“And why does stupidity, perceived or otherwise, justify your anger?”
Dan felt his face flush. “Because it just does.”
“Was your father a stupid man?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Can we change the subject?”
Martin stared like a man watching something squirm at the end of a hook. “Don’t you think we should explore what made you so angry about the dog’s disobedience?”
“No. Let’s change the subject.”
Martin made a few more scribbles in his book. “Fine,” he said. “I understand that you don’t feel like being challenged on this issue today.”
Dan’s teeth were clenched, but he kept his voice low. “Look, Martin, you don’t have to tell me that you understand or that you don’t understand. I don’t care. I just don’t want to talk about the fucking dog.”
Martin paused then said, “All right. Can you tell me at least why you don’t want to talk about it?”
Dan looked out the window over the rows of roofs. The clouds folding into one another. The oncoming darkness. “No.”
Martin scribbled another note. “Okay. Let’s talk about something else. Have you felt violently angry at any time in the past week?”
Dan turned his gaze to him. “Other than right now?”
Martin eyed him warily. “Yes. Other than right now.”
Seven
Now Auditioning
Dan felt a profound ambivalence for the gay ghetto at Church and Wellesley. On the one hand, it was where he’d first been accepted when he came to Toronto; for that, he felt a loyalty verging on heartfelt gratitude. Then the other hand rose up and, with it, his disillusionment came into focus: it lacked pride. The kind of pride he felt a gay ghetto ought to have, though maybe the primary word here was “ghetto” and not “gay.” He’d been to other gay neighbourhoods; few of those had impressed him either. They struck him as being caught between lacking self-respect and not trying hard enough. We can do better, he thought.
Maybe it was the city encroaching on the ghetto that stopped it from being more remarkable. You couldn’t make people respect invisible boundaries, lines drawn in sand, but Church Street always felt unnecessarily tawdry and sad, with its dilapidated awnings and faded storefronts, like a dyspeptic drunk. As though it would rather be something else, but couldn’t decide what. Nor could Dan. He’d taken his time coming out, not because he was ashamed of being gay but because he couldn’t identify with so many gay men and women. It baffled him why they accepted second-hand treatment at the hands of others. It was as though they derived their identity from the fact that they’d been denied by the rest of the world.
And so with the ghetto. He’d never choose to live there. It wasn’t the urge to band together that bothered him so much as their willingness to accept this small bit of turf as all they could have. He often felt sold out by his own kind. Coming to Church Street only exacerbated the feeling.
He headed south along the east side of the street, past a roving pack of club kids, tattooed, coiffed, and spouting song lyrics. Cocky with their twenty-something-ness. The darkened glass of Byzantium superimposed Dan’s reflection over a pair of diners, an Asian kid and a white kid sharing a jocular moment with their waiter. The Asian boy speared Dan’s stomach with a fondue prong and leaned in for a bite. Further along, the windows at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library shouted with book titles and magazines he’d never heard of because being hip took too much energy. If he needed to know anything current, Donny or Ked usually filled him in.
The Black Eagle wasn’t known for being a hustler haven. It was primarily a leather bar, a netherworld of S&M accoutrements catering to a clientele that identified with a vaguely threatening, power-oriented sexuality. Skinhead and biker looks were popular. Dan’s ruggedness fit right in. He’d once gone home with a man he’d met on the upstairs patio, only to discover his apartment decorated with Nazi paraphernalia. He hadn’t stayed long enough to find out if it was a joke.
The out-of-work bodybuilder planted outside the front entrance threw Dan a smile. Steroids had given him pectorals a drag queen would envy, while anti-virals had finished off the effect by reinventing his face. Dan always felt he’d passed some sort of mutation test by coming here. He pulled out the picture of the runaway.
The man looked it over and smacked one fist into the other. “Kid like that comes in here and we’d kick his ass out in a second,” he said. “Don’t need that kind of trouble — those kids have their own places to go to anyway.”
“What about in the daytime when no one’s on the door?”
The bouncer tilted his head toward the entrance. “Ask Charlie. He’s on the main floor.”
Dan went in. The interior carried an aroma of stale beer and body odour while suggesting scenes of torture and imprisonment rather than anything overtly erotic. In fact, a little sex appeal would have cheered the place up, but the premises evoked an aura of pain inflicted in lieu of pleasure. Dan considered physical abuse the dull side of the sexual imagination. He’d stopped going there when one too many pickups expressed disappointment at his gentle touch.
“Do you want to strangle me a bit?” one suggested, after a few minutes of foreplay. “It might make it more exciting. Besides, you look the type.”
“I’m outta here,” Dan said, the door slamming behind him before the man could even protest.
“How come a big hunk like you is so sweet?” another asked, clearly disappointed at not having his endurance limits tested. “I was hoping for a little abuse.”
Dan flexed his biceps. “Who said abuse was free? Usually I get paid to hurt guys like you.”
The man pulled a face. “I’m only thirty-three. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to pay for sex!”
Dan retrieved his underwear and pulled it on. “Ever been to a bathhouse?”
The man gave him an odd look. “Of course.”
“Then you’ve paid for sex.”
In the bar on the main floor, heavy metal music ground through the speakers. The place was empty apart from a shirtless bartender who looked like a double for Jim Morrison right before his drunken downward spiral. He looked Dan over approvingly.
“Hi there.”
“Evening,” Dan said, to put things on a formal level. “You Charlie?”
“Yep. That’s me.”
Dan pulled the picture from his case and laid it on the bar. “Ever see this kid in here?”
Dan could see him calculating whether he was a cop. The bartender shrugged — it wouldn’t matter either way so long as the kid wasn’t in there now. “He looks pretty young. I doubt I’ve seen anyone under twenty in here yet.”
A few doors up the street an early crowd had gathered in Woody’s. Heads turned at his approach. Woody’s
