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The Manhunt Café
By
Kemble Scott
“Wanna grab coffee at the Manhunt café?” Paul asked as he peered over the top of the cubicle.
“The Manhunt café?” Denise took off her reading glasses and looked up skeptically. “I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“Well, that’s not its real name,” Paul said, his face suddenly a little flush. “That’s just what we call it. You know the one. It’s over at the corner of Sanchez and 17th. It used to be called Cup-A-Joe. Now it’s something else. Nobody can remember the real name, so we’ve nicknamed it the Manhunt café.”
“Why? Is it a big cruising place, as you boys say?” Denise smirked. She’d been working in the Castro at the graphic arts shop for only a few months and she still marveled over the intense sexual energy of the neighborhood. Until she started there, she always thought
cruising was something done on a ship! As a woman she felt nearly invisible, allowing her to observe the constant cat and mouse games at play around her. So many cats. And so many mice wanting to be caught.
“You coming?” Paul sounded impatient.
“Sure,” Denise said as she clicked and closed the program on her computer. She opened the top drawer of her desk, took out a small compact, and gave herself a quick look. Her curly red hair looked perfect, of course the perm made sure of that. Denise took her forefinger and dabbed at the speck of lipstick near the left corner of her mouth that had somehow gone astray. From the corner of her eye she caught exasperated Paul’s face.
“What?” she asked.
“Someone left the cake out in the rain,” Paul sang under his breath.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” Paul sighed. “Let’s go.”
Denise had to admit she didn’t understand half the things Paul said. Yet she enjoyed his energy and funny little quips. Without Paul, working at Love Child Graphics would be so tedious. Designing business cards. Ugh! What a major step down from the heyday of dot-com when she worked on cutting-edge web sites. But it was the first time she’d had a job in her field since the tech bubble burst. At forty-six she couldn’t be too picky.
And Frank was so happy when she told him she’d be able to contribute a real paycheck to their marriage for the first time in years. So what if the place was in the gayest block of the gayest neighborhood in the gayest city on earth? It didn’t matter to Denise. Most of the time she couldn’t tell who was gay or straight. Nobody discussed such things growing up in Auburn. Since Frank moved them to San Francisco twenty years ago they’d always lived on Potrero Hill, which was a million miles away from anything gay.
“Are you going to explain this Manhunt thing to me?” Denise asked when they got outside and started walking the two blocks to the coffee shop.
“Well, it’s an internet thing,” Paul explained. “Kind of like…QVC.”
“QVC? You mean like the home shopping channel on TV?” Denise was confused.
“Yeah. Just like that. Except this is on the internet. A web site called Manhunt where guys look for other guys.”
“Oh, I get it. You mean online dating, like Match.com.” Denise smiled. The gay world wasn’t so different from her own. Her sister found a guy on Match.com after the divorce. Finding love online used to be so strange, but now it seemed like everyone was doing it.
“Uh, yeah, sure…I guess it’s kinda like that,” Paul snickered.
As soon as they walked inside the café, Denise could see why the place was different from others. One entire wall was lined up with computers. Desktops. A little sign explained that customers could get an hour’s worth of free access with a cup of coffee. Men, most of them very handsome, Denise thought, filled the seats in front of every monitor. The rest of the shop was crowded with other men, all of them working on laptops.
As they waited for their non-fat au laits Denise nonchalantly shuffled up behind a man who was furiously typing away at one of the computers. She peered over her shoulder for a close look at what was on the screen. It was just a brilliant blue blur. Damn! Without those little half-glasses she got at Walgreens, she couldn’t see details standing so close.
“I tried to look, but I couldn’t see anything,” she said to Paul on their walk back to the office. “Were they all on the same web site?”
“Yup,” Paul said as he sipped through the little hole in the coffee lid.
“Manhunt?”
“Every single guy,” he laughed. “That’s why we call it the Manhunt café. Every time you go, every guy is signed onto Manhunt.”
“I don’t understand. You can sign onto the internet anywhere. Why there? Why do they go to that café to look at that particular web site? Why not just do it at home? Or at work?”
Paul stopped walking. He looked puzzled. “Good point,” he said after a few moments. “Maybe they don’t want evidence left on their computers that they were on that web site.”
“Evidence!” Denise scoffed. “You make it sound like it some type of crime. I mean, it’s internet dating. Everyone does it. Even my sister did it. Really, it’s no big deal. There’s certainly nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Dating?” Paul giggled. “Dating… ha!”
He kept giggling all the rest of the walk back to the office.
***
Paul’s giggling was still on Denise’s mind when she arrived at work the next day. It pissed her off. Like he was laughing at her or something. Yes, she was older, married, straight and the polar opposite of nearly everyone in the neighborhood. Okay, so she didn’t know
everything about their world. It was no reason to make fun of her. She hated feeling like everyone was in on the joke, except her.
By 10:00 a.m. she was still the only person in the office. She grabbed her reading glasses and headed down the street to the Manhunt café. When she arrived the place was packed yet again with good-looking men all pounding away at the keyboards.
After the little Arab man behind the counter took her order, she picked up a copy of the “to go” menu and studied it. This way she could keep her reading glasses on and no one would be suspicious. As the milk steamed, she slinked over behind one of the men at the terminals. She turned her head to study the screen.
Now with her glasses on she could see more than just a blur of blue. The images flew at her, like an assault on her eyes. Is that a…? That couldn’t be a…?
“Au lait!”
Denise felt short of breath. It wasn’t possible. Was that really a…?
“Au lait!”
Denise swallowed hard. She reached up and took off her glasses. She had to do something to stop the images from their relentless attack on her senses. Denise closed her eyes, but she couldn’t forget what she’d seen.
“Hey lady! You have the au lait, right?” the little Arab man said impatiently.
“Uh, yes,” Denise said. She grabbed the hot small paper cup, forgot to put a lid on it, and walked out. She plunked the steaming container in the trashcan at the curb. She wasn’t thirsty anymore.
***
Paul finally came into the office at “two-ish,” claiming he’d worked on a project at home overnight.
“I need to talk to you,” Denise barked before Paul got the chance to put down his trendy leather messenger bag.
“Is everything okay?”
“I went back down to the, uh, Manhunt café this morning,” she stammered. “I saw what those men are looking at!”
“And?”
“And?” Denise gasped. “You lied to me! That’s not online dating. That’s some sort of pornography! It’s pictures of naked men. And not just that! There are close-up of their… And then doing… to each other!”
Paul smiled. “Oh, honey… calm down.” He took Denise by the arm and gently brought her back to her seat, then pulled around his chair to sit beside her. “That’s just the way some guys are. They put it all out there for everyone to see.”
“Even their…?”
“Sure. I mean, guys want to get a preview of what they’re getting before they commit. It’s all spelled out in advance. Length and width. Gotta check out the goods ahead of time.” Paul giggled.
“It also showed them having sex.” Denise whispered the word sex.
“Well, some guys want to know what they’re going to do when they get there. You know, who’s gonna do
what to whom. A little visual demonstration ahead of time. That way everyone knows exactly what’s going to happen. No surprises.”
Denise thought back to when she met Frank. Yes, she was young, but it never occurred to her to ask to see pictures of him naked before their first date.
Check out the goods ahead of time. What a bizarre idea. What about the thrill of being surprised the first time? Besides, sex wasn’t everything in a relationship. She and Frank rarely had sex these days. She couldn’t even remember the last time. Marriage was so much more than what happened in the bedroom.
“Is it all about sex with you guys?” Denise asked.
“Oh, don’t be silly honey,” Paul laughed. “Of course not. But you did decide to go snooping at the Manhunt café. Everyone knows what that place is all about. And it ain’t the coffee.”
***
Paul’s explanation did little to satiate Denise on the matter of the Manhunt café. She’d never seen the world as so sexual before. Was everyone out there having a ball except her? She stayed away from the café, instead choosing to get coffee at Peet’s on Market Street. It was closer to the office and there’s was nothing sexual about it. All anyone ever did there was wait in an interminably long line.
Days went by, but simply avoiding the Manhunt café didn’t get the thoughts and images out of her mind. From her desk, while making sure no one was looking, she found the web site. Google pointed her to it:
Manhunt.net. There was a photo of an attractive young man on the front page,
with his clothes on, Denise noted. It looked enticing, but to enter the web site she needed a membership and password. She couldn’t do that. There was a free trial she was tempted to use, then became too flustered. It’s a web site for men, after all. She wondered if they had a way to make sure no women signed on. Oh, how could they? She scolded herself for being so ridiculous.
Why did she care about this? For some reason, she couldn’t shake it. What men did with each other shouldn’t matter to her. Why did she care so much? It didn’t make any sense to be obsessed with the Manhunt café. If was just a coffee shop. But instead of customers playing checkers or listening to folk music, they indulged their own brand of entertainment. That’s all it was. She’d just had to get over it.
She decided to go back to the Manhunt café. To confront it, and confirm it was no big deal. She’d buy a cup of coffee as any normal patron would, and then she’d be done with it. Maybe she’d even sit for a while and take in the atmosphere, just to have it settled in her head once and for all.
Paul had a meeting with a client across town, so Denise grabbed her purse and headed for the door. Before leaving she stopped at the ladies room and wrapped a silk scarf around her head. She popped on a pair of large sunglasses. She looked absolutely Jackie O, like she was going on some sort of secretive mission in disguise. In a way she was. Now that she knew what the Manhunt café was all about, she didn’t necessarily want to be recognized going there.
When she got to the café she told the little Arab man she wanted her coffee “for here.” He brought her the au lait in a small white china cup with saucer. She sat down in an armchair in the corner, the only empty seat in the place. She breathed in the aroma of the brew. It was very strong, with a hint of bitterness. She scanned the room and studied the faces of the men. As they stared at the glowing screens she could see their excitement, the thrill of the adventures just ahead. She wondered when was the last time anyone looked at her with such rabid anticipation.
She closed her eyes and sighed. Maybe that’s what this little obsession was all about. Was she jealous? These men had in their lives what she’d been lacking for so long. It was a disgusting meat market of carnality that part of her wanted to judge and condemn. Sex without love. Lust. Immorality. Yet another part of her desired all of those things. To be wanted and taken in an animal way. Her mind drifted off, now melding the images she’d witnessed on the Manhunt screen in contact with her own flesh.
“I’d like a cup of coffee and an hour on one of the desktops,” a man asked.
“You’ll have to wait a few minutes for the internet,” the little Arab man replied. “The computers are all tied up right now.”
“That’s okay,” the man said.
That voice. Denise began to emerge from her daydreams. Somehow, she knew that voice. Was it her imagination?
She opened her eyes. She knew the man who stood before her. He looked at her quizzically, as if he also recognized her, despite the scarf and glasses.
“Frank?” she said.
“Denise?” Frank asked. “Is that you?”
“Oh, Frank…” her voice trailed off in a whisper.
Copyright © 2006 Kemble
Scott
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