Deliveries in the Rear

                                              By Jeff Baker

            There was a line outside Deliveries in the Rear that night. The bar was always crowded on the weekends and Chris was leaning all over me smoking what I hoped wasn’t a joint. Jason was craning his neck looking to see if he knew the guy at the door. The three of us had driven out there that night our junior year of college.

            “Hey, Mickey, how much cash you got?” Jason asked me.

            “About twenty bucks, why?” I said.

            “Looks like they’re doing a cover charge. And I brought my I.D. but not my wallet.” Jason said. He was always forgetting his wallet.

            “Great,” I grumbled. This was 1982, and the only gay bar in the area.

            “I should have thought about bringing some beer to wait to get into a bar,” Chris said. “Hey, there’s a sign on the door.”

            “Lemmie check,” Jason said. He walked up to the front of the line for a moment. I felt like I was in the junior high lunchroom and they’d tell Jason to get to the back of the line.

            “Maybe it says ‘Closed for repairs,’” Chris said.

            “Cover charge is five bucks a head, it’s for some charity,” Jason said as he walked back. “Says something else; that slaves get in free with their masters.”

            “Kinky!” Chris said with a grin.

            I did some adding in my head. One of us was getting in free if we wanted to pay for a few drinks. By the time we reached the front of the line, we’d figured it out. Jason had said they were issuing “slaves” white tank tops. Jason had a shirt, Chris and I just had leather vests, but Jason didn’t have any cash. So, Jason, grinning, put on one of the tank tops with “Slave” written on it in magic marker. We sat down and I handed Jason a few bucks and told him to get us two beers apiece and that he was driving us home.

            “Yes, Sir!” Jason said heading over to the bar. I looked around in the typical dim bar light. I could make out several other guys in the white shirts, one giving his “master” a backrub.

Jason came back with the beers, bowing to us, playing the role to the hilt. A guy at the next table leaned over to us.

            “How much you think they’ll get for him?” the man said, indicating Jason.

            “Uh, he’s not for sale,” I said. Chris was snickering as he drank his beer.

            “They’re putting them up for auction later on for charity,” the man said, pointing to a sign by the stage. I stared at the sign; that was what it said.

            “Oh, I’m Steve,” he said.

            “Mickey,” I said, starting to laugh, imagining Jason being auctioned off to a bunch of little old ladies, none of which were going to be at the bar.

            About an hour later, Jason and the other “slaves” stood on the stage where the bands usually played as a drunken emcee in a top hat called out for bids, with all the money going to a local charity and all the “slaves” going home with their owners for the night, as the emcee said; “to do whatever you two want to.”

            When the bidding got to Jason I started laughing. He was mugging and flexing his pecs to the whistles of the crowd. There were a couple of bids and then Chris (who’d had a couple more beers) stood up and yelled “I bid five-thousand dollars!”

            Dead silence. Everybody stared at Chris.

            “Um, I don’t have five-thousand dollars,” Chris said. “I got twenty!”

            “Sold for five-thousand dollars,” the Emcee said.

            In the end, Steve offered thirty bucks and I put in some of my cash along with Chris’. Jason drove both of us home and Steve and I exchanged numbers.

            That was thirty-four years ago. Chris is gone now and I haven’t seen Jason in years. But Steve and I have been together thirty-two years now. It’s a heckuva way to meet, but hey! It worked for us!

                                                   —end—