By Stephen Elliott

Chapter One

There was a storm that lowered itself over a city and it drenched the buildings and made the streets shine beneath the lamps. The streets became hypnotic. The colors popped from the stop signs and the fire hydrants. The rain pushed the trash and the people inside for cover. They knew the rain was never going to stop. The rain cleaned the air so all I could smell was you. The rain smacked across the roofs and all I could hear was you. The rain came in tight clouds, hovering in and caressing the sky. It was only going to rain forever. What it means to love you. It is the end of the seasons, the end of the earth. It is impossible. It flutters through my fingers, harder to hold than air. It falls across the rocks, rattles the leaves, melts the ice and the snow. It is the tiniest tip of the skyscrapers in the cities and the running gutters and the parks. That is what it means to love you. It is the end of loneliness. The loneliness that haunts me. That returns when you are in the bathroom, when you go to the store, when you look away. You carry my stomach with you and leave me with a hole when you are gone. The loneliness is in my walls, in my skin. I can't wash it out. You pour over me. You drown me. I wait on you for my breath. Nobody could ever die for you the way that I die for you. The only thing worse than loving you is not loving you, and that is what it means.

Halsted Street brims with atmosphere rising from the shelters and the lights of Boys Town. The fags and the hags and the queens and the yuppies and the kids fresh out of college looking for something true. And the new millionaires with pushed back wavy brown hair, cashing in stock for twisted nights around storefront strip clubs. And hookers hooking for tips. And grease-filled fag magnets, dirty pink triangles turning meat for crack and salvation, and the sports bars with a view of Wrigley Field and all night coffee shops, the Clack Clack Clack of see-through heels, all brim on Halsted Street in Chicago, a coffeepot full of atmosphere.

There are many different reasons for migrating to Halsted Street. Every night the children run away from home to sit in front of Dunkin Donuts. They come from Morton Grove, Skokie, Oak Park, and Evanston. They ask people for quarters. They sit with radios along the curb playing the latest tunes. They dance to the music when the sidewalks are clear, stomping their feet and raising curled fists to their foreheads. Most of the kids are just slumming, booking on some boring suburban existence. They choose the cement and neon over the bright green lawns and some boring suburban school that justifies their parents' boring lives when their parents tell their friends, "We moved here for the better schools." The kids run from the boring suburban schools and arrive at Belmont and Halsted, and the promised pink and white lights of the Dunkin Donuts shop. They dye their hair blue, wear cheap spiked bracelets purchased at the Alley. Some of the kids sew swastikas on their jackets and others sew anti-Nazi patterns. This is why they fight. The kids sew up black pants with other black pants, a competition of patches. The kids just want to know who can get closer to what it means to be real.

Some of the kids are already there. Some of the kids run away every morning and don't go back. They are real runaways from abusive parents up on the North side, rebels from heroin houses and crack parents on the West Side. Some of them contemplate accepting rides in passing cars. For them Halsted is not an adventure but a place they can go. They sleep at the Neon Street Children's Shelter. They eat what they are given. Any home is better than the home they left behind.

There are many different reasons for migrating to Halsted Street. Freshly graduated students with their first jobs Downtown punching numbers for Arthur Andersen, interning for Blau Direct, first-year lawyers at Sidley and Austin, all move into Lakeview, to experience the city. They work in cubicles during the day behind five foot walls of fabric, drowning in benefits and worthless stock options. They are account executives, project managers, marketing associates. They work in the John Hancock Building, the Sears Tower, the Standard Oil Building, and 100 Upper Wacker Drive. The day steals their privacy and the night gives it back. They find themselves combing Halsted Street, hands in the pockets of their jeans, college sweatshirts blowing in the stiff wind. Late at night with twenties stuck to their fingers and sweat along their foreheads they find themselves roaming the top floors of yellow-lit buildings with broken doors where they simply should not be.

Queers from all over the Midwest move to Boys Town on Halsted Street so they can dance in Roscoe's and be accepted. They end up in the ManHole on lights-out night walking around the pitch-black club in their underwear, swimming in a K-hole, their balls groped, grabbed, and squeezed. They meet at Eros and walk in naked wearing white towels on Sunday afternoon and suck each other off in private rooms with milk-colored plastic saucers full of condoms on the nightstand. Boys Town is paradise and the flags of the revolution fly over the light poles. The queers staff the AIDS hotline and crisis office. They come home from Downtown smelling nice and well-manicured in long wool coats ready to see a play at the Turn Around Theater on Halsted and Grove.

The homeless lurk along the edge of the Triangle on Halsted Street. They beg for noodles in front of Penny's. They follow pedestrians, hands stretched forward, scabs on their arms and their faces. They get needles, soup, and medical attention in Uptown. They sleep in cardboard boxes next to the Walgreens.

The trannies migrate to Halsted and Broadway in tight glittering shorts and high heels showing off their long legs and strong calves. The trannies' best light is the light of the Treasure Island sign. The Treasure Island light is always on, holding over a large gourmet grocery store that sells food in fancy brown paper bags. Treasure Island is open from eight in the morning until ten at night when the fun begins. After ten the trannies fill the parking lot, faces thick with make-up, hair wrapped in tight buns over their heads. The trannies walk tall, breasts poking through sweaters, defying the wind. The trannies beat the college boys in the alleys with the college boys' belts while the college boys lick the heels of their shoes. The trannies escort college boys to the ATM next to the vitamin shop, then paint lipstick on the boys' mouths, then they make them say terrible things, and the college boys run home desperately wiping their lips with their T-shirts until their lips are raw and bleeding. The trannies blow Jons for twenty-five bucks or for ten. The trannies blow Jons in the bathroom at the Vortex. The trannies blow anybody for any price. They spend the days fitting into their clothes and the nights selling it all as quickly as they come without answering any uncomfortable questions. They do it along Halsted Street with glitter and wigs and silicone. They do it until the morning when they go to work Downtown crunching numbers for large accounting firms or they hole up in some cheap hotel next to the video game parlor to get high. And if they have an addiction they sleep off what is left at the Wellington Shelter underneath the red brick church. The streets embrace the trannies in their arms, and save them from certain slaughter.

Anthony walks tight-shouldered down Halsted Street, his balled fists stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans, the sharp lines on his face pointing forward. The fall has tripped across Chicago, erasing the summer and the headlines full of old people dying as the heatwave stretched its fingers into the air-conditioning units in a strip of third rate peeling brown nursing homes. The fall cold bites at Anthony's clear white cheeks.

Anthony's long curly blond hair blows behind him in bright platinum streaks bleached from hot summers on the rocks at Lake Michigan. Long earrings dangle from either ear. He walks purposely, his head down. His compact body gives off an illusion of being short for 5'9".

He passes the pool hall near Addison. Inside a handful of thirty-somethings play pool and pass around pitchers of beer. Everything is looking up for Lakewood. Anthony pushes his hair away from his face, and stops at the window to watch a girl lean over the pool table. She pushes her ass out and draws her stick back. She swings her stick and the cue ball rolls along the green into the nine ball and one ball almost drops. One of the men says something and she laughs and the others laugh as well. She goes to a thin round table with another girl and two boys. They all wear sweaters and drink beer from eight-ounce glasses. Anthony stares at them and makes up stories for their lives. He leans toward the window as one of the men leans closely to a girl and whispers something in her ear. She laughs and pushes him away while keeping an arm around his waist. The four make numerous toasts, speaking loudly, showing off clean, white teeth and taking small sips on their glasses of beer. Anthony pushes his fingers along the windowpane, feels the heat coming through from the warm bar.

Anthony straightens himself up. He notices the bar clock, lit up with an orange neon glow. He leaves the people in the bar and marches off to his destination down Halsted Street. Deep down on Halsted Street.

It is not easy to notice the Stolen Pony. Nobody walks into the Stolen Pony unintentionally. There is no sign over the bar, just a neon horseshoe on the thin black window. It stands squeezed and unassuming between a diner and a vintage furniture store. Nobody knows about the Stolen Pony who doesn't want to. The Stolen Pony does not take out ads or sponsor events, does not maintain a float in the Pride Parade. The Stolen Pony is a tiny bar on a busy strip of Halsted Street that fully occupies an entire world.

The door closes behind Anthony and takes the last of the day's sunlight with it. The bar is shaped like an S with three round tables off to the side and a small square stage in the middle. The S-shaped bar is a couple of feet wide and sticky and black. There is only one beer tap, the rest of the beer is in bottles. Cheap bottles of liquor stand on a shelf in disarray. Behind the bar hangs a large mirror tilting forward, stained with brown and white spots, like someone had intentionally sprayed the mirror with Champagne. Anthony smells the familiar stench of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sitting at the bar are men: fat, skinny, one with a fading brown mustache, another with pockmarked cheeks, still another with a long, sharp pointy nose. They wear their clothes badly, all of them. Their pants don't fit. The men are not shaped right; their shoulders slouch; they are curved wrong. One man wears a lavender corduroy shirt. Another wears a turquoise polo one size too small and rests his hand on an open newspaper that another is also fingering the edges of. Still another wears bright orange pants.

Henry, the bartender, smacks his towel against the bar with a loud wet snap and the man with the beak-like nose lets out a short, breathy laugh. A large stereo, typical of the type that sells for forty dollars at garage sales, hangs precariously on a thin rope above the mirror. You never need to walk away until you've gone too far...

Henry is a large man with an awful, fat face like a baby grown to six feet tall. All of his features are just like a newborn's, squinty eyes, rolls of fat hugging his eyebrows, short, pudgy fingers. On his head he wears a golden tiara.

"You must be Anthony," he says. The men watch carefully, clutching their drinks. "My name is Henry. I own the Stolen Pony. This is my kingdom and stretches as far as the eyes can see to the north, south, east, and west." Henry covers the bar with one sweeping fat arm. "Welcome to my kingdom, Anthony. On behalf of the Stolen Pony and its subjects, I adore you." Henry yanks a man's glass off the bar and sticks it under the only spout, filling it with yellow foam.

The lights go down. Anthony climbs the two small steps to the stage barefoot. Two small lights overhead cover the small stage with thin yellow wattage. The stage itself is made up of translucent colored square lights that shoot slowly up Anthony's legs in pale shades of pink and blue. Their mutterings quiet down as the music gets louder.

Anthony waves as best as he can to the music. It's a small stage with not much room to move. The lights blink on and off beneath him. The light-blues tighten his chin. He lifts his shirt over his head, flexes his biceps. Goosebumps pop on his naked, freshly shaven chest. Somebody walks in the door and a cold breeze cuts across the room. Anthony cannot see from the stage. The men are dark silhouettes. The bar is a million miles away. Anthony's long hair covers his cold, naked shoulders.

The stage sticks beneath Anthony's feet. He lays on his back, stares to the ceiling lights. The colored squares engulf his body. The colored squares swallow Anthony. He rolls his pants down his legs.

"Take it all off," one of the men yells. "Take it all off, Anthony." They already know his name.

"Don't listen to him, Anthony," Henry corrects. "You know the rules."

Anthony slips the pants over his feet and kicks them to the floor. He dances around, only a black thong left. He knows the rules. He's been around long enough. He bucks his hips against the cold square lights and against the silhouetted stares of the bar. He feels the cold plastic of the colored lights against his naked back, pressing the back of his thighs. He is still grinding and pushing his hips against the stage when the music fades and the lights come on.

The men are whistling and clapping as Anthony gathers his clothes. Twelve dollars lay scattered in small, crumpled bills across the stage. Anthony grabs the money and pulls on his jeans, quickly stuffing the money into his pockets. He walks past the bar and into the back room.

In the back there are long, thin pieces of glass. The extra liquor is locked in cages. Wooden shelves are bolted to the walls and held by chains and nylon cords alternately from the ceiling. At a large wooden table Henry lays down a contract for Anthony to sign; a mouse or a rat scampers over Anthony's foot. Dusty kegs line the walls and one thick plastic tube runs out to the bar. A pair of shoes sits on one of the plywood shelves next to a balled-up pair of underwear. The back room smells of old beer and sweet perfume and spilled, sticky drinks heavy with syrup. The back room is flooded with harsh yellow light. Coming off the stage, it seems to Anthony like the ugliest place in the world.

"You can't dance anywhere else," Henry says. "You know that, don't you? We like to think of ourselves as an exclusive club."

Anthony smells the air. He takes in Henry's fat features, Henry's eyebrows drooping over his eyes, cocks his head. Henry's demands are absurd. Anthony knows the Stolen Pony. Anthony is thirty-four years old. He has been in places like this before. He knows this is the bottom of the barrel. This is not an exclusive club. This is a place old men come to when they have nowhere else to go. They come here because they are lonely, without enough money to take a boy back to their rooms. They come here to pick up boys and they make them promises they can't keep. Dancers for their part dance here because they are not quite beautiful enough. They are not tall enough to be models. They are not thick enough for Chippendales. And they can't do anything else. They have just missed and they know it. And sometimes just missing is worse than never having a chance at all. They come here for fifty dollars a shift plus tips. They come to the Stolen Pony to blow customers between sets down at the Ram for one hundred dollars. They come here for easy money to support habits or they come here because they are too lazy to move boxes, to work in a warehouse, too vain to wear a red apron at some fast food restaurant. Anthony knows why people dance at the Stolen Pony. You're like that chicken they sell in Domicks for half price, he thinks. Covered in barbecue sauce. You do what you can.

"You can't dance anywhere else," Henry continues. "And between sets we expect you to hang out at the bar. We don't want you sitting back here moping. And if you're not talking to a customer you can pick up glasses and help keep the place clean. But you shouldn't sit down. Leave the seats for our patrons. And pay them attention. People like attention."

Anthony stares up at Henry's fat face and laughs. Then he scribbles his name across the bottom of the page.

Henry grabs Anthony's face in his enormous hands. "Welcome to my family," he says. Henry lowers his face to Anthony's and presses his teeth against Anthony's earlobe. "I will raise you like a son."

Copyright © 2002 Stephen Elliott