For a while, Graham watched Archie and Cooper work behind the bar. They danced around as they mixed drinks, embellishing the process with enjoyable flair. Cooper was especially flashy, tossing bottles over his shoulders and pouring smooth streams of liquor from high over his head. It was all a bit ridiculous, but it kept Graham entertained.
He also couldn’t help but notice Cooper’s physique. He was shorter than Archie but much stockier, with a broad chest and shoulders accentuated by his tank top. His skin was pale and smooth, except for a dusting of light brown hair across his chest which peeked out through holes in the mesh fabric. His legs were thick and strong – his muscular quads peeked out from under the hem of his shorts, his round ass filling out the seat. It was the body of a powerlifter or a wrestler. It was strong, powerful, sexy.
And in the glow of lights and alcohol, Graham finally admitted it. He found this bartender attractive. He found the male body – its silhouette, its bumps and curves and ridges, its variations of skin and hair, its power and strength and raw sexuality, all of it – attractive.
More importantly he found Archie attractive.
So attractive.
The kind of attractive that made him want to reach across the bar and touch the smooth, glistening skin he saw mere feet away, to feel its warmth and texture and sweat for himself.
He watched Archie's hips sway gently to the music, intoxicated by their movement. His waist was trim, especially compared to his shoulders, and Graham’s mouth went dry as his eyes followed the graceful arc connecting the two. Archie turned around to reach for a bottle off a high shelf, his back flexing and extending. He had a single mole just to the left of his spine, below his shoulder blade, and for some reason it captured Graham’s attention. It was a subtle detail, a slight imperfection that kept him from becoming an unattainable ideal, a figment of Graham’s imagination; it made him even more real.
He was lost in thought when he heard a commotion behind him, accompanied by a voice.
“‘Scuse me. Coming through, ‘scuse me.” The voice called. “Excuse you!”
It was a charismatic voice, direct but not angry, animated, a bit flamboyant. Graham was about to turn and investigate when a figure shuffled up next to him at the bar.
“Bartender!” The voice called playfully.
Archie immediately looked up, a huge smile spreading across his face.
“Trey!”
“Hey girl!” Trey greeted.
“I didn't know you were coming,” Archie called, stepping closer to the bar.
“Girl, you know I love a surprise,” Trey said gleefully.
Archie raised an eyebrow. “You hate surprises.”
“Not when the surprise is me!” Trey shot back.
“How was Sarah’s?” Archie asked, grabbing a tumbler and fixing a drink – presumably for Trey – automatically.
“Oh, you know. It was fun. I drank a lil too much. ” His voice softened slightly here. “We missed you.”
“I missed you guys, too,” Archie said, his tone even.
He looked up and met Graham's eye, which must have been wearing a confused expression because Archie immediately explained. “I missed a friend's birthday dinner tonight. Couldn't get off work.”
Graham felt a pang of sympathy in his heart, though this was quickly pushed aside by the feeling of Trey’s eyes now looking down at him. They looked back to Archie.
“Do we know him?” Trey asked, his hand splayed across his chest.
Archie laughed, dropping a cherry into Trey's drink and handing it across the bar.
“Trey, I want you to meet someone.”
“Ohhhh, you playing matchmaker again?” Trey asked with delight.
Archie rolled his eyes.
“Not like that. He's a guest at the hotel. He's…a friend.” Archie met Graham's eye, a soft but knowing smile hiding behind them. “Graham, this is Trey Thompson, one of my best friends.”
“One of??”
“Trey, this is Graham Harris.”
Trey turned to Graham and extended a hand, palm down in an aristocratic, matriarchal gesture. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Harris.”
Graham took Trey in. He was about Archie's age, a few inches shorter, maybe, with dark brown skin, large, shining eyes, and a sleek, toned body. He wore tight jeans that hugged his hips perfectly and a cropped t-shirt, exposing his chiseled torso. The waves of his short hair reflected the bar lights in a way that was pleasing to Graham's intoxicated eyes. He was incredibly good-looking.
Staring down at the hand waiting patiently before him, and wanting to make a good impression for one of ARchie’s friends, Graham took Trey's hand in his own and brought it to his lips. He looked up at Trey and flashed a suave smile. “Charmed.”
Archie’s eyebrows shot up, a smile breaking out on his face as Trey's jaw dropped. “Ah-!” He gawked, looking at Archie who, for once, looked speechless. “Oh, they're treating you real good at the hotel, I see!”
Archie threw his head back and laughed, a sight that warmed Graham from head to toe.
“Damn, for real, get me one next time!” Trey laughed. “It is nice to meet you. Any friend of Archie's is a friend of mine. He has annoyingly good taste.”
“Thank you, I was just about to say the same to you,” Graham replied.
“Oooh, I like you already!” Trey exclaimed. He turned to the bar and slapped his hands on the counter. Graham felt the vibration in his elbows. “Archie, we need shots.”
“We?”
“Yes we! You missed out on dinner, but I’ll be damned if I let you miss out on a good time.”
“I don’t need one,” Archie started to wipe down the counter, obviously looking for an excuse to avoid Trey’s suggestion.
“Actually, shots aren’t a bad idea,” Graham heard himself say.
“See, that’s two against one. Hey Coop!” Trey yelled. “We need three shots over here!”
“Tell Archie to pour his own fucking shots! I’m busy!” Cooper yelled back, filling highball glasses with gin and tonic on the far end of the bar.
“See,” Trey made a face. “The man spoke. Pour ‘em.”
Archie hesitated for a moment, but finally caved. He grabbed a bottle of vodka and three shot glasses, lining them up with casual precision and filling them to the brim.
“Okay, just one,” he said as he handed one to Trey and Graham. His voice was stern but his face betrayed his obvious amusement and joy.
“If you say so,” Trey rolled his eyes. “Cheers, queers!”
Graham laughed at the toast, knocking his glass against theirs and tapping it against the countertop – an old college tradition he'd never quite grown out of – before throwing it down the hatch. It burned from the first sip to the stomach. Graham grimaced through the pain, but he felt elated. He couldn't remember the last shot he'd taken or the last time he'd had a friend to take them with.
His brain registered Trey's toast, and for just an instant some part of him wanted to reject it, to clarify, to differentiate himself from that label. It annoyed him that that reflex still existed anywhere in his mind, this outdated act of self-preservation, the insistence upon being unequivocally and irrefutably straight. Here he was taking shots at a gay bar with a hot, shirtless bartender on whom he most definitely had a crush…if that didn't qualify him as at least a little queer, he didn't know what would. And yet, part of him still shifted uncomfortably at the idea.
“Yes, bitch!” Trey slammed his empty glass on the counter top. Archie shuddered, a grimace plastered across his face. He met Graham’s eyes, which were watering a little, and they both laughed, scorched but mostly unscathed.
The music changed, a club remix of an old Missy Elliott song Graham knew from his high school days. Besides him, Trey immediately reacted. “Oh, I LOVE this song!”
Graham also perked up. “I actually know this song!”
“Then you're coming with me!”
Trey grabbed Graham's hand and pulled him off the barstool, whisking him into the thick of the dancefloor before he had a chance to react. His first instinct was to find the easiest escape route, to shout some lazy excuse over the music and get the hell out of there, but, true to the spirit of most of his evening so far, he decided to stay and see what existed on the other side of his protective reflexes.
Turns out, quite a lot of fun.
Trey was electric, dancing and grinding and jumping and flailing without the slightest inhibition. Graham noticed this was a shared trait for most of the bodies around him. They thrashed and twirled and moved freely, spurred on by the loud music and dim lights. It was as if this space provided a certain anonymity, granted a certain permission with which anyone could be anything he wanted, where even the slightest social expectations and subtlest cultural norms fell away completely, where someone's truest self could finally come up for air.
Graham looked at the silhouettes around him, allowing their details to emerge. Surrounding him, Graham saw men his age dancing joyfully like college kids; he saw hot young guys in their twenties – much like Trey – flaunting all the benefits of their youth; even a few guys several years Graham's senior – like the handsome businessman from the bar – moved with a sense of joyful ease. There was no rigidity, no self-consciousness, no single definition of how to be in this space as a man. It was…transformative.
As another song Graham recognized began to play, he closed his eyes and cut loose, jumping and singing along to whatever lyrics he could remember. He felt hands clasp his shoulders and opened his eyes to see Trey, jumping with him, eyes shining in the dark. Trey sunk down and started to grind his hips to the beat, and Graham watched them, a bit hypnotized. Trey turned, backing his hips against Graham's, guiding Graham’s arms onto his shoulders. Graham went with it, swaying his hips from side to side, enjoying the feeling of a warm body pressing against his own. He admired Trey’s brazen confidence, but even in the haze of the dancefloor Graham knew he wished it was a different body against him.
When the song changed, Trey turned around and spoke. “I don't know where Archie found you, but he did good!”
“The Marriott West Des Moines!” he shouted back, laughing. “You're just looking for men in the wrong spot!”
“I guess I am!” Trey laughed, clearly amused by Graham's uncharacteristic joke. After a minute, he leaned in again. “Archie is a really good one. Just…take care of him, okay?”
Graham didn't know how to react. That instinctive defensiveness swelled up again, that desire to clarify that he wasn't gay, that Archie wasn't his to take care of. But even as he thought this sentence it felt untrue.
“Okay,” Graham answered instead. “I will.”
Trey smiled, and the song played on.
Graham wasn't sure how long he'd been dancing. Long enough to work up a sweat and almost start to feel sober again. Eventually, once his thirst was too strong and his legs were too weak, he shuffled his way to the bar and reclaimed his old barstool.
“Can I get a water?” He called to Cooper, who was standing nearby. Cooper nodded silently and handed him a pint glass a few seconds later, which Graham drank greedily.
As he drank, the cool water a shock to his system, he turned on his stool and watched the crowd on the dance floor, his eyes now fully adjusted to the dim, colored lights. He was honestly shocked by the range of men he saw before him. Bodies of all shapes and sizes moved and mingled throughout the room, their faces smiling with drunken contentment.
Previously, Graham’s only experience with gay men had been what he’d seen online – young men with chiseled bodies and massive cocks, idealized versions of uninhibited, masculine sexuality – but here, the men were just…people. Normal people you’d run into at work or at the store or in the gym. Sure, Coop had a remarkable physique, and there were several others whom Graham would classify as well above-average, but there was also so much room for average. It was refreshing.
Obviously, he knew that gay men could look or act or sound like anything, that they weren’t all porn stars and stereotypes – or any of the other, far more degrading generalizations he’d heard from religious circles over the years – but until now, until sitting in a gay bar and looking out at its patrons, that had been more of an educated guess, more a logical assumption, than an internalized truth. Now it was taking form, pushing out Graham’s old assumptions with ease.
Graham wondered why this mattered so much, why it mattered at all, until an idea whispered to him, quietly in the back of his mind: he was surprised by the variety of men around him because he was surprised by how well he blended in. He’d always viewed the queer community as something other than himself, but he couldn’t deny how comfortable he felt sitting on this barstool, dancing in this crowd.
A swell of embarrassment rose within him, remembering how extreme his reaction had been upon first walking in. What had he been afraid of, anyways? He was hundreds of miles away from home. It’s not like anyone he knew would see him here and chastise him. What would they even chastise him for? Enjoying a drink on a Friday night at a bar with other men who just so happened to be gay? What was wrong with that? With any of it?
Graham’s mind started to wander, unpacking all the prejudice and hatred he’d absorbed over the years in church, in campus ministry, in Chrstian books and blog posts. He could practically hear the sneering voices of women from his old church referring to a bar like this as some sordid den of iniquity, referring to these smiling, happy faces as moral degenerates. He felt his chest tighten with anger, felt the urge to yell at all the people who had spewed such nonsense over the years. Worse, he wanted to yell at himself for believing it for so long.
He chugged the rest of his water and swiveled around to face the bar, where Archie was standing, watching him. Their eyes met for a moment before anyone spoke.
“Looks like you were having fun out there!” He said.
Graham laughed. “Yeah, I was! I can't tell you the last time I went dancing.”
“You should do it more, then! You looked good.”
Graham swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. “It felt good!”
Archie looked at him with that characteristic stare, like he could hear every thought that had passed through Graham's mind that night. Oddly enough, Graham didn't mind the idea. He wanted to tell Archie the things he'd been thinking, the feelings he'd felt. He wanted to know if Archie felt any of the same things, too.
“What time is it?” Graham finally asked.
Archie checked the computer screen behind him. “Almost one o’clock.”
“Jesus!” Graham shouted, laughing. “I haven’t been up this late in ages! I should probably get to bed.”
“You okay to drive?” Archie asked with genuine concern. Graham's heart fluttered.
“I'll be fine. Promise.”
“I'll get your check.”
Archie placed the thin paper and a pen in front of Graham and waited patiently while he signed. He left a generous tip, which he hoped Archie would see later.
As he pushed the paper back across the countertop, Archie spoke up. “I really am sorry about ambushing you with the whole gay bar thing.”
Graham looked up, a little surprised.
“Don't be,” he said firmly. “Honestly, I'm kinda glad you did.”
“Can I at least take you to brunch tomorrow to make up for it?”
Graham wanted to assure him there was no offense to make up for, but the prospect of seeing Archie the following morning was too good to pass up.
“Brunch sounds great.”
Archie beamed. “Cool. I'll text you the details when I get off later?”
“Looking forward to it.”
Graham took one final look at Archie, his bright smile and dark eyes, his smooth torso and firm chest, the line of his collar bone where that cursed chain necklace threatened to drive Graham wild. How he had ever found himself at this bar with this beautiful human smiling back at him was the biggest mystery of his life.
Tomorrow suddenly felt too far away.
