Page 261 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 231

the cold night blew stoned circles around the million lights of Castro Street
reflecting wet below. More Benday Dots bubbled up the pink-champagne
neon outlining the tall marquee of the Castro Theatre. Roy Lichtenstein
panels pop-pop-popped on the three huge billboards stilted high above
the traffic on Market Street with cartoon balloons exclaiming: What movie
am I now? I’m every movie I’ve ever seen. When do we move to Vegas?
Kick walked him closer to the railing of the rooftop parking lot. A
light mist fell through the glow hovering over the intersection of Mar-
ket and Castro. Below them, tires sang on the glistening blacktop. They
huddled together. Ryan ached with his discipline of self-denial. He wanted
to shout out the truth. He was in-love with Kick. What difference did it
make anymore after all that had passed between them?
“I love you,” Kick said.
He put his arms around Ryan in the blowing mist. Ryan was crying.
Ryan knew he could not say, was not allowed to say, because every fairy
tale had one unbreakable caveat, “I’m in-love with you.” Instead, he said
what he always said, “I love you.” And he meant this too, and meant it
the more because of the hurt of holding his tongue in check, disciplined
against what Kick cautioned might pass for cheap love on Castro. “I love
you more than anyone I’ve ever loved.”
“I love you too,” Kick said.
They both laughed.
“This is the balcony scene,” Ryan said. “Admission twenty-five cents.
We’re both nuts. I love you sounds like please love me, and I love you too
sounds wrung out by torture.”
“But I do love you,” Kick said. “I do no kidding love you.”
“Pretty Poison,” Ryan said. “Tony Perkins said that to Tuesday Weld.”
Again they laughed.
“I really love you, Kick,” Ryan insisted. “You are the greatest love of
my life.”
Tears and laughter made him, on this rooftop in this foggy night
with this golden man, feel absolutely larger than life. His soul careened
out-of-body up higher than the glow from the towering marquee of the
Castro Theatre.
“Do you understand, Billy Ray Sorensen? It’s you I love. Not your
face. Not your muscles. I love you the way maybe no one in this whole
gay intersection loves anyone else. The way I know no one loves you. I love
you in away that has nothing to do with sex. I love your soul. I would die
for you.”
“I want you to live for me.”

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK