A Dream
How much I dislike spending nights alone, but how I dislike the hunt and search to find someone to share it with. I am tired of bars and hitch-hikers.
The sunset lights the sky with pinks, yellows and firey reds as I point my Datsun toward Route 68 west. It's about 60 miles to Dayton from my home. The hunt and search will begin there tonight and tomorrow the haunting memories of another man will be with me.
As I approach Xenia the sunset has turned to dusk. Here and
By Mike Grant
there from the shadows some of the disaster of the tornado lurks. I turn onto Route 35 and start south when someone recognizes me and blows his horn and I return it. Things aren't too bad I tell myself as I am driving along. Somewhere along 35S, I am not sure where I was doing 70 mph, a truck switches lanes and there is no place for me to go and no time to stop. My car lights up his side and then his left rear and at those large tires the lights go out with the sound of breaking glass, and screaming metal. As
Structures
In the spring it was warm and wet and the gray cirrus clouds scudded in from the valley to the west and by nightfall the earth was wet again with the new rain and the stream by the house would swell pregnant with soft clean water pulled down from the mountains. The stream bed had frozen hard and empty and solid with the co.d of winter and now the smooth polished stones shown almost liquid in their muddy browns and grays beneath the running current. There was a willow tree by the stream, huge and ancient and endless and almost as large as the house nearby although its trunk was rough and hard and had been eaten half-through with the rot of one winter. No one could say when or how the rot got there but there was a large plaster patch over the wound and though weakened the tree still grew
We would sometimes sit beneath the willow at day's end and protected from the dripping `rain we would watch the stream continue its journey and wind over rocks and we would listen to the wind and say nothing. The couple who had sold us the house even though we were lesbians had planted a vine at the willow's base and sometimes we wondered whether it might someday grow enough to strengthen the tree or whether it might strangle it. In the days to come I would think back to the rain and the stream bed and the willow and wonder about the tree and the vine and whether the plaster patch was enough to cover the hollow-place inside, but I never went back to find out.
the darkness creeps over me, I what happened the day the place feel pain. went down and he waves his hand and the whole day reappeared before my eyes and I understood. I told how I loved him and how I hated to spend nights alone; how the hunt and search was driving me out of my mind. He told me he knew and understood. However the time wasn't right. I then heard someone call my name and I turned and at the same instant Michael left me.
Here I am where its bright, pretty and quiet. How the time seems to hang, for there is no urgency to be somewhere. But where am I? Wait someone is calling my name, I turn and there he stands. Together at last, the M&M kids. We were called that by our friends, his name was Michael and mine is Mike.
With tears and laughter we greet one another, a little assgrabbing, lots of hugging and kissing. Then I ask him to tell me
By Riki Anne Wilchins
In the spring of that year as the rains were stopping and it seemed the flowers were starting to bloom Kathy came out at work. We had talked about it the night before and she seemed very certain and very confident and when she thought I was asleep that night I looked up through lowered lashes and saw her staring out the bedroom window at the willow by the stream. The very next morning she marched quietly into the principal's office and made her brief announce ment and then as quietly returned to work to stare out over her desk at the happy faces of her children and wonder what it was that had changed. The principal was in complete sympathy with her, and after complimenting her on her courage at risking her entire future career working with children, had said that it made no difference to him personally whether she was queer or green
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or Negro and that as long as she didn't discuss her personal life with anyone, a girl of her obvious talents was welcome to stay at his school anyway. That night she cried herself gently to sleep thinking that I couldn't hear her through her pillow and it was I who stared out the window.
AKRON
As I opened my eyes the nurse and doctor looked so relieved; I
By early summer things came to a head. The people at school did not ostracize her, they did not criticize her, they did not understand her, they did not care to. She ate alone in the cafeteria and walked the two or three miles home from school whenever possible and often in the warm
HIGH GEAR PAGE 9
was back with them. Damn them and damn their stupid ways! Can't they understand I wanted to stay with Michael? I am tired of the game. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go with Michael. But he told me the time wasn't right, didn't he want me with him? Soon I'll be back in the bars, baths and the parks looking for another memory to share the night. Should it be you, be kind to me. It's not you I dislike, it's the game of seek and I lose...
rain and said little when she arrived home. I would ask her if anything was wrong and she would assure me that things were going fine and that night we would make quick and tepid love
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