Also Not Gay

From Wonkette:

Meet David Phillips, a local IT geek and bear-about-town.

Phillips was recently in a bar minding his own business when he heard Craig’s voice on the television.

“I went pale and nearly vomited,” Phillips says. It was the man he remembered from one of his creepiest sexual encounters twenty years earlier.

“After a truncated meal I went back to my hotel room and began unwinding and jotting down the memories that the voice had opened. I recalled The Follies, the furtive groping and pawing there, the odd following of this man in my car….. Crap!”

...Phillips explains, referring to the notorious and now-closed go-go boy bar La Cage aux Follies on Capitol Hill. “There were so many closeted neocons who trolled for cock and ass there, particularly cock and ass on younger men: Terry Dolan, Jon Hinson, and a bunch of other men who seemed to run in a close and secretive group. I had sex with some of them at The Follies, and I even went home with a couple of them — at different times, at least — based on smooth talk and their attraction to a 20-something geek. One of them I would later recognize as Larry Craig.”

One night, Phillips continues, “I followed [Craig] from The Follies to a Capitol Hill neighborhood, parking on the street no telling how far from his house. We walked up the alley and through the back door of a house, with him repeating several times, ‘You were never here. You don’t know me. Right?’ and me responding, ‘Right!’ in boyish submission. As we tiptoed from the back door to the stairs to the upper floor, as if somebody else was home, he turned to grope my crotch and brush my face with his hand.” The house’s decor led Phillips to believe that this was a married man: “The bric-a-brac with family pictures didn’t scream ‘old queen’ to me; it announced a woman’s influence. Still, we made our way upstairs.

“When we got to what reminded me of a rarely used guest room, he stripped me down, and the man’s hands and mouth were all over me. He kept his pants on, though, while laying me back on the bed to suck my cock. Then, he stripped naked and asked me to suck him. I complied for a while, then he disappeared and returned with lube and a condom to fuck me me with. It was a clumsy and unremarkable fuck, .... Still, he blew his load, ripped the dirty condom off and ordered me to get dressed without wiping myself. He hurried me to the back door, again ranting, ‘You were never here. You don’t know me. Right?’”

Mr. Phillips’ next claim is startling, indeed: “On the way back through ... and feeling totally humiliated I let my eyes wander and saw on a table a small envelope, like one from a gift or a floral arrangement, with ‘Suzanne Craig’ neatly written on it. This memory,” Phillips insists, “I noted about three hours after hearing Craig’s voice again, the night before I saw a current picture of him and a good day before I heard of his wife in the news. ‘That’s who’s going to fuck me up if she finds out,’ I thought. As he reached for the door, he took a $20 bill from his wallet, shoved in my front pocket, adding ‘Remember, I can buy and sell your ass ten thousand times over. You were never here. Don’t try to come back here. You don’t know me.

“When I next heard that voice two months ago,” David concludes, “my mind went right back to that encounter, leaving me feeling cold and used all over again. I wish I hadn’t been a screwed-up kid at the time and had had the presence of mind to tell him to keep the money he shoved at me like I was part of the trade common to The Follies.”

And why has Mr. Phillips decided to share this story with us? Mostly because I badgered him to after he related the story to me two weeks ago at the DC Eagle (I’ve known David for several years). “I’m just glad to purge some mental baggage over it. I wouldn’t ratchet my current feelings about it to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder levels,” he explains, “but it’s close. Changing jobs, celebrating two years off meds, and dealing with carpal tunnel release surgery have actually helped me keep sane during the last few weeks. I keep thinking, ‘What next?’ There were a bunch of Houston oil execs and financiers I tricked with during college, almost all of whom were married… so I’ve been on-edge during both Bush presidencies, waiting for one of them to rise to Cabinet level.”