Why you...! Get back!"

"You don't even know how to hold the knife you damn kid. .-. I can kick it right outa your hand."

Ow-w-w

"Yeah? Like hell you . . . Get back dad! I'm "Yeah... so I can see . . . so now I got the knife. You you talk about being a cat. . . you don't know anything about a knife so who you tryin' to snow? You had me wonderin' there for a minute because I ain't had a knife. pulled on me in two years . . . and that joker was an expert . . .. but I got the knife now and you're scared as hell . . . look at ya! Well look at ya! Well... just relax buddy. I'm not gonna use it so there's no call for you to shake your boots off. But you're gonna listen to sumthin' before I call it a night.

"I ...

"Shut up. YOU can sit on the garbage can now. Go ON... all right smoke a cigarette or sumthin' but listen. listen to what I have to say It's hard because I haven't told anybody this for a long time. I've NEVER told anybody like you . . . but . . . all right, here it is.

"My parents were killed in an auto accident on New Year's Eve. It was my old man's fault... he had too much and he thought he could drive. I was eight years old. I went to live with my aunt and I was all mixed up. She put me through grammar school. Then when I was out she said I was old enough to work for what I wanted. She sorta put me on my own. Well . . I was scared at first and clumsy as hell but after a while I began to catch on. I sorta liked it. I didn't feel like a baby .. I didn't feel .. mixed up any more. I started in high school workin' afterwards each night. Few months. went by . . . I didn't feel nothin' towards those girls . . . they sorta turned my stomach in a way . . . silly like . . . cheap almost. Well, I went to movies a lot by myself an' I started readin' ... just junk at first . . . then the good stuff.

"Then one day I saw this novel about queers . . . I don't know . . . that interested me somehow. . . I had the money . . . I could 'a bought the book I know I wanted to . . . but I was scared. Because all I knew about queers was the weird-lookin' guys I'd seen on the street an' a coupla ugly lookin' creeps who tried to pick me up in a movie . . . and a' course there were some fluttery jerks at the school . . . I was scared. I didn't want that bookseller to think I was one a' those guys. I felt yellow and I went outa that place lookin' down at the sidewalk. Well... that made me mad so that night I went back and I bought that book . . . and that bookseller looked at me kinda funny but I looked him right in the eye . . . because I didn't give a damn what he thought . . . in fact I was gettin' sick of carin' what anybody thought. I walked outa that bookstore with my head so high I bumped into an old man on the street . . . and I laughed about that.

"Well, I sat up the whole evening and half the morning readin' that book, an' it was great because the guys in the book weren't ugly or swishy . . . they were young and strong. I was halfway through that book and I knew right then that that was what I wanted . . . I got to thinkin' back to when I was a little kid and later how I felt lookin' at some of the guys at high school . . . and how girls had somehow never interested me and how I didn't care for any older woman' either . . . I knew then . . . that was what I wanted. That was me.

"Only that book loused up at the end. . . it started gettin' real morbid an' hopeless . . . and this guy was suddenly sayin' 'It's wrong . . . .. it's wrong.' So he jumps outa a twelve-story window and the other guy gets soused and drowns himself in a lake. So for over half the book it's talkin' how great it is and then it ends up like that. That got me. That got me all fouled up. I... I didn't know what to think . . . somehow that endin' just didn't make sense.

"I got hold of another book . . . an' it's goin' along fine too . . . only one guy gives it up and goes back home an' the other one goes out an' rapes a kid because he's so confused. Well the cops catch him an' he hangs himself in his cell . . . Great! I was sayin' are they all gonna end up like this? about to jump outa a window myself, those books had me so fouled up. 'Cause

one