Looking Glass - 1. Looking Glass

Elliott pushed the door open, embracing the darkness within. His guitar case was dragging him down, tugging at the edges of the entryway, impeding his movement, but he wouldn’t be deterred. As a musician, his guitar was like a pacifier for an infant or heroin for a junkie. It was a necessary extension of him. Sometimes it was a burden he’d rather not bear.

Regardless, he needed to sit down, have a drink, and decompress. The sign outside proclaimed the name of the place as Toad Hall which was really cool sounding, and much better than the place down the street called the Honey Bucket. He thought this was a groovy place to get his head together. The past twenty-four hours had been so crazy.

First, he’d been summoned to San Francisco by his aunt to help her move. As a recent grad from Rutgers University in New Jersey, he had been curious why she wanted his help. Sure, the money was nice. It would have been far cheaper to pay people to move her things into the large Victorian in Eureka Valley rather than to drag him all the way here. After he got here and met his aunt’s ‘roommate,’ he understood why. Joyce was a six-foot-tall woman who wore cowboy boots, had short shorn graying hair, and even had a light smattering of chin hairs, which could be categorized as whiskers if you were blunt.

He’d been dealing with all sorts of women who acted like men and men who wanted to look like women for the past five days. All he wanted was to get away. This hole-in-the-wall bar offered him a little solace in this bizarre world he was visiting.

As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he felt some of the tension flow from his muscles. The bar was a standard affair, similar to the ones he was used to in New Jersey. A few men were perched on bar stools, in measured separation, along its length.

A smattering of tables ranged along the wall to the left and in the back. There was another crowd of tables around a small stage. Atop the stage was an array of implements which appeared suspiciously like turntables and speakers. There were at least three of them, which seemed odd. Outside a radio station, who would use more than one record player? Sure, he’d heard about people playing songs in tandem before, but at college parties, not in a local saloon.

He shrugged and walked over to the bar. Climbing a stool, he wedged his guitar next to him underneath the edge of the counter. The bartender smiled at him, nodding. He was cutting something with a knife, but then picked up a towel and wiped his hands carefully as he walked toward him. Elliott wasn’t sure why, but he thought the man was especially graceful-looking. His strides were purposeful, yet somehow smooth and dancer-like.

“What’re you having?” he asked, approaching the musician.

“A beer is fine,” Elliott answered, breathing a sigh of relief. Maybe a couple of drinks and a few minutes away from the idea of Claire would bring his life some perspective. Why was she on his mind? It was an obsession of late. She kept popping up.

The band was on the verge of success, and he needed something to catapult them from obscurity into something. Right now, he was wandering about without much idea where to go.

Fuck.

Things were going well, and not. He was a starving artist with a few gigs and a band, but nothing concrete on the horizon. It made the world both too big and too small at the same time. Alcohol made things seem more manageable for some reason. God, his head was so mixed up about that girl, his ‘not-girl’.

“What’s your preference?” the bartender asked.

“I’ll have an Anchor Steam.”

“Coming up.” The bartender grinned and walked swiftly towards the beer taps. “I haven’t seen you here before. Are you visiting?”

“I’m helping my aunt move.”

“She’s moving into the neighborhood?”

“Sure.” After a moment passed. “Not too far from here.”

“That’s far out. Is this chick cool? Where is her place?

“Yeah, a couple of blocks down.”

“Is she family?” the bartender asked, leveling the foam off the top of the mug with a knife.

“She’s my aunt,” Elliott answered, and then he considered. What did he mean exactly? There appeared to be another internal inquiry within the man’s question. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

“Is she a lesbian?” The bartender smirked, “A dyke?”

Elliott watched the man as he set his beer before him on the bar. The bartender had long sandy-colored hair and a shaggy blond moustache. The moment passed slowly. During this time, Elliott noticed a few things. The bartender’s gentle brown eyes blinked back at him slowly, appraising him up and down. The slight smile tried to hide the fact the man was nervous. His hand trembled a little and his cheek twitched. He was waiting for a response, and he reminded Elliott of someone else.

“My aunt’s lover is another woman. Does that bother you?”

The man behind the bar relaxed, almost immediately. A genuine smile curled his lips and he said, “No, we dig it when more family moves in.”

Ever since he arrived in San Fran -- wait, they hate that, San Francisco -- he noticed a kind of mock hostility between gay women and gay men. It was bewildering how this sibling rivalry broke out from time to time. A couple of gay men had helped lug the piano up into Dot’s living room with Joyce ordering people around. The two dudes, they disliked being called that, made it seem like they were annoyed by the women, but when they left it was all hugs and kisses. Mentally, Elliott shrugged and then to make it real, shook his head.

Elliott picked up the mug, gestured his thanks and took a sip of the rich brew. The cool hoppy beer tasted like heaven. He set it down and took stock of the surroundings.

The dark-brown bar was long and polished to a sheen. Behind it were shelves with various bottles arranged neatly in front of a series of mirrors. These mirrors were old-fashioned, well, antiques really. They seemed almost bubbled with some of the silver backing flaking off. The frames were gilded and had shed some of their paint. It wasn’t at first evident in the low lighting of the place, but there were a few things obvious when you looked carefully. This bar was well cared for and at the same time had been thrown together without much money. The place felt comfortable though. Elliott liked it.

The bartender had left and was conversing with other customers at the other end. Every so often, he’d glance at Elliott and his eyes flicked away just as quickly. It felt like the bartender was afraid he’d be noticed staring. Something about that his demeanor teased him. Claire did that. Claire is long gone. Elliott ignored his feelings and took another drink. What was he not seeing?

Never mind, he had to think about his future. The group and his art, they were what mattered.

He was having trouble with the new set. His band was almost perfect, except the music. The songs were missing something: a context, a texture, and an edge that made them stand out. It was bugging him and had since he’d left Jersey for Cali. At first Elliott thought the time away would help give him some perspective. Maybe the distance would give his creative juices a little nudge in the right direction.

His ponderings were interrupted by the sound of a jangling doorbell and the soft puff of a closing door.

The bartender perked up, his bearing became erect and his attention acute. Elliott listened as the footsteps slowed behind him. He watched half-heartedly as a beefy man climbed onto the bar stool next to him.

The barkeep was in front of them, shifting from foot to foot, his mouth twitched from grin to frown and back again. “What can I get for you, Brandon?” he asked, with the man’s name becoming a kind of squeak.

“A beer is fine, a Bud works.”

The terse response seemed perfect for such a large, brooding sort. Elliott noted how the other man’s hair was cut short and bristly. His face was large and angular. The man’s eyes were a brilliant blue, sparkling in the imperfectly reflected light of the old mirror. The newcomer’s demeanor appeared dour at first, but when the bartender set down the beer, his lips curled in pleasure. It was clear, the bartender liked him.

Elliott’s attention returned to his beer. He took another sip and considered his song set. Perhaps the problem was one of context. All their songs were fast moving, hard hitting, riveting and pulsating. They had decided as a group their music should be different and edgy. To a man, the four had discussed what they hoped to convey and it wasn’t a bunch of sickening sweet emotional crap. The Beatles and Beach Boys had already got that shit covered. They would be expressing how fucked up the world was.

“Can you hand me some matches?” The man on the neighboring barstool asked.

Elliott grabbed a pack and handed it to him. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” he answered, lighting up a smoke and inhaling deeply. “You’re new around here.”

Elliott nodded and said, “I’m here visiting family.” Remembering the bartender’s remarks earlier he added, “My aunt moved into the area.”

The man snorted. His eyes met Elliott’s in the flecked mirror and lighted up in humor. “Another fucking rug muncher.”

Elliott smiled in return, confused. He’d heard the term once before, but his bandmate hadn’t explained himself. Pieter was always coming up with the most confusing references and phrases. Then again, this man reminded him a bit of Pieter whose eyes had on occasion crawled over him like the bartender’s had. Now the man next to him did the same thing. Then he spoke.

“Where are you from?”

Elliott swallowed and turned to see the man’s cheek was flushed.

“I’m from New Jersey. Like I said, I’m here helping my aunt move in with her roommate.”

“Roommate. Lesbos.” The man said, shaking his head.

Elliott let the comment ride for a minute, and then he turned to the man again.

“Excuse me, do you have a problem with women? It’s 1970 for fuck’s sake.”

“No.” he answered emphatically, shaking his head vigorously. “I don’t give a shit about women.”

Elliott watched as the man’s ruddy face began to lighten. His cheeks became pale and his eyes sparkled a little more sadly. Elliott took another sip of his beer and ignored the other man who was clearly a troubled soul. He didn’t need this shit.

His mind returned to his earlier thoughts.

The band’s sound was hard-edged and moving, yet there was something vital missing. Their last gig, a basement party in Pieter’s apartment building, had been well received by most of the people at the party. Yet, the praise felt shallow, perfunctory, and not completely sincere. Elliott wasn’t entirely sure why he had that impression, but it was there in the back of his brain nagging at him. The crowd noticed something wasn’t there.

“Women made it all up,” the burly man next to him said, interrupting Elliot’s musings. “That’s the problem I have with chicks. They made the whole idea up.”

“What idea?” Elliott asked without thinking.

“Love. The whole goddamn concept is bullshit.”

Elliott didn’t know how to answer him. In fact, he wondered if he should answer the man at all.

“Brandon, you want another?” the barkeep called out.

“Sure,” the man answered. “We’re both guys, right? I mean, it doesn’t matter which side our bread is buttered on, we should know it’s all imaginary.”

Elliott turned and watched as the man wiped his eyes and then fingered his necklace. He hadn’t noticed it at first. It was a delicate one, silver, and dangling at the nape of the man’s neck was a locket of the same make as the chain.

Elliot swallowed and said, “I’m not sure what you mean, not exactly.”

His neighbor swiveled on the bar stool and peered deeply into his eyes. Elliott leaned back instinctively.

“I think women made the whole idea of love up and we believe in the fairytale. Nobody falls in love, not really. It’s fake, like the Easter bunny or Santa Claus.”

Elliott read the other man’s face and it wasn’t saying the same thing as his words. Brandon, if that was actually his name, was ashen and his eyes were begging for something, some relief. It was obvious from the distressed expression on his face, the man was in pain. Something about him was familiar, again.

“Why do you think it’s made up? I think a lot of poets, many of them men, would disagree with you.”

Brandon shook his head slowly. “I read this article about how we think things exist, but they are only borrowed from what we are told. Movies and books and our families tell us about true love and stuff, yet it doesn’t really exist. It’s something we accept but has no meaning in the real world. It’s all socially made-up or something.”

Elliott watched as the bartender set another beer down in front of the other man. Finally, he asked, “I don’t get what you’re saying about women though. What do women have to do with the concept of love?”

Brandon sighed. He fingered the pendant at his neck for a moment and then faced Elliot. “Men tell women they love them to get laid. Women invented the idea of romantic love to catch a man to take care of them. The whole thing is bullshit and as gay men we need to speak the truth. Love doesn’t exist.” This sounded rehearsed. The guy was repeating something someone had told him, verbatim it appeared.

It was only then Elliott realized three different and equally distinct things were happening that he hadn’t noticed before. First, the man next to him was young, very young, probably in his mid-teens. He was a big kid, muscled and large, but in his tender years.

Second, the reason he thought Brandon was older was because he was haggard and the lines ingrained were from tiredness and fatigue. The boy’s eyes were red and swollen and his shoulders were slumped and rounded with despair.

Finally, Elliott realized the teenager was depressed and that added to his sense of advanced years. Flickering behind those sad eyes was a glimmer of hopefulness. Brandon was begging him to argue, to tell him how wrong he was. The young man was praying for relief.

Those eyes pleading for mercy reminded him of Claire, his girl in high school. She broke his heart when she left for college. In some ways, he compared the women he met, the girls he dated, to her. Claire was a year older and left an imprint as deep and profound as anything he’d ever experienced. He loved her. He’d always love her.

“I think you’re wrong,” Elliott said after the pause. “I believe in love.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Glancing around, Elliott realized he was a stranger here. He didn’t belong with the men dressed in leather, those in flannel shirts, and a few in blouses and tight jeans. His bar mate was dressed in an ordinary pullover and corduroys, but he was a homosexual as well. Brandon’s glances stripped Elliott bare. He squirmed, but then settled down. Is this how women felt when sitting within a group of men? Did they feel eyes caress their breasts, their hips, their crotches with open abandon? Elliott now realized these other men had touched his most private parts with their glances.

In a way, it made him feel good. In another way, as Brandon’s eyes traveled up and down his torso, it made him feel naked and violated. Elliott turned and watched the teenager face away from him, his head hanging low again.

“I think we created the idea of love because we’ve experienced it. Not everybody feels the same way exactly, but I think we all know it’s out there, somewhere.”

Brandon hiccupped and shook his head despondently. Grasping the silver chain, he thumbed the pendant opening it with an almost soundless click. “What good is love if it leaves you and never returns?”

Elliott didn’t answer him. He watched as the boy read something in the locket. His lips mouthed a name he couldn’t decipher. A single teardrop leaked from the corner of his eyes and trickled down his cheek.

“His name is Roger and he’s in the merchant marine on a ship,” Brandon sighed and added, “far away.”

“You love him, don’t you?”

Brandon nodded, appearing young again, the tear had washed the haggardness from his eyes. Now he seemed childlike, vulnerable and sad. “How can I love someone who doesn’t want me?”

Elliott thought back to Claire. He thought of when the latest girl screamed at him as he left her apartment back in Jersey. Those words now haunted him.

“Why can’t you love me?”

Why couldn’t he? When his first love rejected him, it made him feel hollow. Now, when his latest chick demanded love, he couldn’t answer her then, or now. He felt the need to be with her, not-her. He desperately wanted to touch her, taste her, feel her warmth envelop him. But, he didn’t really feel like he loved not-her, not like it was…with Claire. He had loved Claire; he couldn’t feel that way about his last girl, who was definitely ‘not-her’.

God, we fuck everything up. An image came to him. It felt right.

Elliott drank the last of his beer and watched as his bar mate rubbed his eyes dry. “People are like jigsaw puzzles,” he finally said, speaking to the bubbled, flecked mirror more than to Brandon. “They have these jagged edges that can only fit with other jagged edges. We just need to find the one that mirrors our own.”

At first the teenager looked lost. After a few moments, his face relaxed as comprehension dawned. Brandon nodded and cleared his throat. “I need to get past him.” He closed the pendant and gave Elliott the ghost of a smile. “I can’t wait for him any longer. He said I’d make someone the perfect lover, just not him.”

“Yeah,” Elliott agreed, getting down from the bar stool. “I can relate.” A flash of Claire’s face flitted through his memory. Her ruby lips were pursed in a kiss goodbye. Her smell was of rose and powder. She told him she cared for him. She liked him. But, she’d never be able to love him.

Just like he could never love another woman.

Brandon lightly touched Elliott’s arm, tentatively. Elliott turned back.

“I need you to know, he was honest with me.”

Elliott weighed the teen’s words and nodded.

“God, he told me he couldn’t stay with me. He … well, it wasn’t in his blood.”

Elliott nodded. Brandon wasn’t done though. His mouth opened and shut a couple of times and then he said, “He told me something about my eyes was almost enough to keep him here. He said they were special.”

Elliott thought about his high-school love. He thought about Claire. He considered the pain in Brandon’s face leaking so profusely from his eyes. The words seemed to form without thought, though he knew they were as much for his own comfort as for the other person.

“Your man is out there, like you said, somewhere looking for you.” Elliott started to leave.

“You mean, he’s on the other side of the looking glass waiting for me?” Brandon asked, touching Elliott’s sleeve. “My own jigsaw puzzle piece?”

Elliott smiled back at him ruefully as he picked up his guitar, ready to go. “Something like that.” He now understood why the teenager seemed so familiar to him. Brandon had the same look his bandmate Pieter had sometimes: haunted, hoping, and needing. Was there a sense of hopelessness to his face?

***

As Elliott hung up his jacket in the foyer, he heard his aunt calling to him. “Get washed up, dinner’s almost ready.” Elliott stepped into the little bathroom in the front hallway and thought about the teen back at the bar. Something was tugging at him, pulling and twisting and it bothered him. Sometimes when he was writing a song, one inspiration would be enough to complete the lyrics and tune. Other times he needed more. It was like the song needed to be coaxed out of hiding from within him. This felt like one of those times. His intuition told him, he needed to sing Brandon’s story, yet it was still incubating inside his head.

His aunt, Dot and her lover, Joyce, were already seated at the table with a big bowl of steaming pasta and red sauce in the center of the dark, lacquered table. He sat down at his regular spot and adjusted the crocheted placemat. Elliott fidgeted with his fork as Dot filled his plate.

“Seeing the sights today?” Joyce asked, handing him a basket with garlic bread in it. Elliott unfolded the napkin and picked out a piece of buttery toast.

“Not really. I went for a walk. Have you ever been to Toad Hall? It’s a bar down near the Castro Theater at the other end of Eureka Valley.”

“Didn’t we go dancing there when it first opened?” Joyce asked Dot. “If I recall, it’s mostly gay men and gay women weren’t really welcomed.”

“I stopped in for a drink and talked with this guy about the nature of love.”

His aunt and her lover stopped eating and stared at him. “You did what?” They asked at the same time.

“I stopped for a drink. I didn’t know it was bar for gay people.” Elliott paused. “I really didn’t know.”

“Honey, you met someone?” Dot asked, arching her left eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Elliott saw the two women staring at him and shook his head. “Not like that. I was sitting at the bar and a young man, a kid really, sat next to me and told me he thought love wasn’t real. He said love is something we created to control other people.”

“I see,” Dot answered, twirling spaghetti on her fork. “Some jaded queen no doubt.”

“He was young,” Elliott said. “He started crying and told me his boyfriend’s name was Roger, who left him. It was so tragic.”

The two women ate in silence, glancing over at the young man. Elliott couldn’t calm his racing thoughts. Finally he blurted, “I think I’ll write a song about it.”

Joyce chuckled and said, “A song about a jilted gay boy in a bar. I thought you wrote more shit about raging against the establishment and screwing the police and crap like that.”

Elliott groaned. “I do. I mean, most of my songs are pretty hard-core.”

“Artists!” Dot said, smiling at her nephew. “It takes all kinds.”

And with that, the subject was dropped.

***

Elliott stood outside the window of Toad Hall and watched as the bartender poured a beer for a patron. At first he’d been quite surprised to see Brandon worked there. He still thought the young man had to be in his teens yet, too young to work at such an establishment. But, here he was selling booze, flirting with the men at the bar, and laughing. It was so unlike two nights ago when he was crying and talking about losing Roger to the sea.

Elliott pushed his hands into his pants pockets and leaned against the corner of the building. In a couple of hours, he’d be heading back to New Jersey and the band. Watching Brandon work, something suddenly clicked in his head.

He needed a ballad, or rather, the band needed one. All the great rock bands had a moving song which told a story. Elliott began thinking about Brandon’s tale of the man he loved and lost. Why couldn’t he get past this Roger character? What was he so obsessed with?

Why couldn’t he get past Claire? Wasn’t it the same thing? The thought made him shiver.

Elliott pushed off the corner and started walking back toward his aunt’s house. Looking in one more time, he saw Brandon had stopped moving. He was staring into the mirror and fingering the silver chain and the little pendant, the locket. Brandon eyes fell on him, a blink of recognition signaled to Elliott. With a little nod, the musician acknowledged Brandon.

Elliott hurried away, with a song coming together in his head; Claire’s face was exploding in his mind. It didn’t fucking matter if the person was named Brandy or Brandon, not really. Unrequited love doesn’t know gender, and it doesn’t know time, either.