The young boy lying on Bobby’s lawn was Patterson’s little brother, at first in faded blue jeans, lying on his stomach, chin in hands, looking up at Lyn, smiling, his round fanny seeming so squeezable, and then he was naked, hand on bare butt, now it was Lyn’s bare butt, young Patterson was playing the part of Lyn so Lyn could feel how nice it was to be rubbed on the butt, and then his butt shook more violently, and his dick was hard, and his butt shook…

“Lyn!” came the coarse whisper, “Lyn, wake up!” It was Uncle Goat shaking his butt, and Lyn did have a hard on.

“What!” Lyn angrily whispered back.

“Did you hear that?” Goat stood up in the nearly dark dining room, his flashlight set on the floor pointing up to the ceiling, casting a cold and dim gray light to the cavernous room. Lyn could see Bill still slept, and could also see that Goat had a hard on, too. That made him feel less uncomfortable about his own. Lyn stood up.

“I don’t hear anything,” he whispered to Goat. They both stood absolutely still for what seemed like five or ten minutes to Lyn, when a crack or pop sounded in the building.

“It’s those goddamn squirrel eating rednecks, back to steal more plumbing!” Goat whispered. He picked up the two rifles, and gave Lyn the old M-1, which Lyn almost dropped, the barrel hitting the floor. Lyn didn’t realize the thing was so heavy. Goat grabbed it, and handed Lyn the small rifle, the one Goat called a twenty-two. Lyn was glad, this one wasn’t so heavy. Goat flipped up the loading thing and pulled it back, on the M-1, and slapped it closed and locked it down again. This all gave off a tremendous clacking noise like in the movies. “Clack-clack. Clack-clack.”

“How come we were whispering anyway?” Lyn asked, “after all, they’re the thieves, we’re supposed to be here. They should be whispering, and run off when they hear us.”

“Let’s go find ’em,” Goat gnashed his words through clenched teeth, “we’ll fill their asses with buckshot!” They walked through the pantry and kitchen toward the giant banquet room.

“I thought you didn’t have any ammunition!” Lyn grumbled.

“Well, no buckshot, but we got ammo!”

Lyn wondered where the Mexican bandito belt full of bullets for the M-1 was. “I didn’t see any bullets, where did you find bullets for an M-1?” he asked.

“There ain’t none,” Goat grimacingly whispered, “you got the six rounds in the twenty-two!”

“Oh shit!” Lyn said, as they proceeded through the banquet room, and he gingerly removed his finger from the trigger and slid that hand back to grip the little rifle by the stock. He held the gun out several inches from his body, as if it might explode suddenly. He was lucky he didn’t trip over something, since the only light was starlight streaming in the large windows. They couldn’t carry flashlights and rifles, too. Where was Bill? He must still be sleeping in the dining room. Lyn didn’t hear any dog claws clicking on the linoleum. They passed in through the coat room, but instead of going into the bar, Goat led them out onto the lawn that overlooked the farmer’s fields and Highway 17, far down the hillside. Lyn felt a little funny going outside in just his underpants, but Goat didn’t seem to give it a second thought. They set the rifles down by the bar door and Goat walked out across the grass.

“That’s the billboard we’re gonna rent down there on seventeen, it’ll say ‘Eureka House Now Open, Fine Food and Lodging, Next Exit,’ see it?” Goat pointed down the hillside, but Lyn didn’t see any billboard as he walked across the wet grass.

“Where?” Lyn asked, scanning the distance for the infrequent car rolling down or up Highway 17. Goat put one hand on Lyn’s shoulder, standing behind him, and pointed again down toward the moving cars. As Lyn struggled to see a billboard, suddenly his underpants were down around his ankles and Goat slapped his bare ass before he knew what happened. By the time he pulled them up and turned around, Goat had scooted off twenty feet or so, and picked up both rifles to head in to the bar.

“Come on!” Goat shouted, “let’s get into the sleeping bags!”

When Lyn got back inside, there was Bill sleeping on the dining room floor where they had left him. “Bill…” Lyn said, “some watch dog, Bill. We mighta been getting murdered in the banquet room, and you lie here sleeping.” Bill raised his head up off the floor, and his little stub tail wagged a bit, making his head wobble like some toy dog in the back window of a car. “Some watch dog.” Bill just went hrumph, and laid his head down again.

“Let’s zip the sleeping bags together,” Goat said, and Lyn shined his flashlight at the watch in his blue jeans pocket. Four-ten a.m. He shivered a bit.

“I’ve never been awake this late before.” He started to get in his own sleeping bag.

“Come on… let’s zip ’em,” Goat insisted.

“You just want to trick me again,” Lyn grumbled.

“Nah, I promise, no more tricks, I’m chilly, too,” Goat claimed, “we’ll keep each other warm… no more tricks, I promise.” So even though Lyn felt rather uncomfortable at first, they zipped together. Lyn stuck to his side, and Goat stayed on his, until Lyn could hear Goat snoring realistically, and he drifted off to sleep himself.

Lyn awoke first, to the grayish early morning light, lying on his stomach again, and with a hard on, which was not unusual. What was unusual was that still sleeping Uncle Goat had his hand inside Lyn’s underwear, cupped over his bare ass. Lyn feared moving an inch until Goat stirred, rolling over and withdrawing his hand from Lyn’s underwear. Lyn figured he could wake up now, and began unzipping the bags. Goat moved around, propped himself up on one elbow, and ran his other hand over his face, taking a deep breath.

“Hey, Lyn,” Goat croaked, “did you fart on my hand?”

“No,” Lyn responded with annoyance in his voice, “what was your hand doing by my ass, anyway?”

“Oh, was it? I musta been dreaming about my girlfriend. Sorry.” Goat’s sleepy smile was not entirely convincing.

When the two boys rounded a curve, Lyn saw a small straw colored house with brown shutters, and a twelve year old boy lying on the lawn, back arched, stomach down, feet twiddling in the air, and a smiling face looking up at the two of them. Bobby turned up the walk and stood over the boy. Lyn couldn’t believe this was where Bobby lived. Who was this pretty boy with faded jeans, narrow hips and the roundest little fanny? Lyn knew Bobby only had a sister, and she was older than Bobby.

“You’re a long way from Saddle River Road, Frankie Patterson,” Bobby admonished. So this was the sixth grader Bobby had mentioned, that was the brother of bully Butch Patterson.

“I came to collect,” Frankie said, “for the paper.”

“How much?” Bobby asked, one hand on his hip, head cocked to one side.

“Five bucks,” Frankie smiled with insouciance. He lazily stood up, mirroring Bobby’s stance.

“That paper isn’t worth two bucks!” Bobby said, trying to stare the little imp down, “you’ll have to come back tomorrow, same time.”

Frankie slowly backed up, sauntered without breaking his stare at Bobby, until he reached the bush his bike leaned against, raised his leg over the saddle in a balletic adagio, and depressed one pedal half a turn to bring the bike into slow motion, circling Bobby and Lyn, never stopping his gaze at Bobby.

“It’ll be worth it,” Frankie drawled over his shoulder, as the rotating wheels carried him down the street like a flower drifting down a stream.

“He sure is different from Butch,” Lyn asserted, still under the spell of Frankie.

“Yeah, he’s worse!” Bobby cautioned, “Come on in, welcome to my lair.”

The house smelled of meat loaf and garlic, and heavy drapery kept most of the afternoon light outside. The living room sofa and chairs were covered in clear plastic, but Bobby nodded his head toward the stairs. They ascended to a bedroom, a girls bedroom, with lace and frills on bedspread and sheer curtains.

“This is my sister’s room – she’s in Michigan – University.” Bobby went into her closet, calling out to Lyn, “look at all these dresses! She doesn’t even fit them anymore! They’re all mine!”

Lyn just laughed and shook his head. All he could really think about was Frankie Patterson. Like why would such a nice seeming boy want to come around Bobby? It must be for a blow job. Lyn knew he was jealous of Bobby, on that account, but what if Lyn could get to suck Frankie off? It would only happen once, and then Frankie would tell the other kids, Lyn’s reputation would be ruined, and worst of all, Frankie would never love Lyn.

“I wore one of my sister’s silk panties to school once. They felt so sexual!” Bobby confessed, adding, “I showed Lyle what I had on underneath… he’s that swishy seventh grader I was talking to the other day…”

“What did he think?” Lyn inquired.

“He wanted me to steal him a pair! The little tart!” Bobby dismissed Lyle with a wave of his hand, like royalty. “Come see my room!” They went down the hall to a smaller, more masculinely decorated room. Lyn felt more comfortable there. “Sit!” Bobby patted his bed as he flopped on it. He reached up to the window sill for what looked like a hand sander with no sand paper on it’s rubber pad, as Lyn sat at the foot of the bed. “This is neat,” Bobby said, “the orgasm is incredible with this.” He clicked the sander on and placed it over his zipper. “Ooo! Here, try it.” Bobby placed the sander over Lyn’s fly.

“Bobby!” Lyn objected, but didn’t push the sander or Bobby away. He just leaned forward, and Bobby withdrew the sander. “Besides, my dick is between my legs, not under my zipper.” Lyn smiled at Bobby, “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“No, but my dick is under my zipper, pointing straight up, thanks to you,” Bobby rather dejectedly replied. He switched off the sander and put it back on the window sill, flopping his head on his pillow. He sat up again and unzipped his pants. “Want to see my boner?” he asked, and pulled it out of his fly before Lyn could say anything. “You show me yours – I’ll show you mine?” Bobby hopefully asked.

“I don’t want to,” Lyn replied, but he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. All of a sudden, today, just knowing he was queer wasn’t enough anymore. There seemed to be so many ways to be queer, he didn’t know who he was anymore. Bobby’s being queer seemed so different from what Lyn expected, and Lyn thought he himself wasn’t queer enough. And what about Frankie Patterson, and Butch Patterson, and that swishy kid Lyle, and all the other kids Bobby fooled around with? There seemed to be more kinds of queers than straight people. Lyn knew he was one, too, and he peeked at Bobby’s dick, then turned away in confusion, saying, “I’m just not ready for this.”

Bobby stood up and took a small gold cylinder from his pocket, fiddling with it, then stepped across the small room to look into the dresser mirror. He could see Lyn in the mirror. “You’re so sweet,” he softly mumbled. He looked at his face, twirled out the red lipstick from the gold cylinder, and applied it to his lips. He began singing, “I feel pretty, I feel pretty, I feel pretty and witty and gay, oh so pretty, in a pretty wonderful way.” He closed his eyes and held them shut tightly, telling Lyn, “you know, I met Leonard Bernstein once, and he kissed my mother and me, and shook my father’s hand. I don’t think my father was too happy.” He leaned close to the mirror, and opened his eyes, staring straight into his pupils. “Ooo, you gotta try this… if you keep your eyes shut for a while, and then open ’em, you’ll be able to see your pupils grow smaller. Come on, do it.”

“Put that lipstick away first.” Lyn remarked, smiling warily. Bobby put the lipstick in the dresser drawer, and noisily shut it. Lyn stepped up to the mirror, and leaned forward to look at his own face, just as Bobby had done, and was doing again along side of him. Their faces were inches from the mirror and each other. They closed their eyes and held them until Bobby said the magic word.

“Open!” Both boys watched their own pupils grow smaller, getting accustomed to the light. “Do it again, do it again,” Bobby insisted, “I didn’t see yours, I was watching mine.” Lyn gave Bobby a look that questioned and smiled at the same time. “Really, I missed it, oh come on, please?” Bobby wrung his hands together, pleading. “I want to see that beautiful blue grow as your pupils get small. Please?”

“Okay,” Lyn agreed, and leaned close to the mirror.

“I’ll count to twenty, then you open your eyes, okay Lyn?”

“Okay,” Lyn sighed, and closed his eyes.

“One… two… three… four… five…” Bobby slowly counted, “six… seven… eight… nine… ten… eleven… mmmm!”

Lyn didn’t pull away as he felt the warm, moist red lips press against his cheek, but he opened his eyes to see Bobby with eyes closed kissing him in the mirror.

“Oh, that was sweet! Look at your cheek! Promise you’ll never wash it off?” Bobby teased, and Lyn looked at his face in the mirror, at the red double guillemets copulating on his cheek.

“Give me some tissue to wipe it off,” Lyn bemusedly requested.

“I’ll get my mothers cold cream, that’ll get it all off. Promise.” Bobby went running down the hall, and Lyn sat on the foot of the bed again. Bobby raced back with tissues and cold cream, and wiped the thickest redness from Lyn’s cheek, then applied the cold cream with his fingers, rubbing gently in small circles. “Leave that on for a minute to loosen it all up,” Bobby said, and he went over to the mirror to remove the lipstick from his lips. He wiped cold cream on and off with tissues until there was no more red left, then sat next to Lyn and carefully wiped away all the cold cream and redness from Lyn’s cheek. Before he stood up, Bobby quickly kissed Lyn’s cheek again. Lyn pulled away slightly, this time.

“I don’t know who’s nuttier, me or you, I just don’t know anymore.”

“That’s a good sign,” Bobby giggled. Lyn looked at him and couldn’t help but laugh, too. “Sure, laugh,” Bobby laughed with him, “but I’ve never met anyone in my goddamned life that was harder to seduce!” They both laughed at that, and at themselves, what else could they do but laugh.

Bobby told Lyn he had a deck of cards, and that they could play strip poker, but Lyn declined, so they picked through Bobby’s shelf of LP’s, pulling each one out and looking at it. Bobby named his favorite songs from each show or movie. They were all Broadway shows or movie musical soundtracks. Lyn told Bobby that he had mostly rock and roll forty-fives.

“What ones?” Bobby grimaced playfully, kicking off his penny loafers.

“Well, I used to like the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys,” Lyn admitted, sitting on the bed again, “but now my tastes are sort of changing and I like the Rolling Stones.”

“And the Beatles, I suppose?”

“I… uh, well… I kind of think mostly girls like the Beatles, but I do like one song they did, called ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’.”

“Oh, no,” Bobby shook his head, “don’t do that, you’ll get emotionally constipated.” Snuggling close, Bobby leaned his head on Lyn’s shoulder, then slid down and turned on his back at the same time, so that he looked up at Lyn from Lyn’s lap, where he rested his head. He slid his feet beneath his pillow, which rested, crumpled, just below the window sill. “That’s what my shrink says.”

“You go to a shrink?” Lyn asked, tickled by the low regard his own father had for psychiatry, but he was also aware suddenly, that each time he looked at Bobby’s sparkly eyed smile, he would smile himself, which meant that he wasn’t smiling before that moment, and Bobby was. Although he imagined that should make him feel guilty, he felt, instead, strangely giddy, as if he were about to laugh.

“My father caught me wearing my sister’s eighth grade ball gown, and I had full make-up on,” he started to laugh hysterically, “matching sapphire eye shadow and fake lashes!”

Lyn laughed, too, both with Bobby, and at the rebelliousness of destroying a father’s expectations. “I should do that to my father!” he exclaimed. Bobby rolled onto the floor laughing. Their eyes glistened with laughter tears. Lyn remembered not walking the dog, and how a dogshit in the house would be another infraction against his father. He wished his father would just be disappointed, instead of hitting him or his mother. He said, “I better go soon.”

“You can’t go yet,” Bobby protested, “I didn’t even serve the refreshments!”

“What refreshments?” Lyn asked.

“You’ve got to have at least a Coke,” Bobby jumped up, sashayed to the hallway, and looked over his shoulder, “what kind of a hostess am I? Come to the kitchen.”

At the bottom of the stairs, they stepped into the typical suburban kitchen, with Formica countertops and a Formica table supported by chrome legs, neatly nestling four matching vinyl covered chairs with chrome legs. Bobby took two cans of Coke from the avocado refrigerator, and they each removed the new fangled zip off “pop” tops from the cans. Bobby collected the tops and placed them in the trash can as Lyn sat at the table.

“So, I take it your not butch enough for your father either?”

“I think he’d prefer I was a bully like Butch Patterson,” Lyn conjectured.

“You know what the definition of butch is?” Bobby licked the edge of his Coke can.

“What?” Lyn grinned in readiness.

“A Butch is a Femme that traded in her menstrual cycle for a Harley!”

Slowly Lyn got it, and he groaned mock laughter to match his smile.

“Ooo, let me bring the mail in,” Bobby ran out the front door, shouting back, “I’m expecting something!” Lyn heard the door slam. “Ooo! ooo! ooo! Here it is!” Bobby shouted, rushing in and holding an envelope under Lyn’s nose, “Look at the return address! The Metropolitan Opera!”

“You go to the opera?” Lyn wasn’t really surprised.

“We sent my transcript and a letter from my voice teacher,” Bobby explained, tearing open the envelope. He carefully read the letter with increasing joy in his eyes. “Oh yes! I’m getting an audition in January!” He looked at Lyn, “I’m almost too old already, but I might get in the Children’s Chorus!” He jumped up and down, then sat and drank his Coke too quickly, which made him burp. Lyn took a big gulp and burped back at him. A burping contest resulted, which Lyn won when Coke too hastily consumed jetted out of Bobby’s nose. They were both heartily laughing again by then, but Bobby had to blow his nose between giggles. Lyn noticed the kitchen clock.

“I gotta go before it’s dark!” he jumped up. They went to the front door. Lyn discovered that Bobby was no weakling, as he pressed Lyn’s back to the door and kissed him on the lips, and there was no getting out of it. The kiss seemed sweet and funny to Lyn, so even though he didn’t think Bobby was gorgeous, he laughed when he asked, “Do you do that to all the guys that visit you?”

“I never kiss and tell!” Bobby, as usual, kept smiling.

“Well, just don’t do that at school!” Lyn admonished, but couldn’t keep from smiling, too. Opening the door, he said, “See ya tomorrow.”

“Bye, Lyn.”

Lyn’s father got angrier all day, cutting and sweating copper pipes. Lyn thought, “measure twice, cut once,” but knew his father would be enraged if he said it aloud. While his father worked in the Ladies Room of the Banquet Room, Lyn and his mother ate a sandwich in the bar.

“You don't even try to help him,” she lectured, “no wonder he’s angry.”

“He doesn’t want me to help him. He thinks I’m incompetent.”

“Well, prove him wrong by doing something with him,” his mother hissed.

“I don’t think that would make him less angry,” Lyn incredulously replied.

“Then take Bill out, at least do something useful!”

After washing up the lunch dishes in the big commercial sinks, and after walking Bill around outside, two shits worth, Lyn let the dog back in, but stayed outside himself. He had heard popping sounds, like someone hammering, way down past the big dining room, past the motel wing with its twenty or so tiny rooms without heating or plumbing yet. He walked toward where the sound had come from, and as he approached, he saw a recumbent figure facing a hillock in the distance. It was Goat.

“Hey, Lyn,” Goat didn’t look up from reloading the twenty two.

“I thought you were in the City.” Lyn said, standing over Goat now.

“Got back late last night… stayed with Nora, she drove me up the hill this morning. I forgot to reload,” he held the rifle up to Lyn, “here, take a shot.” Goat pointed to the swimming pool that Jonny had filled up with construction debris. A row of old brown and green beer bottles stood on a gray length of two by four resting on an old rusted pizza oven. Lyn pointed the rifle.

“Is this how you hold it?” he asked.

“Whoa!” Goat jumped up and grabbed him, wrapping his arms around Lyn and walking with him like they were dancing, about three feet to where Goat had been prostrate. “First, you gotta see where the bullet is going… ya see that hill behind the bottles now,” he asked, holding Lyn tight.

“Yeah.”

“Now picture a straight line from the gun through the bottles to the hill.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t see no farmers or rednecks in between, right?”

“No.”

“Now come back over here,” Goat danced them back to where Lyn had stood before. “Now picture that straight line from the gun through the bottles. Where does the bullet end up?”

“Way over in those woods,” Lyn answered.

“How far into the woods can you see?”

“I don’t know, maybe ten feet?” Lyn sort of asked and stated at once.

“What if some redneck’s in twenty feet hunting squirrels?”

“I don’t know.”

“You just shot him in the head,” Goat dramatically conjectured, “killed him, that’s what. No great loss to the world, but we can’t have our Lyn going to jail for killing no redneck. You ain’t even busted a cherry yet.”

“How do you know?” Lyn asked with annoyance.

“Can smell it, Lyn,” Goat calmly replied, dancing them both back to the position that lined up with the hillock. He grasped Lyn’s hand that extended over the barrel, and pressed the stock firmly into Lyn’s shoulder, just about above his armpit. “Now pull it into you. Even though this one ain’t got much of a kick, it’ll hurt ya if you don’t hold it right. And don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it slowly and hold your aim.”

Lyn expected a bang, like on TV, with a crashing ping as the bottle was destroyed, followed by a tingly shower of glass shattering to the ground. He slowly squeezed. Pop! That was all he heard, the sound from before, like a small hammer hitting wood. He didn’t hit any bottles. Goat took the gun from him and pulled that thingy that cocks the trigger again, and a small brass shell, without it’s bullet, flew out onto the grass. “Try again,” Goat encouraged, “see that little puff of tan smoke that came up on the hill over there?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s what you were really aiming for. Now aim exactly like the first time, then remember that puff of dirt, and how far it was from the bottle. Just move your aim over by that much, and squeeze off another round.”

Lyn did as he was told, aimed, corrected his aim, squeezed. Pop! A delicate tinkle of glass sounded gently against the pizza oven, as one bottle disappeared.

“You got it man!” Goat congratulated him, and Lyn beamed with pride, laughing, even though in his mind, he thought of guns, war and militarism as something he loathed. “You bussing tables tonight in the bar?”

“No,” Lyn grinned, “Jonny and my father had a fight about that, because my father said I should get paid.”

“Fucking kike doesn’t pay you?” Lyn just shrugged Goat’s question off, but it made him mentally wince to hear Goat call his own father a kike. It was bad enough when Grandma did it, but they were only married, and Jonny called her a Nazi whore. This was only when they were angry, but they got angry a lot. “So why don’t you come with me to the coffee house. The Unitarians are trying to show up the CYO with a Saturday coffee house – lots of lolitas. I might get lucky.”

“Doesn’t Nora mind you chasing other girls?” Lyn asked.

“No way, man,” Goat boasted, “I’ll tell you why… hey, you ever read Shakespeare?”

“Yeah?”

“Alright,” Goat began, “you know that part about us all being actors on a stage?”

“So?” Lyn wondered that Goat had even read Shakespeare, much less remembered it.

“So what he didn’t say was that most actors just repeat their lines, they need a script, you know? And for most people, the script just happens. They don’t know why they say the things they say, and wish they could change things after. But some of us write our own scripts…” Goat patted Lyn on the back, and continued, “that’s me. And that’s what chicks dig in a guy. Nora knows I write my own script, so she don’t bitch when I fuck another chick. As long as I come back to her, she’s cool.” Goat was not simply boasting, and Lyn knew it, although it saddened him for some reason. Still, he smiled as he shook his head. He could not settle in his mind whether queers were just like straight people, in that some fell in love, but most just chased after sex. It must be so, but which one was he, which one was Bobby? Should he be in love with Bobby before he let him fool around? Is that why he held back, or was it only that he lusted after slender young Frankie rather than Bobby’s well rounded figure? Was he a lover and a dreamer, or just as bad as Goat, or something in between? Or was Goat really that bad after all? Maybe Goat’s sexuality was just as natural to him as Lyn felt his own was to himself.

Goat took the twenty two, and popped off four rounds, disintegrating the remaining bottles. Lyn thought Goat was showing off again, but that script thing, he knew Goat was right. Lyn did not write his own script, Goat, and Bobby, did. Sometimes Lyn felt like he was an observer at his own life, rather than a participant, and worse, a stranger everywhere he went.

At lunch Bobby told Lyn that he had something big to tell him, but he had to wait. He wouldn’t tell Lyn at gym class either. Since neither boy had detention that day, they met outside the bike racks, after school let out.

“What?” Lyn slyly asked.

“You’re coming to Gaskin’s with me for a banana split,” Bobby proclaimed, rolling onto his toes and back, nearly hopping up and down, “or whatever you want, my treat!”

“Okay.” At first, Bobby rushed ahead, impatiently waiting for Lyn to catch up, but then Lyn began to hurry, then run, and the two boys ran to Gaskin’s soda fountain, arriving doubled over with laughter and panting breathlessly. They both ordered three-scoop sundaes, Bobby’s mint chocolate chip with hot fudge, Lyn’s butter pecan with hot butterscotch. Their fingers got as sticky as their smiles. Lyn fully expected to be surprised by whatever new enthusiasm Bobby was holding back. He could wait no longer.

“So what is it,” he asked, “what’s the big thing?” Lyn watched Bobby bring clenched fists up to his shoulders, minutely shaking them so that his gleeful face, and his entire body, literally vibrated with joy.

“I got it!” Bobby proclaimed, “The Metropolitan Opera, I got it!”

Lyn’s heart sank in his chest, as if Bobby had just leaped onto the highway of life, and left him behind. He had to be happy for Bobby.

“That’s great!” he enthused, “I’m so happy for you!” He knew he was acting, and hoped it didn’t show. He had to be happy for Bobby, just had to be. Bobby had given him so much, and he felt he hadn’t given back enough. Yet, still, he wanted so much more. He just had to be happy for Bobby. “What happens next?”

“As soon as school’s out, we move to Manhattan,” Bobby explained, “I mean, I still go to camp, but we’re moving all our stuff to Manhattan first. Then, in September, I start school there and sing in the children’s chorus!”

Lyn bravely tried to be extremely cheerful for Bobby, but he thought his world would soon collapse, for there were less than two more weeks of school, and Bobby would be gone. He realized, by now, that being queer was not enough, he had to learn how to live a queer life. He had thought that Bobby would be his tutor. “Will you get to sing solo in the opera?” he tried to focus on Bobby’s joy, and keeping him that way.

“Mostly it’s choral singing, and running around on the stage, like in La Bohème, but if I’m lucky, and good enough, there are a few parts, like the Three Boys in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Have you ever gone to the Met?”

“Nah,” Lyn admitted, “just been to Carnegie Hall a couple times, but I never saw an opera.”

“Ooo, you’ll have to come see La Bohème when I’m in it. I’ll let you know if I get one of the Three Boys.”

“Sounds neat,” Lyn agreed, “I hope I can go…”

“You have to!” Bobby interjected, “I’ll send you a postcard as soon as I know my address. Wait, maybe I have it already at home. You can stop in for a minute, it’s on the way, right?” They both were more than anxious to go to Bobby’s house, so Bobby paid the bill and they left.

Arriving again at Bobby’s house, Lyn noticed the For Sale sign on the lawn, where Frankie Patterson had circled them on his bike. He noticed, too, that the house was not painted straw color, but was actually straw color bricks, some paler, others tending toward a rusty hue of yellow. It was the same brick that the junior high building was made of, they called it Jersey Yellow brick. The front door was unlocked, and Bobby called out when he stuck his head in the door. “Hello? Mother?”

“Where have you been?” came the voice, and then the body, of Bobby’s mother. Immediately, Lyn thought this must be how Bobby would look in a few years, in drag. The same black hair, the same pale complexion, just with make-up added. She saw Lyn, and greeted him with “oh, hello.”

“Mother, this is my best friend, Lyn,” Bobby explained, “he’s just stopping on his way home.” Bobby winked at Lyn when he said that, but his mother was inalterable.

“You know we’re showing the house tomorrow,” she told Bobby, then apologized to Lyn, “I’m sorry, we just don’t have time to entertain this afternoon.”

“That’s okay,” Lyn reassured her, and Bobby, too, “I have to get home and walk the dog anyway.”

“See ya at school,” Bobby promised, as he went in.

“See ya,” Lyn waved, and Bobby went in. Lyn walked across town, toward his house, thinking how few school days were left. He thought that Bobby was the only real friend he ever had, and now he was going to lose him. Bobby was so much more than just a friend, words couldn’t say. He remembered when he was about three, it was the only thing he remembered from being three, that he had fallen into his big toy chest, and the lid had closed, and he cried in the darkness until his mother heard him, and lifted the heavy lid. Now he felt like he was returning to that darkness, and he had only begun to see the light.

The black and white television cast a cool, dim bluish light over Lyn’s face. As he was closer to the set, Goat and Nora were barely visible, swathed in darkness. Lyn trained his eyes on the screen full of snowy interference, watching without seeing, uncomfortably aware of the heavy petting going on across the room, on the couch. They could easily go down the hall to Goat’s bedroom, Lyn thought, for a privacy that, maddeningly, they seemed not to require. Perhaps they thought Lyn was asleep, more likely they were simply oblivious to his very presence, let alone his embarrassment. Lyn could not help but notice certain way stations of the enterprise – the raising of Nora’s top, like a large, cloth covered rubber band, which freed her pert, sixteen year old breasts that danced like fresh eggs released from their shells – the removal of Nora’s skirt and panties, the white silken panties landing on the coffee table, where they caught the ghostly glow of the video tube and, reflecting on the lovers, increased Lyn’s uncomfortable awareness. Then came the glimpse of triangular darkness between Nora’s legs, the pubic curls that were quickly obscured by Goat’s denuded bottom, as his penis no doubt entered her, to judge by the moans and slurps that accompanied the slithering gyrations. Lyn feigned sleep, closing his eyes. He was aware that the feelings in his own groin were also sexual, but not erectile. If anything, he thought his dick had shriveled, like it did after several hours in a cool swimming pool.

Strangely, Lyn thought again of that one day at Bobby’s house – how it occurred to him that if he had not arrived at the yellow brick house with Bobby, then Bobby would have succeeded with Frankie where he had failed with Lyn – and how unfair that was for Bobby, how unfair it was that Lyn desired Frankie, Bobby wanted Lyn, and Lyn could not overcome his fear of being a known homosexual. Unfair for each of them, and Lyn felt he was wholly to blame. Now it was too late, he would never try to befriend any little sixth grader like Frankie, and Bobby had moved away. A sobbing feeling grew in Lyn’s throat, and the fear of seeming to cry made the tears come more urgently, so that he turned his face to prevent Goat or Nora seeing, afraid wiping his face would show him to be awake. Best to be thought asleep, or they might even think that he cried over the death of a Bowery Boy in the freezer of the prison, on the late television movie. Gradually the tears stopped as Lyn castigated himself for his self centeredness. A light clicked on by the couch.

“Hey Lyn, you awake?” his uncle asked.

“Oh… yeah,” Lyn pretended to be a sleepy dunderhead, “what time is it?”

“Time for a joint,” Nora said. Her clothes were back on, and she adjusted the elastic top. “Hey Lyn, you got a girlfriend in Jersey?”

“No.” Lyn wiped his cheeks, pretending to wipe his sleepy eyes, just to be sure that no tear tracks remained.

“How come?” Nora rejoined.

“Shut up Nora,” Goat butted in, “Leave him alone.”

“I’m just asking,” Nora whined, “how come, Lyn? How come you ain’t got no girlfriend?”

“I said leave him alone,” Goat insisted, “he’s gay.”

“Gay?” Nora squirmed, as if her hand had slipped in something slimy, “what’s that?”

“You know,” Goat explained, “he likes guys.”

“Really?” Nora was impressed, “is that true, Lyn?” she asked, obviously not sure if Goat was pulling her leg, but sounding as if she were the first person in Goshen to meet a Martian.

Lyn was embarrassed by his uncle’s proclamation, unsure if his uncle really thought that, and simply couldn’t think fast enough, except to summon up as much sarcasm as his voice could project.

“Yeah… right!” Lyn answered. Goat smiled, and Lyn remembered having read the words “gay boy” in a trashy paperback an older boy at school had found. He supposed it was more a frivolous dismissal, than a demeaning put-down, like “queer” was, but overall, the effect was still negative. Were there any words for his kind that weren’t?

“Come on, that jerk friend of your brother said he’d be at the church at one.” Goat stood up.

“You ain’t gonna sell him the whole bag,” Nora whined, “are ya?”

“Shut up,” Goat told her, as they put their leather jackets on, “hey, you watching this movie, Lyn?” A positive answer would obviate Lyn’s observation of a drug deal, they both knew it.

“Yeah,” Lyn agreed, sleepy expression added.

“Okay, see you later,” Goat walked out, with Nora in tow.

“Yeah, see ya,” Nora added, that strange new respect still in her voice, and Lyn fell asleep watching Ronald Reagan save the remaining Bowery Boys from the evils of their natural lives.