The Third Rail
Small towns, gay demons, and the sadder side of progress
Cromwell, a rural-ish town located in central Connecticut, is one of those tiny, townie bubbles in which everyone knows everyone and gay people generally don’t exist. Or — well, they do, but only in the way that gray hairs might exist on select twenty-something men: few, far between, and unnoticeable from far away.
Some things you just don’t talk about.
I grew up in Cromwell, but I also happened to be raised by a fiery liberal woman with Sicilian roots whose network of friends from nearby towns and cities included just as many out gay men as it did people with brown eyes, so you could say I was lucky. I came out to her at eighteen and our relationship has been more Will and Grace than Step by Step ever since.
One long weekend last winter, I visited. On Friday night my mom and I decided to hit up a new-at-the-time bar in the center of town for some beers after dinner. The bar was called the Third Rail and by ten o’clock we were buzzed and talking about guys.
“I don’t know, Mom,” I rambled, my third or fifth draft beer in hand, surrounded by wood paneling and bright Budweiser signs and creepy older men named Earl or Marty or Don, the type that had probably been there since lunch. “I like him, but not as much as he likes me. He’s too nice and I’m too bored. I need someone who’s more confident, more… of a dick, I guess.”
I was going through a phase where nice guys kept falling for me and I kept finding reasons to rule them out. I was self-aware enough to realize why it was happening yet not quite ready to do anything about it.
“Nice doesn’t have to mean boring,” she assured me between swigs of her Coors Light. “You just need to find a man who’s fun to be around and not an asshole. He’s out there. And you’re young!”
We were loud, and I could tell by the number of eyes on us that our mutual usage of “he” and “man” caught the attention of some of the Third Rail’s more idle patrons. We knew we didn’t fit in there, but we were already there—and besides, we didn’t give a shit what Earl or Marty or Don thought about our conversation anyway.
Two shots of whiskey appeared in front of us.
“Wait, what?” I asked the bartender, who then pointed to Earl or Marty or Don — let’s just go with Don — from across the bar and said, “On him.”
Don smirked, lifted his own shot of Jack, and said cheers.
“I don’t drink this shit,” my mom replied, sliding hers away. “Thank you, though!”
I questioned Don’s motives for randomly buying a mother and son a spontaneous round of shots, but again we weren’t exactly Step by Step, so I drank it so as not to be rude, gave my mom a low-key “what the fuck?” face, and jumped back into our conversation about my big gay love life until, five minutes later, he bought us a round of beers.
“Cheers!” he repeated, coming off a little sleazier this time.
I couldn’t tell if he was just being nice or hitting on my mom, or hitting on me, which would have been even creepier and way more loaded — or conversely, maybe being homophobic and harassing us.
My mom, also aware that two rounds of drinks is never just two rounds of drinks, decided to nip the situation in the bud before it got too far and too weird. “Thanks,” she said, turning toward him in her bar stool with a sassy glare, “but seriously, why?”
It seemed that no one had ever asked him that question before, as he gave a confused, blank stare for about ten seconds before finally forcing out a laugh and tugging on the sleeve of his grimy old white t-shirt.
“Frankly, I just wanna get laid,” he said, trying to match her level of candor, speaking in a tone that confirmed he was horny and alone and drunk enough to just say fuck it. “You… him… whoever.”
He pointed at me during the “him,” and I wanted to puke. I got the vibe that after he said it maybe he wanted to puke as well.
I try not to make assumptions about people, but as I write this I wonder if making assumptions wouldn’t be such a bad idea in this case, since the hard facts alone paint Don as nothing more than a sketchy, sweaty, predatory creep who was drunk and looking to fuck anything that walked that night.
Maybe he grew up in Cromwell, too. Perhaps back then he knew an even smaller version of the town in which gay men weren’t “few, far between, and unnoticeable from far away,” but rather completely repressed because that was the only option. A version of the town in which mothers didn’t have gay friends, and their gay sons didn’t come out to them at eighteen or ever, because gay sons were simply born gay and would die gay but mostly just wouldn’t allow themselves to exist in the first place.
Maybe witnessing me existing made him wonder for a second if he could finally let himself talk about something he never thought he could talk about, and saying him while pointing at me was his tiny way of doing so.
Or perhaps he was in fact just a creep. After all, he objectified my mom and me in the same way, at the same time. And even though we didn’t give him a response and we finished our beers and we got over it easily enough, it wasn’t okay. It was a weird, fucked up thing—a thing that was disrespectful and invasive and uncomfortable and just gross.
But then of course there are things that are worse. Some things are unfair and tragic and sad and lonely. Some things you just don’t talk about.
