Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (32 page)

"I know I wasn't always the best friend," Jack said. "But I've learned a lot about myself, Ned. I'm not so afraid of who I am anymore."

"You mean of being gay?" I said, half hoping the word might wound him somehow. "That's part of it," he said. "I couldn't have even said the word gay two years ago." "I remember," I said cruelly. "Is that something else your TA taught you?"

"James was about as closeted as you can get," Jack replied. "He told the dean that I was the one who seduced him. He somehow forgot that he was the one who invited me to his room for a personal tutoring session on the Articles of Religion and then couldn't wait to get my clothes off. No, it was more living here in San Francisco that helped me get over the whole gay thing. It's hard to be here without loosening up. It's funny how fast people change when they move here. You'll see."

"I didn't know I needed to change," I said.

 

"Lighten up," said Jack. "I just mean your attitude will probably change. Some of that uptightness will go away."

"I'm not uptight," I said, annoyed that he somehow thought he was more enlightened, or evolved, or whatever than I was. "Just because I don't have hair down to my shoulders and jeans that haven't been washed in a month, don't think you can sit there lecturing me."

"I'm not lecturing you," Jack said. "Man, you really do need to mellow out. We should go back to our place and smoke some weed. Andy knows this guy who has the best shit."

"No thanks," I said, reaching for my wallet and taking out some ones. "I think I should go." "Ned," Jack said. "Come on. Let's just talk some more."
"I don't want to talk," I said, standing up. "I've got a lot to do tomorrow."
"Maybe another night?" asked Jack.
"Maybe," I told him. "'Bye, Jack."

I walked out before he could say anything else. I hurried down Castro street, avoiding looking at the men around me. At 18th Street I managed to get a cab and surprised myself by telling the driver to take me to the Golden Gate Bridge. He looked at me suspiciously for a moment, as if checking for signs that I might be planning something he would read about the next day in the morning paper. Apparently finding nothing amiss, he started driving.

I didn't arrive at the bridge with any plan. It had just popped into my head to go there. I vaguely thought maybe I would walk to the other side, although there was nothing waiting there for me. It was purely for lack of any better alternative that I ended up standing in the center, looking out at the night. Watching the lights of ships passing underneath the bridge, I was reminded of a story I'd heard from a World War II navy man—now a doctor at Letterman—while in the hospital. To distract me from the pain of one of the endless tests, he had, while peering into my bowels, regaled me with stories about the Presidio. Concerned more with trying not to soil myself than with listening, I forgot most of them instantly, but one stuck in my mind, a tale about a ghost ship that haunted San Francisco Bay. Its name was the SS

Tennessee , and it had gone down in 1853.

While serving on the destroyer USS Kennison , escorting convoys and submarines to various California bases during the war, the good doctor was on deck one night in November of 1942 when the ship passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge on its way back to port. As the fog parted, he saw another ship passing alongside, heading in the opposite direction.

"She was old," he said. "Not from our century. She didn't make a sound, but I heard the water moving, and she left a wake. And there were men on board, pale men who didn't say anything. They just stood there, looking back at us. Then I saw her name painted on the side—Tennessee. I thought I was dreaming, but later on I snuck a peek at the ship's log and there it was. I looked that name up later in the library and found out a lot of sailors have seen her over the years."

I'd written the doctor's story off as just another legend that someone wanted to be true and so had convinced himself that it was. But looking down from the top of the bridge, I suddenly believed him. I could easily imagine a ghost ship passing through those dark waters, attempting to carry her crew back to the land of the living. It made sense, in that place of so many deaths, that souls would congregate beneath the mighty arc of metal that so many had said could never be built. It was a place of impossibilities, the least of which was that it might be a crossroads between earth and heaven and hell. Jack had appeared like a ghost, out of nowhere and without warning. Like the doctor staring at the foggy image of the past, I was looking over my shoulder at who and what I had once been. My choice now was whether I would run from that ghost or embrace it.

CHAPTER 32
"You come here to pray?"

I looked at the man standing beside me. Tall and blonde, with curly hair and rugged good looks, he resembled Ben Murphy, my current romantic crush as outlaw Kid Curry on Alias Smith and Jones . His blue work shirt was open, revealing the smooth skin of his chest beneath, and he leaned against the bar with a casual air that suggested he was very much at home there. I couldn't recall having seen him before, but I'd only been to the Stud a handful of times.

"Why would I come here to pray?" I asked him.

 

He smiled, and I saw from the way his eyes moved slowly from my face to my crotch that he was drunk or high. Probably both. "This is a church," he said. "You didn't know that?"

I shook my head no and took a pull on my bottle of beer. If he hadn't looked like Ben Murphy, I might have left him standing there and gone in search of someone with a better line. But his cleft chin and full lips kept me rooted to the spot.

"You're standing in the sanctuary of an official Universalist Life Church," he said, raising his arms and indicating the whole of the bar.

"In about an hour, this becomes a place of worship." He looked at me, shaking my head, and said, "What? You don't believe me?"

"Sure, I believe you," I told him. "I believe that in about an hour, half of these guys will be on their knees, and the other half will be shouting hallelujah."

He laughed, a rich, deep sound that made my stomach tingle. Then he leaned in, his leg touching my thigh and his face hovering only a few inches away from my mine. "You're funny," he said. "But I'm dead serious. They had this place declared a church so it can stay open past two."

I didn't know whether to believe him or not (I learned later that he was right), but at that point I really didn't care if he was lying. I was picturing my fantasies about Kid Curry holding up my railroad car at gunpoint coming true. When, a long moment later, he asked me if I wanted to get out of there, I set my beer on the bar and followed him out the door.

Don't judge me too harshly. Remember, this was 1973. We did this kind of thing then. We still do, I know, but in those beautiful days when everything seemed too perfect to be true, we made a life of it. And, as I said, he very closely resembled Ben Murphy. You can tut-tut all you like, but I wasn't the first man to take a stranger up on an offer simply because he looked like someone else, and I'm sure I won't be the last.

We walked down Folsom, the infamous "Miracle Mile" of bars that existed to fulfill the dreams of San Francisco's gay men. It was July, the weather sultry, and many of the men we passed were wearing almost nothing. It wasn't unusual then to see someone giving head in a darkened doorway, or two, three, or more men engaged in foreplay outside a bar door, hands and mouths wandering over naked skin as they negotiated what might come next. The stale smell of the bars leaked out onto the streets, mingling with the scents of pot, sweat, and cooking meat emanating from Hamburger Mary's.

"By the way, I'm Art," my new friend said as we stopped to wait for a light.
"Ned," I told him.
"Well, Ned, where's your place?" Art asked me.
"I'd rather go to yours, if you don't mind," I said. "Mine's kind of crowded."
"Mine, too," Art said. "My wife is there."

Again he smiled at me, and I didn't know if I should take him seriously or not. He put his arm around my shoulder and started walking down 12th Street toward Market.

"Where are we going?" I asked.
"You ever been to The Club?" he replied.
"Which club?" I said.
"The Club," Art said. "That's the name."
"I've never even heard of it."

"Well, then, you're in for a real special treat," he said, holding out his hand to hail a taxi. The cab took us downtown, into the Tenderloin, a neighborhood even seedier than SOMA and its bars. Girls in garish, tight clothes plied their trade under the harsh lights, and their customers lurked in the shadows, waiting and looking. I had no idea where we were going, and when the driver stopped in front of an address on Turk Street, I got out, still not understanding where we were. A sign over a black door said THE CLUB , but there was nothing to indicate what kind of place it was.

"You're gonna love this," Art said as he steered me inside, where he handed over some money to a man behind a window and received back two towels.

It quickly became clear, even to my naive eyes, what The Club was. Dimly lit, slightly damp, and reeking of sex, it was a bathhouse. I'd heard about them, but had never been in one, mostly because I found the idea of them slightly vulgar. Still affected by my conservative upbringing, I preferred the bars, where I could at least pretend I was there for something other than sex. A bathhouse, to my mind, was too brazen, or maybe desperate. I didn't mind looking for sex; I just didn't want to be so obvious about it. As Art led me down a corridor, I tried to avert my eyes from the naked men leaning against the walls and standing in doorways. Although I was far from being a virgin, I felt like some kind of unspoiled bride being led to her wedding night chamber. I sensed eyes on me, and was suddenly afflicted with almost paralyzing shyness. The idea that Art expected me to come back through that gauntlet wearing nothing but a towel terrified me, and I considered just turning around and leaving.

But I was horny, and curious, and so I went into a room where I removed my clothes and put them inside a locker with Art's. He kept the key, which he wore on a band around his wrist, like a charm. Before I could wrap my towel around my waist, Art grabbed my cock and held it while he kissed me. I responded despite my nervousness, and he squeezed me tightly. My hand went between his legs and found him to be equally aroused and impressively large.

After making out for a few minutes, he took me by the hand and led me back down the hallway. I tried to hold my towel around my waist to cover myself, but it wasn't quite big enough to circle me easily (probably by design) and my erection bobbed conspicuously in the gap. More than one hand reached out and gave it a tug, but in the darkness I saw only fingers, never faces. On the second floor there was a large room covered with mats. As Art led me to an empty space, I remembered the night Jack and I had spent with Andy years before. This room, though, was filled only with men, men doing every conceivable thing to one another involving mouths, hands, cocks, and assholes. It was a constantly-changing tableau punctuated by moans, slaps, and the occasional volley of filthy words. Everywhere I looked a different carnal act was being played out in living stereo. Art pulled me down onto the floor and tossed my towel aside. He began kissing me again while he played with my dick. After a while, he moved down and I felt the heat of his mouth as he took me in. I lay back and let him work up and down my shaft, focusing on not getting too excited too soon. Although I'd had a few encounters during the preceding months, the fact was, Art was the first in some time. I knew I could easily pop if I didn't distract myself, so I focused my mind on trying to remember the army's codes for small weapons ammunition.

I was jerked from my task by the feeling of something warm and wet pushing between the cheeks of my ass. I looked up and saw the top of Art's head. He'd pushed my legs back and was burrowing his face into me. Before I knew it, his tongue was inside of me, teasing me open. It was followed soon after by a finger.

"Hold on," I said, reaching down and drawing him up.

 

"What?" he asked, falling between my legs and pumping his cock against mine. "I want to fuck you."

"It's just that…" I began.
"Here," Art said, reaching over and picking up a small, dark bottle. "This will loosen you up."

He uncapped the bottle and held it under my nose. I'd used poppers once or twice before, so I knew what they were and what to do. I inhaled, feeling the rush as the amyl nitrate invaded my brain and exploded. Art took a hit as well, shutting his eyes as the buzz began, then opening them and smiling wickedly. "That should open you up like one of those doors on the Enterprise ," he said, putting his hands behind my knees.

I let him do it. The amyl made everything okay. Not just okay—great. Now we know all the horrible things that can happen when you overdo that stuff, but I tell you, I'm not sure it isn't worth it. All right, when I'm being sensible I know it isn't, just like I know Thayer is right when he tells me three cups of coffee a day is enough. But lust is seldom sensible, and I know why so many guys still take whiffs out of those tiny bottles when they want to get things going. For that minute or however long it lasts, you feel like everything has opened up and that every electrical current in the universe is running right through your heart and out your dick. Everything is magnified a million times, and you don't ever want it to end.

I looked at Art and saw the most beautiful man in the world. He was Ben Murphy, my fantasy cowboy. I didn't know what I was to him, but I didn't care. All I cared about was the way he filled me up and made me want more of him, of anyone, of everyone. I found myself reaching out to the bodies around us, trying to draw them in. Some of them found their way, and we were a tangle of limbs. I felt tongues and fingers moving here, touching there, sometimes fleeting, sometimes lingering, and I didn't care who they belonged to. My face was buried between furry thighs, and I sucked eagerly at a musky pucker while somewhere below an invisible mouth coaxed an orgasm from my swollen erection. I felt Art come inside me. I was certain that I couldn't contain it, that somewhere inside a dam was about to break, cracks in its walls widening and splitting me open. I tried to hold back, wanting to hang forever in that delicate space between desire and completion. Then someone's hand tightened around my balls, pulling gently, and I couldn't stop myself. I cried out as my balls were emptied, my jism flying out like silk from a spider. My body shuddered, and for perhaps a quarter of a minute I was orbiting the sun.