The Closet Has Teeth

Emerging Writer Series

Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, “The Closet Has Teeth” by Finn Deerhart. Born a minister’s son in the Deep South, Finn grew up in a rigidly religious environment struggling against social conditioning and physical abuse. Following high school, Finn also became a trained minister, suppressing his sexual identity as a gay man. After his double life fell apart, he came out of the closet and redefined his search for personal truth. These days, Finn believes that the medicine for internal healing lies within our wounds of rejection and shame. He is 42 years old, happily partnered, and is writing himself back together again. He is a sex counselor in California.

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On the edge of my university campus, there was a public restroom at the end of a long, empty hallway. To get there, you’d pass through a grimy food court, an aromatic cloud of grease and sweat; burgers, pizza, tacos, Vietnamese Pho, as well as “healthy” choices like salads that were really mounds of shredded iceberg lettuce and GMO tomatoes, smoothies that could be candy bars.

Rounding the corner just outside that dining area, you’d enter a hallway that took maybe 30 to 45 seconds before you reached the men’s room at the end, plenty of time to deliberate: I can turn back, I don’t have to go in, my hand on the door wavering. But once inside, the body took over; no turning back on the clutch of instinct. There, men collected like droplets in a puddle.

It was not a beautiful place, more like a prison. Paint chips fell from the walls, everything the same drab beige in sloppy coats that dripped in the corners. Overhead, florescent lights hummed; they were imperceptible at first, but the longer you stayed, the louder they seemed. Those tubes of mercury gas, they tint even the most beautiful skin a sallow hue, shade the air a pale green.

Stretching across the entry wall, a long, rectangular mirror brought sharp focus to the asymmetry of my face: my left eye squints slightly more than the right, an almost-wink. I might’ve flashed a smile at myself as if meeting a suitor. Or interrogated myself: it’s only a matter of time, who do you think you’re fooling?

Past two sinks and their crowning mirror, countertop splashed with soap scum and dirty water, you would then face a short wall with two air dryers—the end of your view—until rounding the corner.

On the other side, a scattering of fellows. Pants tugging back into place. Urinals jammed with those pretending to piss, their hard cocks bobbing. Maybe one of them would abort, nervously tucking his hard-on into his jeans and hustling past, eyes down. He’d exit the restroom, and you’d hear his steps fading down the outer hallway, the remaining others eying you suspiciously. Are you one of us?

Restrooms like this one are secrets in plain sight, whirling carnivals of anonymous sex while around the corner and down the hall, folks order baskets of chicken tenders and French fries. When you enter such a place, you know where you are and why you’re here, a sixth sense tugging you into the hands of strangers. Every once in a while, someone got arrested by an undercover cop or his face bashed in by a homophobe; then, for a few days, everyone vanished, word spreading in whispers. Gradually we’d return, gathering like shadows of the outside world.

Regularly, I skipped class and loitered there: my living study. Sometimes, a couple of hours passed before I realized that no time was left for a credible alibi. Besides sex, men gathered for relief from marriages, girlfriends, boyfriends, professions, lectures about familial alliances and subsistence strategies. We were our own defiant ethnography, a tribe of starving, groping, hands under stalls, ejaculating and shitting side-by-side like villagers. Cyclopses peering through burrowed holes where screws had been stripped in the afterhours.                   

This might come as a surprise, but amid smudgy footprints in rogue splatters of urine, a confetti of toilet paper and dried cum—the tile beneath my knees felt refreshing, its cool surface stripped of wives, churches, and fathers. There, I had no name, no history; I was one among dozens on any given day: men I hated because they were cowards in the outer world, ornamental blondes on their arms.

On the street, we might’ve drifted past each other with adverted eyes, darting like roaches even after sharing skin, because outside those walls, we jettisoned this alliance straightway. Sex dragged us from the closet just long enough to remember our bodies without armor. We did this to survive.

When I left, I’d close the door behind me and flee, the unforgettable thud of bodies against bodies still in my ears.

***
I was twenty-three years old when I married a woman.  I loved her as deeply as I knew how to love, as deeply as I knew myself. When she became my wife, I felt safe from the jaws of the closet. My wife and I enrolled together at the University of Texas where I studied cultural anthropology in the classroom, researched in secret. Men like me have always found each other under a blanket of lies.

We escape the closet in our own time.

But the closet has teeth, and it chews men to pulp. Some of us make it out but forever carry the marks of teeth and nails.

***

This was before hookup apps, when profiles were carved into built spaces populated by live bodies. No truncated torsos in tiny, digitized frames, no stats. Just bathrooms, truck stops, bookstores, alleyways, and vehicles. Walks into dark woods, under bridges, backward glances on the street. The scrawling of digits into stall dividers with ballpoint pens, etchings by knifepoint: phone numbers, dick measurements, times of day.

Paul sucks big dick, 8”+

Here daily at 3:00 pm

Looking for blowjobs, phone number

These were messages in bottles, flares on a lonely ocean.

Beneath stalls, men advertised themselves by footwear and what they did with their anticipating feet. Was he a business man? A construction worker? A college undergrad? Wearing a uniform of some kind? Gucci loafers, Chuck Taylors, or flip-flops?—if all you can see is a man’s shoes, you learn to make fairly accurate calculations about his appearance above the shin.

Were his wing tips scuffed beneath rumpled trousers? If so, he could’ve worn an oversized polo up top to mask a midline paunch. Or were they shiny oxfords, too clean to be cruising the bathroom? Then he might also brandish a full set of veneers, hair that he wouldn’t want tussled, probably a button down over a quasi-athletic frame.

Cowboy boots or steel-toes—you could bet his mouth would go straight for your ass—his face rough, equal parts handsome and gruesome. Sports shoes of any kind were a toss-up: either he was fit, maybe fresh from the gym, or he might give zero fucks in his most comfortable option.

Sometimes you’d need to gather information, wait for a signal. Sniffles or a faux cough meant, listen up, I’m looking. Toe taps: definitively looking, and with urgency. Shuffling: already jacking, possibly near ejaculation, occasionally an exhibitionist. When a hand waved beneath a stall, you could drop to your knees right there and get your dick stroked or sucked.

Not everyone was so bold. Many timidly waited in stalls to be sure you were not a cop, that you were there to join. But to a trained eye, how their shadows drifted across the tile under the divider indicated whether or not the man inside was leaning forward. Then, he might hover just above the bottom of the divider. If you held your breath, you’d eventually see a sliver of his head drop below the partition, a single eye peeping: on the hunt but reticent to tap, shuffle, sniffle, cough, or jangle his belt. 

A man’s stride could indicate whether he was a regular or a newbie, striking boldly with heels versus pattering gingerly. The liberated types and the hung ones always skipped the stalls, went straight to the urinals. They’d lean back, noisily flop out their dicks and flex their hard-ons; these guys settled for nothing less than a blowjob, would occasionally reciprocate but you couldn’t count on it.

If one encroached on your personal space at the sinks or the urinals, he might be a really hot Dom. Or a predator, but you wouldn’t really know until you had repeatedly stopped him from fishing his hand down your ass crack, forcefully pushing your head to his crotch, or inserting his tongue into your mouth or ear without invitation.

And then there were subtleties: was there vanity in how he stroked his cock? Or shame? His shoulders, were they cast back with lifted gaze, or were they crumpled, eyes averted? Hips thrust forward? Or shy, apologetic?

Unlike hookup apps, one could not post photos that were really ten years old. Could not fluff his cock and angle the camera just so. Within these walls, a body was what it was: either a prize, or it would do—and to play, you had to know where along the continuum you fell.

I am not like them, I said, locking myself into stalls.

These were 36” wide, 60” deep, and 88” high, grotesque little boxes of pleading souls: please touch me, love me, hold my cock like you don’t want to let it go. Am I beautiful? Am I worthy? After you’ve seen me, will you stay?

Beneath our skin, we are lotuses in mud.

Nobody stays.

Except for the haunting faces that I cannot forget, both striking and wretched. To those desolate and beautiful faces, I opened because they were not fazed when I trembled with guilt. Together, we slipped our wedding rings into shushed pockets, momentarily relief from loneliness and self-disgust that always worsened after leaving.

My own ring felt cumbersome, too large a life for me.

Men like me have forever huddled in the shadows of heterosexual men: revered for how they rifle through women like laundry or marry their high school sweethearts. Like God intended.

While, in this contemptible sanctuary, murky pools on sticky tiles reflected lunging, whiskered mouths like carp. Here, we would never be idealized, just fractions: holes, inches, girth. Cock-suckers and ass-fuckers. A congregate flesh of free-dangling, lawless dicks. 

Husbands, boyfriends, professors, firemen, cops (yes, cops), attorneys, waiters, insurance salesmen, bums, clergymen, bros who called you faggot on the street only to surface later in the sludge, competing for cocks. No one was gay, straight, or otherwise, just orphaned bodies clutching each other in savage currents.

And what would I, this cock-sucking-ass-fucker, tell a wife?

I am not gay.

One man, he was always there, and I hated him for that. Also because he was fat and breathed with heaving effort. He filled the space with husky gulps of air as he flapped at his cock to make it hard. He didn’t seem to worry about getting caught.

I held the stall door open so he could watch me jack off, my other hand signaling: stop-stay-where-you-are, don’t take a step closer, or the show is over.

Was it really for him? Or, to be coveted, exalted, a meal he could not touch?

If I could go back, I would place my hand over his heart. Tell him that he is beautiful, that he deserves so much more than I was capable of giving, that it was never him that I hated—only myself.

After repeat encounters, I got to know a sexy, mid-forties, silver-haired yoga instructor who drove a Nissan Pathfinder. I knew his license plate because I memorized it. Whenever his SUV was parked outside that grungy little building, I bailed on class so he could cram his shaft down my throat. He made me greedy; I couldn’t help myself.

A dragon tattoo descended his rippled stomach, trailed down below his navel and onto his cock, and this fascinated me: I couldn’t take my eyes off its bold colors nor the treasure it clutched. Once, he picked me up and held me in mid-air, wrapped my legs around his waist and forced me against the wall. Pulling my t-shirt over my head, he sucked my nipples and tongued my ear. Sternly ordered me to beg for his big, beautiful dick. I begged like I couldn’t go on living without it, a dragon stinging the inside of my lips.

Our rendezvouses moved from the bathroom, to the inside of his Pathfinder, to his house. He asked me to call him daddy, and that terrified me: how could he know exactly what needed filling? This hole that never closes.

I brought him soup when he was sick, even crocheted him a scarf for Christmas.

He told me that he loved me, that I was special. Abruptly, I stopped returning his calls and text messages because sucking his dick made tears well up in my eyes.

There was a musky construction worker who wore skank tanks cut deep into the middle of the shirt. I clung to his muscled arms, shoulders, and chest. He wore faded Levi’s over work boots, kept his Oakley’s on, even inside.

He smelled like sweaty armpits, took as much space as he wanted around my body, held my face against the divider wall. Wrapping his thick forearms around my waist, his rough hands snaked down the back of my pants and gently stroked my hole with surprising tenderness. Then, he brought his fingers to his nose, inhaled deeply, lavishly sucking each one like he’d just dipped it in birthday cake.

He handled me like concrete and steel. Tugged up my shirt and thumped the heaviness of his dick against my low back, rattled off a stream of Spanish that I couldn’t translate, but it didn’t matter because I thought I understood. Without asking, he pulled my pants down below my ass and started pushing his tip into my hole.

I stretched open, panting, “You have to use a condom.”

Surprisingly, he had one, fumbled it into place and fucked me deeply into stillness. 

Then, he pulled out, tore away the rubber and ejaculated across my naked cheeks.

What he lacked in consent, he made up in how he held me—wouldn’t let me go even after he’d cum. Instead, he pressed his forehead against the back of my head, gently stroked my hair with one hand, his other tracing little circles down my arm.

One man wore an impeccably-pressed business suit. Also, he brought his own set of clothes hangers. He shut the stall door behind him with as little sound as possible, the metal latch whispering into place. One at a time, he stripped each article of clothing and fastidiously organized it on a hanger until he was naked.

From my toilet, I was bent over peeking beneath, and I watched him descend to his knees—but he did not stop there. Instead, he rolled over onto his back and began edging himself under my stall. I panicked; I had not waved my fingers, had not tapped my foot, had given no signal.

As his head slid beneath the divider, it stared blankly up at me at me as if decapitated, eyes motionless under wire rim glasses. Like a fish, his mouth opened and closed, mimed words I could not read, but I didn’t want to know anyway because I was enraged. On the verge of kicking this head as hard as I could.

Oblivious, he beckoned me closer, his tongue slithering over thin lips before scooting further into my stall.

I should have left.

But hate needs a body to pierce, so I got down on my knees over his face and jacked off, my balls slapping against his forehead. His glasses shifted sideways. When he began moaning and muttering audible fuck words, I bore down over his mouth so that I could not hear. He struggled to breathe, but in my hostility, he was in bliss. This sent fury through my limbs. This was exactly what he wanted.

But I cannot honestly say that I was not glowing with sick indignation, the wrath of a despot who has climbed up from some bottom rung.

I shot my load across his cheekbones, immediately pulled up my jeans and opened the stall door. He sickened me.

Looking back, I saw a string of semen dangled from his bent eyeglasses, and I ran from that godawful face. From the monster I had become.

On some days, Dylan stayed so long that he packed a sack lunch and ate it midway through his shift atop his toilet. Dylan always chose the first stall because, from there, you could peek through a hole in the divider into the urinal area where a parade of cocks moved in and out of view.

I knew his name—just like everybody did—because he routinely begged people to shit on him while saying his name out loud.

Dylan had an enormous uncut cock that smelled so strong, I wouldn’t go near it, but from a few feet away, my eyes seized it like treasure. When he unexpectedly dropped to the floor and started sucking my dick, his stench overwhelmed me, and I almost threw up. Pulling my cock from his mouth, spit dropped on the floor beneath him, and I left without warning.

The next time I was there, a pair of sneakers tapped beneath the first stall. Safe to proceed, I peered into the crack between divider and door, an arm jacking fiercely inside. I tapped on the door, and it opened: Dylan perched on the toilet, legs splayed, shirt tugged up over his stomach. A gigantic cock rising from its throne.  

Pointing to his chest, he begged, “Please piss on me—right here.”

“On your shirt?” I grimaced.

“Yes. And my face.” His eyes untamed.

So I did, all over his shirt and face, the excess running into a plastic bottle that he held beneath his chin. Drinking it, he begged for more, but I had none left to give, my face twisted in disgust.

This black hole of a person, I thought, shame blinding my eyes to the truth that we were in this together, Dylan and me: however he got here—unquenchable, revolting, drenched in piss—Dylan needed somebody, anybody.

Not me, I thought, and I left him in a souring puddle.

A few months later, Dylan moved away from Austin because rumors spread that he was giving everyone STIs. Maybe he was, and I was relieved that I would never see him again.

Sadly, we needed that scapegoat to carry our burdens far away; though, it was too much for any one person to bear.

Shortly thereafter, Dylan took his own life—survived by his shame that remains every bit ours, too.

The last time I ever visited that wretched place, it was late at night. I had been visiting a friend, and on the way home, I parked outside the building for a quick pass through the bathroom. Maybe I’ll get lucky, jack off with a cute freshman, I thought; they trended later in the evening.

The food court was empty, wired gates drawn down over kiosks. The dining area was silent, chairs turned upside down on tables, air smelling faintly of mop water that should’ve been changed more frequently.

Entering that long hallway, my footsteps echoed. I can turn back, I thought, I don’t have to go in, even as each leg took over, no intention of stopping.

In the closet, sex can do that: frays the nerves, short-circuits the conscience, shifts a body into autopilot.

That infernal door at the end of the hallway inching closer.

That door was corroded, the word MEN on a centered plaque.

Portal to the underworld wherein life feeds on life, desire chewing its way through organisms.

For a moment, my hand hovered in front of the door, my will to retreat, a distant glitch between body and soul.

If I could go back, I would have placed my hand over my heart, told myself that it wasn’t my fault: this tender boy with whelps on his legs, a father slamming him to the floor, fear lacing the viscera of his body together like fascia, his cock stitched to a broken spirit.     

Well, bodies do what they do.

I opened the door and stepped inside. It was still. Like a tomb, a cavity of bones.

Past the sinks and around the air dryers, I moved into empty space, the sound of my footsteps reverberating.

I’ll stick around for a few minutes, I thought, to see if anyone comes.

The last stall was my favorite because it was larger than the rest so I approached it, my hand reaching for the latch.

When I opened the door, I don’t know what I saw—that thing crumpled over the toilet, blood splattered across the floor and on walls. Was it blood? It was crimson and brown, but I was running, the door creaking behind me like talons against metal. 

Yes, it was a body. You cannot mistake an inert body for anything else. But blood?

My own, it reddened my ears and flushed my face, my heart crashed against my ribs.

I sprinted straight to my car, started the engine and drove home like nothing had happened. I dared not report what I’d seen because that little chamber at the end of the hall, that little cell of boys grown into men who fuck men who are depraved—even dangerous—had been carved out of secrets exactly like mine.

I am not like them.

Somebody else will notify the police, I told myself; maybe a janitor or an early morning employee, perhaps another like me stopping by in the middle of the night.

Long after my wife had fallen asleep, I laid beside her beneath designer covers staring into the blackness of our chic bedroom.

The closet chewing its way through my heart.