Pot Slut

He was a queer little oddball, staring and silent, who stocked shelves in the liquor store down the street. He wore extra-thick coke-bottle glasses that magnified his mousy eyes, and when he spoke, he enunciated his words in the odd, funny way deaf people do. He was small and stooped and seemed stupid.

I was living in an old-world neighborhood over an Italian cafe in a single room with a sink, a closet, and a window that opened to the inside of the building. I could look out that window and see diners at tables four stories down. All day and all night, the same slew of Sinatra songs wafted up the airshaft through that window. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone except me, and nobody liked strangers.

The cafe was owned by a pair of brothers, a stylish, handsome playboy named Rico and a homely, henpecked husband, Joey. The handsome brother would show up in the cafe at night, after dinner, drinking espresso and smoking cigarettes at tables with local socialites.

The homely brother lived in a ground-floor apartment with his bossy wife and bratty kids and ran the joint like a studio mogul. He knew everything that was happening in his building. He had snitches everywhere, and his muscle was a big, bald brute called Ajax, who worked behind the bar and enforced the house rules.

There were lots of rules to living in the building: You couldn't go on the roof. You couldn't cook in the rooms. You couldn't put plants in the windows overlooking the cafe. Were anyone to defy a rule, the violator would be identified and reprimanded immediately. When a plant fell from a window ledge and smashed on a table below (no one was injured), its owner was swiftly fingered. "I tol' ya before," Ajax scolded me, "Don't put no plants or nothin' on them window-sills!" When someone went on the roof, they knew it was me. And when I smuggled a hot plate into my room, I no sooner had my beans warm than there was a knock on the door and Joey himself shouted, "Are you cookin' in there!?"

In the years I lived there, I assumed a role as comic relief. I was the alien caliban, a rude fool who no one knew. Called to the table by Joey or Ajax, I'd be mocked and laughed at by their cohorts until they waved me away. I was never called by name but whistled at or spoken to like a pet that understood.

But this story isn't really about me but about some other kook in the same neighborhood, the goofy guy from the packy.  

Late one night after last call, I saw him in the crowd on a train on the way home, staring at me. I was drunk and grinned back at him like an idiot, so he came over and started talking to me. I didn't even know his name.

"What's up, buddy?" He said or something. He didn't know my name either. I was exhilaratingly intoxicated, blabby, and loud. After some chit-chat, he peculiarly asked me if I smoked. I got the hophead's hint. Not cigarettes, I said with a wink.

"I got some good stuff back at my place," he said. "If you don't mind smoking with me..."

Why would I mind? I wondered as I told him I didn't mind.

"I'm gay," he confided as if he was confessing some sin.

Aha, that's why he stares at me, I said to myself. I'm not, I told him, but I don't care if you are.

We got off at Queer Street and went up the station stairs. It was ice cold out with a bitter wind blowing snow. I wasn't dressed for the walk; my pants were worn thin at the thighs. I was wearing cotton socks and sneakers, a denim jacket, no hat, no gloves, and my neck was naked.

My hands were jammed in my pants pockets trying to keep from freezing. We crossed a few streets and around the corner and finally came to the row house where his room was. He paused at the bottom of some steep steps before going up. Stopped is more like it.

"Maybe I shouldn't bring you into my place." The little weirdo wheedled. "My roommate might get mad." Fine, I said. Go get the stuff, and we'll go do it at my place. He seemed okay with that idea, and went up to get the weed.

I don't know how long I waited in that wicked wind, but I was sure shivering, cussing his slow sissy ass. I began to think he passed out or had played me off, and I was questioning whether it'd even be worth the wait, when the front door finally opened and he peeked around like a mole poking a nose out of its hole. He saw me still standing there, so he came out with mincing steps. Okay, he said, and off we went into the gale, the icy gusts against us, hurrying through Haywire Square, under the windy Depressway, and down Hangover Avenue to my apartment over the Cafe Fungula Ve.

Up in my room, we sat on the floor across from each other. He guarded his dope like a rat protects cheese. Palming the bag from his pocket, he placed it out of sight on the floor, hidden between his legs. He cleaned the weed and packed the pipe down there where I couldn't see what he was up to. When he put the pipe to his lips, he took a few tokes before blowing out the smoke slowly, then he stared into the burning bowl. Unhurriedly, he had another hit before he finally handed it over to me.

From the smoke he blew, it didn't smell like anything great. I took a hit that was mostly ash and methane. I handed it back to him dead. He dumped the ash on the rug, reloaded the same sneaky way, and took first puffs again before passing it to me. This time, I got a decent hit, or at least one that had me coughing. I felt a faint buzz. The beginning of a buzz. It wasn't very good weed, but it would have to do.

The pipe was empty again, and he looked reluctant to reload it. He held it in his lap while he gazed up at me, mushroom-eyed. Then he asked me if he could give me a blow job. I said no, I wasn't interested. He tried to sell me on his fellatio, how great his head could be, like nothing I'd ever had before. I told him I never had it because I didn't want it. He spoke sorrowfully of the missed opportunity, of the unprecedented oral sex that I was declining, but I assured him that I wasn't game.

He frowned down on the pipe and dope between his legs, then he put a match to a pinch of pot in the bowl and took a drag, then he passed it over. I put the torch to it, and it was already burnt. I gave the pipe back to him. He held it hostage while he held court, boasting about his perverse and pornographic prowess, crowing over his skills as a cock-sucker, and flogging for me to let him fellate me. I was steadfastly opposed to the idea and would not be persuaded otherwise.

At last, the little braggart could see all his pleas were in vain. Unhappily, he balled up his stash and put the baggie back in his pocket. He handed me back an empty pipe and went home. When he got up, I shoulda stood too. I coulda jumped up and strong-armed the wimp, shook him down for some weed. But instead, I didn't even get up. It wasn't worth it.

The next day, I was cutting through the cafe when Ajax called me over to the counter. He stood tall and intimidating, frowning down on me from behind the bar. He asked me who had been in my room the previous night. I told him.

He said, "Buddy, don't let that loser in here no more."

I asked, Why not?

"Cause he's a fag, that's why."

So what, I said, I'm not. What do I care who's a fag?

That stunned him for a second, froze him. Ajax appraised me for a moment, silently sizing me up as if he didn't know what to make of me. He kept snakes in glass cages in his apartment, and now he looked at me with the eyes of a python surveying strange prey. He turned away but warned me out of the side of his mouth, "Don't let no one here hear ya talkin' that way."

I went up to my room, knowing I would never fit in with the cafe crowd. By the look Ajax left me with, I could see that he did not hold out hope for me. Although I had lived there for years, I was still considered a stranger among them, held in low regard, and treated with detached suspicion. Unlike those who try to fit in, I was a staunch oddity. I openly expressed unspeakable opinions. To them, it was me who was queer.