I meet my date—ready for this—at the Port Bar, the weird one on Joseph Campau with a sign out front that looks like it might have been made for a vineyard. Food/Spirits, it says, but there is no food here, just whiskey and beer and cheap wine. So, those three large fish on the sign, swimming, mouth to tail, one about to gulp down the other, might be what really happens here. The food eats itself. Maybe the patrons do too. I find my date in a booth opposite the bar. I apologize for my scruffy appearance. It’s just been such a busy day at the restaurant, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He is short and in good shape for a guy in his late 40s. He says he moved here from the U.P., Iron River. Then he lets slide that he is a priest. What? I say, No way! For real, he says. He shows me his ID. In the photo, he’s wearing a collar with a little white square at the base of his throat. Wow! Holy shit, I say, Do you keep that in your car? Your priest outfit? No, he says, Not the robe. Just the collar. You know, in case I have to go on a hospital visit. I ask if he could wear it tonight. I mean, it’s just a total turn on. He smiles, but says No, maybe another time. After a couple drinks, all I want to do is confess to him. I’m wracking my brain for some mortal sin. Have I not been thinking about this for years? I mean as a boy I was so attracted to my priest. I dreamed about the darkness of the confessional booth. As if a little door in there could slide open, and screen be removed to allow priest and parishioner to join hands. Or maybe other more significant parts might pitch from one dark space to the next to be held and kissed, there in the sexy stillness of church. Because it’s getting late, I pay our tab and we exit the Port. Standing in front of the sign with its lush suggestion of what the bar could be but is definitely not, my date invites me to his place. It’s up in Southfield actually. It’s one those priest houses that connects to a church—whatever they are called. I try again to get him to put on his robes, but he won’t do it. I tell you, though. We have really good sex. It’s super hot. This all happens up by the old Northland mall which is where my Mom took me as a kid. One time in the toy store, she said I could get anything I wanted. We were in the aisle with the rugged little GI Joe figures with all their army equipment like guns and jeeps and helicopters. I didn’t want any of it. I took her to the next aisle and I picked out a do-it-yourself stencil kit for decorating clothes. The pink sides of the box were patterned with flowers. You’re sure, Mom said. I mean, I was and I wasn’t. I’m certain it was a dead giveaway.
Steve Hughes is the writer and publisher of Detroit’s longest-running zine Stupor. He is also the author of two collections, Stupor: A Treasury of True Stories (Stupor House, 2011), funded by the Kresge Foundation, and STIFF (Wayne State University Press, 2018). In 2011, he began producing the potluck/literary series called The Good Tyme Writers Buffet. Hughes lives in Hamtramck Michi- gan and continues to collect stories at local watering holes for forth-coming issues of Stupor.
