What happened at midnight in the parking lot of a bar in Corpus Christi, Texas?

Heads-up: This post contains sexual language and perceived threat of violence.

Come with me to The Whale Bone Bar.

Here, we’re just half a mile from the ocean. A high wooden fence surrounds the bar’s outdoor patio, cutting us off by sight and sound from the parking lot—from any of the outside world. Even so, somehow, the steady early-April breeze ruffling the big umbrellas overhead feels like wind off the water.

Join our crew of merrymakers at a picnic table.

It’s well after midnight. We’ve gathered from as near as down the street and as far as Boston and Tahoe for our friends’ joint bachelor weekend here in Corpus Christi, in the way south tip of Texas. The brother of one of the bachelors is playing a solo show—ukulele, keyboard, drums, voice, looper—and he’s not done yet.

Our crew is all dressed up in the designated theme of the evening: goth. I’ve got on black skinny jeans, a black T-shirt, and heavy black eyeliner. I look good, my friends say. We all look good.

We’ve been here for hours, dancing and chatting and drinking—in my case, ice water only. The musician is about to begin his last set.

But I’m out of steam. I announce my departure and circle the picnic table, giving hugs.

“Find Trent and offer him a ride home,” someone suggests. Trent had gotten too high and overwhelmed, and went to someone else’s car to lie down.

I head for the exit, back through the bar and out the front.

Join me outside. I could use the company walking to the parking lot. And besides, I’m curious what you think of what happens next.

A couple is approaching me, a man and a woman. Early 40s, perhaps, both of them. Dark hair. Their gait suggests they're a few beers in.

“Where are all the bars around here?” the man asks. “Anything open?”

“This place is open!” I smile, not breaking stride. I gesture toward the entrance to the Whale Bone behind me. I’m trying to be helpful. “It’s open ‘til 2 am. If not later.”

We’re already past each other when the man lobs a grenade over his shoulder in a sneering drawl:

“We suckin’ dick out here tonight?”

I freeze. I rotate slowly. His word-grenade is suspended between us. Danger ready to ignite.

Later, I won’t be able to recall his expression, or what his face looked like, or anything about the woman with him—the woman I’m sure he’s trying to impress with some sick performance of machismo. But I know I give him my flintiest glare.

“Nope.” I lengthen the O and make the P snap like a slammed door. I want to sound defiant. Unafraid. I let my glare linger for another second, just to prove I’m not fleeing. I turn back around.

Homophobic heckling wasn’t on my bingo card tonight, I think, shaking my head.

Later, I’ll wonder if that’s true. As I readied to go out earlier that evening, imagining myself dancing at a bar, wasn’t I picturing the deadly scene in the parking lot bar from “Thelma and Louise”? As we all changed into our goth-punk outfits for the show, didn’t I balk at wearing the black skirt Matt offered me? I brought my black skinny jeans, so I might as well use them, I’d said, but was that all? As Matt darkened my eye liner and suggested I add black lipstick—you’re probably the only one who could pull it off—the flattery almost worked on me, but why did I decline anyway? Was I, in fact, bracing myself for this moment hours before?

I keep walking toward my rental car at the back of the little dirt lot. But right as I get to it, I remember: Trent. I was supposed to find him.

I turn around, scanning, trying to guess which of these dark cars might be his hideaway.

I take a few steps back toward the bar. Then I see them.

The couple has returned to the parking lot. They see me, too. They start walking toward me again.

I gotta get out of here. Trent will be fine, I decide. The show is almost over. Everyone else will leave soon enough. 

I turn back to my car. Hurry. But look nonchalant.

I get in just as the couple reaches the car next to mine. I realize it’s theirs. Maybe they’re just going home, too. The guy comes around to my side of the car; the woman is on the other side, maybe out of earshot. I turn on my engine and look back out my window.

The guy is right there, peering back at me. He raises a fist next to his mouth and starts pumping it side to side, tongue thrusting into opposite cheek. The universal gesture for a blowjob.

I feel my face flush and my heart start thumping. Who the fuck is this guy?  I recall a spring morning in Boston, walking to the subway station, minding my own business, sun on my face. I recall a pick-up truck crawling up next to me, two young guys inside. I recall “You wanna suck my dick?” and a nasty snicker. I recall the hot shame of my silence, of shrugging my shoulders and turning away.

Not tonight. Tonight will be different.

My motor is running. I can peel out fast if I need to.

I roll down the window. In the steeliest, straightest-sounding, lowest-pitched, I-know-how-to-throw-a-punch voice I can muster, I say, “What do you want, man?”

He looks me in the eyes. “I want to suck your dick.”

It doesn’t compute. Even now, I’m sure this guy is taunting me. He meant to say “I want you to suck my dick,” but he’s drunk and got it twisted.

“You want… to suck… my dick?” I repeat back, slowly. Ice laced with scorn. Loudly, so the woman can hear. Your loser boyfriend can’t even heckle me properly, sweetie.

He doesn’t waver. “Yes.” A vigorous nod.

I’m out of comebacks. I shake my head, roll up the window, and step on the gas.

It only takes me ten minutes to drive back to our rental house. Ten minutes along Ocean Drive, street lights illuminating palm trees swaying in that steady breeze off the water. Ten minutes for my heart rate to slow, and it begins to dawn on me that the situation may not have been what it first seemed.

Two friends who left before me are still awake, grazing in the kitchen.

“Guys, something really weird just happened, and I’m still kind of shaken up about it,” I say.

They listen to the story. By the end, we’re all laughing.

“That guy literally just wanted to suck your dick the entire time,” Ben says.

“You’ve become the thing you most feared,” says Chase. “You just acted like an asshole closeted homophobe to a gay guy who was trying to hit on you.”

“That poor guy probably just crawled back into the closet for another decade because of you,” Ben chimes in.

“Oh shit,” I say.

We laugh about it a little longer. Everyone else gets home safely soon after, including Trent.

*

This is not the story of bachelor weekend in Corpus Christi. The stories of the weekend are the great music and dancing at the bar, practicing lasso techniques by the pool, a very mixed-levels drag show, a pilgrimage to the Selena memorial, game night with silly wigs. The story is that a group of people connected and played and laughed hard in celebration of our two dear friends’ love.

But weeks later, I’m still thinking about the parking lot of the Whale Bone Bar.

My reaction bothers me. Why did I assume the worst?

Look, I’m not saying it was irrational. The place, the time, my prior experience all conspired against me. And his pick-up line and gesture didn’t make for a romantic—or strategic—combination that would ever work on me, or most people. Anyone else might have thought the same, at least at first. And if I were a woman, no question—get outta there.

But that’s not the point. What bothers me is that I misread what was happening so dramatically. That I read a pick-up line as a threat. That I heard a sneer in a Texan drawl. And that I latched onto that initial impression so tightly that I missed the subsequent signs.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the different stories we all hold. How the pace—and the structures—of our online-addicted lives make us all more likely to cling tighter to our own stories and less likely to hear others. How the algorithms reward having a hot take fast and sticking to it loudly, and discourage thoughtfulness, slowness, the gathering of different points of view. How they provoke a flight-or-fight reaction, even though scrolling on the couch is absent any physical danger. And how that type of online knee-jerk reaction impacts others, too.

My reaction to the man in the parking lot seems like more of an online reaction than an in-person reaction.

That thought bothers me.

And Chase is right: that guy’s story could be the inverse of mine. I don’t really believe I sent him back into the closet for ten years. He was too bold for that. But it seems plausible that he read my anger as disgust, my dismissal as denial. In other words, that he read me exactly as Chase described: a closeted asshole, afraid of being outed, lashing out… homophobically.

That thought really bothers me.

Of course, maybe it’s not that deep. Maybe it’s just a funny story. A voice in my head goes, Give it a rest, man, why do you have to make everything bigger than it is? But I can feel discomfort in my gut saying it’s about something else, something about myself that I don’t love.

This particular story is done. I don’t need to find the guy in the parking lot; I don’t need to talk it out and share a heartwarming—chaste—hug.

But I hope I can remember, in future situations both online and off, to allow that my story might not be fully accurate. To check that fight-or-flight may not be the right response. To feel that cool breeze off the water and let it calm me, help me slow down just enough to notice: what other story might be present here?

Thanks for coming along with me. What do you think?