For a couple of weeks around Memorial Day, I was in Washington, DC, staying with cousins and job hunting. I had discovered the gay bars along P Street NW and went there Saturday night, hoping to find someone to have sex with. I was still in a basic, closeted mode of looking for sex rather than trying to meet people.
One late evening I was in the Fireplace bar but thinking of leaving, as I wasn’t finding anyone I was interested in. There were usually never any bearded guys there (although I did see my first real, live, drag queen and couldn’t stop chuckling). And anyway, I would need to leave soon so I could catch Metro (as DC’s subway is called) before it closed, to get back to my cousins’ house.
As I wandered slowly toward the door, scanning for new faces since I had last scanned for faces, a beard got caught in the corner of my eye. Like most gay bars late at night, it was fairly dark and vaguely smoky (DC still allowed indoor smoking then). I wanted a better look and went over to say hello, maybe.
Beard introduced himself as Dale and he turned out to be pleasantly talkative, intelligent, and a few years older than me. I also decided he was fairly cute and so, to give my admiration—one might say—more time to grow, I got myself another beer.
But after a short while of chatting with Dale and checking my watch, I said I had to leave to get Metro. Dale offered to give me a ride so I wouldn’t have to leave so early, and I accepted his offer but felt a little uncertain. DC had become known as the Murder Capital of America, and here I was accepting a ride from this bearded-but-God-knows-who stranger. As we walked back to his car, Dale smoothly suggested that, hey, a ride to his place might be just as good, and I literally went along for the ride. Not knowing DC very well, I quickly lost track of which direction we went, but finally noticed when we crossed into Maryland.
At Dale’s house we didn’t waste much time on preliminaries but went right to his bedroom. I had an inspiration and moved around between him and the bed, gently pulling him down on the bed on top of me. We wrestled around a bit, yanking our clothes off and learning how we best fit together, our legs, our dicks, and our mouths entwined. I ended up astride Dale’s chest, jerking off into his beard as he jerked himself off under me.
The next morning, Dale, being a good host, fixed a simple breakfast for us, then dropped me off at the nearest Metro station. I got out, as usual (go figya) feeling alone and lost but glad to be heading back in the morning sun. Once again I was wishing, as much as ever, that I hadn’t done it―it’s not who I am!
Months later I got a job in DC and about two years after that, met up with Dale again (I tend to save old contact lists, did I say?) and we had a drink after work. We remained friends though we never had sex again.