The Hoover

It was very late and I found myself rushing to get to theatre before curtain time. I didn't have a ticket but I was sure I would be able to get a single at the box office. The outer lobby was extremely crowded, but I made my way to the window and said to the lady, "A single for this evening, please."

I don't recall her asking me whether I wanted a cheaper seat upstairs or a better seat in the orchestra, but she handed me a ticket and I paid for it. I realized that it would be better if I visited the men's room before the performance started.

"Where is the men's room?" I asked her.

"We don't have a men's room," she answered me.

I stared at her in consternation. How could a big crowded theatre not have a men's room?

"You don't have a men's room?" I asked her loudly, my amazement registering in my voice. What was I supposed to do?

"No," she answered. "You'll have to use the one in THE HOOVER."

THE HOOVER? Where the hell was THE HOOVER? Did all these hundreds of people have to go over to THE HOOVER?

"Where is THE HOOVER?" I asked her.

"About a block over," she said. A block over? People had to go a block over simply to use the rest room? I was appalled.

"I know where it is," said a gentleman next to me, who had obviously overheard everything. "Come with me. I'll show you."

We walked out of the theatre back onto the street, then down the block, then we crossed an intersection, and on the other side of the intersection I saw a string of rundown storefronts. And over one of them in large jagged block wooden letters, was written THE HOOVER.

I thanked the man, and crossed the street. I don't think he came with me. And I don't remember even having any conversation with him as we were walking from the theatre to THE HOOVER. But now I was alone, and standing in front of the seedy looking storefront. I opened the door and entered.

Right away I saw that it was a bar. A ramshackle bar in a distressed neighborhood. And this is where they were sending people to use the men's room? It was all so unlikely.

I looked around the room and there were a dozen or more ruffian-type men, blue-collar workers, in torn crumpled blue jeans and un-ironed shirts with open half- unbuttoned fronts, showing chest fur. They were all young and most had facial hair. Moustaches or beards or both. They were all what I consider to be trailer-trash. They looked tough and they looked mean, and I looked very out of place, dressed for the theatre as I was.

They didn't seem to be paying any attention to me. They were just drinking and talking. Drinking and talking and smoking.

I looked in the far left corner beyond the bar and saw a wooden door with 'MEN'S' painted on it in red letters. I would have to pass many people to get there. Would I have to buy a drink first? I didn't know what to do. I felt really uncomfortable and a little afraid. I knew I had to use the men's room, and moved toward it trying to attract as little attention as possible.

I opened the door and looked in. It was white and shabby and thank-god empty. I crossed over and stood before a urinal, and just as I was drawing down my zipper I heard the door opening. I looked over my shoulder and it was one of the handsome rough-looking men I had seen in the other room (though they all looked very much alike). He was coming toward me, drawing down the fly on his pants. In a moment he would be standing next to me and I felt that I would want to look down at the penis he would be holding in his hand at the next urinal.

I don't remember when I have ever felt so afraid. So afraid and so excited. My throat was completely dry and I could barely breathe, and something was about to happen. And I woke up.

I had been sleeping. It had all been a strange dream. Whatever did it mean? My forehead was flushed with perspiration, and I sat up in my bed. No. No. No. I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. I wanted to be back there. Back in THE HOOVER.

Usually when you wake up you can't remember what you dreamed, but I remembered it all so clearly. The jagged wooden block letters outside the rundown storefront, spelling THE HOOVER. I would never forget that place. I wanted to go back at once. I lay down and pulled the covers up over me, but try as I might, I could not fall back to sleep.

Eventually, an hour or so later, the alarm went off and it was time for me to get dressed and go to work. I would never forget that place. THE HOOVER. But by lunchtime at the office, when I started thinking about the dream, the name of the bar was gone. I had forgotten it. How could I have forgotten it? I should have written it down, because now it was gone. I had been stupid. I felt an awful despair, because if I didn't know the name of the place, how would I ever be able to return there? And I wanted to go back there. So very, very much. Damn. Damn. Damn. Stupid. Stupid.

But then, while I was sharpening a pencil, out of nowhere it popped back into my head. THE HOOVER. The name of the bar was THE HOOVER. It had come back to me. Thank god.

Yes. That was it. It was THE HOOVER. This time I wrote it down on a small piece of paper, which I folded carefully and put next to my driver's license in my wallet. I needed to get back there. Back to THE HOOVER. I needed to experience what would happen next. I had to find it again. Somehow. Somehow.

Day's passed. Nights passed. Dreams came and disappeared without me even remembering that I had even had a dream. It was all so disappointing. More than anything I've ever wanted in my life, I wanted to be back at THE HOOVER.

Perhaps, I could find it. Perhaps I had seen it in real life, and it become implanted subconsciously in my mind. I went to the telephone book. Nothing. There was a Hoover vacuum repair store. There was a Hoover stationery store. There was a Hoover Dry Cleaners. There was Edward Hoover. There was Helen Hoover. There was P. Hoover. There was Quincy Hoover, M.D. But there was no Hoover bar or bar and grill.

I drove downtown and walked the streets. I didn't even know what theatre I had gone to in my dream. Had I ever been there? What was I going to see? Nothing, just nothing, looked like the landscape I remembered upon waking that morning.

Well. If I couldn't return to THE HOOVER, perhaps there was someplace like THE HOOVER. I explored the city. I drove into an exceedingly rundown disreputable section of town frequented by lower class laborers. One of the streets had a row of neglected looking storefronts. And one of them was a bar, but the name Maloney's was painted in red on the front window. Still, I thought I would investigate Maloney's.

I drove through an alley into the back parking lot and tried the rear door of Maloney's but it was locked. I walked back down the dark alley to the street and entered through the front entrance.

There were not too many people there. They all looked like day laborers. They were mostly overweight. Nothing like the gangly, long-haired, dangerous looking men I had seen in my dream. There were no scraggly beards. No mysterious moustaches. They were all wearing different sorts of work clothes and drinking beer. All the stools were occupied, with loud loutish type men watching the football game on television, and cheering on the Tacklers. Here, as in my dream, I felt out of place. I was wearing a business suit and a silk necktie and stood out like a sore thumb. And lord knows I had no interest in the Tacklers game.

I knew I had to order a drink. I looked around. Everyone was drinking beer out of a bottle. Some of them were playing pool in a far corner. There was a lot of smoking, despite the fact that the city has an ordinance against smoking in public places. The smell of tobacco was overpowering. I would have to send my suit to the cleaner's tomorrow.

I stepped up to the bar.

"What'll it be?" The bartender asked me.

"A scotch and soda," I said. He gave me a funny look. As if I were being oh so high and mighty. But I was not going to order a beer just to be less conspicuous. I hate beer. And I already looked out of place, so what difference did it make?

I stood there primly sipping my scotch and soda, but nobody was really paying very much attention to me. Actually that was comforting to me. But across the room, behind the pool table I noticed a young man. He was very handsome, in a vicious sort of way. I tried not to look at him, but I couldn't help stealing glances. Unfortunately, he seemed to know that I was looking at him. He pretended to look beyond me as his lips twisted into a sneering smile.

I took another sip. I sneaked another peak. He raised the beer bottle to his lips and swigged, his eyes glancing off me on their way to the ceiling. What was I doing here? This was all new to me. What was this strange new attraction?

In my younger years I had dated and partied like all the other boys, but as they all married and had families, I retreated further into my own little world holding down an office job Monday through Friday. On the weekends I drove out to the country to do a little bird watching. Occasionally I went over to my sister's house for dinner and to see the kids. Nothing exciting.

I had never had any desire to wed. I could never understand what people were talking about when they said they fell in love. It had never happened to me. And I was not a terribly sexual person. I had had a few experiences, which did not excite me, and I had had trouble keeping an erection. The women always tried to soothe me and tell me it didn't matter, but after a while I didn't want to put myself through that anymore.

I did occasionally 'abuse myself' as the saying goes, but with no particular fantasy, except perhaps the photograph of a large penis entering a mouth, or a vagina, or even a rectum. I liked looking at it. I just didn't want to do it myself.

My eyes darted across the room and the young man was not leaning against the wall where he had been. I quickly surveyed the area and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw him a few feet away talking to another young hoodlum type person. He registered that I had tracked and found him, and again came that cruel smile, which I knew was meant for me, and not for the person with whom he was now conversing

He had very white skin and brilliant blue eyes, but his hair and eyebrows were pitch-black. A startling combination. He was wearing a baseball tee shirt, and form-fitting trousers, all of which betrayed his every muscle and curve. He was exciting. I wished that I could know him. I didn't know why I wanted to know him or what we could ever talk about or do together. Surely he would not be interested in bird watching. And what reason would I have to go over and talk to him? What would I say? What would we ever have in common? But now I wanted to know everything about him. His name, his age, his interests. Everything. I wondered if we could ever become friends.

He seemed to make a little joke to his companion, and he kind of rubbed the front of his pants, and they both laughed, and he was heading towards me. But no. He was heading to my left, and I saw the door there. It was the men's room. He was drawing his zipper down even as he was crossing the crowded bar. I choked on a small ice cube.

It was at that very instant that I knew I needed to use the rest room. But I didn't dare go in while he was there. He would have thought I followed him. I would wait. I waited and I waited. He did not come out for another ten minutes.

I waited until he assumed his earlier slouch against the far wall, before I dared to down the last of my drink and set the glass on the bar. Only then did I walk casually towards the men's room. I made sure not to look either to the right or to the left. My eyes were glue fixedly to the men's room door. I entered.

It was a small room with rotting wooden walls. There were two urinals side by side, and when you stood in front of either of them, the door to one of the two stalls was directly behind you. There was hardly room to pass. Luckily I was the only one now in the men's room.

I stepped up to the far urinal and unzipped my fly. I was just reaching in for my penis when the door flew open and someone stepped up to the next urinal. I kept my eyes squarely in front of me. I wondered if it were the handsome young man who had been fascinating me so. But I didn't dare to look. I tried to concentrate on going. But I must have had some kind of psychological block, because as much as full as my bladder was, I could not empty it.

My face broke out into a sweat. I heard a liquid stream raining against the white porcelain of the facility to my right, but my own stream would not start. The stream to my right stopped but the man did not leave. I thought he might be looking at me. Could he suspect that I was lingering for some distasteful purpose? Certainly not! This was embarrassing.

I knew I should zip up, but I still needed to relieve myself. Finally I cautiously looked to my right.

The man was kind of a rough construction type fellow in his early forties, I would say. I noticed that his rolled up sleeve exposed some kind of military tattoo on an impressive looking bicep. His hair was just starting to go gray, and he had sideburns. He was not classically handsome, but he was rugged and not unattractive.

When I looked at him, he stared directly into my eyes.

"I'm having a little trouble," I explained, laughing. "I can't seem to be able to go."

"I haven't seen you here before," he said.

"No. This is my first visit. I was driving by and noticed the place and just stopped in for a drink. Do you come here often?" I asked him.

"Sometimes," he said obliquely, looking into my eyes and then down at his penis, which, I think, he was gently squeezing.

"Do you want to suck my cock?" He asked me, in a very blunt fashion.

"No. No." I blustered.

"I think you do. I think you came down here to suck cock. But that's fine. I like to get my cock sucked. Go ahead."

"No. Really. I just had to use the men's room."

He didn't believe me. "We can go into the stall there," he tilted his head to the stall behind me. "We can shut the door and slide the lock, and you can sit on the seat and I'll stand in front of you, and if someone comes in, you just raise your legs so they can't be seen under. No one will know. It's okay."

His words were stimulating me and I was becoming erect. Now I would never be able to go.

"Come on," he said. "I'll show you how big it gets. You'll really like it."

I had never even contemplated doing anything like that, but now the idea of it was filling me with a strange excitement. I was being torn in two. Part of me wanted to precede him into the stall and service the penis, which was going to get very large, and part of me was middle-class and offended. And also a little afraid. But the fear was an intoxicant. My penis got hard in my hand. Harder than it had ever been in my entire life. The thought of doing something so unimaginable and so forbidden was filling me with a new lustful desire. My bourgeois sensibilities had suddenly disappeared. I was just about to acquiesce, when the men's room door opened, and two burly middle-aged types came in arguing about the ongoing Tacklers game. That changed everything.

The man beside me immediately flushed, zipped himself up and left the room, and I forced myself back into my pants and followed. I needed to urinate, but I was not good at doing it with an audience. I was shy. I wondered what would have happened to me if I had ever been in the military, with that total lack of privacy. I hear they don't even have doors on the stalls. I would die.

I knew I should leave, but I spotted the handsome slim, blue-eyed, white-skinned, black-haired man again. He hadn't moved. He was still leaning against his wall. His eyes caught mine and only moved away when he threw his head back to pour another swallow of beer into his throat. I ordered another scotch and soda.

I stood there, alone, drinking at the bar, feeling a strange desire to know the tantalizing man across the room. But I was never going to go over to speak to him, and he was never going to come over to me. So finally when I finished my second drink, I put the glass down on the counter and headed for the door. I still needed to use the men's room, but not here. I would find a deserted area and pull to the side of the road.

I went out the door and back into the dark night. I walked ten paces, and heard the bar door close another time as I turned into the alley. Footsteps were following me into the alley. I wondered if I were entirely safe here. But I was probably just being neurotic.

The person behind me was probably only walking to his car in the parking lot behind the bar, just as I was doing. I did not hasten my pace. I did not, in any way, want to betray that I was afraid. I was casual. Very casual.

I knew that when I got to the end of the alley and turned toward my car, I would be able to get a glimpse of whoever it was behind me. I did and saw that it was him. The handsome young man whom I had been watching all evening. And who, I now knew, had been watching me. But I just kept walking toward my car.

I thought that at that point his footsteps would go in another direction, toward his own vehicle, but he stayed right behind me. I was sweating a little now, as I pulled out my car keys and inserted the correct one into the lock.

"Got a light?" he asked me, a long cigarette dangling comfortably from his lips. He was scarcely six inches away.

"No. No. I don't smoke," I told him. Had he followed me into the parking lot?

"I notice you got a lighter on your dashboard," he observed, looking through the window.

"Well, yes, but...."

"You wouldn't mind if I got in and just lit my cigarette would you?"

"I really have to get home," I explained. "I have to get up early."

"Fuck. I really need a smoke. Be a pal."

"I really don't think...."

"Be a pal," he urged me in a very compelling voice. I nodded. In the back of my mind was that I could open the driver's door and jump in and quickly lock it behind me. Yes. That would be my plan. But as I turned the key, and pressed down on the handle, he kind of pushed me aside and climbed in. Now he was in the driver's seat. I was afraid he was going to steal my car.

I stood there immobile for a minute as he pushed in the cigarette lighter, and then he swung over into the right hand seat.

"Get in," he said. "I'll just take a few puffs." He pulled out the red-hot lighter and touched it to the end of his cigarette. I was afraid, but I got in. It was my car, and hopefully he would get out the right-hand door in a moment.

He drew deeply and exhaled a hearty cloud of nicotinic smoke into my face. He was still holding the lighter, which was still glowing red.

"I seen you looking at me all night," he said casually.

"No. I wasn't I noticed you, of course, but I wasn't really looking at you."

"You're a fucking liar. You were cruising my body. I could see it. I even gave you the chance to meet me in the men's room."

"No. I wasn't." I protested. Both of us knew I was lying.

"I figure you're one of those high class queers who come downtown for a taste of real-man dick. Right?"

That was really offensive. I had done no such thing. Why had I gone in there? I was trying to recreate a dream I had had which had also taken place in a seedy bar. But the bar was not Maloney's. It was THE HOOVER. And the men at THE HOOVER held an unbelievable fascination for me that even this handsome fellow did not. In addition, I knew that I was a lot safer in my dream, than I now was in the front seat of my own car, in this deserted parking lot, down a dark alley, behind Maloney's bar.

He kept the cigarette dangling from his lips, not holding it at all, as he reached down and undid his belt buckle. His pants were tight, so he would have to lower them to really free himself. He drew out his member and started displaying it for me as it grew longer and thicker, and there was even a little ooze of pre-cum on the knob.