Lawbreaker

In the midnight hours of August 24, a local resident, Heather Grande, was caught on security camera speeding through a red light in a Ford Mustang and endangering the safety of her passenger, Pete Virgo.

 

According to police, after a short car chase down Highway 69, Officer David Dankit was able to stop the vehicle by jumping onto the hood of the assailant's car and startling the driver, Heather Grande, who immediately pulled off to the side of the road and stopped. Officer Dankit also stated that when he jumped onto the vehicle, passenger Pete Virgo appeared to be in mild hysterics and disoriented.

Officer Dankit's handsome partner, Devon Heavon, reported that Heather was wearing a stylish Bob Mackie Vermillion sequined cocktail dress and shoes by famous Malaysian Chinese designer Jimmy Choo. Pete was wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and a white T-shirt with the words "Hot Stuff" written across the front in sparkly rainbow glitter.

When Officer Heavon questioned Pete Virgo, Mr. Virgo alleged that he was being blackmailed by the beautiful Heather Grande in exchange for what he described as heterosexual sex.

Heather refuted Devon's claim and stated that Mr. Heavon was a crazy homosexual and had attempted to steal a $3,000 dollar pair of Jimmy Choo pumps from her slender feet as they approached the intersection, which was her reason for running the red light.

Sobriety tests were administered at the scene and intoxication was ruled out as a possible cause for the disturbance. However, an unopened bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne was found in the back seat.

No arrests were made because both parties declined to press charges against the other. Officer David Dankit issued a reckless driving citation to Heather Grande and officer Heavon escorted the distraught Mr. Virgo home to console him.

UPDATE — Heather Grande reportedly made a plea deal in court and gave a very small donation to D.A.M.N. (The organization which she founded) in lieu of paying traffic fines and having her driver's license suspended.

 *The names in this article were changed to protect the guilty*

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The Red Barn

Most kids cannot wait until they reach legal drinking age so they can visit their first cocktail lounge, or sleazy bar, depending on how you want to remember it. Like most young men coming of age, I was no different, except the legal drinking age in Las Vegas, Nevada was twenty-one, whereas my old high school classmates who still lived in Maryland began their legal drinking age at eighteen.

The wait wasn't exactly an inconvenience as I had plenty of opportunities to try alcohol long before my twenty-first birthday, but my first official visit to a public establishment that served booze wasn't until October 1983, or thereabouts. Unfortunately, I don't remember my first visit to a normal cocktail lounge, but I do remember my first visit to a gay bar called the Red Barn.

The Red Barn started its life as an antique store in the late 1950s and converted to a gay bar in the early 1960s after new owners acquired the property. By the mid-1980s, when I found my way into the barn, the building and clientele had already reached their senior years. Of course, to a twenty-one-year-old, anyone ten years or so older might be considered an AARP member, so in all fairness to the men at the bar that night, many of them might not have been as old and used up as I remember them to be.

What I do remember about that night is being accompanied by my best girlfriend, Jamie. I had just recently come out as a gay virgin, so I needed protection from being sucked into a void of unfamiliar gayness and/or a reason to hightail it out of there if things got weird.

And things did get weird soon after we ordered cocktails. At least weird to me, as I had no experience being the new young piece of meat sitting at the end of the bar. I thought Jamie and I would be mostly ignored as we huddled together in conversation, giving me the opportunity to quietly observe what other gay men were about. What I didn't realize when we walked in was most of the men at the bar were old drunken regulars sitting in wait for someone like me who might allow them to grope my toned and tanned young body or have anonymous sex in the back alley!

It reminded me of a zombie apocalypse, except the zombies closing in on us were unshaven horny old men with potbellies and receding hairlines, desperately stretching their arms out toward my private parts. Jamie somehow kept them at bay as we finished our drinks and escaped relatively unscathed.

Oddly, the memory of the Red Barn has become more frightening as the years have passed because that potbellied zombie might easily be me today had I not eventually found the perfect husband decades ago.