Mark was a mess. But he was rich, so as drinking buddies go, when you’re in your 30s and up to your nipples in credit card debt, he was a good friend to have. Plus he had a really cute Latino boyfriend that I had less than honorable designs on, so I figured “befriending” Mark was a way to get my foot in the door, so to speak. Don’t be so shocked. I was not always the paragon of virtue, temperance, and propriety you see before you today. I do have a somewhat checkered past! Honestly, it’s a miracle I survived it. It’s a miracle any of us did. You see, this was the height of the AIDS crisis. Friends were dying.
If I wasn’t at work in Burbank, or at home in Silverlake asleep in my apartment, or “sleeping” in someone else’s apartment somewhere in the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area, I was at Woody’s, officially “Woody’s Hyperion Lounge,” which had opened in 1969 in Silverlake, better known as the Swish Alps because the hilly terrain was overrun by gays. Sadly, it has since been gentrified, and is now home to more breeders and hipsters than gays, but Silverlake has maintained its bohemian vibe, which is what drew me to make my home there.
In 1972, Bill quit his job as a circulation manager at the Los Angeles Times, and his partner Ed quit his as an art teacher in the LA Unified School District. They pooled their savings and bought Woody’s from Woody. I didn’t set foot in the place until 22 years later, but I was aware of it; it had quite a reputation by then. I was terrified to go in on my own. I parked in the parking lot of the Mayfair Supermarket across the street that everyone in the neighborhood called “Gayfair” because its frozen foods aisle was a great place to pickup guys for a quickie. There was a time when I could tell you the name of every Swanson Hungry-Man Frozen Dinner. You pretend like you’re shopping, and then say to the guy pretending to be shopping next to you, “is the Salisbury steak better than the meatloaf?” But I digress.
I sat in my car in the Gayfair parking lot all afternoon, listening to Pet Shop Boys on a continuous loop, trying to find the courage to go inside Woody’s. When the security guard from Gayfair said I couldn’t park there unless I planned on shopping for groceries in the market, I mustered up my resolve, drove across the street to Woody’s, parked in back, and went in.
It was somewhere around 4 pm. The place was empty, except for Mark, and the bartender Junior. I sat at the bar, two stools away from Mark. He had six empty shot glasses neatly arranged in a row in front of him with a plate of lime wedges and a shaker of salt, and was drinking a Corona. Junior had this annoying habit, I would learn in the years to come, of tapping the bar twice in front of you while saying, “what’ll it be?”
I ordered a Tom Collins, but specified Bombay Sapphire gin was to be used; in the world of gay bars, this is known as a “call,” when you tell the bartender to use the good stuff and not the cheap liquors from the “well.” Mark, who was drunk, but then he always was, slurred out in a sarcastic, campy tone, “ooooooo smell her, we got us a high class queen here Junior, she’s calling for top-shelf gin,” and then added, “a round of shots for everyone,” which was just the three of us. Junior mixed me a Tom Collins using the blue Bombay bottle from the shelf behind him, then placed a shot of tequila, a lime wedge, and a saltshaker in front of me, after which he poured two more shots of tequila and placed them on the bar in front of Mark.
They each made a fist with their left hand, licked it between their thumb and pointer-finger, sprinkled salt on that spot, and held their shot glasses in their right hands; not wanting to seem out of place, I did the same.
Mark said, “¡Salud!” (pronounced sah-LOOD), and they downed their shot in one go, licked the salt off their fists, then grabbed a lime wedge and began sucking on it. I downed my shot and immediately projectile vomited all over the bar; I’d only ever had tequila watered down in a margarita – on its own, the stuff is vile. Mark laughed and said, “we’ve got our work cut out for us with this one,” while Junior wiped my sick up with a rag. This went on for hours; I eventually got the hang of it.
Later that night, Bill the owner came in. He acknowledged Mark with a friendly, familiar, ‘hello’ and took up the stool next to him. Junior walked over to him and said, “what’ll it be?” But he was so drunk by this point that when he went to do his two taps on the bar in front of Bill, he missed it completely and tapped on thin air. He looked (and sounded) like he was having a stroke, or some kind of seizure. Bill was livid.
His normally gruff, but genial, demeanor turned to rage, and he began to interrogate Junior, asking, “who got you drunk?” Not wanting to rat-out Mark, who was a regular, and a very good tipper, he pointed at me and somehow managed to string the words “I don’t know his name but that guy” into a sentence.
Now, it bears pointing out that Mark was a regular, and an alcoholic, Junior had been a bartender for over five years (and was also an alcoholic), and I was the new guy who had literally walked in off the street for the first time that afternoon. It’s a stretch to blame Junior’s obvious, and quite comical, inebriation on me, but they did. Bill was furious. He turned to me and said, “okay smartass, he’s too drunk to be behind the bar, ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control] will fine me or shut me down, you’re gonna have to finish his shift, get behind the bar and make a pot of coffee for yourself, it’s going to be a long night, he’s on until 2 in the morning tomorrow.”
Mark and Junior thought this was hilarious; they could barely contain their laughter and were quite pleased with themselves. This had been their plan all along! They were already drunk when I got there (remember the six shot glasses arranged neatly on the bar when I came in? – that’s three each!), and Junior knew Bill would be upset with him and send him home, likely finishing his shift for him and maybe even firing him. I took Junior’s shift and worked until “last call” and closing at 2am the next day, and I made a solemn vow that night – I will have my revenge.
As the years went by, Junior, Mark, and I became good friends. Mark would invite me to parties at his swanky hilltop house overlooking the downtown LA skyline, and Junior, whose real name was Marcelino, would take me dancing all over Los Angeles to gay Latino clubs and taught me how to dance a Mexican dance to ranchera music called the cumbia. And in time I learned to tolerate the tequila shots. I mean, I love a margarita, but tequila on its own is just rancid. What other drink requires you to lick salt and suck on a lime just to kill its taste? Junior passed away and Mark bought a ranch and moved to the San Joaquin Valley, but not before I had my revenge.
It was New Year’s Day, five years later. We’d partied the night before, as Prince suggested, “like it’s 1999,” because it was 1999! Junior was behind the bar; Mark and I had taken up our usual stools. We had begun the tequila shot ritual.
Bill’s partner Ed, a Mexican-American, prepared a homemade Mexican soup known to cure hangovers called Pozole, made from hominy (dried corn kernels) and chicken (sometimes pork), seasoned with shredded cabbage, chili peppers, onion, garlic, radishes, avocado, and limes.
Ed served the Pozole around noon as the regulars slowly shuffled in. It looked like the night of the living dead in there. Meanwhile Mark, never one to waste his time in the bar, had already ordered several rounds of shots by the time the soup came out. And we had drunk them. Junior was wasted. And I started to worry once Bill showed up he’d send Junior home and press me into service again. Then I was inspired.
In California, “closing time” is 2am by law and last call is announced at 1:45am. Around 1:30 PM I got up and closed all the blinds – people asked me what I was doing, and I just said the light was too bright and was giving me a headache. It had been hurting other people’s bloodshot eyes, so they just accepted that, and some even thanked me. It was now dark inside Woody’s except for a few overhead lights. Here we go!
At 1:45pm I got Junior’s attention, and pointed at the analog clock that was affixed to the wall behind the bar.
He exclaimed, “oh shit!”
What happened next has passed into the annals (you have to be very careful how you spell that word around gay men!) of legend at Woody’s, which closed its doors for the last time in 2002.
Junior tapped twice loudly on the bar. He then bellowed out:
“that’s it ladies, last call, last call for alcohol, drink up, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
He dragged the rubber mats from behind the bar and threw them on the dance floor to dry out, then mopped behind the bar. He put the garnishes – the lemons, the limes, the olives, the cherries, and the cocktail onions – into separate Tupperware containers, removed those little pouring spigots from the cheap liquors in the well and capped the bottles, rinsed out his martini shaker, and poured the little bowls of pretzels back into a big tub of them behind the bar. He pressed some key sequence on the cash register which began spitting out a long tape of the day’s transactions and took the money out of the drawer and placed it in a canvas bag with a lock on it.
As he finished wiping down the surface of the bar, the clock struck 2. I whistled and pointed at it. With an official, authoritative, “practiced” deep voice, he proclaimed:
“the bar is now closed, good night, drive home safely.”
Mark and the remaining patrons dutifully shuffled out the back door, only realizing it was early afternoon once they were outside in the parking lot. As the last one left, I pulled the door shut behind him and locked it, only Junior and me inside. I went around and opened all the blinds, letting the afternoon sun in. Junior was confused.
I said, feigning concern for him as I did, “oh my god Junior, are you drunk? what have you done? Bill is going to be so mad,” at which point a 1988 Cadillac Seville pulled into the parking lot. It found a spot in between the crowd of patrons milling around like vampires who had suddenly been thrust into broad daylight. Bill slowly got out of his car, glancing around as he did suspiciously at everyone, a bemused look on his face.
He unlocked the door and let everyone back into the bar. That’s when I tried to make a run for it out the front door, but Junior tackled me to the ground and fell on top of me. When Bill walked in and saw the two of us there, he said, “Junior, what the fuck?” Junior rolled off me and stumbled to his feet, so drunk he looked as though he had epilepsy, but he managed to spit out the words, “it was his idea,” while motioning toward me, still lying on the ground. Junior was sent home.
Bill looked at me and said, “get busy, you have customers.”
I dragged the rubber mats from the dance floor and positioned them behind the bar. I took the garnishes – the lemons, the limes, the olives, the cherries, and the cocktail onions – out of their Tupperware containers and put them in the serving thingie, removed the caps from the cheap liquors in the well and put a little pouring spigot in each bottle, placed the martini shaker on the counter, and poured pretzels from the big tub into little bowls which I then distributed evenly along the bar. Bill unlocked the canvas bag of money and put it back into the cash register drawer. Then he sat down and ordered a bottle of Miller High Life for everyone in the bar except me.
My “shift” only lasted until 7 that night, at which point Jose took over. Mark left around 5. Junior was home sleeping it off. I made good tips, but so much for getting my revenge.
that mess on our left is Brian the Sales & Marketing Director here at Stonewall Gardens’ annual ugly sweater contest