A Density of Souls (16 page)

“Poor Greg” and felt herself fall off into sleep.

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S
anctuary had the façade of a typical French Quarter townhouse, but its shutters were thrown back to reveal a dizzying flicker of strobe lights. Its second-floor wrought-iron balcony was hung with rainbow flags and packed with men in tank tops and T-shirts. Gas lamps lined the bar’s outer walls. The bar’s name was emblazoned in rainbow-striped letters on a sign that dangled over the queue of men outside the front entrance.

On most Saturday nights, unsuspecting male tourists would wander too far down Bourbon Street, past the crowded stretch of jazz clubs and strip bars where the music was either karaoke or belch-ing rock. As the bass pulse of synthesized dance music wafted out of Sanctuary, the young men would turn quickly around, realizing what lay ahead, grabbing the hands of their girlfriends who would laughingly pull their boyfriends toward the bar on the excuse that it had good dance music and looked like fun. But if they strayed too close they were subject to the hoots and catcalls of gay men on the balcony who knew how to spot a foreigner with the precision of an exile.

As Devon Walker dragged him across Bourbon Street, Stephen felt as queasy as he had the first time Devon steered him to the bar two years earlier on another muggy June evening. He had met Devon three weeks before he graduated from Cannon. Devon—with his perpetually bright eyes and ferocious fidelity to the sexual orientation Stephen had spent four years regarding as an affliction—had introduced himself at Rue de la Course, a coffeehouse on Magazine Street frequented by college students. Devon offered Stephen his first cigarette. Now, Stephen smoked two packs a day. A political science major and aspiring politician, Devon was wearing blue jeans and an 114

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oxford shirt that stretched taut across the football player’s barrel chest, the feature that Stephen had first admired in him.

On their first date, Devon spoke animatedly about mobilization ef-forfs to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. Devon went on for five minutes before Stephen stopped him and asked him what the Defense of Marriage Act was. Titillated by Stephen’s ignorance, Devon was more than happy to explain in elaborate, gesticulating detail.

Stephen had held his glass of iced tea in front of his mouth with both hands as he sipped. He had barely managed to get a word in since the date began. As Devon talked, his eyes widened and his arm swept over their empty dinner plates as if he were clearing a space for the future of the gay community.

Stephen heard little. The notion of a “gay community” had never even occurred to him. Stephen’s desire was defined by the two hours he had once spent in the backseat of a Honda with his head buried between Jeff Haugh’s legs. He assumed his date with Devon would end the same way. When Devon asked if he had ever been to Sanctuary, Stephen said no at the same time he decided he was falling in love with the bright-eyed young man.

After three weeks of seeing each other, at just the moment when Stephen felt he had written enough love poetry to hand Devon a stack of messy loose-leaf pages, Devon showed up at his house one afternoon and announced that Stephen was a “cold, emotionally withdrawn person suffering from only-child syndrome”, and their relationship was over. He offered evidence. “A week ago we went to see a movie.

Before the movie you purchased a pack of Dots. You consumed the entire pack without offering me any. In the middle of the movie, I rose and went to purchase my own pack. When I sat down, the first thing you asked me was, ‘Can I have some Dots?’ ”

Devon paused, allowing his indictment to settle over Stephen. In response, Stephen picked up the copy of Reports from the Holocaust by Larry Kramer off the nightstand and hurled it at Devon’s head.

Devon had given Stephen the book a week ago, “to educate” him.

After reading the first page, Stephen had decided to stash it under the bed along with Devon’s other gifts, a copy of The Out Encyclopedia of Gay History and Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran. All 284

hardbound pages of Reports from the Holocaust sailed over Devon’s shoulder. Devon lifted one hand to his ear and stared back at Stephen, shocked. “Please get the fuck out of my house!” Stephen requested.

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They did not speak for three weeks. By the middle of the fourth week, Stephen received a memo printed on the stationery of the Tulane University administrative office where Devon was working part-time.

RE: Your Emotional Issues

Stephen—You exhibited a violence I find unacceptable when you threw a book at my face. While I do not mean to mitigate any of the pain you might be suffering as a result of my decision to end our relationship, you seem to be of the belief that your pain is larger than everyone else’s and there-fore the feelings of others do nothing more than get in your way. Call me if you wish to discuss this over coffee.

Stephen did not call Devon. Instead, he delivered a case of Dots to the door of Devon’s dorm room. Charlie—Stephen’s replacement—

ended up opening the box as Devon read the attached card: “Knock yourself out—Stephen.”

“Hey, candy. Awesome!” Charlie remarked as Devon wadded the card and hurled it into a wastebasket. He called Stephen. “We have to talk!” he announced.

“Talk about what?”

“Did you get my memo?”

“Yes. It was my first memo ever. Thank you,” Stephen answered back.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Devon said An hour later they met at Rue de la Course. Stephen smoked half a pack of his own cigarettes during their conversation. “I have certain needs, beyond candy, which you can’t meet,” Devon said, his voice tinged with the same melodrama he used when he discussed his one casual friend who had contracted HIV.

“What kind of needs?”

“Do you remember . . .” Devon stopped to glance around and make sure no one was eavesdropping

“I need a partner . . . sexually . . .” Devon continued, “. . . who is . . .

a little bit more dominant than you.”

Stephen went rigid. His Camel Light froze halfway to his mouth.

On their first date, fumbling naked on Stephen’s bed, Devon had asked Stephen to call him a bitch. Stephen had adamantly refused for 116

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reasons he could not explain. He remembered Devon’s words of accusation, “Your pain is bigger than everyone else’s.” Now he whispered,

“I understand.”

On the way back to their cars, Devon had hugged him forcefully, an embrace that Stephen returned. And in keeping with his missionary zeal, Devon embarked on a relentless quest to set Stephen up with someone else. So far the mission had yielded a Colombian stripper who had babbled drunkenly about “true love” before growing angry when Stephen denied his repeated requests for anal intercourse.

Devon had also set his ex up with a rugged Mississippi native who was also a divorced father of three and a cocaine dealer. A day after the date, “Hottie McHottie”, as Devon nicknamed him, fled the city when he discovered that his apartment and truck had been bugged by the DEA.

Now Devon was serving up a new candidate. He had called Stephen that afternoon. “This guy is hot! Like, your kind of hot, too.

Total, like, frat boy look. Backward baseball cap. But he has an earring—”

“What does that mean?” Stephen asked.

“I talked to him for, like, twenty minutes last night. He’s a bartender but he’s very sensitive. I told him all about you. He wants to meet you.”

“The earring, Devon? What does the earring have to do with anything?” Stephen repeated.

“Okay. Word isn’t in on the guy yet, but personally I think he’s queer as a three-dollar bill!”

“Devon!”

“Stephen, please. He wanted to know all about you.”

“I’m not prostrating myself to some straight-boy bartender.”

Devon was unfazed. “I told him you were cute. Blond hair, blue eyes. That always seems to work. You could have a seven-inch nose and two front teeth but as long as you’ve got the blond hair . . .”

He agreed to go.

Devon was pulling him through Sanctuary’s downstairs. He felt hands glide over his ass as he bumped into the sticky press of several dancers. The music and lights blinded him, causing him to feel like an alien even in the gay world.

“Pool Bar!” Devon bellowed over the music, guiding Stephen across the dance floor and to the back staircase, where they waited behind The Bell Tower

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three coked-up drag queens arguing on the back stairs, shouting

“Hurry up, bitch! My pussy hurts!” and “Tired old bitch can’t even make it up a set of stairs!” On the second floor, Devon steered Stephen along the atrium balcony where plainly dressed men in their fifties surveyed the gyrating male bodies on the dance floor below.

The Pool Bar occupied a tiny corner of Sanctuary’s second floor, where patrons hunched over a single tattered table. Devon sauntered ahead of Stephen, passing through the Pool Bar’s single door. Stephen lingered in the doorway as Devon walked right up to the bar, obscur-ing his view of the potential Mr. Right. Stephen heard Devon shout,

“This is my friend I was telling you about!”

He turned to reveal Jeff Haugh.

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T
he music stopped. Stephen gripped the door frame, paralyzed by a single thought—Jeff Haugh has an earring. Jeff looked blankly back at him in the moment before the DJ’s voice shrilled through the bar.

“Ladies and ladies! Sanctuary would like to ask you to proceed calmly to your nearest exit . . .”

A bored groan went up from the crowd. Devon grabbed Stephen by the arm and yanked him out of the doorway. In a second they were lost among the sweaty, shirtless men stumbling toward the exit. Stephen glimpsed Jeff slamming the bar’s French door behind him. A drag queen shrieked, “Fuck ’em all, honey! If a bomb takes this place out, me and my hair are going with it!” and the bar hooted. Devon and Stephen found themselves forced onto Bourbon Street. Stephen couldn’t speak. He heard a siren’s bleat, saw a flicker of blue and red lights fall across the intersection. A police car pushed its way through the crowd.

“Bomb threat,” Devon said gravely.

Stephen felt light on his feet. He rocked from the pull of the crowd surrounding him. The thin line he had used to separate the present from the past picked up at both ends, whirled like a jump rope. “I know him,” he said.

Four police officers were jostling and elbowing through the crowd.

“Omigod,” Devon gasped. “The snow guy? From that night on the Fly?”

Stephen nodded.

“They call themselves the Army of God,” said a voice Stephen had not forgotten.

Jeff was standing next to them. Stephen recoiled.

“Are the police doing anything?” Devon asked.

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“Not much they can do. Third threat this month. We’re trying to get them to tap the phones. But the manager told me this one came by fax.” Jeff looked at the rainbow flag flapping overhead and then at Stephen. Quietly Stephen inventoried his physical details. Gone was the football player’s natural bulkiness and width. Jeff had honed and pumped the parts he now thought others would admire.

“How you been?” Jeff asked evenly.

“All right,” Stephen said. “How’s your stomach?”

Jeff smiled slightly. Devon snorted. Obviously Devon was less than impressed with Stephen’s manners.

“Please clear the area until a thorough inspection of the premises has been completed!” a police officer bellowed.

The mass of men surged through an intersection now barricaded by police cars. Jeff clutched Stephen’s arm and guided him through the tight gaps between bumpers. When they came out on the other side, amid a crowd of tourists who had wandered down Bourbon to see the excitement, Devon was gone.

“Come on,” Jeff said, striding out of the thickening crowd, toward the door to Madam Curie’s Voodoo Shop, where the obese proprietor had squeezed herself out the door to watch the spectacle. He disappeared inside. Stephen followed him.

Jeff was inspecting a rack of shrink-wrapped gris-gris. A sign promised that the mud-colored bags of potpourri would induce the immediate thrall of the one you love. Crudely carved voodoo dolls perched on wooden shelves. Enigma oozed eerily from the mounted stereo speakers.

“Heard you were at Tulane,” Jeff said without turning around.

“Yeah, well, my dad used to teach there, so I got a full ride,” Stephen answered grudgingly.

Stephen glanced out the store’s front door where he saw a mass of men washed white by the glare of news cameras. Devon was being interviewed, speaking vociferously into the microphone, no doubt practicing for his days lobbying on Capitol Hill for the Human Rights Campaign. Devon was decrying the power of hate.

“LSU. Going on my fifth year,” Jeff said, facing him now, illuminated by the store’s harsh track lighting.

“You drive in every weekend to work at the bar?” Stephen asked.

“No big deal. Just an hour from Baton Rouge. A guy in my Econ class got me the job. He’s a dancer.”

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Stephen smirked. The dancers at Sanctuary were booked via legiti-mate talent and modeling agencies and more than one was known to show overeager patrons a picture of his wife and kid that he kept in his thong.

“Only started a couple weeks ago. That’s why I’m stuck in the Pool Bar,” Jeff said, looking down at the floor between Stephen’s feet.

“Right. Because the manager knows fags will flock to the cute new straight boy bartender.”

Jeff’s eyes met his suddenly, stung. A knot of regret tightened in Stephen’s chest. Jeff turned back to the rack. Stephen moved for the doorway.

On Bourbon Street, the clamor of voices had blended into a sloppy rendition of a song that seemed vaguely familiar. Stephen halted in the doorway and saw a mini-kick line of drag queens, spot lit by the cameras, and belting Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. The crowd had parted, cheering, giving them the street for a stage.

“Look. I know I should have called you or something.”

Stephen jumped. Jeff was standing behind him in the doorway in a cruel parody of the position they had been in during their first kiss on the Fly.