"...YOU SEE THOSE, DO YA?"

A few weeks back, during a particularly boring spring evening in San Francisco, my friend Tom and I set out to lay waste to the city. After a few minutes of walking around the ’Loin, we stopped in front of what looked like the bow of a ship jutting out of a dark blue wall. It was the front of a bar. Directly underneath was the entrance and the sign on the big, wooden door read “The Titanic.” “You’re gonna love this place,” Tom told me. “It’s full of characters.” As he said this, a young, bleached-blonde transvestite came strutting right past us in her high heels, singing, “Everybody wants it, everybody needs it, to survive on business!” She was dark- complected, possibly Latin, and wearing a dingy, red halter top with tight denim hot pants — so tight that part of her scrotum was peeping out. “Not so much fun inside for you!” She shouted back at us. “They all poor and OLD!”
The inside of the bar was pretty amazing. The whole place had a red, white and blue nautical theme: The walls were covered in dark-stained beechwood with portholes and aquariums embedded. Above the bar was the underside of an actual boat about 12 feet long, with fake seaweed hanging down its sides. Sitting at the bar sipping drinks were a group of older gentleman, all neatly dressed and rather dapper. One of them was standing up, finishing a story. He was a cute, portly little guy, kind of like my grandpa. He wore Bermuda shorts and a buttoned-up, short-sleeved shirt with a salmon-colored sweater tied around his neck — as if he’d dropped by the Tenderloin on his way home from a country club. Tom and I sat down to order a drink and listen in.
“… And I kept having this dream for MONTHS!” he told them. “ I’m in someone’s house visiting with lots of folks there. When everybody gets up to go into another room, I stay behind, pull down my pants and piss in the corner!”
All his friends started laughing at him, including Tom and I. Tom leaned over and whispered, “I told you!” as our storyteller resumed.
“The damn thing is, two weeks ago, my neighbor across the hall from me, told me that her apartment smells like urine. So, I remember my dream and tell her to check all the corners of her living room. Wouldn’t you know, she comes knocking on my door a few hours later and tells me the smell’s coming from a corner right behind her couch… someone’s been peeing there! And I’ll tell you something else: I haven’t had that goddamn dream since! Now what the hell does this all mean?”
“I’ll tell ya what it means, friend!” one of his buddies shouted. “It means you’re a goddamned piss queen!” “Not just that…” another voice blasted. “you’re some kind of breaking-and-entering piss queen! The worse kind!” The whole bar erupted in laughter. The poor old guy stood there shaking his head and rubbing the back of his neck as if he were still trying to figure out what, if any, connection his dream had to his neighbors piss mystery. He looked around at all of us laughing, shrugged his shoulders and walked over to the bathroom near the back of the bar.
After a few minutes, things died down. Tom and I chatted with the bartender, who told us, “All these old dudes are here every night. They’ve been coming here since this part of town was nice. Hitchcock filmed Vertigo right around the corner and all these guys were probably sitting right here when he did.” As he and Tom conversed on the history of the neighborhood, I snuck away to use the bathroom.
While I stood at the urinal, I heard something in the stall next to me, strange huffs and moans. It sounded like someone was in trouble, so I zipped up and looked around the door to see what was going on. It was the elderly storyteller. He was slumped over the toilet and his pants were down revealing his pale, saggy little butt. He was having trouble getting up. “You OK?” I asked. “What the hell do you think?” he shot back. I leaned over, grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back and up against me. His pants were still down; I tried not to look at his genitals, but I couldn’t help myself. He had an enormous bush of gray pubic hair covering his entire groin. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was so full that it hid his penis entirely. While I stared, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Good Lord! Am I going to have pubes like that when I’m old?” He caught me checking out his crotch and started laughing, “Oh … you see those, do ya? Yup, they’re all gray, my boy. Don’t smirk, it’ll happen to you too!” We smiled and giggled with each other while I helped him pull his pants up and got him on his feet. “You know,” he said, “they used to be black as coal when I was your age — a lot less of them too. Yeeaah, but that was a long time ago.” I got his pants back up, put my arm around him and walked him out of the bathroom. “Thanks for your help, buddy. “I’m Larry, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Larry. I’m Kurt.”

"BOY, IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU SON."

I flew out to Oklahoma to spend Thanksgiving with my father, his wife and my sister. It was the first time we attempted spending any holiday together in years and, with my dad having recently had a heart attack, I figured I should cut the crap and try to spend time with him.

On the flight over I made friends with a woman sitting next to me. She initiated the conversation, asking me about where I was going and such. I tried to be polite and engaging but one of the stewards on board was an incredibly beautiful Filipino guy, and it was hard to concentrate. I knew he was Filipino because when he talked, all his Fs sounded like Ps and, well, I just knew. After a few minutes, the gal sitting beside me pulled out a handful of drink tickets and offered to get me drunk. Once we got buzzed, she told me about this being her first visit home for Thanksgiving since her brother died three years ago. Her eyes teared up and she looked down at her drink on the little tray. Usually after one drink, I know just what to say, this time I drew a blank. Looking back on it now, I don’t think she was looking for someone to talk to, just someone who’d listen.

I arrived in Tulsa and my father and sister were standing there waiting for me. My sister has looked the same since we were kids — my dad, not so much. The heart attack had obviously taken its toll on him. He was stooped over a little and his face looked like FDR’s before he died: deep wrinkles, and dark circles around his eyes. It broke my heart. But as he saw me walk up, he brightened up and walked toward me with his arms open. He was really happy to see me. It made me feel like an ass for never returning his calls. We all hugged, got into his pickup and went to his place. Soon after we got home, we settled in, exchanged minor chit-chat and went off to bed. It was late and I was still a little drunk. His wife showed me to my room. I got undressed and tried to get some sleep.

About an hour later, I woke up. I was wound-up from the cheap drinks on the plane and so, in order to relieve some of the stress, I decided to masturbate. I’m not proud of my compulsions but I’ve realized that, at some point, you have to make peace with who and what you are. So I lay there, handling myself in Dad’s house, fantasizing about having sex with that Filipino steward I saw on the plane: We were in a hotel on one of those hard, cheap beds. I was kissing him and telling him how much I loved him. He kept smiling and saying “I know, Kurt. I lubb you too, but it’s just not meant to be.” I imagined that he smelled like honey-roasted peanuts. We were in love.

Once I came, I looked for something to clean up with. There weren’t any tissues, so I reached down and picked up one of my socks and used it. I tossed it back to the floor, turned over and held one of the pillows close to me — I imagined spooning the steward after we’d had sex. I guess I’m a romantic.

My sister’s kids woke me up early the next morning. She has two little girls, 4 and 6-years-old and we always have lots of fun whenever I visit. We spent all morning watching Sponge Bob, building a fort out of a coffee table and eating waffles. Eventually, my dad and his wife woke up and sat at the kitchen table watching us and laughing. Later, my dad and I drank coffee and discussed why I still didn’t have a boyfriend. “Boy, it’s good to see you son,” he told me. The visit was going far better than I thought. It was really nice.

After chasing my nieces around the rest of the afternoon, I needed to take a nap. I went to my room to lie down and noticed it had been tidied-up. I immediately thought of my soiled socks and started to panic — had dad’s wife picked them up? Did she make us breakfast with my DNA on her hands? I looked in my bags, under the bed and in the drawers. They were gone. My dad heard me rustling around the room and called me out to the kitchen. I froze. “Oh God,” I thought. “His wife found the socks and, being a good Christian, she turned me in to her husband to set me straight.” Of course, I knew this couldn’t be possible, so I casually walked out to the kitchen to see what he wanted.

“So, what exactly do you think Obama is going to do?” He asked me. “NBC and the media refuse to dig into any of the claims he’s made about how he’s going to fix things! That’s why I watch FOX. I just want the news. I don’t care what Barbra Streisand or some nigger-basketball player thinks …” Usually I would be embarrassed and upset at my father’s comments, but I needed to find out what happened to those socks. “Yeah, I hear ya. Say, did you guys see any white socks lying around? I seem to have lost a pair.” My dad’s wife spoke up, “Oh! Those are yours? The girls got them out back. They’re hitting each other with them. I’ll get them for you.” I bolted to the kitchen window to see what was going on. They each had a sock and were smacking each other in the face with them. Soon my dad’s wife was outside, trying to wrestle the socks out of their hands.

As I watched all of this go down, I thought of the woman on the plane. She poured her heart out to a man who watches his nieces play with his semen-coated tube socks. My sister ran out and soon all four were laughing and playing; tugging and slapping each other with them. Behind me, my father talked about our new president; and I could smell the turkey in the oven, hear the cartoons on the television and watched as all the girls were playing with my crunchy socks out in the cold, gray backyard. It was Thanksgiving with my family. And they were happy – Because I was there.