The view from Texas.

I've been in El Paso for two days for my mother's book release party -- two days of festivities. It's been enjoyable but man has it set me up like never before to remember why I *really* moved away from here. It *wasn't* to be closer to the labs, or further upriver, or to live like Don Schraeder. It *was* to find myself and live *my own* life in a place where I might just do that, somehow or another, yet remain a day's travel away from my aging parents.

I hate this part of Texas. Its pull is far too strong on me. But I can't live here. Can't. Impossible.

Coming in was a trip. Last song on KUNM as I lost the signal south of Socorro, around milepost 135 Southbound on I-25: "Keep it Gay" from "The Producers". Left Albuquerque right after closing up Foxes. Around sunrise smelled the chamisa -- smell literally rising from the earth. Saw the sun rise twice thanks to the shifting Organ Mountains. Rainbow in the rearview mirror in a giant pink raincloud off in the distance. Then the air in the distance in front of me turns brown. You hit the dairies. The mountains that used to be your freinds disappear scraped away under batallions of heavy machinery. The air reeks of manure and spoiled milk. You know El Paso's just around the corner, and that any semblance of sanity's about to fade faster in the rearview mirror than the rainbow.

Good thing I get to head north out of town tomorrow.

Gave a ride to the book signing to Mrs. White, elderly black lady from the deep south who's spent most of her life here. Next door neighbour to my grandmother, she's known my mother longer than anyone else alive. She'd been to a prayer breakfast earlier in the day. Remember this is a dearly beloved human being from my early childhood who hasn't seen me probably since my grandmother's funeral when I was seventeen. I have nothing against this woman and respect her through and through.

She's still a homophobe.

"So what do you do in Albuquerque?"

"Uhm. I work. In a, work, in a bar. I'm the, eh, doorwh, uh, doorman. I don't serve drinks to people. I just keep them safe."

Really I should have known to prepare for this. I sound like one of the disreputable Austrian characters in "The 3rd Man" who literally can't lie to save his life in English.

Bad enough that I work in a bar. Bad enough I *stock* beer at the end of the night. I'm already stumbling over myself to justify what I do to her. Never mind it's an honest and even honourable living; it's just too, too complex to go into *why*. But she doesn't seem to jump down my throat, maybe because I am intensely aware of alcohol's evils and not the least bit unconflicted about working with it.

I don't even consider telling her it's a gay bar. There are some places, some times when it's just plain old totally irrelevant. I kinda suspect she's an old school baptist, though. Judgmental yeah but not near like the moral majority crowd. Still, bad enough I work with liquor, period.

I don't have time to parse her theology, though, because she starts right in on the girlfreind routine. You know: have I got one, oh really, why not, after all I'm so handsome, and all that. This caught me way off guard. Good god, I haven't been through that particular wringer in years. Past a certain age, most people stop asking. I've long since passed that age.

In her case she hasn't seen me in so long she thinks it's perfectly OK to ask. Actually she's pretty gracious about it I suppose, though the sooner it ceases entirely to be an acceptable topic of conversation between older and younger people -- at least based on the assumption of an exclusively heterosexual relationship -- the happier I will be. (Only Mrs. Rivera, my high school librarian, *ever* managed to ask me essentially the same question really well, in a completely gender neutral way, which put her in my permanent good graces, as though she weren't already.)

I *hate* this conversation. I've had it so many times it drives me crazy and I associate it always and exclusively with people of a certain age living in a certain part of town in a certain sort of world. It's also usually women who initiate the conversation. First off it's assumed the only possible kind of adult relationship is between a man and a woman. Nothing else is even remotely possible. "Yeah, I know I'm pretty desirable, thanks, 'cause I've got guys crawlin' all over me most nights I work" is an *impossible* answer, though it would be a wholly honest one. Secondly the fact of my not having ever had such a heteroexclusive relationship reduces me effectively to the status of an overgrown child. Suddenly I'm being talked down to. Great. Thirdly I'm complimented on my being "elusive", or "clever", or on having "escaped", which has more than a little tinge of judgment to it -- the implication clearly being that either I'm being extremely promiscuous with women or I'm -- well, some things are utterly unspeakable.

Yeah, I guess I did escape. Thanks.

That's about all I can do -- let her take the conversation's reins and just react completely honestly if monosylabically, answering "yes" to *my* sense of the word "escape" knowing she means something *completely* different. My dear lady, you've no idea what I *did* escape from. Surely not some pretty young girl intent on marriage. If I suggested it was more like what you escaped from when you came from the deep south, you would take deep offense, and so I won't even suggest it. Forgive my silence. You can never know exactly what it was for me to escape, because in this very awkward situation, you, dear lady, whom I otherwise love and respect, are the opressor. You never can know that I'm never, ever going back to where I was. Pardon me as I smile and nod; I've little other choice, there's nothing to be gained that I can tell by coming out to you right here and now. Horrify you at what I am and spoil my mother's book signing? Thank you, but no, I just "escaped". So believe what you will of me, others have thought far, far worse, believe me. At least I didn't leave a bunch of little kids in my wake, and for that alone, you really can not judge me, and while I do choose to believe you're Christian enough to understand that on some very basic level, it's just not a risk I can take with you right now. And when it comes to calculating and assessing risk, let's just say I've got something of a knack at it.

The irony is that I'm literally "out" to the whole state of New Mexico. All the little towns that I go through I go through as one of the faggots from Albuquerque who buys at local businesses and tips well and damn it you may not like him but don't bug him and he'll come back through a couple of months from now I'm sure and spend some more money and tell his freinds besides. But I cross over that state line and plop! Right back into the closet. The fine lady getting a ride from me has no idea what the golden equal sign on the square violet field on the back of my car means; though she probably does have some notions about men who lie with men, but what those might be I don't want to know.

Actually, I do know. Honestly, I just don't want to deal with it.

Selective invisibility: one of most unique tools we've got in our bag of tricks, by which we do survive. I haven't had to use it in what feels now like a long damn time. Nice to know that I still can. But honestly it kinda makes me sick. And overshadowed my whole trip down here. I've been in an ugly mood since then.

Then again -- well, honey, you might say I sort of *do* have a girlfreind, Foxes being the kind of bar that it is, after all -- but I don't know if she really counts in your book, 'cause, well, see, we do things differently in Albuquerque, though I suppose that's between her and me, besides which -- well, you know I'd really better not go giving away *her* secrets, right? Of *course* you understand.

(Which is to say: of course you don't 'til *you've* walked down the street like that.)

My god I'm livin' in the fifties. Backlash time.

Two days in Texas. Glad I get to taste it now and then. Just a reminder why I'm livin' where I am. Someday if I ever save up my money and get out of the family situation so help me I'll go back to the West Coast.

My mother's trying to arrange a lunch with Lobsang, our Tibetan freind, tomorrow so I may or may not stay here through lunchtime. I'll stay for that but really truly want to leave. Didn't even get to see David this time around. He's in bad shape over some creep at the Center who pulled a similar stunt to the one I've described here. Oh well.

Come out of Texas, freinds. Albuquerque ain't perfect but it sure beats Texas. Maybe there are enclaves in places like Houston but you know I've never seen 'em which I guess is how they manage to survive. Get out, come out of Texas. I can't force you. You have to do it on your own. It's so destructive, sometimes, just to stay.

Kabuki justice and pathetic trolls.

If I wanted to write a Kabuki play I might well choose the murders of a week ago tonight as its theme. More and more keeps coming to light.

First off it winds up the OR Technicians at the hospital who were on call wound up being unreachable on the night of the murders. I have this from a good freind who'd just gotten off a nine hour shift and got called back in an hour later because of it. Not that it would have done much good, they'd lost so much blood by the time they got to the hospital. One of 'em sustained five bullet wounds to the chest. From a Webly six-shooter. The killer must have been one insanely good shot, to be able to do that kind of damage with that antiquated handgun to a professional, veteran officer.

Secondly the other officer murdered (i.e., not the one I remembered from Frontier) was one of those who gave the arrested bartenders their harrowing four-hour ride around town before taking them in to the station for booking the last time they tried to shut down all the gay bars. So there's some sort of tragic justice to it all. I know that must sound cruel. But what can I say, the guy did die honourably and that's about the only way he could ever have redeemed himself in my eyes after what he did to my freinds.

What a town.

Had last night off so went out galavanting. Wound up at Foxes, of course. Karaoke Wednesday. I'd brought something to Sid's attention -- nothing big really, but a little technicality in the Liquor Control Act that I thought he ought to know about in case he didn't. He came up to me while I was there as a customer and told me that in all his years working there no one else has ever read through all the rules and regulations. I can't imagine why. It's only 82 pages, and there are lots of times when nothing else is happening.

Little Mr. Churchy troll who was all over me a couple of nights ago has taken to badmouthing me behind my back to people who talk to me at the bar. Big surprise. He must be painfully jealous. It *has* to be humiliating to be not just turned down but verbally put in your place by the lowly doorman. I'm not terribly worried about it. He was flipping between telling the Northern Ute gentleman I was talking to what a horrible person I am and literally begging for beer. It was sort of interesting, actually, a nice little inversion of the ugly stereotype: the white guy begging the native to buy him a beer.

Free advice to would-be trolls: if you're going to try to undercut someone else's chances, try not to undermine your own credibility by being laughably pathetic at the same time. Duh.

Almost eight, I'd better head in. I hear the Dunkin' Doughnuts on San Mateo has wireless internet late at night. That's good -- finally a place I won't have to drive thirty miles to if I want to go online any time after eleven, and can probably get off pretty cheap with coffee and doughnuts being my only real choices. Later.

New rules and a memorable funeral.

Midnight always tips me out five dollars. I know that's more than 15%. It's more than very decent of him, it is *good*. I suppose he figures that I need to eat, or that I actually do my job, or something. Or maybe it's "what goes around" coming aorund since I always tip him whenever he makes me a drink. (Midnight's the manager from AMC who used to manage Foxes in the '80s, and who's back tending bar at Foxes since the owners shut down AMC on Sundays and Mondays since the Ranch changed owners, killing all their slow night business. He also used to live in the apartment right above the liquor store next door.)

Tonight was so absurdly dead it wasn't even funny. One of those nights the bar is losing money just by staying open past whatever time. I came on at nine, and I don't know whether I scared them all off, but everyone who *was* there left. Or maybe it was time for everyone to go home and wind their clocks and let the cats out. Who can say? I seriously think that for a lot of the happy hour crowd, the doorman coming on to start his shift is the biggest event in their days, by which they mark passage of time.

From that point on we hardly ever had more than three customers at once. One guy from Minnesota came in and we chatted a while about the various bars and real estate values and what have you. Scott, the, uhm, videographer (yeah, that's it), showed up. One couple from New York came in, one of the guys took a cameraphone picture of the sign to send to his freinds back home, but his partner sufficiently resented being carded by an almost empty bar that they both left without buying a thing. Eventually Jay and Christen came in, they're two of the every night regulars. Felicia, the vivacious, damn near flawless, but tragically emaciated drag queen (who I met at Foxes the night of the bar raids) came up to the door -- not in, because she didn't have ID -- to get some rubbers and to flirt with me. Aside from wiping off the lipstick after that, not much of anything happened.

Oh yeah. We watched Family Guy at midnight, as has become the Monday night tradition since I started working there. My first night there was Family Guy night and Ben had it turned on by chance. It was the episode where the dog goes to Hollywood and winds up making porn. The one with a scene set in Musso & Frank's. I took it as a good omen. Well, an omen. How good or not, I dunno. But when the universe gives clearly appropriate signs you don't waste time trying to figure out what's good and what isn't. You just kinda take it and keep moving on, I guess.

New rules for hookups. Being the doorman at Foxes (i.e., "most flirted-with guy in all of New Mexico"), I figure it's time I can afford to set some minimum standards as to whom I will *not* sleep with. Don't worry, it's not as bad as "no fats, no fems, no oldies"; and I really mean nothing personal against anyone by laying down these basic ground rules. I'm just trying to protect myself, here.

1. No drug addicts. However great the sex may sometimes be, they're a hundred times more likely than the general population to turn abusive, and it's simply never worth it. Regardless whether they've got drugs or just know where to get them, they're out.
2. No Nortenos. Sorry guys, it really ain't racism, I've just had too many good hookups go terribly wrong with guys with Nuevo Espana last names to ever knowingly sleep with another again. Far as I can tell, you're all completely nuts.
3. No guys with missing front teeth, or teeth that are clearly rotted. Really this one's for your own protection more than mine: I don't want you to lose a tooth, then choke on it and die while perfoming certain acts on me, because then I'd feel guilty. I refuse.
4. No one who tries to force himself on me despite my turning what I consider to be a clearly cold shoulder. Refer back to the explanation re: Rule No. 1.
5. No drag queens with clearly discernible facial hair. Genderfuck drag has its place, but if you can look like a man simply by taking off your clip-ons and tying back your hair, you're not really that much of a queen to begin with in my book, sorry.
6. No zealots out to save my soul from the firey pits of hell. It's my job to probe the outer darkness to make sure Foxes stays open, OK? I am the sentinel on the fringes. So: wax eloquent about salvation all you want right off the bat: you'll get no ride from me.

Now that I've gone and set such absurdly high standards, I'm sure people will instantaneously and permanently stop crawling all over me. I've probably eliminated about half the queers in this town from my little black book just with these six simple rules. Please note, in my defense, the things *not* in the list. I don't care about weight, or length, or body hair, or cut/uncut, or money, or status, or tops or bottoms, or eye colour, or a lot of other things that really in my book just make a faggot shallow. If you think any of the above make me shallow, that's your problem and not mine. You do not have to flirt with me. I've got more than enough to deal with already.

Was awakened around eleven this morning by the most clamourous sound of sirens I have ever heard outside my apartment here on Central, and I hear sirens every single day. Long -- miles long procession of cop cars -- have little doubt it was every one in the city and many from around the state. Funeral procession for one of the two officers killed in the discharge of their duty last Thursday night, when one guy with a Webly six-shooter revolver went on a day-long killing rampage from one end of Central clear out to the other. Started out on the Westside killing a DOT worker early in the morning. Later in the day he took down two more people including a kid in a motorcycle shop a few long blocks east of Foxes. I was working around ten when suddenly there were maybe a dozen or more cop cars, marked and unmarked, speeding West on Central to the aid of their fallen brothers, lights and sirens blaring. That seems to be where the killling spree stopped, somewhere on Central, near the I-25 underpass where Ivan was murdered last year when he went out on break. One of the officers murdered was one of the regulars at Frontier. Albuquerque's a very small town in some ways.

Last time I saw anything like it was the funeral procession of the firetrucks in Seattle, gathered to mourn the loss of a couple of firefighters lost in the line of duty up there. I can well imagine what some people will think, that it was all a show put on by the police state to intimidate and frighten, a grandiose display of power, the sirens wailing out in pain for miles and echoing off buildings all around. But hell, those two guys gave their lives for one of the most thankless jobs on earth, keeping the people safe. They died well: very honourably. They deserve a grand procession, and who the hell am I to deny it to their colleagues 'cause it's noisy. I found it beautiful, if at the same time, horrifying. Pity and terror. If you know anything at all about me you know I've been on the front lines more than a few times in combatting abuses of police power just about everywhere I've ever lived. I tell you this: today's procession was not abuse; it was a striking, fitting tribute to two dedicated officers who tragically gave their lives trying to get one crazed killer off my street.

This street's seen everything in its day. It's so obscenely violent. People die here all the time. Horrible violent deaths. They get drunk and high and wander into traffic. They get robbed. They get beaten up. Cars slam into eachother and into pedestrians and cyclists with alarming regularity. Drug deals go really, really bad. Irate lovers and employees go blind with rage. As an old crackhead acquaintance of mine once said to me, "ain't nothin' good on this fuckin' street". I would agree, except that it's my home, and I would live no other place on earth. I live and work and play on Central. I have little need to be anyplace else. I'm no less outraged that the cops raid our bars the way they do, but damn it, they're fully entitled to their own parade, this day.

The procession took two full hours to pass this point. Of course I went out for maybe ten minutes to pay my own respects from curbside. I had to drive away to make a phone call -- following up on a potential temporary job I got from Craigslist. I sure hope it goes well. The woman on the other end was nice, apparently she called me because she saw it in my resume that I'd worked at the delicatessen in the Natural Foods (cough, cough) Cooperative. She'd worked there before me as a baker. So how'd I like it? Hm. Well, I was there right when the whole union thing was going on, and, uhm... yeah. I told her honestly I came out for it on matter of principle but that it got too ugly for me to stick around long past the point when the union was defeated in the election. OK, apparently that was a good enough answer for her, she says she'll call me back before Friday.

There's a big meeting of local bloggers upstairs but since I don't use their website I don't even bother to say stop in and say hi even though it's very clear they want people to do just that. I'm far, far too reclusive, besides which they're probably all breeders and the less I have to deal with their kind generally, the better. And no offence but the fewer people who live here in Albuquerque read this, also the better. I don't want to wind up slightly dead, and in a place like Albuquerque, saying something someone doesn't like is quite reason enough.

Almost eight now and with nothing much better to do I think I'll wrap up early and head in to Foxes. Good night.

Crazy night.

Holy crap, they're playing Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" here at Flying Star. This is too crazy.

I don't know whether it was the just-past-full moon just barely peeking out from behind the high, thin clouds above the bar or what, but last night was insane.

It wasn't busy. Just insane.

People were literally crawling all over me most of the night while I just tried to do my job. Starts out when one of the church people who's found himself at Foxes for whatever reason (wonder what *that* might be!) wants a hug. (There are respectful gay religious types who respect the fact that bars are safe spaces for most of us, however problematic, and judgmental church people who make no secret of their moral superiority and disgust to everyone else present despite their being at Foxes Booze 'n' Cruise in the first place, who likely tell themselves they're not there to get laid but spread salvation by descending into the firey pits and hooking up for sex with some lost soul; this fellow definitely fell more solidly into the latter category; I don't do hookups for salvation.) OK, sure. Why not. One freindly bear hug surely never killed anybody.

Big mistake. The poor guy must have been *dying* for human contact of some sort. Now every time I head back to the door and try to sit and read the Liquor Control Act, he's back on me telling me about my eyes and my aura and how I'm "real" and not "phony" like "all the rest". Good god. He *has* been out of the bars too long, if he thinks he's gettin' *anywhere* with me with that old song and dance routine. Yeah, my eyes *are* pretty intense, thanks; you know why? Because I see right through what you're trying to do, and you don't scare me or intimidate me or embarass me at all. I *try* to tell him gently, many different ways, "honey, youre's barkin' up the wrong tree" but with his abstentious lack of tolerance for alcohol and two or three beers in him, it doesn't register at all. "Spiritual" or not, it's the same old story: horny and drunk, hitting on tired and sober. Man, you're gettin' nowhere. Fast. Try someone else. Anyone else. Puhlease.

Then the native guy with the missing front teeth who does the spotlight for the shows (whenever he feels like doing that instead of chatting) starts coming over to chat.

Then the guy I bought the shirt from when I got the job comes in, despite the fact he stopped going out to the bars years back (and apparently just started up again when I let it slip where I worked).

Then a kinky older guy whose company I genuinely enjoy comes in with a drop-dead gorgeous younger freind that no one's ever seen in any bar before. Likely an out-of-towner. A real "all heads turn" moment. Good thing for me nobody seems to understand the colour and position of his handkerchief.

Then an old Nuevo Espana-surnamed acquaintance from way back walks in. (While tending to be pretty good in bed, in my experience, they're all at least a little drug-addicted, inbred, or insane -- or any combination of the three -- so I avoid 'em like the plague. Basically hillbillies of the "troubled genius" variety with pretentions to ancient nobility.)

Then the female impersonator I've taken something of a most unlikely liking to comes in.

Yeah, I'm actually good for business. They don't call us the door whores for nothin'.

Whoo boy. It was completely fuckin' NUTS. Yeah, I enjoyed it, great for self esteem and all, but yeesh! They were not just all over me but staring daggers at eachother like I belonged to each and every one of them in turn exclusively. The absolute last thing I needed was to break up a fight between two or more other guys over myself. It nearly came to that -- to my complete surprise, of course, as I have lived a life of nearly perfect continence. But then again, you know what they say about the dooormen at Foxes. It might be tough gettin' 'em home, but once you've got 'em home it's pretty much a surefire thing. Yeesh. Meanwhile I could barely follow who else was even in the bar who wasn't either there because of or all over me.

Talk about wearing nerves thin! I have to stick at the door to make sure no undercovers, underages, or drunks waltz in while my head's turned for one split second; but no, this guy just wants to hug me in the foyer, this other wants to dance, a third *must* have my phone number *right* now (what can't he tell me to my face, I wonder?), this other wants to talk to me, another wants to play a game of pool, while yet another wants to take me outside, and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum, yada yada yada.

I felt just like Madonna in the "Material Girl" video. Poor little thing. How I feel her pain. (I simply *love* Madonna, btw. Now if only the guys at Foxes would offer me pearls, diamonds, and wallets full of money, why sure, we might talk for a half a minute just outside.) I almost look forward to being a creepy old troll no one will look at, let alone touch. Though honestly, with my reputation being what it is at this point, that's not terribly likely -- more likely, at least I hope, I'll wind up more like one of the older bartenders, all of whom I respect and look up to, with a past a mile and a half long, knowing everyone in town, having few credible or well-supported enemies, and hard-earned, dead-on observations about *everything*.

Of course it's all complicated by the fact that yeah, some of these guys actually interest me in a way that if I were a customer I'd roll over like a little puppy for 'em in about two seconds flat and beg 'em to take me home and feed me, while others utterly repulse me. Especially repulsive are the super-forward and insistent ones who won't take no for an answer, who are intent on having their way with me like I'm some sort of merchandise they can take for a test drive before the bar closes. Whatever the physical attraction may be, guys, first off, I *am* at work, and I am paid to check your IDs -- *not* to make physical contact, *not* to so much as shake your hand if I choose not to. Secondly, I do *not* get off on abuse and will take a fat, ugly, old, hung-like-a-fieldmouse considerate guy any day over my choice of all the built, gorgeous, young, hung-like-an-elephant jerks in the world.

And still I've gotta watch the door regardless. Basically turn *everybody* down, without pissing anyone off so much they won't come back.

And then they think I'm playing coy and those I'm least likely to ever meet outside of work invariably just keep trying harder.

Eventually the guy who's buggin' me the most gets wind of a rumour that I had spent a night with so-and-so and suddenly he turns on me, hissing "I thought you had more class than that".

Uhm, actually, no. If he had *listened* when he was drunk and horny back when I was *trying* to read the law that it's my *job* to both comply with and enforce, he would have known, from my own mouth, that no, in fact, I don't, and don't pretend to have any such kind of ranking over anyone. I'm not gonna argue it with him, though, because damn it, he's off my back for once, and I can sort of do my job, instead of babysitting him and mollycoddling his super-fragile expeditious chosen-people ego. He goes back up to the bar to sulk and drowns his short-lived fantasies of lifelong harmony with me in drink and finally I'm freed up enough to check the parking lot for any empty bottles, getting out of the stuffy and intense inside with its loud, pulsating nonstop dance music and flashing lights and pervasive smell of smoke and beer, beer, beer, beer, beer to decompress.

I feel sorry for him, wish him nothing but the best, but I am seriously just not interested in more than a casual freindship with him, which I'm bluntly only interested in because either one of us might prove useful to the other someday and if we can't stick together when we need to because one of us might have slept with someone the other doesn't like then we're all sunk, church queers and barfly queers alike. I hope he finds what he's looking for, but it's clearly not me, as I hope he'll see when he takes off his beer goggles.

I go back in, behind the bar to refill my wonderfully nonalcoholic drink, and talk under my breath with Alex, who trained me.

"Finally got one off my back", I say to Alex.

"Now you know what I go through", he replies.

No wonder he wears spikes and leather all over him. It makes him just a little bit more unapproachable. Too bad for me goth's really not my look. If anybody made electrically charged clothing that gives off a shock when touched by anyone besides the wearer, I might go for that.

About ten minutes later I figure enough time has passed that I can safely go over to this guy and basically ask what's up, is he OK, without having him explode. Not that I give a shit about him personally at this point (I'm honestly still rather angry, if you can't tell), much less do I want to "make up" with him, but damn it, he's in *my* bar, and I've gotta keep him safe and everyone else safe from him and he has clearly gone from irrepressible to depressed in about two minutes, so I want to clear things up before he goes from dejected to belligerent in two seconds. It's like walking in golf shoes through a minefield covered with the eggshells of hummingbirds, but I seem to have gotten pretty good at just such slightly delicate operations. Yeah, he is OK, he says, but then spits venom against the other person in the rumour involving me who isn't there to defend himself (thank god). So, only for my own good, of course, he just wants me to know that this person isn't what he seems and I don't know what I'm getting into and oh yeah he's got AIDS.

"You know you just committed a fourth degree felony", I interrupt.

"I what?"

"It's a crime in the state of New Mexico to reveal a third party's HIV status without their prior written consent."

Then I waltz away, keys jangling merrily from my left belt loop. Whether it's a felony or misdemeanour I neither really know nor care. I jolted him. Ten thousand volts. He's gone from sorry drunk to wide awake. A sort of little Zen moment.

Long story short, and believe me, these kinds of stories get extremely long, extremely complicated, and violate all kinds of confidentiality if I write details about 'em on the web, but rest assured the person in question is, in fact, HIV-negative, and I know this for a fact, about as well as anybody ever can -- besides which, I play *extremely* safe ever since I went through my own little scare with that insidious virus.

Twenty minutes later this guy who'd been all over me at first, then practically attacked me, then didn't want to talk at all while crying in his beer, then finally tried to scare me into thinking I'd contracted HIV for not wanting to sleep with him comes crawling back to me red as a beet on all fours (not *literally*, ya thillies) to apologise profusely. He had no idea, didn't think what he was saying when he said it, meant no harm to anyone, and is so sorry, and won't ever do it again, and didn't realize how it could backfire on a person. We shake hands -- suddenly, we're on good terms. Mission accomplished.

That lasts about ten seconds, before the "of course you know I'd never gossip, but..." routine starts and he tells me how he "knows" this person has AIDS (regardless of the fact that he doesn't), during which he goes on to talk about the person being a shoplifter and crack whore and how he saw the police dossiers over somebody's shoulder and it kind of looked like him in the picture. It's a cockamamey story that wouldn't hold a thimbleful of water. Total bullshit. You hear a lot of that in bars. But at this point, I am fully in control again. So I basically go thank you, yes, I know you just want to protect me, I do take care of myself, you're so kind, think nothing of it, but please do be aware of the law, I don't want you getting in trouble either, yes, and thank you, but I really just don't need to hear it, you've got nothing to explain, I'm sure you meant the best and nothing but the best, oh, by the way, we're closing, so good night, do come again.

Ktchunk. Ktchunk. Doors locked against the madness of the world, not only has Foxes stayed open another night but I've survived the night. The bar is closed.

If he had done just half of all of the stuff he did to me to any paying customer I might well have had to throw him out.

Having survived, today I went to the United Court of the Sandias membership barbeque to become a member (seven bucks, my last -- but still dirt cheap) and eat my fill of good but cold hot dogs and hamburgers. They hate me 'cause I card 'em but who cares. They're warming up to me slowly, especially since -- but that's another story for another time, not really fit to print, and premature to publicly announce, at any rate.

The courts are the international drag charity organization dating back to the early '60s, founded in San Francisco by Mother Jose (whom I haven't met yet, but will soon), when practically the only "out" gay men in the US were the queens who dared to walk the streets as women at their very lives' peril. Court members were at Stonewall when it got raided on the night that Judy Garland died. It is, to all appearances, a tawdry little organization, characterised by glitter and perilously tall tiaras, with grandiose titles awarded annually to the various queens in any given city with a court.

In fact, it's a damn good organization -- all nonprofit, and they give a *lot* of ongoing support to the community of the sort that big foundations *never* do, and do it in a way that if you're not the kind of person who goes to drag shows on a regular basis and you happen into Foxes on a show night, you likely think it's all some sort of really bizarre joke. If you're a teacher in the ghetto getting crayons for your classroom, or a nurse who deals with alzheimers patients, or a childcare provider just glad to have the dance instructor volunteeering for you that all the kids adore, then you just kinda figure hey I guess those guys ain't so bad after all.

In that sense, in the specific way it does community outreach, it might well be considered the last remaining homophile organization.

It's not a joke. It's camp, yeah, but it's very serious. Predates MCC as far as I can tell. Certainly predates LGTF, HRCF, GMHC, LLDF and all of those alphabet soup types of organizations. As far as I can tell, there's no older still-extant gay organization of *any* stripe, since the Mattachines and Daughters very long ago disbanded. It's got direct connections with our history going three, four generations back in a community where there tends to be no sense of history passed down from one night to the next.

Having $2.75 to my name I head at last in to Foxes for chicken dinner. Wouldn't miss for the world. Get the one beer I can afford at happy hour price and tip a dollar. Eat a plate full of fried chicken. Sit off by myself where no one will approach me since the bar is full up and the last thing I want after last night is to get into idle chit chat or, worse yet, the sort of trouble that I get into on nights off when I have more than three dollars to my name and wind up in the bars. Nobody bugs me. The chicken, as always, is delicious.

Today I'm eating at the Flying Star on credit. Yuck. The food is great but haven't had to use a credit card to eat for a long time. Get paid two days from now so shouldn't rack up *too* much debt in the meantime. Not buying antiques or anything I don't need to survive these days. Driving as little as I can: once a day to Flying Star, then in to work, then home (usually). Have two job applications out for day jobs but not counting chickens there; I seem to be having lousy luck where getting money is concerned since I quit the Frontier. Now if only I could overnight make myself into a little Don Schraeder where spending money is concerned. But alas, people like him are not made overnight. Which reminds me, I've *still* got to return those books to him. Forgive me, Don, I am a mess. But thank you for your inspiration, always.

Enough for now. Good night. I'm off to Monday night at Foxes, which should prove gloriously uneventful. Would be nice if we got busy but can't hope for too much in that line, honestly.

God bless the nelly queens.

I don't believe I've ever made sacrifices, either selfishly or for a principle or cause, like those that I am making now. I don't believe, either, that I have ever realised rewards of the kind I am already for so doing.

I went from a 40 hour a week job paying 8.75 an hour, with health insurance, half-priced restaurant food every night of the week, and a full week paid vacation every year working for people who genuinely hated me, to a 20/25 hour a week job paying minimum wage and a pittance in tips in under three months' time for people who not only accept me as I am but actually encourage me to "loosen up". I did this fully consciously, even if I could not help making it financially devastating to me. My savings of a year have quite run dry, and I have had to drastically, radically alter almost every aspect of the way I live.

I would not go back to that old overpaid padded subsistence, though, for anything under the sun.

The former job? Degrading. Exhausting. Insulting. Deformative to body and destructive to spirit.

The latter job? Noble to its very core. Not terribly demanding, but exhilerating when it is. Appreciated genuinely by most who benefit from my presence in the role I play; those who dare insult me, I can (if I choose) declare unfit to be served drinks thusly: "belligerent, you're drunk". Restorative to body and reconstructive of the spirit.

I literally have eight bucks 'til payday. I work tomorrow, and maybe, just maybe, I'll get five bucks or so in tips to tie me over one more day. Tonight I got four bucks and change. What can I say: it was a really bad Friday. But thanks to those four bucks I was able to get a burrito from Cuco's. And I can still afford to go online once, maybe more than once, at Flying Star before payday rolls 'round again. When payday rolls around I have to live on tips -- yep, still. Because the whole amount -- the *whole* amount is goin' straight to rent. And bills. And registration for the car. And a $20 parking ticket that I got while staying at a freind's house.

That shit? That's money. Yeah. Big fuckin' deal. That's not my life. That's what I get so I can have the life I want: I keep the safe space safe and get to spend my life in bars watching my people very closely. I'm their first line of defense in what the right wing calls a culture war.

Of course I have to scrape together seven bucks for the Sandia Court membership barbeque in Morningside Park on Sunday. And then I *should* have at least 3.50 on top of that for beer and tip for Foxes' chicken dinner, also on Sunday. Of course, I plan to eat my fill of chicken. Not that they'd very likely bug me if I didn't buy a thing and just chose chicken time to pop in, check my schedule, load up on chicken, and be on my merry way. This week at least the Ranch gets nothing from me, even if it is grand opening and they have greasy burgers an hour before Foxes has chicken. Oh well.

It's a phoenomenally complex network of patronage alliegances. You get tipped by the bartenders who tip you out of what they're tipped by customers and from that you go on to tip the drag queens what you can and all that money goes to charity, to Alzheimers Association, or to Pride, or to New Mexico AIDS Services. Those with the very least give most. The doorman (a.k.a. "the door whore") is not, in fact, the low man on the totem pole. Nah man, he hasn't got that honour. He's merely next to lowest.

The drag queen's the foundation on which the whole entire structure stands.

WIthout 'em we wouldn't have Pride. Or AIDS services. Or anything, for that matter, which we've fought tooth and nail for since the Christopher Street Revolt. The ones that fight the hardest are the ones with least to lose. The same ones who give most, and they give not just everything they have, but everything they are. All they demand of me is just a little leeway -- let 'em come in and put their stuff down for the show before I go insisting to see their IDs. Give 'em the dignity of a fabulous entrance the one night a week they can perform in their home bar. Hell, by this point I do know 'em, so why not? They know they need IDs to even be in the bar, by now I've seen 'em all. Fair enough. We've reached detente.

Tonight was a show night, a benefit for Pride. It was a bit of a fiasco, if not quite as bad as last week's benefit at AMC, where all of the performers wound up having to sing karaoke -- without microphones -- instead of lip sync the acts they had rehearsed. The shows are normally on Saturday, not Friday, so the guys who come for drag shows don't show up to begin with. Then, the venue got changed because of a quarrel between the owners of the Ranch and the Sandia Court's reigning Emperor; having been let down by the bar that they knew would be busy that night, they fall back on dependable Foxes. Posters didn't go up until two days before the show. And the Ranch was celebrating its grand opening, essentially congratulating itself for existing by being bought out by some absentee landlords way out in Palm Springs. So all the disconnected faggots and the queers who've never really had to struggle just to be were there to begin with because, lets face it, who wants to go to Foxes and watch bitchy old queens perform when we can head out to the Ranch and pick up cute young things to use and throw away and hope they die of AIDS before they get emotionally attached to us like the worthless leeches that we know they really are. So, long story very short: everyone was at the Ranch. Except, of course, the highest and the lowest ranked in the hierarchy of gay society, standing in sharp contrast at Foxes.

Not that it really is a rigid, formal hierarchy. It's sort of I Chingish: polarities change. Barflies morph into activists and back again with startling regularity. That is the beauty of it: the burnout that goes with any sort of activism and the desperate way out of that frustration and then back into the heart of things flow into, out of one another in the bars. Bartenders who don't drink -- or rarely drink -- or drink one drink per shift with perfect regularity -- are among the community's most deeply trusted leaders ("I did *what* last night?"), and no leader who has nothing whatever to do with the bars sooner or later either gets very far or lasts very long herding the human cats we know as queers.

At worst, the bars are our reality. Our hard reality. Way out past the old city limits on Highway 66 is a dingy dark disreputable little place called Foxes Booze 'n' Cruise. So unapologetically named because you go there first to drink the booze and then to cruise the patrons. When we were criminals in Texas we'd come up to Albuquerque just to get away, then have to head out to the city's fringes just to be with our own kind. This long before the Double Rainbow coffeeshop, or all-age community centers (which we *still* do not have in this town) or the internet or any glossy magazines about LGBT celebrities. This in the days of ink and paper mailing lists and plain brown wrappers and tearooms and bushes and arcades and hanky codes and undergroundish networks like the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society. No one who's never had to cross state lines to hold a loved one in their arms can ever really understand that.

And yet the gay bars are, sadly, no mere anachronism. We *need* them. Still. Why? Because, damn it, sometimes it's the best thing we've got. Yes, alcohol is poison: dreadfully powerful depressant. But it's also a strong disinhibitor, including even inhibitions most nefariously internalized from society at large like homophobia. Seven o'clock rolls 'round, people get lonely and restless, want to go someplace where they can not just know they're among their own kind, but work the courage up to do more than admire their own kind from a distance, if they can only just get drunk enough to say "hello" to someone other than the bartender, to not move away when someone of the same sex brushes up against you, to not break eye contact *too* quickly. Thus alcohol's poison serves as mercurial medicine to many. Terrible medicine to be sure, but without it, far too many of us would just destroy ourselves internally without its chemical assistance.

The bar itself, tonight, was divided into two distinct camps. On the doorman's left: the stage. On stage, the queens, and in the booths around the stage and dancefloor, the activist queers who maybe were barflies in their day but who you hardly see in bars at all these days, yet who came out specifically this day for the big benefit at Foxes. On the right: the bar. Around it, all the down-and-outers without two bucks to spare for Pride, but ten for four beers to get drunk on with no tips to go around for anyone.

There were perhaps 40, 50 people in the bar. Too many just walked out on seeing we were asking for two dollar donations per head at the door. Too many more just breezed on in intent on drink, or worse yet, downright lied ("I don't have two bucks") before sitting down to drown their woes in drink. The same guys who wouldn't bat an eye at paying three bucks cover to get into the AMC on Thursday, or five to get into the Pulse any time that stinking shithole's open (legally or otherwise) balk at giving two bucks to charity resulting in what to them's the biggest party of the year. The drunks couldn't care less whether there was a show, while those people unfamiliar with the place, there for the show first and foremost, got one low-down, sorry-ass impression of Foxes from the drunks in the worst form they've been in for a long damn time: morose, lethargic, and completely disengaged. Meanwhile, everyone who knows anything or cares just sort of wonders it survives.

Foxes is the bar that sponsors things in an extremely low key way. Pulse takes out full page, four-colour spreads in Pride programs annually; so everyone who goes to Pride gets the impression they support the gay community substantially. Foxes quietly sponsors daylong workshops on domestic violence by the only LGBTIQ shelter in the state and gets two words, "Foxes Lounge", more discrete than the bar's real name, printed at the bottom on the back of flyers handed out to the thirty or so people who show up, and does this kind of real community support time and again, and without fail. Pulse "gives" five thousand bucks to be listed as an "Angel" donor on high-profile events attended by the richest of the rich among us, Foxes spends five thousand bucks supporting youth outreach, AIDS services, churches (yes, churches), political organizations, and countless other priceless services in their day-to-day functions.

It's a little like the difference between the customer who quietly, almost apologetically tips a dollar every time and the customer who flashes out ten dollar tips maybe once a week for one of the more than one bartenders he's served by. One's a public display of largesse, the other's more effectively supportive, in the long run.

Guess which bar has earned my own respect to such a point that not only will I work there, I'll work there for peanuts. Actually, yeah. I sometimes literally work for peanuts. If I'm hungry when I go in, I'll eat peanuts, since most customers won't touch 'em, even though they're free. You'd think they think they're booby-trapped or poisoned. Maybe it's pure and simple vanity. "It's free at Foxes, so I can't touch it." As for me, I can gladly live on peanuts and popcorn and pretzels and chicken if I have to and love every last bit.

Why in god's name would I do that? Because for once I've been entrusted with a tough, vital responsibility and am getting paid for it besides. I have to keep the place safe, and the people in it safe. I have to keep it open. I have to hurry up to do the little real work I have to do in order to be able to sit or stand or dance the rest of the night away right near the door and just check everyone's ID and tell the drunks they can't come in.

The rewards? They love me. They really truly love me. Not because I'm "hot", or "easy", even though to most of them, I am. (I am a total story whore.) But because I keep them safe, whether that means sitting alert for hours when nothing's going on or snapping to complete attention and running like mad to do the impossible while maintaining the polished appearance that says "not only is nothing wrong, guys, but everything's right" when something actually does.

I'm hungry, yeah, but man oh man, I'm happy. I do not have to sleep alone. (Not that I can't whenever I want to.) And when I don't, well, that just reinforces the old bonds of honour between the itinerant traveller and the host who gives him a night's lodging, especially if the latter person's onnagata.

It's getting time to head on in to Foxes for another night of who knows what. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

National Poetry Slam MMV.

It's happening as I type. The Flying Star Downtown is PACKED. Every seat is filled and people stand around wherever there's a space. I've got the equivalent of Lincoln's Box at the Ford Theatre -- overlooking the stage from stage left and above. What a view! Lucky I got here when I did. What a show. Histrionic City. High energy performance, spiral staircase used for entries and exits. Bigtime audience participation. I've seen lots of poetry in lots of coffeeshops over the years -- this is the friggin' *ultimate*, I swear. Enough said. I can't concentrate to write, I need to be present in my physical place. Later.

A public announcement.

For the greater good.

My new job's biggest downside seems to be having to tell people you know that they cannot come in because they're glazed-eyed, reeking-of-alcohol, staggering around, falling-down DRUNK with a capital "D".

OK guys, it's time for a public annnouncement.

If you know me and you come to Foxes and I'm at the door and you're drunk off yer ass I ain't lettin' you in, period. Nothing personal. Really. I wouldn't let my own mother in if she were *ever* in a state like I've seen some of you (not that she ever has been). I just have zero interest in losing my job, spending time in jail, and facing a felony conviction because you think you're personally entitled to get in the door and order a drink on account of your knowing me outside of work. You can say "whatever" or call it "bullshit" all you want: if I'm sober and you're intoxicated, then it's *my* judgment call to make, and I will *not* let you in.

If it comes right down to it, and I very much hope it never does, I'd rather lose a freindship (especially with anyone who clearly can't control their drinking) and keep the bar safe and open for everyone else. It's the whole "greater good" type reasoning. If you think that makes me a jerk or an asshole, then oh well, you won't be the first or last addict to pass through my life who thinks that about me; I'll not only survive but move on with my life -- as in, before the next person comes through the door.

Same goes if you think you can get in without letting me check your ID. Yes I'm serious, no I'm not joking, no I don't care if I already know your real age or have seen you here a thousand times before, no I won't tell anyone how old you are, yes I really work here, and why would I be blocking access at the door if I were here to drink with everybody else. Same goes double if you cause *any* sort of trouble in the bar.

And please, beyond the friendly bear hug as you leave, *don't* grope me, however much a compliment you may mean it as, it ties me down. Flirting's OK, but damn it, for your own sake, keep your distance; I've got to be able to move fast. You want to mess around with me, wait 'till I have a night off, and no, I'm not giving you my number while on duty.

Now. If you're not totally wasted, come on in and have yourself a grand old time.

Second night at Foxes.

Zero margin of error.

Every single person from 9h42 to close who walked through the door had their ID checked, *very* thoroughly. The opening routines took me twelve minutes longer than they took Alex and me, together, yesterday. I'll bring that time down with practice. Starting at nine's OK, but that's about when Vice starts shutting places down, it seems. So basically, for that half hour, I rush -- I hurry up to wait.

Just for the written record, police cruiser E106 cruised through the lot around 11h42 PM bar time, turning west onto Central from the front exitrance.

We don't call it "Foxes Booze 'n' Cruise" for nothin'.

:) :)

Best way for me so far seems to be to stand *in* the door -- between the prospective customer(s) and the bar -- nonthreateningly blocking their forward motion, and smile and ask them very nicely, please, may I see your ID? Thank you. Would you mind taking it out? I *do need* to scan it. Thank you. Only one person resented my asking; she was black, I don't doubt she thought I was giving her a hard time just because of it. Oh well. She was also just barely of age. I'm sorry if she thinks I acted out of racism but then again that's her denfense against problems that I've never really faced. Good for her and more power to her.

From nine to eleven was dead. Just a few stragglers from happy hour nursing their final cheap beers. At eleven, the film crew from the east coast all came in. Lacking anything better to do having checked them all once they're in, I help out the barkeep -- who's new, not to the bar, but to that particular job *in* the bar -- to keep things running smoothly, cleaning ashtrays and bringing back glasses and such.

(I *love* Madonna, btw. Hated her in the '80s, of course, but wasn't working in a gay bar then, now was I? OF COURSE NOT. Monroe was but a prophet of Madonna.)

Pennsylvania. New York. New Jersey. Connecticut. New Hampshire. Nevada. Missouri. All different IDs with different layouts and different ways to check to see if it's real. Several different layouts even for the same state depending on when it was issued. I check it every way I can, look at it, memorize what's where on each, then check the guidebook to read up on what I've just seen. It sticks with me after I've held the card in my hand.

I did make one mistake. The gentleman from New Hampshire's driver's license was expired. He was clearly in his 30s, and was (if I remember right) 34, according to his ID. He'd grown a beard since then (it quite became him, too) but it was absolutely, positively him. He also had a bunch of other cards with his name on them -- none of which, of course, really proved anything I cared about. But in the press of there being a little line out the door -- the first I've seen at Foxes in a long time -- I figured if worst came to worst I'd lose my job but surely they wouldn't shut down the bar over a thing like that: the equivalent in my eyes of changing lanes having signalled twice within the space of 100 feet, or of finishing an otherwise correct lane change where the curb is coloured yellow. Not strictly letter of the law legal. I didn't know that -- now I do and it won't happen again. But last I looked they were just shutting down our bars by arresting bartenders, not by rounding us all up and checking all of our IDs.

Though that may very well be next, with the new police chief.

Quid ipsos custodes custodiet?

Felix.

The name I never use. Too complicated. Let it go unsaid. I am not felix.

I'm but a watchwatcher there partly to be admired as I sashay and swagger authoritatively around swinging the keys from my left belt loop.

Yes, my *left* belt loop.

If you don't know what that means, don't bother. Please.

No fights tonight. Good. One customer -- an honest to god straight man who just "likes to come over to the other side every now and then" commented admiringly at how every other place on Central's "going absoluely crazy" while even with 30 people descending on our bar out of the east coast all at once "absolute calm" reigns supreme at Foxes. Yes, I say to him, I've always felt the same and liked that about this place. I don't explain to him in detail *why* it's only like that here. I do admit that my chest swelled up a bit with pride at that comment. Just like it swelled when, hundreds of bicycle cops emerging from underground to "sweep" Pershing Square, that one guy, completely out of place, told me as he stood next to me standing otherwise alone between the handful of people milling about and the army of cops about to drive them back by force that I seemed a "very safe person to be around".

We have allies amongst the breeder population, it would seem. They cannot help the way they are, and some of them are genuinely good people, utterly secure in their identities, to such a point they can go to the seediest gay bar ever -- and feel totally at home. The same gay bar too many of my own kind shun for being seedy. For being in the wrong neighbourhood. For being "dirty". For daring to let in, and serve, and treat with the same respect as anyone, drag queens and "Indians". For having those strategically placed cobwebs, here and there, which hold the place together. There are some straights out there, it seems, who do deserve something not terribly unlike respect from me. God bless 'em, just so long as they don't start shit in *my* bar. My bar is open to any and all who won't cause trouble, and closed to all who will, whatever their proclivities and inclinations.

Yes. It's a gay bar.

The rest of the evening? Gloriously uneventful. No altercations between the drag queen and her drunken butch boyfreind (who I don't doubt for a moment is the real bottom in the privacy of their boudoir, poor pathetic little prick who probably can't get hard without getting his prostate pounded and can't stand to admit it to anyone who doesn't look like a natural woman). One guy did tell me not to let his boyfreind back because he was drunk, but hell. He didn't seem any more drunk to me than the guy telling me not to let him in. I didn't smell alcohol on his breath and he was otherwise OK, aside from whatever personal stuff they had between them. That's not my business. My business is to make sure that we stay open. Period!

There was one guy I seriously took to be -- oh please forgive me, I know not what other word to use -- retarded. (OK, I lied -- but I *do* rather like that word. To be fair, he did seem mentally impaired.) Not quite all there to begin with. Elevator going to the eleventh floor in a twelve storey Zigzag Moderne West Texas sandstone brick building from 1931, shall we say. Not that he was anywhere near as gorgeous as the architectural masterpiece of H.C. Trost's Bassett Tower in El Paso (and not that there's anything wrong with the Bassett Tower's elevator, much less that it's twelve and not fifteen stoeys). He was acting OK when he came in and of legal age and all that. His ID was completely OK and he gave me no trouble. No alcohol on his breath but after drinking one beer the bartender cut him off, observing, much as I did, he *was* OK at first, maybe a little slow or something, but now he's stumbling like mad. I literally clapped him on the shoulder, held his arm, and showed him out, thanking him for coming, when he decided to leave. I guess the water he was being served was not to his liking. Gawd only knows what's in the water here, what with Kirtland and Sandia's Low Level Radioactive Waste Dump and LANL upriver and over the aquifer and what have you. He wandered down the sidewalk stumbling often into Central.

Alas, I can't keep everybody everywhere safe. It's the police department's job to watch traffic and pedestrians on the sidewalk, not mine. Private business could never hope to cover the costs of such a thing, which as I understand it, is precisely why we pay sales tax on everything. Too bad they're too busy raiding the fag bars to bother with such mundane affairs as jaywalking and public drunkenness which net so precious little to the city coffers while merely keeping the streets safe. You know, as opposed to, say, shutting down all the fag bars and planting evidence of the sort that's recently gone missing from evidence lockers on local faggot bartenders.

Not that I'd have a problem with the police or the city acting as they do if they were a business. If they were a business they'd have to show a profit, and from a profit perspective it just makes more sense to shut down all the fag bars like they do than it does to enforce routine traffic codes. Not that I want the city to go bankrupt, mind you, but honestly. With the "1% for public art" program, if the little sweep they did of all the fag bars on the 13th of last month brings in maximum fines, that's what -- 3,500 bucks that'll go to what -- dumbass sculptures in the freeway medians? Puhlease. Why not spend that money, since it's already been allocated, for an endowment for something lasting? Like live theatre? You know -- something that won't just wind up in one person's pocket for a project that looks (arguably) great for five or ten years, then decays to look like crap before it has to be torn down because the taggers love it, but something that will provide an ongoing source of jobs and revenue and so on and so forth? Or why not spend it to build a park -- like right outside my damn window? Perfect spot for a park. Perfect. But no, the parking lot's too valuable.

Of course the city government is not -- or rather, should not be -- a profit making enterprise. Whole purpose of taxation combined with representative government as I understand it is that everyone pays to get something that everyone benefits from which no one *could* profit from if the private sector did it.

Mayor Chavez, I have a bold business initiative for you. If you really want to shut down all the fag bars in town, as you do seem determined to do, why not form a public-private partnership to hire all the unemployed queers in this town to go 'round once every election cycle and do it without involving city government directly at all? They could issue citizens' arrests of all the bartenders and doormen who do anything wrong, and the cops could do "catch and release" when they go down to the station. You get the feather in your cap and we get some good paying jobs. Everyone's happy.

"My god! Your sanitizer water's at 101ppm. It *should* be between 50 and 100, silly faggot. You're under arrest."

"OK. Silly me. I guess I'm closing now and heading to the station. I'll be back in an hour, OK?"

"OK."

Perhaps you could give such a corporation some generous tax credits for employing minority populations.

Because guess what. That's just about the *only* way you'll shut *us* down.

First night at Foxes.

OK. All the doorman's side duties first. Take out the trash. Mop the bathrooms. Stock up on beer. The tour: the back room, the ice machine, the prop closet, the dressing room, the beer room, the cooler, the office, the patio. And there you have it, more or less: that's Foxes.

All of that stuff's done in just about 30 minutes.

Thus begins the rest of the night. The hurry up and wait game which is the real reason that you're there. You check *everybody's* ID. Without exception. Even people that you know. It's awkward, but that's my job; if we get hit by undercovers while I'm on duty, it's *my* responsibility. I'm the first line of defence. The rumour is the cops are gonna be doing another sweep eastbound on Central this weekend. The sooner I establish those good habits -- just like I signal *every* turn and lane change, even in parking lots -- the better. Make it absolutely automatic.

Learn what to look for in IDs. Saw IDs tonight from Florida, Arizona, Nevada and of course New Mexico and it wasn't even remotely busy. All of 'em different. Check birthdate. Check expiration date -- when it has one -- some don't. Check name, connect in mind with picture. With drag queens check the nose and ears and neck: the parts that don't get made up, normally. Trick is simply not to let *anybody* in the door until you've seen ID and verified it just the way French immigration officials do. State law: they have to have ID just to be there in the first place. If they make it to the bar, and that person's undercover, you're in a load of trouble. So is the bartender. So is the bar. Everybody's card gets swiped through the machine. If it won't swipe you make 'em wait while you enter the information manually. The machine spits out their age making everyone cringe (and giving you knowledge no single person should ever possess in a gay bar), but more importantly, it keeps a paper trail on hand that x number of people were checked between a certain time and close. Believe it or not, that's all it tells you, too -- no names, no addresses, no nothing like that. It doesn't store the information or send it anywhere. That way I can have a paper trail to back me up if ever I have to testify that I check *everyone*, without exception.

Learned really fast to stick as close to the door as I possibly can. Certainly 'til I know what I'm doing and what the rhythms of the rushes are on different nights. You'll wait around for an hour or more and no one will come in, then literally, turn your head for two seconds and *bam* there's someone heading for the bar, unchecked. Then you have to run to catch 'em and your sentinel's position of power to deny or grant entry at the door is broken as you chase 'em down and make a fool of yourself before you ever get around to opening your mouth to ask for their IDs, by which point all you can do is hope it's someone who won't mind being asked.

I'm gonna get resentment in this job and I can tell already. Oh well! I'd rather have a handful of variously bad-tempered drunks think I'm some sort of jerk than see our bar closed for a single moment by my own inattention.

Then there are the guys who flirt with you. I'm getting better at accepting this. It used to really bug me. Freak me out. As in, oh sure, there's nothing wrong with wanting sex with other men, but do you have to *show* it, outwardly? Thank god I'm past all that, eh, more or less. (There's always progress to be made on that front.) Besides which I am such a slut at this point (and who in town *doesn't* know it? True or not, that *is* my outward attitude; I find it serving me quite well.) that I pretty much have to take it with some grace. Eye contact's *not* a bad thing, if it's given with good intention.

Plus there's a common misconception in this town that all the doormen at Foxes are "hot", whatever that means. Everyone at all the other bars goes there at the end of the night -- yes, I've heard this many times, from many different people, specifically to "flirt with the doorman at Foxes". You might say it's part of the traditional rituals surrounding the various bars in this town. This one slightly older couple were pretty much both all over me like a big teddy bear. I think -- heh, no, I pretty much *know* -- they wanted to take me home and do -- well, something much more fun than teach me how to spot fake IDs. But I was firmly in "safe" mode. I do not sleep with customers. Never have and never will. Nothing personal, you handsome guys, just policy. (Mine, not the bar's -- but they don't need to know everything, now do they? I thought not.)

Then you start on the closing routines. Go around, lock some doors, Shut off a few lights, turn on others. Objective is to have all the drinks gathered up by two minutes to two. Before two all the doors *must* be locked, the place has to be absolutely empty. By law. Especially in a bar the new (homophobe) police chief would love any excuse to shut down. Same for the mayor, who's up for re-election, and therefore "getting tough" on anything and everything to do with us. At half an hour before close you go up to the bar and all take your shift drink with the bartender and whoever else is working. You drink a toast. It's the tradition.

Quick digression for political commentary. If you're gay, or lesbian, or transgendered, and you live in Albuquerque, and you don't vote this October, or if you do vote and you vote for Mayor Chavez, you're either a total fuckin' idiot or a traitor. Don't expect your drinks to be made very well.

At ten to two -- bar time -- the last guy comes in. Alex says to him I don't want you starting any trouble. So of course this last person comes in and immediately starts yelling at a drag queen who's been sitting quietly at the bar much of the night. "It's gonna be either NOW or LATER!" Practically attacks her, good enough, Alex goes over to intercept and I stand behind the attacker. I grab him by an arm -- I should have grabbed him by both arms -- he's trying to pull this person who I take to be his partner off the bench with his free arm and just keeps yelling about "now or later". He's far too wasted to fight well -- lucky for me. I pull him back towards the door while Alex and about half the people at the bar start marching him backwards. Get him out to the little foyer between the inner door and street door and it basically continues back and forth like that, eventually all verbal. Alex finally forcibly ejects him. He comes back a minute later, shouting that she's got his keys and he wants the key to the apartment. I stand between the two conflicted parties, blocking the inner door with my arm. She gives him the apartment key. He leaves. He comes back 30 seconds later demanding the car key. Eventually he leaves when she goes out with him to the parking lot. Security shows up. They're yelling back and forth. It's in the parking lot, not in the bar. It's not our problem.

Meanwhile that couple just keep flirting with me, just as if nothing's happened. Charming, I'm sure. I hate to say it but if I'd been drinking like they were and was as horny I'd probably be no less oblivious of everything that had occurred in light of a prospective hookup to keep flirting with the guy who's now got adrenaline pumping through his every vein.

The bar is closed.

Count beer and stock it. Rotate stock in back cooler. Turn off remaining lights, the night is done.

It was the first time I have taken any part in any physical altercation since I was 13 years old.

Get this. I liked it. Why? It was purely defensive. This person came in out of nowhere threatening our safety and that was enough for me to make a move. His being queer had no bearing on anything: he threatened *our* safe space. Between everyone else -- but especially Alex, who is professional through and through -- the situation was handled well. No one got hurt. Nothing less would have sufficed. There was no reasoning at all with this agressor. He was bent on violence and we had to get him out, and that's all there was to it. Very clear-cut. I didn't think I'd be capable of what I did. Winds up I was.

Looking forward to going in to work tonight.

Be well.

Would you believe it?

I have a job.

A real, honest-to-god, on-the-schedule job.

I walk into Foxes late last night and Sid asks me if I'm still interested in the doorman position -- it's been a long time since I put in my application there. I say if he's still looking I'm very interested. I'm basically hired on the spot -- I'm going in tonight at nine (bar time) to train with Alex. You know, Alex, the doorman, who was the guy the Vice Squad didn't even want to try and get past.

I think Sid must be a little crazy. Or maybe just desperate for a doorman. Or maybe they figure I actually will take calculated risks when necessary to keep the bar safe, after my name gets in the paper and all that. It's four nights a week -- including most of the busiest nights -- so I'll be in the bar but not drinking. Perfect.

I got a haircut and bought a slick and nifty shirt to celebrate. Not smart I guess to spend that money but hell. I really needed the haircut and the owner of the shop next door came in while I was getting my hair cut and he's a small business owner and I actually like his sense of style and he's queer so what the hell I'll go and buy me a shirt, from him, the first new one I've bought in ages.

Looking forward to this. Later.