The Sunset

“I’ve never seen anybody go in or out of that place,” Michael says, his head is hanging out the bus window. We are both a bit overheated and drunk. He’s pointing at that dive, a short, squat, square, wooden gin mill. Over the door, on a battered sign, “Sunset Tap” is spelled out in peeling letters. A neon ad for Schiltz beer blinks sporadically. “Why don’t we go in for a drink?” he says. “It’s still early.”

“In there? That fire box? Probably a bunch of townies in there. We could get killed in a place like that.”

He waves a hand in my general direction. “Come on, we’ll be Out and Proud. In Your Face Fags. Act Up. Queer Nation. Let’s be visible, let’s be Out There . Shake up the establishment. ”

“You’re crazy! I’m not going into that shit hole looking like this!”

We’re still wearing strands of rainbow beads from the Gay Pride parade, where we drank way too much and danced at the block party in a sea of shirtless, sweaty guys. We must look pretty gross, with lipstick smeared on our mouths, eyeliner rubbed off, the two of us decked out in the height of early 90’s gay wear: combat boots, short short cutoffs, tank tops in neon, and hair spiked up for days. He is freshly platinum blond. I’m the redhead. There is glitter all over us from the drag queen who sprinkled fairy dust from the RamRod float.

The bus, still stopped at the light, is about to get going with a gasping release of its brakes. He pulls the cord to signal the driver.

“Hold up!” Michael calls. “We’re getting out here!”

 As usual, I follow. I never have the balls to stand up to him.

The boozy day, the lusty excesses of Pride, and Michael’s excitement, all conspire to make me bolder than usual, and I am almost giddy. I have no idea what to expect, but I feel like an anarchist, a Queer activist. Living with Michael is one adventure after another, usually involving alcohol. And, I have to admit, I am curious about the place. No one ever does go in or out, it seems. What goes on in there? 

Just wait ‘til they get a load of us.

Soon, we are on the blazing pavement in front of the building. It looks sad, by itself, on the bustling busy avenue crowded with apartment blocks and businesses. Across the street is the Greek Corner, and the Coin Op laundrymat. The day is bright, lovely early summer.

We stumble up the crooked concrete steps to the Sunset Tap.
“Here goes,” I say, with my hand on the door, “a small step for gay kind, everywhere.”
“You’re a regular Rosa Parks, or maybe Nellie Armstrong” he starts to laugh, but shuts up the minute we are inside.

It’s dark. It feels like the place Darkness goes to get drunk and forget. The overpainted windows don’t seem to have been opened since Prohibition. It takes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom, after the sunny outdoors.

On the paneled walls are framed photos of JFK, and Jackie, Sonny Liston, two popes, and a long dead decorated general from some war past. There’s also a stuffed marlin, a number of plaques with sweet, pithy homilies, like : “if you don’t like it here, go the fuck home,” and faded pictures of old sports teams.

“Oh my!” whispers Michael.

“This was your bright idea” I mumble back.

The staleness of the place cannot be overstated. It is rank.

A crowd of regulars, a dozen maybe, are already well launched into their day. Not one of them bats an eyelash as Michael and I sashay in, on a whiff of China Rain. They lean bleary eyed and listless, watching the little TV bolted to the wall. The Sox are playing. 

Our grand entrance is decidedly anticlimactic. "This must be how Al Gore feels when he walks into a room," i say. With a shrug we sit down on two stools, our elbows on the sticky bar.

“What’ll you have, boys?” asks the bar guy, who looks like he’s been standing there since Man crawled out of the primordial ooze, he looks like he’s seen it all, and he didn’t like any of it. 

His eyes are slits, his skin is a reptilian hue. 

“Shall we order martinis?” Michael giggles nervously, but the guy does not crack a smile, he wipes the counter with an old, dingey damp rag.  

“What have you got?” I say.

The bartender nods and grunts to the bar taps, and the row of liquor bottles, indicating the selection at the Sunset.

We order two whiskeys, neat, something to drink fast so we can get out of there.

“Rot gut,” says Michael.

“Here’s mud in your eye.”

“Here’s to Mr and Mrs Bush.”

“And all the little Bushes,” I laugh.

“Here’s to Iraq.”

“Here’s to Paris. We’ll always have Paris.”

 “Here’s to  AZT,” he says, and we both are quiet after that, we both have our reasons to be quiet. We clink our glasses and drink down our shots.

“You guys mind passing those nuts?” an ancient gentleman with hair the color of old snow leans over, his hot breath is enough to peel paint. There’s a bowl of dessicated pale peanuts, Michael hands them to our neighbor, who nods.

“You come here often?” Michael says, in a campy voice.

“Too often,” the guy smiles. Not one tooth is in his head. He paws at the goobers, gums a few.

“Haven’t seen you two before,” he says.

“We’re new to the neighborhood,” I say. “We go to school.” I  give Michael the raised eyebrow “Tone it Down” look.

“Lots of young people, now,” the gentleman says, “lots of students. Not so many of us old fucks left.”

“The place sure has changed,” says our bartender, “the neighborhood’s gotten fancy.”

Michael chuckles, “I guess so.”

“No offense.”

“Oh none taken, dear man. We are indeed fancy.”

“No shit there,” he says. The bar guy doesn’t smile, but the slits of his eyes squeeze a little.

“We came in to shake up the establishment,” Michael says, “we thought we’d rile you up with our amazing Queerness.”

The bartender shrugs.

Another anticlimax.

“Stanny,” says our new pal, “get these two fellas a round, on me.”

We have drinks in front of us.

Michael gives me the wide eye as if to say, “See?”

After a few rounds, we are buddies with Dave, Stanny, Andy, John, and Paulie. The patrons of the Sunset tap are really just a bunch of regular boozehounds, and we certainly find common ground there. I seem to remember at one point singing “It’s Raining Men,” but that may be a bit of history re-writing.

things take a more sombre turn when Paulie and Andy recount a few dicey moments in Viet Nam:

“After that Hell, nothing surprises me anymore,” Paulie says. “I could literally give a fuck about anything. Who cares?”

“Every day, I thought was my last," says Andy.  "Scared to death the whole time, just a kid. No one should die like that, that young and scared, out there in some godless mud pile, all alone.”

Paulie says, almost in a whisper: “Some days I wished for a sniper come and get me, woulda been better than waiting, waiting.”

Michael is quiet, listening. He stares into the last slug of golden booze left in his glass. I know what he’s thinking, though he tries to laugh it off.

We’re both scared to death. His new medication doesn’t seem to be working. We don’t talk about it, ever, but I know. We share an apartment, we share clothes, cash, drugs and men, but we don’t talk about this. We never will.

Instead, we drink and laugh and tell jokes, we are sarcastic and loud. We play at being jaded, so we won’t be disappointed, we laugh when we are scared.

“Let’s have one more for a nightcap,” he says.

When I remember Michael, I remember that afternoon, how young we were, how silly. I remember the two of us leaving the bar, shitfaced, hanging on to each other, waving Bye Bye to our new friends.

“See you next week!” Michael says.

Of course, we didn’t ever go back. Still, there’s the image I’ll always have, of the two of us walking, hand in hand, out of the Sunset, into the blue evening together, both of us laughing our heads off.