13. The Dutch Rudder
An encounter in the gay bar
Friday, 3(ish)
They’re supposed to be going home, but as they get to the bottom of the High Street and turn by the statue of some old dead Victorian that spends approximately two hundred days of the year with a traffic cone on his head, and three hundred and sixty-five days smattered in pigeon shit, Vardaman has suggested dipping into the gay pub for an alcopop to calm the nerves after that near miss with Aaron.
“He won’t think to come looking for us in here,” Vardaman says.
The boys stand outside the door for a minute.
“Alcopop?” Moses squirms. “Can’t I just have a beer?”
“Do they serve beer?” Vardaman says, looking the frontage up and down.
“Let’s just get off the street,” Moses says.
The Dutch Rudder is dead at this time of the afternoon, and they step into a dark cave system tinged with the aroma of line cleaner. There’s a girl behind the bar, a punk, or whatever they’re calling themselves at the moment, slumped up on a high stool reading Kerrang! on crossed knees in pink fish nets. They do beer. One lager, one ale – Welsh bitter – two ciders. And a crystalline wall of glistening spirits and cocktail paraphernalia facing them from behind the bar.
“Quiet in here,” Vardaman says to the barmaid.
She rolls her eyes and lifts herself down from the stool. “What can I get you?” she says in a valleys accent which means she’s probably a student at the art college hanging on for the summer as there’s no work to be had where she’s from.
Moses points at the lager tap.
“Smirnoff Ice,” says Vardaman.
Awkward silence.
Music, as if out of nowhere. “Tainted Love”. The Gloria Jones original. A bit bold for this time of day.
Vardaman looks at his watch, in fact, to see if it’s later than he thought – Gloria Jones time, maybe? It’s nearly three. They’ve been running around for hours. Moses is looking around for signs of whoever put it on the jukebox, an increasing feeling of discomfort coming over him.
The girl plonks the drinks on the bar, and Moses hands over a fiver.
Vardaman and Moses exchange a look. Seems pretty safe in here.
And then there’s a presence. It’s at Moses’s shoulder, and the man who’s their makes them both jump and would have done had they not already been so on edge. Fucking Bronco Pete. Moses, after he’s startled, rolls his eyes to the ceiling. Bronco has that grin on his face, the one that means he knows he’s ruining something for someone else by just being there. Bronco is one of the few openly gay men who drinks at the Pips. Everyone knows Bronco, and nobody ever wants to repeat the story behind his nickname. But everything related to Bronco has a seedy story attached. From his name to that grin.
“Boys,” Bronco says in greeting.
“Hey, Bronco,” they say.
“I hear Aaron’s looking for you.”
Moses exhales a fucksake and Vardaman slams his bottle onto the bar and rolls his eyes, rolls his neck, rolls his tongue around the inside of his cheek.
“Has he been in here?” Moses says.
“Sure has,” says Bronco. “Thought we were in for quite the afternoon with someone as buff as him coming in. Thought maybe he had something to tell me. Something to get off his chest.”
Vardaman starts downing his bottle. “Come on,” he says to Moses. “We’ve had our chillout.”
“I’m not necking this again, Vardaman,” Moses says. “I’m burning through my money at this rate and my belly is full of bubbles. Both are supposed to last until we get to The Loft tonight.”
Vardaman rolls his eyes again.
“You boys finally getting it on, are you?” says Bronco with that sickly grin of his, looking thick-eyed over the top of his bottle of Moscow Mule.
“Give it a rest,” Moses says.
“Well, I’ve often fantasised about you two, and now here you are.”
“Not the right time, Bronco,” says Vardaman.
“Aaron told me all about your threesome last night,” Bronco says.
Moses baulks. “Careful nobody hears you with that shit. We know you’re joking, but if it gets back to Aaron you’ve been saying shit like that…”
“What else would he take you two back to his sex flat for?” Bronco says.
“His sex flat?” says Vardaman.
“Yeah,” says Bronco. “That’s the place he takes girls so his missus doesn’t find out. Or at least where he used to take girls. And now he takes boys.”
Bronco pinches Moses’s forearm as he says it and Moses pulls away from him with a muted fuck off.
“We went because Maestros closed and we wanted another drink,” Vardaman says, and as he does so a flood of images from the night before comes back to both Vardaman and Moses as if they share a consciousness and they even seem to glance at each other in acknowledgment of this.
Bronco goes on. “Aaron told me everything, boys. I sucked him off for the beans.”
Vardaman finishes his drink. “Bollocks,” is all he says to that. “Come on,” he says to Moses and Vardaman marches off toward the door without him.
Moses takes a swift slug of his pint and puts a third of it back on the bar. The barmaid looks over at him.
“Do I know you?” Moses says to her. Something about her is familiar. She shrugs. Couldn’t care less either way. “Did you used to work at the Pig n Whistle?”
“Yeah,” she says, still couldn’t care less.
“What made you come down the hill to this place?”
“All they played was fucking AC/DC. Drove me up the fucking wall.”
She has nice eyes, a round plumpish face, pale with heavy eyeliner and ruby lipstick.
“You not an AC/DC fan? What’s your thing? Me and Vardaman over there DJ up The Loft on a weekend. You should come up.”
“I know who you are. I get up there sometimes. Put some Alien Ant Farm or Presidents of the United States and I’ll come over and say hello.”
Moses smiles. Deal, he thinks.
“Mo, c’mon,” Vardaman calls, his shoulder holding open the front door letting in a laser shard of white light. “You and fucking barmaids,” he says when they’re out in the street walking up toward Kingsway. “You’re unbelievable. She was like fifteen. And a goth. What on earth would you find in her?”
“She was not fifteen, Vardaman,” Moses says. “She has a slightly immature dress sense, that’s all.”
“You’re twenty-four, mate,” says Vardaman. “Have a bit of self-respect.”