Page 401 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 371

It is dangerous. There is no joy in it. Other men, because they
are not him, would simply remind me of him. There is no one I
can turn to. No one can do anything but comfort me with words
or with their caring touch, which hurts me worse because their
words are not his words, their touch is not his touch. He was the
measure of everything in the world. I want to cry. I want to die.
But I go on living. The wave of fire has not killed me yet. I’ve never
felt so unloved or so unwanted. I could easily do something crazy.
I could easily flip out and never come back again. My brother
betrayed my trust. My first lover betrayed my trust. Now this
man, I don’t know yet, may not have been trustworthy.

Saint Valentine’s Day meant something to the romantic in Ryan.
With Kick gone this night, all these nights, he needed the feel of company.
He had insisted on paying for the four tickets the way he had always paid
Kick’s way. He was the last of the big spenders. Kweenie and Solly and I
were his guests.
If you can’t go out with your lover, go out with a crowd.
We arrived at the theater early. Ryan never liked to miss the beginning
of anything, and no matter how dreadful the drama, always stayed in his
seat through to the end. He was excited by the milling crowd in the ornate
lobby. On the sidewalk beyond the brass-and-glass doors of the theater,
ticket holders brushed shoulders with street people. The theater was on the
edge of the Tenderloin, only four blocks from Solly’s penthouse, not far
from the Market Street corner where, for years, straight young hustlers,
eager for a gay buck, leaned insouciant against the dirty windows of the
deserted “Flagg Bros Shoes” waiting for johns cruising by on foot and in
cars.
“Ah, yes,” Solly said as we walked up the street. “I know this corner
well. I want my ashes spread here...in the gutter.” He pointed to one of
his boys working the opposite corner. “You’d like that one,” he said to
Kweenie. “You’re his type of woman.”
“Darling!” Kweenie shook her red hair. “Me? Recycle trash?”
Solly loved to find tricks for friends. “You’d like him. He’s a good boy.
He’s nineteen. He’s a recovered alcoholic.”
“Recovered in what? Chintz? Corduroy? Leather?” She tapped her
program on Solly’s shoulder. “Behave yourself.”
“West Side Waltz is a new play.” Ryan was acting as tour guide. He
was intent we all have a good time. He needed a good time. “The author
wrote On Golden Pond.”

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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