AUGUST 1976
A SATURDAY NIGHT ODYSSEY
By Donald M. Avery Saturday night was hot, extremely hot. I was irritable because of the heat, and also because of an almost sleepless Friday night. Walking from downtown Cleveland public square to the bar, I reproached myself for even coming out on such a miserable night.
Nearing the bar, I felt so totally detached from people and situations, I felt kinship to the moon, shining up above; illuminating almost nothing but itself; a silver-white orb placed by a gothic decorator, in an indigo sky.
Yes the moon and I. Me: excessively concerned about my new haircut, and the moon: determined to outglow all the surrounding stars.
****
Why go out? Why do it at all? Love? Ha, I know about love.
Boy meets boy, both equally charming and vain. They meet again and again and whisper sweet "nothings" to each other. Careful to keep everything sedate. Coordinating their conversations and gestures as if they were actors in a play or a movie. Then, satisfied with the appearance and general mood of things, they agree to meet in an elegant restaurant for dinner, and over cocktails they make a mutual declaration of love and fidelity.
And this happens as effortlessly as one yawns or inhales a cigarette.
****
I move through crowds of fastidious men, making my way to the bathroom in the back to check my newly cut hair.
the
Once satisfied with mirrored image, I move back into the crowd, nodding here and there at friends, and friends I've slept with.
Why do it indeed. Bars and bars and bars. Any Saturday night I'm seen trading witticisms with the other young men fortunate enough to learn the advantages of a good barber early in life.
Immaculately clean and well dressed, we tell a joke and complain of love's dissatisfactions all within the
same breath.
a
Standing with a bourbon and soda in one hand and cigarette in the other, I'm talking to the usual people and making my usual side-glances.
Then, in the early morning hours, twin profiles (smelling faintly of alcohol, cigarettes and cologne) agree to slip quietly out of the bar.
****
****
After a half hour of this, I felt too hot and insipid to continue. I sat down at the bar and greeted everyone knew with a complaint about the heat.
Why do it? The temperature outside is in the eighties, I enter the bar feeling damp and sticky. Inside its just as hot, and its clouded with cigarette smoke..
Someone I've often slept with said I should smile. I retorted it was too hot to smile.
He lingered awhile trying to introduce a suitable topic of conversation, all of which were met by my "overheated" indifference.
After a few minutes had passed, he made a graceful excuse and left feeling (I'm sure) quite bored and disappointed about his wasted time.
I sat there in ill-humor until closing.
****
I almost didn't go to the baths; I almost didn't meet John.
I
*****
The bar closed and with a shrug of my shoulders, I decided to go to the baths. go to the baths often. Sometimes I suspect the people who've seen me there often, of making wry comments on my frequent attendance.
It rarely affects me. More than often I go there not as a last resort, but by choice. I like roaming anonymously through dim halls, having nothing else but pleasure to give or receive. I don't care if it seems shallow, I've had enough of love and lovers. Love, for the most part, has been troublesome, and even at its best, its rarely aspired to be anything else but charming.
Closing my locker; putting on my towel; I went downstairs to the shower room.
****
John was singing in the showers. I didn't know him, I'd never seen him before that night. But strangely.it made me happy. I've never heard anyone sing in the showers while a lot of men were standing around.
Of course the blond boy with the muscles had to ruin it. "Do you always sing in the shower", he said cleverly. A calculated cute remark designed to turn a head to the blond muscles glistening athletically under the silver-sheer cascade of water from the showers nozzle.
I thought John would bite so I dried myself and went upstairs.
****
Upstairs found my friend Dick trying his luck with the gym equipment. Half-heartedly. "I
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played with some weights. I had just gotten bored trying to lift an extremely heavy weight, when John appeared and said "you can lift it."
He said it with such assurance, he inspired me to try again, and I would've but Dick announced that Isadora, with Vanessa Redgrave, was on television and we went to pursue our mutual passionthe movies. After the movie was over. After Dick and I made our usual commentary. After he had left to "cruse", and I went to get another coke. I saw John again. and he asked me into his room.
****
I don't believe in fairy tales. I'm certain there is no such thing as a happy ending. A kiss
from prince isn't going to transform the toad. I often insult anyone or anything that displays even the smallest belief in such myths. And that insult isn't spared on myself when I find I'm longing for starry dreams.
All I know is I felt lousey and remote from everything that Saturday night. Then I met John and I suddenly knew why I do it. Why I worry over haircuts, why I diet, why I insult myself, and why, even though I tell myself it isn't worth it, I continue to go to baths and bars.
John is terrific, he's so excited about the things most people ignore because it isn't important in the achievement of desired domains.
Kissing him I felt like a leaf
Pittsburgh
startled by the sudden jewc.. morning dew gives to the earth. Happy, I spent all night in his
room.
Then it was Sunday morning. He had to go back to his home in Indiana. Sad but not depressed, we addresses.
exchanged
The attendant at the counter said "I wish I had a dime for everytime someone wanted a piece of paper for a phone number". HE meant it wasn't worth it, that people who meet here rarely contact one another. He knows it from experience. and ordinarily I would agree.
But John and I will see each other and soon, very soon. I'll hike with him through the woods he so vividly described.