Which in Bible Belt Lincoln consisted of two bars, side by side on the east edge of the industrial district. I gave myself a strict timetable: four nights of searching only, out of the bars by 11:30 and at my job by 12:00 the first three nights, after-hours prowling only allowed on the fourth night — Friday, my work night off. If no one suitable materialized during the four nights, I would abandon the plan. A newspaper article I had read mentioned that college boys sometimes cruised “Fag Row” looking for bar patrons’ cars to deface, so I would park Deathmobile II a half-mile away and walk over. No leaving fingerprints on bar tops or glasses, my face to be kept averted from everyone but possible hits.
I was well programmed for caution and control, but I wasn’t prepared for the distractions I met, the variations on Ross and blondness. “Tommy’s” and “The Place” were simply dingy rooms with long oak bars, tiny wrought-iron tables and jukeboxes: disco-blaring dives where conversation was next to impossible. But they were packed with blonds cloned from the Ross Anderson style: compact muscles that only hard work could have developed, short hair, toothbrush mustaches and tight-fitting “he-man” clothes — Pendleton shirts, faded Levi’s and work boots. It took me two nights of drinking club soda at the bar, eyeballing for tall, dark-haired men like me, to figure it out: I was in the middle of blue-collar homosexuals at play — hod-carrying, meat-packing, truck-driving men, the blonds among them most often Eastern European types with high cheekbones and ice-blue eyes. It was a subculture that neither my travels nor my recent reading spurt had prepared me for, and as a dark-haired WASP in a polo shirt and crewneck sweater, I felt completely anomalous. Expecting swishy types who would be drawn to me like moths to a flame and just as easily snuffed out, I found shit-kickers who would be exceedingly tough mano a mano.
So for two nights I drank club soda, the nonsexual wallflower at the homosexual prom. The tall, dark haired men I spotted tended to run too lean or too young to be me; my constantly trawling eyes were rebuffed when I made contact with others; the Ross and blondness clones kept me nervous, fingering my glass for something to do with my hands. I had been prepared to be frightened and angry and possibly tempted, but now something else was settling on me, like an undercurrent in the constantly throbbing music. It was a weight that felt like regret. The men surrounding me, frivolous but masculine, made me feel old and numbed by my history of brutal experience.
Early on the third night of my mission I found out why I was being avoided. I was washing my hands in the restroom at Tommy’s when I heard voices just outside the door.
“... I tell you, he’s a cop. He’s been hanging out here and next door for the past couple of nights trying to look oh so cool, and you can just tell.”
“You’re just being paranoid because you’re on probation.”
“No, I’m not! God, slacks and a sweater, how tacky! He’s L.P.D. Vice, baby, so hit on him at your own risk.”
There was a giggle. “You think he’s got handcuffs and a big gun?”
“Yes, baby, I do. And a wife and three kids and an entrapment quota.”
The two voices joined in laughter, then trailed off. Thinking of Ross and how he would have reacted to the conversation, I walked back to my seat at the bar. I was wondering about the feasibility of continuing my mission when I felt a tentative hand on my elbow. I turned around, and there I was.
“Hi.”
It was the voice of my admirer. I stepped off the stool, saw that he was within an inch of my height, ten pounds of my weight and two years of my age. By squinting, I picked up brown eyes. Turning away from him, I wiped the bar top and my glass with my sleeve, then pivoted back with male-model grace. “Hi,” I said.
“You move real nicely,” the man shouted above the music. Ross zipped through my mind and said, “Kill him for me,” and I cupped my ear and pointed to the door. The man caught my drift and walked ahead of me, and when we hit the sidewalk, I looked around for witnesses. Seeing nothing but a cold, deserted street, I mentally affixed myself as L.P.D. Sergeant Anderson and said, “I’m a police officer. You can take a ride with me out to the wheat flats, or a ride to the station. Take your pick.”
The almost-Martin laughed. “Is this entrapment or a proposition?”
I laughed a la Ross. “Both, sweetie.”
The man poked my arm. “Hard. I’m Russ.”
“Ross.”
“Russ and Ross, that’s cute. Your car or mine?”
I pointed down the street to where Deathmobile II waited. “Mine.”
Russ leaned into me coyly, then pulled himself back and started walking. I kept pace with him, staying up against the sides of buildings, thinking of late-night burials and whether my old shovel was capable of cracking wheat-rooted frozen earth. Russ kept quiet, and I imagined him imagining me naked. At Deathmobile II I opened the door and squeezed his arm as I motioned him into the cab, and he let out a little grunt of pleasure. Anticipation and exhilaration hit me, and when I got in behind the wheel I exploded with an urge to know Russ/Martin’s history.
“Tell me about your family,” I said.
This time his laugh came out crude, his voice a mid-western bray. “Very romantic there, gay officer.”
The “gay” angered me; I hit the ignition, gunned the gas and said, “I’m a sergeant.”
“Is that part of your typical gay sergeant’s foreplay?”
The second “gay” accentuated the feel of the .38 tucked into my waistband and kept me from lashing out. “That’s right, sweetie.”
“Any man who calls me ‘sweetie’ can hear my tale of woe.” Russ tooted a fanfare on an imaginary horn, then laughed and proclaimed, “This is your life! Russell Maddox Luxxlor!”
The full name settled on me like a declaration of freedom. The industrial district disappeared, prairie flats and a huge starry sky loomed ahead, and I started to buzz all over. “Tell me, sweetie.”
The midwestern twang came out archly, theatrically. “Wellll, I’m from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and I’ve known I was gay since about age zero, and I’ve got three lovely sisters who buffered me through the tough parts. You know, being picked on, that kind of thing. And Daddy’s a Congregational minister, and he’s uptight about it, but not crazy on the subject like the born-agains, and Momma’s like a big sister, she accepted me real—”
The monologue’s sex drift was turning my buzzing ugly, itchy. “Tell me other things,” I said, holding my voice down. “Cheyenne. Your sisters. What it’s like to have a minister for a father.”
Russ pouted. “I guess you know all about that other stuff already. Okay, Cheyenne was a bore, Molly’s my favorite sister. She’s thirty-four now, three years older than me. Laurie’s my next favorite, she’s twenty-nine and married to this awful farmer man who hits her; and Susan’s the youngest, twenty-seven. She had a drinking problem, then she joined A.A. Daddy’s a good guy, he doesn’t judge me, and Momma quit smoking a few months ago. And oh God, this is so boring.”
I tightened my grip on the wheel until I thought my knuckles would pop. “Tell me more, sweetie.”
The dead man’s effete bray rattled through the cab. “It’s your funeral; my family would bore Jesus to death. Okay, Susan’s the prettiest, and she’s a dental tech; Laurie’s fat, and she’s got three rug rats with her awful husband, and I’m the smartest and the most sophisticated and the most sensit—”
I said the words the very instant the idea took hold. “Let me see the pictures in your wallet.”
Martin/Russ said, “Sweetie, don’t you think this is getting a little far afield? I’m up to party, but this is getting weird.”
I looked in my rearview, saw nothing but dark prairie, decelerated and pulled over to the side of the road. The dead man gave me a spooked look, and I took the .38 from my waistband and leveled it at him. “Give me your wallet or I’ll kill you.”