Run Dry (Joe Biden x Mike Pence)

Chapter One- Love sick seasons

Joes POV

The summer of 1969 was when all hell had broken lose. People raging in the streets, people playing their music too loud, and I loved every exciting second of it. I had just moved out of my parents house and found myself searching for whatever work I could find, sleeping where ever people would let me crash in the outskirts of San Francisco. I has acquired quite a bit of popularity among communities in the Castro district. I was what one could call an infamous man with many friends from months of knocking on people's doors or going home with whatever man would want me from the bar. I became popular in a considerable amount of time.

I had a select group of friends, ranging from the people I met the first day I stepped foot on the land of freedom I called San Francisco. I had never experienced such a liberating feeling of being away from my parents' judgmental gaze or the isolation of the shabby walls of my lonely room. I was home. I never really had a home, and I still don't.

The first man I met in the fall of 1967 was a beloved guy named Ted Cruz. He was young, absolutely gorgeous and was infatuated with me. Some call me self-centered, more people just love me. You hear stories of people getting kicked out of beaten up in the allies of our streets, but most of the time you try and ignore it and hold onto whatever you can; Ted was what I had to hold onto.

He gave me a place to call home. A place to put my toothbrush, and a place to lay down at the end of a long day. He was someone to come home to. I wasn't really looking for that at the time, I think I just wanted to be looking for that. So, I met Ted. We were two weeks strong and I didn't have much to move in. Nothing but a toothbrush and a few pairs of ripped jeans and wooden necklaces as a souvenir from my hippie days. 

Ted was someone to hold onto at night. More stories arouse from the east end of town and well you could jut about read it anywhere. It was in the Chronicle, headlining "Zodiac Killer". It was a dark time for anyone, and homosexuals like my self had it extra bad. Ted and I were together for about a year when we broke it off in the beginning of winter in 1968. The violence continued on, and I decided it was my time. It was my time to live, sleep around, do what ever I wanted to do. No one was holding me back.

It was back to the couches. The worn down walls of people I had never spoken to prior to that night. The drink we shared. Eyes that hadn't been seen except for when the moonlight glanced over them or when the boy pulled out his keys, turned on the light, shrugged his jacket off and the light went out again as our skin connected. It was a truly thrilling time.

Some nights were scary. Some nights at the bar, there would be a guy with a much too strong gaze who wouldn't leave you alone. You'd head talk of slipping things into people's drinks or guys getting so intoxicated they made out with their own brother. Those were the funny stories people liked to hear, but I could only imagine what it's like to live them.

The boys I had befriended, well most of the gays in San Francisco, would get a few converters wailing in the streets, echos of their voices ringing the words "Damn you faggots to hell, let God redeem your soul" but you typically just locked the doors that night, and turned off the lights. Maybe even grabbed a few friends to sit with you by the fire place. 

Those were the days up until now. The days that people enjoyed living. Not that peopel didn't enjoy them now or that I didn't but it was different. The summer of 1969. It was July, I was found in yet another bar in the west end of town. My friends and I crowded along the stools staring up at the tiny box that was broadcasting the moon landing. A damn strange sight, men landing on the moon. It's nothing I had ever heard of before. No one has ever heard of it.

"Joe, do you want another round?" Bill asked me, wiping down the unidentifiable liquids on the counter.  Bill Clinton was a bartender for the past year or so at an alcoholic beverage serving restaurant I was often at. He'd probably seen some of my deepest confessions and me in my most vulnerable spots, which was rare for someone with the confidence of a person like me. 

"Fill me up," I replied quickly with a lazy smile on my lips as my friends crowded around me. The brown liquid poured into my glass and I tilted it into my mouth. It burned as it went down my throat. My friend Obama was somewhere around here, but I lost him to the the hollering and loudness of the confined space. Everyone was so fixed at the television to be paying attention to each other. There was a man at the end of the car counter. He had his hands running through his hair. I was intrigued. You never get new people around here, and I had never seen him before.

I slipped from the seats and my feet carried me to the man of mystery. "You have a name?" I asked him while putting my glass down. His eyes met mine and I was taken back by the beauty of his perfectly structured face.

"I'm Mike."

"Well Mike, do you mind if I buy you a drink?" I asked, a smile reappearing on my face as I begas to speak.