“I met a chick today,” said Sturges with a grin, walking across the living room and into the kitchen of the Big Yellow House. There he found his friend, housemate, and unofficial house manager, John, making a huge pot of hamburger casserole.

John looked up and cocked his long, penciled brow. “Was she pecking the ground with her beak and saying ‘cheep, cheep, cheep?’ ” he asked sardonically.

Sturges smirked. “No,” he said, “but I’ll have her cheeping tonight. I’ve got a date.” John scowled and shook his head, but said nothing.

Tom, another housemate, tromped into the room. He was swilling an ever-present bottle of beer.

“Hey, food!” he said with interest. “When do we eat?”

John cocked his brow again. “I don’t know about you, but I’ll have my dinner in about five minutes.”

“Is there enough for me?” inquired Tom eagerly, licking his thick red lips in anticipation.

“I work,” explained John didactically, “to earn money and to buy food, which I prepare in order to sustain myself. You want to eat, get a job!” He stared down his long, narrow nose at the other man, who, at six feet two, was yet seven inches shorter than John.

“Well, screw it,” scoffed Tom, walking to the cupboard. “I’ll just make some eggs.”

“You do that,” said John. But when Tom extracted a cast-iron skillet from the cupboard, John objected again. “Don’t use that pan, please,” he said in a cautionary voice, rushing forward and taking it from his housemate.

“Why not?” spluttered Tom, taken aback.

“Because,” said John. “This pan’s finish has been cured by years of careful use, to the point where I barely need any butter to fry my eggs.” Tom stared at him. “You’d only scratch it up,” he said in conclusion.

Tom scowled, took out the only other clean pan available, which was a sixteen-inch pizza pan, and plopped it onto the metal burner over high heat. John blew out a breath, receded, and put the coveted pan back into the cupboard.

“What are you doing tonight, John?” asked Sturges as he opened a can of tomato soup and dumped it into a small saucepan.

“I have to work the door at Stagger tonight,” replied John.

“Oh yeah, it’s Friday; I forgot.” He knew that John checked IDs and collected the cover charge at The Stagger Inn tavern on weekends, when they had live bands, in order to make extra money. He also knew that John would let him in for free, a favor he also paid to any good-looking, hot men who tickled John’s fancy. John was one of only a handful of openly gay men in the small town of Edwardsville on this date, November 1, 1977. John’s largesse, however, did not extend to Tom, a newcomer to the Big Yellow House, so named for the awful mustard-yellow paint job on the building’s exterior.

“Why can’t I get in free?” Tom bawled dourly.

“Because you get money from your parents, and they give you enough to buy twenty beers a night, so you can just pay your way in,” answered John with a touch of reproof.

“It ain’t fair,” protested Tom in a high-pitched squeal. “Sturges gets in free.”

“Sturges is only working fifteen hours per week,” John pointed out, “and he gets no help from his parents. He can’t afford rent, groceries, plus the tavern. But,” he added pointedly, “he is working!”

“Ain’t fair,” muttered Tom again, dropping eggs onto the heated pizza pan. The eggs sizzled and sputtered angrily. “Damnit!” growled Tom. “I forgot to add any butter.” John shook his head and assumed a seat at the kitchen table, where Sturges was spooning up tomato soup.

“And don’t forget to do your dishes, Tom,” scolded John, indicating with a wave of his hand the tremendous pile of dirty plates, cups, saucers, and pans stacked in the sink. John took up his pan of hamburger casserole and spooned a generous portion onto his plate.

“You’re having casserole again,” observed Sturges, slurping his soup.

“It’s all I can afford,” lamented John, forking up the familiar concoction. “I’m so big that it takes a lot of calories to fill me.” John always consumed a lot of food, though Sturges knew that John weighed no more than 170 pounds, soaking wet.

Tom, meanwhile, was viciously scraping the burned eggs from the pizza pan with a metal spatula, growing angrier and more frustrated by the second. Tiny bits of egg plummeted screaming to the floor. The other men stared at him for a second, then returned to their meals.

“Are you working all night?” asked Sturges.

“Just till one,” replied John. “Vern,”  referencing the bar owner, “lets everyone else in at no charge after then. I start at seven and work till one.”

“I have to work tonight myself,” said Sturges. “eight to twelve at Wagner,” referencing the old array of small factory buildings in town, reclaimed by the university and where the art department was housed.

“I don’t see how you can take your clothes off in front of everyone,” said Tom with a snicker. Sturges worked as a nude model for the art classes.

“Nothing to it,” said Sturges blithely.

“I’d be afraid I’d get a hard on,” squawked the other man indelicately.

“For you, it would only be a little problem,” John pointed out.

Tom’s face darkened. “Why’d you say that?” he demanded.

“Girls talk to me,” revealed John with a little smile. Everyone knew this to be true. John, for some reason, by virtue of his being gay, or perhaps in spite of it, inspired the confidence of most women. Tom’s mean little eyes squinted, and he hurriedly quit the kitchen, leaving his mess, as usual, behind him.

“You don’t want to get him too wound up,” warned Sturges, staring at the receding back of the other man. “When he gets loaded….”

“He’s always loaded,” remarked John. eating more casserole. “Principally with shit,” he added.

“He outweighs you by eighty pounds,” Sturges pointed out. “What would you do if he took a swing at you?”

“I’d tell everybody that he sucked me off,” replied John dismissively. Sturges laughed out loud.

                                                        . . .

At the door of Stagger Inn, John sat upon a bar stool and met guests as they filed through the portal. He collected the $2 cover charge and checked IDs for anyone of questionable age. Elaine, a full-figured woman dressed all in white, paused and handed him a five-dollar bill. Rapidly making changes, John told Elaine that “you look lovely tonight.”

“Ooh,” tittered Elaine, instantly flattered. Though he was gay, John was still tall, dark, and handsome and capable of outrageous blandishments. And Elaine was the type of woman who gravitated towards gay friends in lieu of lovers, much to her ultimate dismay.

“Have you seen Dennis tonight?” inquired John with a hopeful smile. Dennis was an object of John’s lustful fantasies and another supposedly gay friend of Elaine’s.

“I talked to him on the phone,” revealed Elaine. “He said he might be popping in.”

In a low, hot voice, John said, “I’d like to pop into him.” Elaine tittered delightedly again and proceeded into the tavern.

Next through the door was Betsy, a tiny, dark-haired lesbian who was also a friend and housemate of John. Though she was just nineteen, she was granted admission by virtue of her sexual identity, her status as an art student at the university (the Stagger Inn was known infamously around town as a gay, art student bar), and her acquaintance with John and Vern, the tavern owner.

“Hey, buster,” said Betsy, kissing John on the lips.

“Hey, sweet stuff,” John greeted her in turn.

At that moment, Vern walked up to the door and told John, “Let that new blonde girl, Melody, in here tonight, John. She’s just nineteen, but…”

“Girl?” repeated John. “Did you mean young woman?” He stared blankly at Vern, who snorted. The tavern was but a dodge; Vern made most of his money selling nose candy.

“Whatever you say, John,” he said, drifting back into the growing crowd.

The night proceeded apace until just before midnight, when Sturges showed up and John allowed him inside. “Buy you a beer, John?” asked Sturges.

“No, I get free beer; it’s one of the perks of the job,” replied the tall man, lifting a glass from the bar and taking a sip. “How did it go tonight at the studio?” he asked. “Any hot men there?” He grinned.

“Your friend Dennis was there,” replied Sturges, unzipping his coat and tossing it behind the bar. “He was asking about you.”

This garnered John’s immediate attention. “What did he say?” he asked, his expression eager. “What did you say? Tell me everything,” he demanded.

Sturges chuckled. “He said he’d be by later,” he said. “He wanted to know if you’d be here.”

“Of course I’m here; did you tell him so?” Sturges laughed again.

“Yeah, but he might have been just screwing with you. He knows you’re in love with him.”

“In lust,” John corrected automatically. “I don’t want to marry the man; just do him,” and he smiled a little.

“I don’t know if he’s even gay, John,” said Sturges; “the women are all over him.”

“That man is too damn good-looking to be straight,” declared John positively. “Everyone,” said John, “is capable of bisexuality.”

“Wishful thinking,” said Sturges.

John scowled. “You just go ahead and harvest your little ‘chicks’ and do your straight thing. How boring,” he said dismissively.

Suddenly, a loud voice boomed out of the crowded bar. “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” declared Stan, a homeless Black man known for his homophobia.

“Oh, God,” mourned John, shaking his head. “He’s back.”

“Stan’s alright,” said Sturges, grinning. “He’s just….”

“Yes, he is,” agreed John. “I hope you won’t be bringing him home again tonight.” Stan stayed at a different friend’s house every night; it was, Stan thought, part of his charm.

“Stan’s got a girlfriend now,” said Sturges, sipping his beer. “He’ll be crashing at her pad for the forseeable future.”

“Woman friend,” John corrected automatically. “Huh,” he muttered. “Even the homeless have lovers.”

The tavern, which closed at 3 a.m., was in wild disorder by two o’clock. The band was doing their last encore, a rich rendition of Jackie Wilson’s Higher and Higher, and everyone who hadn’t found a companion for the night was on the dance floor, pursuing that end. Almost everyone was high and/or intoxicated, and no one wanted to go home alone on a Friday night. Tom was there, and he had already consumed his quota of twenty beers. A woman he’d disdained at the beginning of the night had assumed the character of a love goddess in his beer-addled mind. Tom was dancing close with Rose, the single mother of a little girl who lived two houses down from Big Yellow. A decade older than Tom’s 25 years, she clung desperately to him, deathly afraid to be alone or unloved. Tom often attached himself to broken, misused, and fragile women.

John, now free of his responsibilities, sat at a table, sipping a beer, and observing the throng of partygoers. He sighed heavily. Dennis had not shown up, and Edwardsville tonight was itself as barren of gay lovers as a small town in the U.S.A. could be. Though there were homosexual and lesbian men and women in the community, most were circumspect about their sexual identities. John knew who they were, but most were entrenched in old, established relationships they’d had for years or were unwilling to reveal their true selves. It was not unheard of for an employee to be discharged on suspicion of being gay or lesbian. Unlike John, they were still closeted. At that moment, Sturges, with his new girlfriend on his arm, passed John on the way to the door, and he stopped for a moment at John’s table.

“No luck?” 

John knew what he meant. He shook his head disconsolately. “He’s probably off with some skanky female,” he said unhappily.

“Want to walk home with us?” asked Sturges.

John shook his head. “No, you children go on. Don’t worry about me,” he said melodramatically. He drained his glass. Sturges clapped him on the shoulder, and the two young people disappeared through the door and into the autumn night.

Suddenly, a shadow fell across the table. John looked up to find a tall, thin, blonde-haired woman in a halter top and shorts—in November, he marvelled—standing over him. The two’s eyes searched  one another for a moment before John climbed to his feet, grabbed his jacket, and together they swept out into the night.

Sturges was at the kitchen table, drinking a glass of milk and eating toast with peanut butter and jelly, when John trooped through the kitchen to his bedroom, which was just off the kitchen on the first floor. He cracked the bedroom door, and the tall, good-looking girl slipped through. John glanced back at Sturges and grinned wildly, then followed her inside. Sturges shrugged. After ten minutes, the girl reappeared, fully-clad again, and she left without a word. Five minutes after that, John poked his head out of the door, grinned stupidly again, then sauntered into the kitchen.

John was drunk, thought Sturges. “What was that all about?” he asked.

John laughed aloud, then shook his head in wonder. “I don’t know,” he said slowly.

“Who was that?” asked Sturges.

John shrugged. “Deborah….something.”

“What did you do?” Sturges asked with morbid curiosity. This was the first girl that he had ever seen enter the sanctum sanctorum.

“We fucked,” he said shortly. “She’s been hitting on me for weeks.”

“But…”

“I know.” John nodded. “But it was either that or Rosie Palm,” he held out his hand, “and her five daughters.”

“You mean,” said Sturges, “that it meant no more to you than masturbating?” He was rather horrified. John shrugged again, opened the fridge door, took out a carton of orange juice, and poured a glass. He took a seat across from his housemate.

“Like John Lennon said, ‘we’re all doin’ what we can.’ ” He looked up. “Where’s your new woman friend?”

“She had to go home,” replied Sturges. “She has a class on Saturday.”

“So you didn’t get off?” inquired John bluntly. “What’s the point of having a lover if you don’t do it every chance you get?” he asked incredulously.

“There’s more to a relationship than just sex,” said Sturges. “I want this to work. You can’t be using one another, you know?”

John shook his head. Clearly, this was beyond his comprehension. “I prefer the Bath Houses,” he said, referencing the notorious sexual emporia in nearby St. Louis, which catered to gay men. “No strings,” he explained.

“I like strings,” Sturges pointed out. “I mean, otherwise, what’s even the point of being with someone?”

John swallowed the juice and then replied in one word: “Conquest,” he said tersely.

                                                       . . .

The Baths were shadowy and dimly lit, with different colored lights in the different rooms, of which there were at least a score. There were no definitive rules of conduct other than no violence, no hard drugs, no overt prostitution, and no non-consensual relations. Most of the men were good with that. There were beds in some rooms, plain mattresses in others, and just carpet in a few rough zones. John, having paid his five dollars and disrobed and stored his things in a locker, donned a terrycloth towel and found himself in a darkened hallway, illuminated by only a large exit sign suspended from the ceiling. Up ahead, in the shadows, he discerned an indistinct form, crouching upon the floor on all fours. Boldly approaching, John stopped before the gauzy form. A hand reached up and, pushing the towel aside, grasped John’s manhood. John inhaled sharply. Spreading the towel wide, the figure fixed his lips around the other man’s penis and began engaging in fellatio. John’s breathing increased. Ten minutes later, John exited the hallway, having never seen his partner’s face and having not exchanged so much as a word.

                                                   . . .

“Hi, John, do you want my rent now?” asked Beth, the fifth and final member of the household.

John looked up with interest. “Thank you, Bethal Ann McClanahan,” he said in a sing-song voice.

She stood there uncertainly for a moment. “Are you going to the party over at the Corner Tavern tonight?” she asked.

“I suppose so,” he said glumly. “There’s nothing else to do.”

“You’re not working the door tonight?”

John shook his head. “No. Vern cancelled the band he had; they’re just going to use the jukebox tonight.” He sighed. “I need the bread,” he went on.

“You want to go to the party with me?” Beth asked. He looked at her. It was well known that Beth was in love with John’s tall, dark, and handsome form, despite his sexual peccadillos, and she was always waiting in the wings, as were many similarly hopeful women.

“Sure,” he replied slowly. “About ten o’clock?” he suggested.

“I’ll be ready,” she chirped.

Beth, scurrying off now to shower and dress, was the most recent arrival in Big Yellow, having been there just a month or so. Tom, scoping out any and all available women, had loudly announced to Sturges and John that “I’ll fuck her in a week.” John, of course, repeated this boast to the plump Beth, who, though she might have been amenable to such a development once, now disdained Tom as “ungentlemanly.” Besides, everyone had a measure of pride.

At the party, held at Corner Tavern, the uproar was manifest. By eleven p.m., virtually everyone was drunk, high, or otherwise strung out. It was nickel beer night. Sturges edged up to John and Beth, standing at the bar, and said, “Hey, you guys want to do some crystal?”

Beth’s face lit up with a smile, but John shook his head no. “My sinuses are bad enough from all that pot without snorting up lines of Drano,” he said. Beth chuckled.

“Man,” Sturges told him, “it’ll keep you up all night—if you know what I mean.”

“I’m up all night anyway,” murmured John, sipping his beer.

“Ooh, John,” teased Beth, “ain’t you the one?” He grinned and had the grace to blush.

“Is your woman here tonight?” asked John archly.

“My ex-woman, you mean?” said Sturges dourly. “She’s got a new man in her life,” he told them.

“Oh, Sturges,” said Beth, grabbing his arm. “Poor baby.”

“You see now why I don’t form so-called exclusive relationships,” remarked John.

“Well, this should interest you,” said Sturges. “Her new love interest is none other than your good buddy Dennis!”

“What!” squawked John, taken aback. “That boy is gay,” he insisted, only half in jest. What’s he doing with a mere woman? He could have me,” he argued.

“Some men like mere women, John,” said Beth.

“Maybe he wanted to wake up in the morning with his lover still in bed with him,” suggested Sturges.

“A person’s breath smells bad in the morning, all that cigarette smoke and pot and stale beer.”

“It smells whether or not you’re alone, though, John,” Beth pointed out, placing a gentle hand on John’s forearm.

                                                     . . .  

Sturges occupied his regular spot at the huge maple kitchen table one night when John returned home from the tavern with a handsome, bearded man in tow. As he opened the door to his bedroom, John paused in transit and introduced Sturges to the man. “Sturges,” he said with no little pride, “this is Franklin, my man friend from St. Louis.” Sturges glanced up and smiled in greeting.

“Hi, Franklin,” he said.

“Hello, Sturges,” replied Franklin. Sturges thought that the other man was unusually handsome and slender, like a soccer player. “We just got in from the Tivoli,” Franklin said, referencing an avant-garde theater in the city.

“What was playing?” asked Sturges, curious.

“Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Franklin answered.

“Is that still on?”

“I’ve been playing for 52 consecutive weeks,” revealed Franklin. “A toast!” he chirped, quoting the movie, and pulling a piece of toasted bread from his jacket, he tossed it in Sturges’s direction. ” Sturges caught it and laughed.

“Yeah, I’ve seen Rocky Horror a couple of times.”

John held open the door to his bedroom. “Franklin,” he invited, and the two men retired.

The next morning, Sturges was fixing breakfast at that same kitchen table when Franklin emerged from John’s room, fully dressed; John was clad in a bathrobe. A third man walked in through the open front door and greeted the two.

“Ready to go back to the Lou, Franklin?” asked the newcomer, who, like Franklin, was strikingly handsome.

“Be right with you, Ellis,” replied Franklin. Turning back to John, he leaned in for a good-bye kiss. The men embraced momentarily, then bid each other adieu, and Franklin and Ellis exited Big Yellow.

When they had departed, Sturges asked, “Who was that man?”

“That’s Franklin’s husband,” answered John with a warm little smile.

“Not the jealous type, huh?” said Sturges.

John batted the question away. “He’s got no reason to be. Franklin’s committed to him.” Sturges stared back at him. “Well,” observed John, “he married him, didn’t he?”

“I thought the Supreme Court ruled against same-sex marriage,” said Sturges.

“Not exactly. In Baker vs. Nelson, in Minnesota; the Court refused to hear it. It’s still on appeal.” Sturges nodded.

“You know, John,” said Sturges, “I never know who’s going to walk out of your bedroom.” John grinned broadly. “John,” added Sturges. John looked up. “Don’t you ever get a little lonely, you know, with one-night stands all the time?” The other man pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment, shrugged, and replied, “No,” rather unconvincingly, thought Sturges.

                                                     . . .

“We’re having a guest over Christmas,” John informed the others one week before the holidays. “Stephanie will be staying with us till after New Year’s.”

“Boston, Stephanie?” chirped Betsy, fitting slices of bread into the toaster. “I like her! She was here last year.”

“Boston Stephanie?” repeated Tom, again cooking eggs on a pizza pan. His dishes remained unwashed. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“An old friend of mine from when I studied for the ministry for one year in the Northeast”

Tom unleashed a loud, ugly cackle. “Ministry? You’re kidding!”

John shook his head. “I was a confused youth,” he revealed, “back when I was eighteen. I was at a Lutheran College for the longest eleven months of my life. Stephanie was a novitiate at a nearby convent.”

Tom continued to laugh unpleasantly. “What happened?” he asked.

“We fell from grace,” replied John cryptically.

“What’s she like?” asked Tom, getting right to the point. “Is she good-looking?”

“When has that ever been a prerequisite for you?” asked John archly.

“Where’s she going to sleep?” Tom inquired further.

“In your bed, of course,” replied John.

Tom’s eyes bugged out like hardboiled eggs, and he said, “Sounds good to me. I’m always looking for a good piece of tail.”

When Stephanie arrived several days later, the household gathered around to welcome her. She was of medium height, dark-haired, slightly round, and dressed in a Red Sox jersey. Stephanie greeted John with a kiss, Betsy with a hug, and the others with a friendly wave. Beth and Sturges took to her immediately. Tom wasn’t so sure, however. He was mentally fitting her into his queen-sized bed. Having already consumed a dozen of his 20 daily beers, Tom asked stupidly, “Are you a virgin?” She blinked in surprise.

“Honey,” she said, wrapping an arm around Tom’s thick neck, I’ve been with 212 men, four women, two goats, and a Bedouin camel driver.”

“Yikes!” exclaimed Tom excitedly.

For the next two weeks, Stephanie slept not in Tom’s bed, but in John’s, a “friend, with benefits” type arrangement, John told Sturgis.

Two weeks after New Year’s Day, Bethel moved out, only to be replaced by Theresa–Te–a philosophy student at the university. She was diminutive and striking, like a porcelain miniature, and rivaled John with her libidinous promiscuity. In no time, she was sleeping with Sturges in his third-floor atelier and doing lines of blow in every room of the house. Nobody thought much about Te and Sturges canoodling, though it did not sit well with Tom, who, like he said, was always on the hunt for a new piece of tail.

One night Tom sought to replicate his romantic feats with the much scorned Rose, whom he regularly abandoned at the tavern in favor of prettier, younger women.  Returning from the bar at midnight, he approached Rose’s screen door and hammered with his fist upon the portal.

“What do you want, Tom?” she asked, shielding four-year-old Katie behind her hip. They had been roused from sleep. “I’ve got my daughter tonight,” she pointed out. “Come back tomorrow. Katie will be with her father then.”

“I want to fuck you now, tonight!” he bellowed, smacking the door again with his fist.

“Please,” she implored, “go away.”

“At least stick your head out the door and gimme a blow job,” he insisted, edging closer to the door.

“Go away!” Across the neighborhood, lights began blinking on in the windows of other residences. Suddenly, a police car came screaming down the street, its blue and red lights flashing crazily.

“You bitch!” Tom spat. “You called the damned cops!” and he took off, lumbering the two hundred feet from Rose’s home back to Big Yellow. The cruiser, meanwhile, proceeded down the street, giving not a thought to obtruding on a mere sexual harassment case. Wiping beads of perspiration from his bare chest, Tom clomped up the stairs to his second-floor bedroom. As he cracked the door to his room, he discerned whispering coming from the third floor—Sturges’s room. He stopped and listened. It was Sturges and Te.

“Pillow talk,” murmured Tom. Still very drunk, he took a swig of beer and tiptoed half way up the carpeted stairs and stopped again to listen. It was Te alone, and she was on the telephone. Tom recalled that Sturges was posing for a drawing class tonight. Tom proceeded up the stairs. Finally arriving at the top, he peered around a structural pillar and saw her: all four feet eight inches and ninety pounds of her, naked as a jaybird and lying atop a body pillow, with her delightful derriere accomodatingly angled his way. He felt himself growing hard. Walking forward as if in a dream, he unbuckled his trousers and finally stood over and just behind her prone figure. Lowering himself, he grabbed her shoulders and lunged forward.

John was taking a bath in the second-floor bathroom when he heard the scream. It was a woman’s voice—Te! Jumping from the tub, he ran for the door, wrapping his terrycloth robe around his shoulders. With no further ado, he raced up the stairs to Sturges’s attic apartment and found Te, squirming helplessly beneath Tom’s huge, flabby body. Without a second thought, John grabbed Tom’s half-filled beer bottle and brought it down smartly on the other man’s thick skull. With a sickening “Thook!” the bottle reverberated off his cranium. John struck again. The bottle shattered into an amber cloud of glass shards. With a little squeak, Tom fell unconscious off of Te’s backside.

Uttering an anguished cry, Te took up a letter-opener and plunged it violently into Tom’s crotch. Blood spurted everywhere.

“Are you alright, Te?” asked John in a concerned voice.

“Motherfucker came before he could get into me,” she said with a sneer. There were tears in her eyes.

Though initially inclined to seek retribution for Tom’s foiled assault, Te at length decided not to press charges. One reason was that she had succeeded in severing one of Tom’s testicles, and might have faced countercharges had she proceeded; the other reason was that there were so many illegal drugs and paraphernalia in Big Yellow that it was deemed imprudent  to invite an active police investigation of the premises. Tom, of course, moved out a day later and spent much of the next week recuperating in the hospital.

                                                       . . .  

John emerged from his bedroom into the kitchen, clutching a threadbare corduroy coat around his large body. “I hate this old coat,” he grumbled unhappily. Betsy looked up from breakfast.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“When I go to St. Louis with all of rich UMSL students, they all have expensive, warm coats. I want one.” Betsy nodded sympathetically. “Why can’t one of my rich relatives die and leave me money so I can buy a new coat?” he wondered aloud.

“John,” said Betsy, “you don’t mean that!”

“Who says I don’t?” he asked. “They’ve got thousands of dollars in their bank accounts, and I have like twenty dollars.” He plunged his hands into his pockets. “I just need one of them to die,” he explained. “I need new shoes, too,” he added thoughtfully. “Maybe a meteorite could take out a whole household, and then I could afford a new car.” His face shone with avarice. “I’m a student,” he went on, “and I’m trying to make a better life for myself; they’re… old!” he said disdainfully.

                                                       . . . 

In May, just weeks before completing his junior year, John became more circumspect. Always rather flamboyant, he spoke little of his personal life and stopped hitting on random men. He also discontinued his forays to the Baths. Sturges noticed his friend’s change in behavior and became a little concerned. One day, unable to hold his tongue any longer, Sturges asked John, “What’s going on with you?”

John ceased washing dishes, looked over his shoulder, and said, innocently, “What do you mean?” Sturges scowled.

“I mean,” he said, “are you eating salt peter, taking quaaludes, doing smack? You’ve changed, man!”

John grew pensive and decided to come clean: “I’ve found a new…man friend,” he revealed. He giggled like a little girl.

“Who is it?” asked Sturges.

“You remember that man I was with at the bar last weekend, when I was working?” Sturges nodded. He remembered a short, unprepossessing figure in what appeared to be a Brooks Brothers suit standing with John at the door of the tavern.

“Who was that?” he asked.

“That’s Eliot,” said John. “Eliot Denholm; he’s from Scotland. He works for Lloyd’s of London, believe it or not. He’s an executive or something, very high up in the company.”

“What’s he doing here?” Sturges wanted to know.

“I asked him that,” said John. “And he said if he told me, he’d have to kill me.” And he exploded with nervous laughter, clapping his hands together.

“How long’s he here for?”

John shook his head. “Not long. He’s got to go back to bloody old Londontown,” he said, using a poor British accent. “Goddamn limey,” he said half-jokingly. The two men were silent for a moment, and then John said quietly, “Eliot wants to take me back with him to Europe. He’s moving back to Scotland and wants me to live with him,” he disclosed.

“What about school?” asked Sturges.

“Oh hell, I can go to school anytime. I could even attend college in Europe. Eliot said he’d pay my way.” But John’s face, Sturges decided, was troubled. The whites of his eyes seemed to glow like the sun.

“So what’s the down side?”

“There is none,” replied John

“Is he…?” began Sturges.

John nodded. “Yes. He’s rich.”

One Month Later

A bon voyage party was to be held. John would be joining Eliot in Glasgow the following week. Looking around his bedroom, John found that he had little to pack. “There’s nothing I want to take,” he said to Sturges and Betsy, who were helping him prepare for departure.

“Are you ready for a big change, man?” asked Sturges. John nodded.

“Eliot said he’d put some real estate and stocks in my name,” remarked John. “That way, I won’t be dependent on him, and I won’t stay with him just because he supports me.”

“That’s very cool, John,” said Betsy, folding one of John’s shirts and dropping it into the open suitcase. “Eliot seems like the real deal, you know what I mean?”

“He wants us to be monogamous,” said John suddenly. The three friends stared at each other. “I’ve never been monogamous before. I’m not sure I know how to do it,” he admitted.

“How old is Eliot?” asked Betsy.

“Fifty.”

“Are you afraid he won’t be able to…?” she asked.

“No, no, no,” he interrupted her. “He has a strong sex drive; it’s just that I’ve never been with one person—one man—in a committed relationship before.” Sturges thought John looked torn.

“What are you really afraid of?” asked Sturges.

“I’m not sure if I really love him. If I can love anyone, It all used to be so simple,” he remembered. Going to the Baths, and before that, when I was in high school, hanging out in Forest Park in St. Louis. Like I said, there were no strings.” He looked up at Sturges. “I know, you like strings. You told me that before.”

Betsy, who was in the third year of a committed relationship to a woman in her own young life, told him, “If you commit, then you risk getting hurt. The worst thing in the universe is rejection, honey. I’ve gotten to know him over the past few weeks, and I think that Eliot loves you. I really do.” John said nothing.

“Eliot seems like a good man,” offered Sturges.

“I think you feel the way you do about love,” said Betsy, “because of your father.”

At Sturges’s questioning look, John explained. “My dad is a Lutheran minister,” he said. “He disowned me when I came out when I was nineteen.” Sturges hadn’t known this. “He hasn’t spoken to me since,” he added. “My sisters and my mom still talk to me, but he won’t, and I can’t go home.” Sturges had never seen his friend so affected. The whites of John’s eyes glistened with moisture.

                                                    . . . 

The going-away party was a wild one. More than a hundred people swarmed through the many rooms of Big Yellow and spilled out into the yard, where lawn chairs and picnic tables had been set up to accommodate the many partygoers. An enormous amount of beer was drunk, and inordinate quantities of marijuana were incinerated. Though police cruisers drifted past the front of the house, no stops were made; good conduct was observed.

“When are you leaving, John?” asked the mysterious Dennis, showing up at last and running a finger under his eye and preening as though for a camera.

“Two days,” replied John, leaning against a wall, looking at the other man, and wondering what he could have found so fascinating about him. Dennis was drunk on his ass. It was not a pretty sight, thought John. He shook his head at the one who got away.

By three a.m., the crowds had disappeared, and the housemates busied themselves tidying up the premises. Hundreds of beer bottles were scooped into trash cans, and half-eaten plates of food were plunked into bags. Sturges had never before seen so many filled ashtrays. Not bothering to snap on the light, he sneaked into John’s bedroom, emptied an ashtray into a large coffee can, and came upon a small mirror lying upon John’s bed, with two thick lines of coke arrayed upon it. Te, by his side, took up a dollar bill and rolled it into a tight cylinder, and each snorted up a line. All of a sudden, Te was in his arms, and they were kissing. She plunged her hand down the front of his jeans, and he pulled her shirt up over her head. In seconds, they were prone upon the bed, Te astride him, making frenzied love.

It wasn’t until later that they realized they weren’t alone. Beside them on the bed was John, performing fellatio on another man. John and Eliot, thought Sturges with a smile, too high to be embarrassed, until he looked closer and saw that it was not John and Eliot but rather John and Dennis. All sound and movement ceased. No one said a word.

                                                         . . .

On Monday morning, before the Yellow Cab arrived at Big Yellow to take John to Lambert International Airport, John and his two fastest friends, Sturges and Betsy, waited pensively. As the minutes ticked down, they found they had little to say but were each wrapped in their own thoughts. Suddenly, John spoke.

“Don’t forget to collect the rent at the first of the month,” he told Sturges with a wistful little smile.

“Got it,” replied Sturges.

“And don’t forget the furnace filter, once a month,” he continued.

“I’ve got it, John,” Sturges assured him calmly. John nodded.

“When are you coming back?” asked Betsy all at once.

Eliot returns to the States two or three times a year,” replied John. “One time to New York City, one time to Los Angeles, and once to Chicago.”

“Sturges and I can come up to Chicago when you get there,” she said.

“Sure, Eliot will put you up at the Hilton,” said John with a smile.

“I’d expect nothing less,” said Sturges with a grin. Then, “Do you still have misgivings, John?” John shook his head and said nothing. Suddenly they heard the scrunch of gravel, and Betsy peered out the window.

“Taxi’s here, John.”

John climbed to his feet, tugged his light jacket around himself, and turned to his friends. After a second, he grabbed Betsy in a crushing embrace, then released her. He held his hand out to Sturges, and when Sturges reached for it, John took him up in a savage hug, too. Both men giggled happily. “You kids write, you hear?” he said in a strangled voice, and in a second he was out the door, suitcase in hand. They heard the car door open and then slam shut. The taxi backed out of the driveway and sped rapidly up the street.

“I hope it all works out for John. He deserves it,” said Sturges.

“Yes, he does,” agreed Betsy.

“But,” said Sturges, “what if Eliot finds out?”

“He knows,” said Betsy with certitude.

“He does?” exclaimed Sturges. “Did Dennis tell him?”

“No,” replied Betsy. “John did.”

---

Bill Tope is a retired caseworker, construction worker, nude model for university art classes, who lives with his mean little cat Baby.