I was a gay man in my late twenties, living in Toronto in the late nineteen-seventies. I was no magazine Pin-Up Boy, but, my slim six foot tall body, blue eyes, dark hair, clone-style mustache, chunky bum and decent-sized uncut cock meant I did OK playing the field in the city's thriving leather community.
Another reason for any success I might have had was the fact that I didn't bother competing for beautiful, willowy twinks or handsome muscle bunnies. While other guys salivated over hot young men, I spent my time cruising the city's hot leather bars and kinky steam baths, looking out for the older dominant man that I adored. Like most cities, Friday night in Toronto was a prime cruising night. Having finished work for the week, guys would head to the bars early on and be feeling better and better as the night went on. So, if one of those masterful men didn't take me home after the bars closed, I could usually get a guaranteed fuck at the steam baths.
However, on this particular Friday night, I'd travelled north, almost to the end of the subway line to meet my female co-workers at a suburban bar/restaurant to celebrate one's upcoming wedding. Since I really liked her, I hadn't whined too much about having to go all the way into the 'burbs. I'd even talked my best friend Jimmy to come with me, since the women had asked if I'd like to bring a friend so that I wouldn't be the only man at the party, along with eight women.
I knew Jimmy would charm them, and he proceeded to do just that. The fact that he was pretty obviously gay was no problem for the women since they'd quickly figured out who I was. Unlike the other male employees at our aggressively straight, financial workplace, I never mentioned a girlfriend, I didn't leer at the younger women from my desk as they walked past, and I didn't "accidentally" rub up against them while standing at the Xerox machine. Since I never acted like a straight guy they assumed correctly that I wasn't.
The restaurant was nice enough, with lots of people having fun like us. Our group proceeded to let its collective hair down, laughing and joking and gossiping about the bosses and trashing the straight guys from work. Jimmy became super popular by taking some of the girls "discoing" to the music of Saturday Night Fever (top of the charts that year) on the restaurant's tiny dance floor.
The sight of eight women at one table accompanied by two men attracted the attention of some of the straight guys there that night, especially since the girls dancing with Jimmy were very attractive twenty-somethings. The hopeful (and horny) guys hovered around our table like bees to honey, but as the night went on, the lack of response from the girls (who were all either married or had serious boyfriends) eventually discouraged them.
Since the women all had partners waiting for them at home, the party broke up well before ten o'clock, with Jimmy already having said goodbye, eager to get downtown in time to visit his and my favourite leather bar. Feeling responsible for "my ladies", I hung around until the last of them had got into a taxi or been picked up by their husbands, and once they were all safely dispatched homewards, I went over to the bar for a final drink before heading home.
While tasting what turned out to be a surprisingly strong Martini, I nodded politely to a couple of younger guys sitting along from me, who I recognized as being amongst those disappointed by my "girlfriends" earlier in the evening. One of them gave me the dead eye, presumably blaming me for hogging the girls all night, but the other nodded back pleasantly enough.
Liking the bartender's Martini enough to order a second, I sat back to enjoy the straight dating game being played around me. I'd rarely been present at a straight bar at pick-up time, so it was fun to check out the differences between straight people and gay guys. I sat quietly, sipping my drink and enjoying the view from a "sociological" point of view (!) until I heard the unfriendly guy tell his friend that since all the hot girls had left, there was no point in hanging around. He was right; the place was emptying out, and even I could see that the number of available women for pick -up was close to zero. The other guy replied that he'd just finish his drink and then he'd be on his way as well.
With no one else left, he started chatting to me, which I found to be no problem, since he was very good looking. In his early twenties, he was dark haired, clean shaven, about my height and weight but far more muscular. I told him my name was Ben and he said his was Wayne and pretty soon was telling me about being an apprentice plumber living with his parents in a suburb even further north, and about his older brother that he obviously hero-worshipped. He looked so sexy, sitting there in his designer jeans and tight t-shirt that I would have gone for him in a heartbeat if it had been a gay bar. But he was a straight guy in a super-straight environment; so our conversation kept to the usual guy stuff; mostly sports with occasional swerves into TV shows, rock music, and politics.
Eventually of course, he had to ask about all those women I'd spent time with and he'd been ogling all night.
"Hey man, you had a couple of hot babes with you and you let them go home without you. How come you didn't make a move on any of them? You're an OK looking guy and they seemed to like you. I'll tell you; if it was me I'd be home fucking that blonde with the big tits silly by now!"
Being 1977, gay visibility was pretty much zero outside a few downtown neighbourhoods in North America. I was out to the "girls" at work, and to my family and friends and downtown acquaintances and I was a regular at gay bars and other gay-friendly spaces. But outside that circle, gayness was still a big no-no, with the distinct possibility of actual physical violence. So, even though I would have liked to tell the truth, my answer had to be a careful lie.
"Yeah, well; that was a bridal shower/ office party. I work with those women, and they seem to like me, so they invited me and my friend along. I don't want to mess things up back at work by going after one of them; you know how it is."
"I guess so, but I've still got a hard-on thinking about putting it into her. She was hot, man, plus there were a couple other real babes. How can you work with 'em without having to rub one out in the bathroom every fucking lunch time"?
I laughed awkwardly and quickly changed the subject back to sports. As we kept talking I found I liked him more and more. He had a fun sense of humour, and we shared many of the same opinions. We ended up finishing our drinks at roughly the same time and when we got up to leave I realized that I shouldn't have had the second of those Martinis on top of what I'd drunk earlier. I felt dizzy for a moment and when I stumbled the only thing that prevented me from falling on my ass was my new straight friend putting his arm out to save me.
Once I was steady, he jokingly said he'd better see me to my car. When I told him I was headed to the subway, he offered me a lift downtown. He'd said earlier that he sometimes stayed at his older brother's place when he wanted to hit the downtown dance clubs on weekends, and since we'd also realized how close my apartment building was to his brother's, it'd be easy to drop me off. I accepted his offer, partly because it wouldn't put him out of his way, and partly because I really liked being around this sexy boy. Too much booze was helping my dick overrule my normal hesitation around straight men.
Once we were in the car and heading downtown, he talked about my women friends again, demonstrating an understandable obsession with the "hot girls". That was no surprise to me, since I often noticed double-takes from men when I went out for lunch with them. After I managed to evade his questions about my relations with the girls, he surprised me by asking about Jimmy.
"Hey, what's up with that other guy you were with? Larry, the guy sitting next to me at the bar, said he stared at me while he was doing all that poofy disco-dancing. Larry thought he was a faggot. What do you think? Is that true?"
"Poofy" was bad enough but the word faggot made me lose my cool. I should have been used to it, since it was a regular term of abuse in those days, appearing regularly in city newspaper columns and on talk radio. But I'd always hated it; and it disgusted me even more since some thugs had shouted it at me as I left a bar the previous Saturday night. Hearing it applied to my dearest friend made me lose my temper.
"He's not a faggot. Don't fucking call him that. He's gay and for your information, so am I. If that means you don't want me in your car, let me out here. I can walk to the subway."
