You are here: fawny.org > Situationist Histories > Diaries > Tales of the Toolbox

Tales of the Toolbox

Now terminated

My neighbourhood bar, as it turns out, is the oddball Toolbox – surely the only nonsmoking leather bar situated in the middle of nowhere (map) to be found in this or any major metropolis. (Not quite in the middle of nowhere, actually – a few doors down one finds a biker den. Overlapping demographics, shurely?!)

The place is a dump and borders the industrial wastelands of Toronto, and is surrounded by white trash, but the clientele is unique, and I'm rarely bored there. So I'm keeping a journal. You've been forewarned. (And I seem to be setting myself down the course of organizing these entries as badly as my Volt reviews. Will I ever learn?)

Contents

• Termination
• April 2000 | May | June | July
• Adorable Mexicans • Lengthy cigarette break
• Indie-rock kids play pool, drive pickups, are sensitive • Searching for abuse
• “Not the Tiger” • What kind of princess?
• Gerrard Scare • Machiavellian? Moi?
  Prince Albert in a can • Reticent • The big find of the evening • Pompous? Moi? • A deterministic weekend
• Loving Ron Loranger • What were you waiting for, a singing telegram? • Proportionality

April 2000

Thursday 20

• Thursday is Naked Night, though I don’t partake. I sidled up to a stool and eventually noticed that the fellow on the adjacent stool was not-entirely-ungorgeous in a russellcrowesque way. Shortly his friend came over and the two started muttering in Spanish. The Elton John song manifestly not playing in my mind, I inevitably ask “Where you from?”
• Mexico, as it turns out. What the hell they were doing in Canada on a bracingly dank, windy, monsoon-like night in a bar handier to industrial devastation than a ready source of Manhattans, sun-dried tomatoes, and rainbow triangles was unclear to me, but all was revealed when Carlos y David told me the host(esse)s at their guesthouse told ’em to come here.
• Now, Carlos is merely handsome but David is full-on devastating, indeed with banderasian undertones. They were decked out in head-to-toe Woody’swear – nice shirt with button-down collar, perfect-fitting jeans, good haircuts. (The wealthy lavender bourgeoisie is represented in Mexico, too, evidently. Does that group constitute the true velvet mafia?) Yet the two didn’t know Woody’s existed, and there they were mingling among adipose bearded guys with dead cows on their backs.
• We got to talking. Carlos works in E$, while David has some kind of airline job we could not translate into an understandable interlingua. Both spent time in the U.S., hence their quite passable inglés.
• Since starting Xenoblogs, a list of blogs maintained by people living outside the United States, I’ve had several españolophones write in with their own suggestions of blogs. A couple are actually situated in the United States, according them honourable-mention status. (That would be Subte and Tremendo.) Some of these people have treated me with more peer respect and affection than guys I’ve known here f2f.
• I have been finding the Spanish language more and more acceptable after irrationally hating it for decades, and I rather like the look of it. While almodóvarian Castilian Spanish sounds all poncey and twee, Latin American Spanish is a catechism of precision articulation. Everyone sounds intelligent, rational, well-spoken.
• En même temps, somewhere along the line I picked up some antispic racism from Americans, and some overgeneralized responses to unattractive Latino men seen around town. (No apologies, because it accurately embodies how I feel. I’m not proud of it, and it’s dissipating steadily, but I’m not pretending it ain’t there, either. I also blame Zapata Espinoza of Mountain Bike, disagreeable enough to turn you off men completely, let alone Mexicans.)
• Fertile grounds for a fetish, you must admit, though I don’t really have one. I was merely well-prepared to meet a pair of adorable Mexicans in a bar on a rainy night. But here’s the clincher: “How did you meet?” I asked them. In a bar, David explained. “Who said hello to whom?” Carlos, allegedly the more shy of the two, to David. I don’t want to spoil anything, Carlos then said, but I think it was... love at first sight.
  • For a long time I wondered if such a thing exists with inverts, at least those of my generation. For heteros, your attractions dawn on you gradually and there are few barriers to acting on them, where we can define “acting on them” to include “talking about them.” Legendary are the tales of marrying high-school sweethearts. That’s a case of love at first sight, and no one expected the lovebirds to keep their mouths shut about it.
  • Inverts, however, spend two decades in the closet. (That is, all inverts younger than about two decades in age.) Our attractions dawn on us according to the same schedule as heterosexualists, but we have to keep our mouths shut. We have our noses pressed up against the glass. It’s strictly look-but-don’t-touch, notwithstanding occasional episodes of playing doctor.
  • Every time we spot someone we like but have to bite our lips out of fear, a tiny chink of our storehouse of love chips away. For twenty years, we fall in love at first sight every single week. It is love because, with no greyscale between the pitch-blackness of our hearts and luminous outness, we have to round up to the next highest level. We imagine spending the rest of our lives with him because we haven’t been able to spend even ten minutes alone with a man we like, and who likes us, at any time in our lives. Without even crumbs to scrabble for, all we can imagine is the main course.
  • Promiscuity – absolutely the norm among men everywhere throughout history, abetted significantly by the impossibility of pregnancy and the mechanical quickness of gay assignations – digs us deeper in the hole, because tricking merely puts us on the opposite side of the glass. Every man becomes Mr. Right, or Mr. Right Now. In both cases, thresholds are low – in youth because we have no access, in adulthood because we have ready access.
  • Molina, in Kiss of the Spider Woman, knows this all too well. Do you know how hard it is to find a real man? he asks Valentin. And to his shock, Molina finds him: A perfectly manly waiter, a waiter so perfectly manly he’s married. Bill Hurt heartbreakingly evokes the hopelessness of gay love at first sight.
  • “Everyone’s got their breaking point," Gordon Downie declares. "With me it’s spiders. With you it’s me." The closest analogue to love at first sight occurs for those of us with an overriding passion – one that selected us, not the other way around. With some guys it’s Asians, or (most pathetically) tits, or something equally pedestrian. With me it’s redheads. I can spot one before he rounds the corner, and I always spot them in clumps – the documented Redhead Cluster Phenomenon. Once in a blue moon, some handsome creature with red hair, freckles, green eyes, fawny eyelashes, and a good body will cross my path and I’ll hear a little continuous whoosh as new universes open up. I can feel the grooves being cut in my mind. It’s a slot machine where not just three but dozens of slots come up CHERRY–CHERRY–CHERRY.
  • The sensation is merely an analogue. It’s the best my generation can do. We’re scarred. Sorry to sound all dramatic, but it’s actually true.
  • So I want to hear from Carlos in a year to find out how they’re doing. My Woman’s Intuition tells me I’m about to be proven wrong.

Saturday 22

• I lived through Art Fag 2000, ten bucks later (“Which is more gay, crying in public or sketching in public?”), was snubbed by two Art Fag attendees on the streetcar (neither taller than five-six and a hot couple; I guess they knew it, and I didn’t measure up) and decided to show off my Mississauga Girls Hockey jacket, with its Chicago Blackhawks–like racist Indian logo, presumably indicating Brébeuf.
• Immediately this homely guy with a big nose (also about five-six, but with less of a winning way) wearing chaps and a vest chats me up, only to be crushingly disappointed that the Mississauga Girls Hockey jacket I’m wearing isn’t the one he needs to complete his collection. I’m of no use to him whatsoever after that point.
• I moved somewhere else. Lad nearby swivels around more or less immediately. So, a few moments later, a Toronto Sun type (jeans, T-shirt, high-school dropout) walks by. He’s also outfitted in a mullet. I mentioned the mullet. Thus was the ice broken with the swiveling lad.
• A restaurant manager named Chris. He was surprised when I did a Rumpelstiltskin and guessed the name of his restaurant. Occasional voice-over actor. Strangely familiar. “Have we spoken at the Black Eagle?” I asked. Moments later he’s asking to see my member, and moments after that suggesting getting it on in the washroom. My standards are higher than that, I told him. Call me poncey, I said.
• Despite his outré, déclassé outbursts, I was kind of liking him. I Rumpelstiltskinned him again by pegging his exact apartment building. He took a cigarette break.
• Former friend was spotted, nodded at. Former arch-enemy, too. Shortly it was apparent that the two were at the Toolbox together, accompanied by some nebbish who I assume represented the best the arch-enemy could manage.
• The 41-year-old, allegedly-well-hung restaurant manager returns. I warn him about my hirsuteness and he immediately begins spinning tales of using his two sets of clippers on me. My tens of thousands of hairs are my property, I tell him, and I’ll decide what happens to them.
• Elsewhere, I note a stunning leather type (handsome plus great body) and another weirdo, this one clomping around the bar in hip-wader rubber boots.
• The 41-year-old used to live in the neighbourhood; he apparently enjoys the combination of antique stores and white trash. Lengthy are his complaints about being unable to find a lover after seven years here. Everyone’s rebounding from a relationship, or in one, or interested in casual sex only, he gripes. I want someone I can read the Globe and Mail with on a Sunday morning (what, not the Times?) and then go out for Belgian waffles, he explains. So you’ve given up? I ask him. He nods.
• Um... since we’re getting along so well and since I am already familiar with half of what you’re talking about, why are you telling me this, exactly?
• My suitor exclaims “Well, I’m gonna go smoke another cigarette. Look around for a sexy guy to have a three-way with back at your place!”
• Alone again (naturally), I do look around a bit more, but not with buddy’s goal in mind. The hipwaders lumber on by and finally notice the stunning leather type, who is then struck up in conversation. They’re virtually nose-to-nose. I can see for the first time that Mr. Hipwaders is rather handsome himself, though he seems to be overlooking the leather gloves protruding from his friend’s right rear pocket. There’s a lot of muttering. Several of us are frankly staring, because they’re the hottest numbers in the bar.
• ”Mm? Having second thoughts?” Hipwaders asks him. They kiss a bit, Hipwaders taps his pal’s crotch with the backs of his fingers, and they disappear into the night. (Just imagine what the cabdriver musta thought.)
• And into the night is where the 41-year-old disappeared, too. So much for his cigarette break. I will admit to feeling hurt.
  • Update: Mr. Nicotine was spotted on the Queen eetcarstray two weeks ago. I IDed him before I even saw his face, sheathed as it was in absolutely the best sunglasses I’d ever seen. Quite the extensive basket on that man that day. “Hey,” he says. “Don’t I know you?” I ask, heading nonstop to a seat at the back. Fink.

Sunday 23

• I couldn’t immediately think of a reason not to do the Toolbox again.
• The patio is mostly deserted. Runt kinda likes me, and I him. Man with very densely packed musculature lets me rustle past him, though a subsequent conversation is like seducing a Wal-Mart cashier. Dale’s his name.
• I watch the pool game, because the Beëlzebubbian lad also watching it has attractive creases in his cheeks, rather like Kevin Spacey. Francophone from Detroit via Montreal lays waste to all comers.
• I move for a better vantage point and overhear these two fellows. They seem to be discussing the joy of seeing Morrissey in concert. (I know where they’re coming from, having seen him at Madison Square Garden and nearly in the front row at Maple Leaf Gardens, where teenage boys kept hurling themselves bodily at the idol.) Yeah, and Ronny Mars took him on tour, the older fellow with the beard and baseball cap said to the young guy with the thrift-store shirt and rail-thin build.
• “Johnny Marr,” I correct them. “Jeez.” We get to talking, after I do my standard schtick about how Torontonians aren’t allowed to talk to strangers.
• Ken is the indie-rock type, and, having already met a Dale, it was inevitable that the older man would be named Chip. We quickly decided that we desperately wanted a fagbar in this city that played music featuring electric guitars – rather like Popstarz in London, which apparently lacks a Web site. Desperately wanted it. Desperately.
• I liked Ken a lot. Sipping a bottled water, he screamed indie rock, in that style that Jack Saturn takes to nauseating extremes. I told him: You’re totally indie rock. I don’t like labels, he sez. I’m 35; how old are you? I ask. 22, 23, he says. Ah. Well. That explains it. It’s generational. People of your generation just reject any label whatsoever, except maybe “human” or “Canadian.”
• I also asked Ken: You probably didn’t even go through a big angst or coming-out phase, right? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I did, he says, shaking his head at the memory. Wow. That’s unusual, I say. It’s usually a package.
• Chip lives kinda in the nabe, and we discussed how fags prefer the nicer area up north, while dykes are more willing to move into the fixer-upper nether region down here.
• Ken owns a Ford Ranger pickup. I then rib and riff about the most pretentious fashion statement there is – the crew-cab stepside pickup. And that’s what he drives!
• Chip and Ken are a bit taken aback by the fact that I know something about everything they were talking about. And of course taken aback by my waggishness.
• So what are you looking for in a man? I ask Ken. Someone non-sarcastic, he says pointedly. Just a nice, sincere guy I can really get along with, he says. Aren’t there a lot of those in town? Oh, no, no, no, he tells me.
• Ken plays pool. Adequately well, I guess; I’m a total spaz. Chip won’t reveal where he works, stating only “the health-care field.” “Pharmaceuticals?” Shakes his head.
• Ken’s a sweetie. Really. Sharp and idealistic, and passionate about something. (Not straightedge, surprisingly.) He actually does deserve a nice-guy bf, and I kept trying to think of someone to introduce him to. But since guys fresh off the boat have a larger social circle than I do after 13 years here, that got nowhere.
• Both of them tend to visit the bar every week, usually Sundays. This could become a regular occurrence, except for the fact that I have probably already annoyed the fuck out of them, and the prospect of putting up with me every week would send them fleeing into the night. For a cigarette break.
• But the fun doesn’t stop there! An East German with an Italian name managed to repair my Hello Kitty key fob, a feat of genuine dexterity. He‘s hairier than me, wears braces, seems a bit scattered, but takes all conversation with equanimity. (More so than the man in combat pants. I spent a long time discussing the words “camouflage,” “camo,” and “cammies” with the East German. Tried to bring the man actually wearing the cammies into the conversation. All he told me – disgustedly, before he stalked off – was that his pants were “NATO camouflage.” They did seem unusual. Why couldn’t we talk about ‘em?)
• The East German tends to prefer guys in leather, apparently. Hope to see him again. Really.

Tuesday 25

• Pretty vacant, to paraphrase the Sex Pistols.
• Glenn the sexy bartender/coat-check dude says hi. His eyes are as intense as mine. A rarity. (Blacker, though, on him.) I try to chat him up on his camouflage pants, but he’s not buying. Stuck-up fuckers and their camo pants.
• Out of the blue – perhaps Glenn is finally remembering the many occasions on which we’ve gazed longingly at each other – he asks if I understand French. After a very lengthy three-man search, we locate a page in Fugues describing the Omega Cohort. I read the opening paragraph aloud in a passable instantaneous translation of written French to spoken English.
• Glenn’s big thing, as described in Xtra (not online), is sexual abuse of boys who grow up to be gay. Like him. He can’t find any research on the topic anywhere, even after allegedly scouring the scientific journals.
• Now, I am very good at digging up scientific research (I once produced an entire research report on head injuries among wheelchair athletes, for heaven’s sake), so I advised him to broaden his search and use back channels. Like: Talk to researchers on male sexual abuse and ask them if they have unpublished data on gay subjects. Glenn was kinda not buying this at all.
• I recommended he do some Google-searching. He also intends to contact the lead researcher of the Omega Cohort (Charlton Heston B-movie, shurely?!), a 1,300-man study of psychosocial issues in HIV-positivity among Montreal gays.
• But, later on, it took me all of 40 minutes to come up with three articles (a, b, c) with clear citations of research on sexual abuse of guys who grow up gay. I guess this gives me an icebreaker with Glenn next time.
• (However, Glenn is also a leather type. I wonder about touchiness and vulnerability in his adult sexuality. How tricky would an affair with him be?)

Wednesday 26

• The place was dead. Dee eh eye dee.
• Hey, someone else wearing shorts! So I sidle up to him. A young Italian kid (apparent from the nose and general aspect) named Tony with notably long, dark hair on the legs. A major milquetoast. But he hates the Woody’s crowd; they shave their chests and lisp. (They do not. They assibilate.) But, Tony, I don’t respond, you sound gayer than Paul Lynde even without assibilation.
• You live with your parents? Uh-huh. Would your parents be shocked if they knew where you were? Nod.
• Works in retail. Won’t buy compact discs; they’re “too expensive.” Fancies hairier, bearier types. Well, honey, I’m sitting two feet away from you. No dice.

Thursday 27

• Another Naked Night. I daringly wear shorts and an open shirt. You have no idea how significant a step that is.
• Almost immediately, a skinnyish alternakid with (yet again!) kevinspaceyesque creases in his cheeks, plus a goatee and a nametag reading MY NAME IS PRINCESS, is spotted. Rather Laura Ashley MacIsaac–like, in his own way. He actually looks back.
• After what feels like a week and a fucking half of cruising the living daylights out of him while he talks to friends and/or puffs fags in the washroom (“Smokin’ in the boys’ room”), I finally collar him. “Is that Princess as in phone?” Smirk. “Actually,” I continue, “I’m waiting for them to come out with nametags that say MY NAME IS MUD.” (Real name is Ron.)
• I’m like: You’re probably not old enough to remember Princess phones. And he’s like: Oh, I don’t think so. I’m older than you. I’m 35, I replied. How old are you? Older, he said. Then how do you know I’m...? I remember you from Queer Nation.
• Now, the Toronto chapter of Queer Nation (circa 1991) was one of the most trying experiences of my life. I’d never been excoriated in public before. To this day I have not forgiven the major miscreants of the time, and Toronto dykes as a race start out guilty until proven innocent. Not a happy memory. He dropped out early on. Smart man.
• Also lives in the nabe, is a visual artist, but did not attend, let alone compete in, Art Fag 2000 the previous Saturday.
• Born one year and eight days before me. Was a typography queen when growing up, but one or two orders of magnitude less serious than I was. Believes Dennis Quaid and Russell Crowe are the cat’s meow (they are), and can’t wait for Gladiator. Does not, however, see the beauty manifest in Daniel Alfredsson, preferring that pig Tie Domi. Has a rather droll friend and an excitable friend who appears to fancy me (both chatted up on the chilly patio, where I had to do up my shirt as if chastely), and, moreover, an excellent leather jacket.
• Ron, a Franco-Ontarian (does he watch Volt?), actually chuckled when I asked him a question and appended it with "Princess, or Ericofon or Contempra or whatever you’re calling yourself today." (I am a closet Ericofonist.)
• Ron is the first person I’ve met who understood that curmudgeons like me are not in fact bitter without my having to explain it. He understands that we are sentimental, idealistic, romantic, and frustrated at how the world is rather than how it could be. Very impressive.
• So OK, we’re both single, we have loads in common, we were actually able to converse during the first difficult minutes of any Toronto icebreaking. We live within walking distance of each other. We would both clean up after Quaid or Crowe and never wash the J-cloth we’d used. I believe David Lee Roth said it best: It’s got what it takes, so tell me, why can’t it be love?
• He did consent to plug his number into my phone. “We’ll have coffee,” he sez. We’d fucking well better.
• He buggers off. Short markleduclike blond in a leather jacket and no shirt was spotted, chatted up. Geoffrey. My women’s intuition told me it was Geoffrey, not Jeffrey, and it was. He had just finished executing his dying friend’s last request that day. The request was for an Indonesian take-out dish with peanut sauce. Wow.
• He’s a bit tipsy. I ask him if he’s blond or strawberry-blond. We discuss how the eyelashes are the tiebreaker among blond/strawberry blond/redhead. In that case, he replied, I’m a white blond. And in retrospect, I think he was.
• He shaves his chest every couple of days (hey, Tony!), purely as an experiment. He enjoys alternating between “smooth” and hairy. You mean hairy like... this? I say. If I had tits, I’da popped them out at this point, but I had to settle for just unbuttoning.
• Later, I ask: Do you want to fondle my chest some more? I’m tempted. I’m very tempted. But I think I need another drink. That will make you more tipsy, I say. Mm, he says, and leaves. This Geoffrey is a frighteningly smart cookie. The kind of fellow who’s so smart you only realize it afterward and it occurs to you that you barely got away with your life. Don’t run across them too often. Maybe I’m better off. (Later spotted at a house of ill repute. I underestimated his smarts and acumen. Very dangerous indeed.)

Friday 28

The place is dead as heaven on a Saturday night. I strike up a conversation with the only fellow describable as cute, a compact type with good skin and an upturned nose, and the most adorable attempt at a goatee. Ken’s his name. (Seems to be a pattern.) His friend stood him up, and, to paraphrase the T-shirt, he went all the way to the Toolbox and all he got was to talk with me.

May

Sunday 8

• Looking for indie-rock d00dz in all the wrong places, I make an appearance. The East German with an Italian name is immediately spotted and chatted up. Shortly a 5′8″ lad with a floppy hat, an open shirt, shorts, and a lot of hair on his fat chest and stomach ambles over. I like him already. He seems to... know the East German, whom we’ve been calling Mario, even though his real name is Mariusz, and this Tony seems to be a tad smitten by the shy exile from the land of doping.
• My presence is eventually noticed and I am included in the conversation. Tony is fascinated by my getting-to-know-Mario story. There is some discussion of having us both over for dinner, in every conceivable sense, to Tony’s lair near “Gerrard Scare.” Not quite my cup of hemlock, I don’t think.

Wednesday 10

• Glenn is tracked down. Initially he seems glad to see me. I mention the citations I dug up. We have a nice chat over by the pool table. The two of us constitute about one-fifth of the bar’s entire population – slighly lower if we include Dingus the cat, whom I let into the bar on my way in. (Dingus was kind enough to cake my jacket with mud when I picked him up the other day.) The man apologized for being rude the other time, which he really wasn’t, and in any event I was in a good mood that night.
• We retire to the “dining room,” where Glenn reorganizes hangers for tomorrow’s Naked Night. I like his word choices. (I don’t generate that feeling very often.) He worries about his incipient leadership powers. It is making him uneasy that he is doing so well as a semi-public figure. Is Glenn destined for greatness? I told him that such things happen by unfolding gradually. These impulses choose us, not the other way around, and it’s a calling we have to get used to.
• (I speak from experience. I never knew I was a good public speaker until I did it. I’m very effective on TV and radio. A few years ago I epiphanously discovered a new writing talent I never knew I had.)
• Even his high-school teachers, Glenn says, spotted his leadership talents. I think it has a lot to do with his eyes, which do tend to arrest you. (He has a sort of black-Irish look, with dark hair, darkest possible brown eyes, dark brows and long lashes, but fair skin. One tends to take note.)
• I was eventually given Glenn’s snatch-address and he buggered off, none too smoothly. So am I going to get a date out of this? I asked. Is that what you’re looking for? he replies without looking up, all suspicious, as if to mean I had been currying favour. Well, there’s no Machiavellianism at work. I fancied him well before I ever learned the first thing about him. I would’ve done that kind of research for anyone I liked, and have done on many occasions.

Other days

A couple of boring-as-fuck five-minute visits, during one of which Glenn actually notices me for half a second.

Thursday 18

• Soirée nue again. Out on the patio, this runt wearing a vest and a harness is seen talking to some Chinese guy. I am so tired of Chinese guys. They are more sexually repulsive than women. (Whoa, turbodykes: That’s not racism. That’s sexual orientation. I actually admire many Asian fashion models of all genders and am not motivated by racial animus against Asians. I just find Asian guys disgusting. If you can’t tell the difference, let me ask you a question: Do you find every single identifiable group of people that walks the earth sexy? How about your parents and their bridge partners?) However, this Chinese guy is very with-it, despite being about 25.
• I note that the runt has a gigantic Prince Albert ring through a rather thick uncut dick. Now, I find these things fascinating. I half want one myself, though penile piercings are not the sort of thing you go through with if you only half want it. The runt – who also sports nipple rings and (how quaint!) a handcuff on one wrist, its mate dangling in the air – ignores me altogether. He’s very, very interested in our Asian friend.
• Our Asian friend wisely is not having any of it, because the runt, apart from being American, is also drunk. He laughs like Brian Lequator’s wife in the Monty Python skit (“She smells a bit, but she has a heart of gold”). Deflecting attention, our Chinese friend says, “Well, you have an admirer here.” “Curiosity more than admiration,” I reply.
• We get to talking about the handcuff. You’re not really serious about that. Wear that too long and you can cause nerve damage, I say. See? Mr. Chinese says. The guy is informed. It’s not the right kind of restraint. This finally gets the runt’s attention, a little. I’d wear it on the runway, but not backstage, I tell him.
• Mr. Asia leaves, unlocking the handcuff and taking it with him. Hmm. Runt ignores me altogether and takes a walk. I pigeonhole him. Man, is he drunk. I chat him up. What do you like to do with that thing? Fucking, he says. Images are speeding through my mind. Sounds a bit scratchy, I say. Yeah. I’m still not used to this size. Apparently the piercing had closed over before and he recently had it re-spiked. Ouchy.
• He eventually let me touch it. It rotated smoothly in its passageway. Fascinating. Of course, half the patio is staring at us at this point. He complains that guys come up and grab him without asking first. Well, did I do that? I ask rhetorically, taking the calm-sober-person approach. No, he admits. He more or less claims to have taken a vow of celibacy for the time he’s here. Hmm again.
• Bit chilly out here? I ask. Yeah. (Lequator-wife hoarse laughter.) Not like Maui. Though I’m fully clothed, it’s too cold for me, so I leave him and head back inside. I bump into him a couple of times later. He’s staying at a gay guesthouse that’s clothing-optional and has a ticket to the Barn’s “private party” for nudists of recent infamy. He’s a Missourian up from... Maui. Where’s your bf? I ask him. My what? Your bf. My boyfriend? Let’s not go there. [Laughs like he’s expelling a golfball from his throat.] Let’s not go there!
• What number beer is that? He thinks. My fourth. Terry’s his name. We’re standing around talking, an event I am trying to make as unsurreal as possible given the facts of what’s happening. I finger the ring and what it’s attached to. Much later, after pretty much ignoring me for an hour or more, he starts rubbing my crotch. You’re damp. You’re damp. Is that from me? he askes.
• Over in the pit of iniquity, I pull a bit too hard on the ring (“I just went up two gauges.” “Well, I couldn’t have known that.” “No, you couldn’t”) and he gives up servicing me, which is a bit disappointing, since I’d already decided that the coefficient of expansion was astonishing and his piece was the most fascinating, longest, thickest, foreskinniest, most ornamented dick I’d ever seen, let alone touched. Oy.
• The embarrassing part is that I had just finished telling Ron I was strictly a voyeur. Well, to that point I was.
• Eventually I give up. On the way out, I catch Glenn’s eye. He looks away.

Sunday 21

• I was hoping that, since it was another holiday weekend (Victoria Day), Ken would show up, because I found him so pleasant and unique. No such luck. Will I ever see him again? I acknowedge that he is in no rush to see me, but I like him. And not in that way. As a person.
• Instead, I walk in and the place is dead, save for a dozen senior citizens walking around nude. Um, I though Naked Night was Thursday?
• A very stocky blond guy in blue-denim jacket and jeans is kind of nervously watching everything, his eyes almost bugging out of his head. I give him a major stare-down multiple times. Eventually he gets close enough that I can walk over and say “What were you waiting for, a singing telegram?”
• Craig. Husky, he describes himself after I tell him “There’s a lot of man there.” (Nipple and chest, anyway, if not downstairs.) Yeah, I’m pretty big, he admits. In the body. But he’s very nervous about doing anything in “public,” recounting stories of the cops’ showing up a month or two ago. (News to me. It sure happened downtown, though.) Reticent, I tell him. He guffaws. (A word I usually hate. It’s a writer word. Do you have an immediate mental image of how a guffaw differs from a laugh? Neither did I – until I met this guy.)
• Out on the patio, he can’t believe his luck. A lot of pent-up pressure busting loose, until a homely guy with an excellent uncut piece shows up. I’m not into the audience thing, he says. I’m gonna get another beer. Gee. And Mr. Foreskin disappears, too.
• Is this how brides feel when they’re abandoned at the altar?
• I run into Tony, admirer of our Communist Bloc friend Mariusz. I don’t recognize him for a moment. He’s very interested in me... as a person, despite telling me I’m a good-looking guy four times. We have a nice chat. He claims that Glenn’s reactions are understandable; Glenn, he says, hasn’t quite come to grips with things or settled down.
• This Tony, who looks maybe 40 but admits to being 50 (“Well-preserved,” I say. “Well-pickled!”), had signed up for the naked party I later walked into, despite wearing what passes for street clothes down in that neighbouhood (jeans, jean shirt, leather vest) as we were talking. He seems to know everyone who works for the Toolbox, including the owners, and long ago had had a bit of a run-in at the upstairs "hotel" involving being handcuffed to a bedpost as the fire alarm went off.
• We chat about the uniqueness of the place. What do the people in the apartment building behind us think? I ask. Do they even know this is a gay bar? Oh, who cares? he responds. It’s a co-op. Maybe they’re gay themselves. And Tony superexclusively confirmed that guys from the biker den down the street do drop in – with their girlfriends. I told you the demographics overlapped!
• Tony knows the story about this Craig fellow, too, and adjudges his reactions typical. Tony buys me a ginger ale, which is really hard stuff for me. Two guys, one of them a nebbishy office-worker type (Michael Kinsely, come on down!) who nonetheless has a lot of sex appeal and a gigantic organ, attempt to piss in one of the bathtubs reserved for that purpose. The Toolbox: Come for the romance.
• (Actually, that was pretty sexy. A car had just pulled into the adjoining driveway and its headlights partially lit up the maze, giving the place a film-noir look, or at least like something out of a TV melodrama. Then it happened again at the adjoining wall! This beat the shit out of the paltry homemade fireworks someone nearby had shot off for Victoria Day.)
• The big find of the evening was this fellow sitting next to me on the bleachers inside. A day later I’m still amazed at how sexy, beautiful, well-put-together, unique he is. Vaguely Dutch-looking, with a big nose, puffy eyelids, excellent complexion. 5′10″. A fat guy, and, in the cliché, he carries it well. Really and truly. God is fair: He gives girls with big booties big tits, too, and heavyset guys he gives fantastic calves. (And hamstrings, an overlooked erogenous zone.)
• Did I mention blue eyes and brown hair? The very intelligent and alert blue eyes? He was only one or two evolutionary steps away from the fabled fawny eyelashes. White V-necked T-shirt, tan shorts, boots. Moved his head really well to the music – showing off a bit, but also actually having rhythm. Some fat guys can dance.
• He wasn’t even that fat. He was, however, sexy, beautiful, well-put-together, unique. I keep thinking about how I would justify those remarks to typical Woody’s sweaterfags. I’d be like: I don’t care if he’s fat or not. He is just a hot number. I call ’em like I see ’em.
• But you know what? You know what? He studiously rebuffed my attempts at eye contact. I would have been happy just saying hello. I would have been even happier telling him how lovely he is, and simply thanking him for brightening my night through his presence. I just couldn’t get any kind of acknowledgement out of him.
• Except: On the way out, I peeked into the can. Tony’s standing there listening to some queen prattle on at high dudgeon, a smirk on his face. I mean, there’s nothing this cat can’t handle. Alongside, leaning against the sink, the Guy Who Is Almost Fawny looks at me with a grin, as if actually noticing my existence. This absolutely made my day.

Thursday 25

Boring and quickly becoming actively unpleasant. I split.

Friday 26

• Run into Chris the fink. Do we have some catching up to do? He claimed not to remember having walked out on me, but admitted it wouldn’t have been the first time. So this is a pattern of yours, is it? Most annoyingly, when recounting the story to him, he kept interrupting and claiming my direct quotes of his words were mine, as though I wanted to track down a sexy guy for a three-way back at my place. Not. The claim was that the Toolbox is a den of sexual exploration. Well, yeah, but the rules of civilisation are not entirely suspended.
• And, predictably enough, he excused himself to smoke a cigarette. Only this time he later reappeared, chatting some other victim up.
• A man with an excellent mesomorphic body and, unfortunately, a moustache walks in wearing a girls’ field-hockey jacket. I think: What are the odds? So I chat him up. Dead handsome, and Portuguese. He actually coaches girls’ field hockey. Hey, impressive. We discuss the sport’s low profile here, and how the U.S. team, come every Olympics, arranges for photo shoots in magazines in a vain attempt to butch up the team. (Not that they’re fags. It’s just that field hockey is faggy.) This man Carlos excuses himself to play pool, worrying that there’d actually be someone good to play against. I liked him. It was unrequited like.
• A skinhead guy follows me around. Literally. I eventually chat him up. Walter. He’s Belgian, and complies with every Belgian stereotype:
  1. Skinhead. (Even wearing the requisite jacket that angles up at the base from front to back.)
  2. Likes industrial music.
  3. Boring. Belgium and Canada vie for the title of World’s Most Boring Country. (Miss Congeniality: Switzerland.)
  Even so, we chat amiably. Clang! Something metallic fell on the concrete. I look over. A guy stumbles and catches himself. "Dropped an earring," the guy says in a very gay accent. The entire patio cracks up. Talk about school spirit. We actually behaved like human beings for a moment. I find the line so funny I giggle for five minutes.
• Some guy wanders over, unsteadily. He give me various pregnant glances. I say: Are you OK, or are you just tipsy? No, I’m all right. I’m just really hammered. And he leans on a post. Well, I say, good thing you’re leaning on the post there. Don’t want you to fall over.
• He walks right up to us and interjects himself into the conversation. He’s very interested in me. Wow, you’re pretty big. Do you work out? Haven’t been in a gym in two years, I tell him. He kvetches about his alleged “$60”-a-month gym fees. But he’s a figure-skater (“Do you know Matthew Hall?” No, but he claims his friends have seen pornos in which the out skater has appeared), so he’s solid. (Soi-disant.)
• Now, he likes me enough that he overcompensates and turns up the sarcasm. Big mistake, honey. He kvetches about how I talked to him first, and sarcastically. Well, I tell him, it’s the raver-kid approach of looking out for each other. I wondered if you were OK and I asked. He calls me pompous and declares that he’s “sharper” than the two of us put together.
• Then he feels me up. The “big” body. Cripes.
• He eventually takes my increasingly pointed and narrow-eyed hints and fucks off. Jeez.
• Inside, I try resuming my chat with Walter. A nice young man glances over. I include him in the discussion, which he goes for. I postulate that he’s not from here. He isn’t: He’s from a small town outside Campbellton, is out, has actually been asked on a date there, and has no problems whatsoever. I am quietly flabbergasted. I hate it when my long-cherished reasons for despising New Brunswick are chipped away. (A very personable and handsome young man. Compact, too. The most shocking part: He used to live in Toronto. He moved back to New Brunswick!)
• I pull out my shoephone and ask for Walter’s number. He won’t give it. Why the fuck not? I have a boyfriend. I wasn’t asking to become your boyfriend. Just how do you make friends? The European way. You bump into them over and over again, and build up trust.
• What’s there to trust about giving your phone number to a man you followed around all night and talked to for an hour? Fucker.
• (Oddly, he was spotted at the Black Eagle the next night alongside a luminously sexy skinhead boy. Is this your bf? I ask Walter. He has to think. Yes. He wouldn’t give me his number, I tell the bf. Good, he says. So how do you make friends? I ask.)

June

Thursday 1

• Naked Night. Packed to the walls. Walking from the patio to the inner sanctum, some man, with an evidently gay and evidently middle-aged voice, loudly asked “Who is that?” I admit, I enjoyed it.
• Surprisingly uneventful despite the crowd. Very well-built man, looking sexy in a football jersey, got up to misconduct with his almost-as-attractive friend at the bathtub. Who could imagine two bladders with such capacity? (I can understand sex in semi-private. I have a hard time understanding watersports in semi-private. Is what I’m saying.)

Saturday 3

It was a highly deterministic weekend. Pretty much everything that happened was destined to happen. Why? I kept getting déjà vu experiences all weekend.

• I walk in and notice a tall guy with very fair skin and a dark T-shirt. He pretends not to have noticed me, but I evoke no interest.
• On the patio, leatherdudes are holding a raffle. A heavyset fellow with good skin and a big smile engages in the most perverse sexual act I’ve ever witnessed. After the victim concedes to buy a ticket, he knelt down, measured the victim’s inseam with tickets, and, while pulling apart the twin perforated lengths of side-by-side tickets, he nuzzled his forehead against the victim’s crotch. (Still in pants, no less.) Then he accordion-folded the columns of tickets and tucked them inside the victim’s fly.
• What in the name of Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs was that? (He provided no answers when I asked what element of his childhood prompted that perversion.) The fundraiser was for some camp for kids with AIDS. I asked why every gay fundraiser had to revolve around AIDS. Aren’t there other causes we could support?
• At this point, I was carefully situated next to the tall fair-skinned fellow and some leatherdude, who says: I saw you when I came in. It takes me about eight seconds to size someone up. (That’s about four times too long, according to research mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker.)
• Mumble mumble. Mumble mumble. Where you from? Zuul, the tall guy seems to say. He has a familiar accent. Mr. Zuul, whose name is Flavio and who claims to speak Italian (I believe it: He produced a fluent sentence), works in telecommunications. Flavio has a house in the States (and a bf), a house here, and one back in Brazil. Ah. Not Zuul. That’s why the accent was familiar. Are you shy, or is it an act? the dude asks. Standing three feet away, I can tell it isn’t an act. It’s true, in part, the Brazilian says.
• He’s well-enough-off not to need to work, Flavio admits. Well, obviously. Skin colour correlates directly with class in Brazil. So you’re spoiled, leatherdude says. Spoiled? What is spoiled? The word is explained. The Brazilian kind of denies it.
• He admits to being 35, and marvels at how surprising it is to live in the year 2000. Growing up, he says, 2000 was a year that seemed magical. How old are you? Flavio makes the mistake of asking the leatherdude, who gives him a dirty look. Back-and-forth. Brazilian is not taking the hint. We do not inquire as to old ladies’ age in this country. Do the math, the leatherdude says.
• His friend pops by. Where you been? San Francisco. I know that. Where you been? Oh, around. You get your new car? Yeah, it’s the PT Cruiser outside. The man is old, dresses in a leather cap on the weekends, and works in real estate. What other car would he drive?
• The Brazilian subtly but piercingly lampoons the car.
• Flavio is freezing in his T-shirt. Leatherdude lends him his jacket, revealing tattoos and arms and shoulders betraying no flab but no muscle, either.
• So are you or are you not looking for a slave? the leatherdude asks, out of the blue. The Brazilian is so embarrassed he starts laughing. I don’t like to talk about sex, he says. Like to do it, but not talk about it. Something to do with 2,000 years of Catholicism in Brazil.
• So what are you into? The tall boy won’t say. What are you into? In so many words, the Cruiser responds with "Pretty much anything." (He reminded me of Al Pacino in Cruising. In fact, I flashed on Pacino before he even opened his mouth.) Respect is a big thing for him, though.
• Are you a top of a bottom? More embarrassed tittering. Flavio won’t say. Now, even to me it is clear the leatherdude is getting nowhere. More conversation. The Brazilian leans toward the Cruiser’s ear and whispers. The Cruiser twists his head a bit and says Yeah, he is. They walk off to a more remote corner.
• Jeez, took them long enough.
• Elsewhere, the fat guy was back, with something of a brush cut. Whoo-hoo. Still ignoring me, of course. Later he’s chatting with his two friends. I’ve got bruises here and here, he says, pointing to his chest. So I’m in Ottawa, he continues, and I can’t get away, because I don’t know where the hell I am, and they know I don’t know where to get a cab. OK, over the top. Over the top I’m OK with, but ask first. Just ask first. [His name was later overheard as Rod. You couldn’t make this up.]
• Oh, fuck. Look who’s here. Tony: Tony the black guy, who walked past me while I was doing sit-ups at the Y five years ago. Never got a bigger gaydar hit in my life. Trailed him for two years, rubbed his back. Plays tennis and basketball. Shaves his chest. Spectacular body, a beautiful man, and hung like a horse, though I never saw or touched it... directly. Astoundingly frustrating, this man. What is he doing in my bar?
• I give him bemused looks as he passes by repeatedly. Later, I found him in the patio-maze (hyphen sic) and said: So, Tony, what kind of a man are you looking for? Fingers my jacket sleeve. Nothing much, he says, and walks away. I follow him. I seem to remember seeing you out on a first date with a handsome Mediterranean man at Sher-E-Punjab a year or so ago. The Italians and Greeks. They’re hard to nab. I’ve got dibs on a couple myself, I say.
• He stops. He’s upset I’m talking to him. Now, Tony, you have a choice. You can hit me again, or keep talking to me. I don’t want to, he says with equanimity and a wise glance, and walks off.
• Let me remind myself never to chat him up again.
• Out of the corner of my eye – I keep telling you I can spot them before they round the corner – I notice a very handsome early-40s man with dense blond hair, a blond moustache, and, crucially, fawny eyelashes. Hmm, I think, sealing my own fate (fate, remember?). I must look him up later.
• I stand watch at the patio-maze’s only exit. It’s so cold my teeth are locked together and my jaws hurt. I head back in. The young fellow with the Prince Albert (not at all as impressive as the previous one), who told his friend an hour earlier that he has to soak his nose in order to squeeze a bar through its piercing, has vacated my preferred spot.
• Instantly I see that the Brazilian has found the Blond. Oh, fuck, I think, watching them hit it off. Oh, you chose the worst period of the year to visit the south of Brazil, says Flavio, who’s from some island or other, because it’s rain from December to March.
• The bar is loud, Flavio’s voice is louder (perfectly audible seven feet away), but the Blond’s isn’t. He fades in and out. ...a house. We lived together for three years, and then we bought a house a year ago. Moves his head and grimaces while he thinks. They’re working on it, he says in a roundabout way. These things have their lifespans. We’re still...
• Inexplicably, I have a grin on my face, because at one level I am enjoying this. I make frequent eye contact with the Blond, who reacts well to me. I think he relishes the intelligence. I think his bf isn’t smart enough for him. I receive these impressions through ESP signals over the ether.
• Yes, the lashes are fawny. He’s a solid man. Came out to meet his buddy, who stood him up, so he’s having a beer. Flavio, at seemingly random points during their conversation, fondles Blond’s trunk. A solid man, I say.
• Flavio kisses him. Blond kisses back. More talking. Another glance or two at me. Can I get you another one, he asks Flavio? No, this is already my second. Blond orders a Scotch and a bottle of water.
• Well, I’m not wild, says Blond. But I like to... get acquainted with people.
• Flavio isn’t controlling himself. He lays on a turbokiss. (Not as turbo as the fat guy and his friend, seen later on, but gale-force nonetheless.) Blond is right there with it. Come up for air. Fondling of trunks, plural. Minor chitchat. Kiss some more.
• Remember, both men have boyfriends back home. I told you promiscuity is the norm.
• I blink. They’re gone. Fuck!
• Tracked down in the washroom. Later, I actually have to pee. It isn’t a setup. Flavio has Blond against the wall. They’re engaging in a postmodern interpretation of the Hays Code: I’ve never seen such passionate and strenuous kissing and feeling-up while maintaining clothing in a pristine state. Neither man’s shirt is hiked up, both flies are closed, the whole shebang.
• 20 minutes of this pass.
• The two reappear, situate themselves on the bleachers by the exit, do a bit more fondling and kissing. I blink again. Flavio is cruising the bar alone, and Mr. Marriage Material is nowhere to be seen.
• I miss several Woman’s Intuition cues to leave. I finally get the hint after I see Tony do a weird Masonic handshake with the man the fat guy was kissing so aggressively. This is more than I need to know, I think.
• On the way out, the ticket-taker fetishist and his friends are loading up the car. Four teenage boys walk by, three of them black, one white, all decked out in full-on baggywear. Nah, mumble mumble coming out of a... a fag club! one of them says.
• Hey, man. Takes pretty sensitive gaydar to peg the Toolbox as a fag club. Takes one to know one, perhaps?

Sunday 4

• “Joe, I just wanted to tell you to your face: I think you’re a terrible person. It was a horrible thing you did, taking advantage of [other name].” This goes on for two minutes or so, and the guy leaves. I had taken the high road – responding with British-secretary-bitch iciness “Yes, [name]. Of course, [name]. I’m sure you’re completely right, [name].” “You’re an asshole,” I am told, with evident originality. “Keep that in mind.”
• Obviously I’m not supposed to state how hurt and unsettled this made me. I’m supposed to be stoic. Sticks and stones, etc. Like fuck. I am having a hard time justifying going back to the Toolbox again.

Saturday 17

I’ve been back a couple of times. Last night the visiting Detroiters were supposed to put together some kind of Bare Chest Contest™, which wasn’t scheduled till 0100, past my bedtime. But Carlos, he of the girls’-field-hockey-coach jacket, was in full gear at the pool table. Literally astounding arms. I wasn’t aware that triceps, my favourite muscle, were equipped with such tendons. And a major basket. An acquaintance describes him as "aloof." He can afford to be.

Thursday 22

I ran into Ron. We were supposed to share an après-travail apéritif earlier in the week, which Ron had to cancel because one of his friends committed suicide. (Another of his friends, and the second son in that family to kill himself.)

– Oh, hi, Ron. How are you?

– I’m all right, considering I’ve been drinking since five after noon. We buried my friend today.

Ron was in reasonably good spirits, I think. More naturally himself, rather than the constructed artiste persona. He didn’t look or act drunk. He described his plans to paint a watercolour of the yellow rose everyone at the funeral received. A gift for the friend’s mother. Ron has some experience with representing death in painting. His blobettes abstracts directly refer to the eight friends who died in a ferry accident in England a decade ago, while Ron survived.

We enjoyed an amiable conversation across a narrow bar by the front door, talking about him and me in equal measure. Much discussion of the goatee he shaved off, to my disappointment. There was a lot of love flowing between us. I had to kiss him on the cheek at one point, with his soft velvety skin. Naturally, I stopped to think whether I could get away with it first. Welcome to the land of nonspontaneity.

Nuzzling my forehead against his later on was, however, spontaneous. I ought to just come around there and pop you, he told me, making a quick addition he wouldn’t were another persona in effect: Except I don’t know what your sexual preferences are.

Quite powerful, the forces at work. And entirely new. Nothing like that before in my life. Unstudied, unambiguous, unsullied, unprompted by anything but the two of us and what’s been percolating for weeks.

Thursday 29

Very crowded indeed, though not with anyone interesting. R.M. Vaughan, local art critic, was heard to tell his friend "I love this bar."

Bumped an acquaintance of gay-hockey infamy who still acts like I’m wrapped in sticks of TNT with my thumb pressing down on a plunger. He was kind enough to imply that I had once had a LTR. How generous.

Glenn walked by, in leather vest and no shirt. Heyyy. I know you, I said, with a big smile. Accompanied him into the cloakroom, where he was handling disrobed customers (well, handling their clothing), and tried to chat, but there were too many competing voices. Joe, come back, he said as I walked away. No, you’re busy, I said sincerely. I’ll talk to you later. I came back several times, but he was always busier still.

Boys almost never call my name, certainly not in a tone that says "I want you to stay."

July

Sunday 2

I am such a nerd. I walk out of the house expecting a cool 15° evening as ever, and it’s a swamp. I’m wearing black jeans, a T-shirt and shirt, and my dirty white jeanjacket and my hat. I stand there and think: Should I change? Naaah, I conclude, foolishly and yet again ignoring the Woman’s Intuition.

I’m dying of thirst halfway to the bar. And when I get there, it’s the remnants of another naked party. So everyone else is wearing either shorts and tank tops, shorts with no tank tops, or merely shoes and socks, and I’m dressed for October.

On the patio, a slender skinhead type stands next to me. I let him. I allow him to catch my eye, and he doesn’t. I wonder if he’s another Belgian. I can’t take that much boredom when I’m this overdressed.

I walk around a bit. Passing him twice, I notice his bleach-blond bristles. He grunts an approving “Mm” both times. I stand nearby. He’s holding his beer bottle in exactly the right way. Walks by. I follow.

He’s already kissing and crushing the nipples of some other lad, who I must admit has a bit of charisma. I get up close for some voyeurism. Eventually the other lad, having noticed me twice, asks if I have any poppers. As if I’m gonna.

Suddenly there’s a throng. A fat dude fellates the other lad while he rims the skinhead. The lad bursts, and gets up and stumbles away as if we’d just slit his carotid.

Skinhead turns to me, finally. What were you waiting for, I ask him, a singing telegram?

Paul’s the name.

He’s got a lot of what you need in a man, including foreskin, a good body, unreservedness, and a cologne this nerd finds literally intoxicating. We ought to do this again sometime, I tell him, but he doesn’t take the bait to exchange numbers. I mean, imagine what we could achieve horizontal. And alone.

Thursday 6

Hoping strongly to bump into Ron again. But no dice. And he’s not returning my calls. Either he’s on to me and is cooling my jets, or is manifestly unwell. I left him alone for the entire week to give him space, but now I want some of that space back.

The mullet was back, playing pool. Thought I was his next opponent. Got a haircut recently. Looks more human. In conservative Bay-quality white golfing shorts, the relatively astounding legs became apparent. After I told him I was merely a voyeur, not a player, he lost all interest, so I may never know what his secret is.

I bump into Miss Carl Strygg, of denying-HIV-causes-AIDS fame, for the second time in a week (and only the second time in maybe five years). He’s worried about taking airplane rides with his mom, whose osteoarthritic knees were recently replaced with titanium. I was in total femme-out mode chatting with Carl. One has to be to keep up.

Elsewhere on the patio, I spotted a 6′4″, 200-pound man in a wheelchair. How the fuck did he get there? So I asked him. (“Where is the barrier-free entrance to the patio?” I asked, trying to impress him with my crip knowledge.) He mumbled something and looked incomprehending. I asked him how he got onto the patio. Still no go. Tu parles français? I tried. No dice.

German.

So we have a German giant of a man in a wheelchair on the patio of the Toolbox on Naked Night. What are the odds?

”In a wheelchair.” “Uh-huh.” “How to get into patio?” Points to secret door. By golly, on the far wall the boards are actually hinged. It’s a door. My, my, my.

While chitchatting with Carl, I threw shade on these two skinhead types standing nearby. One, 6′5″ and in his very latest 30s, was vaguely reminiscent of Jeff Braff, a former Torontonian (with dual citizenship) who went on to become a bigwig in the AIDS gravy train. (Always treated me well. Recommended I visit the Y twice a day, if at all possible, as he did.) The tall skinhead’s friend, a mere six feet, was late 20s and gave off a slightly stronger ping.

I guess he hadn’t inspected his sweater closely during his last surreptitious trip to the Bay. A base-of-nape logo gave him away: Tommy Hilfiger.

He threw further dirt onto his own grave when, well before witching hour, he heaved a big sigh and headed for the door, uttering the words “School night.”

I took a cruise through the bathroom at one point and spotted this filthy bearded Manson type, wearing naught but mechanic’s overalls, waving his Prince Albert in the urinal alongside the taller, older, braffian skinhead, whose dick was impressively thick. (Proportionality is never guaranteed with the tall boys, let me tell you. And you still have to worry about the coefficeint of expansion.)

This 40-year-old blond man across the passageway was staring at me and trying to chat me up. Say something, he commands. I grin. Hello, I say. Soon: Whoa, he says. Don’t you love watching guys piss? No comment, I said. (A big man with a big dick I will watch sewing a button on a shirt, OK? I’ll watch him swipe a debit card at the supermarket. I’ll let him counsel me to visit the gym twice a day.)

Later, Mr. Big ’n’ Tall was seen engaging in a bit more frottage with the pig, to my dismay. Don’t you have any standards? I thought. The blond man, whose meat is a good size, showed what age and experience can do with a larger specimen from someone who still chooses to keep his mouth shut. On the way home, I felt like king shit cock-of-the-walk. Because I was.

Terminating Tales of the Toolbox

July 30 – I’ve been back to the Toolbox several times, of course. Not much notable happened. A bear type fell backwards into one of the tubs and got right up again to resume his previous activity. I complimented Glenn on his flame-red shorts, which I described as hot pants (articulated as two words).

En route home, a local resident, resplendent in her poor-for-generations working-class tank top and bodyfat, bitched out her bf unit, seated in his very swank Cavalier two-door. “Don’t be dissing me in front of other people!” she screamed. I stopped to beckon a young kitten from a back porch whose door was open. The cat decided to come visit, but, halfway there, the bf unit screamed out the cat’s name and “back inside!” Gee, if only I’d known. I gave the warring couple an “Oh, give it a rest” wave without looking back and kept on my way.

A moment later, I surprised a skunk – a beautiful creature, only the second I’d ever seen (both of them in the last six months). She disappeared as though beamed aboard the Enterprise.

And then there was July 27

Walking to the Litterbox, a police car passed. The Woman’s Intuition said: Wouldn’t it be odd if they asked where I was going? To the Toolbox, I’d say, presumably. Oh, isn’t that a coincidence? they’d reply. We’re planning a raid there for later tonight. Wouldn’t that be odd, I asked myself.

At 0050 hours, after missing several Woman’s Intuition cues to leave the bar, an announcement was made over the PA:

Can you hear me out there on the patio? I know you can. As of this minute, Naked Night is cancelled. I just had a visit from the police. They’re gonna hassle us to fuckin’ death. Bob and I have four years left on our mortgage, and we’d like to stay in business. Sorry, guys, but –

“It’s the end of an era,” Ron told me the next day. “It’ll make a good story for your Web site.”

And speaking of him

Even though this journal said far more about me than any person named here; even though everything I wrote is true, and truth is an absolute defense in libel cases, not that anyone has been libelled here; even though it all happened to me or in my presence, and thus, as part of my life, I have a right to document it, I am terminating Tales of the Toolbox.

Why?

Ron and Glenn, and for all I know other people, have lost trust in me altogether. I ran into Ron the other day at the Toolbox, and at one point he uttered the phrase “I choose not to answer”; at another point, he walked smartly away from me as though I were carrying a Betacam connected by satellite uplink to a live CNN feed. Meanwhile, someone keeps plugging the word glenn into the search engine of this site. I don’t know anyone else named Glenn.

Shutting down Naked Night would seem to be a propitious, if unrelated, trigger to shut down Tales of the Toolbox. Sorry, everyone, but.

Highlights

Of the episodes documented here, my favourite memories are:

1. Meeting Ken, the indie-rock d00d. Would like to see him again. Surprised not to find him at Vaseline, the fag rock night at the El Mo.
2. Getting my Hello Kitty key fob fixed.
3. Encountering the skunk.

Seemingly low-wattage events to nominate as Top Three? Somewhat. But I have learned a few things from writing Situationist Histories. Small details write their memoirs in big letters.

Further hauntings

September 1 – Having had some time to reflect, I must say that the blond-haired man making out with Flavio has been much in my memory. I hold out a romantic hope that he breaks up with his bf, with whom he is unhappy anyway, and eventually recovers enough to revisit the Toolbox, where I hope to have sufficient guts to chat him up. Without, presumably, telling him how magnificent he is. In the top percentile of redheads, whom I already track scrupulously.

Minor heartbreak at being ignored by Paul, the man with the cologne, and the dick. I wonder if I am hallucinating a connection. Perhaps, like plugging an extension cord into itself, a connection still exists even if he doesn’t know about it. I have to have some kind of romantic fantasy unrelated to redheads.

On the upside, Ron and Glenn are both talking to me again without reservation. A significant auspicious outcome.