The conservatives of Los Angeles (of which there were many) would not say it aloud to anyone but each other, but they all felt—no, knew—that this was God’s way of reminding the gays that men fucking other men was a sin. And that the mouth of hell had essentially opened up in West Hollywood one early Sunday morning (yes, a Sunday no less!) for this very reason. That mouth of hell was a sinkhole left in the wake of a deluge of Noah’s Ark-level flooding proportions. And it seemed to Gary Desanto, the head of the Department of Los Angeles Water and Power, that the approximately one-hundred-and-sixteen-year-old pipe that burst in the water main beneath Sunset Boulevard and Holloway Drive might have held out a little longer (after all, they were planning to replace it just a few more years from now) if it hadn’t been forced to cater to the largely gay population of that particular geography.

Of course, on the surface, Desanto maintained his “nonpartisan” façade. For that’s what municipal employees were “supposed” to be: nonpartisan. Neutral. No “real” opinion. Just going about the “straightforward,” “cut-and-dried” business of carrying out mostly bureaucratic affairs. And Gary knew it didn’t get more “bureaucratic” than a busted pipe in the water main of a major thoroughfare. Or, as the news outlets were suggestively specifying, “a thirty-six-inch pipe” that broke and resulted in “a fifty-foot gaping hole.” How’s that for WeHo innuendo, Gary thought to himself as he turned the news off and took the latest angered and panicked call from the mayor, an incompetent woman who everyone wanted so badly to be competent mainly because she was a woman, therefore responsible for representing the entire gender’s viability in politics. At least at the local level. But Mayor Trout was anything but proficient, least of all when it came to reassuring the general population of Los Angeles—about anything. Certainly not the Palisades Fire, which she ended up essentially peace’ing out on right as it was getting started so that she could take a trip to the Maldives.

She didn’t seem to care that much about Los Angeles or how it would look that she abandoned it in one of its greatest moments of need. It didn’t help that, upon her return, Mayor Trout offered a half-assed mea culpa press conference that had her insisting—as if it were somehow a consolation—that she was still, in essence, “working remotely” the entire time. In constant contact with the important officials and fire commanders “on the ground.” As in, the people who actually stayed behind and dealt with the river of fire (in lieu of shit). Because that’s what is expected of people employed by the state. Especially the state of California, where unexpected natural (and unnatural) disasters were happening more and more frequently. Like this goddamn water main problem, Gary thought to himself as he drove to site to check on the progress of the repairs in real time.

He’d had about all he could take of Mayor Trout being up his ass every five minutes demanding to know when this part of the Sunset Strip could open again. She had to be on KTLA in the next hour and she needed answers, goddammit. Well, he still didn’t have any. And he told her as much as calmly and rationally as he could muster through the gritted teeth that prevented all of his anger from pouring out onto her with as much wrath and unmitigated fury as the water that had burst through that broken pipe.

Gary shuddered every time he was forced to come anywhere within even a one-mile radius of West Hollywood. He couldn’t help it; the visceral reaction he had toward gay men in particular (he didn’t mind so much about lesbians or bisexuals) made him practically retch with disgust. Growing up in Orange County, he didn’t have to deal as much with such openly gay men before moving to Los Angeles. And even though he lived in Downtown L.A. (so as to be close to the LADWP headquarters), he seemed to always find himself getting far too close to the West Hollywood vortex. Mostly for professional reasons, like this infernal water main issue, but also for personal ones. Because Gary was often going on first dates, and it seemed that the women who were willing to give him a chance only ever wanted to meet for dinner or drinks in West Hollywood. Who could say why? Maybe it was some sort of test on their part. To ensure his “strong character” by seeing how he acted around gay men.

But Gary didn’t “act” any one way when they were parading their pride around him, doing nothing, as far as he could tell, but squawking and imitating women (whether in mannerisms or appearance). Worse than that, caricaturizing women. Maybe this is what made Gary the sickest of all when he was around them. Still, he put on a stoic face and did everything in his power not to react to anything they did whenever he was on one of those first dates, hoping desperately to get to a second one in a different neighborhood where he wouldn’t feel so incredibly uncomfortable. These were tests of stamina and endurance, he told himself. With the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (an all too appropriate metaphor in this gay men-filled scenario) being that he might get to at least have sex with a real woman instead of the blow-up doll he stored in the closet of his two-bedroom condo near the Pershing Square metro stop (not that he would ever deign to use the L.A. Metro Rail).

He had splurged on two bedrooms because he was hoping to, someday very soon, “secure” a woman to share his life with. Someone who would move in with him. He knew that he wasn’t the most attractive man and that owning property would be a useful advantage to making a woman see his value beyond just looks. As antiquated as it might have sounded, he knew that’s how women still operated. That they wanted something out of a man if they were going to make the genuine commitment to be with him.

Alas, so far, there had been no takers. Only endless dates in West Hollywood. And now, here he was again, pretending like he actually wanted to help fix the deluge that had come for it, even though he knew damn well, like the other conservatives of Los Angeles, that it was God’s way of punishing the sin that had been running rampant in this neighborhood, that had gone unchecked for far too long. Gary couldn’t say this aloud to anyone though. Not even the people he was well-aware felt the same way. Because, again, he had to appear nonpartisan in every way.

It could never get out what his true feelings were. Even though he was convinced it emanated from his pores as he dragged his feet toward the site of the broken water main that day, watching as crews of devoted (read: well-paid, well-pensioned) LADWP employees worked nonstop to repair the issue. And they were doing such a devoted, around-the-clock job that it was only a matter of days before Sunset was ready to be reopened again, much to the surprise of everyone, including Mayor Trout. Always happy to “look good” in the wake of a disaster, even as she took credit for other people’s work or, worse still, scapegoated those in managerial positions as a means to deflect from her own shortcomings (which, yes, usually meant firing them to set some sort of example).

Gary should have been “pleased.” It was a major win to have “stopped up the hole,” as it were, so expediently. Even though he knew that the residents of West Hollywood were going to miss making sexually charged jokes about the sinkhole and that the residents of L.A. in general wouldn’t look to the positive of all this: that the incident was resolved quickly. No, they would instead continue to harp on the mismanagement and misappropriation of labor and funds where it truly needed to go: into the crumbling infrastructure of the city. The entire ordeal was still making Gary’s blood boil a couple of days later when he awoke to the news that a new hole had cropped up in the pipe just as the DAWP was sealing up the road again.

He knew somewhere deep down that he had been the one responsible for causing that latest leak. That he had entered some sort of fugue state these past few nights and done it himself. Oh, he wouldn’t dwell on that thought too long, of course. It would make him paranoid to no end to overthink it, to wonder if he had been caught on some form of camera doing something unbecoming of a government employee. But yes, Gary had the innate sense that he was somehow involved in making the pipe burst anew. Almost as if it was his will—as much as “God’s”—to make it so. For he wanted West Hollywood to flood, to flood so badly that it would be expunged from the map. Only then, could it be rebuilt again in his image.

In the days that followed, Gary did his best to act concerned and inconvenienced about the ongoing flooding in WeHo. But like the rest of the “silent majority” in L.A., he didn’t mind that the gays were being expelled, slowly but surely. And once they were, this town could reach its full potential. Yes, that’s exactly what Gary was thinking as he left his building one morning and emerged to find that a water main had burst in Downtown L.A. as well. Causing a torrent even more forceful than the one in West Hollywood. Afraid to step out and onto the sidewalk, his own car, which had been parked across the street, floated past him, making him certain that he wouldn’t have a viable way to oversee the repairs in WeHo that day. “Luckily” for him, all the overseeing he had to do would be right in his own backyard. Perhaps proof that God hates straights as much as anyone else.