RFD 192 Winter 2022

Issue 193 / Spring 2023

GAY BAR

Submission Deadline: January 21, 2023 www.rfdmag.org/upload

When it comes to well-known queer spaces, little can rival the dominance of gay bars. The first ones in the U.S. opened in the 1930s, and by the late 1980s, according to one estimate, the country was home to more than 1,700. And now? Between 2007 and 2019, some 37 percent of gay bars have closed—and that was before the coronavirus pandemic.

All of which means, many of the places queer folks gathered in the past may no longer exist. But just because those spaces may be gone, it doesn’t mean our memories are. Maybe you worked in a gay bar as a barback or maybe you just worked the backroom. Maybe that’s where you performed an epic drag number that queens still talk about. Or maybe you detested gay bars because you felt ignored or unseen. Maybe you avoided them because you found it difficult, if not impossible, to enter a space that challenged your sobriety. Or maybe you think: Why would I miss those crummy hellholes when I’ve got Scruff?

Chances are, you’ve got feelings about gay bars. And even if you don’t, you probably have a good story about one. If you’ve got something to say about gay bars, RFD wants to hear it. And now’s not the time to be shy and stand by the wall. Last call for submissions January 21, 2023.

The Spike. Ramrod. The Corner Pocket. JR’s. The Stud. CC’s. The A House. The Cock.

San Francisco listing from the Gayellow Pages, 1988. Photograph by Gaby Tenda.

Respite From Dingos

Between the Lines

Welcome to the winter issue of RFD. We’re toasty warm and reflecting upon situations where one thinks to one’s self, Never Again. Readers submitted pieces about personal loss, war, and the tribulations of searching for one’s self. While others wrote about the complexities of relationships, creating closeness and over coming adversity.

It’s been a rough year for joy and pleasure but as we regroup it’s wise to allow for what to let go of from one’s life and see what things have slid away without our noticing.

RFD exists for our readers and we love reading and reviewing the submissions you send, so please submit your stories, poems, essays and art to our pages, your fellow readers will love you. If you have an idea for a theme also be in touch. We’re always looking for ways to reach our readers with ideas we haven’t covered before.

As RFD reaches towards it’s golden anniversary in 2024, we hope you will consider making a donation, large or small to help keep RFD going. We don’t need much but things like printing and postage have increased. We’d like to keep our subscription rate manageable but allowing folks to donate what they can to keep things rolling. Our rough operating budget is $6,500 per quarter or $26,000 a year.

As we enter this season of cool earthy reflection, may everyone have a wonderful Winter solstice.

From the sloggy trails of Vermont

—The RFD Collective

Submission Deadlines

Spring–January 21, 2023 Summer–April 21, 2023

See inside covers for themes and specifics.

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org. To read online visit www.issuu.com/rfmag.

RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative life styles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volun teers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA

01035-0302. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $11.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Hadley, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and as sociated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001.

Production

Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier

Production Editor: Matt Bucy

Visual Contributors Inside This Issue

Images or pieces not directly associated with an article. Artboydancing. ............................ 2, 35 Richard Vyse 5, 39 Gregory T. Wilkins ........................ 18, 51 Duncan Hilton. .............................. 20 bb 33

Dragon (Art Durkee) ......................... 49 Matt Bucy. .................................. 62 Jeff Schuler. 63 See-ming Lee .................. Back Inside Cover

"I Look Good Today" by Artboydancing.

Chipped Pieces ...........................

A. Scott Henderson .................... 4

Winter Gatherings .............................................................. 4

Night at the Park ......................... Luna ................................. 6

Two Men Kissing ......................... Andre Le Mont Wilson ................. 8 Hollywood Frank Castelluccio 9

The Cupcake ............................. Thanos .............................. 19 Shut Your Eyes, Oh God! .................. Lisa Monde .......................... 23 The Death Of Irony ....................... Mountaine ........................... 29 My Rosenkavalier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bob Henry, aka Smiley ................ 34

Never Again… Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Gregory T. Wilkins, a.k.a. Equus 36

Memory is a Funnel ....................... Ron Madson ......................... 37 Spilled Coffee and a Skinned Knee .......... Nicholas Yandell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Healing ................................. Kelvin Beliele ........................ 41

Three Poems ............................ Alexander Perez ...................... 42 Four Poems Sugar le Fae 44

Three Spells .............................. Wonderful ........................... 45

Never Again ............................. Clayre Benzadon ..................... 46 “Layla” K.C. Rose 47 Poem ................................... Lucid in Luzern ...................... 50

Midnight in Byzantium ................... Claude Chabot ....................... 52

Weeder (James Ferguson) ................. Daz'l ................................ 62 Jason Schneider .......................... Rachel Kerner ........................ 63

Winter Gatherings

As usual we’d like to thank the individual communi ties who offer places to gather, connect and heal. RFD uses a number of different sources for our calendar of gatherings but one of the more useful is www.radfae.org but we also search individual groups webpages for their latest events. If a com

munity you think should be included in our Annual Gathering Calendar which appears in our Spring issue, please be in touch – submissions@rfdmag.org

You can also find these events listed on our Google Calendar of Gatherings which can be found on our main page – www.rfdmag.org.

Yule / New Years Gatherette Dec 23 - Jan 2 Wolf Creek OR www.nomenus.org Wasdale New Year Dec 28 - Jan 4 Wasdale Hall, Cumbria UK www.edwardcarpentercommunity.org.uk/ events/wasdale-new-year-2022

Winter Gathering

Winter Meditation

Dec 28 - Jan 2 Saratoga Springs CA www.thebillys.org/events/category/gather ings/

Jan 13 - 15 Mountain Retreat & gayspiritvisions.org Learning Center, Highlands NC

Bear Your Soul: Winter Hibernation Jan 13 - 16 Easton Mountain, www.eastonmountain.org/ Greenwich NY

Imbolc Gathering

Jan 27 - Feb 5 Glastonbury, UK albionfaeries.org.uk

Tropical Full Moon Gathering Feb 2 - 12 Koh Yao Yai, Thailand asianfaeries.com/ Foretry Camp Feb 10 - 21 Wolf Creek OR www.nomenus.org/calendar-2/

Winter Gay Spirit Camp: Mardi Gras Feb 17 - 20 Saratoga Springs CA www.eastonmountain.org/

Wholism School

Rewilding Retreat Mar 15 - 19 Saratoga Springs CA wholism-school.mn.co/landing?space_ id=4316315

Northwest Dance Mar 16 - 19 Northwest US danceforallpeople.com/calendar/ (contact for location)

Movement, Body & Intimacy Laboratory Mar 20 - 27 Valle del las Sensaciones, Spain hadasdelsol.wordpress.com

Poly Men Who Love Men: Spring Retreat Mar 23 - 26 Easton Mountain, Greenwich NY www.eastonmountain.org/

In the autumn of 2024, RFD will be turning fifty years old and we’re seeking your input as we work to make selections of some of the best material to ap pear in RFD’s pages in five decades. So we’re looking for people interested in being readers to go through a small selection of RFD issues to give input on the interesting articles, poems and artwork to grace RFD’s pages.

Once selections are made we’ll chose a selection for inclusion in a collection into a book as a way of celebrating our golden anniversary.

Most of RFD’s back issues are online for people to read directly to help in this endeavor and we can provide you with a list of libraries and archives with copies as well.

If you are interested in being a reader – be in touch with Rosie – houseofdelicious@gmail.com.

Night at the Park

by Luna

The night sky lay shattered behind the bare branches. The clouds glowed with the light radiating from the city. The air was still and all that could be heard was the dull rumble of traffic on the great avenue. Diego found a path and followed it without knowing where he was going. The ground felt soft under his feet. The air smelled of decomposing foliage, a smell that brought to mind the memory of his grandmother planting flowers outside the house where she lived until her death. Diego shivered from time to time but he didn’t know if it was because he didn’t put on enough layers or because he was nervous.

As a child he would have felt fear in a place like that, surrounded by the gloomy silhouettes of leafless trees. He had learned from fairy tales that it was in places like that where evil crea tures lurked. Now he was barely able to feel fear and that saddened him. With the arrival of adulthood, his imagination had stiffened, making it difficult for him to make out faces of monsters from the medley of shadows. He was lost in those thoughts when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He stopped short, his body twitching unconsciously. A dozen meters away he saw the silhouette of an animal slipping through the trees. The fluffy tail and pointed ears gave it away. He only managed to see it for a few seconds before the fox melted into the darkness.

He kept walking and the path turned into a paved road lined with streetlights. The light from the street lamps formed puddles on the wet ground. Diego tried his luck along that path but so far he hadn’t run into anyone, except for a cy clist who he saw coming from afar thanks to the headlight powered by a dynamo. As the cyclist passed him, Diego was about to greet him, as he was accustomed to do when he went hiking in the mountains. This time, however, he said noth ing and the cyclist disappeared as quickly as he had arrived. For a moment Diego wanted to go home but he kept wandering with only the trees for company.

They were towering trees, many of them cen turies old. He thought he recognized several of them although he did not know their names. He

had always wanted to learn the names of trees and flowers, as well as the names of the constel lations. He could have gone to the library and learned those names from books, but he would have preferred to have been taught them by someone when he was still a child and his sense of wonder was still intact. He didn’t understand why at school they taught him the names of en tire dynasties of dead kings but no one bothered to make sure he was able to distinguish between an ash and a beech. Learning a name, on the other hand, could give a false sense of security, as if the mysteries that each one of those giants contained were revealed with the mere utterance of a word.

Diego was beginning to suspect that he would never find the place they had told him about when he saw a man come out of a path and fix him with a gaze that made him uncomfortable. The man was middle-aged with stubble and a baseball cap. He reminded Diego of a physical education teacher he had had in high school. Again he felt a shiver run down his spine. Put ting his hands in the pockets of his coat, he lowered his eyes and walked down the path the man had come from.

It didn’t take long for him to make out the silhouettes of other men in the shadows. Like him, they walked the path in silence. Further on, the trail formed a loop that could be fol lowed in both directions, most of the men doing nothing but completing one loop after another. In the gloom of the park he could barely make out the appearance of those he passed, beyond their approximate height and build. Nobody said anything to anyone, nobody whistled or laughed. Each one roamed like a lone wolf, unsure whether he was going to end the night as prey or hunter. The silence in which this ritual took place began to feel oppressive and he wanted to scream. To calm himself, he touched the bark of one of the trees and traced the outline of one of its knots with the tips of his fingers.

He felt discouraged and did not want to walk anymore. He stood leaning against the trunk of that tree with his hands resting on the bark, trying in vain to convince himself that he did not regret that he had come. He wished that his

arms would grow feathers and that, with his new wings, he could fly away. He would rise above the trees, above the park, and, heading south, leave the city behind in search of a forest where spring had already arrived.

Someone stepped off the path and leaned against the tree next to him. For a few moments there was a tense silence between them. Diego looked at him and felt that the other did the same, although in the darkness that surrounded them it was difficult to be sure. The stranger lit a cigarette and by the light of that fire Diego could see that it was a boy his age with pleasant features. The boy took two puffs and offered him the cigarette. Although Diego didn’t smoke, he accepted the offer and felt an electric current of excitement when his fingers touched the stranger’s.

Without saying a word, the boy took him by the hand and led him away from the path. They walked for a minute and then the boy turned around and kissed him. His tongue still had the bitter aftertaste of tobacco, but any unpleasant sensations dissolved in the moist warmth of those full lips press ing against his. Their mouths parted and the boy led him further to a small clearing in the trees. There he kissed him again as he unbut toned his jeans. Then, pulling gently on Diego’s arms, he brought him to his knees and offered him his sex.

vision scared him but he was unable to stop and he let the stranger continue to enjoy his mouth. His gaze, however, no longer left those eyes. The initial shock turned into terror when he realized that the yellow eyes were moving towards them. Diego pulled away forcefully.

“What the hell are you doing?” the boy roared, unable to contain his anger.

“Look!” Diego yelled pointing at the luminous eyes.

The boy finally saw them and for a moment he was also afraid. He hastily buttoned up his jeans. Diego was still kneeling on the ground. The figure stepped out of the shadows and into the clearing where it became visible to both of them. What was staring at them was a young doe. The animal was limping and half its head was covered in blood.

Nobody said anything to anyone, nobody whistled or laughed. Each one roamed like a lone wolf, unsure whether he was going to end the night as prey or hunter. The silence in which this ritual took place began to feel oppressive and he wanted to scream. To calm himself, he touched the bark of one of the trees and traced the outline of one of its knots with the tips of his fingers.

“What happened to her?” asked Diego alarmed.

“She must have been hit by a car,” replied the boy. “Let’s get out of here.”

The boy turned and walked a few steps away.

“Are you coming?” he called over his shoulder.

Diego didn’t answer and the boy left.

The doe was breath ing heavily. She came close to Diego and col lapsed on the ground. Her eyes didn’t leave his.

Diego did not resist and gave himself care fully to the task of giving pleasure to his lover. The boy ran his fingers through Diego’s soft hair and, from time to time, he grabbed a few locks and pulled his head. Soon after, the boy began to moan and pull harder. As he got down on his knees, Diego had closed his eyes and when he finally opened them he saw the gleam of eyes watching him through the trees. They were small, bright eyes suspended in the dark. That

For a few moments they both remained silent, without moving. Diego hesitantly reached out a hand and caressed her snout. Her breath felt hot and ragged from the effort of staying alive. Diego then sat down next to her and put the doe’s head on his lap. Bloodstains blossomed like roses on the fabric of his shirt.

“Forgive me” was all he could think to say.

Two Men Kissing

by Andre Le Mont Wilson

I had just left my partner at Summit Hospital in Oakland (where I didn’t know if he would survive his staph and urinary tract infections) and had driven down Summit Street before turning right on 29th when I saw two men on the corner kissing. The sight startled me. Unabashed, unconditional, and uninhibited, the two closed eyes, embraced bodies, and locked lips, simultaneously oblivious to the world and desiring the world to see. The two resembled a gay reenactment of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photo V-J Day in Times Square, showing a sailor and a nurse kissing. For all I know, the two men might have been a military man and a male nurse. One man was slightly taller and older than the other. Their bodies were tan and trim. The two had many years ahead of them, while my partner and I may have days, weeks, months, or hopefully a year or two remaining together.

My partner and I were born in mid-twentieth century America when men did not openly display affection for fear of being attacked, arrested, fired, or imprisoned. Although we have been together for nearly twenty-nine years, I do not recall if we ever kissed in public beyond a hospital visit peck on a

masked mouth. And we never married when it was legalized. We were like caged animals. Once the doors opened, we remained in our cages due to con ditioning and internalized homophobia. To see two men kissing enthralled me. I felt proud that queers have come this far, yet I knew we have much further to go as forces seek to overturn gay marriage and the right to privacy between consenting adults.

I slowed down as I made my turn and watched them through my passenger window and then my rearview mirror for as long as possible. They did not move an inch during the entire time. It was as if an artist had sculpted them in clay, cast them in bronze, and placed their sculpture on a street cor ner. I’m grateful that I have lived long enough to see this, that I served as a witness to their love. Will I become one of those gay widowers who cries when ever he sees two men kissing? Perhaps. But these are tears of envy and joy, memory and imagination. Their kiss reminded me of all we had shared, all that we might lose, all we had dreamed. Their kiss also promised that men kissing would go on regardless of what happens between my partner and me. I can take comfort and consolation in that.

Hollywood

by Frank Castelluccio

Fade in:

Ext: Garden – Evening:

The first night they met, Ikal walked Roy home and they kissed in the courtyard enveloped by the scent of night-blooming jasmine while the capti vatingly warm Santa Ana winds furiously danced around them, sealing that first kiss with a magic neither had ever known. It was in the Hollywood Hills, in a brightly pink-colored apartment build ing built in the 1940s, reminiscent of a Mexican Hacienda, that the two lovers, had at first, found happiness. The courtyard was an oasis filled with luscious palm trees, regal aloe plants, tall polished jades, glamorous ferns, and a majestic lavender bougainvillea that had, long before Roy and Ikal were ever there, made its way up the sides and back walls blanketing the two-story buildings to form what looked like a horseshoe.  Along the borders, in the shaded areas multi-colored impatiens stood at attention waiting for their daily watering. Dozens of terra-cotta pots left by prior residents brimmed with cactus plants and unfulfilled dreams. This was the place where their love story began.

Flashback:

A cool dry morning at dawn in Santiago El Pinar. In his room, Ikal’s record player spun as the needle skipped in a lazy rhythm on the final groove of the record that Ikal had listened to over and over the night before, “Yo No Naci Para Amar,” a melan choly tune about a young man who believed he was never meant to love anyone. He turned the switch to off, put the disc back in the sleeve, and stacked his records atop the cabinet, making sure they were completely aligned. His textbooks on drafting and architecture sat neatly on his desk, and his hand trembled passing over the covers, in a goodbye ca ress. He snapped off the reading light lamp, shoul dered the bulging backpack, and took one last look out the window. Santiago El Pinar, a small town in the Chiapas region of Mexico, was his birthplace, a ghost town filled with living souls trying to escape.

The familiar morning scents of freshly ground coffee brewing, sweet anise rolls baking and eggs sizzling in the large frying pan that seemed to never leave its place on the stove greeted him as he walked into the kitchen where his mother stood before the stove, a wooden spoon in hand.

“Mijo, esta seguro? Tal vez tu padre pueda ayudar,” his mother said, wanting to know if he was sure, maybe his father could help. She tried to avoid his eyes as she wiped the kitchen table.

“Tengo que ir,” responded Ikal. “No puedo ser un narco. Me mataran si no hago lo quen dicen.” Knowing that if he stayed, he’d be forced to work for the drug cartel. He had to leave to protect his family.

She finally looked him in the eyes. “No sé por qué pregunté. Sé que estás haciendo lo correcto.” She knew he was doing the right thing even before she had asked the question. She walked him to the door, took his arms and turned him toward her and looking deeply into his eyes she made the sign of the cross on his chest, “Que Dios te cuide,” May God look after you, she said. And without another word, she opened the door, allowing him to be released into the unknown of the deserts, and the mountains that until now had always inscribed a limit on this family.

With every step he took, the unforgiving sun kept reminding Ikal that death could come at any moment, without mercy or reason.

He would never speak to anyone about the things he did to gain favor to make the crossing, or the things that had been done to others, or of those that perished. Six days of walking, waiting, always hungry, always thirsty, and so tired…all snipped from the reel of memory, dropped to the cutting room floor.

East LA was not what he expected. His cousin’s building looked like a prison with all its windows dressed in security gates. He could hear children shrieking in the apartments. Ikal wondered if they ever played outside. The first thing he did was phone, getting word to his family saying all was fine, he was well, and he had made it to the City of Angels.

The two-bedroom apartment was already crowded with his cousin’s children and other mem bers of his wife’s family that had recently made the trip from Mexico. Ikal would have to sleep on the floor in the hallway on a twin mattress purchased from a second-hand shop.

He stood naked in the bathroom looking at the

mirror affixed to the back of the door. He tentative ly touched his left upper thigh and turned to look at the side of his body which was black and blue from bouncing around inside the trunk since San Diego, with three other men. Now he sat and looked at the blisters on the bottom of his feet, strands of shred ded bloody sock welded into his flesh. He lifted his hands to his face and looked at them closely, they were scratched and blistered from having never released his grip from the backpack he had carried. He had done his best to clean up during the journey but from his cousin’s wife’s reaction he knew what he must smell like.

“Mijo! Por favor! El bano es de esa manera,” she said, pointing to the bathroom.

He stood for a long time in the shower, look ing at the water turning brown as it poured down his body, spinning around the rim of the drain and then disappearing. He looked at his hands again, placed both over his mouth and let out a muffled scream.

Dissolve to:

In his bedroom, Roy forced the zippers closed on his two suitcases. He had packed, unpacked, and repacked at least a dozen times, unsure of whether he was taking too much or too little. He looked at the patchwork of photos and posters of his favorite actors and movies plastered on all four walls and smiled. He had always been certain that in a past life he had lived in Los Angeles and had been part of the Hollywood Dream Factory. He knew he wanted to be an actor. Years at the Actor’s Studio taking classes in voice, movement, and character development while searching for his “inner truth” and honing his craft in community theatre assured him of his readiness — It was time to make it in Hollywood!

Roy had been planning this trip all his life, but always postponed it one more year on his mother’s request not to leave her. Having just turned thirty, he couldn’t wait any longer. He finally convinced his mother that it would only be for six months, and he’d return. Initially she accepted that condition. “Okay, if you promise you will be back. Don’t let me have to come and get you!” she’d warned.

“I promise ma, I will come back…,” he said as his mother stroked his hair away from his forehead and smiled.

“You’ve always reminded me of a young Tyrone Power with your hair slicked back.”

Roy’s sister may have been more supportive of his decision, had it not left her alone with their

mother to care for her. “But you will be back, right?” she asked.

“I have to go now, or I never will, I know that.” He offered a half-hearted smile to reassure her, but he could see that she knew he would not return.

At the front door, she stood in the jamb, arms splayed, a human barrier. She begged and pleaded for him not to go. “I’ll lose you forever! I won’t be able to go on for another day!

“Ma! Really? C’mon, you know you are every thing to me, but I have to do this.”

She moved away from the door crying, barely giving him just enough space to go through. He kissed her on the forehead and promised once again he’d be back.

His heart wrenched, starting the engine, pulling out, but at last he drove down the street. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw his mother in the middle of the street bent over in tears. He slowed for a moment placing his hand on the gear shift, but instead of reversing, he reached for the mirror, looked at his reflection, combed his hair back and tilted the mirror down so he could no longer see her as he drove away.

He would later tell Ikal that his drive was like floating on a magic carpet. He barely rested, his excitement growing with each state line he crossed. When he entered California from Nevada he burst into song, “California Here I Come,” sing ing it repeatedly until his voice sounded like mice squeaking. On US Highway 101 he took exit 9ACahuenga Blvd. – Hollywood Bowl. He stopped at the first telephone booth he could find and called his mother.

“Ma! I’m here! It’s exactly like what I have been imagining all these years. One day we will make the trip together. It’s gonna be great! You’ll see!” he said excitedly.

“That’s nice, I’m happy for you, really,” she said flatly. “I need my heart meds renewed. Can you call your sister and tell her? She doesn’t know her ass from her elbow when it comes to taking care of me.” And then she hung up.

Cut to:

On that first night, Ikal and Roy shared all that is kept in the depths of one’s soul, all the secrets that are never voiced to anyone else for fear of being judged. They seemed to grasp all that had appeared to them between wake and sleep, all that had waited, hidden just beyond the shroud.

In that courtyard, they found their home. They’d take care of it. They worked together cleaning up

the flower beds, weeding and pruning. This garden became their temple and they both cherished it for what they experienced and what they shared.

Ikal sometimes stayed the night, but he always left before the sun came up. Roy didn’t know exact ly where Ikal lived. He’d told him it was somewhere down La Brea Avenue but never gave him the address. “I’m beginning to think you have another man hidden somewhere—that’s why you never give me your address. Are you cheating on me?” Roy asked, half kiddingly, half serious.

“I would never cheat on you!” Ikal said, his brow creased with consternation. “Ever! If either of us ever falls in love with someone else, it must be said. No cheating, ever!” Roy looked at him, smiled and caressed his face.

At first, they met every three or four days and then every other day. Ikal would show up showered, his shirt ironed and smelling like patchouli, always sighing once the door was opened—as if reading his first line of a scene.

“I’m glad you are here. I didn’t know if it was good for me to come over,” Ikal would say as he rubbed Roy’s earlobe with his thumb and index finger.

“You say that every time. You know I’m waiting for you!” Roy would respond as he took Ikal’s hand and kissed the palm of it.

Their usual place, Hoy’s Wok, was down Holly wood Boulevard to Cahuenga. There on the corner was Hoy’s Wok. It had four tables inside and two on the sidewalk. Roy called it a restaurant, but it was really a take-out joint. The windows needed to be cleaned, and the tables screamed out for tablecloths and flowers, but the place was sweet. For five dol lars they’d get pork fried rice or Lo Mein, chicken with garlic sauce, or boneless spareribs, tiny things that Roy referred to as “pork chips.” The two would sit at a table facing the door—Roy had been taught in Brooklyn that you never sit with your back to the door. You never know who is going to come in and start shooting. Roy would stare at Ikal in amaze ment over the amount of hot sauce he would put on everything. “Doesn’t that bother your stomach? Do you even taste the food?” Roy would always ask.

“Yes, I can taste it. I’m used to eating spicy, this is really not that hot,” Ikal would respond without looking up as beads of sweat illuminated his face and forehead.

If they could scrape up forty dollars between them, they would head to Mickey’s in West Hol lywood, the bar where they had met. When the pair walked in, men and women stared. Roy was fair-

skinned, tall, lean, with jet black hair. The gaze of his deep green eyes made people pause, needing to know more. Roy’s confident and elegant gait often made those who walked past him wonder whether they had just seen their favorite movie actor. Ikal was also tall, but his skin was silky caramel, and he took pride in his muscular frame, earned by the hard manual jobs he accepted (but needed to con stantly change due to his illegal immigration sta tus). When it was his turn to be carded at the door Ikal nervously handed his fake I.D. to the doorper sons but, they’d barely look at it. “Welcome,” they’d whisper with bedroom eyes handing it back to him, “Go ahead, maybe a drink later?” His piercing black eyes and long black hair captivated everyone. The bartenders nicknamed him the Mayan Prince.

Getting there before 7 p.m. meant tap beer for a dollar, served in plastic cups. They drank five and at 7:30 p.m. they would order a Long Island Iced Tea. The combination of vodka, tequila, rum and gin always did the trick. By this time, Roy was heading for the dance floor, but it took Ikal at least another drink before getting up the nerve to dance. He would stand on the side and smile as Roy jumped up and down, spinning and yelling at the beginning of every favorite song. “I LOVE THIS SONG!” Roy would then drag Ikal onto the dance floor, where the two danced until their bodies were soaked with sweat. Tammy Wynette and The KLF singing “Justi fied and Ancient” signaled that the night was over and the bar was closing.

Once outside, their ears buzzed and the sounds of faraway muffled voices surrounded them as men and women left the club. Ikal would then take Roy’s hand and insist they go to the beach. Roy would cite the late hour, but relent when Ikal pleaded that they go look at the stars. Roy would smile and say, “Only because it’s like a movie.”

The next day, hung over and exhausted, they would always make the same agreement. “We can not go out when we have work the next day,” Roy would say, scoldingly. “From now on we go out only on the weekends.” Somehow, they were always able to scrape up those forty dollars and the following week it would inevitably happen again.

On those rare days when they had a day off together, Roy would plan trips to his favorite Holly wood sites: cemeteries. There they would stroll past the graves of long-gone actors, Roy tutoring Ikal on their place in film history. “You see, the thirties and forties were the golden age of Hollywood. That’s when stars were really stars. When they made the

classics! It was glamorous. It’s exciting! You can feel it, right? The magic?” Roy would say.

“Exciting? Doesn’t that mean, happy? Everyone is dead here. I don’t know why we should be happy,” Ikal responded.

“You don’t get it. It’s not about happiness. It’s different for me. I grew up watching these people, it’s like I know them personally,” Roy said, taking Ikal by the hand and pulling him about the cem etery. Then he would add how each legend had died. “Fatty Artbuckle, sad story, died at forty-six of a heart attack—he never really made a comeback after being accused of rape. John Barrymore, he’s over there, died of cirrhosis of the liver—great ac tor. Oh! And over there, that’s Peg Entwisle…poor thing jumped off the Hollywood sign…only twentyfour, couldn’t make it once talkies came in. But, she’s a star now… yup, those were the years when Hollywood was really Hollywood!”

Ikal smiled at Roy’s excitement, “I don’t really understand, it’s all so sad but if it makes you happy then I’m happy for you.”

One very hot day Roy made it their mission to locate the final resting place of his favorite actress, Bette Davis. He knew it was in Forest Lawn but didn’t know the exact location. “Long ago, I prom ised myself,” he explained to Ikal, “I would meet Bette Davis, even if she was dead.”

Ikal didn’t understand how Roy could have so much love for a person he’d never met.

“I swear, it will be worth it. I promise you. Bette was everything to so many and especially for me. I want to pay homage to her,” Roy said.

They walked through Forest Lawn, the scat tered tombs and tilting headstones, reading the old inscribed names.

Ikal looked up a small hill and there in front of him a large tomb with stone pillars. The name DAVIS jumped out at him—below that “Bette Davis.” Ikal didn’t say a word, just pointed and Roy followed his stare.

He took Ikal’s hand and together they ap proached. A quotation came into focus: “She did it the hard way.”

“Thank you,” Roy said, as tears streamed down his face. He beheld the landmark, inhaling its aura. “Give me a cigarette, please.” Ikal handed Roy the cigarette. He laid it down on the tomb next to a bunch of wilted flowers. Ikal lit his own cigarette.

“She was important to you?” he whispered.

“One day you’ll understand everything.”

They began walking down the hill. Roy looked

back toward the tomb and said, “Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars,” quoting the actress from her movie, Now Voyager.

Cut to: Thanksgiving was Roy’s first holiday spent away from his mother. He and Ikal ate deli turkey sandwiches, drank beer and made love. “This is the first Thanksgiving that I am not depressed,” Roy reflected. “I’m really happy we’re here together.”

“I’m happy too,” said Ikal. “Maybe next year you can make a real dinner? I see on the commercials they have a lot more food on the table.”

“Shut up! This is all we can do this year. It will be better next year, you’ll see. I have a bunch of catering gigs lined up…we’ll make this Christmas special.”

Early December, a 90-degree day in Bel Air, and under piercing sunshine Roy drove up a long curv ing driveway to a massive mansion sheathed with thousands of miniature white lights made redun dant by the sun. Fake snow had been strategically placed on the perfectly manicured grass, sprinkled around bushes, and piled on flowering plants so as to cover the blooms. Inside the house was a Christmas wonderland—the air was scented with pine and Bing Crosby crooned “White Christmas.” On duty, Roy stood by a blazing fireplace in the middle of the living room holding a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Like the rest of the staff, he wore a red silk bowtie and a red velvet tuxedo jacket. Although the air conditioning blasted throughout the house, Roy sweated profusely. He caught a glimpse of two women in fur coats standing by the sixteen-foot Christmas tree as a photographer snapped their picture. Other guests, wearing wool sweaters, hats and scarves, waited along the side readying for their photos to be taken. To no one in particular Roy suddenly blurted, “You people are nuts, batshit crazy! I’m going home for Christmas!”

He called his sister and asked if she would help with the airline fare. “I’ll pay you back in a couple of months. I promise.”

“Like you were coming back in six months, right? Fine. It’ll be a break from mom,” she replied.

He broke the news to Ikal delicately. “I’ll be back in a week. I just have to go and see my mom for a few days and then I will come back for the New Year, and we’ll dance all night long!”

“Your family is important to you, it’s good that you can go. I would too if I could.” Ikal said holding

his breath pretending to wipe dust from his eyes.

The night before Roy left, they went out for drinks. Ikal hadn’t eaten much that day and gulped the three Long Island Iced Teas in quick succession. Nothing Roy did could get Ikal on the dance floor. Stone-faced, he sat watching Roy, until without notice, he rose and walked out of the bar.

Roy spotted his broad shoulders in the small park across the street. He was sitting alone on a bench. “Please come back,” he said without looking at Roy. And then a sob erupted from his lungs, and he bawled so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. Roy sat and held him.

“I could never leave you. Of course I’m coming back. Where is this coming from?”

“I have no one that cares for me. Only you! Only you! You can’t leave me! I can’t go home anymore. You are my home.” Ikal was slurring and clutching Roy like someone about to fall off a cliff.

“I’ll always come home to you, always,” Roy said as he wrapped his arms around Ikal. He rocked him back and forth until Ikal finally stopped crying. That would be the last time Roy would ever see Ikal cry.

The next day they drove to LAX neither of them mentioned the night before. As Roy’s flight was called, he stood before the gate, looked at Ikal and said, “I’ve been waiting all my life for you. Nothing is going to keep me from coming back.”

Six days later, Roy reversed up the gangplank to the same spot, finding Ikal in an ironed shirt, smell ing of patchouli, and holding a bouquet of flowers from Ralph’s Grocery store.

“You’re a nut!” Roy said as he hugged him.

Ikal rubbed Roy’s ear lobe until they were in the car and then they kissed.

“It’s good you are back.”

“It’s good to be back. I couldn’t wait to come home. It’s time to take the next step.”

Roy spent days getting the apartment in shape so that Ikal would feel at home. He made space in the closet, cleared out half of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, bought new towels and sheets, and cleared a wall of his posters—perhaps Ikal would like to hang some of his art. It was the first time in Roy’s life that he would be living with someone other than his mother.

When a car pulled up, Roy ran outside. A young man dressed in black jeans and black tee-shirt was dropping boxes on the sidewalk. Roy still had no idea where Ikal had been living, or with whom. He

wanted to make the stranger feel welcomed, so he said, “Hi! I’m Roy!”

The man got back in the car, waved to Ikal and said, “Orale wey.” Then drove away.

“Who was that?” Roy asked. “Why didn’t you introduce me? Why didn’t he say hello?”

“Just a guy, he had to leave. It’s not important,” said Ikal as he started hauling things in.

“It’s important to me. In my world, people intro duce people to each other. Everything with you is so cloak and dagger. I feel like I don’t exist sometimes, like you don’t tell anyone who I am or what I mean to you.”

“Why do we have to tell anyone? As long as we know who we are to each other and what we mean to one another, that’s all that is important. It’s no one’s business.”

Roy stood for a moment. He lifted a box, shak ing his head, and followed Ikal.

Their life became an unorganized routine. They worked when work was available, they went out to clubs, and window shopped at trendy boutiques on Melrose Avenue, never able to afford to buy anything. They ate dollar Chinese Food, celebrated birthdays with inexpensive gifts, always promis ing that next year would be better. Finally, one late afternoon while sitting on the beach waiting for blue sky to turn dark, Roy announced, “I’m going to stop thinking of this crazy idea of becoming an actor.” He paused, waiting for Ikal to disagree with him, but when he said nothing, Roy continued. “I’ve fallen out of love with acting. I’m not even sure why I wanted to be an actor. I like the attention, but… perhaps if I had come here in my twenties…” He looked at Ikal, expecting something.

“What do you want to do?” asked Ikal.

“I want to make money. I’m tired of just scrap ing by. I want to buy those things we see. I want to go eat at a real restaurant. I want to be able to pay the light bill!” They both laughed. Roy continued, “Maybe we can open a business. Maybe together, right?”

“That would be nice,” Ikal mumbled. “It’s going to be hard with no money.”

“That’s what credit cards are for. And maybe you can start taking classes at night, study architecture,” Roy mused. “You said you always wanted to be an architect.”

“When I was a small boy, I always drew houses. I see how they look inside of them in my head. It would be like a dream if I could do that,” Ikal responded in a lively, bright tone.

“We just have to figure out what we can do that’s

going to be successful,” Roy said. “We’ll make it work, you’ll see. We’ve come this far together—we’ll make it together. And once you get your green card, we’re going to travel the world, it’s going to be amazing! You’ll see.”

Neither looked into the others’ eyes as Roy spoke those words. Instead, they looked at the ocean while Roy made small circles on the sand with his finger. Ikal reached out and took Roy’s hand in his.

“Maybe,” Ikal said softly.

Smash Cut:

“Have you decided about leaving?” Roy man aged to say, attempting his best to sound calm and not show his anger, but failing miserably. He stood by the kitchen sink, having removed the layer of Teflon off the frying pan he’d been scrubbing for an hour. Ikal had spent the night out—again. Not with anyone special, Roy was sure of that. Still, it drove him mad not knowing and not having been warned in advance. Another sleepless night wondering whether he was safe.

“No, not yet,” Ikal responded quietly. “I don’t know if I should leave. Do you want me to go?”

“Don’t start that crap with me!” Roy exploded, slamming the now decimated frying pan against the sink. Indecision was one of Ikal’s personality traits that Roy found exasperating and had never been able to come to terms with. They were stuck on a merry-go-round trying to jump off, but both hesitant of taking that first step, afraid of falling. The unhappiness had taken hold of them at some point, but neither could recall when. Who was going to leave? If one left before the other, would it then be his fault for the relationship failing? Neither was ready to commit to leaving nor to staying. Both played a good game of chess. They instinc tively understood which piece would be moved and precisely when it would take place, so neither could ever call checkmate.

“And now you start!” Ikal replied, crossing his arms.

“I won’t make any more of your decisions! I’ve had it! You hear me?” Roy continued yelling, “This time I’ve had it!” And with that threat having been voiced one more time, Roy left the room, slamming the door to their bedroom—yet again.

In solitude, Roy brooded on their five years together. It seemed like a lifetime. Five years of arguing, of loving, of making plans (which never came to be), of making love, of throwing empty (and sometimes full) bottles of beer against walls.

Five years of hoping that the other would change, of wishing that discussions of money, or lack thereof, were not always excuses to rip each other apart, that the differences in their cultures were not justi fications of their incompatibility, wishing they could simply enjoy the same movies or even the same mu sic—all of this never happened. Wishing, hoping, dreaming, screaming, but sometimes, when they fell into their four-poster bed and Ikal put his head near Roy’s and rubbed his earlobe with his thumb and forefinger, they were both brought back to that place where they were alone, completely apart from the world, completely void of any problem or dif ference. And most importantly in such a moment, they were completely and absolutely—for they had abided by it—faithful to one another, and therefore, in that intoxicating moment, completely happy.

How they clung to each other. Was it out of love or was it out of fear of being alone? Neither could make sense of it.

Roy had always thought that if Ikal could, some how, become a legal resident maybe, just maybe, his demons could be exorcised, and he wouldn’t be living in constant fear. And Roy wouldn’t be over compensating by attempting to make Ikal’s life as normal as possible, which it couldn’t be. The magic of that first kiss on that first night so many nights before had now become a legend. That moment could no longer sustain their existence together. Both were tired of hearing the other’s explana tions, excuses, or resolutions. Their words became tiresome and annoying and neither wanted to hear them, especially Roy. When Ikal uttered, “I am your angel. I am here to watch over you and love you forever,” with his accent purposefully thick as honey (for Ikal knew its effect), Roy grinned, but his insides bled. How many times had he fallen in love with him one more miserable time only to end up feeling hatred a few weeks later? And how many times had Roy manipulated Ikal’s feelings so he would stay, citing all that he’d done for him, all he’d given him?

Finally, Roy emerged from the room on some pretense, hoping they could find some words to end the aching pain in his chest, and stop the litany of doubts and confusion in his head. In the living room, they staggered through their usual insecuri ties, the worn explanations.

“But do you take care of me because you love me,” Ikal asked resentfully, or “because you pity me?”

“I went into bankruptcy to pay for your attor neys. They all promised they would find a way to

get you a green card. And when that didn’t pan out, I borrowed money from my family to pay a woman to marry you. It wasn’t my fault she changed her mind. And now you are ready to abandon me because you can’t put up with me, because you find me difficult?”

“I’ll never be what you want,” Ikal said. “I never asked you to do anything for me.”

“Sure, you never did. But you wanted a green card, you wanted to be legal. And I did it for you and now this is how you repay me. Ready to walk out just when I need your help the most?” Roy said.

It continued this way, until somehow the room got quiet. Roy walked outside and sat on the steps leading down to the garden. There he smoked a cig arette and cried silently, wiping one tear after the next, annoyed at their wetness. Then Ikal stepped outside and sat beside him.

“We need to water the impatiens. It was very hot today.” Ikal put his arm around Roy and rubbed his ear.

“Yeah, I know. They look like they are about to drop dead.” Roy leaned his head on Ikal’s chest. “It’s getting more and more difficult taking care of everything…”

Most people they knew kept their distance, de spite the things they had in common. As a couple, they emitted mixed social messages. Gregarious Roy had always welcomed strangers with open arms but Ikal was cautious of people and kept mostly to himself. Ikal believed Roy was too quick too trust, and never opened up to people he didn’t know—that’s how you ended up getting hurt. Roy criticized Ikal for his standoffishness; he felt they had no friends because Ikal trusted no one.

The only exception was Greg and Bert, an older couple that lived across the courtyard. Greg and Bert had been in Hollywood for many years, having run away from their strict Baptist families in Baton Rouge. Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, stars and lovers, were their idols. Neither man had the talent nor the drive to pursue acting; they both worked behind the scenes, Greg as a make-up artist for fading movie stars that he referred to as “my girls,” imitating Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, while Bert found his happiness in set deco ration. In his free time, Bert sat at outdoor bars in West Hollywood, sipping double bourbon mint juleps and watching the boys stroll by.

Greg and Roy often confided in and trusted each other while Bert and Ikal, though cordial and friendly, kept their cards close to their chests,

reserved and skeptical. According to Greg, he and Bert never argued, they discussed. “It’s the Southern way,” Greg proclaimed, in his rich baritone drawl. “It’s the only way.” But when Greg got really angry at Bert, he’d declare, much in the same fashion as his favorite movie character, Scarlett O’Hara, that Bert was “as useless as a fly on an old man’s dick!”

To Ikal, Greg seemed sincere in his devotion to helping the young couple get through their rough patches, but one day when Ikal overheard some thing, he felt justified in his distrust of people. He overheard Greg tell Bert that the only reason he and Roy were together was because they looked “... marvelous together, just marvelous!” Then meanspirited, Greg added, “It’s dreadfully sad they haven’t a thing in common!” Ikal didn’t mention anything to Roy, fearful that it would start another argument. But the rest of the night, Ikal acted re buffing, like the macho man he wished to be, spill ing out sarcastic and hurtful comments whenever Roy spoke.

Roy responded in kind with digs at Ikal’s pride. “Darlings!” Greg said, “Visiting you is like step ping into one of those loathsome scenes between George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf!”

Bert looked over to Greg disapprovingly and said, “Now, Greg, let the boys be,” as he sipped on his afternoon gin and tonic. Roy didn’t appreciate the reference, but understood it for what it was. Ikal didn’t, and that made him that much more frustrated, insecure and angry, consequently taking his anger out on Roy.

Greg was convinced that the couple was part of an experiment conducted by an evil spirit, shar ing his theory with Bert, after overhearing Ikal and Roy having another argument, “I’m positive it’s an evil spirit! He knows very well they haven’t a goddamned thing in common. Not even a grain of compatibility. He saturated them with love dust, I’m sure of it, and now the son-of-a-bitch is waiting to see if they will stay together or make mincemeat of each other! I’m telling you, he is up there waiting and hoping for the worst!” Greg proclaimed.

“Can it just be that they are just having a tough time and they will eventually work it out?” Bert retorted. “Does everything have to be so melodra matic? Evil spirit nonsense.”

Whenever an argument began, ended or con tinued, somewhere in between, the silence would start. Roy hated this the most because Ikal was a master at this game. He would do all the little things which drove Roy crazy: blast the sound

on the television set, thump on the floor when he walked, loudly crunch potato chips, or pick on his teeth with toothpicks, spitting out the remains. In retaliation, Roy would then become the life of the party and telephone every one of his friends, past and present, and speak loudly so that Ikal could hear as Roy made fictional plans of nights out danc ing, dinners, and vacations to romantic islands. This deeply hurt Ikal, because Roy was well aware that he could not travel. Ikal lived in the shadows, acknowledged for what he could do but never given the acknowledgement of ever being seen. Once all the games were played out, the silence would return. Only this silence was different—it was filled with guilt and shame resulting from having delib erately tried and in most cases succeeded to wound and permanently scar the other.

For Ikal, love was devotion. His parents were dis ciplined and hard-working, and his ten siblings obe dient. Everyone in his family inherently understood, though they never voiced it, that they were devoted to one another completely, that was that—showing affection was simply not required, not part of the equation. His parents had been together since their early teens. Now in their mid-sixties, they never seemed, at least to their children, to ever have had a disagreeable discourse or show any fondness for each other. What they gave their children was the pride that comes from hard work. As a result, their children grew up polite, quiet, reasonable, but total ly uncommunicative, especially about their feelings. And because of his homosexuality, this behavior was welcomed and cherished by Ikal. Unfortunately, he had never planned on Roy.

For Roy, love was an MGM movie, an unrealistic Technicolor extravaganza. He had grown up with a divorced mother who had embedded in him all the romantic novels she’d read and who spoke endlessly of the beauty of art, of opera and of course, the movies, her constant companion. As a young girl her favorite quote was from Vivien Leigh, spoken to Robert Taylor in Waterloo Bridge: “I loved you. I never loved anyone else, I never shall, that’s the truth, I never shall.” Love meant drama, talk, more talk, and then tears and then passionate love again. Roy’s homosexuality, though not talked about, was welcomed with open arms by his mother, for she would have a companion till the end of her life, leav ing her other children free to live their predestined lives with their husbands, wives, and children.

Roy’s stubbornness and histrionics made him unable to simply let go, while Ikal’s marbleized emo tions and predetermined devotion made him inca

pable of understanding the concept of breaking up.

“Why can’t life be like a Hollywood ending?” Roy once asked Greg.

“Because Hollywood endings are only the begin ning, my dear.”

One night, Greg and Bert returned from din ner, and as they walked through the courtyard, they heard Roy screaming.

“Dear God,” Greg mumbled, “those boys are go ing to kill each other!”

“Let them be!” Bert said. “Live and let live, they’ll figure it out.” But instead of following Bert inside, Greg stood in the shadows and listened.

“How could you send them our rent money?” Roy yelled.

“I didn’t send it all. I’m sorry—they really needed it,” Ikal said.

Roy continued yelling, “Why do you always do these things without consulting with me first? Why is it always behind my back?”

“I thought I could work extra shifts and have the money back…”

“I can’t take this anymore! All they do is take, take, take! Never once have they returned any of the money you lent them! Why doesn’t your family cross over like everyone else and get jobs?” Roy suddenly stopped and looked at Ikal standing with his hands balled up in fists. Roy had never seen him so angry. They had a rule—never to go after each other’s families. Roy had broken that rule.

Roy took a step back as Ikal advanced on him. But instead of striking Roy, Ikal kicked one of the cats across the room. The cat jumped up looking astonished and sprang under the sofa. Meanwhile, Ikal walked out. Furious, Roy ran around the apart ment opening cabinets, looking in closets, and then under the kitchen sink. Behind the garbage pail he found the toolbox. He opened it and reached for the hammer. He ran toward the front door but came to an abrupt stop when suddenly he grabbed his chest. Roy fell to the floor, trying to catch his breath and then curled into the fetal position.

Greg stood aside and watched as Ikal ran past him crying. Greg ran inside and yelled, “Jesus! Are you alright? Ya’ll are going to be the death of me!”

“I’m okay, I just need a moment.” Slowly Roy stood up, looked around the room, and walked to the liquor cabinet. He grabbed a bottle of scotch and poured himself a shot as he had seen leading men in movies so often do, just before an inevitable doom.

“You cannot go on like this, it’s madness, do you hear, madness! No love is worth this much pain,”

Greg took Roy’s hand in his. “You’ve got to end it. I know the thought is devastating, but you’ve got to end it!” He paused. “Do you want me to stay?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Roy said quietly as he took another shot of scotch. He looked up almost as if he was looking through the ceiling toward heaven. “I know what I need to do.”

“All right, but I’m just across the way if you need me. Don’t do anything foolish though, you hear?” And with that Greg walked out, gently closing the door.

Cut to: Exterior – Hollywood:

It was a perfect Sunday morning in Los Angeles, warm and sunny, a slight breeze making leaves of the palm trees dance their slow sensuous dance. Ikal had come back sometime during the night and had fallen asleep on the couch. Crushed beer cans laid strewn around him like unfinished crumpled love letters. Roy had taken the two cats in the bed room with him and had fallen asleep in the midst of purring and the haze of scotch.

Roy opened his eyes and looked up at the ceil ing. He held his hand to his mouth, and as his body jerked forward he leaned over the edge of the bed and heaved in a bucket. He hung there over the edge of the bed, motionless, hearing the familiar sounds of Ikal preparing the large pot of espresso that they always shared. As the smell of coffee reached Roy’s bedroom, the doorbell rang. Roy lifted his head and looked toward the closed bedroom door. Ikal never answered the door when someone knocked, never answered the phone when it rang—always afraid of what lay behind the unknown. Roy still didn’t move. If no one answered the door it would all simply go away. But the bell just kept ringing and ringing. Finally Roy lurched to his feet and staggered out into the apartment. Ikal, pouring milk and sugar into two cups, looked at Roy, perplexed.

Roy opened the door and laughed nervously when he saw the two men. They didn’t look any thing like they do in the movies. Instead of suits and ties, they wore jeans and T-shirts. Flashing a badge, one of them stated in a steely, diplomatic tone, “We’re from the Immigration and Naturaliza tion Office. We’re looking for Ikal Costa Nunes. We understand he is living here.”

Roy turned to find Ikal looking at him with ter ror in his eyes. Roy tried to speak, attempting to tell the agents that there was no Ikal here. “Perhaps next door? I was angry, you see…” He blushed, made frantic meaningless gestures with his hands. “The scotch… it was too much!” Then he screamed, “I made a terrible mistake!”

The cups crashing on the floor made Roy jump. Ikal ran to the back door. The agents barreled through the door and chased after him, order ing him to stop as they pulled out their guns. Roy clutched his chest again, trying to catch his breath. “There’s been a mistake!” he wailed. “Please, there’s been a mistake!” But before he knew it, Ikal was handcuffed and being escorted out. Roy followed them outside to a waiting van.

In the courtyard, Ikal no longer struggling, gazed at the wilted inpatients. He turned toward Roy, eyes fixed on his, and with the slightest hint of an accent said, “Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving…me, and must be punished for it. George and Martha, sad, sad, sad.”

The officers looked confused.

“Te quiero mucho mi amor,” were the last words Roy heard Ikal say.

Roy stood in the silence as the van pulled away. Alone, he touched his own earlobe, slowly caressing it as Ikal had so often done. He looked up at Greg and Bert’s windows. He noticed Bert peering down at him. The old man looked shaken as he reached to open the window. But then he stopped midway, shook his head, closed his eyes and drew the cur tains closed.

Roy looked around as if it was the first time he’d ever been there, like someone searching for something but having forgotten what. He looked up toward the Hollywood sign, tears streaming down his face. “Words…” he whispered to himself, “that’s all they were supposed to be.”

Roy entered the apartment. He was about to close the door, but then stopped and left it ajar. In the kitchen, the broken mugs lay shattered on the floor. He walked to the couch, stepping over the empty beer cans, and sat holding the pillow that Ikal had slept on. In time his eyes fell upon Ikal’s backpack tucked under the coffee table. He felt his pulse throbbing in his ears. He opened the backpack and found old copies of Pennysavers, real estate bro chures featuring homes in Beverly Hills, a catalogue from the Los Angeles City College, a worn Spanish/ English paperback dictionary, a tattered, dog-eared copy of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and folded inside, an expired one-way ticket to Guadalajara. Lastly, a Hallmark card, the envelope bearing his name in Ikal’s handwriting. He looked around the empty apartment, seeming to wait for the music to swell and the words THE END to appear. He opened the card.

Fade to black.

Never Again (and yet, marine life continues to be threatened)—Color of Water: Under the Sea honors marine life and coral reefs. In our life, we will see the disappearance of the Great Barrier Reef and others across Earth.

"Color of Water: Under the Sea" by Gregory T. Wilkins aka Equus.

The Cupcake

by Thanos

I was twenty-seven and it was the time in my life, when I thought my life was over. I was a healthy, decent-looking, five-foot-eleven guy. But my good health and good looks were in no way going to stop me from thinking that I was dying.

I had just broken up with David that summer. I had just moved to Minnesota. I got myself a spa cious one-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis, but living alone for the first time turned out to be a nightmare. Day after day, I found myself in a con stant state of fear. Even though there was nothing to be scared of, I trained my mind to be obsessively looking out for potential threats. I became very scared of electrical cords, specifically the possibility of a chair’s leg pressing a cord, which would then start a fire and burn the apartment building down. I did not mind dying, but I could not bear the thought of my neighbors suffering a horrible death in flames. The old lady on the second floor, the family with the two kids next door. To protect them, I had to unplug every single device every time before I stepped out of the apartment and every night before I lay in bed. Preventing a fire was an art and required a certain level of dedication I tended to daily: first the kitchen plugs, then the coffee machine, then the big light stand. After that, the plugs in the living room and of course the plug outlet that hosted the TV, several chargers and a small lamp. With similar dedication I watched the stove knobs carefully, sometimes for several minutes at a time, to be sure that I had not accidentally pushed one of them on. I took my trash out daily, always with a sense of urgency, out of ap prehension that it would attract bugs and roaches. I was convinced that, if I gave them the opportunity, bugs would crawl all over me at night. Any leftover foods and peels that I could not throw out immedi ately, I kept in small Tupperware containers in the fridge, because keeping them in the trash can felt like too big of a risk. I was a healthy, decent-looking, five-foot-eleven guy. I had my whole life ahead of me and I was terrified of my own shadow.

My nights were not any better, since I could not sleep for more than a couple of hours. My heartbeat moved my chest up and down at a steady rhythm and a sense of dread woke me up every few minutes, as if it felt very wrong to give up control and sleep. Because of my sleepless nights, I had an overwhelm

ing feeling of exhaustion on most days and I had to push myself hard to reach the absolute minimal level of productivity that was required to get my life in order. I had to unpack, get furniture for the new apartment and look for jobs, all of which took much longer than I had originally planned. My exhaus tion interfered with my eating as well and, since I was losing my appetite anyway, I had an excuse to not bother to cook. It seemed that my muscles were forming into an irregular shape: longer, skinnier. They looked as if they were embracing my bones tighter than before and they made both my arms and legs to look very long. For while all I saw in the mirror was a scarecrow, but not because of my skinny limps that looked like wooden sticks. It was the eyes. Black and soulless.

On the positive side, the new apartment had the large windows I always dreamed of. Fall in Min neapolis started early, which was the main reason why I moved up north after spending six years in California with David. Six long Octobers of longing to feel a cold breeze every time I opened the small window in our apartment. Rarely did a breeze come in. David was kind to me, but for a big portion of our relationship I was feeling a desperate isola tion simmering inside of me like a hot Californian October. David was a simple man. If we were fish, he would always swim in the shallows and he would spend his days eating crumbs small children throw in the water. He would have big cheeks and it would seem as if he was always smiling. If I were a fish, I would be a gloomy, half-swimming half-drifting creature at the very bottom of the lake, touching the sand, where it’s cool and dark. I would never put crumbs in my mouth and I would never know what bread tasted like. I would die happily in my sorrow, because I would have never known pleasure to lose it. If we were fish, we would have never met, let alone share an apartment together.

At least my first October in Minneapolis was cold and breezy, the way I expected it. I had to put on a light jacket even for small errands, like walking to the nearby deli for seltzer and snacks. Between being busy with rituals to prevent a fire and the fear that every day would be my last one, it suddenly occurred to me that I was actually surviving. It had already been three months since my move and I had learned

"Tupor," by Duncan Hilton.

to live with my fears and to not be bothered much by them. I even managed to build a good routine for my self: work, exercise, books and movies. And Grindr. Within a few months, I was on the top of my game fucking every guy within a five-mile radius.

Sex began to fill the void that a six year relation ship had left, but it also offered me a strong will to survive I hadn’t tasted before. A drive to take care of my body, to eat well, to go out and make people like me. By the time winter came, I had done it all or I thought I had: sex on the first date, mainly sex before the first date, sex after the first date. I fucked men in my apartment, their apartment, my car, their car, sau nas, bars and public bathrooms. I was having phone sex and I was sexting like a maniac. I stopped thinking about starting a fire all the time and my body did not seem like it was dying any more. My muscles became firmer, stronger. For the first time in a while I was able to experience positive emotions or at least thrills, nervousness, and excite ment surrounding my hook-ups, which over time fully replaced my previous agony.

Over time my dick got to be in full command and made all decisions for me. Decisions that if I tried to resist, my mind would scream. To put it simply, the only thing I cared about was sex. But this is not as simple as it may sound: all I cared about is sex does not only mean the act of fucking. It means fantasizing about sex most of the time, it means making my body desirable for other men by hitting the gym every single evening, it means texting with dozens of men every week to arrange the next fuck, it means think ing about the men I had already fucked, it means fantasizing about the types of men and sexual stuff I hadn’t had a chance to try yet and it means getting tested for sexually transmitted infections every three months. Fucking had become my full-time job on top my full-time job. I was fucking exhausted.

By March, I was already getting habituated to most of the sexual stuff I was doing at the time. Topping, bottoming, flip fucking. Oral, rimming, threesomes, orgies. Been there, done that. It did not

take long to put together this fantasy: I would have a submissive guy worship me and serve me. I would find someone who would kiss my body, lick my feet, do chores for me, tell me how great I am. I would try something new. It felt like an exciting idea!

Getting a sex slave was very easy. His name was Alex, a cute guy a couple of years younger than me. I first invited him over when I was working out at home, lifting dumbbells. He told me through his text messages that he would love to massage me, worship me and that it would be even better for him if I were sweaty. And so it happened: the first night he was all over my feet, and I found out that I was pretty good at dominating. I would give him orders to go down on all fours, lick my body, tell me how strong my muscles were. I would spit on his face, calling him a bitch. My bitch. I still re member how he moaned in pleasure every time my spit landed on his face and hair. I would tease him with my dick, by showing it to him or hitting his face with it, but I would not let him put it in his mouth. I was in full control over everything. I would order him to not masturbate—he was here to pleasure me anyway. I would have him take my cum on his clothes and leave my apartment with stains all over his sweater. Dominating this poor guy offered a sense of fulfillment and empowerment that my words and thoughts cannot fully articulate until today.

For months to come, Alex was my full-time bitch. I saw other guys too, but Alex was my go-to man for the dirty, validating work. Every time I looked at my muscles in the mirror, I instantly thought: "Fuck! So fucking hot." And so I would text Alex, who would most of the time be there within a half-hour, always willing to take my orders. "Take everything off except for your briefs. Get down and crawl towards your daddy. You missed these strong muscles, right? Mmm. Fuck, boy. So eager."

"We’re not done here," I said one day after I came inside the hoodie of his coat, which he would then have to wear. "Here’s my vacuum cleaner over there. My floor is fucking gross." I am not naturally rude,

Sex began to fill the void that a six-year relationship had left, but it also offered me a strong will to survive I hadn’t tasted before. A drive to take care of my body, to eat well, to go out and make people like me.

By the time winter came, I had done it all or I thought I had: sex on the first date, mainly sex before the first date, sex after the first date.

curt or dominating, but I had to keep my domina tor’s act even after I ejaculated, which was not easy. After humiliating him sexually, I often lay on the couch watching TV, while he was commanded to do chores for his master. He seemed to be falling in love with me or at least that was what I liked to think. He had all sorts of questions as he was doing the cleaning. Where I am from, what do I do for a living exactly, why Minneapolis and if I ever went out to dinner with guys or only fucked them. I ig nored or lied to almost all of his questions so I could preserve my role as his master, even though a part of me wanted to act naturally and have a normal chat. Nah, that would ruin it all both for me and for him. And I was right. The excitement from our little master-servant game did not fizzle out a bit for months to come. What turned him on was to feel like he was nothing, like he did not exist. And I told him "People pay for this! People pay to be domi nated like that." That he was a lucky boy.

My twenty-eight birthday was coming up, bring ing a strong sense of relief that this horrible year was almost over. I had survived my breakup with David and I had outlived my crippling anxiety, which on the dark days I never thought I would. Plus, my life had intersected with the lives of so many other people that year. Even if that was through fucking them. That still counts. I was turning twenty-eight! I was putting together resolutions and wishes for weeks leading up to my birthday: I would go back to school. I would take on more responsibilities at work. That would for sure give me a sense of purpose. I wanted to con trol my sexual urges. Maybe I would get an expert to block all the hookup apps on my phone. I would definitely see a therapist.

The morning of my birthday I woke up with an unfamiliar feeling of joy. I put on a new shirt that I had kept for a special occasion and I went to work with a smile on my face. A smile that felt so wrong that I decided to keep. Nevertheless, none of my coworkers wished me happy birthday. Not even my boss, who I thought should have a list with his em ployees’ birthdays. I had really thought I would get a few wishes, a few smiley faces. A cupcake would be nice. It did not matter though. Not celebrating my birthday was true to the solitary life I was living any way. To wish for a cupcake would mean that I was truly lonely. To admit that I wanted something more than what I already had was not going to happen.

I hit the gym after work. I usually showered at the gym, but this time I went straight back home and texted Alex, who had said it many times that he preferred my body sweaty. I took off my clothes

and sent him a photo: "Wyd, boy? Come over." He replied with a salivating emoji and the word fuck, followed by I will be there in 30’. "Bring a cupcake, it’s my birthday," I ordered him. I immediately convinced myself that this was not a wish. This was an order and I was still his master. "Smell this hairy armpit. Get on all fours, bitch. Open your mouth. More. Lie on your back now. Bring a cupcake, it’s my birthday." Yes. That sounds like an order.

I always kept my door unlocked when expecting Alex and he knew not to knock. He always opened it reluctantly, took two steps into the apartment and then stood there for a minute waiting for orders. He always seemed a bit nervous, no matter how many times he had come over to be humiliated. It made me hard to see the intimidation on his face. This time things turned out differently. Alex opened my door, took off his shoes quickly, smiled at me and walked straight into the kitchen without waiting for my orders or permission. He was holding a small brown paper bag. He opened the bag, took out a strawberry cupcake, grabbed a plate from the dish rack and placed the cupcake right in the middle of the plate. He then reached back at the bottom of his bag to take out a tiny candle, which he dug in the frosting. "Get me a lighter," he said. I walked towards the kitchen trying to hide my face of em barrassment and I handed him a matchbox, know ing that my secret was out. He knew that Bring a cupcake was not an order, but a cry. He sang "Happy Birthday" and I blew my singular candle quickly, feeling too nervous to focus on making a wish.

We sat at the kitchen table to pick at the cup cake with our fingers, but we ended up not having a single bite. We were just awkwardly decomposing it, until it did not seem like a strawberry cupcake anymore. We looked at each other in the eyes. He knew that I was sad and he knew that I knew. That moment he instantly found out the answers to all the questions he had been asking for months: "What do you do at your job exactly?", "Why Min neapolis?", "Do you go out to dinner with guys or do you only fuck them?" He did not have to ask any other questions ever again, because he saw all the answers in my eyes. I felt like a caged animal. A lion when it shamefully realizes that it does not scare anyone behind the bars. All that it has is to stand proud and pretend that it does not care about the food people throw into its cage. It eats arrogantly, slowly with its head high, just because the food is right there on the ground, not because it needs it. That was exactly how I took the first bite of the cupcake. Alex was free.

Shut Your Eyes, Oh God!

by Lisa Monde

“In Kiev, Kherson, and other areas of the Ukraine, many sexual assaults have occurred, committed by the occupants. Among other victims was an eighteen-year- old girl; Russian soldiers have been raping her for eight days straight.”

—La Strada, a public organization

Anna Kava

Russian fascists should be ripped into pieces! Kill the scumbags!

Maria Svet

Beasts, moral freaks… May all of the Russian aggressors die on the Ukranian land… May they never rest in peace!

Oleksandr Rudenko

Their privates with their papers should be sent home, let the dogs have the corpses— they can strip that shit to the bone!

Pavlusha Kotik

No need to take any prisoners, they all knew where they were going. Shoot them down, like rabid dogs! ***

There were dozens of comments. The content was pretty much the same. In a nutshell: hatred for the invaders and calls to commit the utmost brutality against the fascists, or Russists, who arrived with their guns on the Ukranian lands— that is what they were called by the Ukranians from the beginning of the war.

Galya was sitting on the floor, her back pressed to the cold radiator, in the only room of their apartment where the windows were still intact. The door was closed. The silence of the apartment felt huge and empty. It had been a few days since she’d heard the sounds of shooting, explosions, and the howling air raid siren com ing from the outside.

She didn’t want to read the comments any more. She didn’t feel like anything at all: she didn’t want to drink, eat, or sleep. She didn’t

even want to move. Galya felt as if she had even stopped breathing: her chest moved ever so slightly. Her eyes almost didn’t blink: she was just staring straight ahead, at the picture stand ing on a table. Two young women were looking back at her from the pretty picture frame— they were clasping each other in an embrace; they were smiling; they were happy. One of them was Galya. And the other one, Valya, Valusha. They had taken that picture only about six months ago, when Galya had turned eighteen. Valya was older by two years.

They had met about two years ago, by chance. Although, nothing ever happens by accident in this life, does it? That Sunday morning, Galya went to the market with her mother. They needed to buy some lamb. They were expect ing guests and had decided to prepare a stew because the wife of her father’s friend—Lola, for whose sake the whole huge feast had been arranged to begin with—came from Central Asia and of all meats recognized solely the lamb. Lola’s justification for that peculiarity seemed very strange to Galya: she said that the ram was stupid and didn’t understand when he was being taken to slaughter and therefore wasn’t full of “hormones of fear.” And that was why the ram’s meat was the “purest” and healthiest.

Galya and her mother moved from the row of stalls filled with meat to the vegetable ones. And there, by the counter heaped up with various greens, she saw Valya standing in the shade un der one of the few trees at the open marketplace and nibbling sunflower seeds. She was spitting the husks into a little plastic bag, not onto the ground.

Her peculiarity could be seen from afar: strength and weakness all in one. A mannish, athletic body without even a hint of a waist, muscular legs and arms, coarse and large facial features, a short haircut with shaved sides, a tattoo on the back of her neck—all of it seemed to be in a state of horrible dissonance with her defenseless and childish facial expression. Hav ing sensed Galya’s roasting gaze with her whole body, Valya shrugged, put the plastic bag filled with husks into a pocket that stuck out of her

cotton dress, and started to walk. Toward Galya. As they were coming closer to each other, Galya’s heart was beating faster and faster, louder and louder. At a certain point, she thought everyone around them could hear her heart beating. A step, another step. The distance between them seemed to decrease faster than they were walk ing. Finally, they’d reached each other.

“Hey, I’m Valya. And what’s your name, girl?” Valya asked, sort of how kids on a playground start a conversation: afraid that they will be rejected and at the same time hoping that a play mate has been found.

“Galya.” She said her name in a singsong manner. Whatever they were saying, their in tonations didn’t matter in the least. The words disappeared just like the husks from the sun flower seeds. Whereas their eyes, as if the wet lenses stuck together, could not be parted. And it was precisely that bond that allowed them to exchange kilobytes of information at an unbe lievable speed.

“Galya, where did you go? I’ve been searching for you everywhere, you silly girl.” Her mother was out of breath. She grabbed Galya’s arm and dragged her along. “Ma, wait! I saw…a friend of mine...” said Galya, swallowing hard since she felt her mouth run dry.

“Come to our place tomorrow! Make sure you come visit us.” Those words were addressed to Valya.

“I know where to find you.” Smiling queerly, Valya put her hand on her neck, instinctively willing to cover up her tattoo.

Galya’s mother was watching Valya suspi ciously.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that…girlfriend of yours,” her mother grumbled, continuing to pull Galya along. “There’s still so much to do at home, and we’re loafing about here. Here, carry this! Not too heavy?”

Mother gave two relatively small bags to Galya and carried the other large and heavy ones herself.

Throughout the summer holidays that started a week later, Galya and Valya spent a lot of time together. Valya had already graduated from high school and worked at a store selling stationery and office supplies. Each day, Galya waited for her by the store, and they traveled to Dnepr together, where in a secluded secret spot they could fully belong to each other. First, they would eat the sandwiches, carefully prepared

by Galya and brought from home, with juicy tomatoes and crunchy cucumbers, cherries, and other fruits that were available at home. Then, exhausted from the heat and their overloaded stomachs, they would lie on a blanket and watch the sky. They would hold hands and watch the clouds pass by.

That was where they first kissed. Valya want ed to get to the next level of physical intimacy there, but Galya refused—she wanted their first time to happen somewhere more private.

“No, please, let’s do it at your place,” whis pered Galya, feeling hot and aroused, trying to restrain Valya’s hands from wandering all over her body. “I can’t do it, not here…”

“As you wish, my love,” exhaled Valya into her girlfriend’s ear, then licked it.

The village where Valya lived consisted main ly of regular wooden houses with tiny farms in the backyards. They also had glassed-in porches, wells in the yard, and stoves for heating. She had moved into that house as soon as she left the orphanage behind. At first, she had lived there with a friend, but at a certain point, the friend left and Valya had to keep house herself. She fixed the windows as best she could so the wind wouldn’t get through and fixed the stove so it wouldn’t smoke up the place. She threw out all of the junk from the cellar and kept jams, pickled vegetables, and compotes there, which she had prepared herself. She would stock up on food for the long winter ahead. She would get carried away and prepare more than she could possi bly eat. But at the same time, she had plenty of treats for her city friends; she would bring treats to work on various celebratory occasions.

Her house was poor but clean. The bed where they loved each other for real for the very first time was soft and squeaky. The old iron-clad grid had sagged a long time ago and couldn’t be fixed. But that didn’t matter to the girls: inter penetration, which filled them both with infinite tenderness and warmth, was much more impor tant.

After the act, they talked incessantly about men, sex, kids, and childbearing. Pretty much about everything.

Valya told Galya about her life at the orphan age. How she had dreamed of someone who would adopt her. She had a recurring dream in which she was walking by a man’s side, hold ing his hand. He was her father, and she was so proud, proud that she had him.

“Let me comb your hair,” she would tell Galya and with great pleasure, taking her time, would comb through her long thick hair. She shared with Galya that she could physically imagine and feel how her foster mother would comb and wash her wavy locks. For whatever reason, she always missed that type of tactile contact the most.

“I personally hate it when my mother combs my hair!” “Why?”

“Well, it hurts! She pulls too hard,” Galya tried to explain but realized that Valya would probably never understand.

“What about your father? Did he ever walk you to school, hold you by the hand, for ex ample?”

“He did, whenever mother would send him. He is a typical pussy.” Galya sat naked, tuck ing her feet under, and her nakedness felt like freedom to her. “Mother made him that way: there are only her wishes and needs. He obeys her completely.”

“Does he love you?”

“Of course. And I love him. He and I—we are both victims…” She smiled. “Of our authoritative mother.”

“Do you think she’d be able to accept our relationship?”

“No.” Galya stood up abruptly, threw a robe over her shoulders. “Never. She’d kill me sooner.”

“And your dad?”

“I’m afraid he won’t be able to help me…”

“Well then, I’m going into the cellar. I’ll bring some jam for us. We’ll have some tea with sweets; we’ll sweeten the sourness of these words!” Valya got dressed and climbed the lad der down to the cellar to grab a jar.

“Strawberry or raspberry?” Her voice came from under the floor. “Whichever,” responded Galya with indifference. ***

From the very first blows of the occupants directed at their city, Galya and her parents would run to the bomb shelter whenever they heard an air raid siren go off. There was more and more destruction. They would attack civil ian targets: a theater already stood in shambles; a whole wall of a municipal hospital had come down; there was a huge gaping pit in the middle of the market square; around it there were heaps of construction waste and the remains of tents,

booths, and counters.

Only a week later, Galya was able to escape from home. She went to visit Valya. The out skirts, where her friend lived, would be fired at quite often, and Galya’s heart was aching from worry about her beloved. She had never prayed before since her family was not religious at all, but the war changed everything: she began to address God and ask him for help and tell him about her worries often.

“Please hear me, God! Please have mercy on your servant Valentina; protect her from a bullet, a splinter! I am worried sick about her, oh God!” Galya pleaded as she could. She didn’t know how to pray and didn’t know any prayers.

“Forgive me, oh God! I don’t know how to ad dress you or speak to you properly to make sure that you hear me! I swear I’ll learn some prayers, I’ll go to church and go to services, and I will thank you for your help!”

Once, her mother had gone to pick up some grocery packs that were being distributed by vol unteers from humanitarian convoys, and she had written a note and left it on the table. She wrote that she had gone to see a friend and would be staying with her for the night. Father was sent to pick up some wood to strengthen the window frames, which had partially fallen out from the bombardment.

It took Galya almost two and a half hours to reach Valya’s house. Her heart was beating with joy when from around the corner she saw the house standing there—all safe and sound. There were several burnt cars on the street, two distorted tanks with a letter Z on the armor. A scorched corpse was lying on the ground by a tank. Galya had never seen the war that close…

Valya was making soup out of vegetables and canned, stewed meat. The smell of food had filled the whole house, and when Galya opened the door, the smell hit her so hard in the nose that she could barely stand. Or perhaps she was just extremely tired. Or she was just extremely happy to see Valya alive…

Of course, she stayed with Valya for the night. It felt so calm and sweet, sleeping together, holding each other. In the morning, they heard the roar of the tank engines and rushed into the cellar. The girls thought they’d shoot. But the oc cupants burst into the house, having easily bro ken the lock on the flimsy door. They searched the whole house, and a burst of gunfire hit the closed lid of the cellar.

Galya screamed from fear.

Someone yelled back in Russian, “Come out, come out, wherever you are! I’ll shoot!”

Trembling from fear, Galya followed Valya, who resolutely went up the ladder first, covering her girlfriend.

There were five men in the house: two young soldiers and three officers, apparently. A thought crossed Galya’s mind: They are my father’s age . And one officer even almost looked like her father. Almost. The room was turned upside down: the closet was open, clothes were scat tered around the floor, and the ledge on one side was torn from the wall and was hanging across the window.

“Who are you bitches hiding from?” asked the superior officer. “From the bombs,” answered Valya hardly loud enough.

“Who lives in the house?” continued the questioning superior. Two soldiers were holding Valya from both sides, as if she could run away— her legs had turned to rubber.

“Nobody, it’s just me. My friend came to visit,” babbled Valya, nodding in Galya’s direction.

“Anyone in the neighboring houses?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been outside in a while,” Valya said, and the officer struck her straight across the face.

Her head bounced and a stream of blood came out of her nose. When the blood reached the corner of her mouth, Valya licked it off, and the left corner of her mouth turned red.

Just like a vampire, thought Galya.

“Why the hell are you talking to her? Drag her out into the yard, and we’ll ask the youngster a few questions,” shouted the officer who had momentarily reminded her of her father.

Two soldiers who were holding Valya dragged her toward the terrace. She tried to resist, but she wasn’t strong enough to fight two large men. She was trying to turn her head to be able to see Galya. She wanted to tell her with her gaze that she supported and loved her. At least like that.

“I love you; never forget that!” shouted Valya when she was already behind the door, out on the porch.

“Hullo! You two are lesbians,” happily cooed the senior officer. “Lookie here!”

He grabbed Galya by the shoulders and pushed her to the table. Confused, she didn’t resist. In any case, resistance was futile.

“Let me show you what the almighty dick is capable of!” The officer unbuttoned his pants

and approached the group at the table: two sol diers were holding her from either side; she was spread-eagle on the table. The soldiers tore her clothes to pieces and cut her panties off with a knife. Galya shut her eyes, so as not to see their disgusting grinning mugs.

They raped her in turns, one after another. The officer that resembled her father ran it all. The only thing that she begged God to do was to make her lose consciousness so that she wouldn’t feel pain, shame, and repugnance, which covered her like a wave at each friction of the rapists. Through all that horror, she heard an explosion outside. It seemed to her that it had come from one of the neighboring houses. The three men, standing at the table, grabbed her and pushed her into the cellar, closed the lid, and locked it from the outside so that she couldn’t get out. They ran out. And soon they all returned. The five of them. She could hear their footsteps, their voices, and could smell the food being cooked. They were frying something— it stank. It was a sickening smell. She vomited.

Galya was trying to listen to their conversa tion. She was worried that Valya had disap peared. But no one mentioned her. They were discussing the explosion. It seemed like several soldiers from their subdivision, afraid of the probable treachery of the residents of the neigh boring house toward them—the unwelcome visitors— opened the door and threw a hand grenade in. Then they entered the house with out fear. It turned out that there were only two elderly people in the house. Their bodies were thrown out behind the gate. The cow, standing in a barn adjoining the house, got wounded by the splinters from the explosion. So, the soldiers had no choice but to shoot her. Someone stayed behind to cut the meat: the soldiers decided to fry it and feed their brothers-in-arms. ***

Very quickly Galya lost track of time. She couldn’t understand what time or what day it was anymore.

Most of all the thought of where Valya could possibly be occupied Galya’s mind. Valya, Valechka, Valyusha.

It would have been better for her not to resist those jerks. Now she’s probably locked up somewhere in a basement. It’s full of holes; it’s cold down there, thought Galya. She imagined how

once those degenerates were gone, she and Valya would embrace, warm each other up; they would cry a little and promise each other that they would forget what had happened to them once and for all. They would leave this place, this town and perhaps even this country. There were many refugees now; they could get lost among them. Of course, Valya would be against that. She loved the Ukraine, Dnepr, the nature and people. After all, Galya’s parents were here too. But who could guarantee that once again the predatory sharp-toothed neighbor wouldn’t crush their world with the war? Would she be able to live with the thought that this could hap pen again?

The young soldiers, fresh out of school, were extremely sexually active and would drag her out of the cellar several times per day. Every thing would repeat itself: they would throw her down onto the table, pull her torn clothes up, open her legs, then press their bodies against her, squeeze her breasts and her belly, roar with laughter, curse, roar like wild beasts, cover her with sperm. The most repugnant of the soldiers kissed her on the lips, bit her lips until they bled, tried to shove his disgusting huge tongue down her throat. At times, he would shove his dick down her throat too. Galya felt like she would choke, but her gag reflex would save her.

Every once in a while she would end up face down, with her belly on the table. That saved her from redundant cringeworthy grappling and stinking breath, but the penetration itself hurt more.

Galya didn’t want to think about what those beasts were doing to Valya. She was certain that they were raping her also but Valya didn’t scream because she didn’t want Galya to hear her screams. And that was precisely why Galya would clench her teeth and silently endure the violence. She would only moan quietly when it was completely unbearable. She would cry in the cellar, quietly, into a handkerchief. She would pour her pain out through tears. It helped.

“Open your eyes wider, oh God! Look what horrible and foul things these monsters are do ing to us!” she prayed. “Punish them, please! You are wise; you’ll decide what kind of punishment they deserve. Just cast a glance at us…”

Half-dazed, she muttered the address of Valya’s home, sending her prayers to the Al mighty over and over again.

Later on, she convinced herself that Valya had

been able to escape. If they were raping her too, it was unlikely they were spewing quite so much lust onto her… And Galya was sure that one of the soldiers would have spilled the beans by now. But no one mentioned Valya at all: Galya was trying to pay attention to their conversations. Only once, in the beginning, the three officers cursed and discussed her beloved. Naturally, in the most unflattering manner. At that, the more drunk they got, the more their speech became meaningless and the richer in threats. She couldn’t understand what they’d wanted to do with Valya if she was being kept captive.

Soon that one nasty soldier was brought in; he was wounded and the others left him on the porch. He screamed from pain, moaned and cursed, then mumbled something incoherent loudly, being in a feverish state. The night had gone by. That was the first night the lid of the cellar opened only once, when someone threw in a piece of bread and a bottle of water.

There were compotes, juices, pickled veg etables in the cellar—one wouldn’t die of hunger. Valyusha was a good hostess. And her childhood spent in an orphanage had made her very thrifty. Once, Valya had received a salary in the form of products from the store where she worked: there was paper, notebooks, pens, pencils, and even glue. All that treasure was neatly kept in the corner of the cellar.

“Why are you keeping this?” Galya used to laugh. “Give it to the girls and boys in the vil lage!”

“You don’t understand; it might come in handy one day,” Valya would answer earnestly.

“It did come in handy indeed,” said Galya aloud, holding a notebook and a pen in her hands. She decided to write a letter to Valya: Valyusha,

I know, you’re going to come after me soon! My dear Valyusha, I love you so much! I miss your touch, your tender kisses behind my ear, on my neck, around my nipples… I’m out of breath even now imagining how you made a wander ing path with your kisses from my breasts to my navel, and then lower toward my lap. When your fingers gently touched my clitoris, I was already wet. The vaginal moisture oozed from every where, even from my eyes it seemed. Even those simple tender touches were enough to make me come. But that was the moment when your tongue would attack me, and it took me to cloud nine!

Our love, the love that we share, is so differ ent from the loathsome things that the Russists did to me. I think that the sensation of a stake being stuck in my crotch is never going to go away! As if someone stuck the handle of an ax into my pussy and forgot to take it out…

You’re going to ask if it hurt? Yes. But the physical pain was not as awful as the moral one… It was completely useless to resist or scream. I was a complete rag doll in their hands; I was a vessel that took in their lust and excreta. They stank, panted, sweated, screamed, roared with laughter, covered me in their sperm, and then fell off from exhaustion like a bug filled with blood falls off its victim’s body. They were poking so furiously with their dicks, attempt ing to receive love from me, but that is not how one receives love. That made them even angrier, and they would hit me, scream curses at me, demanding something of me that I wouldn’t have been able to provide, not for any money or promises in the world.

Every night, when they would come home, they would eat and get drunk on vodka; they would then open the lid of the cellar and de mand for me to come out. When my head would appear above the floor level, they would grab me by my hair and pull. They made me clean up the table, then they would shove me onto that same table in order to fuck me one by one, over and over again. After that they would send me back into the cellar, having thrown some bread and boiled potatoes and a couple of plastic bottles of water after me. I tried to clean myself up as best I could, but their sperm was everywhere. I’m covered in it even now. The smell never leaves me. Even though the soldiers are long gone. I can hear that the house is empty. No one is walking around; the wounded man is not moaning any more. I think they’re all dead now. I don’t know how, but they disappeared from the face of the Earth. I feel it.

I don’t understand why the fact that we were lesbians infuriated them so much. Remember, you told me that women fully accept homosexual relationships between men but not women. These men were peculiar; something was so wrong with them. They furiously reproached lesbians. They discussed you among themselves and called you a man without balls, as if you had gotten a false idea of your own importance and God had punished you. You are strong and I be lieve you were able to fight them and run away. I

know you’re thinking night and day of how to get me out of here! And I know you’ll be able to save me. I’ll wait; don’t worry about me, Valyusha. I love you so very much!

Yours always, Galya

In the morning, she saw the light coming through the floor boards. She tried to get out of the cellar, but the lid was closed from the outside. In the evening, the cracks in the floor began to let the darkness through. And the dead silence. It seemed like the whole world around ceased to ex ist. Even the dogs didn’t bark. The roosters didn’t cry, proclaiming the sunrise. Two days more had passed. Finally, she heard footsteps. Those were not soldiers, she had a feeling. And so, she screamed as loud as she possibly could.

When Galya went down the front steps of the house, she saw Valya’s bloody corpse right away: her arms were tied behind her back, her breasts had been cut off, and a cane was sticking out of her vagina. A knife, stuck in her stomach, pinned down a note with the following message written in crooked letters: “Not a lesbian anymore.”

“Shut your eyes, oh God! Don’t look here…” was the last thing that Galya whispered before she lost consciousness… ***

“In the N. Village of the Kiev region, after the departure of the Russian occupants, multiple cases of violence against the civilians of par ticular savagery were established. Hanging from the front gates of one of the houses a mutilated corpse of a hanged young woman was found.”

—An excerpt from the newspaper Oblasniy Visnik

The Death Of Irony

A largely historical adjustment of reality (or not) by Mountaine

Once upon a time, at a fabled sanctuary spot that had been traditional native American hunting grounds, Irony was in full-time residence. She was a fabulous Goddess. She knew it! So she acted accord ingly, dishing out large portions of surreality to all who came near. She needed to be honored. And she needed to die!

Why die? Why not? To honor much that had been lost. To make room for a resurgence of community and creativity. No one knew what life would be with out Irony. But in those long-ago days, entering into un known new phases of existence was extremely popular. In that vein, the honoring and death of Irony began to take shape. First, like many things, in the body and mind of one person…

Hush had returned from Burning Man, inspired by the famous effigy which is constructed and ritually burned every summer. Then the attacks on the World Trade Center (“9/11”) in 2001 caused his inspiration to quicken. He wanted to ritualize mourning, grief, death and (re) birth, in a uniquely faerie way, at that year’s Fall Gathering. So Hush began to brainstorm with other visionary creatives. Preparations went on for many weeks, because this was to be a “never again” event, and all knew that the more intent and effort went into it, the more powerful the outcome would be. And besides, it was really fun!

Then, ironically (coincidentally?) (serendipitously), a full pound—or was it two?—of moldy weed was discovered in a dark wet corner under the cabin. The one-and-only Little Green Muffin processed it to alleviate the mold, and prepared it into a gloriously delicious pesto to be served at dinner. The suggested dose was one teaspoonful, carefully distributed to all those who chose to partake. Of course, some eager eat ers came back for seconds and thirds. Perhaps others didn’t realize the pesto contained a special ingredient, and consumed large dollops of the yummy delight. As you, dear reader, may know, an extra-special bonding can happen when large groups of people are altered

on the same substance. The “loaded” pesto certainly contributed to the heightened appreciation of what took place that evening.

There was a bit of confusion about the name of the event. Some thought it was the Death of Ironing, and were either devastated or thrilled at the prospect of not being able to smooth the creases of their jeans ever again. Others with mild hearing loss were convinced it was to be the Debt of Irony, and participants were to become privy to the misdeeds resulting from Her shady investments. How strangely ironic! Perhaps someone thought it was the Dearth of Iron, but if so, they’d already eaten greenish brownies and were feeling silly well before the pre-dinner announcements were made. After much gleeful ingesting, and subsequent dishwashing, the bell was rung. Not a ding-ding-ding but more of a slow tolling dong…dong…dong, sum moning the stoned faeries to the funeral. A huge effigy of Irony had been created, and raised up at the Medicine Wheel ritual space. Her arms were made of fabric so when cremation time came (yes indeed, fire was on the agenda), they would burn first. Her head had multiple eyes and noses over an animal skull, to make her even more imposing. The rest of Her was a combination of materials designed so the cremation would take place slowly, in stages, so as to maximize the effect of her going up in flames and (rather noxious) smoke.

The faeries trickled into the Circle dressed in mourning drag appropriate for the somber occa sion. There was drumming and instrumental music, anticipating the arrival of legendary dancer Agnes tesia, who was intent on getting her makeup just so, and had to be cajoled into starting her performance before she felt the look was perfect. (“Do you want it done right, or do you just want it done?” “The whole gathering is waiting for you—I’ll take just done!”) Ironically, it was well after dark, so the details of that makeup were not seen clearly, when she was joined by Rob in an evocative performance, dancing

Photograph courtesy author.

out their surreal feelings of grief.

A call for focus silenced the crowd, except of course for those who didn’t feel like being focused. A wordy eulogy was given, explaining in mock-academic verbosity both the Socratic and modern dictionary definitions of the goddess’ name. Fabulous Vivian (née Justin) burst out from Irony’s voluminous gold lamé hoop skirts and sang Her praises. And then came the procession. Irony was carried out of the Circle by Her handlers, onto the road to the bonfire. This had not been rehearsed, and she was too tall to be moved along the planned route because Her head kept hitting the tree branches hanging above, so the route was changed to accommodate her fifteen-foot height. peter panZy wove in and out of the crowd, declaiming a politically poetic rant (see sidebar). And I stood (yes, of course, I was there) on the road, dressed all in black with a flow ing headdress that covered my face, playing the impos ing funeral dirge by Chopin on my bamboo flute. Very sad. Very ironic.

As the mourners approached the knoll, they discovered that four loudspeakers had been set up around the bonfire, playing “Memorial” from Michael Nyman’s soundtrack of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. The fire was already lit in preparation for the ritual burning of the body. Chanting of “burn the bitch” took over the crowd, eager for ceremonial con summation. When the body of Irony was placed on the fire, She was heard screaming in agonized delight, knowing this was only another adventure in her long strange trip through existence and non-existence.

At the peak of the burning, our tuned-in DJ began the night’s playlist with “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince, a fitting (and not at all ironic) choice to kick off ecstatic dancing and cavorting. Several savvy observers no ticed that the use of speakers surrounding the bonfire would probably have been very controversial, and would not have passed in the consensus process, had the plan not been a carefully orchestrated surprise. But of course it was fabulous! Wild abandon was flung to the heavens as the faeries truly went crazy to the lyrics focused on The Aftermath of Life. Wow! And then, we went beyond wow…

As the effect of the pesto was at its peak, the level of weirdness raised to a fever pitch. Suddenly, those with sharp eyes saw a dot of light above the bonfire, like a star, but getting bigger and brighter by the second. Within a minute everyone could see that it was some kind of UFO headed directly for the knoll. The spaceship (for so it was) sprouted legs, landed on the ground, and emitted a group of strangely spindly beings. Miraculously, no one seemed to feel any fear around this stunning turn of events.

With the sweetest but sternest of voices, one of the beings announced, “Greetings faeries! We have come from our faraway home Betelgeuse, with a serious message for you regarding the future of your planet, which you are required to share with your global spe cies ! You faeries have been chosen for your ability to navigate multiple realities at the same time, which will help you succeed in the challenging task we have set for you. Are you ready for our instructions?”

The faeries’ response, certainly affected by the THC coursing through our systems, plus the context of the Ironic cremation, was giggling. Lots of giggling! It all just seemed so funny. I picked up my bamboo flute, and played the silliest song I could imagine. Other faerie musicians joined in a fabulous jam that felt like a chaotic kids’ song, with influences ranging from “Twinkle twinkle little star” to “The Monster Mash”. And then the most amazing thing happened. The aliens started giggling too, shaking like thin sticks of jello, letting out whoops of delight.

The alien spokesperson, the one with the sweet but stern voice, was clearly moved. “Thank you for this ironically resplendent welcome. We came here tonight to announce your planet’s imminent destruc tion! But clearly it’s more fun to giggle with you! So we are thrilled to announce…your ascendance into a new plane of pleasure. Dance, faeries, dance. We will guide you into sustaining life on your planet, and we will dance with you, giggling together into eternity!”

So we all danced and giggled, into the night and beyond.

At dawn, the ritual was closed by its creators. The spirits that had been called in were encouraged to move along to wherever they chose to go. The aliens and their ship faded into the forest, where they have been detected occasionally ever since by those with the eyes to see them.

But then, at breakfast, it was a shock to discover that Irony had not died at all! She was clearly still pres ent and active in every conversation on the porch. So what had taken place? Was it all just a stoned dream? Several faeries debated this, but decided that since they all remembered the ritual speeches being worded in “ironic pentameter”, everything was probably okay. And they agreed that the coffee was a bit weak, but the coffee cake (the famous “muffin” made in huge roasting pans by the late Louise and her early morning crew) was killer.

At least that’s how I remember it happening. Or not…

Never again. Or not?

They all lived happily ever after. Or not!

Rant by Faerie p (peter panZy)

IRONY ATTACK

IRONY ATTACK We’re all symptomatic of an IRONY ATTACK

IRONY ATTACK IRONY ATTACK We’re all symptomatic of an IRONY ATTACK

IRONY ATTACK

IRONY ATTACK IRONY ATTACK IRONY ATTAAAAAACK

Chewing it up And spitting it out  Bustin on in cuz You wanna get out

Fighting for what You are deathly afraid Expanding all your emptiness  by getting more laid

Tell me you love me With a kick in the balls If one has to come Then another one falls

It’s only a game If someone has won Email me tomorrow  where to meet for qigong

Frosted flakes In vanilla soy milk Boil all the worms And lavish in silk

Lavish in silk Boil all the worms and lavish in silk

Psychotropic meds are  Makin you crazy Then they test your urine Cuz they think you’re lazy

Living in a coop And locking your door Raping your friend cuz You think he’s a whore Talkin’ social justice In ex-clu-sivity Another one killed by chemotherapy

Products all around you Where do you shop? Graffiti is a felony Unless you’re on top

Yoga in the waiting room Of the salon Plucking them off And drawing them on

Turning on the TV To inform yourself You think your cookies came From a cute keebler elf?

A cute keebler elf? You think your cookies came From a cute keebler elf?

SAVING ALL THE BABIES BY  BOMBING THEM OUT ANOTHER WAR FOUGHT OVER ROTTON SAUERKRAUT

You say you’re full of love But can’t name who EATING YOUR CAKE  AND FUCKING IT TOO

My Rosenkavalier

by Bob Henry, aka Smiley

A few days after I complete this story, I turn eighty-five and can look back on a wonderful life. After I go, among my belongings my heirs will discover a box with my favorite LP records. One in particular will draw their attention. Still inside its unopened cellophane wrapper, is a recording of the opera, Der Rosenkavalier. They will wonder why it was never opened and played. They will never know…but I shall tell you!

In the early 1970’s, at the public library, I dis covered a wonderful comic opera, Der Rosenkava lier, with music by Richard Strauss and libretto in German by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. I had heard the waltzes from this opera but I did not know the storyline until I read the album’s synopsis. The lead character, the “Marschallin”, is the twenty-nine year-old wife of a central European aristocratic field marshall who she does not love and who we never see. As the opera opens, the Marschal lin, sung by a soprano, has just had sex with Octavian, a man in his teens. The part of Octavian is sung by a mezzo-soprano in what opera-goers call a “trouser role”: a female singer who portrays a young man.

As the opera unfolds, Octavian is chosen to be Der Rosenkavalier, a man hired to present a silver rose to Sofie, a pretty young woman. The silver rose is a symbol of Sophie’s engage ment to the much older man who sent her this gift, and who seeks her and her family’s money. At their dramatic encounter, Octavian and Sophie fall in love. As the opera’s comic third act ends, Octavian gains Sophie’s hand and the “Marschallin” accepts that her love life is over.

This opera’s plot hit me like a ton of bricks! At the time, I was in my early thirties, married to a

loving wife and had three young children. I had finally accepted that I was probably gay or bisexual, although I had not had sex with another man. As I listened to the highly romantic music and sing ing, I saw myself in the “Marschallin” character. Like her, I had resigned myself to the limits on my sexual expression.

Seven years later, however, everything changed! I came out, divorced and began living an authen tic gay life. One night in 1982, while at the Joshua Tree disco in Tucson, I met Mike O’Hara, a hand some Irishman with curly, reddish hair, a big grin and mischievous blue-green eyes. At some point, I

shared that I was a physician and a professor at the university medical school. To my surprise, Mike said he was a graduate student and in the pre-med pro gram. He hoped to be admitted to medical school in September, just a few months away. He lived with straight roommates but was not “out” to them. Therefore, he did not give me the telephone number for their shared apartment phone because “they”

might answer. Instead, he said he would call me of ten, which he did. This arrangement worked and we dated for about three months. We always met at my place or the disco because of his roommates.

The night before I was to fly from Tucson to Paris to present a research paper at an international con gress, Mike spent the night with me at my condo. After the congress, I planned to tour around Europe for my first time so Mike brought me a book on European History—a large, heavy well-worn college textbook he probably purchased at a second-hand book store. I was impressed by his thoughtfulness, but as I would travel for a month, I did not take it with me.

A few weeks later, at the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of everything I had been seeing. I wanted to share my feelings with Mike, or at least send him a photo postcard, but that was impossible! We were lovers but I didn’t even have his home address! My temper flared but then I became sad that he had to be so secretive, like most gay men in those years.

One evening shortly after my return home, Mike called and asked to come over. I agreed, but when he got there, I was preoccupied with a live TV broadcast of the opera, Der Rosenkavalier—my first opportunity to actually see this opera as well as hear it! I was in music heaven—Mike was bored and went home.

I did not hear from Mike for several weeks, but on November 1st, my birthday, he called. He asked me to open my front door while he waited. There, I discovered the LP record album of the Der Rosenkavalier featuring Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in her signature role! When I got back to the phone, it was dead! Without his telephone number, I could not thank Mike for this wonderful gift. My heart sank again!

When I left for Europe, Mike told me that he had been accepted as a freshman student at the medical school. Being a faculty member, the next day I went to the school registrar and asked to leave a mes sage for Mike O’Hara in his student mail box. As you might have guessed by now, there was no such student! It was hard to separate my feelings of anger from those of embarrassment and disappointment. I never heard from Mike again!

Months later, my best friends, Bruce and Rich ard, a gay couple aware of the situation, ran into Mike at a gay bar in Phoenix. They learned that Mike had moved back there, was living with his par ents and working as a shoe salesman at JC Penny’s. He admitted that he had never been a pre-med stu dent. He created his false persona because he feared that I would not be interested if he was an ordinary guy. I teared up when I heard this. Mike pretended to be somebody he believed I would like better than who he actually was. At the same time, I enjoyed the attention of a much younger, attractive man while ignoring obvious red flags about his honesty and maturity. Ironically, my decision to watch an opera about numerous deceptions in relationships, brought my own affair to a painful close.

Because of the emotions that lingered from my experience with Mike, I could never open the Der Rosenkavalier album. This wonderful opera, howev er, remains my favorite. I have seen live productions by several opera companies and also a streaming in ternet production by The Met during the pandemic. I have memories, and sometimes, a few tears in my eyes, when I think of what might have been if...

Never Again… Hands Up, Don’t Shoot

by Gregory T. Wilkins, a.k.a. Equus

"Hands, Up… Don’t Shoot!" This phrase became a rallying cry for Ferguson, Missouri residents, who took to the streets to protest the fatal shoot ing of a Black eighteen-year-old on August 9, 2014 by a White police officer, Darren Wilson. Witness accounts spread after the shooting stating Michael Brown had his hands raised in surrender, mouthing the words “Don’t shoot” as his last statement before he was shot execution-style. The gesture of raised hands became a symbol of outrage by activists over mistreatment of unarmed Black youth by police. In the United States, it can be argued that being born Black is a crime or at least gives people in power the right to shoot to kill.

Never again! Again, never! Again, and again, and again. NEVER! And yet, the killings continue—Brianna Taylor, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Ahmaud Arbery, Terrill Thomas, Terence Crutcher, and countless more—yes, into the hundreds — who have not made national or international headlines.

Words are meaningless plati tudes as Black and Brown people are slaughtered at the hands of police who are sworn to “pro tect and serve”. Outrage fills me each time I see another Black or Brown life taken. I get tired of marching, fists raised, voices loud, traffic stopped, drums echoing across the street void. And I will continue to voice my anger and frustration until this nation does something more than pay lip ser vice to the dearly departed.

Statements from blasé politicians about “thoughts and prayers” are sentiments that are lack luster and have become cliché. Public officials offer ing condolences after a publicly notable event are empty of justice. The phrase has received criti cism for its repeated usage in the context of gun violence, terrorism,

and acts of hate. Thoughts and prayers are a poor substitute for corrective action, like gun control, counter-terrorism, as well as environmental, eco nomic, environmental injustice, et al. Thoughts and prayers have become a soulless mantra where words mean little and whereas actions of the people could be truly transformative. Actions speak louder than meaningless insipidities.

Never again is the rallying cry of people in the streets. Never again are muttered words of moth ers, fathers, and siblings robbed by injustice. Never again are texts in newspapers, periodicals, and preached from pulpits of the faithful and street war riors. Never again is blazoned across my chest and fills by spirit with rage. Never again…again, never!

"Black Lives Matter: Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" by the author.

Memory is a Funnel

by Ron Madson

Memory is a funnel. When young, when we look back, current memory is wide, bright, clear while the past grows narrow, murky, fogged. As we age that reverses itself; the past grows clearer, the pres ent narrows, grows illusive, lessens its imprint on our lives.

When I was thirteen I discovered masturbation. I always claim my high school swimming teacher taught me. Calm down, not the way you think. At our first class meeting, he warned that he didn’t want any of this in the showers, using the universal action for masturbation. I being fairly intelligent intuited what he meant. I tried and succeeded. Who knew what a life time of adventures would be cre ated by what would now be a TikTok.

Forward a few months. My cousin K. introduced me to mutual masturbation, shockingly delight ful, a comet in my cosmos. This went on for a few months. We became mutual initiators.

Catholic guilt caught up to me. I was conflicted. It was confraternity that did it. Confraternity, Mon day night Catholic instruction for high school teens, dancing to follow. Our bishop had a youngish priest, a youth pastor, conduct a week long evenings retreat in all of the diocese’s parishes. I attended.

That priest gave guidance on all sorts of moral issues. Sex was relegated to marriage. Anything else was a grave mortal sin. End of discussion.

Truly, being faithful can be a curse. I mulled over my newish pastime of pleasure. I decided I should go to confession. In those days every little offense was a road to hell. Lines on Saturday extended down the aisles of the church to the four or five priests ensconced in the confessionals at the back of our Romanesque sanctuary.

Being thirteen, I knelt in the dark booth, chant ing the formal opening, growing anxious in my quest to gain heaven and abjure hell. So I spit it out. The good father countered with questions.

What the hell? He never asked for specifics about my lies. “Who was the person I had done this with?” “My cousin?” “How old was he?” “We’re the same age.” “Who initiated it?” “He did.” “Have you done it since?” “Only that once.”

OK, so I was lying. Not just about the number of times but about it being his aggression and my weakness. Lying in confession, a swirling black

tornado, a funnel, a conduit to the flaming pits of hell should have opened in front of the confessional curtain as I slithered away to say my penance of five Our Fathers and five Hail Mary’s.

My mortified cheeks, my scarlet letters, pro cessed me to the communion rail to say my prayers in front of the statue of The Blessed Virgin, Immac ulate Mary’s Bleeding Heart. Penance performed, I remained with my knees on the cushioned step in the sacerdotal gloom, feeling humiliated, mulling over the atonement. If the sin was so evil, why was contrition the same as for lying, fighting with my siblings? What a crock of Bull, hypocrisy. Then and there I said “Never Again.” Never again would I let others define my sense of the rightness of my life, especially of my sexuality. Free will was the only intelligent path. Yet I remained deeply spiritual.

Much later in life, my friend Rosie defined my feelings, distilled into five simple words, “Pleasure is a moral good.”

Was that priest checking to see if I was being molested; or, might he have been taking notes for future possibilities. I’d never know. I never stood on his line again. My confessions became edited tran scripts. I perfected duplicity. Evasion was a survival technique for a boy who understood his difference was viewed as a menace to society.

“You will ‘Never Again’ hit me!” I snarled at my often violent mother as I grasped her thin wrists attached to her pounding fists as she cornered me in our tiny bathroom. Standing a foot taller than her, fifty pounds heavier, I maneuvered this petite Torquemada into that auto de fe corner, released her fists, exited the door. That Dominican Friar at least had goals when he inflicted pain.

At sixteen, I had had enough. Stopping her from beating me did not stop me from wanting to save her. Her dark cloud of unhappiness lasted until 1995 when she died. It lingered in her children’s skies for much longer.

My therapist, ten years later, diagnosed her as having a Borderline Personality, often violent, always on edge, fear ridden, explosively angry, never taking responsibility for her own actions. Add an alcoholic father who always deferred to her, sanc tioning us not to upset our mother, and you produce four damaged children. As my oldest sister put it,

Unlike my mother, learning to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ was liberating. It took longer to understand my anger. Today, I’m medicated to alleviate my anxiety. Forty years of on /off therapy, looking inward, owning my shadows has not been easy, nor have those journeys ended. But from shadows we can gain strength. Ad versity in childhood prepared me for the outrageous fortunes yet to come.

By thirty-four, I had relished five years of exis tential freedom. By growing older, I became young. I had a husband of ten years. We had successful careers. We recognized the damaging environ ments we were both raised in, determined not to repeat them, embracing therapy both individual and couple. We were early volunteers in the sexual revolution after trying five years of monogamy.

But the fates had other plans that would change our lives forever.

AIDS.

It buzzed around us like angry wasps. Friends of friends got sick. People we knew peripherally died. We lived in fear for ourselves and our friends. We shut down. We turned inward. The darkness fell.

It was a Saturday in November of 1984. My hus band worked weekends. Our good friend P. called me to say he had called her. He could not bear to tell me. She had no way to soften the blow. His best friend, our friend, Gene, was in Beth Israel with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. I collapsed on the floor beating it where I could not beat the virus.

For eighteen months we were his primary care takers. A cadre of friends did as much as humanly possible. One cleaned his house once a week, others ran errands, did laundry. The experience of watch ing him deteriorate was like being put in a molca jete, being ground into guacamole. But, for Gene, it was the wood chipper scene from Fargo every day.

As a teacher, I had kept a low profile. When Gene died I swore, I would “Never Again” be closeted about who I was, who I loved. I, we, could be dead in a moment. My husband agreed. The intensity of those eighteen months also left us empty, lost, adrift.

About a year later I attended a Gay Teachers Association meeting at the Center. There Linda L. announced that Lambda Legal was looking for couples willing to be “out” litigants in a suit against the Board of Education and the City of New York for Domestic partnership rights, most importantly for medical coverage for our partners.

We joined with Ruth and Connie, our open Lesbian

partners, in the case. None of us ever looked back.

Still, there were more friends who we needed to support as they succumbed to prejudice, indif ference, that plague of purple wounds, lost minds, drowned lungs.

Motivated by Gene’s story of torture in junior high school, I became an advocate for lesbian and gay kids at the Board of Education; for teachers at the UFT (United Federation of Teachers). I was appointed to the lesbian and gay advisory boards for Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, for Comptroller Alan Hevisi, and Mayor Dinkins. "BTQ" added by increasing awareness.

Our Domestic Partner case was settled after six years of opposition, four by our supposed friend David Dinkins. He settled the Saturday before his failed reelection bid to Rudolph Giuliani. Queer money spoke.

Eventually the City extended DP benefits to all employees as our agreement compelled. Hetero sexuals remain the primary applicants.

Evan Wolfson of Lambda Legal was our lead lawyer. He went on to head Marriage Equality. Our case was one of the foundational stones for Eddie Windsor’s win. Married, our health benefits were no longer taxable.

In 2000, I took early retirement. After thirteen years of activism, thirty-three years of teaching, I was physically and mentally exhausted. I became paranoid after having conflicts with the teachers’ union, fearing they would not protect my interests.

I swore I would “Never Again” be on someone else’s schedule, doing someone else’s biding, being at someone else’s mercy.

After six years of rest and recovery, I became a guide at the National Museum of the American Indian in NYC, a Smithsonian Museum. Loving that work, my teaching skills found a new venue.

Volunteering at a Federal Institution with a bureaucracy writ large was arcane and absurd. Turn over of the Visitors Services Supervisors was con stant. In sixteen years we had at least six. Two years without any. Some interim.

At a volunteer meeting, I was told I would do two tours back to back. Two tours, an hour each, one after the other with no break was work, not fun. I looked at the interim supervisor and said, “That is not going to happen.” There were gasps from some of the twenty or so people present. I told her the schedule I found comfortable; that volunteers were asked not told.

Having been locked out by the current plague for almost two years, I decided not to return. I had

“The world should count itself lucky there aren’t four mass murderers out there.”

discovered a memoire writing group. Excitingly, revealed a hidden skill. I have since written three novels about a Gay serial killer and his family, filled with gore and sex. Writers write from imagination as well as memory. My natal terror and violence decidedly informative.

Owning your own time is an amazing thing. Better still is owning your authentic self, my most important and concluding reason for saying, “Never Again.“

My husband was being poisoned by a psychia trist in the mid teen years of the 21st century. Al ready having a depressed, addictive personality, he struggled with self medicating alcohol, prescribed medications. That charlatan foisted new and/or additional anti depression drugs, tranquilizers and god knows what else on a monthly basis for over a decade while knowing Rick’s daily alcohol consump tion. It was an increasingly accelerating spin down a dark whirl pool, funneling him to mental and physi cal demise.

After many years of delusional compassion, try ing to save him, I realized he was not only deter mined to destroy his own tortured unhappy life

but seemed set to destroy mine. A Friday night in December, after another harrowing incident, he an nounced he didn’t need a principal telling him what to do. I simply stopped cooking for him, stopped talking to him, went out on my own over those weekend days. That Sunday night, he over dosed on pills and vodka, moments after I returned from a movie. He was in a coma for three days, then sent to a city psychiatric ward.

Before he was released from legal incarceration, he swore drinking and unnecessary drugs were over. He fired his psychiatrist at my behest.

At a housewarming party a week after his return home, he drank champagne. Back in our apartment I told him that if he intended to drink after promis ing never to again, I would contact a lawyer in the morning. My exact words, “I will “Never” be put through that “Again”.”

The only person I could save was myself. He wisely chose us over substances.

We are old, content, dare I say the happiest we have ever been.

June 16th, 2022 was our 52nd anniversary.

"Hunk on Line" by Richard Vyse.

Spilled Coffee and a Skinned Knee

by Nicholas Yandell

Rushing out the door, late, as usual, for my regular counseling session, about a thirty minute drive away. At the edge of the sidewalk, I tripped off the curb, landed on the asphalt, spilling my coffee and skinning my knee. Entering my car, I angrily shouted to no one in particular: “Why am I always hurting myself?” I was referring to my continuous habit of losing track of time; the cause of my mad rush towards my car in the first place.

As I was extracting gravel from my “selfinflicted” wound, I wasn’t really thinking about my stinging skin, or the coffee splashed on the leg of my jeans. I was deeply immersed in a circular exploration of the words that had gushed from my mouth just moments ago.

“Why am I always hurting myself?” “Why am I hurting myself?”

“I’m hurting myself.”

“My own actions are the cause of this pain I’m feeling.” “This very different pain I’m feeling right now.”

“The pain I’m causing myself.“ “But why do I keep inflicting it?”

I was raised in a conservative, non-denomina tional, Protestant church in Boise, Idaho.

Homeschooled all the way through high school, I then moved to Long Island for college. I continued to go to church there.

In my early twenties, I finally came to terms with the fact that I was attracted exclusively to males and I just couldn’t accept that. I tried to stay extremely busy and suppress my attractions. I managed to do so, for the most part, outside the regular depression, a suicide attempt, and feeling unable to be open and honest about what I was struggling with, even to my closest friends.

When I left college and moved to Salem, Oregon, all my pent-up feelings just worsened and so did my depression. I learned of a church with counselors, who claimed they could help people defeat one’s unwanted same-sex attractions. In a moment of emotional desperation, I sent them an email.

At first, the weekly appointments with my counselor were refreshing. Spilling my cloistered desires was cathartic. Riding on that feeling, I had a surge of new hope that I could transform this “flawed” part of me. I thought that maybe it re

ally was as simple as rewiring myself, by working through some childhood trauma that had stunting my “natural” “heterosexual” attractions. I believed that if I could work this out, I could be right with both God and my feelings.

Progress plateaued though, after several months. Conversations led in circles. The books read, and workbooks filled out, became simply busywork. I was left with cracks in logic, unan swered questions, and no clear path forward. I mostly blamed myself, feeling incompetent in my ability to stamp out the roots of homosexuality, which just seemed to cling to me.

About that time though, I met a guy at the bookstore where I worked. We talked about fantasy novels, met up for coffee, then planned a stroll in the park. That walk was a surprise and at the end of it, I had a boyfriend, while still going to ex-gay therapy.

Juggling the dichotomy of this existence wasn’t easy. I can’t imagine anyone would think this could work. One moment, praying in a church to keep me alone. The next, feeling the warmth of human affection. All the while, I was a tormented soul, never believing that what seemed so natural, could ever be acceptable.

My first relationship couldn’t survive and I’m sure that’s no surprise. I thought breaking up was good for my soul; that it was just part of my jour ney. I had no idea what was to become of me, but I still felt like God was my guide.

Counseling continued, but nothing changed in me, except for a growing self-hatred. I hated my body; hated my mind. Pain and discomfort were pills of choice, with vitamins of guilt, taken daily, to keep me focused on my counselor’s plan for me. I writhed in mental misery, waiting for a sign; words from above, to guide me out of the torment I was in.

I never thoughts those words would be spoken through me, from me, to myself, accidentally. Just a reaction. An answer to an action. One that left me stained and bleeding, sitting in my car that fated morning, as ten or so minutes ticked away.

I called my counselor, cancelled my appoint ment, and never went back to that church. I knew that never again, did I need to hurt myself in

this way and deny who I was. I got my sign from God and I got it abruptly, and it was just what I needed.

For more than a decade, I’ve been free of the self-hatred that haunted me. This path to freedom is so obvious now and it’s hard to fully remember the length I had to go, just to finally accept my self. Happily, amid a much better present reality, I don’t often have to relive the struggles of my early

self that led up this pivotal happening. When I do take a moment to reflect on that morning, I just thank God I made it here. I may have been stubborn and delusional; caught within the storm of the irrational; but at least I survived and finally woke up, through that simple message, chan neled so effectively, in the welcome side effects of spilled coffee and a skinned knee.

Healing

He gnawed at his nails constantly down to the bloody quick and beyond. His teachers criticized him; his mother nagged, and his peers mocked.

Magical Happenstance! He found a boy. Slipping into his buddy’s keen desire, He knew he had found a home—the place he belonged. His friend beneath him groaned and begged for more. Hard and deep he complied filling the boy with affection and lust.

He never again chewed his nails. They grew into lustrous gleaming talons, leaving scratches on his friend’s back and loins, bloody signs of lasting adoration.

—Kelvin Beliele

Three Poems

by Alexander Perez

what god sees fit thirteen years ago i gave birth to you, my dear cicada. how bad i wanted you. the curandero said, “drink this.” for thirteen years i felt nothing. then one summer evening you pushed hard against my ribcage. my fear unravelled when i saw your great head your membranous wings emerge from under my skirts. you came out shaking your enormous rattle. then the priest wouldn’t baptize you the neighbors wouldn’t visit so i said to you, “time to fly my little tree cricket!” after that i went back to the same curandero. i drank the concoction. now i can shake this homemade rattle every thirteenth summer knowing you will return to me you and all your rising brothers and sisters.

variations on a silent theme

i gave up sound when you did not say goodbye. our world, their world a forgotten conversation, a noteless piece. noise heard the same as silence.

yesterday, my heart beat on my ribcage, a reverberating xylophone. it inspired a newborn phrase yearning for sensation. buzzing, cicada crescendo, ravelling, unravelling, rhythmic, dynamic, minimalist melody, summer’s simple symphony.

pianissimo, softest wave, i heard my name, a composition you only know. i repeat that name again since now i rediscovered how to let my voice resound.

underfoot remember i have no ribcage. only an exoskeleton. i shed myself, my cicada shield. every few years or so i become unravelled. do not crush me. i hear you trampling the forest floor. i don’t think you heard me. tree knuckles crack, rodent skeletons picked clean. climb says instinct. she is hard to ignore. even though i swear by free will. it’s impossible to unravel mysteries. sometimes i miss underground. i dreamt of wings, a carapace, a simple, unending

Four Poems

by Sugar le Fae

Johnny from Deli

In many ways, Johnny from Deli is a prototypical white dude. Fun-loving, scruffy, brooding. He’s got this drunk uncle charisma that gets him by. Plus, he’s cute. He’s everyone’s secret crush but won’t date any of us.

Behind the Deli or Juice Bar, he’s in sight of register 1. It’s really the only good thing about running 1. And puzzling why we lock eyes so often. But whether or not he may be a six-pack away from gay,

he’s mulling over something sad and fundamental that pings something similar in me. Not to mention that he’s hungover every shift. I’ve noticed time and again how much I’m attracted to my own sadness.

Masc

I’m scared and tired of you, America. I hide because I can in plain view. I grow my own beard. I wear jeans I don’t want to. See me grip the seams like a dress, walking away from you.

Luke Leaves for New York

I knew we shouldn’t live and work together. We waited till he moved to the other store. I generally don’t befriend straight men, unless I’m trying to sleep with them.

Luke at least has good taste in music, art, a good sense of humor, and he brings his own weed. Now, he’s leaving for New York, a year queerer, a weirdo among faeries, dancing, marching, doodling cubist spaceships. (The ayahuasca was his.) And although no one cares, here’s to you, Luke, finally swimming nude with the rest of us.

The Circle-Jerk Boys

They always want receipts. Men whose mothers dress them in button-ups and tasteless ties. Dudes who broker firms in this yuppie hub of Nashville. High-rises, high-ballers, Irish yogis. Lunch is the new circle-jerk. These particular guys are nice, good-looking. They come in once or twice a day in packs of four or five. The cute brunette, probably my favorite, is scared of me. I sense it. He winces when we lock eyes, avoids my line. Do I remind him of that friend he got caught with one time?

Three Spells

by Wonderful

Always cast a circle of love and protection around yourself before initiating any magick.

I. Spell to Send Back Negative Energy

Best done outdoors. Light a black candle. Focus on sending the energy into the flame.

Unwanted energy –I bounce you back! Feel my force –Return to your source! Transform, transform from tense to slack dissonance to parity injury to balm chaos to calm confusion to clarity Let the sender find sight In the truth of the Light As I will, so must it be! Blessed, blessed, blessed be!

Blow out the candle and fan away the smoke. Repeat as needed.

II. Spell for Healing Pain

Lie prone on the ground/floor/rug, hugging the Earth. Open your heart chakra and let its light join with the Earth’s light. Recite three times, each time louder than the last:

Great Mother who gives birth to all Mother Earth, hear my call Heal this pain under which I strive Heal this pain that I may thrive Let Buffalo trample it into the ground

Let Gopher carry it deeper down May worms in their turning transform it lightly May crystals absorb it and radiate brightly Heal me easily – Let me be free Blessed, blessed, blessed be.

After the final recitation, stand up and raise your arms to the welcoming sky, taking in three deep cleansing breaths.

III. Incantation for Calling in Positive Energy

Sit comfortably with your eyes closed. During the incantation, visualize a beam of light from the sky entering the top of your head, filling the crystal of your heart, and increasingly radiating through your whole body. Repeat evenly until you are gently smiling. You can let the lines playfully jumble their order as you repeat them:

Brighter than bright The heavenly light Pouring into me Joyously, givingly

Crystal of light Ignite! Ignite! Growing brighter Ever lighter

Filling me lovingly Pulsing wonderfully Growing wider Ever brighter Goldenly bright My body of light

Never Again

is what you tell yourself day after day

after work. And yet, here you still are, clocking in, running

the clock, drinking in My Chemical Romance’s “Famous

Last Words”: I am not afraid To keep on living (yes you are, you know you are, you read about the resurgence of Florida’s

Don’t Say Gay Act, you want to act, you want to obliterate the revisionist history on the Florida Civic

Literacy exams claiming there are “two sides to the Holocaust”)—

I’m singing to the Silver Jews, remembering the random

rules, like the time nineteen Orthodox Jews were kicked off a plane for “eating after the airlines’ designated meal times”, they’re destroying angels

honey, the planes lands close to a field that looks like a camp, never again, you hum under your breath, you cast yourself off as dancing, you are thinking of Gerald Stern’s poem: “as if we were dying”, you are dying, you are dying, you are trying to rave, to rage, but you are stuck defeated in your office chair (this always happens again).

— Clayre Benzadon

“Layla”

She was a 60-degree New Year’s on shrooms kaleidoscoping a numb black sky into neon hieroglyphs coaxing the likeness of Revolution to the ground, now round-bellied and real.

All for me, I think, as I clasp the sun-fried grass, in supplication to the repulsive delicacy of feeling again, raw and still alive like baby eels ecstatic dancing down my throat.

We’re kissing floating flying finally til a shove parts my teeming gut and I’m retching something gray and semi-solid, the New Year apparently here to stay.

— K.C. Rose

I will no longer put my hands away To hide the mauve paint ready To claw

at a moment’s notice

The heavy pit of uncertainty consumption, dull persistent murmurings I will never get back

Lest those hands shrivel there And perhaps lose them completely is all of this lost on me?

I endure, I persist I carry around your fresh life and All its poisonous details: Your new tea towels, The architect you’re dating Tell me god what joy you get From inflicting these minutiae on me

I say “No, you did this”, And I blame God for naught I do not blame him for the same mistakes you make The Small incisions Working to fell this great tree Well, Let it Land on me Crooked and gnawing as it is, I’ll take it this delusion

Let me never go there again I do not want to My crippling urge to compromise Won’t permit it —Lucid in Luzern

Never Again (and yet, Black and Brown folks continue to be target ed)—One of the core principles of the Fourth Amendment is that the police cannot stop and detain an individual without reason – probable cause, or at least reasonable suspicion – to believe

"Black Lives Matter: Driving While Black" by Gregory T. Wilkins aka Equus.

Midnight in Byzantium

by Claude Chabot

In the next room a designer and editor pore over a light table; I cloister myself facing west, oblivious to their appeals for help, watching the sun melting over the city’s towers; immense burning sarcophagi standing against the fading glow. I am arrogant but unsettled, after years of frustration and hard work, my “look” now sought after and well-paid for, appreci ated, reviled (but most importantly talked about), and wonder, “What are they doing in Athens now?”

It was never Paradise, but I thought it was once. Let me tell you…

Night brought something to the National Gardens that daylight could not provide, especially for those men whose interest it was not merely to stroll, but to seek, and much better to be found, preferably by one driving an Alfa or Aston. One who would desire but not devour you, and much better, a virile and wealthy andros.

Rarely is this dream fulfilled, that of loving and being loved in equal measure by one’s chosen ideal. Perhaps this explains why I returned to this distant city, pursuing something I knew was as ephemeral as an Aegean mist at the dawn of a summer’s day. Most of the time the amorous situation is a great joke from the Byzantine God, who after all is Greek, with an im paling sense of humor Onassis must have possessed when he chose his women for their fame, would or could not love them, but expected something like it in return.

“Why don’t you go with him?” George quizzed me sadistically in his lyrically accented English touched with the brush of French manor houses as well as the Attic plain. We were sitting on a bench in the Nation al Gardens in the small hours smoking George’s hand rolled cigarettes. The city’s principal park blossomed with a lunar atmosphere of grey flowers, black foliage and human beings like shadows.

“Why don’t you go with him?” I repeated to myself silently, as a dark-haired andros sat in his car piercing me with his gaze.

“He’s looking at you Claude. Why don’t you go with him?” he repeated maddeningly in his wheedling Hellenic whine.

Despondent as I was, I hadn’t failed to note that the young man staring at me was exceptionally good

looking and well built. I supposed that in the dim city lights and hidden in his car he seemed close to perfection.

“He must have a flaw?” I asked George without expecting a reply. He made none.

After some time passed without reciprocation the alluring driver in the red Ferrari disappeared into the anonymous evening glare of Athenian traffic. This event passed in my peripheral vision: I looked directly at the George seated to my left, who was drawing on his cigarette and thoughtfully exhaled his smoke under his half-lowered eyelids. He offered a cigarette and I accepted it, then he repeated his irksome ques tion, now in the past tense.

“I don’t understand you Claude, why didn’t you go with him?”

“I came to see you.”

“Of course…I know that you have come to see me, and I am very happy. I am so happy Claude; I can’t tell you.” He grinned, looked at me, and at the same time tucked his legs under the bench, blond haired calves twined together, his feet enveloped in straw sandals. He grasped my left hand with his right. I loved every thing about him: the muscular legs and forearms and the physical wreck that was the rest of him. It made me feel foolish, but it was because I had thought that at thirty-four, I was beyond feeling.

“Po po po,” George whispered, watching me with half-closed eyes, partially obscured by cigarette smoke wafting about him, “but I think it was not me alone who you came to see. You also came for Andreas.”

“Yes, to see him, to see you, all of you, everyone.”

George was silent for while. Over the treetops I could barely make out Hadrian’s Arch floodlit against the moonlit sky. Everything was still. “It is interest ing to see who comes to the park at this time, isn’t it Claude? Andreas used to come here like this, late at night and wait for someone like we have waited. He did that a lot even when he had lost weight and was so skinny. He would go out cruising even looking the way he looked and he would find men to go with looking the way he did. Even though he was sick and it would make him sicker and maybe kill them too. I tried to help him, and I would argue with him, but he never listened to me.”

The Byzantine God had seemingly turned his gaze from George amongst Athens’s choked and choking streets, piney hilltops and shattering heat, killing his father and favorite cousin this past year.

There was no sorrow discernible in his voice now, only puzzlement.

“You have had two tragedies this year, and…”

He vigorously and almost wildly interrupted me, “I do not want to speak of it, please Claude. I have talked and thought and cried too much,” he hoarsely whispered with finality. “Where shall we go tonight? Dimi will be home tomorrow; should we go to a gay bar? I do not like gay bars so much, but we can go if you would like. Or we can have a drink at a square, a little far from here…”

“Where we were the last time, in Kolonaki?”

“I don’t remember where.”

He didn’t remember a very important evening of my life. “You’ve already brought me to two depress ing places, that café or whatever it was where I was the only customer and the other bar with straight boy and girls almost half my age. Can’t we go to the ‘Alekos Island’?”

“We could go there, but of course you know that I am friends with one of the owners. I know you won’t like him, he really is a terrible, nasty queen, but he does recommend clients to me. If we go there together, he will insult you and ask me about my heri tage and how much the lawyers will take.”

“Your inheritance, not your heritage.”

He giggled. “Oh yes, my English, so terrible. Since my father died, I have no one to talk to in English. I would try to speak to him in French, but he would always correct my mistakes. Then he would try to talk to me in Greek, but then I would correct his mistakes. We could only communicate in English without cor recting each other always.”

“Maybe we should just go home.”

“Yes, we can do that if you don’t want to go with a boy. We could have something to eat. I’m very hun gry. Would you like something to eat? Or do you want a boy? You could still find one here.”

“Let’s go home.”

It seemed to me that George was daily creating and recreating his life. For George this was not just an existential but a practical question: all cultural baggage was recognized as such; thus one recog nized that there were no true mores or rules to live by (Greece’s long history of secretive homoeroticism presented problems for those who did not wish to be secret). To compensate for this lack of meaning as an undeclared outsider, George embraced his cultural traditions in a self-conscious way: we do this because

if you are Greek this is how it is done, whether it was playing cards on New Year’s Eve, or eating a ceremo nial food on a saint’s day, or going to a nude adult christening in the Greek Orthodox Church. And just as Greeks were presented as doing this or that, so George reminded me how Americans must do this or that in a certain way, though because of my French origins, no matter how distant in time they were, George would remind me that I wasn’t American at all, and that the French had their own way of doing this or that, and it grieved him that I had never met his French father because we would have gotten long famously, because with the name Chabot, I was truly French after all.

“Claude Chabot, it is the name of a French direc tor, I think?” he asked me as he moved purposefully in the small, smart kitchen.

“You’re thinking of Claude Chabrol.”

“Of course, I get it all mixed up.”

He turned this way and that, moving surely, el egantly; arranging orange-gold wedges of an emerald skinned melon on a plate. He blanketed these with translucent slices of Serrano ham, poured out two glasses of an Alsatian beer, and brought them out to the living room with its doors open to the balcony and the evening air, set one plate and glass down on the glass topped dining table and the other opposite me. I dimmed the lights and lit two candles including a thick black taper which stood by itself in a terracotta plate.

“Oh, no, please, not the black one, it will bring the devil,” he warned me. I extinguished the flame between my two fingers. He crossed himself.

The melon was sweet against my smoky palate. Si lence and cool evening air drifted in from the balcony. Andreas was conspicuously missing. I ate ravenously.

“You are very hungry. Would you like some more melon?”

“Yes, please.”

“I am very hungry as well. Should we have the stewed rabbit my mother has given me yesterday? You like stewed rabbit?”

“Very much.” I had never had a stewed rabbit. But I was willing to try one. “I know that here you end to leave things on food that people otherwise throw away. Does the rabbit still have its head?”

“Oh yes, naturally the brain is the best part. What do you say in English?” he asked in an exaggerated American accent, “It’s my FAY-vor-ite.”

“I’m sure it is.”

We went back to the kitchen to inspect it. George extracted it from the refrigerator reverently as if it were a holy relic. The carcass lay in a pool of con

gealed sauce. He turned on the oven and slipped it in.

“I think we should have a salad, Claude. Do you think we should have a salad?”

“Yes, I think we should have a salad,” I parroted impatiently. But first George went about cutting more melon and ham and commented that Dimi would be home from Patras by tomorrow at midday.

Ah Dimi! It was through Dimi that I had had my small vengeance on George’s indifference.

We had both been sitting in the kitchen, as George and I were now. I was putting a sandwich together, and Dimi was preparing his country specialties he had learned from his mother or father. George was out. However taciturn and remote he usually ap peared, that afternoon he was unusually friendly and approachable, preparing one of his excellent dishes. At one point, stirring a pot of boiling peanuts, he rested his hand on my shoulders lightly. This was not the first time that he casually touched me as he stirred the pot, not in sexual overture (I think), but as a means, perhaps, to bridge the language barrier be tween us, as well as the awkwardness and emotional distance. His touch was uncharacteristically gentle and tender, and he smiled at me in a friendly, abstract way, his eyes crinkling behind his expensive eyeglass es. I think at that moment I understood his shyness, and he understood my own discomfort being there with George and him and of my need for something to fill up the void in my life by traveling all this way to be with them both, a couple without counterpart in my life in New York. I think he understood it then better than I did at the time.

He tapped me on the shoulder and pushed me lightly out of the kitchen, laughing with his peculiar grace so unlike his public deportment, laughing and dancing into the bedroom, his hand to his belly, Dimi bobbing and whirling, his other hand to his ear.

Alone in the house together, perhaps for the first time, both of us embarrassed, a trifle shy about one another, as neither of us could communicate except through smiles and gestures. They all had a flirta tiousness to them, which was not what was wholly intended; at least, not at first. He was the least likely lover I’d every encountered, someone who was more comfortable with his sexuality than George, and yet outwardly very conservative. I had come to visit them both, and I realized that I had now come to like Dimi as much as George. This was a consolation for George’s indifference, and it also suggested a way of evening the score with George without feeling guilty. I could cheat on George, as George had cheated on Dimi with me, and now I could offer Dimi the same satisfaction.

We fell on their bed, suddenly kissing deeply. His glasses and our clothes rapidly came off. Eventu ally, for all his quiet masculine reserve he moaned luxuriantly as I stroked his buttocks. He turned over, urgently spread his muscled cheeks open like tough, ripe fruit. Dimi was big bellied, but a well-built man, solid from his nightly weight lifting, and as such I thought he would choose to dominate me. I straddled and pressed and rubbed myself against him. He moaned more urgently as he pulled his cheeks wider revealing a sexed red hole swollen through a dither of sweat soaked, bristly black fuzz. He raised his but tocks higher and turned his head to look at me with oriental eyes. There was a moment or two of fum bling with the condom, but I penetrated him easily as he breathed hard and loudly moaned again. Thereaf ter, I imagined each slow thrust as a stab at George’s indifference. Dimi growled something low and dark in Greek as my flanks slapped his buttocks.

Afterwards, when the sex had left us sated, he had turned out to have been a more sophisticated partner then George ever was. He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took two drags and then handed it to me, and putting his robe on opened the French doors in the bedroom to the blind-white afternoon drowse of Athens. He gazed outside at the hills for a moment as if recalling some puzzling memory, then he closed them quickly so as not to lose the tender, dreamy tranquility of the moment (perhaps), and then, slowly turning, taking his robe off, made it clear that he wanted more. And finally after more, we lay in bed smoking and we slept, and George didn’t return to the apartment until late that night, and I had had my pleasure and my revenge.

We finished the rabbit (George offered to share the brain, but I let him have it). We refreshed our selves with salad, a bottle of Cretan wine, raspberries in sweetened, cream-gorged yoghurt, Greek coffee and eau de vie. Weaving a little from the heat and the alcohol, I came in from the balcony where I had been standing looking out to the Lyvitikos Hill. We got high on George’s joints at 3 a.m., playing a desultory game of Scrabble amidst the ruins of our meal and listened to old love songs by Manos Hadjudakis. I simply had no desire to play seriously; there never had been a fondness for card or board games in me. I looked at the three words that I had spelled out on the torn and tired boards. “Dread, Greek, sin,” were my contributions to the game. There was nothing deliberate in their selection; they had been formed by my allotment from the tattered velvet bag which held the letters. George had taken the first turn and that had also established the precedent for me: my options

had been limited. Nevertheless, “dread, Greek, sin” suggested something about the way I was feeling.

“We used to sit and play this way for hours sometimes, Andreas and I. Not Scramble, of course, but backgammon. It requires more thinking, I think, backgammon. This Scramble is an American game for children, except for you Claude. It is strange the words you have chosen; dread-Greek-sin. What is your dread Greek sin?” he laughed and reached out to touch my hand. “I hope I am not the Greek sin. I have sinned, but God will forgive me because I only make little sins, and they are only sex sins, not big, hurting ones.”

This was not quite true. Every moment that I was there he was flirting with, enticing me, teasing me, pretending.

“We will go to the beach tomorrow, no? It is so hot and will be hotter tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, let’s go, but not to the gay rocks where we might die.”

“So you remember the gay rocks! Yes, we will go to a real beach. We must! Maybe we should go now Claude and watch the sun come? I am tired of Scramble. But first I will lie down, and then we will go to the beach.”

George didn’t awaken until the next afternoon, and I was grateful for the respite. We never did make it to the beach, at least together. I was dropped off and retrieved as George had his errands to do. The afternoon following our prorogued supper George told me that Dimi had to conclude some legal busi ness the next morning in Patras. George was to see a client there late the next day too, and I was to leave with them that night after dinner.

That evening in the car, George casually com mented as Dimi drove silently, “It is quiet I think, tonight, Athens. The cars are not out as much as they would be. I think it is because of the government’s law. Otherwise the smog will be so much worse, and all our old buildings will be ruined, and what would Athens be without them? And really, Claude, Greece? If the Parthenon dissolves like it is happening we will no longer be Greek. It would be like the Empire State Building falling down.”

“Worse.”

“But you see what I mean. It is very special to us.”

We drove to a restaurant in a park concealed by a dead-end street. The car was stopped. Rapid words were exchanged in Greek between them, and then turning around to me alone in the back seat George announced, “We are here: it is the best restaurant in Athens.”

“The best restaurant. The best restaurant,” I

repeated.

“Please Claude.”

It was a quiet taverna, but crowded, sitting in an umbrageous park with black trees and dark shad ows, as if cast by the light of a dead star: luxurious shadows, velvety, quiet, enveloping, sumptuous and oriental, obscuring the crowds; the mystery of dense undulating branches and between them, glimpses of the heavens, crannies to beckon ecstasies, welcom ing us, friends after dinner seeking a quiet place for hashish.

We climbed a hill to a barren hilltop with a bare tree jutting from the hillside, a horizontal boulder, and the panorama of the unfamiliar city spread out below and around us. And there we were, three men inhaling from a hash pipe with a sheer drop from our side of the boulder down the mountain.

I recall dinner with myriad dishes eaten greed ily; and feeding stray kittens with a dish of poached brains in wine looking like halved mushrooms, all of us watched carefully by a careful cat mother.

Later, we settled in their Fiat and Dimi authori tatively took command of the stick shift. He briefly searched my eyes as he grasped it and smiled a smile hidden from George. Then the car jumped into ac tion, and we were gliding through Athens’s busy eve ning streets amidst careening buses, darting mopeds and mad trams.

We followed the same route from Athens to Corinth that I had made some years ago when I was traveling with Monica. I had now twice left Athens at night, but this second experience was of a different kind. Alone on the bus with Monica asleep beside me, I had felt let loose upon a foreign land; with George and Dimi I felt comfortably at home. This June the evening air was different from my trip many years ago in August, the air cooler yet more clouded with the choking Athenian smog neftos.

As we traveled along the main road, the only road as far as I know that stretches from Athens to Patras, we crossed the canal at Corinth.

“Have you seen the canal, Claude? We are coming to it,” George asked me from the front seat.

“Yes, my last time here. There’s something about it that disturbs me.”

“Yes, yes, I understand you. It is quite horrible, I think, like a monster. You think it is a monster, or maybe a monster that has made it?”

“The Cyclops.”

He giggled and his mirth burst from him in rip pling laughter, then he turned to Dimi, and I believe, translated into Greek what I had just said, and Dimi laughed. I wasn’t quite sure what was funny, but

George looked at me and whispered, “We must go Claude, maybe the monster will come back to eat us.”

George himself had once remarked to me that Greece had changed, and it was a change he did not like, although he could not quite be clear as to what he meant. He often spoke about the country as if were his personal responsibility, as if he himself were liable for the state of the railways and television pro gramming, the restaurants and their plumbing, the smog, Olympic Airways and the cab drivers; the at titude of Greek men toward Greek women; of Greek men toward Greek men; and of everybody toward foreigners of which I was constantly reminded I was, welcome though I might be, but clearly not under standing the country. George tended to apologize for the state of things while reminding me that I couldn’t possibly understand how things worked. He viewed the United States as a paradigm of efficiency and wealth, although at the expense of la vie humaine. He liked Americans for “the directness” while deploring how that same quality was an impossible commod ity to traffic with in his country, where subtlety and wiliness were not merely important, but essential characteristics for negotiating the shoals and averting the cesspools of life.

We arrived in Patras around 1 a.m., but before vis iting Dimi’s parents, we stopped at George’s friend’s apartment to see if I would choose to stay there, as George’s friend was out of town and I could have the apartment to myself.

In the bilious green sitting room of the apart ment (I felt as if were underwater), we found an Elvis collection: Greatest Hits, The Golden Years, The King Lives Again, Viva Las Vegas with sundry Elvis liqueur bottles, statuettes, lamps and key chains, the latter forty or fifty dangling from a specially constructed rack on a wall over the stereo.

“Elvis! I run into him all over the world and this preoccupation with American pop culture,” I sniffed, disgusted.

“It is very American, you know? But a sanctuary, a holy place. She adores him very much. You would like to stay here? No? I see it is disturbing to you, this shrine to Elvis Presley. Then you will stay with Dimi and me at his parent’s farmhouse. You will meet the Dracula mother. She will love you, I think, though she is suspicious of everyone.”

We went onto Dimi’s parents in their country farmhouse, whose neighboring farms had been swallowed up by the sprawling whitewashed subur ban apartment houses of Patras. Their house stood amongst these ten storied dwellings, an anomaly in

the new Greece. The late twentieth century has not been kind to the nation. Athens destroyed much of its past to create the jarring visual and automotive cacophony that is its present, and from what I could see, Patras was well on its way in eradicating much of its own patrimony.

It was necessary to account for me, as George did not want Dimi’s mother to know that he was living with Dimi as his lover, and another male traveling companion frightened George into thinking that he would surely be given away, although the logic of this escaped me. “How is the American to be explained?” he stated out loud in the car to no one in particular. I sat in the back of the Fiat after they had gotten out and were approaching the rustic cabin door of the Dracula mother and her husband.

After sitting patiently in the darkness for five minutes or so, I began to get cross and cursing under my breath, hopped out. At the same time a door opened about one hundred feet from me, and George sprung out speaking in Greek to an indistinct person obscured from me by the glare of a lamp coming from behind him. Dimi pushed passed George and the other figure, who now appeared to be his mother, clad in a nightgown swaying in the nocturnal breeze. Dimi athletically bounded down the stairs, and ran lightly to the car, smiling as he came up to me while gesturing with his hand to come forward.

He lightly took my elbow and ushered me along a graveled path up to the door of the farmhouse. I could scarcely see the old wood and stone structure, and the greeting Dimi’s mother murmured was obscured against the hum of crickets and the rush of cars on the highway only three or four blocks distant. After a moment lost to these distractions, I turned to the imposing maternal figure, though not at all resembling Dracula’s mother as George described her. She was, in fact, rather sweet looking with an owl-like gaze. I offered the polite “yassas,’ the full extant of my conversation in the language besides “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” and “come.”

She shrewdly, if casually, appraised me, but was not unfriendly, curious to see the American who somehow knew her son. Suddenly, she grabbed my shoulders (practically dislocating one) and abruptly pulling me forward to her hefty bosom, lightly kissed me on both cheeks murmuring “Yassas” in return. For all of George’s concerns, she innocently made up a bed for the two men in a guest room not connected by any door to the rest of the farmhouse. I was given a cot in the same room.

When I awoke at 8 a.m. Dracula’s mother and her spouse had vanished to visit a newborn relative in

a nearby town. George announced this through his typical morning stupor. Dimi had been up and out by seven, off in the car efficiently doing whatever he did at that hour.

I stepped outside, having showered and dressed, waiting for George to get out of bed. The gravel drive way was surrounded by a terraced garden filled with fructant vegetable beds and fig trees holding their embryonic sweets.

Eventually, a woman came out of one of the tenstory buildings surrounding the farmhouse and bus ied herself on one of the balconies on the third floor. She saw me but pretended that she hadn’t. I watched her as she was the only figure in view. Eventually she waved to me and shouted something in Greek. I didn’t really know what to do. I answered, “I don’t speak Greek, but ‘kah-leh meh-rah.’”

“Are you introducing yourself to all the neighbors, my dear Claude? She probably doesn’t speak English at all and you will have confused her,” George stated slyly as he stood slouched against the farmhouse doorway smoking a cigarette, barefoot in Bermuda shorts and a white tee-shirt. He came forward into the sun and shouted something in Greek to the woman, and she shouted something back, smiled, waved and went inside. From the way he spoke to her they seemed to know one other.

“Friends?”

“Not friends, no, I have just seen her putting out her wash before. But I know she wants to have sex with me. One day she has given me an egg from the hen that they keep. There, you see?” He pointed to something on the terrace, but I couldn’t tell what.

“It is the mother of the egg. The hen. In that cage. Don’t you see? So I know she wanted to have sex with me because she has seen me sunning myself, and I have seen her husband and he is old and fat. That is why she gave the egg. Maybe we will have sex, maybe not.”

I thought briefly, unkindly, but truthfully, that George was young but out of shape and no competi tion to anybody.

The only person who would have appreciated the comic scale of George’s ego would have been Monica. Poor, lost Monica! She had moved to California several months after our return from our trip to Greece two years ago. I found out from a mutual acquaintance that she had suddenly married and was living somewhere in South San Francisco. I wondered why she hadn’t stayed in touch with me; there was no argument between us. I felt better about the rejection when I found out that she had cut off all of her New York friends.

She was originally a Californian, and I think there had been something very upsetting to her about her life in the East. She had not become the model or actress she had set out to be. Working as a masseuse had always repelled her, even thought it gave her plenty of freedom. In her last few months in New York she had taken to making bitter jokes about her life, something I had never heard before.

One day I took the same path that Monica and I had taken a few years back amongst Athens’s streets where she had guided me to precious haunts of hers that she had somehow found, that I later learned to find. She was a person and time in my life that was past, surpassed, though it is strange to acknowledge it; a part of my life, of everyone’s life that changes when you expect that a reality that you are ac customed to will continue forever. Athens may be forever, or even Rome or Cairo, but people and eras fade from memory and easily to oblivion.

I felt someone touch my shoulder. “Excuse me Claude, I think that maybe you have gone some where?” George was beside me, squinting.

“I was just thinking of someone who would believe all the things you say to me. If I write them down, people will just think that I made you up.”

“Ouf! How can you say such a thing? I am very real, and even if you could try, you could never make me up. I am George. I am George from Greece, and that is all there is to say. Shall we see what is for breakfast? I think the Dracula mother has left something. And then maybe we will buy pot,” he pronounced this with a particular emphasis on the ‘t’, “I will have some, Dimi will want some later, and I think maybe you will get high and then we will all have sex, no?”

“We will all have sex, no.”

“But please, Claude, do not be upset. If we all don’t have sex together it is fine. But as your host, and you my guest, I thought it only polite to offer.”

Over an excellent breakfast consisting of fresh yoghurt, croissants, omlettes and orange juice, which George had insisted on squeezing by himself, he outlined the plan for the day.

“We will first wait for Dimi, then we will buy pot. Then we will…no, I see what you are going to say, we will not have sex. It is something on my mind. Perhaps we should have sex now alone, rather than wait for Dimi?”

“Okay. But what about your business appoint ment?”

“Oh, I will see him on another day. And if Dimi takes too long, as he seems to be doing, I think we should go back to Athens and he can take the train.

We have done this before because he has his long lawyer meetings.”

After the very friendly, if somewhat pedestrian lovemaking between us, where George always sought to dominate me, we did start back after George informed Dimi of this on the “little phone”, and the conversation that resonates in me had already begun, a singular dialogue that defined the trip.

We drove out of Patras until George had realized that he had forgotten his glasses, and this entailed a twenty-minute return. We then passed a sad halfhour at Andreas’ grave when finally we were back on the main highway to Athens.

“And now we have two hours my dear Claude to speak of anything you may wish. Maybe to ask any thing of George and to be granted a wish like a genie?”

“Do you really think you’re that important? What cheek!”

He lowered his head and fixed his long-lashed eyes on the road as he changed gear and smiled.

“But you see, and you must understand, that I if make myself sound that way, it is because I want to make your stay in Greece so happy, so very, very happy. Because, I think, and please understand that I like you and do not want to hurt you, that you seem unhappy to me Claude, but you will not need to speak of it, and I don’t want to make you speak of something unpleasant to you; if you choose to then it is some thing I will listen to, I must! If not, then it is right for me as a friend to make you happy here, as happy as I can, even if this time is not easy for me either.”

I changed the subject. “Why isn’t it easy for you?”

George looked at me if I had lost my mind.

“My father! My cousin! I have lost them both, and you have lost a friend you knew, and a friend you would have liked. What am I saying? A friend you had and a friend you would have made of my father. But you have changed the subject!”

He studied me momentarily, “What are you so very worried about my dear Claude? You look at me sometimes, and you are either with me or far away. And even when you are with me you seem so far, so very far away.”

“I’m not sure what you mean. I’m here, listening to you, listening carefully, whether I want to or not. We’re jammed into this tiny car with nowhere else for me to go.”

“Yes, it is the boat cars, the American boat cars that you are used to. You feel squashed like a bug in my Fiat?”

“What happened to your MG?”

“The car of my brother. He took it back.”

“I thought it was yours.”

“And I thought he had given it to me. But he is always doing these things. But he is only my halfbrother, so he is only half of anything to me. He is very critical, and very religious too, telling me I am very sinful for living with Dimi. He’s always talking about God. And now Claude, you again have that funny look in your eye. What are you thinking?”

“It’s nothing. I was also just thinking about…”

“About what?”

“About God.”

“Po po po,” was his disdainful reply.

I was raised to believe that if there is a God, his supreme indifference ignores our petty crimes and daily tragedies until the ultimate reckoning. We were not meant to enjoy any divine intervention for good or evil, but left to find our own destinies, and to be addressed at death and no earlier as to what we had done with our lives; or so my upbringing had prom ised and threatened.

But in Greece I think the Byzantine God watches, and not indifferently. By our indiscretions he turns his gaze from our lives. He is not a vengeful but a terribly just God just the same, existing for Greeks alone, a male visage that looks or looks away at this most East ern of Western nations. I am reminded of this when I hold the icon George gave me. Each time I glance at the heavy silver bas-relief I think of the Byzantine God and both more sadly and happily, of George.

What would we do if I were to move to Greece and assume residence in the duplex overlooked by the solemn bulk of the Lyvitikos Hill? I loved George and wanted him but desired him in a metaphysical man ner, far removed from any sense of possibility.

Traveling uphill, along the orchards and fields con taining unknown crops, George would turn from the road every so often to pat my hand and ask another question, respond to my own, or laugh during our circuitous dialogues.

The shadows lengthened on the road although the sun gleamed potently in the sky bidding the afternoon a bright but fading leave. The day had been grand in some ways, George’s hand always resting quietly on my knee. Now it probed down to the warm place of uncomplicated delights.

“What is this? What is this?” he asked, squeezing. “If only there was some place to stop. Greece does not believe in places to stop.”

“Did you want to rest?”

“Claude, you have that far away look again. You know how strange it makes me feel when you get that look.”

“I’m really not so far away. I’m right here. Very close to you, attached, actually. Your hand is where it

should be; that’s what we’re all about.”

How glad I was that I had slept with Dimi.

I knew I could never tell him, but I wanted to confess; I had been evil, seeking and sleeping with his lover. I wanted to confess, to reveal everything in its most nauseating detail. I felt guilty as he massaged my thigh and moved deeper down, brushing my balls with his thumb.

“It is my hope that you will come often to Greece, to be my guest, to stay with me and with Dimi, he is very fond of you, you know, you simply don’t under stand him. Of course, his English, it is not good. And then you don’t speak Greek, but who in the world does except us Greeks? I am very sorry if visiting Dimi and I has made you uncomfortable. It is simply, it is simply that we sometimes want someone else to…share our bed and you are so nice and have the body that American boys all have. It would be nice if you come stayed with us tonight…for awhile, in our bed.”

Maybe I couldn’t blame him for trying.

“You never stop do you?”

“Oh, you are so American. You see Claude, I will be married in a few years, to make babies, but we will still be friends. The women…the women, you see, are only for the babies, it is the friendships with men that are important.”

“Why do you even have to have babies in the first place? What difference does it make? You’re living with Dimi now and you seem to be happy, at least you seem to be a bit content, aren’t you?”

He removed his hand from my thigh.

I turned to gaze at him looking at the road and the black velvet of the Peloponnesian gloom when he spoke again.

“There have been terramotti here, you know.”

“Earthquakes?”

“Yes, of course, I couldn’t remember the English word, only the Italian,” he shifted to a higher gear, “I want to talk to you Claude. There were things, there are things I want to say to you that I have never said to you or to anyone. It is important, I think to do this. You see, I must explain to you why I didn’t call you or didn’t seem interested in speaking to you for all that time. I have to explain, I must.”

“I was confused. You didn’t call or write.”

He took the next corner with tires screaming.

“Actually, I hated you George.”

“How can you say that, Claude? Hate me? I really think you are being unfair.”

“I hated you because you tried to pretend you weren’t gay.”

“I am not gay. I have my preferences, of course,

just like any other Greek man, but we are not femi nine and not effeminate.” George was getting more emphatic as he went on, “It is unfortunate that you do not realize how difficult my life with Dimi is…we are always being questioned now that I am getting old.”

“You’ve just turned thirty.”

“In Greece it is old for not having babies.”

“There’s more to life than babies. Maybe someday you will be able to have your own life without having to sneak around while you’re married and making babies. Making babies doesn’t make a man. It’s an old, old idea that dates back to a time when people weren’t rational, a time of superstition, of ancient customs.”

“You’re talking about Greece today,” George laughed.

Dimi and George were together and would be, with some connection, maybe for the rest of their lives, but it was as George said, he had to marry for the children. He was pulled by tradition as surely as the wind coming off the sea bent the cool piney hilltops, displacing the parched landscape as we gradually ascended into the mountains.

“I think that you may be wondering why I have been talking so much about the difference between the States and Greece, but it is because I think that you may be unhappy with me, with something I have said or have done. But you see, it is important the way we live our lives given that we have certain prefer ences.”

“I would say tendencies.”

“I think preferences is better, ‘tendencies,’ it is strange to say. So we have our preferences. The way we live our life in Greece, we do this by bending a little, maybe a lot, because there is little room for liv ing the way one wants with…preferences. In America it is better, you are more idealistic, and you can live the way you like. But in Greece if you are a man, it is not possible not to have a wife and children. If you do not have them, you are not a man, not matter how muscular, handsome or rich you may be.”

I answered with impatience, “People live their lives as they choose, including men, including Greek men, to take what they want from it anywhere in the world. Some men will choose one thing; choose to have the wife and family. That’s fine for many men, but it may not be fine for someone else. Like me. It wouldn’t be fine for me. Having sex with men and having a wife. It’s not fair.”

“Oh, but this is Greece. It is so different.”

It seemed we had reached an impasse. The rest of the drive I fell into a kind of dull glazed mood. The air breezed through the open window. Sometimes it would carry the smell of resin as we passed the

night blackened firs, but as we approached Athens the landscape became austere, dry and cracked. Harbors appeared with pinpoints of sharp light on smokestacks springing from the coast, with smoke and steam spiraling from them absorbed into the night sky. When we arrived home, rather George and Dimi’s apartment, I was quite asleep and woke up with the sound of the trunk opening.

“I think it is time that you wake up my dear Claude. It is late, and the witches will be out soon,” he laughed, “we should go out now to a bar, not far from where we can find your pleasure. There will be boys, so many boys for you. You might have one or more, at least one. They are nice, of course, all of them, but I am most interested in the Poles. There are many beautiful Polish boys in Athens now, so willing to ac cept our Greek traditions. And, of course, if you wish to bring someone home with you, you must do it. Re ally, you must. Because we, I mean Dimi and myself, want to be good hosts. We want to be extending to you the hospitality that is the tradition of Greece and especially of Athens.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You mean the traditions between your legs and your buns?”

“Don’t be vulgar,” George answered frowning, mockingly or truly hurt, “I am talking of the ancient traditions of male culture. The greatness it has pro duced in our country. You are from too young a place, too strange a place, to understand what our culture can mean.”

We rode up the elevator, each floor passing us in the doorless box when we jolted to a halt at his floor. The door parted introducing us to an elderly woman, the mother of a cabinet minister, I think George said, dressed in a simple cotton house dress, her white hair looking as if it had been carefully coifed days ago but now had fallen awry. She stared at us with elderly interest. George spoke to her, soothingly, in Greek.

“She gets confused sometimes you see. Her hus band is dead, and her son comes to visit very little. She likes me because she is lonely,” he told me later over a glass of wine. We never did go out. I drained the glass and went to put it down on the dining table but missed. The glass crashed against the marble floor.

“But Claude, why have you done this?” It is one of our best crystal goblets.” He stopped a moment as if surprised that he knew the word goblet. “Dimi will be so angry with me. He will blame me you know. He always does.”

“Tell him the truth. Tell him that I dropped it.”

“You know he already blames me for your visit.”

“What?”

“Now Claude, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, it is simply that he doesn’t like guests, any guests, not just you. The two blond Dutch girls I had here…he was so angry because I left them here for a week. I was home, but I did give them a key. They were very nice and we had some...fun. It was strange that I told him about that, but…”

“You just can’t keep it in your pants, can you?”

“Oh, Claude, you know how sexed I feel some times.”

I was sitting in the white linen overstuffed chair. I’d never seen a white linen overstuffed chair until I’d come to Greece.

“We will have supper before we go to bed, will we not Claude? You will make one of your salads, one of your beautiful salads?”

“Like you wife might?”

“Claude, please, you are cruel sometimes. But, you are right; in Greece when a man has a talent for cooking he uses it, but not too much. Then he would be thought of as being a woman. But you are not that way.”

“You’re preoccupied with what men should do and with what women ought to do. You don’t have to conform to your macho ideal, you know. You all have sex with one another anyway; as long as it’s hidden it’s okay. Then you’re all hidden women. Don’t you know that? You’re all women, not because you have sex with men, because you’re afraid. Don’t you consider fear and weakness the most feminine traits you can have?”

He paused, looked at me shrewdly with his lips pursed slightly, then spoke deliberately, “You see Claude, in all my wanderings, and I think in all yours too, we have looked for the perfect life. I have never found it. I think you have not found it. But you insist that it exists, somewhere. You think, or thought, you found it in Greece, but it doesn’t exist here, and it does not exist anywhere. You seem unhappy Claude. I want you to be happy. I do this in the way I must, in the present, not caring for the past or the future, only caring for you. But you are not happy with that and criticize me, us, for our inconsistencies and illogic. Yes, I think it is illogical the things I say, but it is the real world in Greece that I must live in, when I have such preferences, as we have called them.”

“I think you will always and everywhere be disap pointed my dear Claude, unless you take life as it comes to you, not as a promise or a fantasy. I think in this, we are very similar. I have not always been happy with Dimi, and I follow my little god to many places, but I love Dimi. Sometimes we are happy, and then in the meantime, we pass the time with others.”

I closed my eyes, then answered, “I hadn’t thought that I was looking for Paradise. I was just trying to find a place where I could be happy. I haven’t been happy in New York. It’s not just because I want to be happy or find a kind of Paradise, it is the life in New York that makes me unhappy. The constant struggle that gets me down, the crowds, the pressure. And there are other places I want to be, other things I want to do, other lives I want to live.”

“Then you can stay with me as along as you like. Come to live in Greece. You will find a job, maybe one that you will like. I will help you. But even if you do come live with Dimi and me you will not be happy, because you are looking for something that is not possible. I am part of Dimi, and he with me, even if I try to be, try to say, what is the word? Otherwise, even though I try to be otherwise.”

“I think, though, you do not want to do it. I know you must return to the States and try to make a life for yourself, no matter how difficult it has been for you. To stay here in Greece would be to hope for something that will never be. We will not always be young Claude, and the Paradise that you are seeking you will never find. I think you know this and want to find some resolution, some life, some peace, some love that is real and not in this fantasy world you have made Athens for yourself. I am a real person, not your fantasy lover.”

He kissed me tenderly on one cheek and put his arm around me. And so I decided to take the train to Patras two weeks later to catch the ferry to Italy in order to visit a friend in Bologna before going home.

George and I entered the train terminal with its smell of damp and urine. The impeccably painted railroad cars of the EU sat outside next to the squat, quaint station, reminiscent of a village, not a city.

“It is here that we will make our parting Claude,” George mumbled to me with an undercurrent of tension. He seemed uncomfortable, maybe even sad, mimicking my own melancholy.

At the last moment I tell him that I had cheated with Dimi. I expect his farewell to catch in his throat, his face to crumple in hurt, and then having him stalking off in a rage.

“But of course you have Claude, and why not? Dimi likes you. He very much wanted you to fuck him. You did fuck him? And I think you should have had him. I am very happy for both of you that you have gotten what you wanted. I thought we could have a threesome, but there has been no time.”

I looked at him.

“And, of course,” he added, grabbing my arm, “you

were not interested in that.” He smiled and winked at me.

“And so I will come to New York. We will see how you live in your great city. But really Claude, I don’t see how you live there with all those people, such strange people! Being there was like watching a movie run fast. And the people there only think of money.”

“Money and status, but not everyone; but you’re right, in New York more than many places.”

He looked around, maybe losing interest in what I had to say, “Shall we go for a coffee and a cigarette? The train will not leave for a few minutes.” I agreed.

“What was there that I wanted to ask you? I think there was something. When you met Monica, there was something I wanted to ask you and never did.”

“Monica?” George answered. He seemed puzzled, “Who is Monica?”

“Monica, my friend, Monica…when we met you for the first time a few years ago, Monica was there for dinner.”

“I do not remember meeting anyone with you. I think you are mistaken.”

I reflected a moment and remembered her date that night. George was right. “That was the trip where we started to go our separate ways. She didn’t come to dinner that night; she had a date.”

At the station café a spilled Coke attracted a covey of bees that recalled our visit to Andreas’ grave on the ride back from Patras.

We had stood at his shrine in the heat and light of almost noon, his ingenuous smile beaming from the photograph atop his marble sarcophagus. George smoked a cigarette stoically, but I wept. He had brought two stems of roses, red and white, and criss crossed them on the monument. Andreas was dead, and though it was almost noon the cemetery was ghastly quiet. Andreas was gone and my dreams of Greece and George and peace and safety were dead. Though there was a shatteringly bright sun and the bees buzzed over the cut roses it was midnight.

“When Andreas was very young, I should say younger, as none of us is really so old right now, are we Claude?”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, of course not, we are not so old that we have the wrinkles and the chins, but we are getting there, as my mother says.”

“What did you want to say about Andreas?” I asked, impatient at George’s eternal digressions.

“I don’t remember. Sometimes I realize that even as much as I loved him, I am forgetting him.”

The bees lazily flew around me in the heat, the velvet of the rose petals shriveling.

Weeder ( James Ferguson)

June 28, 1945 - October 22, 2022

How do you write a memorial for someone who was such an iconic presence at Short Mountain? Weeder was a builder, a plantsman, a sexy man, loved creating order out of chaos, carved many a phallus out of wood, crafted birdhouses from gourds, smoked a lot of weed, pulled a lot of weeds, and didn’t have much tolerance for bull shit. He often had such a positive mental attitude, which he used to great service as a gatekeeper for the community. Many a maypole was selected and cut down and safely raised by him and a crew of folks on Beltane day. He was a cancer, so at times he was a crab, and other times showed compas sion to people that other folks didn’t get.

When we met in 1989, and shortly there after became boyfriends, I knew if we didn’t remain partners, we would always be friends. He was that kind of per son. We lived together for fifteen years, in the house we designed and built. He loved creating a homey environment, the house was always chock full of plants, and cute tchotchkes.

When he started to not feel well again this sum mer a couple of years after receiving treatments

for prostate cancer, it was quite apparent how well loved he was by the number of people who stepped up to visit him, bring food, offer care, and hold his hand. We had just mobilized a network to have two people there 24/7 when he was released from his most recent trip to the hospital, where he received the diagnosis that the cancer had spread. He was set up looking out the window of his house at his bird feeders, and the giant Willow oak tree in his front yard. A day later amid a flurry of visits from hospice nurses and dear friends he seemed both ex hausted, and very much at peace. One of the last things he was asked “are you in any pain?”, he replied “no”. Shortly after that, his last few breaths came very hard for him. While it was both terrifying for those of us present, it seemed like the perfect moment to cross over since he wasn’t in pain. I held his hand, and stroked his leg. And then no more breaths passed his lips.

Thank you Weeder, for your grace, and all the beauty you nurtured around you. You are loved.

—Daz'l

Photograph by Jeff Schuler.

Jason Schneider

February 7, 1959 - October 22, 2022

Jason Arthur Schneider died October 22, 2022 in New Haven, Connecticut, of pancreatic cancer. He was born in Detroit on 7 February 1959 to Judy Mayer and Arthur Schneider. Jason spent his whole life fighting to make people’s lives better—not just family and friends but entire communities.

After graduating college he moved to Boston and was involved in making independent living and transpor tation available to people with disabili ties long before the ADA was passed. Some of the founda tional meetings for AIDS Action were held in Jason’s living room and he was centrally involved in the founding of the first Medicare funded AIDS hospice in Mas sachusetts.

In case that wasn’t challenging enough, Jason went back to school to become a middle school teacher. In Greenfield, MA and later New Haven, CT, he taught under served students and served as not just an educator but a mentor. He was known to his students as "Mr. J" and worked hard to make their lives better both in and out of the classroom.

Jason intersected with the Radical Faeries through Faerie Camp Destiny in Vermont, helping build it’s timber framed kitchen as well as being active in guiding it’s governance by hosting and working on several committees. He graciously hosted folks at his Shelburne Falls home for these

meetings and several gatherettes. When RFD moved from Tennessee to New England, Jason served as a Board member and worked as one of RFD’s dedicated proofers. His critiques on people’s submissions was often better than the submission itself. Once the managing editor had to write him back, “This isn’t The New Yorker, it’s RFD!”

Above all, Jason loved his family home on St. Joseph Island, Canada, which he vis ited every summer for his entire life. There he spent every pos sible day sailing, even on days which others may have regarded as “not windy enough,” “too windy” or “inad visable.”

Jason was pre ceded in death by his parents, Judy and Arthur, his sister Mar tha Leah, and his life partner Scott Bassett. He leaves behind his life partner Tom Red doch, daughter Rachel Kenner, brother in law Ken Silverman, and nieces Tara and Jasmine Silverman, along with the many sundry friends and relations.

If you would like to donate in Jason’s memory, please consider:

• The Kensington Conservancy, which pre serves land on and near St. Joe Island. www.kens ingtonconservancy.org.

• ACT CT, which oversees a number of pro grams including AIDS support, harm reduction, and CT Pride. www.act-ct.org.

Photograph by Matt Bucy.

website at www.rfdmag. org/advertise.php.

Issue 194 / Fall 2023

RAINBOW FLAG

Submission Deadline: April 21, 2023 www.rfdmag.org/upload

These days, you can spy a Rainbow Flag just about anywhere: Painted on a city crosswalk, stamped on a smartphone case, tattooed on someone’s backside, hung inside a coffeeshop window and, of course, held aloft at a Pride parade. First introduced in 1978 (with eight stripes, including hot pink), it’s a symbol that’s been modified and tweaked to represent the LGBTQ+ community. But is it time for something new?

As we approach the 45th anniversary of the birth of the Rainbow Flag, we want to know what this fluttering piece of material means to you. Do you see it as a symbol of inclusion? Does its ubiquity cause you to think how far we’ve come? Or has the transformed rainbow become commodified, just another overused visual that businesses employ to make a buck? When you see it does it make you feel, well, proud? Or are you over the Rainbow?

Maybe you have a secret history with the Rainbow Flag. Maybe you’ve had sex on one or used it for post-coital cleanup. Maybe you were in San Fran when it was first unfurled. Maybe there’s a pic of you with rainbow-dyed hair. We’d love a window into the feelings that ripple through you when you gaze upon one of these rainbow wonders. Essays, fiction, poetry, artwork: If you want to express your feelings about this symbol of expression, we want to hear or see it.

Come on, cuties. Don’t hold back: Let your freaky Rainbow-Flag story fly.

Photograph by See-ming Lee via Creative Commons Attribute Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

a reader-created gay quarterly celebrating queer diversity