“Hi, Sweetie,”…Hug from Matt.
“Hello, Momma’s a little tipsy,”…Hug from Don.
Matthew was spinning another yarn that made you wonder why he didn’t have a two a.m. comedy show at the Starlite room in Vegas. He was, without a doubt, one of the funniest story-tellers I have ever listened to. His version of the periodic table would come off like Laugh-In.
“Oh, Girrrl…” Matt once said, “Some guy approached me today asking ‘Aren’t you Matt Finley?’ I replied yeah. ‘Don’t you remember me? You were in a movie I directed back in the 80s!’
“Oh, shit, I’d forgotten all about that thing, it was some student film. This guy was so excited, ‘I just got it released! Here’s a copy of the DVD!’ He reached into his bag and pulled out the movie.
“Girllllll…. I kept thinking, ‘It took you seventeen years to get the movie released?’ Here take it. I can’t bear to watch it. Let me know how bad it is…”
Matt handed me the DVD of a movie called Zit. “Please, just be gentle when you give me your review…”
So, I took it home and watched a film that yes, was pretty awful, but therein laid its appeal, sort of like those early John Waters or Ed Wood movies. I actually enjoyed the campy trashiness of it, especially when a much younger Matt appeared onscreen, with almost no lines, as a zombie with a giant exploding zit on his head, stabbing his mother with a knife.
Hey, every actor has to start somewhere. You can’t tell me George Clooney is all that proud of those early years on The Facts of Life?
When Matt moved to California years ago he said his mom had been worried about the L.A. lifestyle. She meekly mentioned over the phone, “Dear…just promise me one thing…please don’t do porn…”
Now, Matt was a fun loving, slightly stocky guy. Porn stars don’t begin their dialogue with “Oh, Girllllll….”
He had the bar in stitches as he said, “Drugs, alcohol, the casting couch….what’s my mom worried about? Me doing Gay Porn. For what studio? Animal Planet?!”
I ordered a beer and chatted with Adam for a bit when in came a real barfly named Dwight. Now, I can be friendly with just about everybody, but sometimes, with certain personalities, an invisible emotional wall goes up.
Dwight was one who pushed that button. As Irish looking as he could possibly be, I think he secretly wanted to be Sicilian. He had this Sopranos complex, trying to act like some tough mafia guy with lots of “connections”.
Constantly trying to impress others with how much money he made, he literally bulldozed people into a corner. I don’t know what his background was or if he had a rough childhood, but he almost screamed out, “Like me! Like me!” all the while handling it in a way that made most others feel the exact opposite.
The first time we met he said, “You know what I dthoo, right?” trying to make the d into some Italian tough guy dialect.
“Well, I thought I did…” I answered.
“Yeah, but you know what I dthoo, capishe?” (Now where the hell in County Cork do they use the word, “capishe”?)
He then proceeded to tell me how he recently had meetings with one of the most powerful individuals in the world. Dropping the name of this global leader, I knew then and there Dwight’s real occupation was “bullshit artist”.
Really into Sinatra, go figure, he once tried to impress some guy sitting at the bar with a live recording he had of a Rat Pack concert at the Villa Venice, a nightclub out in the suburbs of Chicago back in the early 60s.
“This thing is so fuckin’ rare, buddy, the general public can’t get it…I had to pull some strings to get hold of this fucker…”
I naively love to get into conversations of things I care about and I was always a Sinatra fan. I thought, well, here’s my chance to have an intelligent talk with somebody into Sinatra as well.
Not even realizing I was contradicting him, I said, “No, it’s been out on CD for awhile. I bought it a few years ago. It’s really a fun concert…” happily going off on how great the Rat Pack was.
You could have heard a pin drop. Dwight didn’t say a word, wouldn’t even look at me as the guy sitting nearby took this as an out to get the hell away from him.
Dwight looked towards the back of the bar and walked away. Not one word.
It took awhile for me to get the hint, but once again I tried to engage him in conversation when he started in on Sinatra while sitting at the bar a few weeks later. I told him the first movie star I’d met in college had been Nancy Sinatra. She had just published her coffee table book on her father and at ten p.m. on a weeknight, her and I sat next to each other in a basement storeroom of Doubleday books.
I’d hand her a book, she’d sign it, I’d put it on a pile and so on. It was just the two of us, and after awhile she called her husband at the Plaza since she was hungry and had him bring her a hamburger and me a coca-cola.
I thought it made a great story, but all Dwight said was “That’s nothin’. I had dinner with Barbara Sinatra a few years back.”
End of discussion, he walked away and that was that. He’d put me in my place.
I don’t usually take such people very seriously, but what really pissed me off was when he pulled the “Holier than thou” crap on my boyfriend Chris. Now, you can get away with treating me like a dog, but don’t you dare do that to Chris, who was worth ten of every single person in that bar, myself included.
One afternoon Chris came out with me and while we sat on corner stools, Dwight walked by on his way to the door.
“Hi, Dwight, I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Chris…”
Dwight turned around, walked ten feet back to where we were and said in a dramatic tough guy way, “Listen, Piesan, I don’t have time to meet you. I got stuff I gotta do now. Gotta get back to my place and get some business taken care of. I don’t have time to meet anybody…” then he paused to see what effect this dramatic comment had, turned around and walked out the door.
My jaw was on the floor, it took as long for him to spew out all that crap as it would have if he’d just said ‘Hello, nice to meet you, I’m Dwight. Really sorry, but I’ve gotta go…”
“What an ass…” I said, a little embarrassed, but more than that, really pissed off he’d done it to Chris.
“Don’t worry about it,” Chris replied, “that type of stuff doesn’t bother me. Back when I was a bartender I had to be polite to people like him all the time.”
But from that moment on, Chris gave Dwight a nickname that stuck among the people who would be nice to his face then the minute he was gone start bitching about him. Chris called him “The Chinless Wonder”, and even Adam latched onto the name one day after he received an over the top text message from Dwight.
Showing me his phone, Adam said, “You are not going to believe what CW just sent me. It’s straight out of seventh grade.”
The text message went on and on about how Adam had done something to piss Dwight off and ended with, “I don’t need either this shit or you! I don’t want anything to do with you. Done!”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Adam replied, “but let’s hope whatever it is keeps him out of this bar for awhile…Done!”
For the next month our little group would yell out “Done!” every so often whenever we’d get into a mock argument.
“Can I have a beer?” “Done!”
“How are you doing today?” “Done!”
How’s that apple pie coming along?” “Done!”
On this particular night, the Wonder was gabbing with four people at once, probably giving them the inside scoop on some deal he’d made. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I know a guy who knows a guy who can get you in on this scheme…”
After another ten minutes he left, pushing open the glass door without using the handle. Once he was gone, the doorman ran over with a towel and Windex to wipe the smudge off the glass, all the while griping about possibly “catching something”.
No sooner was he “done” when two guys walked in and sat down near Matt and I. One introduced himself as Monty, and I thought he was cute. Dark hair, brown eyes, tall, he seemed a little slow on the uptake but was friendly enough. He was also swaying like the St. Louis Arch in a windstorm.
The other guy was named Trent and I had met him twice before. Trent was the only person I have ever actually met who graduated from my college in New York. He was just as surprised about it as I when he found out and apparently he had graduated a few years after me.
Matt asked me, “Watch my seat, I need to use the restroom.”
As I glanced through a magazine, I noticed Monty and Trent talking and from the sound of it, Monty was already three sheets to the wind and Trent was obviously trying to pick him up.
Monty turned around, looked at me and immediately forgot to use his indoor voice when he said, “Oh, you did? Well, it’s clear you graduated after him…you look so much younger.”
My one eyebrow went up. I didn’t realize I was going to be part of this reality floor show. It was obvious Monty was talking about me since he was only four feet away. He continued with “And you are so much better looking also…”
Trent glanced over and saw I’d heard it. Monty noticed the direction of Trent’s gaze, turned around and saw me staring at him straight in the eye.
He immediately blushed, his eyes got wide and he blurted out, “Oh my God, you heard that?”
Not lowering that one eyebrow for an instant (I attended a master class with Bette Davis once) I said, colder than a witch’s tit, “Yes I did, and thank you for being so kind and compassionate.”
Back-pedal time as Monty got nervous. “Er…Er…I…I didn’t mean…I mean…er…I didn’t…I didn’t mean it like that…er…you are so good looking! You are hot!....er…er…I’d go home with you…”
“Home to where? The old folk’s home? Too late now, buddy. But I do suggest you keep your endearing comments to yourself. And by the way, straighten your toupee, it’s crooked.”
I didn’t once take my eyes off him. It was all I could do to not yell out, “Done!”
Trent must have been very uncomfortable being put in the middle of this, but Monty kept hem-hawing around until he finally just lowered his eyes to the ground and wouldn’t look at me for the rest of the evening.
Matthew returned from the restroom and noticed my one eyebrow, locked there like super glue, while I continued shooting daggers into the back of Monty’s head. “What’s wrong?” Matt asked.
“Nothing, I’m just amazed at the politeness of Foghorn Leghorn over there…” spitting out the words, knowing Monty wished he was anyplace else than where he was now. This perhaps sounds a little cruel, but I was enjoying acting a little wicked towards him. Much like a grave digger, I sometimes enjoy running things into the ground.
Matt was drunkenly perplexed. “What are you talking about? You on crack Girl?”
I decided to drop it, “Don’t worry about it. If I can shell it out I’ve got to be able to take it too….”
A week later, Monty was kicked out of the bar for getting belligerent with one of the bartenders and banned. I hope he found someplace else to go that wasn’t quite as old and wrinkly.
Matt told me, “You wear bitter well, don’t you?”
After Monty high-tailed it out of there, the tall handsome doorman named Kevin suddenly twirled around. Shaking his pelvis, he sashayed over to our area and emptied the ashtray, singing “I’m too sexy for this bar, too sexy for this bar…”
Kevin was usually quiet, mainly due to his youthful belief that acting sexy meant you acted with “attitude.” To me, that didn’t make you look sexy, it made you look full of yourself. I used to do the same thing when I was in my twenties, so I knew where it was coming from.
Tonight, however, he was so animated I knew something was racing through his bloodstream. Although I had only been introduced to him once, he had a quality I felt compassion for. Once you’ve been around the block, it’s easier to empathize with someone else’s facades. Hell, I’d had more facades over the years than the White House had paint jobs.
“He’s really swirling tonight, isn’t he?” Matt asked Adam, who was cleaning glasses behind the bar.
He looked over, “Yeah, he does enjoy his TINA and G. I hope he doesn’t get too deep into it.”
(TINA is the code for Crystal Meth. G stands for “Gamma-hydroxabutyrate”, another common party drug.)
“Well, he’s young,” I commented. “We all need to make our own mistakes in order to grow up.”
“I don’t know,” Adam dryly commented. “Some of these doormen around here are classic examples of kids going down with nobody to pick them up again. You and I have been around honey, we can laugh at the past. I just hope these young pups can get through it and one day sit here alongside us, talking about how ‘idiotic’ the next generation is.”
“Well, you’re a breath of stale, tepid air tonight, aren’t you?” I replied, smiling. “We didn’t come in here for a glass of prune juice and a ‘I just don’t know about these kids today…’”
“Listen, Sister! You don’t want me to jump over this bar and snatch you bald-headed!” he joked.
“I’d reciprocate but it looks like somebody already did it for me!” I served back, referring to his receding hairline.
“Man!” he continued, “That’s why I love it when you guys come in, this is a tough room! You gotta be on your toes around here. Ladies and Gentleman! I’ll take Paul Lynde in the center square!”
Who knows why I felt concern for Kevin, I didn’t even know him. Perhaps it was the way he smiled at me whenever I walked in, then quickly covered it up with a stoic face, averting his eyes somewhere else. That wasn’t attitude. That was disguising shyness and hoping people wouldn’t notice, which unfortunately, most people didn’t.
I looked over at him. Young, handsome, full of life, he probably had no clue how harsh and shallow much of the gay bar world could be. I was technically old enough to be his father, and many times when I’d see young men like this I’d shake my head. This time, I simply smiled at Kevin, knowing I had to go through the same thing a long time ago to get on with my life.
I felt both empathy and concern, hoping he had someone real to fall back on once the party started to spin out of control.
As Kevin continued down that catwalk in his mind, I turned back around just as Adam placed a shot class in front of me.
“This is for you, darlin’!” he said.
Thinking it was “Kool Aid” the generic low alcohol drink the bar served on the house, I took a swig and almost spit it out as I yelled, “Prune Juice!?”
Adam walked away and smiled over his shoulder, “Center square baby, center square…”
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