One of the things on my list of things I’d never done (before being sent to my death), was go into a speakeasy. Of course I’d never been to one, they sort of scare me. I always imagined the worst in every scenario. I go into a bar, a drunk man beats me silly, etc. Anything could happen in a bar. And that terrified me, of course. I like knowing what comes next. But, since I was going into a war where it didn’t matter if I was afraid of the future, I might want to break some of my little ‘traditions’. It was cold outside. Every window was frosted and every voice would only be spoken followed by the vapor from breath. Not to mention a light snow, the crunchy type, if that makes any sense. I walked along the sidewalk, no hat, just a light jacket, no gloves or boots either. I didn’t want to put on a whole thing, I just wanted to enter the first bar I saw and then leave. It’s a five-second ordeal. I finally found a place that looked like it would be a bar. It was a big wooden place. I never want to have to describe a building as wooden. It puts me off. I stood outside the door, hearing some sort of trumpet through the thin walls. I really just waited. It’s not like I could go in, that would scare me too much, so I just waited. Suddenly, the door swung open and two men came out, wobbling, not walking in a straight line and laughing. Immediately, I backed up about twelve steps. I have a horrible fear of drunk people. Don’t ask me why, of course, I haven’t got the slightest idea. When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was the lack of civility. What kind of idiot notices that before anything else? A paranoid idiot. And somehow I’m not nearly as afraid to go to war as I am afraid to enter this bar. Of course, that’s a joke, and far from true. I sat down on a barstool at the table where all the drinks were and where the bartender did whatever he did. He looked at me and smiled, asking if I wanted something to drink. I couldn’t drink alcohol, I couldn’t stoop down to be that hypocritical, so I just asked for water. That was a good request, especially for my dizzying head. Too many things had been happening recently, way too many things, and I was sick of it. I turned my head around to watch the events of my surroundings. All over the place, people were screaming, some were crying… And there was a jukebox playing a song with a very loud trumpet bit. That was what I was hearing from the outside. I then noticed two people at a table. One got up so drastically that the chair behind him fell down. He was angry and he yelled at the other person who was with him. I quickly looked away from them. My head was all over the place. I couldn’t grasp anything that was going on. I decided to put out my migraine for a bit and take a sip of water, while staring at the door, but as soon as I reached for it, I felt a hand stop me from doing so. Startled, I whipped my head around when I heard a voice.
“Maybe don’t drink that…” said the voice.
“What?”
When my brain finally came back into focus, I saw the man who was sitting next to me. He was shorter than me, he had curly blond hair and freckles all over his face. The first thing I noticed was how inviting he looked. Like the gingerbread man or something. He smiled, showing a set of straight, white teeth. He also had dark blue eyes, beautiful ones. Like from a painting. And he stared at me, just as I stared at him, the music drowning out any other noise. Other than my beating heart that was making my whole body vibrate. My palms were also sweating and I felt like my face looked horrible and that I had to run to the nearest mirror and fix it. Of course, it was all in my head. I quickly leaned my head down in the most discreet way possible to try and smell myself. Of course, I smelt fine, but I got paranoid. I looked back at him, and he tilted his head a little as he did so.
“Somebody’s put something in there,” he spoke in one of those accents that Hollywood people have in pictures. Smooth, intelligent.
“What…?”
“In your drink. While you were looking away, somebody put something in it.”
“What…did they put?” I stuttered out stupidly.
“A drug. Maybe one that makes you sleep or get all…drowsy,” he shrugged.
“Why would…anyone do that?”
He smiled and furrowed his eyebrows, as if I had to know the answer to that question. My face immediately heated up, and I was sure that it was red as a tomato.
“I don’t know. It’s just a thing people do,” he said.
“Oh. Uh…Thanks for warning me… What’s your name?” I finally managed to get out a full sentence.
He looked to the side of me for barely half a second and then put his hand out.
“Art Johnson,” he said.
“James. Baxter,” I separated my name into two sentences (of course) and shook his hand, knowing full well that mine was soaking wet.
It felt like I had been doing nothing but the wrong thing, ever since I entered the bar.
“Did you see who…” I said, alluding to my drink.
“No, I didn’t notice, sorry.”
“That’s alright.”
Instinctively, I turned around a little to maybe try and find someone who looked like they would try to drug me. Really, it didn’t matter so much to me. After all, I didn’t even drink the water. But I sort of wanted an excuse to get away from Art. Something told me that he was going to get me into something I’d never want to get into. I looked to my left and saw two men…let’s just say ‘going at it’ at a table right by us. I let out an involuntary shout and put my hand against the side of my face to block that view, crouching down and turning back to Art.
“Goodness gracious!” I whisper-yelled upon seeing them.
Art raised his eyebrows. He looked quite surprised at my behavior. I was too. Never in my twenty-three years of living had I ever said goodness gracious.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Uh…I am, yes… It’s just that,” I leaned closer to him and whispered, “those two men are… Well, they’re doing something. I don’t know if they should be doing that.”
“Why not? It’s a free country,” said Art with a smile, not returning my panic.
“Yeah, but…why are they…?” I muttered.
“Where else?”
I thought for a moment and then looked around the bar again. Those two men at that table weren’t the only people of the same sex going at it. I finally realized just where I was. He chuckled, I assume once he noticed my face completely drop, upon me finally grasping the situation.
“Not where you thought you were?” he teased, his eyebrow raised.
My face dark red, I shook my head, my hand still blocking the view around me.
“Well, that’s what I get for just entering a bar with no plan…” I mumbled.
He almost looked like he was making fun of me in his mind. I wouldn’t blame him, obviously, I had never been to a bar and I had no idea what I was talking about. I imagined it from his point of view, like if a man walked up to me at a library and asked me why there was no sound. I’d laugh. He’s laughing. It’s normal.
“Do you…” he started, cutting himself off and looking down.
I had never felt more uncomfortable in my entire life. He was obviously thinking things about me, and it was impossible for me to know what that was. And I knew it couldn’t be positive. That, and I knew that he was holding back on some words that he felt like sharing. And on top of it, I was surrounded by…some people that didn’t exactly help the situation. I just sort of sat there, twitching my fingers against my leg. Art Johnson looked up at the bartender and smiled, almost insincerely.
“Ginger ale, please, neat,” he said.
The bartender smiled, nodded and turned around to the bottles. I felt a bit more comfortable when he ordered a non-alcoholic drink. He had no intention of meaninglessly throwing his mind away to a beverage, unlike alcoholics and drinkers. I was glad to know that at least he had a brain.
“Water seems appetizing, though,” he smiled at me.
I laughed and shook my head a little.
“I can’t stomach anything else,” I said.
Art squinted, tilted his head to the side and observed me.
“What are you doing here?” he asked politely.
I sighed and looked away from him.
“It’s my last week… Before I, you know… Go away. For good probably,” I cut off my own sentence once I realized how unclear I was being, and that he most likely didn’t know what I was talking about. “I mean war.”
“Me too,” said Art.
My eyes went wide.
“Really?”
“Really,” he nodded. “And a lot of these guys. That’s why it’s not just the regulars in here today… Lots of other people. You know, just men who want to, uh, see it all, before going off to war.”
He started to observe me again, making me feel judged once more. My leg started bouncing involuntarily.
“And you’re…?” he asked.
I didn’t answer, my mouth hanging open as if I was going to say something, but I didn’t.
“Seeing it all?” he repeated. “Or have you seen it already?”
I didn’t know how to answer that question. What I wanted to give was the right answer, but I just wasn’t sure which one that was. Either way, I felt like I was in the wrong.
“Um…You first,” I said, as if I were in some western picture, asking him to put his gun down before mine, so we can both be unarmed.
He laughed a little. I was slightly relieved.
“No, I’ve seen it already.”
I nodded, sweating, keeping on a fake friendly smile.
“No kidding,” I practically mumbled.
“You don’t have to get all uncomfortable, you know. That’s not necessary at all.”
He had caught me red-handed. I was uncomfortable. I had been raised against this. Actually, I wasn’t really raised with it at all. I’d never tried it before, but I was sure that if you said the word queer in our house, you wouldn’t live to tell the tale. It was a horrible word. I was never taught that, because I never remembered my parents saying it. It’s just one of those things that you always know. I mean, who taught you Stone Blunts Scissors? Nobody. You just always knew it. I just always knew that queer was a bad word. I knew what it meant and that was supposed to be bad too. Did I understand why it was bad? Of course not. I didn’t understand a damn thing about anything, but I had to comply with whatever norm was pushed upon me. Queer was bad. Queer was a swear word. That was it, that was all. Very, very simple. That’s the way it was engraved in my brain.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s okay. A lot of people get… squirmy at the mention of it.”
“I don’t want to. It’s just-”
“Engraved in your brain?” he grinned. “Oh, I’ve heard that one before.”
I started to sweat again, my cheeks still hot.
“Sorry,” I repeated.
“Don’t be.”
I wish I knew how to speak like a normal adult man.
“So…War, huh? Horrible,” that was surprisingly enough, the best conversation starter that I could come up with. I might as well have said : ‘man, how about that war?’ while nudging him with my elbow.
“Yeah, horrible,” he said with a small smile that was obviously mockery.
But then he looked down and shrugged.
“Well… I don’t know… I’m sort of… motivated. Maybe.”
That was the real shocker about him. I stopped caring that he was queer by then.
“Motivated?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah. Anything to get away from here. On top of that, I’m glad if I get to beat up some Nazis. Makes me feel like an American hero rather than an American Embarrassment, which I feel like on most days.”
“Oh. I never thought of it that way.”
“Well now you have,” he said with a smile, taking a sip of his drink.
People often say ‘I didn’t believe in destiny until now’, but they did. Anyone who would believe in destiny at some point, has always believed in it to a certain degree, because in their minds, it’s in their radar to believe something like that. I don’t. I just think I wound up here by an insane brush of luck. A coincidence. Some people say that coincidence and destiny are the same thing. But destiny is something that someone created for people to believe in, to think that there’s a point to every shitty thing that happens in their lives. In truth, it’s all just coincidence. So, it’s a coincidence that I ended up in a bar like this, that I met Art, and that I might slowly be falling in love. It’s horrible to say. I’ve also never thought about being queer up until now. I mean, I have thought about it, just not seriously. There have been a couple ‘geez, don’t look there, everyone’s gonna think you’re a queer!’ in my life, but I never really said to myself : ‘hey. Maybe’. And anyways, at the end of the day, even if I did think about it seriously, I’d never be able to act upon it. I’d never be able to look into the mirror and say the words. Never. But maybe now, maybe now that I’m going to war, maybe now that I’m going to die soon, maybe now that my whole life is over, I can look in the mirror and say it. Outloud, even. But just maybe.
“You know, you didn’t answer my question before…” he said.
“Which question?” I lied. I knew which question he was talking about. The one where he was asking me if I was…like him. I was hoping he’d forget. I wanted to admit it outloud, but not so soon, and not so drastic.
“I’m pretty sure you know.”
He was right. I’m not sure how he was, but he most definitely was.
“Um… Well… I just don’t think… That I’m in any way shape or form…Ready to say it.”
“Why not? It’s easy. I’ve been down that road, and typically, it seems bad before you say it, but right after you realize that they’re just words. They’re just air with sound. Nothing to cause such a fuss over.”
He smiled at me, but then it went away and he squinted a bit.
“Not that I… Need you to say it,” he shrugged, looking away from me, anywhere, at the ceiling, to the ground, pretty much everywhere except for my face, “I mean, say it if you want to. I don’t…uh…you know, I don’t mind. You can do it, you don’t have to. It doesn’t, um…”
He started laughing a little, nervous.
“James one, Art zero,” he said.
I laughed a little too.
“I’d say Art nine, James one,” I said.
“Really?” Art seemed skeptical.
“Really. Since the moment I sat down, I’ve done nothing but embarrass myself. Since my first sentence, really, honest. The first thing I said to you was ‘what’ and then the second thing I said to you was also ‘what’. Not to mention that I actually, genuinely said goodness gracious.”
Art laughed again. Then he simply smiled and ran his fingers along the cup. I assumed it was a nervous tick.
“Alright, well how about we put the score back to zero-zero?” he said.
“Deal. Although Florent Gibson might not be too excited by that.”
He smiled even wider.
“If Florent Gibson doesn’t like it, he can twirl on it.”
I laughed a little. He wasn’t so scary. I was raised to believe that people like him were scary. But he was quite the opposite. Everything about him was inviting. His large smile, his pale skin… How was I supposed to find him scary? I didn’t. Another feeling I’ve had about him was jealousy. Everything I’ve ever wanted to be seemed to be a part of him. Except queer, that was never a life goal. But he was charming, funny, gorgeous, smart… I was terribly jealous of him. I was stuck as this, and he got to be all that. I wasn’t mad about it, even though it sounds like I was. Some guys like him really take it for granted. They’re also almost always assholes. They’re used to getting away with a lot, so that continues throughout their lives and manifests… and eventually, they become brats. But Art wasn’t a brat, he wasn’t entitled and he wasn’t in any way an asshole.
“Baxter…” he muttered to himself. “You wouldn’t happen to be the son of Bobby Baxter, would you?”
He was smiling ear-to-ear. My father’s name was Robert. People might have called him Bobby, but I had never heard it in all my twenty-three years of living.
“Robert Baxter? Is that the same guy?”
“Yeah. Tall guy, round glasses, lanky… He’s got a big nose, but a small, sharp rodent face…”
I thought for a moment and squinted.
“Yep, that sounds like my father.”
“Oh, wow… My dad’s Arthur Johnson.”
The name passed through my head for a small and significant moment like a star.
“Holy cow… Thee Arthur Johnson?”
“Yeah. You didn’t notice that we had the same name?”
My face heated up in embarrassment and I prayed that it wasn’t visible.
“No… I mean… There has to be a couple of Arthur Johnsons in the world…”
My father worked for his father. Basically, Arthur Johnson (not Art, his dad) was a massively powerful entrepreneur who was richer than gold itself. He owned almost every county in West New York and almost everyone worked for him. My father did when he first arrived in New York. I’ve lived here all of my life, but my parents used to live in Massachusetts before they got the news about my mother’s pregnancy, and moved over here. His first job was with an Arthur Johnson company. My father had no experience anywhere, and he was struggling. Arthur Johnson gave him a chance, and the two quickly became friends. I remember Arthur Johnson slightly. Until I was four years old, he would come over to see us at church. He’d chat with my father for about two and a half minutes, and then he’d leave. He’d always say : ‘gotta go, Baxters. Somewhere in a church, my family’s getting restless’. And he’d always laugh afterward, but I had no idea why he and his family went to two different churches. After a while, he and my father had a spat and they stopped speaking, and my dad stopped working for him. I didn’t know how Art knew my father by appearance.
“Have you met him?” I asked.
“Bobby? Oh yeah, I’ve met him. He’d come over on Tuesday nights for five minutes and give my mother an ear of corn,” he laughed. “Then he’d ruffle my hair and leave.” Art snorted and then leaned his head onto his hand with a smile. “We’d call him Corny Bobby.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re glad to know a direct relative of Corny Bobby.”
Art smiled and shook his head.
“He was so damn corny…”
“I wish that he was like that with me. For since I can remember, he’s just been cold… and angry.”
Art threw a minor hint of pity and I looked away, uncomfortable.
“I mean…”
“Mine too. He’s always upset, he’s always… disappointed in me,” he said. “Like no matter what I do, he’ll always find me repulsive. Like I’m the bad stench of a corpse feeding into the guilt he feels about murdering it. I know he wishes I wasn’t his son. Like I’m his biggest mistake… like I’m a burden.”
I nodded as he spoke.
“Sorry,” he said softly.
“Oh, no, don’t be. Aren’t we all burdens to our parents?” I laughed to ease the situation.
“We’re not supposed to be. We didn’t ask to be born.”
“But we are. See, my parents simply don’t like me,” I shrugged, the topic riling me up a little. “And they’d hate me even more if they found out that I was here… with you.”
Art smiled and raised his eyebrows.
“With me? What’s that supposed to mean?” he said with a knowing grin.
My face heated up and I avoided eye contact again. My arms were sweating, so were my palms. I cleared my throat, trying to come up with something to say, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t thinking clearly anymore. What I said about my parents hating me more if they found out I was with him, I didn’t think before I said it. I meant it as, they wouldn’t like to know that I was hanging around a queer boy, but I made it sound like I was interested in him. And I definitely am interested in him, but if there’s one thing that he doesn’t need to know, it’s that.
“Nothing, nothing, really,” I said.
He moved forward in his chair and came closer to me. I nearly fell off the stool and threw up all over the ground.
“Nothing? Really?” he said with wide eyes.
I blinked a few times, backed up a little, and avoided looking at him altogether. I could feel my heartbeat in my empty head. I just needed to say something and maybe the situation would die down.
“I just meant that, um… My parents are very political, and… They’d hate to know that I was with someone…like you, that’s all,” I didn’t look at him as I spoke, and I remained motionless.
“Someone like me?” his tone was playful.
“...Interested in politics, but with opposing views,” I lied.
He finally backed away. Although, I knew he knew what I really meant.
“I’ve always been big on politics, you know.”
“Yeah? Opposite of me… My parents always taught me to keep my mouth shut about that stuff.”
Art tilted his head to the side and observed me, confused.
“And you just listened to them?”
I didn’t know what I was supposed to answer.
“Yes?”
He leaned his head forward with his eyes wide.
“Just like that?”
“Of course…”
“But, Mr. Baxter, don’t you have morals? Don’t you have opinions?”
I shuddered at the way he called me Mr. Baxter. I hated that.
“James, please.”
“Yeah, I heard it when I said it… As soon as I said it, you know : I just thought that James was too familiar… I just didn’t want to offend you, sorry,” said Art quickly, smiling a little.
“Don’t…apologize.”
He leaned a bit forward. I was getting even more nervous.
“In that case, you can call me Art.”
I smiled a bit, but it was just to cover up the fact that I was inwardly melting.
“Okay…Art.”
It was crazy how easily I dropped the fact that he questioned my opinions and morals, just because he was pretty.
“I mean, morals make a man, you know,” he said. “Look, I’m not saying you don’t have any. I know you do, everyone does, they do. But the thing is, you don’t talk about them. And your parents think that you agree with them, and your parents are wrong.”
That sentence pulled me out of the trance that he put me in. I wasn’t really sure how I was supposed to react to someone insulting my parents. If I wasn’t allowed to say anything even remotely backhanded about them, then he certainly wasn’t allowed to completely accuse my parents of being wrong. I was raised to be upset about that. As a kid, if someone does that, you’re supposed to tell them off. You’re supposed to completely cut them off from your life and everything. But there was something about what he said, something about the way that he said it, that made me believe that maybe it was okay to question my parents, just maybe. Thinking like this could get me a sanction. That was the scariest thing I could get. But the thing is, I never really knew what the worst that could happen was. And that was because I never started to ask. I always assumed it was the death penalty, but that was impossible. That day, in that bar, on December 1st, no one else was there. No one was there to give me the death penalty, no one was there to take my life away, to yell at me, to kick me out, to call me a name, to throw up at my feet… I was safe in my mind, I was safe in that bar, and for the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t afraid of the worst that could happen, because for the first time, I assumed that it wouldn’t happen. I turned over to him and his face went ghost-pale and he put a hand out.
“Oh God, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to say that…” he looked like he was worried that my parents would come out of nowhere and beat the living shit out of him. I would normally find that ridiculous, but I was worried about the exact same thing.
“No, it’s fine.”
He nodded and then looked away, but he still had a pensive look on his face. He turned back to me quickly.
“You’re not going to tell them I said that, are you? They know me, they know my father, they could talk to him and then he could talk to me, and trust me, no one wants that…”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“Are you sure? Because your parents could really, really talk to mine, and-”
“What are you afraid of?” I asked, surprising myself with my own words.
He looked just as shocked as I was. It took a while before he regained composure.
“I beg your pardon?”
He looked sort of mad, and I was scared that he might be sort of mad, but I don’t think he was.
“Well…You seem pretty scared of your parents… That’s all.”
Art broke out in a cold sweat and adapted a shifty look. He then tried to play it off with a smile and took a sip of his drink, trying to look at me, but it seemed to be some sort of workout exercise.
“Aren’t we all burdens to our parents?” he said
“We’re not supposed to be. We didn’t ask to be born,” I said in return.
He laughed and nodded, probably forgetting that he gave a reply when I said aren’t we all burdens to our parents. He then looked up at me and smiled with furrowed eyebrows.
“Dammit, I was doing so well…” he said and chuckled.
I grinned to myself and placed three fingers on my water glass.
“What exactly were you trying to accomplish?”
He looked up, as if he were looking for something, and then quickly averted his attention back to me.
“I don’t know, James. I really don’t know. Maybe I thought I could convince myself that I was good with words, just long enough for you to believe it too.”
I didn’t get it much, but he took a sip of his drink, finished it, and then looked straight ahead.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, putting a five-dollar bill on the counter and getting up. “I’m not feeling well.”
My heart sank. Immediately I knew that I had said something wrong. With a straight face, he pushed the bench underneath the table. In a moment of pure fight or flight, I swiveled my chair over to him.
“Did I say something wrong?” I asked.
“No, no, you’re great… I just think I need to go. I’m getting a bit nauseous.”
I stood up, and he turned around to leave. There was a split second where my brain was empty. And it’s weird to think about, but it was. My brain just completely emptied its compartments. I saw it all happen so quickly. He’d leave, and everything would just go back to the way it was. I shouldn’t care. I wasn’t supposed to. But I did. Over the course of the night, I knew that I had fallen in love. I’d never done that before, I’d never known anyone worth loving, although I realized that day that it wasn’t about who deserved it. I couldn’t pick. That might have been the worst part. And as scary as the war was, what was even scarier, was that I could have had the chance to finally be happy alongside someone, and I wouldn’t be able to go through with it because of that damn war. But what I did next very much shocked me. You know, in your dream, when you know no one can see or hear you, so you go nuts and jump on the tables and all that? That was the same feeling I felt at that moment. I wasn’t ever going to see him again in the future. In fact, I wasn’t ever going to see anyone in that bar ever again. So what the hell was I being dignified for? What I was keeping civilized for? Who was I acting for? My parents weren’t there to yell, my conscience was enlisted in the war, and I was alone with nothing but will. The will to stay with him, the will to do something I had never done before, and most of all, the will to live. Because I don’t believe that I have done that yet, despite being twenty-three years old.
My brain out of commission, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him over to me. He furrowed his eyebrows, and watched me, like a man watching a movie for the first time. My heartbeat rose to my dark red cheeks, and I tried my best to keep my composure, but I wasn’t sure how anymore. I went close to him, put my hands on either side of his face, and just stood there. For a while. I just stood there, his face in my hands, his shocked, blinking eyes looking up at me. I didn’t want to see him anymore, it was making me too nervous, so I squeezed my eyes shut, and went in to kiss him. I don’t get it when people describe how a kiss feels. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it felt like. That wasn’t what mattered. The entire time, instead of enjoying myself, I was thinking things like, what if that’s not what he wanted, what if he’s not interested, am I any good, will my parents be able to tell, are people watching, am I going to see any of these people outside of the bar? Once we pulled away, I thought I was going to vomit. There was liquid rising at the bottom of my throat, and I started to scan the things around me—garbage cans, pails, etc—to see what I could throw up in. But I kept it down. And he looked up at me, shocked. He then got on his tippy toes and kissed me again. So I guess he wasn’t mad. I was surprised. He liked me. He liked me, I wasn’t alone. And I felt so Goddamn alone. But just then, I told myself to focus. Nothing else mattered, that’s what I tried to say to myself : nothing else mattered. But as soon as it began, it ended, and he pulled away, blinking rapidly, a dumb and very attractive grin on his face. I had a stupid smile on too, but mine was more of an embarrassed smile, unsure what to do with myself.
“James, I’ve got to be honest,” he said. “No one put anything in your drink. I made it up so I could have an excuse to speak with you.”
He started to giggle, a blush on his face. I let out a breathless laugh.
“I mean… Was it worth it?”
He put his hands behind his back, walked up to me, stood on his tippy toes and kissed me again, for a half of a second.
“Yeah.”
I smiled and bit the inside of my cheek. He went over to the counter, took a napkin and a pen right out of some guy’s hand, and then he wrote a number down on it. He passed the napkin to me.
“Please call. Please.”
He returned the guy’s pencil, kissed me on the cheek, and left. My head was spinning. War be damned, I was happy. Believe it or not.
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