T

by K. O. NEAL

THE

JUNK

DEALER

I met him through Jerry. Jerry and I had had this arrangement for years. We traded tricks. I'm not much on writing a story, if this is a story, in fact I've never written one before, and I think you're supposed to say it different than that we traded tricks. Anyway, that's what we did. A long time ago Jerry and I had been married for a couple of months, and I'm not sure why we broke up, really, but I think it was because we were too much alike. We both hated gay bars, for example, and we both loved black cats and real crummy movies, and little things like that, for example. Anyway, things went so goddam nice we really weren't having any fun, and one night we got drunk and said so and that was it, and Mary, were we relieved!

Well, anyway, Jerry calls up and says he has this offbeat goodie for me. Yah, I says, just like that, cause Jerry liked dark parks and tearooms and always had been blind as a bat without his glasses, which he refused to wear cruising, and he'd sent over some stinkers. But he'd found out about these contact lenses and got some and liked them fine except it was so expensive cause he was always losing one. He never lost two, it was always just one. I used to every now and then run into him at night at some dark tearoom and there she would be, holding one eye closed with one hand and holding a match up in the other, peering around the gloryhole looking for that thing.

Well, anyway, Jerry kept pushing this guy, me just half listening. Not that I had any intention of turning it down. Not at my age.

So I gets this call a couple of nights later. That voice! Mary! It was low, real low, so low it made you think of a growl. It didn't excite me that first time, it just kind of scared me. It just didn't sound gay. I mean, a lot of queens can

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