Holding Margie, her youngest child just three years old, against her chest, Mom runs full-throttle down the hall, through the living room and out our front door. My oldest brother Howard jumps up, bangs out behind her, and a second later I shoot out behind him — already Mom’s at the end of our building. Clearly something bad is wrong.

Howard shifts gears, gaining on her. Without first checking in either direction Mom runs across Bicknell Avenue and starts up Hazelwood. Howard catches Mom just past Fox’s Neighborhood Grocery, yelling at Mom, “What the fuck’s . . .”

“I need to get his baby to the hospital!” Mom pants.

“Why? What’s . . . ”

“She drank a whole glass of nail polish remover!”

Howard says, “Fuck!” Says, “Give her to me!”

Mom nods and Howard lifts Margie from her. He runs ahead of Mom who runs ahead of me.

It’s early evening, August, and so hot you want to take off your skin and sit around in your bones. On the right side of the street neat, white, close-together houses sit like the teeth in a comb, but hardly no one’s out.

Mom wears blue jeans rolled up mid-calf, a sleeveless red- and white-striped, like a barber pole, pull-over top and black shoes not all that good for running. She speeds up until she’s running alongside my brother, who’s also wearing jeans and a pull over shirt. “What was she doing, Mom?” he asks Mom. “How’d she get a hold of . . .”

“Brenda left a glass full of polish remover unattended,” Mom explains, “on the little table beside the bed. I think she just went to the bathroom. The shit in the glass was a red color. Margie thought it was a sweet drink.” Brenda is my next-to-the-oldest brother Larry’s wife. She paints her nails with real artist brushes that she lets soak in a foul-smelling solution when she’s finished.

Running past my elementary school — where I’m in Mrs. Lawless’s fifth grade class — we scare up a half-dozen birds like a handful of buttons tossed in the air and I get close enough to Mom and Howard to see Margie is a bluish color and she’s making scary, I-can’t-catch-my-breath sounds.

Howard’s sweating, running hard and showing all of his teeth. The veins on his neck are popped out and Mom asks him, “Do you need me to take her?”

He shakes his head. “No. I got her.” Unable to keep up with Howard, Mom falls back. As we approach Alma Avenue, my 21-year-old brother completely stops. Breathing hard and sweat-drenched he bends forward. Mom quickly reaches him. “Give her to me!” she demands. Howard nods and hands Margie, a baton in a life-and-death relay race, off to my mother. She accelerates.

Howard held Margie honeymoon-style — his arms under her neck and knees, like husbands carrying new brides over thresholds do. But Mom holds Margie in a wrapped-around-her, monkey-style way, like Tarzan carries Cheetah when the two of them are swinging through the jungle.

Howard jogs slowly now, so slowly, I overtake him and run just a few steps behind Mom. I get a bit distraught when someone’s yellow dog bounding from out of nowhere runs up to me. I’m scared of dogs, but I can see pretty quick this one’s okay. He just thinks running with a maybe-dying little kid is a fun game. One of Mom’s black shoes flies off, arcing over my head it lands with a wet-plop sound on the walk behind me. I fall back to retrieve it but already kicking out of her other shoe Mom says, “Leave it!” The yellow dog leaps onto the shoe Mom tossed on purpose like he can’t believe his luck and heads for the hills with it.

After another minute, it’s Mom who slows, almost-but-not-quite stopping to work on her breathing. Howard swoops in, grabs Margie up and then, after turning right onto Bluegrass Avenue, runs faster than ever.

Barefoot now, Mom runs at a trot beside me before revving to all-out, full-steam,  maximum-speed in front of me.

Up ahead to our left the hospital complex comes into view. Mom catches Howard, again there’s a child hand-off and the closer my mom gets to the hospital with Margie the faster she runs. As she darts into the hospital’s parking lot, plowing straight toward the emergency entrance, Howard and I are right on her heels.

Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital at 1850 Bluegrass is six-tenths of a mile from 1475 Bicknell, the address of our housing project apartment and though it feels like we ran for hours, it’s only taken us seven or eight minutes to get to it.

The hospital’s emergency room doors whoosh open, Mom runs through them, past the eight or nine people waiting, lickety-split up to a desk. Mom yells, “She’s swallowed a glass of nail polish remover!” Her voice is so loud and hysterical and scared I want to bust out crying.

A skinny guy in white scrubs blasts through a set of double doors with round windows like on a cruise ship then two seconds later explodes back through them pushing a gurney. He turns the little bed on wheels sideways in front of my mom and a happily plump nurse with piles of red hair helps Mom lower a limp and eerily quiet Margie onto it. The skinny guy and nurse push Margie past the desk and disappear behind some curtains. Mom’s right on their tail.

I grab the back of her shirt. She tries to shake me loose. “Wait!” I yell at her.

Mom stops. “What is it, Billy?”

“Tell ‘em to look at your feet,” I say.

Mom’s eyes look at me and then to Howard before taking in the bloody footprints she’s left on the lobby’s white tile floor. She lifts one of her feet, sees it’s blistered and cracked, oozing blood. “Well, Lord. I can’t feel a thing,” she says. She turns and disappears behind the same curtains the skinny guy in white pushing Margie and red-headed nurse went behind.

Howard turns and walks away. I walk over to the waiting area and situate myself against a wall in such a way that I can see the double doors and everything behind the desk.

My heart leaps when the curtains part and the red-headed nurse steps through. Walking briskly, she moves around to and then behind the ER desk. Her uniform is way too tight. Her breasts and belly strain against the mint-colored fabric and the sleeves cut into her arms. She picks up a phone and punches buttons.

I can feel the eyes of a beefy man, shirtless, in bib overalls and holding a bloody dishtowel to his forehead on me. He glowers like it was me who caused the damage under the rag. Like I threw the paperweight at him, ran into him with something sharp.

I look around for Howard. He’s fifty feet away, studying a painted, near life-size statue of the Virgin Mary. The red-headed nurse in the too-small clothes stands up. “David Wheeler,” she calls. The beefy man with the forehead wound stretches his neck to look at her. “You want to come on back?” she asks/tells him.

The hospital has a flat, antiseptic smell and it’s cooler than outside, but only by a few degrees. The skinny guy in white who got the gurney for Margie so quick steps from behind the curtains. He has a dark, neatly-trimmed goatee — my brother Larry would call it a face pussy — soft, friendly brown eyes as he walks past me to step through the automatic door.  I look at a clock. It’s 7:10 in the evening.

At 7:55 p.m., Constance Simms, a bespectacled girl, 15 or so years old with a croupy, window-rattling cough she never bothers to cover with her hand is called back. Howard’s still checking out the statue of Mary, looking her over like a guy thinking to buy a car. The curtains behind the desk part and I see a flash of red and white. Mom steps out. A black nurse about Mom’s same age with hair plastered so flat against her head I think it’s painted on steps out with Mom and walks beside her, then Mom veers toward the waiting area and the nurse goes the other way toward the desk. Howard hurries up to Mom. “How is she?” he asks her.

“She’s going to be okay,” Mom says.

I sneak around my mother and brother and sit in one of the hospital’s chrome and orange vinyl waiting room chairs. Mom eases down in the chair beside me and  looks up at Howard. “They pumped her stomach and they’re keeping her overnight, but she’s alright. I’m gonna stay with her, carry her home in the morning. She may be able to walk some by then, so I’ll be fine,” Mom says. “We’ll be fine,” she says.

Howard nods. Mom tells him, “Go on home, hon, and let everybody know Margie’s okay. Especially tell Brenda. I know she must feel awful. Billy, you go on home with your brother.” I sit back in my chair and shake my head. An army of ghosts and vampires couldn’t make me leave my mom alone here.

Howard reaches into his back pocket, pulls out and opens a beat-up looking wallet. He takes money out. “I’ve got four dollars, Mom. You’re welcome to it.”

Mom gently pushes at his hand. “No, I’m all right.” She looks at me. “Billy can stay with me. You go on home, Howard, tell Estin what’s going on. Tell him he’ll need to do both Mark watches tonight.” What my mom means is my stepdad will have to sit up all night watching to make sure my little brother Mark, who’s mentally retarded, doesn’t set anything in our house on fire. Normally, Dad just sits up between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. and then after only a few hours of sleep Mom will get up to keep watch the rest of the night.

“I’ll take your shift,” Howard tells Mom, “I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

“Thank you, hon.”

“Take this money, Mom.”

“No.”

Howard reaches into his shirt pocket and takes out an almost-full pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and five or six kitchen matches and hands them to Mom. “Here,” he says, “I got more at home.”

Mom takes the cigarettes. “Thank you again, Howard. I don’t know if I’d have got that baby here without you.”

Howard leans over me and shoves the four dollar bills into the pocket of my shorts. He turns and walks across the lobby. The hospital doors blow open to let him out and sigh closed once he is.

Mom moves to a chrome and orange vinyl chair closer to an ashtray and I move closer to her. She shakes a cigarette out the pack Howard gave her and puts it in her mouth. I watch as she opens the fly of her jeans and strikes a wooden match the way a man might, against her zipper.

An hour later I enter an elevator with my mom. We ride up, get off and walk to a room where Margie lays wide awake, normal and pink-looking on a bed. The room has a large window and two chairs. Tan vinyl and wood this time. Mom sits on Margie’s bed and gathers her up in her arms. I park myself in one of the chairs.

Margie smiles, gets this kind of embarrassed little girl look on her face and says against Mom’s neck, “I thought it was Kool-Aid.”

Mom says, “Of course you did,” all warm and mom-like and her eyes fill up with tears. “If I saw a tall glass of red stuff I’d think the same thing.”

A couple hours later Margie’s asleep. I feel wired and hungry, but I don’t say anything about it to Mom. In the room’s other chair Mom smiles at me. “I say we go downstairs and hunt up a cup of coffee and a cold drink, maybe a candy bar,” she says to me. I scoot forward faster than I intended to, in my chair.

“You think it’s okay to leave her?” I ask Mom.

Mom nods. “For five or ten minutes.” I stand up when Mom does and follow her out of the room and down the hall to the elevator. I push the down button and we wait.

“How’s your feet?’ I ask my mom.

She shrugs, “Okay. Not near as bad as they looked.”

I nod. There’s a ding and the elevator door slides open. We get in, the door closes and after a little lurch we start down. Mom puts her fingers in my hair. “You know, Billy, every cloud’s got a silver lining.”

I look up at her. “What silver lining does this one have?”

“Well, we get to spend some time together, just you and me. That don’t happen often.”

“I’m glad you didn’t make me go home,” I tell my mom.

“I’m glad I didn’t too, Billy Boy. I’m glad I didn’t, too.”

When I get there George has already laid her on the bed. He’s red-faced and aggravated. Mable’s rearing up and taking big roundhouse swings at him. “Mable, Mable,” I coo. “Calm down, Mable.”

“Oh God, Honey, I’m glad to see you. This big bastard is… ”

I gently wrap Mable’s wrists with my hands. George pulls down her pants. “What are… ?” Mable’s mad. “Honey! Let go of my hands so I can knock hell out of this bastard.”

“Mable that’s why I have your hands. So you won’t knock hell out of him.”

Mable flops back in defeat. Her little roommate, June Moricle, tries to pull a drawn curtain to see what’s going on. In a tiny voice she says, “I’m scared. Oh, I’m afraid. I’m so scared. Scared to death. I’m frightened. Terrified. I don’t know when I’ve been so scared.”

Mable is struggling, trying to loosen my hold on her wrists.

“Be still, Mable,” I urge softly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mrs. Moricle.”

“Be still you say? Look what he’s doing to me, Honey.”

“He’s putting dry pants on you,” I tell Mable.

“What kind of pants?”

“Dry ones. Yours are wet.”

“Wet? How did my pants get wet?”

“Somebody threw water on you.” I don’t have the heart to tell Mable she’s pissed herself.

“What kind of place is this, Honey, that they’d throw water on you when all your doing is minding your own business? Oh look now what he’s… ” She’s angry again. “He’s got me naked. Let me hit the big son-of-a-bitch, Honey.”

“No, Mable. You can’t hit him. He’ll be finished in a minute.”

George manages to get a dry brief on Mable and pull her dress down. I let go of her wrists. She lunges up and takes an angry jab at George ,but she misses by a mile. She continues to fight him, but cooperates with me as we get her back in her wheelchair.

Mable is in her early eighties. She looks like the guy on the Quaker Oats box. She has all the femininity of a jackhammer, but she is partial to dresses and often wears a puffed-sleeved gingham one like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Mable compliments this blue and white tied at the waist number with brown, size-14 lace-up shoes. She has white, Charmin soft hair and wears black cat-eye glasses.

Mable’s voice is… it’s Hulk Hogan-ish. And she hates the dining room. She feels about the dining room like Bush feels about gay marriage. When it’s time for all the little old people to eat someone will come and find me, no matter where in the building I’m working, and ask if I want to push Mable to the dining room?

Of course I want to push Mable to the dining room. She hates the dining room! Oh, but she loves me. She looks at me the way George Michael looks at a stranger’s pecker. The way a fat kid looks at cake.

I grab the handles of her wheelchair. “Honey, oh you’re pushing me somewhere. Honey, where are you taking me? I’m so glad to see you, Honey. We’re going somewhere, Honey, where are we… ”

I turn a corner and the dining room comes into view. Mable plants her big feet, Fred Flintstone-style, throwing on her brakes. The look of utter horror and disgust she slaps on is nothing short of hilarious.

Sometimes Mable doesn’t quite remember how to cuss, but she’s quick to try and let’s loose with a “No Honey. Not this slop dick gin lick dump fuck hole!”

“Mable, you have to eat,” I tell her.

“Honey, not in there I don’t. That’s a pig cunt sty… and I ain’t going near it.”

Mable’s heavy. Her feet are huge. I can’t budge her chair, so I turn her around and drag her into the dining room backwards.

“Why are you forcing me to eat in this cock and fried mess, Honey?”

I park Mable at a table and leave. I go back to my side of the building and get back to work.

Felicia comes by a few minutes later. She asks if I’ve seen Mable. She needs to give her a pill.

I nod. “She’s in the slop dick gin lick dump fuck hole,” I tell her.

At 6 p.m. every evening Mable gets a vaginal suppository. This is an endeavor that takes 11 people to execute. One to insert the suppository and 10 to hold her down.

Felicia, our charge nurse, a pretty black woman, is usually elected to give Mable her nightly suppositories. Felicia is brave and possibly even meaner than Mable.

I am pretty crafty and I’m somehow never available to do any inserting or holding down. But often, just a couple of seconds after the deed’s been done and the suppository is in, I’ll bust into Mable’s room and showily throw all 11 inserters or holder-downers out.

“What the hell are you people doing to my Mable?” I’ll demand.

Mable grabs onto my arm like it’s a life preserver.

“Oh Honey, I’m so glad you’re here,” she sobs. “You wouldn’t believe what they’re doing to me, Honey.”

“GET OUT!” I yell at my co-workers all of whom are over-worked and unamused. “There. There. Mable it’s all right now.”

“I’m afraid,” June Moricle says from the next bed. “I’m scared. Oh, I’m afraid. I’m scared to death. I’m nervous and scared. Oh, I’m afraid. Frightened to death. Afraid I tell you. Terrified. Scared. I don’t know when I’ve ever been this stricken.”

I help Mable up and back into her chair.

“Oh, I thank God for you, Honey.” Mable wipes at her eyes.

“And you should, Mable. I’m practically a saint.”

“Honey, I know. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

It usually takes Mable an hour or two to get over the suppository trauma. She sits in the hall in front of the nurse’s desk and whenever she sees me she throws her dress up, spreads her legs wide and pulls the crotch of her brief to one side to show me (and the world) her monk.

“Honey. They’ve done something to me. Come look at it, Honey.” She points to her big, bare, chubby twat with her free hand. Family members are walking by. “Honey, they lunged it or something. They broke one off in it. Come look at my pussy. See if it’s bleeding.” Mable then leans forward and frowns. Peering into the sunroom she asks, “Is it night time Honey?”

“It’s getting ready to storm, Mable.”

George passes by. Mable tries to kick him. He’s hot and sweaty and doesn’t even notice. George doesn’t love Mable like I do. Then again she hasn’t bit, kicked, cussed and clawed me like she has George.

A few minutes later George pushes Moricle up and sits her beside Mable. He locks the wheels on June’s chair, turns and hurries back down the hall.

Mable smiles at me. She looks over at Mrs. Moricle and takes my hand. “Honey, have you met Cilla Brubaker’s boy?”

Moricle says, “I’m scared.”

Felicia wants me to distract Mable while she gives her an insulin shot.

I nod.

“Mable, didn’t you tell me your daddy had show horses?”

“Oh yes, Honey! He had the most beautiful… ”

Felicia sticks her.

“…horses. Ouch, you fuckin hurt-er!” Mable swings at Felicia. Felicia easily dances out of reach.

“Did you see what she did, Honey?” Mable asks me. “She put glass in my arm. Did you see her?”

“I gave you a shot,” Felicia says.

“Yeah, well if I could get out of this chair I’d give you something,” Mable assures her.

A little while later my friend Buffy and I pass by Mable on our way to the break room. Mable grabs my shirt and pulls me toward her. Mable thinks if she has her hand in front of her mouth she is whispering but her Hulk Hogan voice doesn’t lower an octave.

There’s just the hand in front of her mouth when she says, “Honey, you got to watch out for the niggers.” Buffy is black and a half dozen or so of my coworkers milling around the desk are.

“Oh? Why is that, Mable?”

“Honey, they’ll steal you blind.”

“They will? Do you think their being black has anything to do with it?” I egg her on.

“Oh yeah, Honey. It’s in their blood. They have to steal. Especially electronics.”

Buffy shakes her head and moves on. Black aids and nurses look tiredly at me and then at Mabel. When they’re more rested some will plot to get even with me.

I get back from my break. Mable and Moricle haven’t moved. There’s a weather report on TV and Buffy turns up the volume.

Felicia’s heels click on the tile floor. Mable watches her approach. Mable’s short-term memory isn’t what it used to be. She knows she hates Felicia, but can’t quite remember why.

Mable looks at me and her hand goes in front of her mouth again. She whisper-shouts, “Honey, this one coming here is a bitch. A raping bitch.”

“Which one, Mable?” I ask.

Felicia glares at me as she moves by.

“The one that just walked by, Honey. She’s a bitch and a nigger and a lesbian.”

Felicia stops, backs up and stands hands on hips in front of Mable.

“What did you call me old woman?”

“Honey, there wasn’t nobody talking to you,” Mabel tells her curtly.

I chuckle.

Felicia turns on me. “Be careful, Browning. Some of your best friends are bitches, niggers and lesbians.”

I shake my head. “Not since Mable warned me about you people. I have a lot of electronics.”

Felicia walks over to Buffy. They have a worrisome little whispering session.

I go back to work. Felicia comes to me and tells me George has to leave early. She’s pulling me to the floor and I have to put Mable and Moricle to bed for the night. I don’t mind. I didn’t like what I was doing anyway.

I push Mable to her room. Someone has laid Moricle down already but she’s on top of her covers and she’s pulled her brief off.

Moricle, a teeny tiny woman, a mousy woman looks at me.

“I’m afraid,” she says softly, over and over. “I’m scared. Oh, I’m afraid. I’m scared to death. I’ve never been so afraid. I’m scared. Frightened to death. Afraid I tell you. I’m so afraid. So scared. I’ve never been so scared.”

Mable looks up at me. “Honey, it’s just a hunch but I’m thinking that little bitch over there is afraid.”

I laugh and start undressing Mable. A briefless Moricle worries me though. She often has diarrhea. A projectile type of diarrhea but I decide to risk it and get Mable in bed first. I take off her shoes.

“Honey, what are you doing?”

“I’m getting you ready for bed.”

“Are you going to lay down with me?”

“Mable that’s the best offer I’ve had all week, but I can’t. I still have a lot of work to do.”

I get Mable’s dress off before I realize I don’t have a gown for her.

“Wait just a minute, Mable, and I’ll be right back.”

I go out into the hall. I find the linen cart but there are no gowns on it. I’ll have to get one from Laundry.

A long-awaited storm hits Louisville and Waiting To Die Manor like a truck slamming into a wall. In Mable’s and Moricle’s room some plants and perfume bottles are knocked over and a window slams shut.

The window slamming scares a scared Moricle so bad she lets loose a blast of diarrhea that sprays a wall, Mable’s bed and Mable.

Unaware any of this has happened, I reenter the room.

It looks like a tornado has ripped through.

Moricle is standing in the middle of her bed (something I didn’t even think possible), naked from the waist down.

Plants and pretty, colorful bottles litter the floor and Mable is splattered with feces.

My mouth drops open in disbelief. “Mable, what happened?”

Mable calmly takes off her glasses.

“Honey, the wind blew, the shit flew and then there you stood.”

The wind blew… the shit flew… and then there I stood.

The story of my life.

I think of the times in my life when one minute everything is fine and normal, and the next minute simply and unexpectedly the wind blows, the shit flows and there I stand. With little choice but to deal, to calm and right things as best I can, to clean up the shit.

To hope the shit that comes my way both literal and figurative is a sort of cosmic fertilizer and from it something good will grow.

And to carry on.

This is me carrying on.

Yep. A rooster. I work off of Hurstbourne Lane. There’s miles of shopping, heavy traffic. It’s an area where you don’t expect to encounter roosters.

This one’s red, a bit on the thin side and doesn’t want to let me pass. I fake to my right and then cut left to get around it. I enter a side door and find the usual mob gathered around.

“HI, BILL!” Wilson screams. I fall and trip over old people while trying to get to the time clock before it clicks 2:31.

Ahhh, I made it. It’s then that I notice how hot the place is. The new air conditioner is still not installed. I put my book bag down.

Reba sidles over and rolls her eyes up at me. “I’m glad you came curry curr standin’. I need to go to daddy’s and fortitude with you maybe.”

I have come to the conclusion Reba could be an Al Quaida operative, or maybe in cahoots with my first wife. Driving me totally mad seems to be her main purpose in life. I’m tempted to tell our government about her. She could be quite a helpful tool. Put her in a cell at Abu Ghraib or some such place with a terrorist you want information from and I guarantee in 30 minutes he’ll be singing like a drunk Supreme and reminiscing about the good old days, when beatings and sexual humiliation were all he had to suffer.

“Reba, please, I have to get a report.”

“Well, I know you do, but all in all you could fly forth.”

I ignore the crazy old crone and turn to the day nurse on duty. She looks utterly wilted as she tells me about a new admit in 203. “Polly Spencer. She’s continent and ambulatory and as crazy as the rest of them,” Day Nurse says.

“There’s a rooster in the parking lot,” I tell her.

“I know,” she says. “It’s been out there awhile.” The day nurse gathers her purse and keys.

“It looks hungry,” I say to no one in particular.

Day Nurse tells me to have a good day and hurries out.

I count narcotics with Bobby, the cute Cuban CMT. Today he looks flushed and sweat beads his nice forehead. “Jonquil Doonan has name the bird Randall,” he says.

“Randall The Rooster. I like it,” I say.

I open the cart. Bobby punches out and I watch him weave his way through the old people and leave.

Reba is again at my side. “Wind for swing to the store and cracked corn?” she asks.

“I have no idea what you’re asking, Reba.” I open my medication book.

“Well, if it’s hungry feathers wide open, feed it.”

“I can’t go to the store, Reba, and that Rooster is not my responsibility,” I tell her.

“Well, somebody did for too long a time and it could die.”

I sigh and start getting medicines together. Reba moves away. A woman I’ve never seen is walking slowly toward me. I figure she must be Polly Spencer.

“Can I help you?”

She narrows her eyes. “You killed Marvin.”

I roll my eyes heavenward.

“RUNNERS!” Wilson screams, and points to the glass doors.

I run. Shit! Reba and Jonquil have followed the lab guy out.

Wilson pounds the arms of his wheelchair. “GET ‘EM, BILL!”

By the time I punch in the code and dash through both sets of glass doors, Reba and Jonquil have broken into a jog. I quickly catch up to them.

I run alongside Reba for a minute or so. She looks over and smiles.

“Where are you going?” I ask, casually.

“I need to fly around to Daddy’s… ”

“Is that where you’re going too, Jonquil?”

Jonquil smiles and nods. She’s even smaller than Reba.

“Come on ladies, I know the way!” I say excitedly and run ahead of them.

They look at each other, like “is this the greatest guy in the world or what?”

I jog them through the flower garden, around the back and straight into the building.

A door slams shut and locks behind us and Reba skids to a stop. Jonquil crashes into her.

“This is where they trolley back and began!” Reba says disgustedly.

Drenched in sweat, I return to my cart and look at the clock. Only 18 minutes of my workday have passed.

“BILL CALL THE KKKKKKITCHEN AND FFFFFFIND OUT WHAT WE’RE HAVING FOR SSSSSSSUPPER,” Wilson starts his ordering me around shit. I go to the phone. I talk to someone in dietary and hang up.

“Fried chicken, Wilson.”

“FFFFFFried cccccchhhhhhicken on Tuesday?”

“That’s what they said, Wilson.”

Don Davis steps into the hallway. He has an accordion strapped to the front of him. Don can’t remember his room number or his daughter’s name but he can play 23 different polkas. Apparently in no mood for polkas today he tears into “In the Sweet By and By.”

Reba’s at my elbow again. “This ain’t Daddy’s place,” she says, like, ”you bastard.”

“Reba, go sit down.”

“Well you ran and mere blister pack to quick where we started. I know that!”

“I couldn’t leave you outside, Reba.”

And so it goes for a while.

At around four o’clock, I sneak out back for a smoke. I see the four hunky, mouth-breathers that’ve been working at installing the new air conditioner are chilling in a van.

I put my cigarette out and go back in. Another hour slogs by.

We’re not suppose to give anyone medication while they’re eating, but I sometimes do. The dining room is pretty crowded today. Mrs. Beeker smiles at me. “Did you know we’re having fried chicken for supper?” she asks.

“I did know that,” I tell her.

“It’s Tuesday,” she says, and shrugs her shoulders.

“I know, Flora. Doesn’t it seem strange to you we’re having fried chicken on a Tuesday, and that rooster out front has suddenly gone missing?”

“Oh, you don’t think… ”

“I don’t know, Flora. Draw whatever conclusions you want,” I say.

“You’re bad!” Carolyn Coffman says. Carolyn, only 41 years old, has suffered a massive stroke. Her right side is as firm and supple as a hard-working dancer’s. Her left side is as stiff and useless as a nerd’s dick. You can see that once, not too long ago, both of her sides were pretty.

At a nearby table Jonquil takes the lid off her tray. She stares at a fried wing and thigh. “RANDALL!” she wails and throws the lid straight up in the air.

Wilson spits out a mouth full of chicken and I hurry out of the dining room.

I get back to my cart. Relentless Reba is waiting for me.

“Do you have time to take mooser foo toward Floyd County?”

I glare at her.

“Well, all I asked was!”

“GO SIT DOWN,” I say through clenched teeth.

Reba’s eyes go all mean. She shakes her head, turns, and I’m pretty sure she mumbles, “You don’t want no fucking Jihad up in this mother!” as she walks away.

Waiting To Die Manor has a number of bird feeders mounted on poles. While everyone is at supper, I go out, open them all and scatter birdseed around the parking lot. Randall watches me from under a bush.

As my residents finish eating, they stop by my cart and line up like geriatric junkies to get their meds.

At 10:15 most everyone is in bed. It’s still unbearably hot on my wing and I’m trying to finish my paperwork. Abigail Fischer rounds a corner.

“Hey woman.” I smile.

“Hi, Bill. I want to use the phone. I need to call Money Grubbin’ Whore.”

I hand Abigail the phone.

Polly Spencer peers over the high desk. “You got by with killing Sheila and the baby but you’ll never get away with Marvin’s murder,” she says.

I ignore her. She eventually turns around and heads down the hall to her room.

While talking to her daughter-in-law, Abigail grows frustrated. “I don’t want to talk about that. That’s the PAST and I refuse to talk it. I don’t want to talk about a future that may never take place, either, but we can talk about the present if you want. I fucking love talking about the present. I even think it’s a great name for it, don’t you? The present, you know, present — like a nice, unexpected gift. I’ve always said screw yesterday and screw tomorrow, but unwrap today, and every damn day you get, one at a time and then treat each of them like the gift from God they are.”

I finish my work and check the time. 10:29. I grab my book bag and at 10:30 I punch out. My testicles feel like two marbles in an old gym sock after eight hours of unspeakable heat.

Nearing my car I see Randall is pacing in front of the driver’s side door. “You should be in bed,” I tell him. “Don’t you like have to be up at the crack of dawn?”

I go around and climb in on the passenger side and scoot over and behind the wheel. I start the engine.

“In the sweeeeet… by and byyyyyyyyy… we will meet on that beautiful shore… .” While driving home Don’s damn accordion plays in my head.

I climb the few steps to my front door and put my key in the lock. Cool air hits me as I step inside my apartment. Max is back-flips-glad to see me. A smiling D-Brizzle greets me, too.

“How was your day, Dad?”

“It was Hell, like usual. Like “Night Of The Living Dead” meets The fucking “Golden Girls… ”

“Unwrap today and every damn day you get… one at a time and then treat each one like the gift from God they are,” I remember Abigail’s words and smile at my son.

“Actually, Dan, my day was fine.” I change my mind.

“How was yours?” I ask.

She was stunned to see me in eye shadow and lipstick and wearing several of her beautiful necklaces. I’d also clipped on some blue and green earrings that looked like sparkling dragonflies.

In an instant, Mom’s face went angry and hateful. She dropped the clean and folded laundry and before I knew what was happening, pounced on me.

“GODDAMN YOU!” she screamed. She hit me hard on the side of my head an earring skipped across the polished wood floor. “You little fuckin’…”

I cried out when she tore the other dragonfly off my ear and yanked the necklaces off my neck. Colored beads splashed and bounced around us. Then my mother pulled me by the hair down a long hallway and into the bathroom.

“You goddamn little . . . fuckin’ GIRL!” she screamed. “I will not have this! DO YOU HEAR ME? I will not raise a goddamn queer! I WON’T!”

Surprised and scared, I tried to pry her hand out of my hair. I’d seen my mother mad, but I’d never witnessed — and certainly never inspired — this kind of fury.

Mom threw the hot water tap on and shoved my head under a near scalding stream. I was crying now. Mom pulled me from under the horribly hot water and slung me into a peach-colored tile wall. Through confused tears, I watched as she angrily soaped up, not a rag, but a brush, a stiff-bristled brush that she used on the dirty floor sometimes.

“Mom! No! . . . please Mom! . . . I won’t . . . ”

Like a demented and snarling animal she advanced toward me.

“COME HERE TO ME! Goddamn you again!” Mom grabbed my hair again and started scrubbing my face. She went after me harder than she’d ever gone after any floor. I screamed and begged and fought her but she kept on scrubbing. She lost her hold on me and then backhanded me and I hit the wall again.

“Goddamn you . . . Goddamn you . . . I’ll die and go to hell before I raise . . . a goddamn . . . fuckin’ . . . little . . . pansy-ass . . . FAGGOT!” Mom put the brush in her other hand and leapt on me again.

When she finally fell to the floor, spent and exhausted, I ran out of the bathroom and down the hall to my room. A room I shared with three brothers who thankfully weren’t home. My face was stinging and my mind raced. I slammed the door and pulled a chest in front of it. It would buy me enough time to climb out a window and get away if she came after me again, I thought.

Moments passed and I calmed a little. My face felt like it was on fire. I touched my cheek and looked at my fingers. I made my way over to a mirror. My forehead and both my cheeks were bleeding. I picked up one of the clean white Tee shirts my mom dropped earlier and pressed it to my face.

A half-hour passed and then an hour. I picked up and put away the laundry. I located and gathered all the beads and jewels and put them in an empty shoebox that I had in my closet.

When I couldn’t find anymore of the scattered beads I sat down on my bed and heard a soft knock on my door.

Mom tried the door, easily pushed it and the chest into the room. She walked up to me and lifted her hands in a “come to momma” move that I misinterpreted. I flinched, and she burst into hysterical tears.

“God, Almighty, help me, if one of my babies is so afraid to come to me . . . ” She backed away a couple of steps. “Look what I’ve done to my boy! Lord-Jesus-God forgive me.”

Mom was crying hard now and after surprise-rushing me again she gathered me into her arms. Though I was near as big as she was, she lifted me up, turned and sat on the bed and her frantic arms urged me into a tight ball.

“Baby . . . I’m sorry, Billy, honey, I’m so sorry . . . but I was also . . . Oh God . . . scared when I saw you like that! I’m afraid you’re tryin’ to be something that . . . oh, JESUS-LORD, help me!

Help this little boy!” she wailed at the ceiling. “What you’re trying to be, Baby, is a really hard thing to be.”

I started crying, too, mostly because my mom was crying.

“Oh baby, your face is bleeding again . . . Billy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” she said. And then we both just cried. Mom rocked me, and after what seemed like a long, nice while she released her hold me and let me climb to the floor.

Then Mom reached out and took both my hands in hers. Her red, swollen eyes looked into mine. “I got some money hid, Billy. Nobody knows about it. It’s quite a bit of money. I’m gonna let you stay home from school tomorrow and I’m thinking we’ll take a cab up to the K-Mart. Baby, I’m gonna buy you every coloring book in the place . . . ” she busted out crying again “ . . . and the big box of crayons.”

Mom was crying so hard she could barely talk. “The really — oh Heaven, help me — the big, big box of crayons, Baby. The one with the sharpener in the back and I swear to you, Son, listen to me, I swear to you, I’ll never lay an ungentle hand on you again. I might yell at you, and I might cuss you some, but I won’t ever touch you mad and crazy like that no more. Okay?”

“Okay, Mom, but . . . I don’t need no coloring books,” I said. “I got one I ain’t finished yet.”

“Well after tomorrow, you’ll have about a hundred of them. And if anybody asks you how you got ‘em, you just tell ‘em it ain’t none of their fuckin’ business, you hear? Better yet, you refer ‘em to me, and I’ll tell ‘em.” My mom smiled and real weary-like she stood. I went to my dresser and picked up the shoebox.

“I’m sorry your necklaces got broke . . . ”

Mom acted like she didn’t want to take the box. She started crying again. “I need to start supper,” she said, and taking the rattling box, she left the room.

I walked to my bedroom window. I hoped all the crying was over. Tears make a burning face sting worse. Out the corner of my eye I see my mom standing in the doorway again.

“I want to tell you something else, Billy.”

I waited.

“If you want to play with my makeup and jewelry and things, you can, honey. I don’t mind. But . . . you gotta be careful. Just do it when they ain’t nobody here, okay?”

“I don’t need to play with that stuff anymore, Mom,” I said. “I should have asked you first,” I said.

“It’s okay. You was just being curious a way a boy like you is curious. Nothin’ wrong with it. Nothin’ at all. I just don’t want you to . . . well . . . only do it when it’s just you and me here. Secret-like.”

“I don’t want to play with that stuff no more,” I said again, and I didn’t.

“Well, if you change your mind you can but when no one’s around, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

Mom didn’t scrub away my “gay” that day, just my skin. I stayed home for two weeks. My mom told the school it was none of their goddamn business why I was out. And she kept her word about K-Mart and bought me seven coloring books and a gigantic box of crayons. She also bought me some colored markers and drawing paper and a red belt just because I liked it.

Three days after those terrible moments in the bathroom, Mom came out to the backyard where I was playing. Thinking I was in some sort of trouble again I worriedly watched her approach.

Mom stops a few feet in front of me. She’s wearing a pink housedress and she smells nice. “Billy, honey, I wanted to talk to you with nobody around.”

I shield my eyes from the sun and wait for her to talk.

“Baby, sometimes moms don’t know what to say or they say the wrong things and then after they have a little while to think . . . They figure out things to say that are more right.” Mom looks back toward the house.

“Honey, I told you that you could play with my things but you should only do it when no one’s around. . . . Well, listen, you do it anytime you want. Ya here? Even if your daddy and brothers are home. I don’t have to hide or live in fear and as long as there’s a breath in my body you don’t have to either. You dress up or make yourself up anytime you want and if any of them bastards say one cross word to you, and I hear about it, I’ll chew their goddamn balls off.” Mom smiled.

She actually looked kind of pretty standing there in the sun. I didn’t know if “chew their balls off” was one of those figures of speech or something she might really try to do, but either way, it conjured pictures in my head I didn’t want there.

I broke off a piece of willow and fiddled with it. “I don’t want to play with your stuff anymore, Mom,” I said.

My mom stood there for a while just studying my face. “Well, suit yourself, Baby. I’m just saying, you ain’t never got to hide. Not in your own house. Them fuckers in there get to be themselves and you get to be you too. Okay? Got it?”

I nodded.

“Talk to me, Baby. What are you feeling right now?”

I shrugged. The only thing I was feeling was a little embarrassed about how dirty my hands were.

Mom smiled and turned slowly. I watched her make her way back, up a few steps and disappear behind a door.

In a house full of testosterone-fueled brothers and uncles, home for a gay boy can be a pretty scary and confusing place. When I was that young, it was almost always the last place I wanted to be.

I was 8 years old and I was gay. Before I’d ever much feel any kind of “sexual” I was gay. There are all those people in the “It’s a choice column” who don’t believe you can be 8 years old and gay, but they’re wrong. You can be 3 years old and gay. I was. But I didn’t know what to call it and I didn’t choose it. It chose me.

That third-grade boy, watching his sight-challenged mother make her way across the violently green back yard, had characteristics and interests my slew of brothers didn’t have. They had characteristics and interests I didn’t. Like, already, I could name all of the different types of flowers and plants that grew in and around our yard and I’d already started spending a lot of time in a library near my house. All of my brothers could tell you the make and model of every car that drove down our street and they had already started spending a lot of time in garages.

I looked into the sky and wished the library was open that very moment. It was the only place in the world I felt safe, the only place where I could relax and breathe a little. I loved those shelves full of books. To me they were like jars with bits of great people’s minds in them and even if someone called you names in a library they had to whisper them.

I hated shouting when I was 8. I hate it now. Hateful, hurtful people confused me then. They confuse me now.

So, I’m standing there in the back yard. Mom’s back in the house, but two of my bothers are also home and I have to pee. I hate it but I have to go in. I open the back door off the kitchen as quietly as is humanly possible, but my mom has these bionic ears . . . “Billy? BILLY!”

I stand at the kitchen doorway. My mom is opening a can of something.

She looks up. “Honey, you know Juanita’s boy, Joe Eddie?”

I look at her and nod.

“Honey, what do you think about him?”

Joe Eddie Singleton made me feel nervous. A different kind of nervous than George and Larry, my brothers, made me feel. He was 10 years old and like my brothers, but nicer. He knew about sports and cars, too, but he was willing to like you — and not be mean to you and not make fun of you — if you didn’t know about them.

Still, even though he was nice, he made me nervous. I liked looking at him like I liked looking at flowers and plants. But just hearing his name made me nervous.

“Honey, are you okay?”

I nod again.

“So, tell me, what do you think about Joe Eddie?”

“He makes me feel nervous,” I admit softly.

It was Mom’s turn to nod. “You know, when him and Juanita was over here Wednesday I kind of picked up on that. That’s why I’m glad I invited him over tomorrow to have lunch with us.”

“You invited Joe Eddie here for lunch?” I suddenly needed to sit down.

“I sure did. Juanita needs to do something for a couple of hours tomorrow around noon, so I told her he could come over. I thought I’d make us some lunch. It’s okay, Billy. I’ll make sure it’s just the three of us.” My mom smiled and turned and rinsed her hands under the tap.

“Just the three of us?” I said weakly.

“Yeah, I know when I’m nervous around someone the best thing for me is just to be around them, until I don’t feel nervous anymore. So I thought . . . well, I told Juanita I’d start looking after Joe Eddie some for her. I think you and him could be real good friends. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I nod again.

“Come on in here, Honey. I want to show you my new slicer. I love it. I just got it in the mail.” I walk to the counter where Mom’s preparing supper. “It’s from Ronco,” she says. “It’s amazing. This thing will slice 70 tomatoes in less than a minute. Watch.”

I want to ask my mom how often she has a need to slice 70 tomatoes in a minute, but I don’t.

Mom slams the top part of the slicer down on three tomatoes. They’re mashed flat. Juice and seeds spray out all four sides of the thing. We both jump back.

“Oh this fuckin’ piece of . . . shit!” She tries prying the thing’s jaws open.

I turn and head for the bathroom. “The stuff you send off for never works, Mom,” I say over a shoulder. “Dad’s told you. I’ve told you, to just stop sending off for shit, Mom.”

My mom has been tricked into going. Sharon and I have led her to believe it’s a Tupperware party.

Sharon and I park in front of her apartment. Mom is at the door and ready to go.

She gives Marsha some last minute instructions. I unlock the back door and Mom climbs into the car.

“Mark is throwing a goddamn fit,” she says.

Mark is my brother. He is mentally retarded and doesn’t like to let Mom out of his sight.

I back up and point the car in the direction of Kim’s house, where the party is going to be.

“Don’t worry about Mark,” I tell Mom. “He’ll be fine for a few hours without you.”

“Is Bonnie coming?” Mom asks.

“Yes. I talked to her a couple of hours ago. She’ll be there.”

“Good,” Mom says.

I’m happy, too. I always have fun with Bonnie.

Mom sits back. “I’m kind of glad to be going to this,” she says. “That stuff you buy in the store — it ain’t nothing like Tupperware. Sharon, do you remember the tumblers that you used to could get? They were like eight different colors and they came with a caddy thing. I hope they still have those. I’ll get me a set. And I used to have this really nice container you could store your cold cuts in after you opened them. I hope they have those too.”

Sharon and I look at each other.

We get to Kim’s, park and climb out of the car. Mom pats her Chia-pet hair, straightens her huge glasses and checks the buttons on her sweater. We go in.

There’s a dozen or so women sitting in a semi-circle of chairs in Kim’s living room. Bonnie’s one of them. She looks fabulous. I hug her and say hi to all the other women. Everyone is thrilled to see Mom. She rarely makes an appearance anywhere these days.

A woman Mom and Nezzie work with named Faye gets up and lets Mom have her chair. “Oh! Thank you,” Mom says.

Faye’s daughter, Jennifer, and a neighbor of Kim’s named Candy have volunteered along with one of the Fantasy Party reps to model lingerie.

Jennifer has a body like Elle McPherson and a head like Gene Wilder. Candy is tragically bucked-toothed, but is otherwise attractive; she has really great hair. The Fantasy Party rep/model looks pretty good in next to nothing.

For a while, various skimpy looking things are modeled while other sexy women’s garments are held up or passed around for a closer look. Mom, looking both eager and confused, takes it all in.

A chair between Mom and Bonnie empties up and I grab it. Dildos are now being distributed and passed around the room along with some of the underwear and silky things.

Mom is handed a dildo that’s heavy looking and has a crank protruding from it She holds the thing up close to her glasses and then holds it far out to view it another way. She calmly turns the crank a few times and then hands it to me.

I pass it to Bonnie like it’s on fire. She quickly gives it to the woman next to her.

Mom leans in to me: “This ain’t no Tupperware party.” She flops back in her chair. “It’s Fuckerware,” she says, in utter disappointment.

Jennifer, the Gene Wilder-looking girl, recognizes Bonnie and rushes up. She is in a red teddy and matching panties. “How are you?” she asks Bonnie. “My, you look great! I think the last time I saw you was at Angela’s funeral.”

Mom leans forward and says, “Honey, why are you in your underwear?”

“It’s a Fantasy Party, Peggy. I’m modeling things that they’re selling.”

My mom gives me a dirty look.

“Jennifer!” The Fantasy rep’s voice calls out from down a hall somewhere.

“Excuse me,” Jennifer says, and leaves.

“Did you go to Angela’s funeral?” Bonnie asks me.

“No. I really should have though.”

“Everybody was talking about how good Angela looked. I tell ya, they were all lying. She was ghastly. The deadest looking dead woman I ever saw.”

“I remember when cars had a crank on them to get them started. So it makes sense they’d put one on a fake doo-loller.” Mom was talking to a woman sitting behind us that I didn’t know.

Buck-toothed Candy, taking the modeling thing a little too seriously, has changed into something very see-through and edged in black feathers. She struts her stuff.

Sharon, in the doorway of the kitchen, seems to be having fun. “Why don’t you model some crotchless panties for us, Bill?”

“Honey, don’t do it,” Mom says. “I ain’t seen your pecker since you was about 12 and I really don’t want to now.”

“I don’t want to show it to you, Mom.”

“You could show it to the rest of us,” buck-toothed Candy says.

“Some of us didn’t get see it when you were 12.”

“You’d have to take me to dinner a few times first.”

“Honey, save your money,” my mom says. “It won’t be a fair trade. He ain’t a bit interested in seeing anything of yours.”

Nezzie pulls a chair over, closer to where we’re sitting. “Peggy have you done something different to your hair?”

Mom touches her miserable hair. “Oh, I just got it permed again. My hair is so fine. I have to perm it to give it a little body.”

Bonnie looks at me.

Mom’s white hair is electrocuted-poodle curly, but I don’t say anything.

“What?” Mom asks.

“Nothing.” I refuse to be drawn in.

“Bill hates perms,” my mom tells Nezzie.

More dildos in various shapes and sizes come our way. Mom seems to be taking a little more interest in them. The doorbell rings and Kim welcomes a friend of hers that I’ve seen at some of these gatherings before. Her name is Roberta and she looks . . . picture Bea Arthur dressed like a hoochie. Everyone seems glad to see her.

The Fantasy rep has somehow joined us and is rubbing something on my mom’s hand.

“Now blow on it and you can feel it getting hot,” the rep tells Mom.

“You’re supposed to put it on yourself down there?” Mom asks.

“Yes,” Fantasy rep girl says. “Or on a man’s penis.”

“And it burns? . . . Honey, if you’re here for Tupperware,” Mom tells Roberta, “you’re about to be rudely disappointed.”

“I ain’t needin’ no Tupperware,” Roberta assures the assemblage.

Mom turns back to Rep Girl, “And this stuff, it gets hot?”

“It gets warm. Can you feel it?”

“Yes. It’s like UTI in a bottle. That’s really going to get me raring to go.” Mom shakes her head, totally unimpressed with the product.

A green plastic thing that looks like a skinny dick with the head severely bent sideways is handed to Mom. She looks at it. And then at me.

“It’s a tool designed to reach your G-spot,” I tell her.

“Most penises won’t reach . . . ” the rep girl tries to help explain. Mom doesn’t need the help.

“Oh, Hank’s won’t get to G,” she says. “He has trouble reaching D.”

“Have you ever had your G-spot stimulated?” Rep Girl asks Mom.

“Honey, I’ve looked for it and I can’t find it. Maybe I could locate it with this, though.”

“How do you know about G-spots?” I ask Mom.

“HBO,” she says, still eying the green toy closely. “Men don’t have a G-spot, do they, Bill?”

“No, Mom, but if I had one, the best tool to stimulate mine would be a checkbook.”

“I heard that!” Bea Arthur Hoochie Woman says.

Mom hands the dildo off to the woman that I don’t know behind her. “I gotta be careful here. A while back, Nezzie told me Jerry liked it when she pinched his nipples and one night I gave both of Hank’s a real good squeeze and he damned near wanted to fight me. I know now everyone don’t like the same thing. Do you like it when somebody pinches your nipples Bill?”

It’s not easy being the only guy at a Fantasy Party.

“No Mom. I don’t like it.”

Mom leans forward and tells Bonnie, “Everyone don’t like the same things.”

“Oh I know,” Bonnie says.

“Hank ordered me to stop talking to other people about sex, but I don’t listen to him on things like that.”

“Roger wants me to dress up,” I heard someone say.

Mom looks around. It’s the woman behind her.

“Hell ain’t sex a good time to get undressed?” she says.

“With Paul, the bus never arrives on schedule,” Patsy says. Patsy is a long-time friend of Sharon’s, dating back to high school.

“Honey, what’s she talking about?” Mom asks, blinking violently.

“He’s a premature ejaculator,” I tell Mom.

She looks at me. “You mean some aren’t?”

“Some aren’t,” I assure her. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m seeing lightning bolts in front of my eyes. Honey, what’s this?”

“It’s a butt-plug, Mom.”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s kind of self-explanatory, Mom. Butt. Plug.”

“You plug it into your butt?”

I nod.

“Is it for people with a leakage problem?”

“No, some find it pleasurable to insert something . . . ”

“That big in their ass?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, not me!” Mom shakes her head. “I have to put in a suppository now and then and I think they should make those smaller. Do you want something that big in you . . . um . . . never mind, let me ask this woman.”

“Anal anything isn’t for me,” Bonnie offers.

“Why plug a hole that don’t leak?” Mom asks the woman behind her. “And if it leaks bad enough you need something this size to stop it, I say order up some surgery, not a big plug. I mean, see a damn doctor!”

“That poor girl,” Bonnie talks to me low and out the corner of her mouth.

“Who?”

“Candy. Why don’t she do something about those teeth?”

“Those teeth of hers are dangerous,” Mom agrees hissingly. “She kissed me when I came in and I checked to see if I was bleeding. Honey, what is Roberta looking at over there?”

I sigh. “Ben-Wa balls, Mom.”

“Whose balls?”

“They’re . . . in this case . . . metal balls, Mom . . . Ben-Wa . . . it’s Asian. They’re . . . um . . . you put them . . . forget it, Mom.” I need something to drink.

I get up. Mom stands and follows me. We pass several small groups of women talking at the same time. Three women to my right discuss the pros and cons of swallowing. I hurry Mom past them.

Bonnie sidles up next to me. “Check out Jennifer’s friend with the blue tank top on,” she says out the side of her mouth.

“What about her?”

“She’s missing two toes on her left foot.”

“Bonnie!” I say scoldingly.

“She’s wearing sandals!” Bonnie defends herself.

Patsy and a woman named Nola are blocking the punch Sharon made and the cheese ball and crackers I bought. I go around them and grab a can of Pepsi.

“Get me one, Bill,” Mom says.

I get mom a soda and head back to the living room. I sit down. Jennifer immediately sits next to me. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. What?”

“If a man wants you to put something in his rectum does it mean he’s gay?” Gene Wilder looks anxious to get an answer.

“Kevin?” Mom has followed me. “He wants you to stick something up his ass?”

I ignore Mom. “It doesn’t mean he’s gay,” I tell Jennifer. “The anus . . . it’s an area on a man that . . . there’s a lot of nerve . . . No, Jennifer, it doesn’t mean he’s gay.”

“What does he want you to put up there?” Mom takes a slug of Pepsi.

My mother’s friend Margaret arrives late. There’s a brief meet and greet thing. Margaret’s brought a broccoli salad. She sets it down in the kitchen. “I’m sorry I’m late, Peggy. It’s been hell getting away . . . I’m not wearing my teeth. I hope you all don’t mind. They were itching and burning me something awful.”

“Those are hemorrhoid symptoms. Where were you wearing them?” I ask.

Margaret doesn’t get it, but Bonnie yelps.

“What kind of things does Kevin want you to put in his ass?” Mom asks Jennifer again. “There ain’t no Tupperware here,” she tells Margaret.

“Like a cucumber or carrot . . . the handle of a hair brush, once. Things like that.”

“Oh, I’d say he’s queer then,” Mom says, and blinks violently.

“Don’t listen to her, Jennifer. If he likes men, he’s gay. If he likes cucumbers, he’s . . . well, he’s something else.”

“You can say that again,” Mom says, and looks to Bonnie for agreement.

Bonnie laughs.

“All I know is, if he has something up his rectum he gets better erections,” Jennifer says.

I nod understandingly. “He’s drank a lot of alcohol over the years and that can effect . . . ”

“Hell! If it’ll give Hank better erections, I should shove one of them plugs up his pooper.”

Buck-toothed Candy, in regular clothes now, has joined us. Mom turns to her. “Are you still seeing Phil?” she asks.

“Oh, he makes a booty call now and then.”

“What kind of call?” Mom’s eyes swim behind her large glasses.

“A booty call. It’s when a man just wants sex from you.”

“A booty call . . . ” Mom frowns “ . . . and you answer?”

“I did the other night.”

“Booty call . . . ” My mom says again. I can see she is filing this away in her brain.

Margaret flips through a catalog.

Mom frowns at her. “Honey, if your searching for a tally-whacker with a crank on it, you’ve come to the right place. You can get some shit that’ll set your twat on fire, too. Or some Oriental guy’s balls, Ben somebody, but you ain’t going to find anything to put leftovers in. I wanted some tumblers, but they ain’t shit like that here.”

I get out of my chair and Bonnie takes it. I need a cigarette and start plotting an escape. Bonnie takes my arm and pulls me down to talk in my ear. “That woman in the red, Theresa? Kim’s sister-in-law, who just left — she ordered $227 worth of stuff!”

“You’re lying!” I say.

Bonnie shakes her head. “She did. Really.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Somebody needs to introduce her to an iron,” Bonnie says. “Did you see that wrinkled blouse?” She lets go of my sleeve and sits back.

The party is starting to wind down. I’m eating cheese ball on crackers like I’ll never get another meal. Jennifer is telling Bonnie how much she liked Jennifer Anniston’s hair and how she told the girl at Fantastic Sam’s, since they had the exact same name, to give her exact same cut.

Bonnie looks at me.

Jennifer’s hair looks exactly like Gene Wilder’s, but I keep a straight face.

Bonnie leans forward. Talking low and out the side of her mouth, she says, “It’s so sad, when someone is hideous and don’t realize it.”

Mom leafs through one of the catalogs. She looks up and thoughtful.

“It should be that none of this stuff is necessary, shouldn’t it?” she asks no one in particular. “It should be that God gave us all everything we’d need to turn on a man, shouldn’t it?”

A silence fell over the room.

I take Interstate 264 West and Mom’s apartment is only a few miles away.

The party was everything I expected it to be. Bonnie was in rare form and I’d had a good time.

But the real kicker is mom ordered (on a discreet form placed and sealed in an envelope) $116.43 worth of something and she won’t say what.

“Mom, you gotta tell me.”

“No, Honey. I respect mine and Hank’s privacy too much.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

I give up and wait for the light at Crums Lane to turn green.

I look over.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask Mom.

“Honey, I’m just wondering what I’m going to store my cold cuts in.”

“Where are you goin’ Dad?”

“I’m going to the Conven… “

Just the two syllables send the child into a sort of panicked tailspin. He runs. He darts and zigzags. He races down a hallway. He dashes back.

“Where’s my shoes, Dad?”

Dan is 3-and-a-half-years-old, and he loves Convenient Food Marts. These are little gas stations and stores that have sprung up on every corner in our city. They stay open 24 hours a day. And more than Disney World, more than boats or blue vans like Papaw’s, Danny loves Convenients. He calls them “The ‘Benient.”

“Listen to me, Danny. I’ll only be gone for like five minutes. I’m going to run straight in to the store and then back out. You stay here with Eric.”

“Stay here? No, Dad! Please! I need to go with you, Dad.” Danny spots a shoe under the couch and dives for it. “Dad, WAIT! Don’t! Wait, Dad!” Dan hurriedly slips on the shoe.

“I don’t know why you’re looking so hard for your other shoe, you’re not going with me.”

“Not going with you? Dad, I need to go with you. I have to go to the ‘Benient with you, Dad. I have to.”

An amused Eric listens and watches from the couch.

Danny’s panic increases as I move toward the door. “DAD! Wait… please… “ My child’s voice is muffled before he tears out of a closet carrying his other shoe.

“I need to go with you, Dad,” he says, beseechingly. “I need to go to The ‘Benient with you.”

I shake my head no and step onto the porch but then I can’t shut the door because my son’s little bare foot is in the way.

“Dad, you’re not letting me explain how I need to go. You’re not letting me tell you everything I need to tell you.”

I shake my head. This child breaks my heart. I love him so much I think I’ll bust sometimes and right now I can see myself in his dark green eyes, literally.

“Danny, I don’t want you to go with me. Not this time. Stay here and be good. I’ll be right back. Five minutes. I promise.”

“I love you, Dad, and I need to go with you. Please let me go with you. PLEASE! I need to go with you to The ‘Benient.”

Danny’s little foot is still stuck in the door and he’s still holding his other shoe.

“I love you too, Danny, but I need you to stay here.”

“No, Dad. Dad, you said you like me more than anybody and I like you more than anybody, so why can’t I go?”

“I don’t have much money, Snake. I have $10 to my name. And if I let you go you’re going to want one of those damn $1.79 toys that’ll be broken before we even get it home.”

Danny is holding a finger in the air, like, I want to say something when you’re finished.

“Danny, no. I’m broke and I don’t want to deal with you and cheap-ass toys tonight.”

“I won’t aks you for nothin’, Dad. I won’t. I won’t aks you for one thing. Not one. Let me go with you, Dad. I won’t aks for anything. I know you think I will aks you for somethin’, but I won’t. I won’t aks. For nothin’. Let me go. Please, Dad. Let me go with you.”

The boy is wearing me down. There’s such pleading in his voice and he’s inconceivably cute and his blonde hair sticks up on one side and his knees are fat and he’s wearing red shorts and a yellow “Hulk” T-shirt and the shoes he’s located are little black and white checked sneakers.

“Danny, I know how you are. Listen, I get paid tomorrow. I’ll take you to the Convenient or K-Mart or anywhere you want to go.”

“I don’t care about going no place tomorrow, Dad. Let me go to The ‘Benient with you now. Please, Dad,” he whimpers. “PLEASE!” he says desperately. “Dad, I won’t aks you for nothin’. If you’ll just let me go with you, you’ll see I won’t.”

I look at Eric. Beautiful, young, blonde Eric. “I’d let him go,” Eric says. “That first ‘I won’t aks you for nothin’’ would have convinced me.”

“You’re a lot of help,” I tell my, um, friend.

Eric shrugs.

I give in.

“Put your other damn shoe on,” I tell Danny.

Danny falls onto his butt and pulls his shoe on.

“I love you bigger than the sky, Dad.”

“I love you bigger than the sky, and Texas and California,” I tell my son. “But, so help me, Danny, if you ask me for so much as a stick of gum I’m gonna take your pants down and spank your little bottom right there in the store. In front of everyone. Do you understand me?”

“I do, Dad, and you won’t have to spank me, ‘cause I won’t aks you for nothin’. I won’t.”

My son jumps up and takes my hand. “I’m going to the ‘Benient with my Dad,” he tells Eric.

Eric chuckles. “Do you think you’ll ask for anything while you’re in there with him?”

Danny shakes his head. “My Dad don’t have much money,” he says. “I won’t aks him for nothin’.”

“Hey Sport, I can’t ever remember. There on your shirt, that Hulk… what kind of Hulk did you say that was again?”

“It’s a ‘Credible kind of Hulk.”

Eric nods. “I see. Like on television?”

Danny nods.

“Well, I guess I’ll see ya in a bit. You have a good time.”

“I will. It’s The ‘Benient,” he reminds Eric.

I walk to the car with my persistent son. This is back in the good old days, before Ryan Seacrest and terrorism and mandatory seatbelts. Dan crawls up and onto the front seat. I close his door and make sure it’s locked. I go around, open the driver’s side door and slide in under the wheel. My boy scoots over and crams his small body into mine. I start the car and back out of the lot. I straighten the car and accelerate.

“Oh shit, Danny! Listen.” I turn the radio up.

“Oh shit, Dad!”

Music swells.

“You ready, Snake? Are you ready, Boy?”

“Yes Dad, I’m ready”

“You gonna sing with me and Gloria?”

“I am,” Dan says excitedly.

“But, will you sing with passion?” I want to know.

“YES!” Dan leans forward. “Here we go, Dad.”

Dan’s little hand squeezes my arm, I light a cigarette and Gloria Gaynor shares: “At first I was afraid… I was petrified… kept thinking I could never live without you by my side… but then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong… and I grew strong and I learned how to get along… ”

My son and I know every lyric and, stopped at the light just before the turn into the Convenient, we sing with Gloria.

Danny throws his head back. “Go on now go… walk out the door.”

I laugh and sing with my boy Danny and with my girl Gloria. I turn into the Convenient store lot and park but we’re all still singing. “I will survive… ”

“Man! You sang that that with much verve,” I tell my son.

“I felt verve, Dad.”

“Good. Okay let’s go. You remember our deal?”

“Yep. I won’t aks for nothin’, Dad. I won’t. Nothin’.”

“If you do, Danny, I’ll do what I told you I’d do.”

“I know you will, Dad. I won’t aks for nothin’, Dad.”

“Okay.”

Danny scrambles out of the car and we go in.

The goddamn Convenient people place wire racks that have 30 or 40 $1.79 toys pinned to them right in front of the door. Where kids can spot them immediately. Danny, right away, walks to and stops in front of the rack of toys. I go to the back of the store and pick up a two-liter bottle of Pepsi and then in an aisle to my right I snatch a loaf of bread.

Thinking to myself, “If that little shit asks me for anything, I’m going to keep my word to him,” I move through the store.

I get in the checkout line behind a pretty girl. She smells like Ambush perfume and wears the tightest Jordache jeans I’ve ever seen. I look over and see Danny still standing at the toy rack. He gets on tiptoes and reaches for something, he turns and walks slowly toward me. I shake my head.

The child is carrying a blue, soft plastic gun that shoots Ping-Pong balls when you squeeze it and he’s wearing this “I’m an abused orphan look” on his face. I can’t believe his nerve. The cashier gives the pretty girl her change and watches Danny’s approach.

There’s a quarter-size wet spot in the front of Danny’s shorts that breaks my heart a little, but only a little.

“See this pop gun, Dad?” he asks.

“I see it,” I say warningly.

Danny takes a huge breath and sighs. “This is the toy I’m not gonna aks you for,” he says pitifully, and then turns to take the popgun back.

“Put the damn thing up here on the counter!” I say through clenched teeth.

Again on tiptoes Dan puts the toy beside my Pepsi and bread. He pulls at my shirt.

“What?” I ask him.

“You can’t be mad at me Dad ‘cause I didn’t aks you for it.”

“I’m not mad at you,” I tell him.

On the way back to my apartment Danny takes the popgun out of the bag. “I love you bigger than the sky, Texas, California and the Empire State Building, Dad.”

“That’s a lotta love,” I tell Danny.

“It’s true, Dad.”

I park in front of my apartment. Danny gets out of the car and runs ahead of me. When we step inside and Eric sees the popgun he turns away so Danny doesn’t see him laughing. I look at my (very on the down low) boyfriend.

“What can I say? He’s my little boy and he knows how to push every button I got.”

“You know it’s not entirely bad that they’re pushable,” Eric says.

“Hey, Buddy, come show me how that thing works.” Eric takes Danny’s hand and they go into the living room while I set the table.

“If my Dad had more money, he probably would have got some ice cream at The ‘Benient too.” I hear Danny tell Eric.

“I think I got a few bucks, Sport. What kind of ice cream do you like?”

“Bernilla.”

Sammy’s Levi’s feel small in my hands and smell of mulch and sweat. Knowing he’s likely left change or a comb in them I absently search pockets. In a front left pocket I pull out what appears to be five torn ticket stubs. They’re a bright green color.

I frown.

Why would Sammy have tickets to a Haunted House in his pocket? And why five? Why would they have last night’s date on them? Sammy worked last night… he said…

Suddenly I know the whys. Sam didn’t work. He lied. For months now… he’s been lying.

I sit on the side of the bed. I look down at his jeans in my lap and again marvel at how small they are. Almost like a boy’s jeans. A garment belonging to someone not old enough to cheat on you.

I’m unable to move for a long while.

It’s all sad and incomprehensible but realizing Sammy’s been lying to me, is so good at lying to me, devastates me most.

Pictures flash in my mind. A kaleidoscope of images, recollections…

Muddy work boots under the coffee table… A flash of olive-colored skin… A shard of laughter… A brush of male lips against male lips… Sammy in just white boxers putting a star on top of a Christmas tree… A beat up Braves cap on top of the refrigerator… The two of us laughing with George and other friends at Jerry’s restaurant… Soft snoring beside me… The look of fear on Sam’s face just before they wheel me into surgery… Sam and me running out of Target in the rain… Golf clubs tucked behind a door… Damp towels on the bathroom floor… Sam’s chocolate-y stare… Him beside me at my mother’s funeral… and my brother’s… and my other brother’s… and my adopted sister’s and my sister-in-law’s… What a fucking year.

The slide-show of memories continues. In my mind I see the last left-handed note Sam left on the counter… I see myself laying face down on a wide ottoman and recall being filled with him… slow selfish him… There’s a flash of straight white teeth… And six Bud Lights sitting neatly on a shelf in the fridge… Sam’s rude mouth below swollen eyes wrapping around an asthma inhaler… We sit side by side on the couch eating butter noodles on a cold winter night… He jogs in the park… He dances, he thinks unobserved, to ABBA… I wait for him on stone steps as he finishes testing for his GED… There’s the faint cheesy taste of his cock and Family Guy in the background as I…

I look at one of the monstrously green stubs in my hand. Like a little certificate announcing another sudden and unfair death. Life as I’ve known it for the last six years has been forever changed with the discovery of these torn slips of paper…

And they’ve been good good years. Sam’s been so easy to love… and live with. So relaxed and male and present.

It’s impossible to imagine but we’ve never once argued. We’ve never been mad at each other.

The only thing about Sam that’s ever bothered me… the only thing I ever gave him shit for… is his penchant for two word communications and responses. Sam’s a man of few words… He can answer any question, say anything with two words.

You can deliver a soliloquy to him but all you’ll get in return is a “right on”… or a “not bad.”

It’s the way he talks. Let’s fuck… Good deal… No way… Yeah fine… I’m good… Gotta go… Gonna cum… That’s cool… Me Tarzan… You Bill… Bye bye…

GODDAMN YOU SAM… Goddamn you…

I pull myself up, gather the dirty laundry and make my way back downstairs.

An hour passes and I’m folding Downeyed towels when the phone rings. I check the caller I.D. and see it’s Sam.

I push the talk button.

“Hey Hey…” Sam’s deep voice says.

“Hey Sammy.”

“I left work early and I’m on my way home… I wanted to let you know I’ll be going back out for…”

“How was the Haunted House?” I ask.

There’s a long pause. “It sucked.” My lover’s voice says. “How’d you…?”

“There were ticket stubs in your jeans pocket. Five of them.”

“Yeah… I went with these four guys I know from work.”

“It’s confusing to me that you’d have all the stubs Sam. Did you pay their way in?”

“Um… yeah…”

I close my eyes. “Do you love her Sam?” I ask.

After another pause Sammy says, “I don’t know.”

“You love her.” I say quietly.

“What makes you so sure?” A young man I’ve built my life around wonders.

“Oh… I think only a girl could persuade YOU to enter a Haunted House. Only a girl you think you love… and you’re too cheap to pay anyone’s way unless maybe you were trying to impress someone.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“What’s her name?”

“Debbie.”

With the phone cradled between my cheek and shoulder I snap a clean towel and fan it flat on a kitchen counter. “How many times have you fucked her Sam?”

“About ten times.”

“I’m sure it’s coincidence that that’s the same number of times you said you were working third shifts these last few months.”

“We need to talk.” Sam says. “I’ll be at your place in a few minutes.”

I hang up the phone. I stare out the window above the microwave. My place… Not -I’ll be home in a few minutes. Not -our place…

Yep. It’s as dead as my momma but… at least this time… I can stay in my big shorts. I won’t have to wear a suit to the funeral.

I pick up the phone and dial numbers. A voice on the other end says, “Happy Homes” happily.

I ask for the department I work in. I tell my boss I’m sick and won’t be in. My boss isn’t happy.

I know I can lose my job but I don’t care. Losing things is getting to be old hat for me.

Thirty minutes later Sammy and I are on the couch. Sam sits as far from me as possible. His narrow left hip is literally jammed against the arm of the sofa. He looks tired and more like someone who works in a coal mine than the lawn and garden department of a large Home Improvement Store. Dark rings of sweat darken Sam’s Tee shirt under his arms. His khaki-colored cargo shorts are filthy. A right knee sports a big scab…

Sam picks up the remote and flips on the TV.

On MSNBC there’s a good deal of talk about Martha Stewart beginning to serve a 5-month sentence for insider trading at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia.

I take the remote control from Sammy’s hand and flip the set back off.

“When I’m in the last minutes of a dying relationship I prefer no distractions.” I tell him.

Sammy nods and stares straight ahead. I have no idea what to say to him or where to start so I sit hoping he’ll start…

“You don’t know how bad I hate hurting you.” He finally says.

“It’s okay Sam.” I say gently. “One can’t choose to love a snake and then be all devastated to find out it hisses and slithers… and all my relationships end this way. Usually much sooner than six years but they all end with me being replaced by a girl.”

“I am straight.” Sam reminds me.

“Yeah… and you’re approaching thirty. I’d say you’ve probably wasted enough time here…you know… with me… with… this. You should go… and make some babies.”

Sam frowns. “I don’t know about all that.”

There’s more not talking between us. Sam still doesn’t look at me. A thigh muscle jumps under the fabric of his shorts.

“Go be straight Sam. Really. I’ll get started falling apart and then I have the, learning to live life without Sammy Drake thing, to do.”

Sam shakes his head. “I want to talk a little first.”

“Okay… talk.”

For the next six minutes I learn how over it truly is and what a ridiculous old fool I can be but I’m glad six months of Sammy lies are being replaced with some truths.

We go back to being silent.

Sammy looks over at me. “What are you thinking about?” He asks.

“About how I didn’t see it coming and how good you are at lying. Like when I asked you why you weren’t tired after working third shifts and you said you and Eugene just drove from store to store all night… and how you said he always wants to drive so you catch a bunch of little cat naps. It’s amazing considering there weren’t any third shifts or trucks or even a Eugene… I mean that was so good. You could give lying lessons Sam.”

Sammy sighs. His coffee dark hair looks dry. It needs cutting. “I guess I’m glad to be good at something.” He says.

I nod again. “You’re good at a lot of things.” I say quietly.

Sam turns to me. His wide brown eyes are sorrowful but there’s also an excitement at their nougatty center, a looking forward to a life that won’t include me. “You think I’m a snake?” He asks.

“I think you’re self-centered prick but… until a few hours ago you were my self-centered prick. I guess it’s good you’ll be someone else’s now.”

“I’m sorry Bill.”

“I know Sam and again it’s okay. It’s even normal and sort of blue… kind of…”

“Sort of what?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know… It’s weird… There’s something sexy about you fucking a girl in secret and something equally cruel about you loving one the same way.”

Sam scoots forward on the couch. “Is it okay if I wait till the weekend to get my stuff?”

“Yeah… That’s fine.”

As I walk Sam to the door I decide, from the side, he kind of resembles a duck.

Before stepping out Sammy turns to me. “Before I go I got one of them two word communications that frustrate the fuck out of you.”

“Yeah? I’m not surprised. What is it?”

“Thank you.”

Sammy steps onto the porch and then scurries down steps. I close the door and hear his Mustang start up. A second or two later I hear it zoom down Washington Street.

My Sammy is in a hurry to get somewhere.

I shut the door and fall against it. I press my head back and a glass pane feels cold where I’m balding.

“You’re welcome.” I tell an empty room.

At the time, only I drive. George, Dan and Tim are all without licenses, or cars, or both, and when there’s a get together or outing, I am ringleader and chauffeur. I go around and pick everyone up.

The third time I pick Tim up he steps onto a cluttered porch and a tall, thin boy — considerably younger than Tim — steps out behind him. Watching Tim approach the car, I wonder why the boy on the porch looks angry.

The kid bends at the waist. “GET OFF MY PROPERTY FAGGOT!” he screams. “I MEAN IT!”

Tim hurries toward the car.

“FAGGOT! FUCKING QUEER! LEAVE MY BROTHER ALONE!”

Tim opens the passenger side door of my car, quickly slides in and shuts it. “Let’s go!” he says.

I calmly light a cigarette. “Who’s the little purple-faced homo-hater?” I ask.

“That’s my brother, Sam,” Tim says. “Let’s just go.”

I don’t just go. I look back at Sam. He’s pacing, rock star style, up and down the porch and shooting me double birds. “Get out of the car Tim!” he orders. “Don’t leave with that COCKSUUCCCKKERRR!” he screams, blood quickly returning to his face. “FUCKING FAGGOT! YOU’LL GET YOUR ASS KICKED IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD!”

I drop my car into reverse and slowly back out of Tim’s drive.

“Sam hates gay people,” Tim says.

“COCKSUCKER! FAGGOT! QUEER!”

“Yeah,” I nod. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

As I back out onto the street, I watch the young homophobe. His nasty snarling and all that unhappy pacing reminds me of a caged animal.

I straighten the car up and drive off. “How old is your brother, Tim?”

“Sixteen,” Tim mumbles.

When I pick Tim up at his house the next night, I endure a repeat performance from young Sam. There’s more shouting and name-calling. Amazed so much hate can pile up in a heart so young I again back out of their drive.

I continue to pick Tim up and Sam continues his tirades. I pull into Tim’s drive on Muller Avenue and young Sam literally explodes from his morose-looking home, as though he’s been waiting for me. He continues to scream some serious ugliness at me but as time goes by, he’ll get more creative. In addition to the standard and overused cocksucker, queer and faggot, he’ll add degenerate, freak, butt-pirate, fudge-packer, ass bandit, pillow biter, rump ranger and the ever-popular fucking fruit. I’m even a colon cowboy, an ass jockey, a bone smuggler and a booty bandit.

Yep. Sammy runs the gamut. There’s also concern on his part that I’ve somehow got brainwashing powers and plans to convert his brother to the evils of homosexuality. And there are tiresome accusations that any interest in small children I might have isn’t entirely wholesome.

It’s all annoying and offensive, but friendship is friendship, so I keep picking Tim up and exposing myself to this kid’s venomous outbursts.

I get a little concerned on the first occasion when Sam uses a shotgun to emphasize some of his points. But only a little.

“Who’s fucking gun is that, Tim?” I wonder.

“It’s Sam’s.” Tim tells me. “He’s got about ten guns.”

I nod thoughtfully. “Of course he does,” I say.

Backing out of the drive and looking at Sammy looking down the barrel of the shotgun he has aimed at me, I have no idea he will one day be the most significant significant other I’ll ever have.

Sam’s efforts to rescue his brother and terrorize me ebb and eventually stop.

Two years go by. During that time Tim and I and the rest of the posse see about a hundred movies. We do open mike poetry night at Twice Told books every Wednesday evening. We hang at Denny’s until the wee hours of the morning. We talk and dream and argue and whatever else it is that good friends do and one day after I pull into my friend’s drive and he opens the passenger side door of my car and slides in, I just sit there.

I watch a now 18-year-old Sam Drake dribble and shoot a basketball in a weedy back yard.

An impatient Tim says, “Let’s go!”

But I don’t go.

While an August sun thinks about a good night’s sleep. I watch Sam. Playing basketball all alone, his dribbling and shooting seems to me, a kind of monotonous dance.

“Tim?”

“What?”

“How many gay people has Sammy ever met?”

“None.”

I snub a cigarette out in the car’s ashtray and look at my friend. “Go ask him if he’s hungry Tim. See if he wants to go with us.”

Tim can’t believe his ears.

Still watching Sam, I say. “Do it Tim.”

Tim gets out of the car and a couple of minutes later he slides back into the front seat beside me and a skinny, miserable-looking Sam climbs in and settles into my back seat.

George is driving now and he and Dan are already at Denny’s when we arrive. Drake brothers and I locate and sit with them. Introductions are made.

I’m surprised by how much the guys and I enjoy Sam’s company. He’s surprised by how much he enjoys ours. In spite of a really bad, parted-in-the-middle haircut and some cheap high-water jeans, Sam’s pretty cute. His brown eyes are chocolate-y and alive. I assess him as a somewhat shy but honest boy and he’s bright and charming as we talk.

I ask Sammy a question.

“What was my life like growing up?” Sam repeats the question and looks around as though he fears being overheard. He leans in and tells me, “I wore corduroy pants, even in summer, and buttoned my shirt all the way to my throat. I got my ass kicked everyday.”

This response speaks volumes to me. I nod. “So you learned to fight?”

“No. I learned to run like the wind.”

I grill Sam for several hours, because that’s what writers do, they grill people. But it’s okay. Sam seems pleased someone – anyone — is remotely interested in him.

Across from me and beside Sam, George and Dan argue sports. Beside me, Tim has his head back and his eyes closed.

Sam smiles. “Um… Tim says you saw ‘Interview with a Vampire’ last night. How was that?”

I peer into an empty coffee cup. “Okay.” I say. “It wasn’t a fiasco.”

Sam bows his head. “Fiasco is a fag word,” he says so softly I’m not sure I hear him correctly.

“What was that?”

Sam looks up and takes a deep breath. “Fiasco. It’s a fag word.”

I shake my head. “Words don’t have a sexual orientation or belong to a particular group.”

Sammy nods. “Yes they do.” He argues quietly. “Different groups own different words. I mean you can give yourself away with them. Like a bisexual would have used the word ‘catastrophe.’ A straight guy would’ve said ‘It wasn’t a disaster.’”

I laugh, thinking Sam might be on to something. “So -what’s another fag word?” I ask those brown-eyes.

Sam shrugs. “Enthralled.”

I laugh again. “Okay. What would a bisexual say instead of enthralled’?”

“A bisexual would say ‘riveted,’” Sam says seriously.

“And a straight guy?”

He’d say, like, “I was fuckin’ on the edge of my seat.”

Though I’m enjoying my friend’s bigoted little brother, I see Tim’s nearly asleep and George and Dan have decided they’re ready to go. We call it a night.

There’s a chill in the air a couple of nights later when I pick Tim up at his house. Sam again steps out behind his brother, but this time he simply stands by their front door and watches Tim as he hurries toward the car. Sam and I lock eyes.

I roll down my window. “Come on!” I yell, and Sam’s off the porch like a shot. He’s in my car before Tim is.

I pick Dan up and a low on gasoline George and point my car toward the Cinemas. I want to see “Four Weddings and a Funeral” but George and Dan want to see “Dumb and Dumber.” Being a firm believer in “good in means good eventually out and shit in means shit eventually out” I stand firm. Dan suggests a vote and when I diplomatically agree, Tim steps beside me. George and Dan stand opposite of me and everyone looks at Sammy. “Looks like you’re the tie-breaker.” Dan tells him. George, a good size guy, gives Sam a menacing look.

Sam looks at George and then at me.

“My advice is always side with Bill.” Tim says.

Dan nods. “It’s good advice.” He tells Sam.

Sam moves and stands between George and Dan.

It turns out okay. I don’t mind losing a vote here and there and I’m glad Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels have put these boys in such a good mood. We go to Denny’s after the movie and have a wonderful time.

The restaurant isn’t busy so Jenetta has lots of time to flirt with Dan. We all tease him about being such a stud.

We wrap things up and I drop George and Dan off at their places and then take Tim and Sammy home. Tim says “See ya!” and opens his door. Sam taps my shoulder. “Hey thanks. I had a good time.” He says.

Sam starts to get out of the car. “Wait.” I tell him. The kid sits back. I turn and look at him. “Sam I want you to come to my apartment tomorrow night.”

Sam’s eyes go a little wide.

I nod. “Yes. Be there at six p.m., sharp. That’s an order Sam. But feel free to bring one or more bodyguards with you if you have concerns your precious penis might be in jeopardy. Protection isn’t necessary though. You’re actually quite safe. I already have a rediculously gorgeous boyfriend and though he’s not faithful in a relationship, I am. And I might add, you are one of the most resistible young men I’ve ever met. But bring Tim, or an army of Tim’s if you want. Really. I don’t care. Just be at my place no later than six.”

Sam nods. “Can I ask why?”

“No. Just show up.”

The next night at exactly 5:59, there’s a knock on my door. I unlock locks and open the door to find Sam standing in the hallway. He looks nervous but he’s alone.

I invite him in. “Sit on the couch,” I tell him. “Yeah, that’s fine there. Do you want something to drink?”

Sam shakes his head.

I walk to the TV and slide a movie into the VCR. “You’re here Sam to watch a movie. It’s called “Torch Song Trilogy” and I want you to watch every minute of it. Do NOT drift off. Pay it close attention. There’ll be a test at the end.” I push a button.

Sam settles back. “Are you going to watch the movie with me?”

“No. I’ve seen it Sam. A dozen times. So I’m going to wash some dishes and clean my kitchen, but I’ll be finished with all that and back in here about the same time the movie ends. And may the Lord help you Sam Drake if I test you and learn you didn’t pay attention.”

While Sam watches the movie, I wash and put away dishes. I scrub the top of my stove. I take laundry out of the dryer, fold it and put it away. I stop now and again to listen to the movie, gauge where it is Sam’s at in the experience. I’m putting away a broom and dust pan just as the movie ends.

I hurry into my living room, turn off the VCR and television and still carrying a dishtowel, I sit in a chair across from Sam.

“So, Sam, tell me. Did you learn anything?”

Sam levels saucer-sized brown eyes at me and nods.

“What did you learn?”

Water fills Sammy’s eyes and when he says. “Gay people are just like everybody else.” I also want to cry.

And I want to send Harvey Fierstein a thank you note. “Torch Song Trilogy” is an amazing movie that each and every time I’ve forced a straight boy to watch it, has taught them what it’d just taught Sammy. On many occasions I’ve seen it’s ability to wipe out years and years of taught hate… and replace that hate with a simple realization that gay people are just like everybody else.

Fierstein has been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember and how he and his movie can unteach in 121 minutes, what an intolerant and hateful world has taught a boy such as Sam for years, baffles me. But it can and it does and I have been, and I am sure I will again be, grateful to him for creating it.

“Okay Sam. You pass the test with an A-plus. I was hoping this movie would teach you gay people ARE just like everyone else and being called names and shouted at, and/or often, experiencing even worse, from little shits like you is confusing and hurtful to them.”

“Thanks for making me watch that.” Sam says quietly.

“Thank you for watching it.” I tell him.

I sit up. “I’m in the mood for Steak and Shake. Are you hungry?” I ask Sam.

Sam also sits up. “I could eat.” He says. “Hey Bill… um… will it be just you and me?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I could call the guys, if you want, and ask what everyone’s up to?”

Sam shakes his head. “If it’s okay with you… I think it’d be great if it was just me and you.”

I nod. “Okay… it’ll just be us then.”

Sam and I immediately set about becoming best friends. For eight years, we will be near inseparable. Two years after the night Sam watches “Torch Song Trilogy” he and I will progress to lovers.

If you read “Hiss and Slither” you know how mine and Sammy Drake’s extraordinary relationship and friendship ended. This is how it began. But this piece hopefully wasn’t really about any of that.

I meant it to be about a movie. And an admiration I have for its writer and star. And though it’s not necessary with most of you… I wrote it for the occasional Sam that enters into my life or stumbles onto my pages. I wanted to do with this piece, and with every thing I write and post, what Harvey Fierstein did and does so beautifully with his little movie. Not say, but actually “show” someone, who needs the lesson or reminder… gay people are just like everybody else.

And I’m driving down Third Street. Danny –comfortably situated in the back seat of my new Olds Derby Calaise –is almost nine years old. Right now he’s perplexing both me and his teachers by refusing to write anything down on paper. The child feels, if things are for sure in your head then there’s just no point in writing them down. He thinks you should be able to just say answers out loud. I glance over at Barbra, my daughter who’ll soon turn five seated next to me. She’s had a big day and is noticeably tired. I have to have her back by 6:00 on Sunday evenings, her mother insists… No Billy, not 6:01. 6:00 sharp. Understand Billy?

I understand perfectly.

After making a left turn, I drive by Our Lady Of Mount Carmel church where I once coached a mixed softball team called the Misfits.

I feel sad. Another weekend’s closing too soon.

I glance back at Danny in my rear view mirror. He had an empty notebook opened on his lap. Hours ago I gave him an assignment, or made a sort of deal with him and told him if he would put ten things down on paper he wants I’d pick one and buy it for him.

I love Danny and Barbra so much I could bust…

I love my Olds too. The first car I’ve ever owned that someone else didn’t own first. It’s sharp. A color not exactly pink and not exactly brown called Rosewood and it handles easily.

I’m also pretty smitten with Gregory Popp and Alison Moyet who just started singing on the car radio. Everyone knows I love Danny and Barbra and my new car but no one –and I mean absolutely no one –knows I love Gregory and only Danny knows I love Alison.

Alison Moyet is a singer. A big girl with a big voice. Gregory Popp is this guy at work who does something in the computer room for Dave Furnish. He’s tall and lanky and grins a lot. I mean Gregory is tall and lanky and grins a lot, not Dave Furnish. Furnish is short and doughy and always looks worried. Popp’s the exact opposite. Rangy and always happy. Sort of part man and part Praying Mantis in denim jeans. He smells like lime and doesn’t know I’m alive…

Mom would say Gregory’s just another narrow-assed boy, nothing out of the ordinary and she’d be right but for me it’s his unspecialness that makes him so special. To me. And I guess the narrow ass doesn’t hurt.

Gregory makes me feel like I’m invisible. If I had breasts he wouldn’t. A couple of nice tatas would be enough to make him hang on my every word. I could wrap him around my… whatever it was I wanted wrapped.

Alison Moyet’s voice swells, and an unseatbuckled Barbra moves closer to the dashboard. She half closes her eyes and the AC rushing from the car’s wide open vents gently blows back her hair and gives boost to her powdery, clean smell.

Smiling, I reach around her to turn up the volume. In the rear view mirror I see my son shake his head.

I don’t care. Allison is something special.

I pull in front of a brick house and wait for Alison to finish before getting out of the car. I go around and help Barbra step out. After gathering her  things I take her hand and we walk down a drive and around to a back garage apartment.

I’ve returned my little girl four minutes late but the ex –Barbra’s mother –lets me slide. She isn’t warm but she’s not cold either.

On the way back to the car an uncle of Barbra’s, one of the ex’s brothers and I pass each other. He’s a sprawling, blonde and blue-eyed U of L football player and he also makes me feel invisible.

I climb back into my car.

Danny’s moved to the front seat and now it’s him sitting beside me. There’s not a single mark in the notebook still open on his lap. I pick up one of my son’s hands and see his nails are filthy. I sigh. Since he’s just going to get dirty again my son also sees no point in bathing.

Twenty minutes ago I was hanging on a peg at a place called PeekWorld. Now I’m on the front seat of a silver Dodge Dakota — an SLT four-door with an extended cab — being driven much too fast by a young guy who, after a lot of pensive looking around and pacing and considerable comparison and debate, purchased me for $79.95, plus tax.

Oh wait. I should tell you I’m not a person; I’m a sex toy — a masturbator, actually. More specifically, I’m an artificial vagina. My name is Debbie XS11.

Leadfoot here paid for me with a credit card that had a picture on it of a tiny, smiling girl in a highchair. I notice little things. Details. Like personalized credit cards. Like how a speeding truck can smell like a mix of Axe Kilo body spray and old motor oil.

Before Martin, the clerk at the adult bookstore, slid me into a brown paper bag, I noticed that this still-somewhat-nervous acting, Jeff Gordon wannabe wears his cell phone on his belt. That would explain, at least in part, his need for a Debbie XS11. But the guy’s surprisingly good looking — for a cell-phone–on-his-belt-wearer. He’s shortish and slight, but also in a too-scrubbed-and-clipped, blond, blue-eyed and rednecky sort of way very cute.

I am sharing the brown bag with a couple of magazines, one called “Creamgirls,” the other titled “Facials.” The bag is open at the top and tilted against the passenger side door in such a way that I can see tree tops, forlorn-looking poles and wires, the occasional, nondescript rooftop and expanses of a swollen, gray, southern Indiana sky.

My new owner switches on the truck’s radio and I hear Tim McGraw confess to spending forty-eight dollars last night at a county fair and throwing out a shoulder while winning someone a teddy bear.

She’s got me saying sugar-pie, honey, darlin’, and dear, Tim sings.

While McGraw’s liking, loving and wanting more of it, I stare at a seemingly stationary blimp advertising “MetLife” in the sky and wonder how much farther it is to wherever Speedracer and I are going. He cracks a window and a sudden rush of wind causes the brown bag to make a noisy flippy-flap sound that drowns out the radio. Cutie smashes the accelerator a little more.

Eventually the truck slows and we turn onto Something Church Road. After a few lefts and a right, we pull into a driveway and stop. I’m gathered up along with a black metal lunch box and Pager Wearing Boy jumps out of the truck into an overcast day and hoofs it across an overgrown lawn. He holds the bag in such a way that I can’t see much, but I hear children playing, the sound of a distant lawn mower and, closer by, a woman crying.

A man’s hoarse-sounding voice asks. “How’s it going, Wade?”

With a simply stated, “it’s going,” Wade climbs a few porch steps. There’s the jangle of keys. I hear a door bang open, then the clomping of boots on a wooden floor. The metal lunch box makes a sort of combined clang and thunk noise when Wade sets it down on a glass coffee table. When he tosses the magazines and me on a couch, I slide out of the brown bag and can see again.

Through a big, curtainless and rain-speckled window I notice a Jeep in Wade’s drive that’s more or less in pieces and an old Pontiac Grand Prix up on blocks in a frightfully unkept front yard.

Contrasting the clutter and chaos outside, the interior of Wade’s home is sparse, colorless and almost prissily neat. A black, leather couch and a huge, flat-screen TV are this room’s only furnishings. Wade’s walls are painted an ash color and he has nice, hardwood floors.

At first I was thrilled this guy decided on me instead of Pamela XL200, with her life-like pubic hair. I truly hated PeekWorld and the panic I’d sometimes feel when some old, fat fucker would eye me. But now something about Wade makes me not so sure about him, either. Still, in a sort of incongruent, hayseed-trying-to-be-a-hipster kind of way, he is cute.

The cloddish work boots he wears, the silly phone caddy and a chain wallet that’s too young for him all could go, but I like his dark, loose-fitting jeans and tight, black T-shirt with the word “Hollister” across the front in stone-colored letters.

Wade disappears, returns after a minute or two with an icy-looking Bud Light and walks to the big window. Staring outside, he takes a long, throat-working drink.

Like some sort of geek cowboy might draw a gun, Wade snatches his cell phone, quick-like, from its holster, punches buttons and waits.

“Hi, Meg,” he says softly. “I know I said I wouldn’t call you, but…” Moving to his right, almost out of view, Wade watches a girl — a young woman, really — as she steps out onto a porch just across the street.

“I’m not looking for that either, Megan,” Wade says, “and I definitely don’t want to fight with you. I just want to make sure you’re not going to try and make it hard for me to see Madison. She’s three years old, Meg. She don’t understand what’s happening. Everything’s changed so much for her… for all of us, really.”

The woman across the way is red-eyed. Her face is puffy, but she’s still quite pretty and Wade can’t seem to take his eyes off her. He puts his beer down. “And none of that changes the fact I still love you, Megan,” he says, calmly. “Okay. Okay. Fine. As long as you don’t try to keep Maddy from me. I can somehow learn to live without you, Babe, but I can’t live without my daughter. I won’t.”

It occurs to me the dark-haired woman on the porch is the same woman I heard crying earlier. Still watching her intently, Wade says, “You are sooo wrong, Meg,” into his phone. “I never thought about another woman the whole time you and I were together. Not once. … Don’t worry about that, I’m not going to spend a lot of time hoping where there ain’t any anymore. You do what you have to do. Go through with the divorce. Whatever. Just tell me I can pick my daughter up on Friday, on most Fridays, and you and I won’t fight in front of her any more.”

Wade has sapphire blue eyes, a smallish upturned nose and a nice, wide mouth I note as he stands at the unadorned and, now, fogging-up window. “Every guy isn’t Darryl, Megan,” he says, “and I don’t care what you say, some of us don’t stray or even want to stray.”

The pretty but distraught looking girl across the way steps back into her house and Wade turns from the window. A couple of minutes later he hangs up his phone, takes another long pull on his Bud Light and punches more buttons.

“Hey Sean,” Wade starts to pace. “Yeah, thanks,” he says. I notice he has a piece of black leather cording or something tied around his wrist.

“Yeah. Twenty-four. Tomorrow.” Wade frowns and sputters the words, “Are you kidding me?

“Hell no!” he barks. “No! Fuck him! I don’t want anything from Dad. I don’t know. Not much. The truth is I don’t need much. … No. I just got back from buying myself a… Wade looks over at me… an, um, CD and a… a couple of books. And it’d be fine with me if that’s all I got this year.

“Nah, don’t even do that.” Wade walks over and sits on the couch beside me, close enough I can feel his body heat. “What was that? … Well you can’t keep an outside dog inside.” Reaching over, he moves “Creamgirls” and rests a slender hand on top of me.

It’ll be a couple of hours and several more calls later before Wade carries me into his bedroom. It’s another cheerless, sparse, but neat room with a tidy, almost funereal-looking bed and a black, mirrored dresser. There’s a nightstand and, on the wall over the bed, a pearl-encrusted cross.

After closing window blinds, Wade walks toward the bed. Using both hands to hold me, he rubs me against his Levied crotch and I feel him swell under the thick fabric of his jeans. Wade places me on the bed, pulls his shirt off and then leaves the room. He returns after a minute carrying a slate-colored towel and a large bottle of lotion. It’s shocking to me to see how small and thin the guy is.

After unbuckling a too-big-for-him belt, Wade unzips his pants. He spreads the towel flat on the bed and moves me over to the center of it, pushing his jeans and underwear down his smallish body until they drop and rest on and around work boots he’s still wearing.

The head of Wade’s fully hard dick is wide. A dark rose color. In all honesty it’s a beautiful cock — so perfect it almost looks more manufactured and artificial than I do.

With pump bottle in hand, the young man moves closer to the bed, bends at the waist and his thin fingers spread open my perfectly crafted labia. Sticking the hard tip of the bottle into my tiny vaginal opening Wade pumps me too full of a white, coconut-smelling lotion before proceeding to pump a couple of generous squirts of the same lotion into a cupped right palm.

I watch him slather lotion on and then up and down a now fully hard dick. Still bent at the waist, Wade slides a middle finger into me. Slowly moving it around, he actually groans. He finger fucks me for half a minute or so. Preparing me.

Finally I feel his weight as he climbs onto the bed and positions himself over me. Guiding his cock with his fingers, Wade pushes just the thick head of his cock into me. He waits a long minute, then silently sinks the rest of his length into me.

Watching his small, firm ass repeatedly tighten and release in the dresser mirror, I think about what will happen to me when this is over. I’ll most likely be ignored.  Tucked away in a closet or drawer and lucky to be taken out once a week. Eventually I’ll be thrown away when Lover Boy finds a real vagina to service his needs. Once a week.

As Wade moves slowly, balls-deep, in and out of me I decide I won’t worry about the future. Several silent minutes pass with Wade’s lubed, moving cock grinding against my hard little nub of a clit.

After emitting an almost scared boyish little whimper Wade suddenly and inexplicably pulls completely out of me and, on his knees, crawls forward on the bed.  Using his cock-guiding hand now to finish, he throws back his head and shoots ropy, white jets of cum all over a pillow.

As Wade’s orgasm subsides he husks one word: “Bitch.” He sits back on his heels, calms and climbs off the bed.

I watch him walk out of the room. Lying there, I see myself reflected in the mirror and I’m shocked at how pink I look in Wade’s colorless world, like a huge wad of chewed bubble gum on a sad, lonely sidewalk.

Several nights pass with me tucked away in the nightstand on the left side of Wade’s bed. The drawer is a little off the track, keeping the drawer slightly ajar so I can at least see out, watch Wade pace as he talks on his phone. I watch him eat. See his flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, a large shiny square that rarely comes to life.

I also see out the big, bare window nearly a week of days just as grim, weather-wise, as that first one was.

I believe it’s a Thursday evening when I hear Wade’s key in the front door. He’s been gone most of the day, leaving empty-handed that morning at around eleven but returning now with two large shopping bags from Baby Gap.

Wade’s on the phone as he comes through the door.  He’s a talker for sure. One day, 6O years in the future, he’ll be one of those tiny, gossipy old men on a bench in a park somewhere.

“The thing about you, Sean, is you like KFC with a side order of wedges. I’m more a grilled, lemon pepper chicken on a bed of rice. … What do you mean that’s what I’m trying to be?

“Who wouldn’t be impressed? … Yeah. well, that may be, but she was very impressed with my daddy skills. Yeah. She said she enjoyed watching me around Maddy.

“No way, man, she’s not West End at all. No, no, she’s very East End. I know! She has that ass and a fuck-ton of money.”

Behind Wade I see it’s still… or again raining. I sigh. After so many weeks of the bright lights and colorful images at the store, I’m sad to find myself in a dark drawer looking out and learning how dreary a late summer/early fall can feel.

“You want me to do what?” Wade asks whoever Sean is. “No! Fuck no! I don’t care. Tell her whatever you want. No, Sean. There’s no way  I’m coming there to meet her.

“Because she’s fat, Sean. … That’s easy for you to say. You’re banging the hot nurse. … I appreciate the thought, Sean, but it’s not like I’m desperate.”

Soon, with one of his dark gray towels and the bottle of awful lotion in one hand, a fully nude Wade lifts me out of my drawer with his other hand and after not much preliminary or prepping at all, little Wade fucks me with his big dick. Jabbing almost painfully into me, it doesn’t take him long to pull out, crawl up and again jack off onto his pillow.

As his orgasm subsides, he utters another single word; this time it’s “Haley.”

I eventually learn Haley is the 17-year-old sister of Wade’s wife, Megan. I also become aware of how Haley doesn’t know Wade is alive.

In the kitchen, a completely nude Cell Phone Boy opens a cold beer, and a bag of potato chips. Resting on a crotch-high kitchen table, I’m again struck by how small and slight Wade is and notice for the first time how disproportionately short his arms and legs are to how long his trunk is.

Wade takes a few steps toward a radio. He punches it on and a nasal sounding country voice sings. Wade sings along with it…

‘Cause when I’m a bullet shot out of a gun
‘Cause when I’m a firecracker comin’ undone
Or when I’m a fugitive ready to run, all wild-eyed and crazy
No matter where my reckless soul takes me
Baby you save me.

Watching Wade bite into a potato chip I’m reminded of that little gecko that sells insurance on TV. I think about how it is that someone can be quite cute while also being a little reptilian.