ALL THE

WAY

by

Frank Hammill

Transfixed with one idea, one result, I sit in this dim-lit bar scribbling. Drink? Yes. But drinking is not forgetting. Will the door swing open as it did that other night six weeks ago and Bill walk again into my life, or is he forever gone? Since I'm afraid to hope for a future, since the present is unbearable, and since for now the very past has evolved into a centering upon the past six weeks of Bill and me, I want to dwell on that, to tell someone about it. So here I sit writing:

Sudden, monstrous tragedy took Duane from me. One day he complained of stomach pains. The next, he lay struggling in an iron lung. And in two days, funeral arrangements were under way. Bulbar Polio, they said. Ten years together terminated in a jolt! My shock became a void. What had life to offer? One can't go out cruising after such a relationship. A year of gray longing drove me that night six weeks ago to this Santa Monica bar. A drink or two, I thought. Loneliness may lose its sting if I surround myself with the boisterousness of others.

Sipping, thinking, I suddenly found myself looking across the corner of the bar into puzzled, sad eyes.

"Gotta match?" he asked.

I thought, what the hell. Corny, usual approach. But as I slid a lighter across,

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