Too much

The bars sucked. Jim had set a rule that for every gin and tonic he drank, he’d have a club soda with lime. That’s how he’d started his evenings at the Holiday Bar. Until recently he’d done okay. Mom hadn’t figured out he’d been drinking when he got home late at night. But now, ever since Andy Warhol had died and they found a Warhol mural behind the paneling, the bar had been jam packed like a bunch of sardines. It hadn’t even been this crowded when he’d gone to ATO socials at Carnegie Mellon, and that’d been six years ago.

Tonight he’d found a really hot guy to go home with. Short, to be sure, a real fireplug. Albert. Bald with a full black beard, into science fiction and techo bands, and lots of chest hair. Jim loved chest hair on men. So they went to his place over in Point Breeze. Soon as they walked in, Albert took off his clothes. It wasn’t just chest hair, this man was the missing link. Hair everywhere and way too much of it.

Two huge dogs came up to him. “These are my wolves,” he said. They looked like big huskies, but at least they were nice. Wolves in Pittsburgh? Shit, he thought, what if they start beying at the moon? Albert wanted him to take off his clothes, but he wasn’t really ready. So Albert said to him, “Let me soothe you with herbal clay and a rock salt bath.”

Get me out of here, Jim thought. He faked a near-vomit experience and ran for the door. Soon as he got outside, he recognized St. Bede’s – that’s where Uncle John Enright was priest for how long? Forty years? Fifty years?