Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

I haven’t had any ass in a month. More. Two months, going on three. A long time, and I wanted some. That was all, animal as that must sound. I was tired of doing it to myself. Tired of thinking and dreaming about it, swiveling around to stare after it on the street, reading fiction about it, looking at nude photos in men’s magazines, lingerie and swimsuit ads in the Sunday Times magazine, going to R-rated movies just to get a glimpse of the pubic area and long looks of bare thighs, breasts and behinds. So I brushed my hair. Shaved. Ten after nine. Little bit late to call but it was worth a shot. And left my apartment.

I made two calls at the corner phone booth. First woman said “Bullshit, man, you only call when you’re horny,” and hung up. The other call was answered by the babysitter: “Ms. Michaelson is out on a date.” I’d check out the bars. Where else could I now hope to find someone to make love with tonight? I looked in the window of the bar nearest my home. It had a tall, beautiful bartender, but all the customers at the bar but two were men like myself: looking for ass; trying to get into bed with the bartender, who, times I was there, I saw was mainly behind the bar to keep their fantasies going about her while selling them twice as many drinks as they’d normally buy. Did any of them eventually end up with her? I doubted it, so to me it was a losing place.

I went into the next bar a block away. It had always been the best place in the neighborhood to meet women. Always crowded, lots of good music playing, and no professional whores. It was much darker now. Just as crowded. Same kind of music it usually played but much louder. All the customers were men, and they were all gay. Several of them gave me friendly looks. I walked right out. “Say, where are you going? — you’re cute,” one of them said. I looked at the bar’s sign and saw the name hadn’t changed. There was a notice taped from the inside on several of the bar’s small French window panes and one pasted to the lamppost out front:

COME TO THE WEST SIDE’S

NEWEST MEAT RACK

Dancing, inexpensive dining

Taped music during the week

Live combo Friday & Saturday nites

Never a cover, minimum, ripoff or

Commercial hustle of any kind at

Our good place

Peace-loving bartenders

Well-meaning bar owners

Sympathetic landlord

We like nice company too

Bring your closest friends

Probably the best bar for me to go to now was one eight blocks from here. I hardly ever went to it because it was so far away. But plenty of single women used to go there, and it was usually crowded at the bar. So if I saw a woman I was attracted to and she seemed unattached, I could go over and stand next to her while ordering a drink or drinking the one I already held. In other words, it wouldn’t seem unusual my just standing there before I spoke to her.

So I walked to it. It was a chilly night and I was glad to get inside. The place was crowded. Lots of smoke, chatter, laughing, huge television set on without the sound: basketball, and a new super-stereo jukebox playing a loud rock number almost in beat to the dribbling, passing and dunking of the ball.

I looked around as I unbuttoned my coat. Two middle-aged women sat on the bar stools nearest the door. They looked up, seemed to resent the draft I brought in with me. One flicked cigarette ash to the floor, the other fooled with her false eyelash, and they resumed their conversation. Group of young women at the end of the bar by the dartboard. Two of them playing, other two watching. All four drinking beer from the same pitcher. A pretty woman sitting at the middle of the bar, a man on either side of her leaning on the counter and talking to her at once. Another woman standing not too far from them, looking drunk or stoned. She dropped her cigarette, had a hard time finding it, and when she did, picking it up and then trying to relight it though it was still lit. And several other women, at the bar or seated at the three tables in front, young and not so young, heavy, thin, stacked, flat, pretty, very pretty, short, average and tall, all apparently with men. I went almost to the end of the bar, stepped on a guy’s foot along the way, said “Excuse me, I’m sorry,” and then “But I said I’m sorry,” after he growled.

There was only one bartender, running around like mad and also pouring drinks for the waiters and waitresses for the table customers in the next room. I remember him from the bar that had gone gay. He sort of managed it and never poured a free drink in two years and liked to eighty-six people from that place. One time he told a friend of mine to leave because he thought he was drunk. When Jack refused to go because he said he wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t, Gil phoned the police. Two cops came in about five minutes. Their patrol car was double-parked outside with the emergency roof light spinning. Gil didn’t have to say a word to them, just pointed at Jack. They went straight to him and said “Okay, wise guy — get.” “But I’m not drunk,” Jack said. “I’ll piss in that ketchup bottle and let you take a urine test of it to prove I’m not drunk. But if I am drunk then I got that way here, so why don’t you pull Gil in for selling a drunk beer?” One cop started to unsnap his holster. “I can’t believe it,” I said. “Come on, Jack.” Gil said to me “Good, you’re his pal, you go too.” I said “Jack, goddamn you, let’s go, before you get shot for being a jerk,” and pushed him out the door. He never really forgave me for butting in. He said later “I wanted them to take me to lockup and then for Gil and those freeloading cops to pay with their jobs for that bum rap.”

“How you doing, Gil?” I said.

“Rick’s it, right?”

“Ray.”

“Ray. Ray. Right. Nice to see you.” He stuck his hand across the bar. He always wore the greatest shirts and belts. My clothes were fairly old and drab and getting threadbare from the wash. We shook hands. “What’ll it be?”

“A dark draft.”

“All out. Only in bottles.”

The bottles of dark were German or Danish and too expensive, and besides, I didn’t want to be carrying one around with the stein. I said “Regular draft, then. You got yourself out of Sweeney’s, I see.”

“Came to where I couldn’t make it there, or they couldn’t make me,” and he laughed. I smiled. So we were old friends. He gave me my beer and I paid and put down a good tip. “Appreciated,” and I said “You’re welcome.” I was going to ask if Sweeney’s had new owners — anything to keep the talk going a while longer — but by now he was holding three order slips a waitress had given him and pouring a bar customer white and red wines, and I turned to my left. Those four young women were right by me as I’d planned. The two dart players had each been trying for the last few minutes to end the game with a bull’s-eye. One of the two watching the game looked at me and then away. It was a hard look, a quick put-down for faking my way over here and staring directly at her, not at all interested, never could be interested, go away. The others seemed just as hard, though none looked at me. I didn’t belong in this place. Didn’t belong in any of these bars. It wasn’t my clothes that were old, it was me. And my aim was all wrong: to come here just for a beer, okay, and preferably with a friend so I wouldn’t have to push myself on someone to talk, but not just to find ass. It had never really worked out for me here or in that bar that was now gay or any of the bars around. In the four years since I’d come back to the city it had never worked out once. Closest I came to meeting a woman in any of these bars was right here about a year ago. I looked at her a long time. She was short, blond, lively, had a nice smile, seemed sexy, homey, thoughtful, uncomplicated, and as if she’d be lots of fun. She was talking to a man and every so often looked at me. Once, she smiled at me and I smiled back. Then she left for the ladies’ room and on her way back I touched her arm and said “Excuse me, I know you’re with someone, but I’m drawn to you, plain as that, silly and rude as that has to sound.” She said “No, I think it’s fine. I just met that guy, so I can talk to you, and thought I was the one bugging you before with my occasional stares. You’ve very wistful eyes, that’s why, which you must have been told before and which has to sound sillier or plainer than anything you said to me.” Two stools opened up and we sat at the bar. Admitted that these opening conversation lines were the worst. Laughed, talked, bought each other drinks, had hamburgers and fries. Then about six women — women I didn’t know she’d come in with — came over and one said “Have to be skedaddling now, Lail.” I whispered to her “Stay the night with me — we got something going.” She said she knows, and she would, and she told me before she was a singer and accordionist? Well, it’s with an all-women band and singing group in Florida and they had performed in Brooklyn that afternoon and were on their way to Pittsburgh in half an hour to give a concert tomorrow. We exchanged addresses. I kissed her fingers at the door, in jest and for real. We wrote each other and sometimes I called. Each letter and phone call became more affectionate. Then she didn’t write back. I wrote again and she didn’t answer. I called a few times. The woman who answered always said she’d give Lail my message. Finally I got her on the phone and she said she couldn’t come to New York as I’d been asking her to and I shouldn’t come to Florida to see her as I then said I wanted to, as there was lately another man in her life and marriage seemed a definite possibility. I said “Hell, I’ll marry you,” and she said “Sorry, but with this one I know I’m safe.”