Don We Now

Last year's was the first Christmas after the separation. No one intended it to be -- but the entire morning spent exchanging and opening gifts with my ex-wife and son was infused with a sort of awkward sadness that neither of us was really expecting. In-between the smiles for the gifts were silences with nothing to say, and memories too fresh to ignore.

I wouldn't call it unpleasant, or even regretful.
The whole thing was just ..hard.
Eventually it came to a point where I decided to leave for everyone's sake. But being Christmas morning, it wasn't like there was anywhere else to go. I ended up walking on the beach for a while before heading back home. I stayed there a while, watching the cat chew on Christmas lights, trying to bury myself in whatever distractions I could think of -- looking for something, anything that could help me escape the utter loneliness that this day can deliver.
Eventually it got to be too much and I had to get out of there, too.
What I really needed was contact. People. Conversations about nothing, water to sink into. Somewhere in this city there had to be an open bar. Somewhere in this town someone else had to be feeling the same way.

I don't know what made me think of Sherwood's. Despite it's simple comforts, it's never really been one of my favorite places. But it was the only neon light burning into the darkness that night -- and even the company of disinterested strangers had to be better than driving around by myself.

I honestly expected the place to be dead -- but what I found when I got inside was a full on crowd scene. Groups of friends hugging and toasting drinks, crowds around the pool tables, and lines by the bar. Unbeknownst to me, 'Christmas night at Slurwood's' is actually sort of a local tradition -- turning the only bar open into the best possible place to be.

I found a seat, ordered a drink, and checked out the crowd. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits, shaking hands and laughing. It was hard not to get swept up into the mood, and soon I found myself talking with the guy sitting next to me about some movie we both thought was funny.

His name was Harry -- he was dark skinned and short-statured, with a mustache that didn't quite meet in the middle. He wore a sweater jacket over a button up shirt and smiled with his whole face, which added all together made him look sort of like a cross between Eddie Murphy and the guy who played Mac on Night Court.

He bought a round, I bought a round. Small talk exchanged, friends introduced. The bartenders all seemed to know him -- which spilled over into preferred treatment for me as well. It was a good time, and if nothing else had taken my mood to an entirely different place than it was before, which was what I had been hoping for, even though I never really expected something on this scale.

Harry had to check out early for some reason, but by that point I had found enough common ground with other people he'd introduced me to so that the evening could continue on uninterrupted. If that weren't enough, one of the women I had met was starting to look at me with a bit more interest. She wasn't Jessica Alba, but she wasn't Kathy Griffin either -- and despite the number of drinks in my system, it was impossible not to sense a vibe of sorts developing between us.

As the hours passed by, the place began to get more and more crowded -- making conversation difficult and elbow even room harder to come by. So much so that at one point my new female friend suggested that I should join her and her other friends as they "took the party somewhere else."
The directions written on the napkin said our next destination was
another bar -- but the look in her eyes said something else entirely.
The place we were headed to was called Park Place -- a bar across the river from the place we were at, but perhaps more interestingly only a few blocks away from my apartment -- which offered my already lecherous thoughts even more motivation to stay with the party.

Park Place is a gay bar, but it wasn't like that was any kind of problem. I'd spent plenty of nights hanging out at The Metro, and it's not like The Pearl doesn't have a certain kind of swagger to it sometimes. I even remember a time when spots like Club Park Avenue and Brothers were the places to be in Tallahassee, with lines of people wrapped around the building waiting to get in.

The drive was short, and once I found a place to park I stepped inside the door hoping to hook back up with my group. Park Place is a lot smaller than Sherwood's, so it was easy to pick them out. We waited our turn, ordered our drinks, and then set about finding a spot to hang out and continue our good times.

Conversations started, drinks disappeared. At one point it seemed everyone was off on their own catching up with people they knew, leaving me at the bar to kind of hold our seats. I settled in, sipped at my drink, and absently looked around the bar to see what else was going on
Only to find Harry -- my initial new friend of the evening, staring right back at me.
Half-drunk as I was, my brain was in no shape to do math -- even if it was only a matter of putting two and two together. In my mind I had happened on a lucky break finding someone else I knew to talk to while everyone else was off chatting with friends. But in Harry's mind it must have been like Santa Claus himself had delivered me to the door.

He moved to a seat next to mine and re-introduced himself. There were short conversations about how the night was going, punctuated with several remarks about how Harry "never expected to see me here" after he left Sherwood's. I laughed along, still scanning for the group and the woman I had been hanging with before -- who (of course) seemed to have completely disappeared.

Harry continued pleasantries and offered to buy another round. I still hadn't really caught on to what was happening and accepted. The drinks came, we toasted the holiday, and drank them down.
It was about that point when he first put his hand on my leg.
Have you ever had one of those moments when no matter how drunk you feel something happens that makes you instantly sober? It was like all of the sudden the entire plot of the movie had come into focus and I realized that Gabriel Byrne was not Keyser Söze.

I've done lots of theater; I've had plenty of gay friends. One thing I've always been pretty aware of is that regardless of whether another man finds me attractive or not, I give off some sort of vibe that is the virtual equivalent of wearing a sign around my neck that reads "Heterosexual." Everyone knows where everybody stands and it's all cool. But somewhere between the booze and convenient coincidences all around it was like my sign had been flipped over to reveal the words "Bi-Curious" written by someone else.

I started backpedaling for all I was worth, but Harry wasn't anywhere near giving up, asking me things like "Well how do you know you're not interested?" and "What's wrong with trying something different?" I was doing my best to be diplomatic in my refusals and not be an asshole. I mean, it wasn't like suddenly realizing my situation threw me into some sort of homophobic panic attack -- I just didn't have any interest in sleeping with other men.

Unfortunately, this was a fact that Harry simply wasn't ready to accept, and he pressed on with the hard sell. It was kind of weird, because I found myself wondering if this is what it's like for women when some guy they're not interested thinks he's got a chance and starts going in for the kill. In fact, I started mentally replaying nights from my past where I'd gotten shot down when I realized that the woman from earlier that evening (she never did tell me her name) had returned and caught enough of the scene to start having doubts about me herself.
The tone of her voice suggested that she was being sarcastic
-- but the look in her eyes said something else entirely.
At that point when I decided to cut my losses and get out of there. Harry pushed for me to stay, and I finally laid down the line. He seemed disappointed, sad almost -- but it just wasn't going to happen. I headed home, curled up in bed and fell instantly asleep.

The weird thing about it though was that the next day thinking back, I was kinda disappointed in myself for not being more aware of the situation I had gotten into. At the same time, I realized that despite the fact that I like to think that I'm pretty adventurous and open-minded, there are still some things that I simply have no interest in at all.

But here's the weird part -- last night I decided to head back to Sherwood's for Christmas night, knowing that same party atmosphere would be there. The place was packed and it was a great time, but at one point this gay guy sat down next to me, wished me Merry Christmas, and then proceeded to pretty much ignore me altogether in favor of chatting up the young couple behind him.

I hate to say it, but after all that had happened the year before -- I felt totally snubbed.
I'll tell you something else -- drunk as I was, I had half a mind to go all New York on his ass, too
"Hey buddy -- I am no backburner bitch!"
[Listening to: Korn, "Make Me Bad"]

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