Junior were doing it.
"James Niebuhr," he introduced himself, with a strong, large hand thrust out for me to shake across the ravages of noodles in cold sesame sauce. I noticed paper cuts in the thumb and index finger and guessed he worked in design or art directing. "And yes, I'm distantly related to the Niebuhr."
"I gotta piss!" was Junior Obregon's loud announcement. He continued to sit there, chewing on a chopstick while glowering at me.
Now Junior and me, we have history. About two years ago, I was walking home from watching a third-rate foreign film at a local cinema when he accosted me at Seventh Avenue and Twelfth Street. Junior is lanky, and handsome in that strange blond-Latin way—you know, hair a little too thick, eyes a little too brown, face a little too pitted. His leather jacket is always open, and a work shirt is open to his navel even when it's so cold out sleeping sparrows are falling like stones out of trees. So I looked, immediately thought, Trouble, and moved on.
Junior Obregon is no fool, and he caught on to what I was thinking. So he followed me all the way home, sometimes behind me, sometimes on the side, a couple of times even in the gutter, all the time talking dirty to me, but in reality challenging me.
When we got to my place, he stopped my hand at the front door and said, "I need it bad!"
"If you're looking for money, forget it," I said, hard as ice.
"No, man!" with that accent. "Just a little action."
I still thought he was trouble, but I've been gay long enough to know even the worst men can be quite amenable when they're suffering from a case of blue balls and you're the one designated to help them.
As I let him in, I continued calculating: I was big enough to take him without a weapon if he got itsy. But if he were armed... Before he could think, I spun Junior around, pushed him against the corridor wall, and frisked him. He didn't complain. He did not breathe a word. I didn't find a weapon, and all the while I was saying to myself, "Honey! You are one hard queen!" thinking what a great story this would make when I told Alistair the next day on the phone.
Inside the apartment he stripped off his pants and dropped onto my sofa, working up his dick. I blew him and he left. The entire encounter took at most ten minutes. I never asked his name and he never offered it.
He appeared a year later, stepping out of Tisch Hall in company with Wally and some of his cohorts. At which point it became clear he wasn't the Puerto Rican ex-con with the hots he'd pretended to be, but merely another NYU film school student, son of successful and well-off parents who lived in semirural New Jersey.
I didn't care. But evidently Norberto Juan Maria Obregon the Third— that was Junior's full name—did care, especially because he'd been found out playing a most unenlightened role of Latino trade. He'd silently resented me for it ever since, even though I never told Wally or anyone else.
"So Wally said you do... What is it?" Niebuhr asked.
"Drug pushing!" Wally said.
"I'm an axe murderer," I readily agreed and poked through their dishes searching for something edible.
"No," James said. "You're like a writer or something."
I turned to Wally. "To answer your question: yes, I gave Alistair the pills. All sixty-four."
"You'll burn in Hell," Wally said with no emotion. He'd located a prawn and fed it to me with his chopsticks.
Junior Obregon got up to piss.
"You wrote a book, didn't you?" Niebuhr asked. " The Sexual Underclass . Junior's Soc professor has it on his reading list."
"He's losing his memory," I said to Wally, referring to Alistair. "The virus has already reached his brain. I've seen what it's like when they become demented. You haven't."
"Why not just wait outside his building and knife him?" Wally asked.
"He barely gets out anymore. Too exhausted to walk."
Niebuhr continued to ignore our conversation. "Junior said that his prof said it was the best study of the rise of the gay
"James Niebuhr," he introduced himself, with a strong, large hand thrust out for me to shake across the ravages of noodles in cold sesame sauce. I noticed paper cuts in the thumb and index finger and guessed he worked in design or art directing. "And yes, I'm distantly related to the Niebuhr."
"I gotta piss!" was Junior Obregon's loud announcement. He continued to sit there, chewing on a chopstick while glowering at me.
Now Junior and me, we have history. About two years ago, I was walking home from watching a third-rate foreign film at a local cinema when he accosted me at Seventh Avenue and Twelfth Street. Junior is lanky, and handsome in that strange blond-Latin way—you know, hair a little too thick, eyes a little too brown, face a little too pitted. His leather jacket is always open, and a work shirt is open to his navel even when it's so cold out sleeping sparrows are falling like stones out of trees. So I looked, immediately thought, Trouble, and moved on.
Junior Obregon is no fool, and he caught on to what I was thinking. So he followed me all the way home, sometimes behind me, sometimes on the side, a couple of times even in the gutter, all the time talking dirty to me, but in reality challenging me.
When we got to my place, he stopped my hand at the front door and said, "I need it bad!"
"If you're looking for money, forget it," I said, hard as ice.
"No, man!" with that accent. "Just a little action."
I still thought he was trouble, but I've been gay long enough to know even the worst men can be quite amenable when they're suffering from a case of blue balls and you're the one designated to help them.
As I let him in, I continued calculating: I was big enough to take him without a weapon if he got itsy. But if he were armed... Before he could think, I spun Junior around, pushed him against the corridor wall, and frisked him. He didn't complain. He did not breathe a word. I didn't find a weapon, and all the while I was saying to myself, "Honey! You are one hard queen!" thinking what a great story this would make when I told Alistair the next day on the phone.
Inside the apartment he stripped off his pants and dropped onto my sofa, working up his dick. I blew him and he left. The entire encounter took at most ten minutes. I never asked his name and he never offered it.
He appeared a year later, stepping out of Tisch Hall in company with Wally and some of his cohorts. At which point it became clear he wasn't the Puerto Rican ex-con with the hots he'd pretended to be, but merely another NYU film school student, son of successful and well-off parents who lived in semirural New Jersey.
I didn't care. But evidently Norberto Juan Maria Obregon the Third— that was Junior's full name—did care, especially because he'd been found out playing a most unenlightened role of Latino trade. He'd silently resented me for it ever since, even though I never told Wally or anyone else.
"So Wally said you do... What is it?" Niebuhr asked.
"Drug pushing!" Wally said.
"I'm an axe murderer," I readily agreed and poked through their dishes searching for something edible.
"No," James said. "You're like a writer or something."
I turned to Wally. "To answer your question: yes, I gave Alistair the pills. All sixty-four."
"You'll burn in Hell," Wally said with no emotion. He'd located a prawn and fed it to me with his chopsticks.
Junior Obregon got up to piss.
"You wrote a book, didn't you?" Niebuhr asked. " The Sexual Underclass . Junior's Soc professor has it on his reading list."
"He's losing his memory," I said to Wally, referring to Alistair. "The virus has already reached his brain. I've seen what it's like when they become demented. You haven't."
"Why not just wait outside his building and knife him?" Wally asked.
"He barely gets out anymore. Too exhausted to walk."
Niebuhr continued to ignore our conversation. "Junior said that his prof said it was the best study of the rise of the gay
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