Cockeyed

“Recompensed?”

“That’s what I heard from the bartender here, James.”

“Mason isn’t getting a nickel, Stu. He’s deluded. Is he drinking again, by chance?”

“I guess so. I saw him in here last night. He had a beer or three.”

“Hu

CoCkeyed 149

A little silence. I could hear voices and dance music in the background. “You are such a bullshitter, Strachey.”

“Not in this case.”

“I just feel like I’ve been treated like I’m a big nothing.”

“No, Hu

beyond the use of condoms when appropriate — and no legal obligations at all. The thousand dollars Hu

and still intends to pay you — is actually a very generous amount for someone in your position.”

“No, it’s not. You’re forgetting that Hu

“Stu, you wouldn’t really want to make that claim in court.

It wouldn’t work. Witnesses with other versions of your sexual history might come forward.”

“Is that what you would call a threat?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“Well, you better keep your fire hose handy.”

“Don’t say that, Stu. You don’t know if this call is being recorded.”

“Is it? Well, maybe I don’t care. Maybe I’m going to get what I deserve for a change, a little respect. And maybe if I don’t, there might be a big hot fire someplace, and somebody will get burnt up in it.”

I knew I’d taken the wrong tack with Hood; threats just set him off. I was about to back off that approach and say some things I hoped he would find soothing when I heard a shriek from inside the house. I told Hood I had to go and would be in touch with him again soon and that I knew where to find him.

I rang off and went into the kitchen where Hu

and suffered a fatal stroke or heart attack after she strolled into the woods.

Hu

“drinky-poo or possibly two,” but Art pointed out that that didn’t make sense since the dead lady’s family might get wind of the celebration on Moth Street and be hurt and offended. Also, Art pointed out, Mrs. Van Horn was still missing.

“Oh, Arthur, girl, you had to go and remind me of that,”

Hu

Antoine, Marylou and the twins had all come into the kitchen, and Antoine suggested that they all join hands and pray.

Hu

We all joined hands and bowed our heads, and Hu

“Lord, help get Mom’s wrinkly old butt back to Golden Gardens ASAP, ‘cause this whole dumb lottery thing plus Mom taking off somewhere has just about wrecked my last nerve, and I don’t think I can take much more of this horse doody. In Jesus’ name, amen. Oh, one more thing. Smite the Brienings, okay?”

Then everybody said amen.

ChAPteR twenty-one

“I heard at the office,” Timmy said, “that all kinds of gay organizations are trying to get Hu

“Neither Hu

“The gay-marriage referendum up there is expected to be close, and it really doesn’t help the image of gay people to have Hu

“Yes, Hu

I was embarrassed and ashamed right along with the rest of gay America. But Hu

“It’s more than just strategy. It’s decency. It’s sobriety. It’s sanity. It’s taste.”

We were in the kitchen fixing a quick di

I said, “Taste is overrated.”

152 Richard Stevenson

“Yes, but sanity isn’t. Or sobriety.”

I told Timmy about Quentin Shoemaker and the Rdq and their standing up against assimilationism.

“Assimilationism? Some people would call living the way we do, and the way most of our friends do, having a life. A good life, actually. A life where we can get up in the morning and not have to think about getting called names or arrested or where our next orgasm is coming from. We can just think about the good and bad minutiae of being human, as well as the bigger questions of human affairs, and not be saddled with some desperate quest for endless stimulation or having to make everybody you meet feel like they want to run out of the room.”

“That’s a pretty bleak assessment of the way a lot of gay people have lived for a pretty long time. Basically, people like Hu

“Much of the trouble has to do mainly with style, yes. I grant you that. It’s not my style, though, and it’s not yours. And it’s a style that causes trouble a-plenty for the rest of us when it turns up in anti-gay TV ads in Maine.”

I said, “Should corn be boiled for three minutes or five?”

“Three is plenty. Aunt Moira always said twenty minutes, but her corn was so tough only her hog could eat it.”

“She kept a hog?”

“My cousin Kevin.”

“Shoemaker talks about Hu

“I sometimes find that humor and playfulness refreshing, too, but it’s the relentlessness that gets to me after a while. And the CoCkeyed 153

always sexualizing everything. Give it a break, I always want to say.”

“Maybe they are just more honest than the rest of us.”

“Oh, Donald, please. At this late date, are you going to go hippie on me?”