Chapter 6
COME to find out, gay bars are just like every other bar in the world.
Griff wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d headed into Manhattan. He felt like an idiot. He didn’t even know if he was dressed right. He’d put on black jeans and a new black shirt hoping it would make him blend a little bit. The shirt was a short-sleeve polo his ex-wife had bought him, and at the colar, the rusty hairs on his chest were just visible; the knit hugged his thick triceps and pecs. He figured he looked good enough.
It was October tomorrow, and tonight was the night that the HotHead scene Dante had shot for Alek would appear on the actual website, as the “Stroke of Midnight.” Dante had bragged and ribbed him about it al week. He was the only person who knew and he was also the only person who was tempted to go see.
Dante didn’t know that, but stil….
For his own safety, Griff needed to be as far away from the Internet and his computer as possible before he lost his mind and did something he couldn’t take back, or saw something he couldn’t forget. This Manhattan fieldtrip felt like a perfect two-birds-one-stone solution for a lapsed Catholic: Life-wrecking temptation? Run away!
Time to get some answers. Time to deal with the reality. At a time when he needed to be far, far away from his computer and the temptation to “just check” HotHead.com. He could survive buying a beer in a gay bar to get a handle on what his dick was doing. Plus, pubs didn’t have Wi-Fi Internet, did they? He wasn’t going to ask.
Maybe he was just gay. Maybe something in him had just changed since the divorce. Maybe there was a whole side of him that had been waiting to come out. Maybe he had started batting for this other team without realizing. It happened sometimes, right?
As Griff headed out the door, he checked himself in the hal mirror. Good enough. He’d combed through Time Out’s Nightlife listings for something like a gay pub and found a place caled the Pipe Room. A pub seemed safe: beer and dudes outside of Brooklyn. Except in this place it would be dudes-only, and they’d be openly creeping on him, and while on the premises, he was supposed to be doing the same to them.
Ack.
Stil, anything was better than logging on to that goddamn website and spying on Dante— betraying their friendship, betraying himself.
There were a couple of gay bars in Brooklyn near his place, but hel if he was gonna risk that. Better to head across the bridge into the East Vilage and pay a couple bucks more for his beer than risk being seen in a gay bar by someone he knew. Or worse, his dad hearing about it. Gah. The thought made Griff queasy.
The subway station at Carrol was empty for a weeknight, and he plunked himself down in a plastic seat so he could panic in peace. He had to figure out if this whatever-the-hel with Dante was a phase, and he wasn’t a fucking coward. He ran into burning buildings, forchristsake!
Griff took the F train from Cobble Hil to Second Avenue. These days the East Vilage was fancier and more populated than he remembered. He spent ten minutes walking around the block before he worked up the nerve to climb the three steps into the dark bar.
Chill out, freakshow.
By the time he did, it was nearly eleven. Treading those steps, he could feel the panic rising in him, hands sweating as he ducked through the door. As he stepped inside he almost walked into a chubby man with a white beard who was headed outside. Santa Claus hits the bars. The older guy stopped short, then smiled and nodded at him before heading out.
Griff took a second to get his bearings. He had half expected al the heads in the joint to swivel and glare at him like an impostor, but once he was inside, it was just… a bar. Not that different from the Stone Bone, actualy. The windows were tinted, the brick wals worn, and the decor was early ramshackle comfy. He had heard Green Day playing from the curb, so nothing strange there; now he could see it came from an honest-to-God jukebox. The patrons wore a mix of jeans and suits and sweats, like everyone had come from work or home to meet their buddies. These guys were gay?
Except for the pricier neighborhood, it could have been one of those old family-run cop bars in Bayridge or Staten Island. A bunch of dudes hanging out together ordering pitchers. Except that there were no women inside, as in none. Stil, if he hadn’t been paying attention, he might not have noticed for a while. In fact, he could almost imagine that everyone’s girlfriend had just gotten up and gone to the bathroom at the same time.
Almost.
It felt so much like his own stomping grounds that he almost pretended to himself that he was waiting for his crew in one of their hangouts. No big deal. New York City had banned smoking a while ago, so even if this place looked like a grungy dive, the air was clean, the crowd was professional, and the old bar looked like it had been seeing use for fifty years or so. Had this place been a gay pub fifty years ago?
He stil felt like an intruder—this wasn’t his hood, this wasn’t his crew, and the only thing he had in common with them was that he wanted to make out with someone who had the same equipment as he did. Did that make them al instant friends? Was he automaticaly a member of the club? He felt like a bridge-and-tunnel moron.
Griff wiped his hands on his jeans and headed for the bar; everything was easier with a beer in your hand, right?
In the center of the room, wel-built guys leaned against high tables in friendly clumps, joking and talking. On one wal, a tal Asian perched on the arm of a lumpy sofa said something to his friends that made them nod appreciatively as they watched Griff navigate the man maze.
He knew that his rugged frame and red hair always attracted attention. And in here, he realized, the black shirt looked kinda dressy and made him stand out more. Duh. He could have just worn a T-shirt and sweats, but they were eating it up apparently. Thank Christ he hadn’t worn the kilt!
Griff felt flattered. Some of the dudes scoping him were way better looking than he was… on a purely objective level. But some of them were just regular, shlubby guys. Again, people checked out firefighters al the time, so that didn’t seem strange either. He could totaly do this. And come to think of it, he had noticed a couple cute guys on the way in, so maybe his problem wasn’t Dante.
Through a gap in the crowd, Griff just caught a bartender’s eye checking to see if he wanted something. Griff nodded a yes as he nudged through the men and stepped up to the bar. Pressed against the wood, he realized the bartender was shirtless and underwear-model lean. Over one pierced nipple, a sticker badge on his slick chest said “My name is… STICKY . ”
Whoa.
“Sticky” gave him a warm smile, hands in his back pockets. He was alabaster pale, with white-blond hair and an elaborate Celtic tattooed sleeve spiraling up one corded arm in stark blue-black. And the smile was a little warmer than it would have been in Brooklyn, like he knew he was good-looking and he wanted Griff to know it too. Sticky wet his lips; his tongue was pierced.
Griff didn’t flirt back. “Uh. Hi. Yeah. Can I…? Beer? Uh, stout if you have it. You can pick.” Was that the wrong thing? Why was he looking at Griff so intently? Oh. Yeah. He’s one of them. Us. Whatever.
“Yessir.” Sticky winked and went to pul it from the tap, the knotwork tattoo flexing over his forearm. Griff leaned back against the bar, pretending this was normal.
Four stocky guys in rugby shirts and shorts came in, sweaty and muddy and leaning against each other as they headed toward a rowdy mob of other players huddled around a couple pitchers of beers on a high table. As the shortest teammate passed, he clocked Griff’s scrutiny and returned the favor with a cheeky grin.
With his buzzed hair, USMC tattoo, and cute-ugly face like a trol dol, this little fireplug checked Griff out head to toe and back, stopping right on his cock, then winked.
Jeez.
Griff pretended to cough and turned to look back toward the back of the bar, where a pool table was set up. A group of hammered colege guys was shooting a game and play wrestling; NYU was around here, so this was probably a hangout for them. Gay students. They hung on each other more than they would have in Red Hook, but no more than a bunch of joeys cutting loose down the Jersey Shore. It didn’t seem weird; it seemed sweet.
Trouble was, none of the men around him made Griff horn up. None of these guys had made his dick so much as twitch. Not gay? Maybe he only had a thing for Italians? He scanned the crowd for someone Italian enough to turn his crank. But if he let himself imagine Dante getting busy on that website right at this moment, his boner got hard enough to pound nails. Stop that. Apparently, he was having some kind of localized erectile malfunction.
“You from out of town?” The raspy voice in his ear startled him. He turned to see that Sticky was back and bending toward him over the scarred counter.
The slim bartender was passing a foamy dark pint to him from behind. His tattooed arm brushed against Griff’s bigger one, the fine hairs dragging together gently enough to cause goose bumps—pale gold on rust.
Griff took the glass, but Sticky left his arm where it was, just brushing, until he shivered. Griff turned to break the contact.
“Nah. Brooklyn. Born and raised.” Talking to this gorgeous kid, Griff felt the tips of his ears get hot. He must look like such a rube: wrong clothes, wrong drink, wrong background. And his dick was definitely not reacting to attractive guys around him. He was even more confused than he’d been an hour ago.
“Seriously? I figured you for a farm boy. Somewhere they grow apples or goats or something.” Sticky was reading Griff’s body from behind the safety of the counter, a slow head-to-toe appraisal with scenic detours. He laughed, but he wasn’t teasing, just being sexy and friendly. “And you got to nap a lot in the hayloft with your cousins. They built like you?”
“Yeah. No. I mean. That sounds nice, but I’m 100 percent city mouse.” Griff sighed and took a careful sip of his beer.
Why wasn’t he turned on? Griff could tel this hipster underwear model was interested, but apparently his own interests were stuck somewhere else. Like over the Brooklyn Bridge.
These days he couldn’t sit next to Dante without popping wood, and he couldn’t check his e-mail without itching to go to that damn pornsite.
Hel, Sticky was probably a fucking HotHead member and would be downloading Dante later for his personal use. Griff tried not to feel angry and possessive, but the panic weled up in him again.
“You’d look hela fine in overals, bub. That blazing hair and those cannonbal shoulders and nothing else. Trust me. I gotta pair.” Sticky winked. Even his eyelashes were platinum around his hazel eyes.
“Thanks.” Griff winked back and nodded because it seemed polite, but he didn’t want to lead the bartender on. Was that what he was doing? It felt so weird for other men to mack on him like this. If Dante could see this, he’d piss himself laughing.
With a little crease of disappointment on his brow, Sticky rapped his knobby knuckles on the bar between them as if putting a period on the flirting. “You get thirsty again, you come find me, farm boy.” And then he was taking an order from three suits carrying briefcases, pouring sambuca shots.
Feeling like he’d been rude somehow, Griff pushed back into the crowd and found a corner where he could watch the other Pipe Room patrons unobtrusively as they surged around him with their eight-dolar beers and cool shoes.
Griff heard the crack as the NYUers started up another game of pool. On the sofa, the tal Asian was teling a long story to his friends, and the rugby team was watching the flirty fireplug Marine open a present. Sticky scooped up a couple folded tips and tucked them into a jar while he talked to a burly black bouncer who’d come to the bar for a bottle of water, just like Griff did on a slow night at the Stone Bone. That could be me.
Just guys.
Nothing that made him uncomfortable at al, but also nothing that made him feel the frantic hunger Dante aroused in him. This wasn’t his world or his life. He felt like a spy. Again he had the thought that if he hadn’t known it was a gay bar, that these were gay men, an hour could’ve passed before he figured it out.
Dumbass.
How could he know if he was, if he couldn’t even tel if they were? Griff felt so relieved and so confused at the same time. He’d cool off and finish his beer and head back home.
He stil didn’t know the right question to ask, but he knew his answer was waiting on the other side of the river.
GRIFF kiled another beer before he cut out, figuring he should give his dick a chance to speak up if it was ever gonna get interested. No luck. He left a healthy tip for Sticky by way of thanks and apology. He ducked out the side door, which led to a short aley with a dumpster and a couple dead kegs.
He didn’t see the two men fucking until he was almost on top of them.
He had slipped outside quietly, not wanting to attract attention inside the bar. He didn’t attract attention out here either, apparently. He turned toward the streetlights on East 7th, and from the shadows of the aley behind him, he heard someone yelp in pain.
Instantly alert, Griff doubled back to investigate, sticking to the shadows.
If it was a mugging, he needed to surprise them. If someone was injured, he didn’t want to startle them.
When he reached the Dumpster he saw them: two men in their thirties standing braced against the brick wal, fucking hard in a puddle of brightness thrown by an overhead safety light.
They faced the same direction, mostly dressed and pretty built, their pants just open enough to line up ass and cock. Their muscular butts were framed by their shirt hems and their lowered jeans.
The man humping away looked Middle Eastern and covered in dense hair; his hard, fuzzy glutes clenched tight every time he impaled his noisy partner.
The guy getting fucked was shorter and whining a little, but his dick was a wet iron bar under him and he was jerking it roughly. He almost yelped whenever he arched and took the whole dick inside him—like it hurt, but it hurt weird and good. That was the pitiful sound Griff had heard.
Griff hesitated, crouching in the shadow of the Dumpster and watching them with quiet fascination. He’d never watched two guys boning, so this felt like sneaky research.
Both men were strong and weren’t careful with each other. It didn’t seem like being with a woman at al. Was that hot or scary or both? It seemed so real and so fast and almost angry. This wasn’t romance, just guys getting off.
Griff scootched closer, not realy turned on by the roughness but sort of turned on by spying on them.
The short guy taking it under the safety light didn’t seem to have a problem getting railed hard. He panted and sank fuly to his knees so that the hairy guy had to folow to stay inside his ass. As the smaler man slid down, the man behind literaly spat at him, at the tongue arching out of his open mouth, and he groaned as if grateful and licked his lips.
For some reason, Griff’s ass felt funny inside his pants, inside his boxers, like it was imagining how much it must hurt taking something that huge. He’d never thought about his butt as sexual, but something about the rawness of these men felt real. He could sort of understand what they wanted from each other.
Next to the dented kegs, they fucked like dogs, angry and fast on the rough concrete, getting close to getting off. The guy on the bottom showed scratches on his knees and hands. The arm he was using to hold himself up in a frog crouch was bruised. The swarthy man pumping into him slapped those plump asscheeks and pushed a long finger in beside his hard shaft, stretching the hole wider and making his partner shout.
The sight made Griff horny, and that was a new piece of information for him. What if it were Dante? He wasn’t hairy like this guy, but he was dark, and Griff was pale. He could almost imagine it.
If Dante wanted him like that, forced him, he’d do it gladly. If Dante held him down in an aley and bred him like a dog…. If his best friend fucked him rough on his knees with his round ass up and split open and filed like that, Griff knew he would shoot the first time Dante’s dick touched bottom inside him. Just the thought of that and Griff started to get an erection and his bals shifted, but before he could wrap a guilty fist around it, the finale started under the safety light.
The hairy dude in back tensed his asscheeks and crammed himself inside. As he unloaded, his face stretched into a scream, but he made no sound as he tugged his partner roughly onto the ful length of his erection.
The smaler guy under him was squeezing his dick until it turned purple, the head swolen as he yanked it, his knuckles bloody from scraping the concrete.
Without warning his partner pushed his face into the ground, holding his hips to keep his ass high, and hammered at it a few times; the bottom growled low and squirted twice— tthhit-tthhhit—onto the ground, sliding forward and faling free of the greasy condomed erection behind him.
Griff was holding his breath, half aroused and half ashamed.
The guy on the bottom roled, and his Arab buddy offered a hand and puled him up to stand in the light. At some point in the rush to hook up, his face had been scraped raw against the bricks, a pink rectangle on a cheekbone.
That was when— Christ on a crutch—Griff recognized the guy who had taken the pounding: Tommy. Tommy Dobsky. Tommy, with the scraped face and bloody knees and bruised arm and sore, fucked-wide-open ass, and a smile like Christmas morning.
Tommy was from the neighborhood. Tommy was married and had kids. Tommy was a paramedic, ferchrissakes! They worked together. Tommy was a total joey with a share down the Jersey Shore and a thing for Hispanic chicks. Not here, apparently.
Here, Tommy liked getting half raped on his knees and forced to the ground drooling and moaning. Here, Tommy was buckling his belt and wiping his raw hands on jizz-stained pants, nodding at something the Arab guy said and chuckling. Tommy snuck into Manhattan to do this. Griff had snuck here and watched.
What worried Griff was that he had loved watching it a little, long as he was imagining Dante in the equation.
What if Griff had been seen? What if Tommy said he’d been in that bar? What if Tommy knew what he’d seen in that aley? He had just watched Tommy Dobsky get fucked on scraped knees by a big Arab gorila and love it. Tommy had begged and eaten that guy’s spit. Tommy would kil him for knowing.
They were dressed now, and their voices were murmurs from the rear of the aley. In a second they’d see him. Griff thanked the Lord he had worn black. If Tommy saw him, he’d be in shit to his neck, and not for being a peeping Tom. He had to get the fuck out of here, before—
They turned toward the Dumpster!
Griff slid back into the shadows along the wal, keeping to the dark until he’d put a safe distance between them. Before Tommy could take two steps in his direction, Griff hauled ass out of the aley and sprinted up the street and halfway to the 2nd Avenue train stop before he paused to puke in a trashcan ’cause he was so relieved and anxious. Guh. Nasty.
Down in the subway, the F train took forever ’cause it was almost midnight now.
Tommy likes dudes. And I think maybe I like dudes. Definitely one dude, at least. Griff prayed he could keep it together. He kept thinking about the sounds Tommy made getting humped and the way he’d smiled at his fuckbuddy after. His brain felt scrambled.
He kept looking at his watch so much that finaly he took it off and put it in his pocket. At the exact moment when Dante’s video went live on the HotHead website, Griff was underground at East Broadway, tapping his feet and reading the ads overhead to distract himself from the second hand sweeping around the little dial on his wrist. At least he knew his dad would be watching television when he got home. That would keep him from going online and out of his gourd.
For once, he needed his dad to be rigid and detached. For once, Griff was weirdly relieved to be going back to the same law’n’order house he’d grown up in—an adamantly porn-free zone and al the safer and saner for it.
The late-night subway meant Griff didn’t get back to his dad’s until nearly one. Walking in the dark streets, he’d taken the long way from the Carrol Street station and stopped at the Korean deli to buy ice cream and toilet paper he didn’t need. He had a ten-minute conversation with a homeless man about global warming to waste some more seconds. He went to an ATM to check that his paycheck had cleared. It had.
Al the way through Carrol Gardens, Griff kept teling himself he was exhausted and needed to crash because he was working a ful moon over the weekend, and that always meant crazy shit for the station. This was what rehab must be like, fighting alone in the dark against something you needed to hide. He’d seen guys kick destructive habits. It came at a cost.
As he walked past sleeping brownstones, he made a deal with himself. He wouldn’t promise he’d never watch the video. He was just going to try to get through tonight without giving in to the impulse. He could make it through the dark in one piece.
One night at a time.
His body wasn’t listening; his body was thinking some realy inappropriate things about Dante that forced him to carry the groceries in front of his zipper. He thought about the guys who’d watched Dante already since midnight and wondered how many there were, where they lived. He wanted to punish them for something that wasn’t their fault. He got so pissed he stopped thinking about it.
Even walking as slowly as possible, Griff finaly made it home. The windows were dark and his father’s car was stil gone. Shit. He was walking into an empty house.
He thought of heading to the station and sleeping in his crappy little bunk just to be surrounded by normal life and no privacy. He thought of caling someone to come over, but the only person he could think of was exactly the person he didn’t need to be sitting with. Hel, Dante would probably sign on to the HotHead site and make him watch his porn debut. He almost considered going back to chat with Sticky in Manhattan, just to kil another couple beers and hours so he’d be tired enough to sleep.
Griff’s key turned in the lock with a thunk of finality.
“Dad?” Hoping against hope, Griff caled out into the dim rooms, praying that his father had passed out somewhere or that he’d had car trouble and been dropped home. The parlor was stil. The kitchen. Just the ticking of his mother’s clock from the hal as he climbed the stairs, the ghost of a bel as the gears shifted and shook the chimes without sounding them. Tick-tick-tick as he creaked up the stairs to the dark above. “Hey. I’m home.” No answer. His dad’s door stood open, the spartan bed made. A suit hung on the closet door like a man without a head or hands.
Griff clumped back downstairs in the dark to the kitchen. Without turning on the light, he opened the fridge, which held only half a lemon in wax paper, a gummy jar of peach preserves, and a container of Greek takeout he smeled and tossed. He thought about making toast, but he knew anything would taste like ash tonight. He closed the pantry.
1:08 in the a.m.
How many guys have seen Dante now on the web? How many HotHead members have watched him spray his load over himself while I am sitting here like a coward trying to eat spoiled food in an empty house?
Griff kept thinking about al those men tonight knowing Dante like that. Seeing his pleasure and thinking they owned some sliver of him because they’d witnessed something private, something that should be his alone. How many people would have a piece of Dante next week, or next month? That seemed logical. If Griff gave in and signed on now, he could at least share Dante with them, rather than just letting them steal part of him.
No. Reaching above, he puled down a bottle of scotch and poured himself four fingers into a chipped glass, raised a toast to nothing and drained it, then did it again.
His celphone buzzed on his hip. Someone must have left a message for him while he was on the train. He lifted the screen to look.
Dante.
Griff poured himself another hefty scotch, and, unable to stop himself, he retrieved the message, listening to it on speakerphone as he headed down to his room in the basement apartment. The message echoed in the empty house.
“’S’up, G!” Dante was caling from somewhere loud, a bar probably, with disco blaring. Glasses clinked and a rowdy crowd shouted at each other in the background. Dante sounded happy too.
“Hey man, I was wondering if you wanted to come over on Saturday to help with the roof again. I hate to ask but I gotta leak in the attic. I promised Tino I’d do an eggplant parm and knots, so you’l eat good. Yo, watch…!”
The message got muffled for a second as Dante was jostled and the phone dropped to the floor with a clatter. Rustling as he retrieved it. “I swear I’l make it up to you, Griff. Y’know, I got that check from that… Russian thing and I don’t want the roof to get worse.” Griff pushed open his bedroom door, dropping the phone on the bedside table as he turned on the reading lamp. He felt that scotch. Good. Maybe he would be able to sleep. He kicked off his shoes and unbuttoned the tight jeans to scratch his ridged bely. His bed stil didn’t have a headboard, just a boxspring and mattress on the floor. His little TV and boom-box dated from high school. Jesus. Right then, he tried not to feel like a complete loser and failed.
On the cel speakerphone, Dante was laughing at something over the roar of the bar. A woman’s voice, nearby but low, said something inaudible. “Yeah!
Yeah. Oh, and Griffin, my dad sent you an e-mail about Sunday dinner and you’re coming. Don’t bitch, just fucking say yes back right now so my mom doesn’t give me grief. I gotta g—” And the message ended.
1:16.
Roboticaly, Griff scooped up his laptop from the desk and opened it on the bed. He puled the black shirt off over his head and tossed it toward the closet as his system woke up.
Sure enough there was an e-mail from Mr. Anastagio. He opened it and typed an answer with two blunt fingers: Yes, coming to dinner Sunday. Thank you, Mr. A.; what can I bring?
Closing the invite, he deleted a weight-loss ad, penis enlargement spam, and two schedule changes from his captain, and then he saw it.
“ARE YOU A HOT HEAD?”
Dante had forwarded the fucking website link. To him. On purpose. Ha ha.
Griff slammed his laptop shut and put it on the bedside table. Heart pounding, he turned off the lamp and put a couple books on top of his computer, like he was trapping a snake inside it. His hands shook.
I wish I wish I wish I wish….
He pushed away to the other side of the bed and lay there in the dark watching the ceiling. He thought about the joke that Dante thought it was. Dante and he had been naked together before. Hel, they’d banged girls together when they were stil stupid teenagers.
But Dante didn’t know that something had changed in him. He probably thought it was hilarious, that was al.
Griff concentrated on taking deep lungfuls of air because there were spots in front of his eyes in the dark room. He understood, but Dante didn’t. That was the problem.
Fuck him. Fuck him. How can he not know?
Griff lasted thirty-seven minutes before he broke.