For three days, they stay with Teddy Winkleman, a boy from their high school who moved to San Francisco after graduation. Now Teddy hangs with a group of Sikhs and calls himself Baksheesh Khalsa. He has two roommates: Susie, who sells flowers outside Candlestick Park, and Raj, brown skinned with shoulder-length black hair, who spends weekends reading Garcia Marquez on the living room couch. The apartment is not the cobwebby Victorian Simon pictured but a dank, narrow series of rooms not unlike 72 Clinton. The décor, though, is different: tie-dyed fabric is pinned to the wall belly-up, like animal hide, and chili pepper lights wind around the perimeter of each doorway. The floor is strewn with records and empty beer bottles, and the smell of incense is so dense that Simon coughs whenever he comes inside.
On Saturday, Klara circles an apartment listing in red pen. 2 BD/1 BA, it reads. $389/mo. Sunny/spacious/hardwood fl. Historic building!! MUST LIKE NOISE. They take the J to Seventeenth and Market, and here it is: the Castro, that two-block heaven of which he has dreamed for years. Simon stares at the Castro Theatre, the brown awning of Toad Hall, and the men, sitting on fire escapes and smoking on stoops, wearing tight jeans and flannel shirts or no shirts at all. To have wanted this for so long – to have it both at last and so early – makes him feel as though he is glimpsing his future life. This is present, he tells himself, dizzy. This is now. He follows Klara to Collingwood, a quiet block lined by bulbous trees and candy-colored Edwardians. They stop in front of a wide, rectangular building. The first floor is a club, closed at this hour, with windows that stretch to the ceiling. Through the glass, Simon sees purple couches and disco balls and tall platforms like pedestals. The name of the club is painted across the glass: PURP.
The apartment sits above the club. It isn’t spacious, nor is it a two-bedroom: the first bedroom is the living room, and the second bedroom is a walk-in closet. But it is sunny, with golden wood floors and bay windows, and they can just afford the first month’s rent. Klara spreads her arms. Her ruched, orange halter top rides up, exposing the soft pink of her belly. She spins once, then twice – his sister, a teacup, a dervish in the living room of their new apartment.
They buy mismatched kitchenware from a thrift store on Church Street and furniture from a garage sale on Diamond. Klara finds two twin mattresses on Douglass, still in their plastic packaging, which they wrestle upstairs.
They go dancing to celebrate. Before they leave, Baksheesh Khalsa supplies hash and tabs. Raj strums a ukulele with Susie on his knee; Klara sits against the wall and stares at a fortune-telling fish she found in the novelty aisle at Ilya’s. Baksheesh Khalsa leans toward Simon and tries to engage him in a conversation about Anwar el-Sadat, but the windows are waving hello to Simon and he thinks he would rather kiss Baksheesh Khalsa instead. There’s not enough time: now they’re at a club, dancing in a mass of people painted blue and red by flashing lights. Baksheesh Khalsa yanks off his turban, and his hair whips through the air like a rope. One man, tall and broad and covered in beautiful green glitter, trails light like a fireball. Simon plunges through the crowd, reaching for him, and their faces crash together with startling intensity: the first kiss Simon’s ever had.
Soon they’re flying through the night in a cab, bodies straining in the backseat. The other man pays. Outside, the moon flaps like a number come loose on a door; the sidewalk unrolls for them, a carpet. They enter a tall, silver apartment building and ride an elevator to some high-up floor.
‘Where are we?’ asks Simon, following him into a unit at the end of the hall.
The man strides into the kitchen but leaves the lights off, so that the apartment is illuminated only by the street lamps outside. When Simon’s eyes adjust, he finds himself in a clean, modern living room, with a white leather couch and a chrome-legged glass table. A splattered, neon painting hangs on the opposite wall.
‘Financial district. New to town?’
Simon nods. He walks to the living room window and looks at the gleaming office buildings. Many stories down, the streets are mostly empty, save for a couple of bums and the same number of cabs.
‘Want anything?’ the man calls, his hand on the refrigerator handle. The tabs are rapidly wearing off, but he doesn’t look any less attractive: he is muscular but lean, with the tidy features of a catalog model.
‘What’s your name?’ Simon asks.
The man retrieves a bottle of white wine. ‘This all right?’
‘Sure.’ Simon pauses. ‘You don’t want to tell me your name?’
The man joins him on the couch with two glasses. ‘I try not to, in these situations. But you can call me Ian.’
‘Okay.’ Simon forces a smile, though he feels mildly sickened – sickened to be grouped with others (how many?) in these situations, and by the man’s caginess. Isn’t disclosure the reason gay men come to San Francisco? But perhaps Simon has to be patient. He imagines dating Ian: lying on a blanket in Golden Gate Park or eating sandwiches at Ocean Beach, the sky streaked orange-gray with seagulls.
Ian smiles. He is at least ten years older than Simon, maybe fifteen.
‘I’m hard as shit,’ he says.
Simon startles, and a wave of desire builds inside him. Ian is already taking his pants off, now his underwear, and there it is: boldly red, its head proudly lifted – a king of a cock. Simon’s own erection presses against his jeans; he stands to pull them down, yanking when one leg snags on his ankle. Ian kneels on the ground, facing him. There, in the narrow space between the couch and the glass table, Ian pulls Simon forward by the ass, and suddenly – shockingly – Simon’s penis is in Ian’s mouth.
Simon cries out, and his upper body bucks forward. Ian holds his chest up with one hand and sucks as Simon gasps in amazement and exquisite, long-dreamed-of pleasure. It is better than he imagined it would be – it is agonizing, mindless bliss, this mouth on him, it is as concentrated and intense as the sun. He swells. When he’s at the brink of an orgasm, Ian pulls back and grins, slick.
‘You wanna see this nice floor with cum all over it? You wanna come all over this nice hardwood floor?’
Simon pants in confusion, this being so far from any objective he had in mind. ‘Do you?’
‘Yeah,’ says Ian. ‘Yeah, I do,’ and now he is crawling on his knees, his penis – so red it’s nearly purple – extending toward Simon like a scepter. A large, meandering vein snakes along the shaft.
‘Hey,’ says Simon. ‘Let’s just slow down for a second, okay? Just really quick, for a second?’
‘Sure, man. We can do that.’ Ian turns him around to face the windows and takes Simon’s penis in one hand, pumping. Simon moans until a dull pain in his knees brings him back to the room and to Ian, whose own penis is persistently nudging Simon’s ass cheeks apart.
‘Can we just . . .’ Simon gasps, so close it takes effort to speak at all. ‘Can we, you know . . .’
Ian sits back on his heels. ‘What? You want lube?’
‘Lube.’ Simon swallows. ‘Yeah.’
Lube isn’t what he wants, but at least it buys him time. As Ian springs to his feet and disappears down a hallway, Simon catches his breath. Remember this, he tells himself, the right-before. He hears the light slap of footsteps, a bony thunk as Ian takes his place and sets a bright orange bottle to one side. There is a gloppy squirt as the lube is dispensed, then the slick sound of Ian rubbing it between his hands.
‘All good?’ asks Ian.
Simon braces himself, pressing his palms into the floor.