A boyhood friend and high school classmate of mine, Jake Orr was your prototypical macho man. Six-foot three of hard-packed sinew, state wrestling 195-lb champ, star linebacker and captain of the football team. After graduation had joined the U.S. Army, tried out for and made the Green Berets, served two tours with distinction in Iraq, then back in the U.S. passed the requirements for Officer’s Training School with flying colors, graduated high in his class, rose in short order to the rank of Captain, and was currently assigned to Army Command in the Pentagon, in preparation for third tour, this time in Afghanistan. Over dinner at his Arlington apartment one night, Jake surprised us, shocked might be better word for it, by casually letting it out that he was gay.
The road sign read: “Richmond 5 miles.” Jake Orr had left visiting his parents in Charlotte and was driving north on I-95. Two more hours and he could make it home to Arlington before sunset, but it being Saturday and his office at the Pentagon closed for the weekend, he decided to stop for the night in Richmond. He checked in at a hotel, asked the clerk for local entertainment directory and, leafing through it, selected a gay bar to visit that evening, within walking distance from the hotel.
Though the night was young, the Paradiso Lounge on Grace Street was already packed with its regular clientele of gay men and smattering of straight women, so-called “fag hags,” who enjoyed their company. Jake came up to the bar, ordered a beer, and leaned back against the counter to take in the scene. Dance music, alternately lively and soft, played non-stop in the background. Jake gazed by turns at the couples on the dance floor, at the ones in the booths along the walls, some swaying to the music, laughing, talking animatedly, unabashedly cozying up. Unlike the flamboyantly attired and hyper-effeminate prototypes of generations past, the gay men at the Paradiso felt no need to prove or flaunt their sexuality. Liberated, was the word that would best describe them.
But for all the good vibes in the Paradiso, Jake couldn’t get in the mood. At age 30 he wasn’t much older than the average patron, but that night, a vague recall of a sobering war experience was making him feel mature beyond his years. Like a parent watching his children at play but not daring to join in lest he spoil their fun, he remained leaning against the bar, aloof, sipping his beer. He could feel the eyes of more than one young patron lusting for him, inviting him for a memorable one-night tryst, but he didn’t return the gazes.
So Jake finished his beer, exited the Paradiso, and started up the street back to the hotel. Then, in his peripheral vision, he caught sight of them. Two goateed, unkempt men clad in hunter outfits had been casing the Paradiso from a pickup truck parked across the street. On seeing Jake leave the lounge, they emerged from the pickup and, sneering the sneer of gay bashers on the prowl, began to follow him. “Hey, faggot!” they mocked. “Wha’ happen? Couldn’t get enough cock to suck in the club?”
Jake did not quicken his pace toward the hotel or retreat to the safety of the Paradiso, nor did he reach for his cell phone to call for help. Rather than intimidate him, the impeding danger had excited, embolden him. Leisurely, as if out to enjoy the evening air, he strolled on up the street.
In an alley between the wings of a building undergoing renovation was a dumpster brimming over with pieces of lumber, rusty re-bars and other debris. Jake had vaguely noticed the dumpster earlier that evening on his way to the Paradiso, but now he vividly remembered it and the debris strewn around it. Subtly glancing behind him, making sure the bashers were still following, he turned into the alley and took a position behind the dumpster.
The bashers for a moment hesitated, wondering what the big fag was up to. They had expected him run, beg, or cry for help, as had every fag they had assaulted. Fags for them were fun prey because they were too sissified to defend themselves. Yet this one seemed different. He was going into an alley and boxing himself in. Did he think he could hide from them? Well, whatever it was the big fag had in mind, it wasn’t going to do him any good, they figured. So they came into the alley looking for him.
Jake let them approach, and when they were nearing the dumpster, he stepped out wielding a thick re-bar in his powerful hands. In an even voice he asked: “You boys looking for something?”
Jake rose early next morning, enjoyed a hearty breakfast, and drove the last leg home to his apartment in Arlington, listening on the radio to a classical music station and reflecting on last night’s encounter with his would-be bashers. He could easily have killed them both, but had purposely held back, limiting their injuries to concussions and a few broken bones. He wanted them to survive, suffer a little, that they might pass on the word to their pals that gay bashing could be a hazardous to their health. On his way back to the hotel he had stopped at pay phone to call for an ambulance.
The fight, if one could call it that, had lasted less than a minute. Jake was pleased by how quickly his combat instincts had come back to him; by how vividly he had remembered the re-bars strewn around the dumpster, as if they been lying there all along waiting for him; and by how deftly he had put one to good use. Not for nothing had his buddies in Iraq dubbed him “The Improviser.” The bashing of the bashers last night would have explained why Green Beret Jake Orr had returned home from the war unscathed and with a chest full of medals.
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