By the age of twenty-two I had a new life in a new city, but I wanted a serious romance. I soon discovered that although I was experienced in sexual matters, I was still naïve about affairs of the heart.
The country was in the midst of recession when I arrived in San Francisco in the early seventies. After six months of job-hunting, I remained jobless. When I bemoaned my bad luck to a stranger in a bar, he offered me a part-time job filing papers in the Transamerica building and I lunged at the opportunity.
It turned out to be hard, mind-numbing labor. Every day I hoisted heavy cardboard boxes onto training tables and sifted through reams of property tax documents. After work, fingers stinging with paper cuts, I stared out of the bus window wondering why I had wasted four years at college.
I trudged up the steep hill from Castro Street to sit in an empty apartment in front of a TV dinner while my roommate worked the graveyard shift in a small hotel. Night after night, I tried to summon the courage to venture out into the gay scene by myself until an overpowering mixture of horniness and loneliness pushed me through the front door.
When I entered Badlands, a country-western-themed watering hole, I felt immediately ill at ease so I made a beeline for the bar and ordered a beer. As I looked around for a place to sit, I spotted a lanky, long-haired blond playing pool in the back. I headed over and sat myself on a stack of beer boxes across from him.
He looked to be in his early thirties and wore scuffed cowboy boots topped by stiff, dark jeans. His half-open, chambray shirt revealed a pale, hairless chest. Each time he leaned over to make a shot, a hank of hair fell in front of his face. When he pulled it behind his ear, he lifted his blue eyes and gave me a wink. After he sank the eight ball, he tossed the cue stick onto the table and walked right past me.
Confused by his come-ons and subsequent snub, I got mad.
What a prick tease! I don’t need this!
Before I could get up to leave, he sidled up next to me with two bottles in his hands.
“What’s your name, good-lookin,” he asked handing me a beer.
“I’m Ralph.”
When he smiled at me, his eyes crinkled at the sides like the Marlboro man, a definite turn-on.
“Hiya Raff, I’m Cole,” he drawled. His thick Southern accent dripped from his lips like thick barbecue sauce.
Badlands attracted a wannabe crowd who dressed in business suits by day and western wear at night. Once I got a close look at Cole, I could tell that he was the real article.
During an hour of easy conversation, his manner was so courtly that I half-expected him to call me “Ma’am.” When he mentioned that he was staying nearby with a woman friend, I wondered if he was straight, or at least bisexual. As if reading my mind, he leaned over and pecked me on the lips.
“You are one handsome fella, why hasn’t somebody snatched you up?”
Startled by his sudden show of affection, I just shrugged as Cole delivered the classic pick-up line.
“You live ‘round here?”
Wary of asking him back to my vacant apartment, I concocted a quick lie.
“I live a few blocks away, but my roommate’s sister is visiting.”
“No problem,” he replied. “Why don’t we go back to my place and smoke us a joint?”
We left the bar and weaved arm-in-arm up Nineteenth Street to a stucco apartment building. Once inside, he led me to the sofa and after a long, hungry kiss, he pulled a pre-made joint out of a drawer in the side table.
We smoked and necked for another half-hour. When he took me to the bedroom, our sex was so heated that we tumbled off the bed. When our naked bodies hit the floor, we laughed and settled into each other’s arms until we passed out.
We met at Badlands the next evening for a beer before Cole took me to dinner at The Sausage Factory. After sharing a large pizza and many glasses of wine, he picked up the check. Ever since arriving in the city, I wanted to find a boyfriend but settled into a series of one-night stands. As Cole fawned over me like a prom date, I felt a web wrap around me.
On the way back to his place, he stopped on the sidewalk and cupped my face in his hands.
“Gimme me some sugar,” he cooed planting a big French kiss on my mouth.
I was a goner.
When we got back to his place, his needy roommate was waiting to snare us in a long conversation before we could get to his bedroom. After a few more dates, I trusted Cole enough to ask him back to my place and our assignations shifted permanently to the privacy of my apartment.
One night at the Sausage Factory, Cole cradled my hand on the red gingham tablecloth.
“I got sumthin’ to tell you,” he said looking down.
I waited until he looked up.
“Just before movin’ here, I was in jail for a while.”
His words came quickly as he scrutinized my face.
As I waited for what came next, it occurred to me that his pale complexion was a case of prison-pallor.
“I fell in with some bad people and we did some burglaries.”
He looked like so scared that I began to feel sorry for him.
Who hasn’t stolen something? I asked myself in the pause following his confession.
As his face grew more panicky, I rode my train of thought to the next stop.
Anyway, he paid his debt to society.
“That’s okay,” I said, breaking the silence. “Anyone can make a mistake. I’m glad you told me.”
Before I could change the subject, he took a deep breath.
“There’s somethin’ else I need to tell you, he added, squeezing my fingers.
“I got me a lover in prison. His name’s Jimmy. He was a hustler here in San Fran for a bit.”
Just then, the waiter appeared with a pizza. Instantly sensing the table’s intensity, he plopped the metal tray between us and disappeared.
“He got picked up by a tourist outside the St. Francis. After they had sex, the asshole refused to pay him.”
Cole took another breath.
“Ole Jimmy’s got a real bad temper and before he knew it, he put a knife in the guy’s belly. He died.”
As I was taking in these words, I stared at Cole’s face and saw a lasting affection for Jimmy in his eyes. In the ensuing long pause, all I could think was that Jimmy was in prison, probably for good, and Cole was here with me.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered.
I freed my hand to throw down some wine while Cole breathed a huge sigh. Within seconds, he reverted back to his sweet-talking ways and I put the entire conversation out of my mind.
It took Cole several more weeks to find a job driving a cab. After we emerged from my bedroom one morning, I kissed Cole goodbye at the front door and sent him off to work while my roommate Barry silently ate his post-graveyard-shift breakfast at the kitchen table. He didn’t look up from his cereal bowl until he stopped me on my way back to my room.
“Are you sure this guy is right for you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, he’s just not in the same class as us.”
Upon hearing these words, a land mine exploded inside of me.
“He treats me better than anyone I’ve ever met!” I snapped, resisting the urge to add: “Including you!”
“Okay, okay I just think you could do better,” he muttered before returning to his gaze to the bowl.
Barry’s snobbery had always rankled me. Although we had both gone to prep schools in the Midwest and attended the same college on the East Coast, I yearned to escape my elitist past in California. While Barry only socialized with the A-gays, I dove headlong into the socio-economic melting pot of gay life in San Francisco. Throughout our long friendship Barry never had a boyfriend, so I figured that he was just jealous.
When I met Cole at Badlands after work, I noticed that he substituted straight shots of bourbon for his usual beer. After a few whiskeys, he became hostile towards everyone but me. If some guy gave me the eye, Cole leapt up from his stool, shook a menacing fist and hollered across the bar.
“What are you lookin’ at? You better get the fuck outta here if you know what’s good for you!”
“It’s okay, just sit down” I whimpered.
“I’ll be goddammed if some fuckin’ faggot is going to cruise my boyfriend,” he growled, slamming a ten-dollar bill on the bar for another shot.
When the bartender cut him off, he grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me to the front door.
“C’mon Raff, who needs this shit-hole!”
We went back my place and headed for the bedroom. After ten minutes of foreplay, Cole rolled over and started to snore.
When I mentioned the scuffle at the bar the next morning, he brushed it off.
“Oh darlin’, I’m just lettin’ off a little steam after driving some real a-holes around all day.”
Whenever Cole showed up again at Badlands with an apology and a fresh wad of cash, they always took him back. After I arrived from work, we attempted a normal conversation while Cole knocked back two whiskeys between my beers. When he started to antagonize others, I scratched at my bottle’s wet label until he got eighty-sixed from the bar again.
Trouble started to follow Cole everywhere he went. When he confessed that his roommate had thrown him out because he owed her a lot of money, I thought back to all of the dinners and drinks he never let me pay for. When he showed up at the bar one night with a black-eye, he explained that someone cut him off in traffic and he jumped out of his cab. An argument escalated into a fistfight until some bystanders broke it up.
“All I did was cuss out that sumbitch!” he exclaimed.
By this time, my feelings for Cole had changed completely. After spending my first eighteen years trapped in the house with a rageful, alcoholic father, I was determined not to waste one more minute with another belligerent drunk. I stopped meeting Cole at Badlands and he barely seemed to care when I told him that he couldn’t stay over at my place anymore.
One night a loud banging on the front door startled me awake at 3:00 AM.
“Lemme in, darlin’, I really need yooo!” Cole keened.
When I opened the door, I saw that his shirt was blood-soaked from two open wounds dripping down the sides of his face. Reeking of alcohol, I noticed that he couldn’t bend his left knee as he peg-legged his way to the sofa. After easing onto the couch holding his stiff leg straight in front of him, he started to rant.
“Two goddam a-holes jumped me outside the bar! I’m gonna go back and kill them bastards!”
He suddenly hauled himself onto his feet and, reaching into the waistband of his jeans, he pulled a shotgun up from his left pant leg. As he started swinging it around the room, the barrel just missed my face.
Every nerve in my body ignited, but my mind strangely cleared as my sole focus became separating Cole from the rifle.
“Just put the gun down and let me clean you up,” I whispered, softly touching his shoulder.
His arm went limp as the gun barrel pointed down at the floor. Then he looked at me with puppy-dog eyes.
“OK, darlin’. I need to lie down for a bit anyway.”
He leaned the shotgun against the living room wall as I led him into the bedroom. Having maneuvered him away from the weapon, my next step was to get him out of the apartment.
He lay down on the bed as I fetched a cold washcloth and placed it on his bloody, swollen face. When he put his hand on my leg, I pushed it away.
“C’mon baby, I need me some luvin’ …” he simpered.
“No way, not with that gun in the house!” I replied sternly.
“Honey, you know I’d never hurt you for the world,” he burbled.
“I don’t care, I just don’t want that thing anywhere near me.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet,” he cooed hoisting himself up from the bed.
As the bloody cloth tumbled onto the carpet, he staggered to the living room while I followed a few steps behind. He went directly to the rifle and wrapped his fingers around the barrel.
“Thanks for fixin’ me up, darlin’, you did real good.”
Then he inched the shotgun back down his jeans and hobbled toward the front door. Before opening it, he swung around.
“I’ll see ya later. I got me some biz-ness to take care of!”
As he hopped down the stairs to the street below, I slammed the door. As soon as I locked it, my composure evaporated. My mind spiraled into a freak-out, so I got busy. Dashing into the bedroom, I picked up the bloody rag and tossed it into the wastebasket.
How do I get those stains out of the carpet?
What am I going to tell Barry?
Is Cole really going to kill someone?
I started to shake so I plopped into a chair, turned on the TV and stared at the screen until Barry got home at 4:00 AM. As soon as he entered, I blurted out what happened.
“I told you he wasn’t good enough for you!” he scolded.
“I know, I know, but how am I going to get rid of him?”
“Hell if I know. Just don’t let him back in here again!” he answered while disappearing into his room, leaving me to tremble in front of the TV until the sun came up.
The next night, Cole didn’t show up and he didn’t call. After a week with no contact, I was still apprehensive about another showdown at my front door. After a few weeks without any word, my fear subsided.
After a couple of months, I got a letter from a correctional facility in a county outside of the Bay Area. When I opened it, some of its words were blacked out. In small, neat handwriting, Cole wrote that he was back in jail for assault and battery.
He was also reunited with Jimmy, his old lover. When I read those lines, I wondered if that had been his plan all along.
He begged me to write but I did not respond. When more redacted pages arrived, I stacked them inside my dresser drawer. After three months, the letters stopped.
I was afraid to go out by myself since I had collided with a jailbird on my first solo flight. I only frequented upscale bars with Barry, the unlikeliest places to bump into Cole. As a final precaution, I changed my phone to an unlisted number.
After a year passed without another letter, I moved to another apartment and decided to list my number again without my address.