Cockeyed

I asked, “You were arrested at a protest, Hu

16 Richard Stevenson

“Yes, on June twenty-eighth, 1969.” He smiled at me and batted his eyelashes and flapped his wrist once.

“Stonewall? You were there?” I had goose bumps.

“Both of us were,” Art said. “Hu

“Wow.”

“Some of us in the Van Horn family,” Nelson said, “are actually quite proud of Art and Uncle Hu

‘nice basket.’”

As Nelson gave his speech, Hu

Paying no attention to anything Nelson had said, Hu

“Why is that?” I said.

“Because two or three of them I think would have to be considered maybe kind of…dangerous?”

Art leaned over and peered at the list and nodded, and Nelson slid even farther down in his chair.

ChAPteR thRee

“I think I should get half,” Stu Hood said. “It’s only fair.

Hu

“How old were you?” I asked.

“When Hu

“But the age of consent in New York is seventeen, Stu. Dewy-browed stripling that you might have considered yourself to be, in the eyes of the law you were a consenting adult.”

“No shit. I thought you had to be twenty-one.”

“To drink, yes. But not for sex. Voting is eighteen and alcohol consumption twenty-one, but seventeen is the age of consent for sex in New York.”

“Well, he served me alcohol.”

“Uh huh.”

“He told me it was happy hour on Moth Street.”

“This was in Hu

“Yeah, Art wasn’t home and Hu

We were seated at a table near the dimly lit rear of the Watering Hole, a gay bar of robust semi-down-at-the-heels antiquity down the street from my office on Central Avenue. Hu

on his breath.

I asked, “Had you been acquainted with Hu

“Yeah, I’d talked to him a few times in the park. But only talk.

I was cherry.”

“Washington Park?”

“Sure.”

“Are you a naturalist, or did you hang out in the park trying to get picked up?”

“I was bi-curious, yeah. But I never did much of anything with guys till Hu

“You said, Stu, that you believe Hu

“Sometimes fifty,” Hood said. “Anyways, with Hu

“So you and Hu

“Yeah, I’d ride my bike over there, and sometimes Art would show up and get a little, too. I’m not saying they weren’t nice to me. All I’m saying at this point in time is that Hu

The bar was surprisingly busy for a summer afternoon. The air-conditioning probably served as an attraction, and in any case the two dozen or so patrons did not look like either beachgoers or men who might otherwise have been off on Adirondack birding expeditions. Some of the men in the bar glanced our way from time to time, maybe wondering who Hood’s new friend was.

CoCkeyed 19

I said, “Stu, you’re a cyclist. How come?”

I knew what was coming. “I lost my driver’s license. Too many DUIs. It sucks, but I’m sort of used to it. It’s rough in the winter, though. People give me rides.”

“Have you had any other legal troubles?”

“A few.”

“Hu

Hood looked down at his draught beer. Almost inaudibly, he said, “I guess so.”

“He said you had an arson conviction as a juvenile.”

“Yes, I did. But I’ve been to counseling.”

“You left a message on Hu

He shrugged. “That was bullshit. I was drunk up to my eyeballs when I said that. Shit, Hu

“I’m here to tell you, Stu, that if Hu

Hood mulled this over and had some more beer. “I guess Hu

“He is concerned about you. Hu

“Hu

“He said he heard you had been laid off at Target, and he said he would be happy to spring for a thousand to help you along until you located another job.”

“Hmm. Check or cash?”

“Whichever you would prefer.”

20 Richard Stevenson

“Cash money, please.”

“But no more threats, okay?”

“Well, shit, it’s more than I got out of the Catholic Church.”

“You sued the church?”

“I wrote a letter to the pope. He never answered it. A priest at Sacred Heart fucked me seven times when I was eleven.”

“But there were lawsuits over sexual abuse by priests, and victims were compensated. This was several years ago.”

“I heard about that later.”

The music playing now was Do

It occurred to me that the first time I had heard this song could well have been in this very bar some decades earlier, perhaps on the same night I met Timothy Callahan under a bush over in Washington Park, and we had been together pretty much ever since. I raised my bottle of Saratoga Water with a chunk of lime jammed down into it. To Do