Mother walked straight to Kit and demanded soda water to clean the splattered specks of barf from her skirt. After spending a few moments scrubbing it with a bar towel, she raised up and proclaimed it as good as new ((and she meant it was clean enough to return to the department store the next day)). The front bar was exceedingly crowded and Kit hustled to fill drink orders. While she shook a cosmo in one hand and poured a "Walk me down the road, sweet Jesus" with another, Mother lambasted her for serving beanie weenies in a gay bar and made her swear to never do it again. In her manner, Mother blamed Kit for all of the night's events, and completely shirked any responsibility of her own...After all, she'd just sat there while everything happened all around her...but..I wondered. It had all worked out so wonderfully in her favor...and I'd never seen Hester before this night.....Something just smelled rotten.
Twyman's black janitors whisked speedily by us - separating our entourage - supporting ( as best they could ) a slumped middle-aged lady wearing a bobbing motorcycle helmet. I assumed they were taking her to a waiting cab when Kit buzzed them out. They were followed by a drag queen ( in Salvation Army drag ) -- name unbeknowst to me, but an obvious no-name who hadn't reached headliner status -- wheeling a ten-speed bicycle beside herself and out the door. I had come to the point that nothing surprised me in this Alice In Wonderland, and I took it all in stride, and I left my 2's to add themselves together, later............and they would.
When the drag queen returned without the bicycle, -- and with a little grease on her crinilin -- she announced that intermission would conclude in ten minutes, and the show would resume. ( I deducted that Mitzi's oscillating fans were meant to clear the air of any remnants of Hester....and hoped the Lysol would somehow work some similar magic -- Febreze had yet to be invented ). The drunken crowd - mostly........... some were drugged and fewer, like me, were coasting -- didn't respond to the queen's announcement, and they carried on their merriment as if nothing strange had just occurred. However, I was a bit traumatized by the fart and barf extravaganza, and I welcomed a breath of fresh air when Kerry suggested it.
Kit buzzed us out, and we walked out to see the black porters loading the 10-speed in the back of one of Hot Springs' yellow cabs. I plainly saw Hester passed out in the back seat, and I knew the poor lady who'd consumed a lethal dose ( for us, anyway) of eggs and hops was okay.......for tonight, anyway. The outside of the bar was flooded with light from many angles, and into that light stepped someone who looked slightly familiar and that someone knew me. He walked with a swoosh, which wasn't a total surprise, and his eyes looked like they needed liner, so I figured out it was a drag queen I'd met in the past, but he'd come to the bar as a boy on this night. When she called out my name, I looked at her and searched for any recognition.
"It's me," he said. "SiAra Riviera". And I did know her, sort of. She was one of the first people I'd met when I had entered the bar on Thanksgiving night. Cherry had retouched her paint job, and she'd tipped the cosmetique-extraordinaire-bartender 20 bucks for his efforts. I hugged her and asked where she'd been..
"Oh, gurl," she coughed with a raspy hack, but continued, "I've been under the weather, but I just had to get out and about. Are you dating Kerry, now?" and she pointed toward Kerry who stood by my side and had been wordless up to this point. ( I was beginning to realize this Land's End boy might have been pretty, but he had the personality of a darning egg).
"We just came out for a smoke," Kerry quickly said -- which surprised me, but I was grateful for his words since it let me off the hook, and I didn't have to answer SiAra's probing questions. ( These Southern queens wanted to know all the tea and what kind you drank......and where you bought it...and how much it cost) ,and we walked out of the light and into the dark....and back behind the bar...to the green trash dumpster which was contained in its own fence, so it was perfectly private and a wonderful place for rats, raccoons and degenerate queers to frolic as they pleased -- and the used condoms scattered on the ground told me that it had been put to good use. Moonlight behind winter clouds was our only source of light. SiAra exchanged niceties with me and gave the usual insincere compliments that gays always do..."You look fabulous"..."Where did you get those jeans?".."Did you do something different to your hair?"...blah blah bull crap. I was so immersed in SiAra's questions, that I didn't even notice Kerry light up, but I found it odd when he passed it to SiAra, and she inhaled and held her breath...Then she passed it to me.
"Oh, honey, thanks, but I have my own cigarettes..." I said innocently as I lit my Benson and Hedges Deluxe Ultra-light 100 -- the name was nearly as long as the cigarette itself, but it came in a gold box, and that is the reason I chose the brand. My college friend, David, smoked them, and I thought the box looked classy. Anything golden appealed to me, and I didnt have to worry about coordinating my cigarettes with my outfit. Gold went with anything and was always in style. My dear friend, David, introduced me to B&H, but I took the blame for becoming addicted to cigarettes in general............and I regretted it, most of the time. ( but I religiously moisturized my skin because I didn't want early wrinkles because of cigs.) I missed David immensely; he had been my closest friend through out college: drinking buddy, bawling buddy, but never fuck buddy. Our friendship was pure and true, and we'd never tarnished it with sex. Up to this point in my life, he had been the most loyal friend I had ever had, and I hoped to find that again some day, but I was fully aware that no one could ever take the place of another so his place in my heart was eternally secure. I really think the reason I clung to my Benson and Hedges was because it was a constant connection to him, and they comforted me when he could not.
SiAra blew her smoke out in one huge exhale, and the sweet fragrance told me that it wasn't tobacco. I'd had some experience with Mary Jane in college, and while I liked Puff the Magic Dragon in those days, I'd given it up for multiple reasons -- the chief of those being its illegal status. In all seriousness, I knew I had to drive home, and I knew how I'd reacted to the Puff in college, and I declined for that reason. I'd grown up a bit, and my pot days ended when I received my diploma.....
"Who told you?" she asked in a paranoid voice.
"No one had to tell me," I answered her, and wrapped my arms around myself in the shivering cold. Kerry attempted to move closer to me and put his arm around me, but I pulled away and stood alone....and separated myself from the smokers a bit. I had had a little alcohol, but its effects had worn off, so I was aware enough to be on the look-out for anyone approaching us. The puffers couldn't have cared less which told me that they'd been to this clandestine "meeting place" before, and I had to wonder which rubber was theirs.
"Then, how did you know?" she was even more paranoid, and she passed the doobie to Kerry.
"Cuz, I know what it smells like..." I looked at her like she was crazy. My eyes had adjusted to the faint moonlight, and I could see dark circles around her eyes, and SiAra's cheeks appeared to be sunk-in to pale, thin skin. He didn't look well. He'd looked fine the night I'd met him, but Cherry's brush had given him color that was not his.
"It has a smell?" she asked shocked, and she gathered up her shoulder length, wooly, blond hair and held it in a mock pony tail before she released it and let it straggle willy nilly.
"Well..........of course, it does." I just figured she smoked it so often that she just didn't smell it anymore....and I also attributed her intense questioning to THC.
"I never knew that...." she said quietly, but continued. "Do you think other people can smell it too?"
"If they've been around it, they know what it smells like," I explained. Kerry moved a bit closer to me, but he didn't extend his arm, so I let him stand next to me. It was cold and windy outside next to the dumpster, so it was nice to have some warmth emanating toward me, and I could hear the scratchings of an unseen varmint in the metal trash bin, so maybe it would jump on him instead of me if it decided to depart it's trashy paradise.
"Have you been around it a lot?" SiAra continued to probe, and Kerry didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. I finally understood Mother's reference about his red eyes when she'd met us in the bar earlier in the evening, and I figured out why the farts had left him unphased....Kerry was higher than a kite, and he'd been floating above it all.
"Well...not a lot...but some in college," I said, but I still thought SiAra was nuts. How could she not know that pot had a fragrance and be standing in a marijuana cloud? Kerry offered me the joint, but I waved it away, and he handed it to SiAra. She took another pull on it, held it in, and then released with a cough that seemed interminable.
"Did a lot of people have it?" she managed to eke out while covering her mouth and exhausting her cough.
"Not a lot...some did and some didn't. People experiment in college; it's normal. It's like a rite of passage," I offered.
"So a lot of straight guys had it?" she asked with some surprise in her voice.
"Of course..gays, straights...blacks..whites..asian..It didn't matter." I attributed her inquisitiveness to her lack of education. It was obvious for several reasons that she'd never been to an institution of higher learning nor was she aware that much more than academics were acquired there. Lord knows, that I had a degree in boxed wine and joint rolling, as well as my BA in English by the time I'd graduated....and rightfully so. I told myself it was fine for me to learn about life as well as Chaucer while I'd been in college, and I hadn't regretted it one iota. But, I'd also learned enough to snuff out the dope and drink only on occasion, too, when my formal education ended.
"You don't think bad of me do you? I'm not a slut." she said humbly...with more than a little sadness in her voice.
"No...I don't think bad of you. Where did you get it, anyway. Is it hard to find around here?" I asked, but wondered about the slut addition.
"I got it from this guy I dated about two years ago," she said as she looked at her Saucony tennis shoes and rubbed the toe of her right shoe into the gravelled lot.
"You've had this for two years?" and that really surprised me. Wouldn't its THC levels have dropped to nill in that time?
"That's what the doctors think...........I'm lucky to be alive, they say.....This AZT is about to kill me, and I've lost so much weight. People are dying all over the place, but I still keep holding on," she said valiantly, and forced a smile, but her eyes held too much water, and it almost trickled out of her lids.
And, then I knew that we'd been talking about two different things. She'd thought the reason I had declined to smoke after her was because I knew that she had AIDS.....but I hadn't known until she'd mentioned AZT..........and I just didn't want to take a puff period. It had nothing to do with her HIV status. I was smart enough to know that I couldn't get it from touching her, or drinking after her, or from smoking Pot after her..............but Hot Springs wasn't quite that sophisticated yet. They thought someone could catch AIDS from toilet seats ( and they passed out paper toilet seat covers at the local mall for just that reason). I felt sorry for SiAra and almost asked for a drag on her doobie just to show her that I wasn't afraid of her.....but she tapped it out on the bottom of her shoe before I had the chance, then she handed the roach to Kerry who deposited it in his pack of cigarettes. As we walked back toward the light in awkward silence, the wind whipped up and blew chill in our faces.
Twyman's black janitors whisked speedily by us - separating our entourage - supporting ( as best they could ) a slumped middle-aged lady wearing a bobbing motorcycle helmet. I assumed they were taking her to a waiting cab when Kit buzzed them out. They were followed by a drag queen ( in Salvation Army drag ) -- name unbeknowst to me, but an obvious no-name who hadn't reached headliner status -- wheeling a ten-speed bicycle beside herself and out the door. I had come to the point that nothing surprised me in this Alice In Wonderland, and I took it all in stride, and I left my 2's to add themselves together, later............and they would.
When the drag queen returned without the bicycle, -- and with a little grease on her crinilin -- she announced that intermission would conclude in ten minutes, and the show would resume. ( I deducted that Mitzi's oscillating fans were meant to clear the air of any remnants of Hester....and hoped the Lysol would somehow work some similar magic -- Febreze had yet to be invented ). The drunken crowd - mostly........... some were drugged and fewer, like me, were coasting -- didn't respond to the queen's announcement, and they carried on their merriment as if nothing strange had just occurred. However, I was a bit traumatized by the fart and barf extravaganza, and I welcomed a breath of fresh air when Kerry suggested it.
Kit buzzed us out, and we walked out to see the black porters loading the 10-speed in the back of one of Hot Springs' yellow cabs. I plainly saw Hester passed out in the back seat, and I knew the poor lady who'd consumed a lethal dose ( for us, anyway) of eggs and hops was okay.......for tonight, anyway. The outside of the bar was flooded with light from many angles, and into that light stepped someone who looked slightly familiar and that someone knew me. He walked with a swoosh, which wasn't a total surprise, and his eyes looked like they needed liner, so I figured out it was a drag queen I'd met in the past, but he'd come to the bar as a boy on this night. When she called out my name, I looked at her and searched for any recognition.
"It's me," he said. "SiAra Riviera". And I did know her, sort of. She was one of the first people I'd met when I had entered the bar on Thanksgiving night. Cherry had retouched her paint job, and she'd tipped the cosmetique-extraordinaire-bartender 20 bucks for his efforts. I hugged her and asked where she'd been..
"Oh, gurl," she coughed with a raspy hack, but continued, "I've been under the weather, but I just had to get out and about. Are you dating Kerry, now?" and she pointed toward Kerry who stood by my side and had been wordless up to this point. ( I was beginning to realize this Land's End boy might have been pretty, but he had the personality of a darning egg).
"We just came out for a smoke," Kerry quickly said -- which surprised me, but I was grateful for his words since it let me off the hook, and I didn't have to answer SiAra's probing questions. ( These Southern queens wanted to know all the tea and what kind you drank......and where you bought it...and how much it cost) ,and we walked out of the light and into the dark....and back behind the bar...to the green trash dumpster which was contained in its own fence, so it was perfectly private and a wonderful place for rats, raccoons and degenerate queers to frolic as they pleased -- and the used condoms scattered on the ground told me that it had been put to good use. Moonlight behind winter clouds was our only source of light. SiAra exchanged niceties with me and gave the usual insincere compliments that gays always do..."You look fabulous"..."Where did you get those jeans?".."Did you do something different to your hair?"...blah blah bull crap. I was so immersed in SiAra's questions, that I didn't even notice Kerry light up, but I found it odd when he passed it to SiAra, and she inhaled and held her breath...Then she passed it to me.
"Oh, honey, thanks, but I have my own cigarettes..." I said innocently as I lit my Benson and Hedges Deluxe Ultra-light 100 -- the name was nearly as long as the cigarette itself, but it came in a gold box, and that is the reason I chose the brand. My college friend, David, smoked them, and I thought the box looked classy. Anything golden appealed to me, and I didnt have to worry about coordinating my cigarettes with my outfit. Gold went with anything and was always in style. My dear friend, David, introduced me to B&H, but I took the blame for becoming addicted to cigarettes in general............and I regretted it, most of the time. ( but I religiously moisturized my skin because I didn't want early wrinkles because of cigs.) I missed David immensely; he had been my closest friend through out college: drinking buddy, bawling buddy, but never fuck buddy. Our friendship was pure and true, and we'd never tarnished it with sex. Up to this point in my life, he had been the most loyal friend I had ever had, and I hoped to find that again some day, but I was fully aware that no one could ever take the place of another so his place in my heart was eternally secure. I really think the reason I clung to my Benson and Hedges was because it was a constant connection to him, and they comforted me when he could not.
SiAra blew her smoke out in one huge exhale, and the sweet fragrance told me that it wasn't tobacco. I'd had some experience with Mary Jane in college, and while I liked Puff the Magic Dragon in those days, I'd given it up for multiple reasons -- the chief of those being its illegal status. In all seriousness, I knew I had to drive home, and I knew how I'd reacted to the Puff in college, and I declined for that reason. I'd grown up a bit, and my pot days ended when I received my diploma.....
"Who told you?" she asked in a paranoid voice.
"No one had to tell me," I answered her, and wrapped my arms around myself in the shivering cold. Kerry attempted to move closer to me and put his arm around me, but I pulled away and stood alone....and separated myself from the smokers a bit. I had had a little alcohol, but its effects had worn off, so I was aware enough to be on the look-out for anyone approaching us. The puffers couldn't have cared less which told me that they'd been to this clandestine "meeting place" before, and I had to wonder which rubber was theirs.
"Then, how did you know?" she was even more paranoid, and she passed the doobie to Kerry.
"Cuz, I know what it smells like..." I looked at her like she was crazy. My eyes had adjusted to the faint moonlight, and I could see dark circles around her eyes, and SiAra's cheeks appeared to be sunk-in to pale, thin skin. He didn't look well. He'd looked fine the night I'd met him, but Cherry's brush had given him color that was not his.
"It has a smell?" she asked shocked, and she gathered up her shoulder length, wooly, blond hair and held it in a mock pony tail before she released it and let it straggle willy nilly.
"Well..........of course, it does." I just figured she smoked it so often that she just didn't smell it anymore....and I also attributed her intense questioning to THC.
"I never knew that...." she said quietly, but continued. "Do you think other people can smell it too?"
"If they've been around it, they know what it smells like," I explained. Kerry moved a bit closer to me, but he didn't extend his arm, so I let him stand next to me. It was cold and windy outside next to the dumpster, so it was nice to have some warmth emanating toward me, and I could hear the scratchings of an unseen varmint in the metal trash bin, so maybe it would jump on him instead of me if it decided to depart it's trashy paradise.
"Have you been around it a lot?" SiAra continued to probe, and Kerry didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. I finally understood Mother's reference about his red eyes when she'd met us in the bar earlier in the evening, and I figured out why the farts had left him unphased....Kerry was higher than a kite, and he'd been floating above it all.
"Well...not a lot...but some in college," I said, but I still thought SiAra was nuts. How could she not know that pot had a fragrance and be standing in a marijuana cloud? Kerry offered me the joint, but I waved it away, and he handed it to SiAra. She took another pull on it, held it in, and then released with a cough that seemed interminable.
"Did a lot of people have it?" she managed to eke out while covering her mouth and exhausting her cough.
"Not a lot...some did and some didn't. People experiment in college; it's normal. It's like a rite of passage," I offered.
"So a lot of straight guys had it?" she asked with some surprise in her voice.
"Of course..gays, straights...blacks..whites..asian..It didn't matter." I attributed her inquisitiveness to her lack of education. It was obvious for several reasons that she'd never been to an institution of higher learning nor was she aware that much more than academics were acquired there. Lord knows, that I had a degree in boxed wine and joint rolling, as well as my BA in English by the time I'd graduated....and rightfully so. I told myself it was fine for me to learn about life as well as Chaucer while I'd been in college, and I hadn't regretted it one iota. But, I'd also learned enough to snuff out the dope and drink only on occasion, too, when my formal education ended.
"You don't think bad of me do you? I'm not a slut." she said humbly...with more than a little sadness in her voice.
"No...I don't think bad of you. Where did you get it, anyway. Is it hard to find around here?" I asked, but wondered about the slut addition.
"I got it from this guy I dated about two years ago," she said as she looked at her Saucony tennis shoes and rubbed the toe of her right shoe into the gravelled lot.
"You've had this for two years?" and that really surprised me. Wouldn't its THC levels have dropped to nill in that time?
"That's what the doctors think...........I'm lucky to be alive, they say.....This AZT is about to kill me, and I've lost so much weight. People are dying all over the place, but I still keep holding on," she said valiantly, and forced a smile, but her eyes held too much water, and it almost trickled out of her lids.
And, then I knew that we'd been talking about two different things. She'd thought the reason I had declined to smoke after her was because I knew that she had AIDS.....but I hadn't known until she'd mentioned AZT..........and I just didn't want to take a puff period. It had nothing to do with her HIV status. I was smart enough to know that I couldn't get it from touching her, or drinking after her, or from smoking Pot after her..............but Hot Springs wasn't quite that sophisticated yet. They thought someone could catch AIDS from toilet seats ( and they passed out paper toilet seat covers at the local mall for just that reason). I felt sorry for SiAra and almost asked for a drag on her doobie just to show her that I wasn't afraid of her.....but she tapped it out on the bottom of her shoe before I had the chance, then she handed the roach to Kerry who deposited it in his pack of cigarettes. As we walked back toward the light in awkward silence, the wind whipped up and blew chill in our faces.
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