The Pink Slip

It’s like seeing the building for the first time, black bricks pressing in on a single window framing neon letters that light one at a time—T-H-E-P-I-N-K-S-L-I-P. Crude but imperial, the bar’s location on a north side section of Myrtle Street is graced by a burgundy awning covering a shallow vestibule where smokers huddle together in the rain. The front door, wrapped in a tight cushion of black pleather and framed at its edges in a precision rectangle of large gold tacks, opens at six a.m. and closes at two in the night, everyday including holidays, and has done so for forty-one years. A center for trade and free flowing drinks, of rumors that circulate over which sex workers had been arrested the night before, jailed, and about their benevolent johns who bail them out in order to repeat the scenes of the night before. The weight of the wrecking ball raised high above and ready to smash the building to hundreds of thousands of pieces, this is the end. Obsessed with wristwatches, I snuff out my cigarette and step in.

Dark varnished wood frames a sheet of glass covering the bar top and a couple dozen pairs of intimate apparel. Named the Gallery of Underpants, stretching the entire length of the bar, it quickly became a sideshow attraction in the Lower Gulch. Invented by proprietor Benjamin Stone, I accompanied Ben on his mission to gather the items by spending three weeks shopping the best department stores that anchor the four corners of San Francisco’s Union Square. There are a few unexpected selections from decades earlier whose origins remain a mystery.

Once complete, Benjamin set the gallery ablaze under a series of ten pink spotlights—three hanging above the short end, seven over the long extending to the back of the building. He sits on a speckled throne, the barstool with its wooden legs crowned in a cushy seat of gold lamé vinyl. The remaining thirty-odd stools neatly flush against the foot rail sparkle silver. Still an available seat at his side, I can redouble my efforts on the future of House of Belden. Oil the rusty parts of his feeble mind and remind him the future is now. House of Belden will be a shelter in Benjamin’s final ascending years, a Victorian mansion up Clay Street fronting the Hill of Lafayette that Augie will inherit one day. And for me, moving into the Belden will finally give me a home, not just a hovel in Chinatown. Benjamin, Augie, Eve, Raymond, and Augie’s father, doctor/vintner Nathan Schnell. I’ll call them my slanted family and figure out my place in it later. Time for a drink.

Terry, one for the boy.

Not a boy. Maybe aging rent boy. But I am young enough to be his son, grandson, or nelly nephew. Still we are friends, older generation to the younger, simply joining one another for some kicks. He picks up the libation by its thin stem, puckered lips meeting the edge of glass and down goes the last swallow before setting the clear base down over a y-front on a pair of briefs. Pride for the bar overriding his vodka-flushed cheeks, The Pinky survived struggles for gay liberation, the epidemic, assassination of Harvey Milk, repeated booms and busts of San Francisco, even the earthquake of 1989. I prefer financial downturns with its sidewalks of unwanted furniture, blocks of apartments with empty unswept rooms, long lonely walks, stops for a quiet coffee in a half-filled café. In the present boom of another financial upswing, prospectors are back, leasing agents, buyouts, demolitions, new construction. Benjamin and I thought there was a spirit of protection that shrouded The Pinky. Not this time. With the building sold, Benjamin’s lease has come to its end. Decisions asking for resolutions we both hesitate over next week.

In the eighties, I started coming here when I was a student and at the right time of day, I’d find him there, on that same old stool and the opposite end of the bar with a handful of regulars and nothing else but the antiseptic smell of pine cleaner, old wood, and fresh booze. Benjamin and The Pinky were the only immovable objects in the whole city. Now with the natural blond of his youth long gone, hair snowball white, he appears topped by a pink wig. Dressed everyday in one of many signature pink v-neck cashmere sweaters pulled over crisp white Oxford shirts, charismatic designer jeans freshly pressed, feet always housed in shined black wingtips. Every inch of attire comes from Wilkes Bashford, his dedicated up-end retailer. Not specifically for its couture, which it has in spades, but especially due to its salesmen who offer cocktails to regular clientele while they do their shopping. When Benjamin shops, he drinks Chivas Regal 18-Year. It is there and only there that he drinks that specific cocktail in order to give the experience its own stamp.

He stands up to stroll the black and pink tiles the size of Scrabble squares, Benjamin and a growing clan includes a lone troll, a listless set of blonde twinks, a few drag queens together with trans people drinking margaritas, and Ned the Clown who spends his retirement at The Pinky after a long career with the traveling circus.

Benjamin reviews the walls with their pictures of celebrities in underwear ads, the Wurlitzer set into the brick wall opposite the bar, and an old dart board with a bullet hole through the bullseye. The bar comes to its abrupt end at the LADIES and GENTS, the Presto Photo Booth sandwiched between their two entrances. He surveys the Gallery of Underpants. Reaching the opposite end where a set of Calvin Klein briefs await, pressed under glass—everybody’s favorites. Women’s panties and a couple of authentic 1950s girdles slightly bunched and wrinkled remind us that The Pinky welcomes everyone. To my knowledge, Benjamin never possessed a fetish for women’s underwear. But in the bar’s history there has never been a single jock strap. He wouldn’t hear of it. There are two male Speedos, Benjamin says they add class and a sexiness of the swimsuits by themselves, which invite the right swimmer’s build to break the glass and summarily don himself in sporting elegance, nearly naked in the bar. When the glass cracked over the Speedos during the earthquake Benjamin removed the two pairs and replaced them with a fresh set, one a rainbow design and the other half yellow, half black that everybody began calling the bumblebee. Ned sat at the bumblebee, every day until the start of Half-Price Cock n Tail. At the same time he removed a woman’s thong and had the glass man nail it to the ceiling, fifteen feet overhead. I wonder where all these collectibles will go.

Returning to my right, he directs Terry to wind the place up by switching the music to free-play.

I’m slicing, Terry says. He wishes to be left alone with the lemons and limes. To slice them into proper wedges. He had given the job to the bar backs, but they slice them into unusual shapes and often cut their own fingers. Head on the citrus fruits, slicing and slicing, lips moving and sound leaving, Let’s give this night a commemorative vibe, never shifting his eyes from knife, lemon, lime. All happy memories. He’s referring to the night ahead and the load of gems of the Detroit era, late fifties to early seventies. Spinning old Jubilee Records, Roulette, Liberty, RCA, Motown, signature labels that provide a trip back to simpler days. Somebody selected Peppermint Twist by Joey Dee and the Starliters. When Eve arrives, I’ll play our song. That’ll be the perfect launch of Half-Price Cock n Tail.

Terry possesses a love for the bar that I can taste in the air. Just breathing in front of him with a cocktail shaker in hand, I envy his mastery, to be at one with a single act, a conquest over time. Black waistcoat, French cuffs, pink triangle for a lapel pin. A presence with fingertips lightly gripping the stem of the martini, he removes the completed cocktail from his service to my enjoyment. I look at my watch, waiting for the minutes of the hour to clip away and suck up into the air vents while Terry, Benjamin, and I form a fugitive triangle, Terry remaining ever the watchman, my spiritual doppelgänger recording the reality we face with the bar closing and the new millennium finalizing time.

Everything’s on the house until we close. Benjamin’s orders are unwelcome as Terry’s eyebrows creep up to his thinning hairline. He continues to look down at the soda gun in hand. You mean, until we close this evening, temper assured, firmness that underlines years of service. He finishes filling a triplet of hi-balls and replaces the gun into its holster, looking pointedly at his boss, eyes speaking, You old fool, I’ll be worked to death.

Maybe to the very end, Benjamin says. That’ll keep the place packed. We’re the last of the old Gulch and we’ve got a cellar full of booze we need to liquidate. If we run out, you can order more. Which means carrying up boxes of booze from the cellar and Terry hates being told what to do because then he has to tell the bar backs what to do, and that’s tricky. I’ve sat with Benjamin for drinks on one too many occasions and when Terry’s bossed, he turns from a miffed valet attending his cavalier prince to a silent wall of protest. They’ve lost enough bar backs in the past and this final week isn’t one Terry can afford to lose any of the crew. Terry’s bar backs are Timmy from Thailand, Jimmy from Florida, and Tate, a drifter who no one knows where he’s from. They work shirtless, Timmy sporting bullet piercings through his nipples. Jimmy’s got a ring just above his navel. Tate wears sleeves of tattoos down both arms, which make them look longer than they are. All in their early twenties and within a year or two of one another, on the busiest nights they work in a fluster of tipping bottles and squirting guns.

A few nights ago, Benjamin asked me out to Café Rose where he’s a regular, where the same table is set on Mondays and Thursdays after Half-Price Cock n Tail. No plowing me with drinks to coax me on to his duplex. Just the cuisine of another disappearing San Francisco hideout. And he remained that night honest as a button. During the ride over, I sensed he was a stand-in for Nathan, Augie’s father. Benjamin is screening me for tomorrow, before I view House of Belden with fresh eyes. I’ve had conversations with the Doctor over the past year about living at the house and also helping him convince Benjamin to move up the hill after the bar. But he never shared anything deep or personal. The Doctor’s talks always revolved around the history of the house, promoting it, like a realtor in the process of trying to sell a property. I’ve been attending dinner parties at the house over the last ten years, have studied it intently like I’ve studied the bar. I’ve spent more time in the house’s Library of Missing Books than in any other room. It will be a chance to get out of my studio’s dark noise and tourists and strangers of Chinatown. I’ve told Benjamin repeatedly it’s the right thing to do. With the bar gone he can sell the duplex in North Beach, and we’ll all be up on the hill.

We could have gone to dinner anywhere. Benjamin knows Jeremiah Tower and his legendary restaurant Stars, its proximity to the bar within walking distance, another diamond in the rough. But Café Rose—the shiny penny on a random walk catching your eye by the little glimmer, an intoxicating respite on its own nestled into the anonymity of the residential neighborhood Cow Hollow on Baker Street, tucked away one block from the greenery of the Presidio. Never a sign to indicate its name, it has six tables. The same dedicated customers come week after week in a setting that is a precise box surrounded by walls covered in brocade curtains and a broad front window that slides open to a quiet walkway. No other mission than to bring the home cooking of Hungary to a loyal set graced with meals unveiled in the good and bad weather and in a setting where the dizzying city disappears behind the quiet breezes coming off the Bay and the sight of the elderly lady towing her grocery trolley home. Rather than a deliberate shunning of the city’s culinary nobility, dining at Café Rose had become an intimacy shared between us.

Jazmin greets us, Jó estét. Good evening. She leads us to his table and methodically slides shut the tall broad window. While she shuts it, we catch the first mist off the bay ushering in with it the evening, ghosts of fog that wish to speak the history of San Francisco, to see what they have seen over a hundred decades. Jazmin follows by closing the caramel blinds and the ghosts disappear.

Sealed in the warmth that takes us deeper into the night and comfort, wall sconces provide light by fire. Her husband Imre, wordless, approaches the table and strikes a wooden match to spark the crystal votive at the center of the table. They hail from Budapest and oversee every aspect. They personally greet, pass out menus, take orders, direct one another over a single room with an open-air kitchen and employ only John, who washes dishes for Café Rose, like me lives alone in Chinatown, and has a second job at City Lights Bookstore stocking shelves where I met him only a couple days before my first time here about ten years ago. While John washes Jazmin and Imre execute the slicing, the chopping, the roasting, stirring, and serving to create the Bohemian micro-theatre.

Haven’t been here in a week, Benjamin says. I haven’t been here since he last invited me. I knew this night would be different. Jazmin tells us to relax and settle in, turning the wine glasses mouth side up. She shrugs her shoulders, Enjoy it while it’s here. She walks away.

The restaurant’s tables overflow. He removes each arm from his mismatched blazer, black watch plaid. Paired with pink sweater, he should be sitting here with Ned the Clown, not me.

Jazmin enters the kitchen, checking three large kettles adding paprika, I guess. Years of paprika, it’s in the woodwork. Abundant and having filled even her steps over to a shelf holding dinner plates and a stereo. The music, once she’s inserted a CD into the player, predictable: a recording of Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, even offensive; the word blend translates to Gypsy wise, music projecting from four speakers attached to crown moldings at the upper corners of the room. Benjamin is set to begin checking off the Doctor’s figurative list within Benjamin’s head, brow pinching in the middle and there’s the scowling. I practically burst out laughing. Instead, I picture him in a top hat.

One word: Augie, he says. His irresistibility to those like me, taxi dancer, but then, he’s referring to half of Ben’s customers, the late night row that fought another fight than I fight, or Eve and Augie fight, the senior generation that started favoring the word gay around the time The Pinky opened in 1958. Trying to fill the void that won’t be filled, we both know it’s the single reason he’s glad the nights of the bar are coming to their final end. Absolutely the only reason. I can’t watch the inner loneliness of these men, he says. Too much for me any longer. He explains they remind him of himself. They come for the boys, they rarely leave with the boys, and they come back for the boys. You wish to go to the toilet with Augie, but you never do. And then we have Eve. Eve tires of everything and Augie follows, he tells me. But know, he only follows Eve. That’s why I work on her. But work on her for what? I think. She’s been at House of Belden seven years. The Doctor approves of her, her life, her entanglement with Augie.

So what about you, Ben? House of Belden or John Barleycorn? To Benjamin the question is like asking if he prefers crêpes or shepherd’s pie. Both delicious but the former retains classic refinements. But John Barleycorn, a bar lined with pews from old St. Mary’s Church and tartan carpeting wall-to-wall, shelves of books read only for the purpose of disguising inner loneliness. He’d die of alcohol poisoning.

It’s five thirty, The Pinky full. Terry clears away our empty martinis, his silver cufflinks clinking against glass. Benjamin straightens himself against the wall of black bricks coated in varnish. Music breaks through the noise of the crowd. The bar backs trip over each other and a drink that looks like a cherry gimlet spills over the bar.

Would you like another round dear Benjamin? Or have you finally had enough.

You know the answer. Time for clean cocktails. Order the bar backs to drink the vermouth. And they can gain some weight by eating my olives.

With the regulars present plus those who’ve heard on the street that The Pinky is closing, they all come to visit one last time. Competing voices try topping one another as the bar mixes in Doo-Wop and laughter. Terry gives the bar backs permission to mix basic drinks like vodka sodas and shots of whiskey, or various flavors of schnapps, plus opening bottles of beer or pulling from the draughts. He makes specialty drinks—Manhattans, Cosmos, Cocksucker Coffees. Random visitors who haven’t been here in years bump and nudge into us, my drink spills down the front of my sweater. Bodies wedge their way through more bodies and the humidity rises, a steam room of sweat and cologne and smatterings from unwashed druggies releasing chemicals already spent and processed, the residues add up to the Chernobyl effect. Benjamin looks out the window and instructs me to take a moment to capture the half-light and watch the roll gate close over the Asian market across the street. That’s it, he says, the family’s final night. Over seventy years and three generations. It’s then I realize Benjamin’s distracted me with a purpose, to keep me away from Augie, who pinches at the back of my sweater pulling as if lifting off a circus tent. Benjamin and I stare out one final time then he turns off the neon and draws a stretch of black velvet curtain across the window. He tells Terry to turn up the music in order to drown out the voices, the dissonance of competing conversations and camp. Extending an index finger in the air, Dick and Dee Dee’s The Mountain’s High, 1961, he says. He can name every song on the Wurlitzer.

It’s a B-side. Should have been an A-side. Eve arrives. Like always she takes my stool in order to sit next to Benjamin. I sit to the right of her. Augie sits to my right. They’ve had no sleep.

Adam, Evelyn, Eve, all in one. Eve, mildly amused with the night awaiting us, her dark skin is a high-pro glow of morning at Lands End. She once commented she switched from Evelyn to Eve because she wanted to be associated with the night. Having let go of the trauma of her birth name Adam, what had been placed on her by her parents, how could they know? She hides her crush for Terry, his smooth reliable bearing, something she could hold onto. She indulges Benjamin with the banter he enjoys, a man she loves like she loves Augie’s father, the Doctor, paternal but not parental. Tonight Eve wears a new set of clothes purchased only at Kiku Mokoto, the Japanese designer with boutiques across Japan but San Francisco is its only store in a foreign location. Ankle-length black wool skirt and monkey boots below. On top, a lemon-yellow ribbed turtleneck tucked in at the waistline and a collar of Tahitian black pearls. Eve creates an ensemble for her tall body that looks purposeful merely sitting on a barstool sipping booze. Having majored in fashion merchandising, she has never put her education to effective use, but this could change with the Kiku Mokoto opportunity. She hates what Augie conveys, the way he bats eyelashes and tilts his head in Ben’s direction. Augie retains an imperfect allure and the drunker I get the more I’m dancing with him over the patio, a scene he wants to repeat tonight. Plus there’s his lack of caution. A few months ago, I pulled him from under a pile of coats in the early morning hours of a rave located in the city’s last industrial zone, and with no hesitation he pulled out a capsule and popped it into the back of his throat. It wasn’t a date, it’s not quite safe. He wanted to introduce me to the scene, the flip side of his father’s fundraisers and opening galas. He’s a lot like the bar backs, pale from lack of sunlight. He’s wearing a white t-shirt with the letters SOS on its front. Short sleeves, his right forearm covered in tiny devils holding pitchforks and prancing on their tiptoes. Eve picks out all of his clothes.

Save Our Son.

The t-shirt? Sale rack. But I’m not buying all of his clothes. I’ll pick them out, she adds. He’ll need to pay me back. For an unexplained reason Augie removes his shoes, reaches over me and puts them in Eve’s lap. He’s her wild teenaged son but not, red-blonde hair and he needs a shower after last night and the night before. Left wrist strapped by a silver-studded leather band that Benjamin bought him at The Gauntlet. From what I’ve seen, he’s never removed it. Gray-green eyes with specks of brown, ridiculously high cheekbones, my taxi dancer, like owning a pet wolf. He treats Terry like the help, which Terry isn’t bothered by, but it displeases Benjamin, unaware that he, too, is help—enabler when Augie’s blown all the money. Nathan refuses to give him any more.

We need to have an actual conversation. Sober.

Benjamin had been to the GENTS and returned, taking the vacant seat next to Augie, leans into him, older on younger, and drunker. You know your father asked me to keep an eye on you. You remind me of me when I was you.

Eve swivels her legs and torso my way. The Doctor, she says. He would never say such a thing to you. He has a business partner in the winery named Michael. He’s straight, and he’s hot. As they say, straight to bed. The rest of the place is a group of laborers picking grapes all day. Child, I’ve been on my knees for hours on end but never worked that hard.

I think they just bend over, Benjamin adds.

I’ve done that too. But bless them all, she lifts her drink high. Augie, what’s with your father anyway? He says he’s retired. Retired to what? He’s the busiest man I know.

Augie tells me his father will likely ask me out. Like a date. That kind of out. Part of the process.

A date would be fine but I’m focused on the Institute and definitely don’t have time for anything serious. Especially with your father.

So you’re not hunting?

You know I’m not.

The point is don’t spend your youth and beauty on just anyone who adores you. She checks me out of the side of her eye. Are you listening to what I’m saying?

Speaking of hunting, have I told the one about The Pinky and the Stonewall riots?

Yes, Ben, Eve says, you have. All three of us.

I called every cop I knew in San Francisco, inviting them in for a day of free booze. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made for the future of The Pinky. Never an arrest inside this bar.

Yes, she adds. I was here the year two cops picked up that one drag queen and took her to a hotel.

She died in ’93. Myrtle Street. God rest her soul.

You held her memorial. Remember? I was here for that as well.

I stared at Augie the entire time Benjamin and Eve spoke to one another. He’s focused on the shelf of liquor bottles ahead of him like he can break one. He’s scheming and I don’t trust him. His trance is the thing that suddenly shatters.

Are you in?

Meaning, will I be joining them for another night of clubs, perhaps back out to Lands End and a return to the early morning hours.

No. I’m not in. I need food, bed before midnight. I don’t need Chinatown but it’s what I’ve got. Eve tells me not to worry about food, she knows the right appetite suppressant. You can never be too skinny or too rich, she says.

Augie wants me not to worry what time I show up tomorrow at House of Belden. You can come tonight, tomorrow, doesn’t matter. I think you’re bound to be a Beldener. Eve presses her chest into the bar.

Yes, Eve?

Surprise me. A shot of anything. Make that for the two of us.

She leaves for the LADIES. I’m not drinking what she ordered, lured into what they want. I order a pint of beer from Jimmy. Turnover through the years, lasting a month then back on the streets. Benjamin pulls them in again. With the bar closing he’ll have to find new options. As the clean pint glass tops off, I decide I’m going back to my studio and this, thankfully, is my last drink for the night. Augie sits up straight, lengthening spine to take off his t-shirt then drapes it over the seat on top of his leather jacket. Benjamin asks him to remove the rest of his clothing.

Not until I’m beyond drunk. Quicker if I’m hallucinating. Works every time.

I’ll arrange that. Terry, back us up. Forget the Vermouth and save the olives for the Italians.

Clearly he’s lost count. My watch says eight forty-five, the bar has thinned out, others off to primp themselves at home before setting off for the Friday night clubs. Terry lowers the lights, the cast of late night regulars set in a pink haze. The moment allows me to register the raw beauty of The Pinky for the sake of memory, memories, to be passed on one day to someone, anyone. Eve is over at the Wurlitzer selecting a song she’ll dedicate to Augie. The song begins with a stretch of violins, slow, hypnotic, pleading. She tops the barstool.

I played this for you, sweetie. Embraceable You, by the lovely Della Reece. Exactly what I need from you tonight. No sex clubs, no jails, no morgues. Just your lovely little self filled with irresistible charm.

Charm? From me? That’s like asking one of the rent boys for a free blowjob.

I disagree. He’s got the charm of the taxi dancer and he only said that for effect. A deeper effect on me. He won’t win. The back and forth, push and pull is something I’ve become used to. What will it take to break that? I don’t know. And Eve is awash in him, having chosen one of their songs. There’s another song that’s theirs but she hasn’t played Bernadette, yet. I’m sure it’s the alcohol. Whatever she’s snorting, it’s bunk. She continues surveying me, I’m necessary for the trilateral experiment, Augie the connecting third, or it’s me; I’m either silver or bronze, she is gold. Benjamin set down his drink, looking over us with approval. He surely believes it’s the thing to push us forward, to at least get this out of our bodies.

Oh forget it Terry. Bring a round of schnapps. He hates getting stuck with the old timers who’ve sustained The Pinky’s business through the years.

Sweet Jesus. I need to powder my nose again. She stands, tosses back her hair and proceeds to the LADIES and vanishes behind the doorless entry. I’m worried I’m going to be sick. Even a small bowl of cocktail olives would help. I’m torn between the triangle and House of Belden, or just back to Chinatown. I look at Augie.

I really think I should be going. I need to show up tomorrow in good form, to give your father a good impression. Augie attempts to shake me down, his outstare the trigger of an animal trap.

Dear sweet thing. He’s stolen Eve’s language. You’re already committed. Leaving us now would be an insult. He’s been taking intermittent breaks in the toilet to snort something unknown to me and I’m afraid to ask. This time, he invites me with. I don’t refuse.

We’re in the GENTS. No dividers separate the three urinals. Stand next to me, he says. I’ll give you a bump. It’ll keep you focused. He pulls out his cock over the urinal next to the wall. I haven’t pissed in well over an hour and step up next to him and unzip my jeans. He lets it hang freely while I watch it pissing, then he reaches inside the left pocket of his jeans and brings out a bag of powder. Holding in the piss while digging for his keys that make the sound of metal on metal, he pulls them out of the right pocket, opens the bag with the other hand, scoops a key into the chemical. He begins pissing again and takes the powder bump from the bag and snorts it off the key up into his nostril. He repeats on the other side. Handing the bag along with the keys over to me, he grips his cock with the thumb and index of his left hand and begins to move the flesh back and forth. It starts to thicken. He runs the other hand through his mop of hair. I dip the groove side of a key into the bag and take it to my nostril, wait a second, and without more hesitation snort up into not only my nose but my brain. Repeating into the other side, I did what he did. I begin to seal the bag and he tells me to wait. Two more. Each. Returning to the same motion on his cock, I simultaneously snort. Finishing like it’s something I’ve found, I hand the bag back to him, thankfully not my property. I’ve finished pissing and I could stand here with my hard cock, or drop to my knees inviting him inside my mouth. Instead I pull it back, maneuvering into my jeans to make it fit, now an uncomfortable part of me, like a stick protruding from my pelvis. His bare torso is a sight I want to remember at the bar while wishing to take him in me, take in tonight, plus last night as if my memories are images that fill the walls of The Pinky. Augie takes me by the chin and brings his mouth to mine. Why did you do that? I don’t answer him but start to wake, filled with a vague impalpable fuzz, internal and bodiless, inside/outside a seashell. I can smell the chemical, part household cleanser and ammonia. This is the drug of the homeless which must include me in some way, but I do have Chinatown. He doesn’t kiss me but leaves me with those words. I can see the two of us erect and walking out of the GENTS. However this affects me, I’m leaving, alone. We step to the bar to take our seats. Benjamin and Eve look into us, our wide eyes.

Well look who’s come home for Christmas, she says and I see a postcard of a cottage in wintertime.

Everyday’s a holiday.

A repeating vacancy but echoes, a switch turns, I hear reverberations of sound molecules into emptiness, those words. Filling my head, snow falling. A hollow cold wind howling amid the occupant between my eyes. I am that I can’t feel my mind, see the bare lightbulb navigating under the light of the moon, scattered diamonds on a blanket of white. Not sure that’s now what I want, Augie, snow globe skull of stones out of round after round of clear alcohol, void. The dominant effect that I don’t want Eve right now.

You’re right, Augie says in her direction. I can do runway.

Don’t flatter yourself, she says.

No, Benjamin interrupts, stammering and trying to open his eyes wider on Augie. Leave that to me, Augustus. I’ll flatten you like a German pancake, and slather you in butter and cover you in maple syrup.

Augustus? Augustina is a better fit. He’s wearing more makeup than me. She shoots back the schnapps. Besides, everyone’s gone on to the clubs, can’t you see? her finger poking him in the chest. You’re still here.

And I see your breasts have come along nicely.

My wife had the most beautiful breasts. A marriage that lasted less than a year. Just remember, you three can come to my house when you’re finished with your little sex games.

And that’s a wrap. Eve closes this portion of another night. Lands End, Augie insists. I’m baffled they want to repeat last night, I thought they’d finally worn themselves out.

Yes, she says. For sure. The sea lions are good for my comedown and the ocean breeze makes me hopeful. She can think about sleep after she’s dead.

Chinatown for me, I say, or did I think, a murky assurance that through the blizzard I can make a decision on my own. Despite, in spite of, dispirited, fucked up. Obsessive, twitches. I hope this doesn’t happen to me now.

I’ve got to walk this off. I’m afraid to go.

You’re coming back to Lands End.

Eve doesn’t step in. Like I thought at Lands End, she and I are in agreement, my studio is the best place for me right now. There’s tomorrow. I’ll see the Doctor, Augie’s father, tour the house. We stand up.

They kiss Benjamin on each cheek. I’ve never felt the need to kiss Benjamin, but I’m trying to pull myself together and kiss him on the mouth. Maybe I should do it again. I’m not sure if he’s blushing or it’s martini cheeks. Owning a little piece of him that isn’t taking him away. So far apart, yet so close the affection but an idea now. Where can I go.

Avianto, my lovelies. I’ll put a key under the mat and you can climb into bed with me at the end of the night. While we leave Benjamin, I look back. He turns, turns back to Terry and what has become a sparse row of white hair under pink lights.