I didn’t see any arrests concerning drugs but I heard about them and knew people who’d been arrested. The man who told Will I might be with the FBI was one of them. A serious dealer, he’d be at the baths for days on end, was always online and regularly doing G every other hour.
During the raid on his condo, a member of the law enforcement unit put a gun to the dealer’s dog, threatening to shoot it in the head if he didn’t tell them where the drugs were, at least that’s what I was told. The stories going around Chicago during this time were horrific, and the person in charge of this unit widely known for such tactics.
Will almost bailed the dealer out, but the guy’s family eventually did, so I later asked Will, “If you’d posted bail, would he have gone into rehab, or right back to the drugs?”
Will replied, “Well, he’d head to the drugs,” which is what happened, and in a few months he was arrested for dealing again, this time placed under house arrest. Temporarily staying with Will, a monitor was wrapped around his ankle in case he left the building. When Chris and I came over once to go to dinner with Will, the guy was outside, riding his bike up and down the street, high, swearing undercover Meth units had a car in the alley waiting for him. Odd he’d tell this to a member of the FBI, but oh well.
During my TINA period, weird things were going on at the baths also. One guy I’d see would walk around early in the mornings with a cell phone, yelling very loudly. Obviously a dealer, he’d talk about drug runs.
“I said, don’t fuck with me, Man! I can take you down if that shit doesn’t come through!” he’d scream into the phone. Strange, someone would be so loud about it in a public place, but he must’ve had a lot of power.
Another time, Eric and I were there in a room, using, and once we opened the door, a guy named J.B. stuck his head in and said hi. Cute, he had a baseball cap on, and was fully dressed. First of all, you don’t walk around the baths dressed, you wear a towel. Talking to us for thirty seconds, when nobody extended an invitation, he moved on.
Later, while I was walking around, he approached me again and I could tell he wasn’t really interested, he just kept looking at my eyes as if searching for something, asking a lot of forward questions, like, “Do you party?” or with no hello or how are you first, “You know where I can buy some stuff?”
I’m not stupid and once I said no, he quickly headed the other way. Within fifteen minutes, three people warned me he was a NARC who’d been arrested and that part of his agreement with law enforcement officials was turning people in, his behavior seemed to confirm it to me.
Eventually, I went back to the room to check on Eric, and when he opened the door, who was sitting in there with him, but J.B., I was surprised Eric let him in.
Within two minutes, J.B. left, and I whispered to Eric, “You need to be careful,” telling him what I’d heard about the guy. Claiming he hadn’t mentioned drugs, Eric also said J.B. wouldn’t do anything sexual.
“Keep clear of him,” I continued, leaving again to do some more cruising, but in another hour, when I returned, the same thing happened. J.B. cleared out of the room once more after seeing me.
Why would Eric take the chance hanging out with him in a potentially set-up situation? After I asked, he replied, “You know me, I like guys with a dangerous edge. I want to push it to see how far I can go.”
“Well, push it when I’m not around, I don’t want any part of him. Maybe you want to take chances, but I don’t.”
Eric and I eventually did hook up with someone, but we didn’t do Meth with the new guy. I don’t even know if it was brought up, but I assume it was. The encounter didn’t last long and after it was over, I didn’t think anything more about him.
Until, a couple weeks later, when I went to the baths by myself, getting another room. J.B. was there in his usual get up, so I ignored him, especially after he stopped me, saying, “How’s it going? Are you okay? Your eyes look red.”
The man Eric and I hooked up with two weeks before walked by. He smiled, but that was it, so I returned to my room and shut the door, needing a break from the guys staring in, a really rough crowd.
Putting my hand on the knob, ready to head back into the fray, I heard someone say, “That’s the one,” and when I opened the door, the guy who smiled was right there, pointing at my room to one of the fully clothed men walking around the club. I stared directly at him as he finished the sentence and he gave an embarrassed, sheepish smile, moving on. No drugs were on me, so I was in no danger of arrest, but still, it creeped me out.
I’d been clean about a week, yet why were these guys casing me out while three or four serious tweakers ran around downstairs like chickens with their heads cut off? After another quick walk around, I once again returned to the room, only this time a man in clothes was at one end of the hallway, another at the opposite, staring at me.
Forget this, I thought, it’s supposed to be about sex and fun, not underworld cover-ups. Getting dressed, I turned in my towel and got the hell out of there.
On the way home in a cab, I called Will and my conversation would’ve clued the driver I was obviously gay. About four blocks from my home, stopped at a red light, I suddenly heard the sound of metal on metal. Having enough experience with firearms as a farm boy, I knew what those sounds were. I looked over the back seat, and the driver was loading bullets into a revolver.
I bolted out of that cab, thinking this would be some hate crime in tomorrow’s paper and immediately assuming due to my phone call to Will, the driver was going to use the gun. I was not high, but stone cold sober. What would you do? Just ask, “Hi, and oh, by the way, what is that, a revolver?”
Running into the nearest condo building, I told the guard, who refused to call the cops. Pretty soon, the cab drove up and the driver walked in.
“Where’s my money?” he asked.
“Where’s your gun?”
“What gun? I want my money,” he replied, cocky and angry.
“Don’t give me that shit, you were loading bullets into a pistol, I saw you.”
“For your information, all cab drivers in Chicago carry guns.”
“Here’s your fucking money,” I said, throwing a ten dollar bill at him, “Get the hell away from me,” I told the guard again to call the cops, but he still wouldn’t do it.
Just then, another driver walked in, the first had obviously made a call. He took one look at me and said, “Oh, yeah, I know him.”
“Know me? You’ve never seen me before in your life! What the hell is going on?”
After narrowing their eyes and a quick threatening tip of their heads, they both walked out and drove away. When I asked the guard why the hell he wouldn’t call the cops, he replied, “I can’t be bothered with a cab dispute.”
“He was loading a revolver! It isn’t a fucking cab dispute!” and I took the name of the management company of the building. The next day I called to complain about the doorman, but who knows if anything was done, so much for human kindness in the big city.
As I walked the four blocks home, a cab appeared, slowly following me, obviously on purpose. Luckily, there was only another block to go and once inside my apartment, relief hit. What the hell was happening? I was sober! Perhaps I was over-reacting, but have you often seen drivers loading bullets into a revolver while on duty? I felt I’d perhaps saved my ass. The driver was probably just trying to scare me by following, and if so, it worked.
The next morning Will told me that a Chicago cab driver had been allegedly murdered by a gay man just a few days before. The cops arrested the man immediately, so I don’t know what they were scared of me for. I wasn’t a killer, and I wasn’t a dealer, why was this shit following me around? Thus ended my hardcore bathhouse days, it was back to the perfume counter for me.