Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

man-hours had been wasted, he wondered, searching for that stupid brown bottle amid the bedclothes?
    It wasn’t Bill’s fault, really. He enjoyed sex with Michael. He enjoyed it the way he enjoyed movies with Michael or bull sessions with Michael or late-night pizza pig-outs with Michael. He had never, apparently, felt the need to embellish it with romance. That wasn’t Bill’s problem; it was Michael’s.
    Michael moved to the edge of the dance floor and watched couples shuffling along shoulder to shoulder as they did the Cotton-Eyed Joe. There was genuine joy in this room, he realized—an exhilaration born of the unexpected. Queers doing cowboy dancing. Who would’ve thunk it? Kids who grew up in Galveston and Tucson and Modesto, performing the folk dances of their homeland finally, finally with the partner of their choice.
    It didn’t matter, somehow, that teenagers out on the highway were screaming “faggot” at the new arrivals. Here inside, there was easily enough brotherhood to ward off the devil.
    Ed Bruce shambled onto the stage. He was a big, fortyish Marlboro Man type who spoke of golf and the Little Woman as if he were singing to a VFW convention in Oklahoma City. His big hit, “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” took on a delectable irony in this unlikely setting.
    Twenty years ago, thought Michael, gay men were content to shriek for Judy at Carnegie Hall. Now they could dance in each other’s arms, while a Nashville cowboy serenaded them. He couldn’t help smiling at the thought.
    Like magic, across the crowded dance hall, someone smiled back. He was big and bear-like with a grin that seemed disarmingly shy for a man his size. He raised his beer can in a genial salute to Michael.
    Michael returned the gesture, heart in throat.
    The man moved towards him.
    “Pretty nice, huh?” He meant the music.
    “Wonderful,” said Michael.
    “Do you slow dance?” asked the man.
    “Sure,” lied Michael.

Learning to Follow
    A T FIVE-NINE, MICHAEL WAS DWARFED BY THE MAN who had asked him to dance.
    To complicate matters further, this lumbering hunk clearly expected him to follow —a concept that hadn’t crossed Michael’s mind since the 1968 Senior Prom at Orlando High. And then, of course, Betsy Ann Phifer had done the following.
    There was a secret to this, he remembered. Ned had learned it at Trinity Place’s Thursday evening hoedowns: Extend your right arm slightly and straddle his right leg—tastefully, of course—so that you can pick up on the motion of his body.
    Check. So far, so good.
    It felt a little funny doing things backwards like this, but it felt sort of wonderful, too. Michael laid his head on the great brown doormat of his partner’s chest and fell into the music.
    Ed Bruce was still on stage. The song was “Everything’s a Waltz.”
    The man stepped on Michael’s foot. “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “That’s O.K.,” said Michael.
    “I’m kind of new at this.”
    “Who isn’t?” grinned Michael.
    Not so long ago, he realized, men had slow danced in San Francisco. He recalled the tail-end of that era, circa 1973. The very sight of it had revolted him: grown men cheek to cheek, sweaty palm to sweaty palm, while Streisand agonized over “People” at The Rendezvous.
    Then came disco, a decade of simulated humping, faceless bodies writhing in a mystic tribal rite that had simultaneously delighted and intimidated Michael. What that epoch had lacked some people were now finding in country music. The word was romance.
    “Where are you from?” asked Michael.
    “Arizona,” replied the man.
    “Any place I know?”
    “I doubt it. A place called Salome. Five hundred people.”
    So he was a real cowboy. That explained the hands. They felt like elephant hide. Bill could just go fuck himself. “Salome,” repeated Michael, copying the man’s pronunciation (Sa-loam). “As in Oscar Wilde?”
    “Who?”
    Michael’s heart beat faster. He’s never heard of Oscar Wilde. Dear God, was this the real thing? “Nobody important,” he explained. “It doesn’t really matter.”
    It really didn’t. He felt so profoundly comfortable in this man’s arms. Even his gracelessness was endearing. It wasn’t the man, he reminded himself, but the circumstances. Two prevailing cultures—one very straight, one very gay—had successively denied him this simple pleasure. He felt like crying for joy.
    “Did you … uh … ride in the rodeo?” he asked.
    “