The last week of lawn work at the Hackensack County Jail Annex, indeed the whole last week of August, 1967, was certainly eventful for seventeen year old Christian Howard. He could hardly wait to begin his life anew at university in Florida, and he had only days to go. Even his allergies seemed to clear up in anticipation. Saturday, he had sneaked off on the bus to New York City, to Greenwich Village. His mother would probably have had a fit if she knew he hadn't been in New Jersey that day, but the Sam Goody in Paramus didn't have nearly as much of a selection of records as Christian had become interested in and wanted; and now, with his job, he could buy so many more records.

He went to the House of Oldies, on Bleeker Street, where, despite their name, all the very latest and coolest records could be had - ones the other high school kids in Jersey never heard of. That summer a new radio station started, and they played all those really cool college kid bands, like Jefferson Airplane from San Francisco, and the Doors from L.A., and Christian's favorite, the Lovin' Spoonful from right there in the Village. They played a lot at a club called the Night Owl. The new station, WOR-FM, had dug up Murray the K, the great DJ from WINS's rock and roll days, and now he played really neat new stuff, like things from England. Christian heard him say that an album, by this American guy who had to go to England to cut a record, had finally come out over here. The band was called the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but Sam Goody didn't have it. The House of Oldies did have it, and Christian bought it as soon as he arrived there.

Next, Christian walked around the Village a bit, and despite having a pretty good sense of direction, he got a little lost. He saw several guys that might be artists, or beatniks, but he never did find the Night Owl Café. On more than one occasion, he had overheard his parents and their friends speak of beatniks disparagingly, but Christian saw some connection between being a beatnik, and the Allen Ginsburg poetry they read in high school, with music and the clubs in the Village, and with going away to college, and tales in Time or Life magazines about college kids taking a new drug called LSD, and that somehow these were all ways of being that would soon be available to him, even though they made LSD illegal now. Christian felt that his secret homosexuality could be a part of these ways of being, like many branches of an unclimbed tree, but whether it would be a leaf, a branch, a root, or the bark, he couldn't tell. Somewhere he hoped to find his place, and going to college was his way to climb the tree.

When Christian stumbled across the subway entrance at Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue, he recognized that he was back at the subway stop for the A train he had come on, and he figured he better get back to the Port Authority, or he'd miss his bus back home, and then his mother would want to know where he went for so long. The A train came right away, and Christian was at Forty Second Street in ten minutes. Since he had thirty minutes before the next scheduled bus, he decided to check out the dirty book stores that proliferated east from the Port Authority Bus Terminal along Forty Second Street. He walked along Forty Second on the south side, east to Sixth Avenue, then crossed and started back; there were only naked lady magazines anyway, and that didn't interest him. Christian saw a record store on the north side of Forty Second as he crossed at the light: King Karol. Christian thought he'd go into King Karol, but, a couple of doors west from Sixth, he found Bob's Bargain Books, an adult bookstore with a difference. In the window, Bob's Bargain Books displayed magazines with naked teenaged boys on the cover, boys like himself. They covered their penises with a stuck on blue dot with the price written on, but Christian felt sure that the ones you bought would be free of these blue dots. Despite the six dollar price tag, enough for two whole record albums, Christian wanted desperately to buy one of these magazines, but the sign on the door said "BE EIGHTEEN OR BE GONE". Christian, seventeen, feared going in. Surely they could probably tell. Just as he turned to head back to the Port Authority, a man, only a few years older than Christian, dressed in an all white sailor's uniform with white sailor's cap, began walking uncomfortably close to Christian. He rubbed shoulders with Christian.

"I saw ya lookin', why didn't ya go in?" the sailor asked.

"I'm not old enough," Christian answered.

"Ya want me to go in and buy ya somethin'?"

"No thanks."

"Ya wanna go somewhere and talk?"

"No," Christian began to hurry his step, but the sailor kept up.

"Let me buy ya a Coke," the sailor persisted, still keeping up, adding, "come on back to my room, I'll show ya a real man."

"No, please," Christian hurried across Broadway, but the sailor was right with him.

"Ya know you're cuter than them boys in the mags, don't ya?"

"I don't think so," Christian mumbled, still trying to lose this sailor. He regretted having spoken those four words, he feared they would be taken as encouragement, that now a conversation had begun with those words. He ran across Seventh Avenue even though the traffic sign blinked "DON'T WALK". The sailor stayed with him.

"You got a nice ass," the sailor said, "you know it's beautiful, don'tcha?"

"Yes." Christian said this firmly and loudly, still hurriedly walking, and it worked. The sailor stopped following him, stopped in his tracks as they say, but as Christian continued toward the bus terminal, the sailor shouted at him one more time.

"Bitch!"

Christian felt relieved, and he raced to his bus platform, but as he stood in line for the bus, he felt a little sad for the sailor. Very likely he had been drinking, still he meant to be nice to Christian, and he probably only wanted sex with Christian, and Christian wanted sex, too, but Christian wanted to pick the first one. Not a drunk sailor. He wanted the boy on the cover of the magazine in the window of Bob's Bargain Books. That boy looked like he might have been in high school with Christian, and Christian wondered if he lived there, near the Port Authority, and if he was still about the same age. He could little imagine why the boy had let someone take pictures of him naked, but was glad he did. He still had that picture indelibly in his mind. Maybe it was because of a man like the sailor, who had a camera. Christian wanted a camera. As he rode home on the bus Christian closed his eyes and thought about that boy in the picture. He opened the top buttons of his shirt and felt the key and gold ring that hung from the gold chain around his neck. He wanted to understand the secret way of being that belonged to his late grandfather and Léos, the boyfriend his grandfather lost. Christian needed to find his own boyfriend in that world, which must be the world of the boy in the magazine picture, too. Stories in the Village Voice hinted about that world, stories of drag balls in Greenwich Village, of hustlers on Third Avenue or Forty Second Street, and now Christian had been to the Village, and Forty Second Street several times. So far, New York kept that secret. He never ventured to Third Avenue and Fifty Third yet, though. Maybe that is where he would find a boy like the one in the picture. He wondered if the boy liked rock and roll. Christian pressed his elbow lightly against the Jimi Hendrix Experience album tucked under his left arm, just to be sure it was still there. He could hardly wait to get home and play the whole thing.