The only nights I don’t remember a line outside the door to get in were during those three weeks of the sniper attacks in ’02. We stopped checking IDs, stopped charging admission so no one would have to stand outside like an easy target. But a lot of people stayed home. Any other night, four hundred through the door was considered slow.

I’m not guessing at the number. I’d work the cash box often enough. I must’ve seemed like the trustworthy type Joey could stick in the little closet by the entrance. I felt like a fucking goldfish behind that mirror. All the closet held was a stool, a cash drawer, and a surveillance camera. That my drawer was never short was taken as proof of my trustworthiness.

   The way it worked was, a patron of our fine establishment slid a twenty through the window—the entry fee varied, but let’s go with twenty. I’d slide a ticket through the window slot, which the patron then handed to my buddy Kenny or whoever was working stamps. Kenny would stamp the patron’s hand. And he was supposed to drop the ticket into a little box.

End of the night, if the ticket count matched the drawer count, we were deemed good and honest employees of Badlands. The system was nearly thief-proof, nearly. The only way to steal was to work together and avoid the cameras. The cameras were easy enough. I’d lean up to the glass and scream at Joey to let me out of the fucking aquarium, I don’t deserve this shit, god, I’m so fucking bored. And I’d grab a few twenties while my body blocked the overhead camera. Kenny’d palm a few tickets, enough to cover the loss. And I’d sell those tickets to the next customer.

I know; stealing is wrong. But I wasn’t stealing from Joey—he was the manager, not the owner. And your morals get a little flexible when you don’t make enough to cover your rent, let alone food; when, at the end of the night, your boss sends you and a buddy across the parking lot with thirty to fifty grand in a backpack to store in the safe at the other club owned by some fat guy in Rehoboth, who you’ll see exactly once in four years and he yells at you for not knowing that he owns you. There was always talk of a backpack heist. Far as I know, no one ever pulled it off.

   It’s not like I was new to embezzling from my employer. I spent years of my life walking a bridge in Namba, Osaka, or a town square in Zurich, or Lucerne, or Munich, a shopping alley in Bern, on sweltering days that made heat rash blossom on my thighs and frozen days when the wind pierced something inside my ears, through slush that seeped through broken shoes to turn my toes blue, handing posters to pedestrians, quoting the lines in Japanese, German, French: “Hi. This is for you.” (It wasn’t. We’d take it back if they didn’t donate.) “We’re Christian missionaries. Would you like to donate to our work?”

You think I didn’t pocket a few coins? You think I was the only one? Here’s an exercise in moral relativism: Which is worse—forcing kids to beg to support a cult by soliciting donations under the guise of missionary work, paying someone below a living wage, or stealing from those who do? Were the bouncers any worse than the bartenders known for pouring the heaviest glasses of water in D.C.? I’ve put a lot of thought into this and come up with the same answer every time: I’ll do what I need to do to survive.

The other bouncers at the club were not what you picture when you hear the word “bouncer.” I don’t know if Joey had any hiring criteria other than “desperate enough to take the job.” They were twinks, gutter punks, vogue queens, and tweakers. They were tattooed and pierced and wore jeans the size of hoop skirts and skater shoes with the brand emblems worn off. They came from shitty small towns in West Virginia, South Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the Maryland and Virginia suburbs and exurbs, towns country singers don’t bother writing shitty songs bragging about, towns where, growing up, queer kids live the stories they won’t tell their friends, even in the dark, even on the drugs they use to feel something that doesn’t hurt. You can pretend to be concerned about casual drug use. I’ll tell you that you’re the reason we casually used drugs.

   They’d drop a headline about their pasts here or there. The sort of hints at a story that would make anyone want to know the story. But ask a follow-up question and all they’d say was “Shows, honey. Just shows.” Far as I can tell, it means something between “drama” and “you’re an idiot.” Not everything gay translates directly. What it meant in this case was “You should know better than to ask.” What was left was tragedy by buckshot: “Girl, I lost my virginity to the counselor at the camp they sent me to to pray the gay out.” “I fucked a Republican once. I was fourteen, though.” “My daddy’s the only one who gets to call me a faggot.”

There was this kid we called Lil’ Joey, because the boss was Joey. If that sounds confusing, at one point, we had four bartenders named Mike serving cosmos to a never-ending stream of Kyles. Anyway, Lil’ Joey was a twink, weighed about ninety pounds if you put a case of beer in his stick arms. He was blond, but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you the color of his eyes. He always looked like he was staring at the sun. He started as a bouncer but worked barback some nights. He’d come in on barbacking nights and hand you a photo of Whitney Houston and tell you she’d be helping you out tonight. I don’t know if he believed he was Whitney, but it’s possible, likely even.

   The thing about Lil’ Joey was, he’d pick fights. That’s not entirely fair. But the idea of backing down when some Abercrombie queen didn’t recognize Lil’ Joey’s authority, vested in him by Whitney herself, was unthinkable. I never knew what happened before he screamed my name. I’d crash through the crowd, hop over the bar, whatever it took to get to him. He called me his big butch brother. I liked playing the hero. But more than that, it turns out I liked fighting.