn't the first time I've seen people look at Jonathan this way.
Now I know he's my friend and all. But Jonathan's really good looking. I mean, he could be a poster boy for the Aryan race. When I met him, I told him he looked like Rolf the Nazi Youth from THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which he does.
But I know why Jonathan's mostly ignoring the kid, and I know why he's discouraging the wigless queen - who told me that his stage name was Shantraila Park.
Anyone you can simply, quickly or easily have, anyone who treats you like you're too good to be true, anyone who lacks self-confidence and thus immediately deifies others, anyone who judges you as worthy based solely on face value - no matter if, in addition, they're too young or if you have your own reasons for rejecting them beyond that - is, by default, unchallenging and unwanted.
But the kid, whose name was Lane, just thought Jonathan was cold and potentially heterosexual. I told Lane that Jonathan was, in fact, gay.
Jonathan, meanwhile, was turning down the drag queen, apparently for the thousandth time. Overhearing the queen, I understood that Jonathan was telling him quietly the truth about the rejection - which is that Jonathan's HIV positive (which is, I'm guessing, what he said) - in addition to being uninterested in anyone who wears that much makeup (which is, I'm guessing, what he didn't say).
"IF THAT'S YOUR ONLY REASONING, I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT WASN'T A PROBLEM!" the queen yelled at Jonathan's confession.
Jonathan walked away.
"I have work to do, bitch!" Jonathan said with an amused tone.
What is it about people having no trouble volunteering themselves for exposure to something that they don't really even comprehend? I did it when I was a kid, thinking I was invincible. I managed not to catch anything, but I realized that it was still a huge judgment error on my part.
Somewhere during their conversation, Lane managed to tell me out loud that he was 20 - which Jonathan overheard and commented on. I started to laugh out loud, eyeing the kid's cocktail. So Lane told me he was 23.
"Ri-i-ight," I said. "What year were you born?"
"I was born in 1980," Lane said, rather quickly.
"Cool, you can do math in your head quickly," I said to him.
His sidekick girl told me that I was talking too loud, and I told her that it wasn't a big deal, that we'd all done it legally and illegally.
Don the Mute walked past me as I was talking, and I don't know what compelled me to kiss him again. But I did. And he still didn't talk much.
But he drank from my Diet Coke. And he tried to kiss me again. But I started to cool down, lessening the depth of each kiss.
I was distinctly aware, for some reason, that Jonathan was right there ... watching ... or not watching ... and I didn't like that feeling, which I couldn't explain.
When someone's your friend - and you know that someone is your friend and cares about you (which I guess I know about Jonathan now), it's hard for you to betray your own sense of right and wrong in front of them.
I eventually told Don good night, and he left the bar.
So I sit with Lane some more, and he and the drag queen shower Jonathan with more requests and compliments.
And I look at Jonathan in the middle of this and say, "Hey, I love you in the only way that matters." I don't know if he got what I meant.
So he asked me if I was all right to drive home. And I told him that all that popcorn and Don's Marlboro breath had sobered me up.
"I would hope it would," he said. "As much as you were sampling it."
So I left the bar, turning to the doorman on the way out and saying it was the best time I hoped I'd never remember.
Out in the parking lot, though, Don was waiting for me.
He ran up to me in the parking lot, saying that his car won't start. I think it was the longest sentence he'd said to me all night.
(I saw Mark Harmon playing Ted Bundy in this TV-movie once, and he used the exact same line.)
And I'm thinking, "Yeah right. Dude, I'm so not giving you a ride home."
So I knocked on the door to the bar, got the doorman's attention, and he stuck out his head.
"You can't come back inside," the doorman said, for it was closing time when I left.
"This is Don," I said to the doorman. "His car won't start. Can you help him?"
The doorman made a face, and I jet from the scene, yelling "Good night, Don," as I pretty much ran to my car.
The doorman, though, wouldn't help Don, so he came walking toward me again. So I went faster, jumped in my car and took off.
So Don mouthed what was probably an obscenity at me and started walking to Ansley next door, and I'm thinking, "OK, he wasn't lying, but I still don't want to give him a ride."
And that was my quiet night having a glass of scotch at a bar.
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