This happened in the early '90s. One Saturday night, I went to a bar near a police precinct in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. The bar is closed now. It was called Kelly's. I had just turned 18 and had to use fake ID to drink. I was a typical Brooklyn kid but still wet behind the ears. Guys had started to come on to me, but I was still struggling with my sexuality and I passed up a lot of opportunities—-which is something that I regret now! I had done some experimenting with other boys, but for me, sex was still a mystery waiting to be explored.
An older married friend had introduced me to Kelly's a few weeks before. I later found out my friend was bi, but I didn't know it at the time. Anyway, Kelly's wasn't a gay bar. It was a laid-back place with sports on TV , some video games and a pretty good jukebox. What made it interesting was that I could count on some members of the local precinct showing up to drink with their buddies. While my friend and I usually sat at the bar up front, the cops always took tables in the rear. Some were in uniform and some in civvies, and they always seemed to stick to themselves.
On that Saturday night I went to Kelly's alone. From my perch at the bar I would glance at the cops from time to time, because I had begun to feel that there was something about cops that intrigued me. Even if it didn't make a lot of sense, their presence seemed to add a mysterious charge to the air. I knew it had to do with manliness, but I was also fascinated by men who had learned how to strike a balance between helping people and having to use rough tactics. I never spoke to those cops. I just liked to watch them and imagine what it might be like to be one of them.
By 10 p.m. that Saturday, I was on my third beer. All that liquid had begun to get to me, so I headed for the men's room. Kelly's was not fancy, and there were only two small urinals with no partition between them. I was standing at one urinal when a tall, handsome man came in and stood at the other one. He wore aviator glasses and his brown hair was cut short. He was wearing a light blue polo shirt over a broad chest and muscular arms, and since I had seen him sitting with the cops, I figured he must be one too. While I stood there pissing, I couldn't help glancing as the guy pulled out his cock. It was enormous—at least 9 inches long and thick. The piss shot out of it, and I had to keep from staring. Then—and this was the weird part—I thought the guy's eyes were straying toward my own penis. But that seemed impossible. I finished pissing. As I shook the last drops from my cock, he gave me a little grin and met my eyes.
What was happening? Inside, I was dissolving, but I managed to say, "This is a pretty cool place, huh?"
The guy said, "It's okay. Depends on what you're into." As he walked off, I felt him graze my ass with his hand.
Did he really? He couldn't have. Or if he did, it must have been an accident. Feeling a little shaky, I went back to the bar, and he rejoined his friends at a table. Whatever had happened was over. I decided I had imagined the whole thing.
Yes, I must have imagined it.
But five minutes later the tall guy walked up to where I sat and swung onto a stool next to mine. Startled, I gave him a cautious smile.
He said, "How's it going?" and ordered a beer and said, "Those assholes back there tell the same fucking jokes every night. I'd rather talk to a normal person for a change. He grinned and said, "You are a normal person, aren't you?"
I laughed and said, "More or less."
He laughed too and started slugging beer from his bottle. A news show came on TV, and it contained a report of a hit-and-run accident in Williamsburg. I said, "Why do people do things like that?"
He said, "Hit and run? Shit! Because they're scared little pussies that won't take responsibility for their own actions. They're afraid to be a man. By the way, my name's Rick."
I felt a warm flush come over me and told him my name. We shook hands, and I said, "I was wondering if you're a cop."
He said, "Does it show?"
I laughed. "A little."
He went on to tell me about a woman he had arrested a week earlier for assaulting a neighbor. He said, "She said she'd blow me every week if I forgot about the thing, and she pulled out her boobs. They weren't all that great so I cuffed her." We both laughed again, and after a while our conversation moved on to other things. I explained that I was working part-time in a fast-food joint and was hoping to get into film school, but I knew it wouldn't be an easy road.
"Yeah," Rick said. "A lot of things in life aren't easy. But when there's something you really want, you have to go for it."
I said, "I intend to."
"You'll do okay if you've got the skills. Of course there are some skills so special not everybody can appreciate them. Know what I mean?"
"I—I guess so," I said.
"I mean some skills are totally personal, just between you and somebody else. Strictly private stuff. You'll understand that better when you get older."
"I think I understand now," I said, feeling my heart beat faster.
"How old are you anyway?" he asked. I didn't want to tell him I was drinking illegally, so I said I was 21. He said, "No shit? You look about fifteen." He grinned. "No offense, okay? Hell, I've only got a few years on you. Care for another one?"
I let him buy me a beer, and we kept on talking. Around 11 p.m. he finished his own beer, looked around the bar and noticed that his buddies had left. He stretched and said, "Fuck, looks like they all went home. It's about time I got out of here too."
I was about to say, "It was nice meeting you," when he put his hand on my arm and said, "Feel like a nightcap?" At the same time I felt his knee pressing against mine.
Damn. Could this really be happening? Excited but with a shiver of fear, I agreed to go with him. We left Kelly's and he hailed a taxi and we took it to his building about a half mile away. He lived in a third-floor apartment. It was small and neat, with a kitchenette on one side and a double bed on the other. As I looked around, I was puzzled. On the kitchenette wall was a calendar with photos of nude women. And on a coffee table was a copy of Penthouse and several porn magazines, on one of which was a picture of a girl sucking a guy's cock. All the porn looked hetero. Rick wouldn't have stuff like this if he wasn't into women, would he?
So what did it mean? Maybe I had been wrong to come here. My fantasies had kept me talking to this hot-looking guy, and now I had to deal with a touchy situation. After all, he was a cop. If I came on to him, he could give me a very bad time. It was even possible he had been trying to get me into a position where he could arrest me. But why?
Nervously, I watched him pour rye for the two of us, and for a while we sat sipping our drinks. Trying to keep things light, I pointed to the coffee table and said, "That's some hot stuff you've got there."