The Old Ones

By Colvin Marks

"That is no country for old men.

-W. B. Yeats

It's the old ones that bother me; you know, the old guys who hang around Lesbians just to buy them a beer and spill out their wheezy autobiographie s.

In the old days when this city was going

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really

swinging the bars on Jordan Street were filled with girls, a few queens, and the old Johns. One big sideshow: We danced and drank, passed out phone numbers, held hands over the table gay gay Gay!

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I'd

On the nights that the dikes bored me it was possible, then, to be bored with girls, with so many of the m strut in high fom drag, making like de Pompadour, let the Johns buy mo drinks, and listen to them for entertai nment. And the stories, the broken-hearted stories. The old guys loved the girls, and never asked for anything but a kind ear. So I'd listen. The stories were always the same: The wife vho died or left with the icoman, the un-Prodigal sons, and the sadness of it all, and have another boor on me. All the same.

Then I swore off Johns. In The Masque, on a slow night, I sat next to an old guy who looked like living alcoholic death. Ho examined my face, "Young lady", young lady.. ..he hadn't been here long, "You look intelligent. down and be intelligent." He shot a finger in my face, "do you know what you're looking for?"

"Yos, a girl."

"A or any? Specify."

Sit

"A girl", I specified. It's the truth, I was, but after a while I forgot to look for her.

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