Waiting with the Bar Rats

Waiting with the Bar Rats Elizabeth Hall (bio) It's a warm, sunny day in San Pedro. I borrow Mark's car and drive down the coast for the afternoon. I book an appointment at Irvine University archives where I'll shiver at a long wooden table and thumb through the personal papers of Robert F. Gentry, the first openly gay elected official in Southern California. Off the freeway, I miss the turn to campus. I drive towards the beach, telling myself it's far too nice a day to read inside. At the park, the wind drowns out the cars. Beyond the tree break, I sit in the dry grass and spit cherry pits. I let my skirt fill with twigs. A child picks up a blue ball and drops it. A cloud of dirt rises. The child tries to throw the ball. It falls. I turn a page, and the breeze blows it back. I read the same lines, never getting any closer to their meaning. There's a dog tied to a fence, barking at a pack of little leaguers. When I kick open the bathroom door, the dog at me. The barking drowns the sound of my pee. In the mirror, my creased face in a shaft of light. Below the sink, a half-moon of turds on the tiles. I look closer. The tapered edges of the turds are a sure sign of rats. Yes, rats. Even in Orange County ________ I plan many visits back to the university library. Some days I pay to park in the packed campus lot, then drive off without opening the car door. This surprises me every time. Because I'm not in Irvine to sun at the beach or search for rats. I'm here to paw through the personal papers of Robert F. Gentry and other archives, to chart the evolution of southern Orange County from hippie heaven to conservative cliche. Today, I miss my turn. Today, I cruise straight through the city's heart, down to the coast, past the beach, into the canyon where the birds sing all day long, or so I read somewhere. ________ I choose a different course. I pull into the parking lot of the bar. ________ My new research method is simple: visit every gay bar past and present in Laguna. I'll chart the demise of "Southern California's original gay beach" one converted dive at a time. My sole job: sit in the sun and drink. Research even a distracted person can perform. [End Page 153] ________ Ever since the trip to the desert with friends, when I think about sitting in silence to work on the project, my stomach clenches, and I find myself wanting to flee. These days I find myself less and less interested in the quiet contemplation of writing. I want to be out, on the scene, snooping around an abandoned barroom, losing myself in the borrowed nostalgia of the disco dancefloor. ________ "When I can't write, I go in and play with the rat," says Brenda Hillman, a poet who knows the differences between rats in the attic and rats in the barn, rats we pet and rats that trawl trash, rats running mazes and rats that rule our dreams. Of these, I prefer the ones that come to me while I sleep. How they edge out all other visitors. If I sleep. ________ I blame my recent insomnia on the rat who moved into my roof a few weeks ago. It runs all night, I say to friends. In bed, stiff as a matchstick, I watch the hours burn. ________ No one can ask the rat for its opinion about the cause of my sleeplessness. If they could ask, the rat might point out that I was already awake at 2 a.m. the first night I heard it scratching above my head. I was awake that night at 2 a.m. as I had been every night since my trip to the desert when Mark, my ex-boyfriend and current roommate, unzipped my tent, crawled inside, and assaulted me while a horned owl hooted in the distance. ________ There are...