I called Holden up at her job at the dildo factory and told her she should meet me at the Lexington Club. I'm there perched at the polished wood bar

that acts as a sort of sneeze-guard, keeping the establishment's foxy bartenders away from the slobbery advances of last-call drunkards who've lost all sense of pride. I'm enjoying an elegant little gimlet with the most delicate sheet of ice coating the top. I love the Lexington Club at happy hour, and not just because the drinks are such a bargain. Sunlight pours in through the windows; the deep red walls, so intense at night, like a bordello's, seem playful and alive, and fresh air gusts through the open door. And here's Holden with her crooked grin and bangs flopping in her face. We slip inside the yellow bathroom, where the light is just bright enough to read the scrawls of paint pens and the scars of knives that have gouged love, threats and epitaphs into the walls. The sinks are sturdy so you can heave your ass up onto the porcelain while a sweet scruffy girl who knows how to have a good time crouches on the floor before you. When I come, my hip bumps the faucet and water streams down the crack of my ass. It doesn't matter how long we take — there's another bathroom next door, smaller and blue, for the drinkers — so we're in there forever.
Suddenly I have a gigantic panic attack as I realize I'm late to meet up with my actual girlfriend, so I dash out of the bar and sprint up Valencia. Anxiety increases as I discover my hands smell like Holden. I pop into a mini-mart, buy a pack of watermelon Bubblicious, chomp a piece quick and then wipe it all over my hands like a sticky, gritty, fruit-scented Handi-Wipe. My girlfriend grabs my candy-coated hand and lugs me back to the Lex, where the jukebox is booming Cheap Trick and the bulldaggers are stalking the pool table. I order another tiny gimlet and sip it slow as the sun slides down in the sky outside and the girls get louder and night comes and I grip my girlfriend by the ribs and take her lips between my teeth in a tiny table wedged behind the pinball machine of the Lexington Club.

The Lexington Club
3464 Nineteenth Street, San Francisco
(415) 863-2052
Recommended drink: Cosmopolitan
(Photograph by Bryce Duffy)

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