This happened in the early '90s. One Saturday night, I went to a bar near a police precinct in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. The bar is closed now. It was called Kelly's. I had just turned 18 and had to use fake ID to drink. I was a typical Brooklyn kid but still wet behind the ears. Guys had started to come on to me, but I was still struggling with my sexuality and I passed up a lot of opportunities—-which is something that I regret now! I had done some experimenting with other boys, but for me, sex was still a mystery waiting to be explored.
An older married friend had introduced me to Kelly's a few weeks before. I later found out my friend was bi, but I didn't know it at the time. Anyway, Kelly's wasn't a gay bar. It was a laid-back place with sports on TV , some video games and a pretty good jukebox. What made it interesting was that I could count on some members of the local precinct showing up to drink with their buddies. While my friend and I usually sat at the bar up front, the cops always took tables in the rear. Some were in uniform and some in civvies, and they always seemed to stick to themselves.
On that Saturday night I went to Kelly's alone. From my perch at the bar I would glance at the cops from time to time, because I had begun to feel that there was something about cops that intrigued me. Even if it didn't make a lot of sense, their presence seemed to add a mysterious charge to the air. I knew it had to do with manliness, but I was also fascinated by men who had learned how to strike a balance between helping people and having to use rough tactics. I never spoke to those cops. I just liked to watch them and imagine what it might be like to be one of them.
By 10 p.m. that Saturday, I was on my third beer. All that liquid had begun to get to me, so I headed for the men's room. Kelly's was not fancy, and there were only two small urinals with no partition between them. I was standing at one urinal when a tall, handsome man came in and stood at the other one. He wore aviator glasses and his brown hair was cut short. He was wearing a light blue polo shirt over a broad chest and muscular arms, and since I had seen him sitting with the cops, I figured he must be one too. While I stood there pissing, I couldn't help glancing as the guy pulled out his cock. It was enormous—at least 9 inches long and thick. The piss shot out of it, and I had to keep from staring. Then—and this was the weird part—I thought the guy's eyes were straying toward my own penis. But that seemed impossible. I finished pissing. As I shook the last drops from my cock, he gave me a little grin and met my eyes.
What was happening? Inside, I was dissolving, but I managed to say, "This is a pretty cool place, huh?"
The guy said, "It's okay. Depends on what you're into." As he walked off, I felt him graze my ass with his hand.
Did he really? He couldn't have. Or if he did, it must have been an accident. Feeling a little shaky, I went back to the bar, and he rejoined his friends at a table. Whatever had happened was over. I decided I had imagined the whole thing.
Yes, I must have imagined it.
But five minutes later the tall guy walked up to where I sat and swung onto a stool next to mine. Startled, I gave him a cautious smile.
He said, "How's it going?" and ordered a beer and said, "Those assholes back there tell the same fucking jokes every night. I'd rather talk to a normal person for a change. He grinned and said, "You are a normal person, aren't you?"
I laughed and said, "More or less."
He laughed too and started slugging beer from his bottle. A news show came on TV, and it contained a report of a hit-and-run accident in Williamsburg. I said, "Why do people do things like that?"
He said, "Hit and run? Shit! Because they're scared little pussies that won't take responsibility for their own actions. They're afraid to be a man. By the way, my name's Rick."
I felt a warm flush come over me and told him my name. We shook hands, and I said, "I was wondering if you're a cop."
He said, "Does it show?"
I laughed. "A little."
He went on to tell me about a woman he had arrested a week earlier for assaulting a neighbor. He said, "She said she'd blow me every week if I forgot about the thing, and she pulled out her boobs. They weren't all that great so I cuffed her." We both laughed again, and after a while our conversation moved on to other things. I explained that I was working part-time in a fast-food joint and was hoping to get into film school, but I knew it wouldn't be an easy road.
"Yeah," Rick said. "A lot of things in life aren't easy. But when there's something you really want, you have to go for it."
I said, "I intend to."
