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So a girl dressed up as a boy went to the gay bar. She wanted to know what it was like. She hoped her tensor bandage was going to make it through the night.

Friday night in the great urinal is a much more interesting scene than the weekday roundup. Some of them are under 40, and the total is greater than ten.

There's a long-time local leather top who's always at the pool table with his crew, and there they were, playing pool and generally having much better pants than I do.

We sat down at a neglected table by that door in the back that goes wherever it goes, presumably into some queer-as-folk dry ice fantasia that I will never breach, or possibly the furnace room.

We were doing all right until who should walk in and sit down a few tables away but my Three-Day Disaster.

"You'll have to go to the bar this time." I said to my friend. "If I don't move, he won't see me." And I adopted a manly pose I'd been trying to teach her, the "I'm acting like I'm relaxed even though every muscle in my body is tensed" pose. You know it. Arms spread, hands hanging down, legs aggressively apart, jaw clenched like tetanus.

Of course, as soon as she'd gone to brave the bar lineup as a boy, Disaster and his pal walked over and sat at the next table. I don't know if that's just the fatal gravity of people who don't want to see each other, or if he wanted to show off his date to me.* When she came back, I nodded to the other table. "Disaster's over there with his buddy." I said. "I'm trying not to bolt."

Tensor bandages are famous among those who use them as binders for not really doing what they're supposed to do. They slip, they separate, they sag, they stretch. My friend was having trouble with hers.

"Okay," I said, since I wanted to get away from the table anyway, "Let's go into the bathroom and fix it."

So I led her into the men's bathroom, into the only stall, and shut the door. For privacy. You know.

We talked in an undertone as she fixed the bandage. "Ah." she said. "It hurts." She loosened it.
"Is that better?" I said.
"It's too tight."
"Okay."
"That's better."

As she's fooling with it, I realize that there's a guy at the urinal. It crosses my mind that this little scene must look a trifle outre.

I start to mime for her, "That guy thinks we're jerking off." I get as far as "that guy" and "jerking off" and realize that I can stop there, because that guy is, in fact, jerking off.

So there we are, locked in a stall in the men's bathroom, laughing hysterically but silently, with a guy outside jerking off.

And really, the faux pas is ours. We are, to judge by sneakers alone, two guys in the bathroom stall doing either drugs or each other, and common courtesy dictates that we ought to go out and join in with the poor guy.

But that is not going to happen tonight. So we huddle there, conversing in whispers about what we're going to do.

At this point, things became a little confused. We couldn't see what was going on out there; we could only hear it. Someone else came in, anyway. And then someone said "There's two guys-- two guys in there."

"Okay." I said. "We're going to open the door, look straight ahead, and walk out. We're not going to make eye contact with anyone."

So we opened the door. With dignity, we stepped past the small gauntlet of men who had assembled in the bathroom, including the leather top I mentioned above, which was only fractionally less embarrassing than if it had been Disaster himself.

Once outside in the club, there was some more violent laughing to be done.

"Well, you passed." I pointed out when I could breathe again. It took her longer because of the bandage.

Then "Like a Prayer" came on and there was really nothing to do but dance.

{rf}

*Which, please fall in love with each other and never, ever talk to me again.

Next time: tube steak, smelling like a man, and experimental conclusions