You think you’ve done the very last, totally stupid thing in your life when – guess what? – you do it again.
It’s Tuesday night in Lauderdale, underwear night at the Ramrod, where if you’re a confirmed exhibitionist and amateur alcoholic like me, you can get free drinks from midnight till one a.m. by just prancing around in your undies. No problem for my bud Bill and me, seasoned veterans of Haulover, Miami’s nude beach.
It’s ten to one and I challenge anyone to find another bar, straight or gay, in these United States with more people in it – near naked or otherwise – on a Tuesday night. Even if some of the bozos roaming the bar in jeans and T’s are more interested in playing with their smart phones than staring at the bulges in front of them.
I’ve guzzled down my three-going-on-four rum and cokes when this tall, lanky, sorta handsome guy with tousled hair and a Fu Manchu goatee begins cruising me on the patio bar. With my usual inhibitions thrown to the wind, courtesy of all that free booze, I walk up to him. From the corner of my eye, I see Bill, with his bright yellow pouchy undies, make a play for a pleasant enough looking guy in a green polo and jeans. As Fu Manchu gropes my chest and I unbutton his loose flannel shirt and sneak a peek at his, also hairy, I can see Bill strolling away with Mr. Green Polo. Double score I think smugly to myself as my guy, Gilberto, a Brazilian transplant of German descent (that explains the European looks) living in Lauderdale for the past eighteen years, agrees to come home with me. I slip on my gym shorts.
Complication #1: Gilberto, who between the back bar and the front entrance tells me he has been thrown out of his apartment for the night after a knock-down fight with his roommate, has come on bike. Schwinn, not Harley. He offers to follow me over, but my Honda Element very neatly swallows up his bike and makes getting him in my bedroom a bit easier.
OK, now it’s 1 :30, my three doggies with their zap’em anti-barking collars are quietly milling around in the living room while in the back bedroom, Gilberto and I, down to our undies, (“Keep them on,” he says with a sly smile in his thick Portuguese accent, “I like.”) start getting it on. Just as I’m ready to dive down on his piece, still imprisoned in his Hanes, Gilberto taps me on the shoulder and asks, “You smoke?” Instinctively I remember the one ash tray in the house is out on the patio and I sneak out to retrieve it while my doggies begin whining ever so softly (remember, the barking collars) as I once again slam the bedroom door behind them.
For the next forty five minutes, we smoke, get high, and talk Latin American politics. While Gilberto may be an out-of-work house painter, he’s no dumb faggot and, in fact, rather articulate, even if his broken English somehow doesn’t fit someone who claims he’s been living here in the States, first Jersey, then Florida, for the last twenty of his forty-six years, almost half his life.
Finally, finally, we get down to doing the nasty which lasts as long as it takes Gilberto to light his pipe. Bing, bang, boom, he shoots over my belly after barely a lick while my Mr. Peter patiently remains at full attention, waiting for His turn which never comes. You see, Gilberto is “very tired” and wants to turn in. So, hoping for some action in the middle of the night or certainly by the dawn’s early light, I switch off the bed stand lamp and strip off my underwear. Gilberto stops me in mid unveiling and puts his own back on. “I like,” he reiterates. So I shove my pole back in snuggly and hope for better later.
Now, what I should have done at this point was tell him to get his fuckin’ German/Brazilian ass out of my bed and drop him and his bike off at the nearest Seven Eleven. But the eternal optimist in me says no.
It’s pretty rare I bring a guy home (even with G, my partner 1,340 miles away in PA’s Poconos), so I figure at least I’d take advantage of a warm man’s body next to me, certainly a change from my three furry companions who, just outside the door, have raised their whining to an Excedrin headache level. We clasp hands romantically for all of seven minutes. Then Gilberto turns away from me onto his side. I do the same, at this point content to just get some shut eye.
Ah, but there’s more …
