Jinx
John M. Trumbo
You’re used to humidity but not like this. You grew up with thick, wet summer nights, nights when you thought you could actually wring out whatever was bothering you and feel better. But this is the Deep South now. This is different. This is real somehow. More real than it ever was before. This is only your first month or so in Atlanta and you thought it would be like your first twenty-four years. But you’re wrong.
You’re now with Craig who has driven you to the Cage, the city’s leather bar for gay men. He’s driven you and his best friend and his best friend’s boyfriend in his beat-up Chevy station wagon, a beast of a car that he uses for work, to the bar for a Saturday night of fun. This feels important to you, as if you should have been studying for it all along.
Craig’s station wagon reeks of chemicals. The back is full of barrels and test tubes and boots and gloves all slowly being eaten away by the stuff designed to turn God’s towering giants into paper products for consumers — notebooks, napkins, tissues, toilet paper. He drives all over Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee inspecting chemicals in the water at paper mill treatment plants. He makes sure the pH is just right, or something.
Craig wheels his monstrosity everywhere he goes, up and down interstate highways or along dusty country roads all over the Southeast. As a kind of reward for his labor, he tries to plan his trips near some big city so he can hit all the gay bars. In his late twenties, it’s still a novelty to him. He gets off on the attention he’s paid when he’s the only new face in some rundown shit hole in the worst part of town named “Rumors” or “Secrets” or “The Hidden Door” where aging drag queens lazily lip sync to a Tanya Tucker song for a few sticky dollar bills, still expecting to be discovered. Or adored.
But tonight, Craig is with you and you think he thinks the world of you. He powers the Chevy wagon up the incline of a church parking lot across the street from the leather bar. The irony is not lost on anyone. He guns the car’s loud V8 engine into a parking spot and you all pile out. Craig. John David, his best friend and roommate. Tim, John David’s boyfriend. And you. You all congregate on the passenger side for what feels like a ritual.
You love rituals. Rituals make you feel like you’re part of something. Something apart from yourself or, rather, something you wished you had been part of all your life. A fraternity of sorts. You lean against the car waiting for Craig to get the party started. He pulls out a small glass vile of cocaine, a vile with a dipper — a tiny spoon — attached to the screw top. Craig unscrews it and helps himself to the first hit. He bought the stuff, after all. It’s his.
But what’s a party without someone to share it with? So he passes the vile to John David. This isn’t serious. It’s just enough to, you know, get the evening going. Without the air conditioning of the station wagon, you remember that it’s hot. You wipe sweat from your brow as you wait for John David to finish his turn. You wait, but you don’t want to be left out, the weird one, the loser who doesn’t do what everyone else is doing. You’re young so you want to fit in. And this is the 1980s, for crying out loud. You’re just doing what everyone else is doing.
Finally, the vile comes to you and you grip it tightly, making sure not to let it slip out of your sweaty fingers. That would be bad. You grip the vile with one hand and the top gingerly with the other. Dip the spoon into the magical white powder and scoop out a spot of it. Just a spot. Lift it to your nose and, pinching one nostril, make the white spot disappear. Repeat on the other side.
You screw the top back onto the vile and pass it back to Craig who prepares one more for himself for good measure. The anticipation and the anxiety and the drug all rush your brain. You’re not fucked up or anything, but this is all still pretty new to you and being a little bad feels good right about now. The night has begun.
You and Craig met on your second night in Atlanta. Coming from rural Virginia, the southern city seemed like a good place to find work, life, and who you’re supposed to be. Friends in the suburbs let you stay with them for a few weeks. But after meeting Craig, you spent nearly every night in town with him. Except for weekends when he takes off for a long work trip.
Soon, you moved in with Craig and John David in their two-bedroom apartment. They live in this sprawling complex in Midtown that looks like it was built in the early 1960s. You’ve never seen so many gay men concentrated in one place before and you’re not sure if this is heaven, or someplace else. It’s clean enough, but there’s patchwork paint and mismatched appliances and the laundry machines only work half the time and instead of putting any real work into the place you can tell that they just keep it prettied up for the boys.
John David’s boyfriend, Tim, lives out in the country somewhere. He’s a truck driver and mainly just comes into town on the weekends to party and hang out with John David, and sometimes you and Craig. You like Tim because he’s older than the three of you by about ten years or so, a little rough around the edges, but more importantly, he doesn’t act like he’s “performing” like Craig and John David. He’s seen shit like this for years, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t make you feel like you’re supposed to be something that you’re not.
Like this: One Saturday morning, Craig was going on and on about what all happened at the bar the night before and you were just sitting there in front of the TV wearing a pair of striped candy-colored shorts watching “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” Tim laughed his ass off at you, but not like he was making fun or criticizing you for not playing along with Craig’s bravado. More like, “Yeah, little man, you do your shit!”
“How do I look?” Craig asks before heading into the bar, but he already knows your answer. He can be so damn sweet when he wants and make you think you’re the only fucking person in the world. “I’m going to take my shirt off out here before we go in, it’s too damn hot already. I’m fat. Fuck it, I don’t care. Fuck ’em if they ain’t never seen a belly. You ready, Miss J. David?” His accent thickens to syrup when he’s been drinking or had a couple bumps.
“Hell, girl, I’m always ready,” John David replies quick and urgent. “I’m ready to get me some trouble! I can feel it comin’ on and I’m ready to shake hands with it tonight, baby!” John David can never just say yes or no. And when he’s wired, he puts an extra little hop in his step like he just won the lottery.
It used to bother you when you heard gay men calling each other “girl” or “she” because it just seemed to reinforce the tired old stereotypes. But now, when you’re just hanging out bullshitting each other, it just happens. It even works for some people, like John David. He’s not particularly feminine or anything, but once he gets all wound up and stuff you just gotta get out of the way and let her go.
Tim doesn’t say anything. He just watches and grins. He’s been around long enough to know the drill. He knows that Craig and John David are leading this parade so there’s no sense in trying to weasel his way up front or make any kind of impression. He’s just along for the ride like you and maybe, when the night is over, he and John David will still be together.
“Alright then ya’ll, let’s go,” Craig instructs. “We ain’t meetin’ nobody out here in this parkin’ lot.” You keep pace in back with Tim while Craig and John David dart across Continental Avenue without looking for traffic. You and Tim make sure it’s safe to cross the busy late night street. At the entrance of the Cage, you push your way through the heavy plastic strips hanging in the doorway like a car wash. The cold conditioned air inside suddenly hits your face and the cocaine hits your brain and your nipples get hard. They poke up against Craig’s leather vest that you borrowed. You love that feeling and slip your hand inside the vest for a quick twist through the fabric of your t-shirt.
Craig buys the first round of beers and hands them out. You grab your cold can of Budweiser and take a long, deep chug and it tastes like the greatest thing you ever had in you life. Beads of condensation drip from your fingers and you think to yourself, I feel fucking fantastic and you strip off your t-shirt and stuff it down the back of your jeans. The waistline is already soaked with sweat. Some drips down the crack of your ass like nobody’s business and you slide your arms back into the damp leather vest.
“Nice,” the bartender says, watching you. “New in town?”
“Me? Yeah, just moved here about a month ago,” you say with a voice that sounds surprised and uncontrollably high. “I really love it.”
“Well, let me be the first to welcome you,” and he leans over the bar and plants a wide-open-mouthed kiss right on you. You don’t want to look like an asshole so you kiss him right back just as deeply. Craig catches this and saunters back over to where you got your face entwined with the bartender’s.
“This yours?” the bartender asks Craig when you separate. “Figures. Well, welcome anyway, stud,” he says back to you. You.
“I’m not here two minutes and already you got your face down that bartender’s throat!” Craig yells at you over the loud music. He’s not really upset, he’s just putting on a show. It’s like some kind of validation for him. Like a dog pissing on a bush.
“I couldn’t help it, he attacked me!” you explain weakly, but it doesn’t really matter. Craig is grinning and has already turned back towards the crowd.
“We might come back for him later. Come on,” Craig orders. He grabs your hand and leads you through layers of leather-clad men — chaps, harnesses, biker caps. There’s a small dance floor off in the darkness but you can’t make out faces, just bodies moving and writhing to the disco and new wave music, a mix of new stuff and classics that even the butchest men in the crowd can’t resist.
“You okay, dog?” he asks you all nice-like. He started calling you “dog” a little while ago. You think you like it. He doesn’t say it in a derogatory way, really. It’s kind of endearing.
“I’m cool,” you say, though it sounds like you’re trying to convince your mom that you’ll be fine when she and your dad drop you off at camp for the first time and you want her to think that you’ve got it all under control. Cool as a cucumber. To prove it to Craig, you slip out of his clutch, take another deep swig of your beer and start cruisin’ the place.
You’re not looking for anything in particular, you’re still going home with Craig and all, but you want him to know that you’re prime and you’re lookin’ good and lookin’ around. Craig just looks at you for a minute and smiles his Cheshire cat smile. He knows.
For the next few hours you just stroll the bar, sometimes with Craig, sometimes alone. Just strolling, meeting new people, dancing a bit. And every hour or so, the four of you regroup and head out to the Chevy wagon to freshen up. Leaving the cold, manufactured atmosphere of the bar — heavy and stale and intoxicating — the sticky southern night air smacks you in the face. There’s no chance of drying off. And who the fuck cares?
Sweat pours off your body like you’re raining. Raining on other human beings, the essence of yourself flowing out of your pores. Then, after another little bump of coke to keep things going, you wipe off the remains on the end of your nose and lick your fingers and, damn! Nothing could be better than this. Nothing! You all go back inside and there are hot men everywhere, dancing and moving around you and some of them are seriously checking you out and you think, This is it, man. You have fucking arrived! And for the first time in your life you can see how good it can be, how good it can feel to grab hold of the world, your world, and declare, “Look at me, damn it, look at me! This is me.”
The night wears on and you don’t want it to stop. None of you want it to stop but the bar’s closing so you all gather near the front door and ask, “What now?” John David and Tim are still together, kissing their goodbyes to a couple of men but still together. Then you’re out by the station wagon and Craig climbs in and starts the engine. Soon, you’re on your way down a quiet side street. There’s no traffic this time of night, though you know full well what kind of condition you’re all in. You look over at Craig. He’s alert and running his mouth just like usual so you don’t think too much about it and John David and Tim don’t seem to be too concerned and you’re sure as shit not going to say anything to spoil the mood so you just hold on and don’t think about it. It’s not far home.
Back at the apartment, you all pile out of the wagon like clowns, whooping and hollering to anyone still up and hanging out. You climb the stairs to apartment C-12 and flop onto the couch next to Tim. The air conditioner’s cranked and it feels pretty good. Tim puts his arm around you, more fatherly than suggestively, but it makes you feel sexy just the same. You like being this close to him even if he is John David’s, not that she cares or even notices right now.
Just then Craig dumps out another little pile of coke onto the coffee table and starts to cut it into lines. You know it’s already late and you’ve probably done enough for one night but you just want to keep this feeling going, this inevitable, head-forward, fearless, fuck-it feeling. Yes! You might roll your eyes at him for what he’s doing but secretly you’re just as glad as anyone it doesn’t have to end, this feeling of almost perfectness. Not just being high with your buddies but a sense of being a part of this, this thing that trumps whatever moral and emotional and physical ramifications all of this may have on you down the line.
“J. David, call those boys down in building A and see if they wanna come over,” Craig instructs loudly, still cutting.
“Girl, I don’t know if I have the energy tonight,” John David announces. “I danced my ass off at the Cage. This one boy just would not let me go.” Craig’s heard all this before and doesn’t pay any attention. He just hands him a twenty-dollar bill rolled into a straw. “But...” John David relents and snorts up the first line, “it might be nice to have those cute boys over for just a little while,” and reaches for the phone.
You’re just watching all this go on and realize you could just sink down into this couch and Tim’s arms and never come up for air. This is all you need. Forever. Right here. Somewhere in your mind you know there’s a fine line between pushing things too far and breaking the spell, spoiling the feeling. You just want to keep things easy, sit here next to Tim, let Craig and John David do their thing then fall into bed with Craig and sleep it all off until tomorrow afternoon sometime. Have brunch maybe.
Don’t jinx it.
But then time gets all sped up or slowed down, you’re not sure. And pretty soon these two guys from building A show up with a friend from North Carolina. And Craig’s all over that because he’s from North Carolina and anyone from North Carolina is okay in his book. He’s wound up and talkin’ this boy’s ear off about NC State basketball and the guy looks like he couldn’t give a shit but he’s happy to play along and do what needs to be done. You know? And you just try to appear cool and think of something interesting to say but nothing comes to mind. Nothing. Not Pee-wee. Nothing.
You chit-chat a little bit with the couple from A but you don’t leave your space next to Tim. From here, you can pretend to be interested and engaged while keeping Tim close to you like some kind of shield or protective blanket.
“What’s up, baby, you hangin’ in there?” John David asks all sweet-like. You know it’s bullshit. He don’t care. He’s eyein’ those boys back and forth like a dog in heat but still you say, “Oh yeah, I’m good.” Tim just smiles, not caring one way or the other. Sometimes you wish you and he were together. The two of you could just get out of here, but you’ve got Craig and he’s got John David and that ain’t gonna change anytime soon. So, you turn your attention to a Frankie Goes to Hollywood music video on TV.
Frankie say, “Relax.”
You’re fixed on music videos for a while until you realize that Craig and the guy from North Carolina are gone. And the other two guys are heading into your bedroom.
Slowly, it dawns on you what’s going on. You may be new to this but you’re not stupid. In fact, this is what’s supposed to happen, right? You rehearse what you should do in your head for a minute or two — it might be longer, you can’t be sure — then decide to stroll into the bedroom and see for yourself. He’s your boyfriend, after all.
But first, Tim looks up at you from the couch where he’s repositioned himself like he’s thinking about saying something to you. Something you ought to know already. Then he turns his gaze toward John David, who has decided to empty the dishwasher. He gets like this. One night after the Cage, he repainted his entire bedroom — complete with faux marbling — in just a couple of hours. Tim turns back, looks at you and says, “Get yourself in there, boy, if you’re gonna go. He’s your man.” It’s like he’s giving you up. Kicking you out. For your own good.
You find your way into the darkened bedroom. A couple of ancient candles perched on your shabby-chic dresser are bouncing a dim, scattered glow off the popcorn ceiling overhead. You guess that Craig has lighted them for ambiance, though he doesn’t normally do this for you, and you slide through the shadows without being recognized. You see a pile of bodies in the candlelight but you can’t tell who’s on top of whom or who’s gettin’ what done to them. Blood rushes from your heart to your head and you feel your face blush with a sudden heat and you try to make sense of the scene. It’s time to decide.
You want to believe you’re okay with all of this, with your boyfriend lost in the human jumble in front of you, but somewhere not too far beneath this fuzzy, choppy surface you’re paddling through, you sense that’s not the case. You know this is what everybody around you says you’re supposed to do with other young, attractive gay men, but you have a passing feeling that this is just trying to make things better. Better than they should be. Like faux marbling. Like Saturday night at the Cage. Like a bartender sticking his tongue down your throat, his hand down the back of your sweat-soaked jeans, who doesn’t even know or care to know your name.
The other side of you says to be cool. Join in. You move to the side of the bed and try to find an opening, an empty place between souls you can slip into with the ease of a feather and start doing something. Then you see Craig kissing the guy from North Carolina while getting fucked from behind by one of the other guys like he doesn’t even realize the guy is there.
And something snaps in your head. The fucking doesn’t bother you as much as the making out with the North Carolina guy. The two of them slinking off without so much as a word to see if you’re okay with it, or if you wanted to join them. They just disappeared like you weren’t even there. Or mattered.
Guess what. You weren’t there. Not really. You were curled up next to Tim watching videos like that were all that mattered. A comfortable little spot in your candy-colored world where you almost forgot about what was going on around you. You almost forgot you were somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. You’re not sure what you imagined your new life in a southern city would look like, but this somehow feels like make-believe.
You blink back to your senses and realize that the second boy from building A is reaching up to you from the mass with an outstretched hand, attempting to slide his hand beneath the leg of your boxer shorts, coaxing you downward. “C’mon, man, it’s cool. Lemme see whatcha got,” he whispers. The ancient candlelight flickers uncertain off the popcorn ceiling creating something like the dimpled surface of the moon. “We got lots of room. You can join us if ya want.”
But you’re already somewhere else, and it’s crystal fucking clear now. Clear and bright as day. This ain’t your bed anymore, not like you thought it was. You ought to know better. You back off from the boy with his hand under your shorts, say no thanks, I don’t want this, and walk out. You walk out past Tim, who has nodded off on the couch. You’d like to save him and take him with you, but you know you can’t. You don’t know where John David is, probably in his bedroom. The thing is, you’re not here anymore.
You’re on the surface of the moon now where no one — no one here, anyway — will even think to look.
__________
John M. Trumbo is a senior healthcare writer. He holds an MA in Writing degree with a concentration in nonfiction from the Johns Hopkins University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Christopher Street, Rebel Yell: Stories by Contemporary Southern Gay Authors, Rebel Yell II: More Stories by Contemporary Southern Gay Men, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, the Arlington Literary Journal, and the Medical Literary Messenger. He will also have an upcoming story included on The Story Collider podcast.