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.”
Posts
