The Ram

Something compelled me to go to The Ram while in Chicago. I had never been there before, and the steep admittance fee to the backroom maze of gloryholes and porn booths didn't put me off. I suppose I was fraught with thought about life, relationships, wandering around chilly Wicker Park. A younger, more naive me spent a lot of time there with The Patron before he freaked out. I can't remember what street he lives on; I don't care. I'm smarter now, a little bit harder perhaps. Smarter, yeah, but with more baggage. And no one to blab it to.

I used to be an ethnographer of sorts to places like The Ram. The darkness, the stench, the men were all enchanting to me. I don't know why. Like swimming pools. Nowadays I just go there to be anonymous. Anonymous to other people. And, I realized on Friday, anonymous to myself as well. It's a stupor of frowns, hands in pockets, head down, unsmiling, meditative, medicated, wandering down the black halls. Ignoring the men who followed me plaintively: that's power, though that's all the power I feel I have. Desperate. I sat in a booth and closed the door. Some porn was playing all grainy and technicolor on a fly-spotted screen. In the next booth, I could hear two men sucking each other off, wetly. I sat and listened. I no longer learn anything from those sounds, they no longer open but instead close down like pockets of wool on my head.

I finally got off alone after about an hour and a half. I shut the door on me, and peered into the screen, and saw nothing, which was exactly what I wanted to see. At one point, just before I came, someone pushed hard on the door, and I had to use my weight to hold it shut, to keep whoever it was out.

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