Boot(s)

23-Boot

Bobby O'Callahan

I was plastered. Maybe even the drunkest I had ever been. I don't drink a lot often. Apparently, when I do, I give my best friend sex eyes.

I vowed to myself that every time I thought of that moment, that sentence leaving his lips, I would take another sip, another shot, order another round. Hence me being plastered.

I wasn't plastered enough not to see the bartender giving me the look, though. The sex eyes. I took another sip. He was hot, in a weird, mountain-man-hipster way. I imagined his place was a studio where he had space to be creative. Maybe he did pottery. Maybe he made placemats out of logs. I decided, if he had a best friend, his best friend definitely did not treat him the way mine did. He treated him good. Brought him out to the queer clubs. Took him to parades. His best friend was proud.

Either way, this guy was hot. And he was giving me the sex eyes. I took one more sip, then did something I would never, ever have done, if I wasn't 20 miles outside of Atlanta, and ten drinks in at four o'clock in the afternoon.

I got up from my seat, staring at this grey-and-white flannel motherfucker, and downed the last of my beer. I didn't know how this usually went, but I had seen movies. I had read books. I raised my eyebrows at him and was about to make a move to ask him when his shift was over, but someone—the only other dude in the bar—hollered his name (Dale, of course) , taking his attention off my very progressive flirtation move. I set my glass down, congratulating myself for giving flirting the good old college try, then made my way to the bathroom.

And then—there he was! Mountain man, logger, potter's wheel Dale. He was smiling at me. I think I was smiling back. Things weren't all there. But suddenly he was—there. On my lips. And I was making out with clay-throwing Dale in the public bathroom of a dive bar twenty miles from home at 4 in the afternoon. And I felt fan-fucking-tastic.

I definitely had my hands in his pants. I remember that much. I was thirty-one years old and had my hands down the pants of a bartender at four in the afternoon. I want to say that's what stunned me out of this horrible position, but it wasn't. I would have kept going. For how long, I don't know. But Dale's voice had me pulling away from him.

"Someone must be missing you at home then." What he said was sad, but he was smiling slightly.

"Huh?"

"I said, you called me Peter. So, I'm betting someone's waiting on you, back home."

I shook my head. "No." Pottery wheel Dale tilted his head like he knew I was full of horseshit. Pottery wheel Dale had a comforting presence. Maybe it was his beard. "Yes."

He gently pushed my body off his, out of his pants. "Let's get you a cab, bud."

"I drove," I managed.

"We got a Motel 6 next door. Sleep it off at least. Can't drive home to Atlanta like this."

"No, pottery Dale," I said. "No, we can not."

Six hours later I woke up in a horribly lit, bodily-fluid stained room of the Motel 6. I pulled on my sneakers, chugged the three bottles of water from pottery Dale, then gassed up my Jeep and started for home.

On the way, I tried not to think about Pete. Like always, that was useless.