They sat across from each other at the Cottage House. The noise of the Sunday morning breakfast crowd around them offered little solitude. It would be impossible to converse on the level he needed and so Alan waited to resume his story.

"Do you mind walking a bit after our meal?" he asked.

"Where to?" John replied.

"I thought I might take you down to the dam. It's probably the best place to tell you the next part of the story."

"The dam, I would be honored," John said.

"Good man, a worthy friend."

An hour later they were perched on the rocks above the cascading waters and John could easily understand why this place was special. Tommy had sat here and John looked around as if there might be some remnant of the lost boy.

"Up there," Alan said, reading his thoughts.

John turned and looked up at the large boulder towering above their heads. Scratched into the surface were the initials he'd been seeking. A.S. & T.B.

"I sat him on my shoulders to reach that high. He didn't weigh much but I was still sore when he was done. It took him at least half and hour and I figure the initials will last at least a hundred years."

Alan turned away from the rocks and stared out across the water. John knew it hurt him to see those initials but at least he had something permanent here, something Tommy had done for their sake.

"One Sunday afternoon I found my way down here and sat on the rocks to think." Alan began.

I closed my eyes and thought about how Tommy had loved Sunday afternoons with me down here by the water. We would make love and then if no one was around would skinny dip. My mind still held an image of him standing up to his waist in the water, a sparkle of light playing on the surface, like diamonds surrounding him. Tommy's fingers would comb through his hair and he would giggle as the mud oozed up between his toes.

Alan's voice wasn't filled with sadness this time, John noticed. It was a relief to know that the time of mourning seemed to have passed. The emotions of the other night had worn him out. He had meditated long and hard over Alan's words.

As I sat there was the sound of laughter and I saw two boys down below skimming rocks across the water. They were young, both about Tommy's age. Not really knowing what I was thinking I climbed down and walked along the shore until I reached them.

"Hey guys," I said. "Answer me something will you?"

"I dunno," the little blonde one said," what's the question?"

"Have you guys known each other for a long time?"

"Oh yeah, since first grade," the brunette spoke up.

"Are you the best of friends?" I asked.

"Sure, I guess so. Aren't we Jimmy?" the blonde asked.

"Yeah Mike, you're my blood brother, remember?"

"Oh yeah, we did the ritual thing in third grade, I still have the scar," Mike said, showing me the scar on his hand.

"So Mike, what makes Jimmy a good friend, is he dependable?"

"Yeah, I can always depend on him to drink the last Coke in the fridge at my house," Mike laughed.

"But seriously, would he defend you in a fight?" I asked.

"Yes, I know he would," Mike instantly replied," just like I would back him up if he needed me. So why all the questions?"

"I just wanted to know what it means to have a best friend your whole life. It sounds to me like having a brother."

"Oh no way, my brothers are real assholes," Jimmy said. "Mike is better, we think alike."

"Yeah, I know what Jimmy is thinking every time he looks at my sister," Mike laughed.

"Oh shut up," Jimmy protested, "I don't like her."

"But maybe you will someday," I suggested. "Would it be so bad if you dated his sister?"

"It would be awful," Jimmy laughed, "she's seventeen."

"Yeah, he can't even get it off yet," Mike said.

"I can so, you're the baby dick in your family," Jimmy threw back.

"You aren't going to fight each other, are you?" I asked.

"Hell no, we mess with each other all the time. Don't you have any friends you mess with?" Mike asked.

"No," I said, and turned away, but then I stopped. They were just staring at me now.

"Listen guys. Do you love each other? "

Mike looked puzzled at the question and he stared at me for a while before looking over at Jimmy.

"I don't think I really love him but he's the first person I want to talk to when something happens," Mike said.

"Yeah, I agree with that," Jimmy said. "I can tell him things no body else knows and he doesn't give me too much of a hard time about it."

"What if you had to tell him something really hard and personal? What if he said he was queer?"

"Get lost, that's fucked up, I ain't no queer," Jimmy said and he walked away.

But Mike stayed and looked at me.

"Are you queer?" he asked.

"Yes, I am," Alan said.

"Oh, I'm sorry. It can't be easy. I hope you find a best friend," he said, "everyone needs a best friend." And then he ran off to find his.

The boy was right, it wasn't easy. Somehow I wasn't taking the right approach to the situation. I needed to find out just how others solved these issues. Where were all the queers hiding out?

I had always been aware that there was a hidden side to the queer world. It always seemed to receive the most publicity. The harsh part was that most of it was true and it disgusted me.

I would read in the paper about the queers busted in the park doing their business in the bushes. Only an idiot would be out there like that in a public place. But then I would remember what Tommy and I did on the baseball field behind his school and what happened here at the dam.

I'd see an article about some queer old men getting busted in a department store men's room. That had to be another loser scene, but I'd been tempted to go down there and see it for myself.

Almost everyone knew about this certain adult bookstore over behind the mall. Maybe, if I could get the right identification I'd be able to sneak in there. It was worth a try.

I needed the real thing too, like a driver's license. At this point Maryland still hadn't gotten around to putting photos on them yet which was perfect. There was a lost and found at the pool so I figured most places had them.

On Monday I went by the grocery and the drugstore without success, most places sent a lost license back to Motor Vehicles right away. I was on my way home when I decided to try the delicatessen. Luck was with me, there was a new clerk behind the counter.

I asked him if they had a lost and found since I had been missing my school ring for a week. Sure enough he pulled a box of goodies from under the counter. Another customer approached so I took the box from his hands.

There were all sorts of things in this box but of course no ring. However there were two wallets and I covertly slid them open and bingo, a license fell out of the second one. William Anderson was the name on the license, five-nine, blonde hair, blue eyes. We almost made a good match, and then I looked down at the birthday. I'd have to pass for thirty-one and that seemed absurd.

I went home, put on a shirt and tie and then donned my trench coat. Looking at my image in the mirror, I decided it was laughable. I could try to act the part, but couldn't convince myself that I looked the right age. But I might pass for twenty something.

I got in my mom's car and drove out towards the mall, hoping no one would see me dressed like this. In the trench coat I looked like I'd just come from church, not the image I was trying to project.

The bookstore was in a small building tucked away on a side street. I parked around the corner and put a dime in the meter. That gave me an hour. If it took longer than that it would be because the owner had turned me in to the cops.

My heart was pounding as I stepped through the door and approached the counter. The clerk asked if I was a member and I said I wasn't. He a told me it was five bucks and he wanted to see some ID.

He passed over a membership card and asked me to fill it out. I quickly printed my name, the fake name. The clerk rang up the sale after a cursory glance at the license.

"Welcome to the club, Mr. Anderson. We're open seven days a week, noon to midnight." I was so relieved I still remember his words.

I wanted to scream with delight as I stepped through the door, then I felt like screaming at what I saw inside. There were about ten men in there, most looking at girlie magazines until I entered the room. The eyes all turned towards me and somehow I felt naked. Most of the men went back to their smut but one didn't.

I walked around the room, trying to act normal as my knees trembled and my hands shook. The nearby racks were loaded with big tits and bare pussy. I turned away from that and realized the magazines I wanted would tell everyone in the room what was on my mind. It was hard to be queer, but I was.

I moved to another wall and found my first naked man on the cover of a slick trade magazine. The whole row was naked men, and I was just thinking about how wonderful it all was when a man slid up next to me.

I could smell the alcohol on this guy’s breath and ignored him for a while. The man finally moved away and I picked up a copy of Manhood. The cowboy on the cover was dressed in a black vest and nothing else. I opened the cover to discover a shot of another guy with a cock of historical proportions fucking the cowboy’s brains out.

I put the magazine down and was reaching for another when a hand intercepted my move.

"Here, look at this one," the voice attached to the hand said.

I hadn't noticed this guy before, he looked like a college student, maybe twenty-one or so. He was handsome and well groomed. I smiled and took the proffered magazine. The guys inside this one were real young, probably eighteen but I couldn't be sure. There sure was a lot of action going on in those pages and it was beginning to turn me on.

John laughed," You actually met a guy in a porno bookstore?"

Alan smiled. "Wait, it gets better. I was in way over my head"

"I'm Louie by the way, what's your name." The guy said to me.

"Bill," I replied

Louie offered to buy me the magazine if I liked it, then he offered to buy me a drink. I just had to get out of there and I knew the other men were watching and listening. I didn't mind that Louie was trying to pick me up, if anything I was flattered. Louie paid for the magazine at the counter and we walked out into the afternoon. He offered to drive and bring me back for my car later.

What the hell I was doing I sure didn't know. Bill's character was just supposed to be this ticket through the door. Now this guy thought I was Bill and wanted to buy me a drink and then he would ask to take me home and, it was just about too much.

But Louie had a cherry Mustang, it was gorgeous. I told him how great the car looked as we drove out of the lot and it broke the ice. He asked if I was hungry and I agreed that something to eat might be nice. We talked about his love for cars and I asked him what he did for a living.

He told me he was a vet, cats and dogs mostly. Then he asked what I did and I told him I was a student. He asked what university I was attending and I just couldn't continue the charade. I told him that I was still in high school and waited for him to freak out, but he didn't.

Instead he started to laugh and said he had done some crazy stuff in high school but he had never snuck into a bookstore. I asked if he was queer and he said, "Yeah man, I'm the real thing, a genuine homo."

I told him my name was Alan and that I was only sixteen. We sat in a small diner off the main highway, a very public place. Louie felt more at ease now, the lies were over. I ordered a hamburger and fries and then Louie really focused in on me. He looked me over. I was past the frightened stage and began to focus in on Louie's emotional response. I knew he was trying to make a decision.

He said I was too young to be approaching the gay scene like this. It was the first time I had heard the word gay instead of queer. He felt empathy since it had been tough for him as a kid. He'd met an older man when he was fifteen and they'd had a father/son relationship. He was now twenty-five, successful and dating several wonderful men. But then he looked me in the eye and said that maybe he could find the time to mentor a new boy. But only if I would keep our friendship a secret.

I swore I would, in fact I swore on Tommy's grave that I would never tell. He asked me about Tommy and I had to tell him a little bit about my past.

"And I thought I was the only one who knew that story," John said.

"Sorry, not true. I was last year's tragic figure in the GDW, they all seemed to know. But, John, the story you heard was unique. You care about my feelings and so I gave them to you fairly bluntly."

"Apology accepted. What is the GDW?"

"Oh, that? The Grand Dames of Washington is sort of an organization for queer, uh, gay folk. Oh hell, John, they're all drag queens but some of them are very nice. The rest you wouldn't like."

"You know drag queens too?" John asked with a laugh.

"Do I know drag queens?" Alan laughed. "Where do I begin?"

I was standing at the foot of the marble staircase and watched as the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra the Magnificent, made her grand entrance. I bowed as was expected of me, a mere slave of her court. That's when my black wig fell off and a few snickers passed around the room. My hair had been bound up under the wig but I freed it and shook it out. That caused a few murmurs, my blonde hair was longer than the black wig I had been given. No mind, we went on with the grand charade.

It was the Annual Drag Queen's Ball last year, thrown by Miss Ta Ta Sweetcheeks and the Grand Dames of Washington. Louie had made himself up into a magnificent Cleo. Hell he'd spent three months alone on the jewelry and costumes for this party.

My white body glistened with baby oil and my skimpy loincloth was a pale blue, beautifully trimmed in gold. The heavy gold collar plate around my neck itched like hell. Other than that I was having great fun standing almost naked in front of all those people.

To prepare himself Louie had rented old movies about Egypt, some of Hollywood's finest. We had watched them flicker through the projector about a dozen times, all the while taking serious note of the costumes. Then Louie had sewn for days until his poor fingers bled when he even looked at them. All for one night's glory and a measly hundred dollars prize money, a true drag queen's delight.

"You were in a drag show?" John laughed.

"Sort of, but I wasn't in drag. Louie said it wasn't my thing, and then I was still underage. But I'm getting ahead of myself," Alan said.

At first Louie opened a window on the gay world for me, John. A debt I can never repay in one lifetime. But we had to set a few ground rules for me right up front. As Louie said, the sanity of our friendship depended on it. Rule One was not sleeping together, I was jail bait. Louie said we were taboo for one another. If I found a boyfriend, I could bring him over. Louie would bless a union between peers. Otherwise I scared him to death.

I knew he didn't mean it to be anything but flattery when he said he thought I was the most desirable young man he had ever met. He quickly became a surrogate parent so I started helping out around the veterinary clinic after school to show my thanks. The parents thought it was nice that I'd made friends with a doctor and hoped I might get a real job there someday.

I was doing my homework in the medical supply closet every afternoon and shoveling dog shit in the kennels out back when it was done. I like animals and some of them like seemed to like me too. Louie often joked that I would never be a true homo unless I owned a cat. The relationship is good for us both.

The fact that Louie might have a boyfriend and I might get in the way worried me for a while. But Louie didn't have one special friend, he confided, there were three at the moment. His theory was that if he could date three guys off and on then he wasn't about to get serious with any one of them in particular. Louie just felt like he wasn't the marrying kind right now. He still had his girlish figure

Louie was very informative on the entire gay scene right from the beginning. I had read so much misinformation it was like starting over again. He loaded me down with books to read. I studied every one as if there was going to be a test the next day.

The classics and novels by famous gay authors taught me one very important lesson. We are everywhere. The world has seen a pantheon of great men and women who were different, John. They molded that difference into their lives as gay and lesbian artists and have given back a richness that will become eternal.

I found new heroes and role models amongst the great queer folk of history. It gave me courage and made me bold. If I wasn't yet old enough to actually be in the gay scene then I was determined to become an expert on it.

It was with some amusement that I happened to find Louie's walk-in closet full of dresses one afternoon. Louie had never mentioned his interest in drag, probably because I wasn't old enough for the clubs where a lot of the drag shows occurred. But he had many friends and I eventually found myself being taken along to the private parties thrown by the Grand Dames of Washington.

The first night we went to an old house in Alexandria. No one answered the door when we rang so Louie just barged on in. There were guys in various stages of undress and some even had curlers in their hair. I remember this one guy came running down the stairs and stopped short when he saw me. "Are you with the caterer?" he asked. "No, you couldn't be," he finally decided.

Louie introduced me to Steve, the owner of the house.

"Sorry, dears, it's a madhouse at the moment. Carlos is due any minute with the finished wardrobe for the show on Saturday. Everyone is so excited, and my, aren't you the cute one, dearie." He smiled at me and I saw lipstick on his teeth.

I could smell the alcohol and pot smoke in the air. Louie laughed and pulled me out onto the side porch which had couches and chairs all around. He asked me to sit while he looked into a few things.

"Take a seat, kiddo," a woman's voice said. I hadn't seen her sitting over by the piano in the corner.

"Thank you," I replied.

"You Louie's friend?" she asked.

"Yes, we just met last month."

"Good man, Louie. He takes care of my dogs. I'm Brenda, by the way, and you?"

"Alan. Sorry, this is all a little strange to me."

"We all gotta start somewhere, don't we? I work with Steve at the restaurant. Have you ever met a lesbian before?"

"No. There aren't any in my school."

"Maybe, are there gay boys?" Brenda asked.

"Probably. Sure, I know of several."

"Then there are probably a few butch girls over there too. Look, kiddo, gay and lesbian people are everywhere. It's probably easier for a boy than a girl at your age. Hell, I didn't know what I was until I was twenty-three."

"I imagine it's hard to figure out at any age," I said.

"You got that right, it's kinda scary too."

With that Brenda pulled out a silver cigarette case and lit up a small cigar. Somehow smoking a cigar fit the image. Her hair was short, brown and combed straight back. She wore jeans and a button down shirt. She had large forearms and muscular biceps. With that no BS attitude I liked her right away.

We talked about school and the restaurant business, that's when I found out she ran the place with Steve, they were partners. Louie reappeared and Brenda sat and talked with us until her lady friend arrived. Her lesbian partner was shy and sweet, so I guess that opposites do find themselves attracted.

The entertainment they put on the following Saturday night was hilarious and I have never laughed so hard as the first time I saw Louie all made up and sheathed in a slinky dress. And just when I was beginning to think that drag was nothing but handsome men in beautiful gowns I met Miss Ta Ta.

"Ta Ta Sweetcheeks? What a name," John laughed.

"Oh, she's a serious lady when she's in drag. Kinda scary too."

Ta Ta is a rather large man who shaves himself completely bald from head to toe. He bubbles with excitement and seems so full of life for such a big guy. At first I thought he was just full of himself because he didn't seem to care for me. "Boys are just like puppies," he said," and everyone knows that puppies just pee on your carpet." His very words and I thought I wouldn't like him after that.

Louie laughed it off, but I was offended. Ta Ta would come around to liking me I was assured. I stayed out of Ta Ta's way for a while after that. It didn't matter, there was so much other stuff going on around me.

Louie had the perfect figure to portray a woman, a subject of great jealously amongst the girls in the club. Put him in a dress and his face became softer, even sexier after the transformation and a little makeup did wonders.

He asked me to sit in the living room one evening until he had changed and then suddenly re-appeared at the bedroom door in a pose. His head was crowned with a beautiful wig of long silky black hair that he had piled on top in a classic do. Long strings of white pearls hung around his neck. The stark red of his slinky dress ended at his thighs where the black fishnet stockings followed the curve of his legs to the matching red pumps on his feet. He was simply gorgeous as a woman and I quickly gave him a standing ovation.

To Louie and his friends it was the ultimate form of theater, though some of them, including Ta Ta, looked like they'd graduated from clown school. Be kind to her, Louie cautioned me, she has more money than most of the real queens of this world. And damn, John, Louie was right.

Besides the dresses they wear, each of these men develops a persona. Each outfit they wear encases a different personality. Some actually sing, but many just lip-synch to tapes of the great and famous, Garland, Streisand, Billie Holiday. I had such great fun watching Louie's friends perform. I could almost forget who I was. But then some bitch who still objected to my minor presence would come along and remind me.

I was sure Louie had caught hell from Ta Ta by bringing an underage boy into their midst. In my own way I tried to diffuse the situation by being helpful when I could. As it stands now most of them accept me but probably because Ta Ta says I can be there.

"And you still go to these shows?" John asked.

"I was still wondering which persona Louie was going to be in this fall's show when I sat down in English class that morning. Then I happened to look over at the guy sitting at the end of the row beside the window and he looked back at me, the rest you know."

"You just think I know," John said. "No, I feel as if the mystery is just beginning. Every time we talk I learn something more about you."

"Stop, you'll make me blush," Alan said. "Your turn is coming you know."

"Too late, and speaking of late, do you know what time it is?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, I've been rambling on about my life and…"

"Hey, never apologize to me for something I wanted. I just have to be home for dinner this evening. This is the probably the most important moment of our friendship, Alan. We can accept our differences because we trust. Will you introduce me to Louie?"

"Are you sure? The gay scene can be a little intimidating and you're hearing this from a gay person remember?

"My best friend is gay. I can't have you keeping a great part of your life secret, now can I?" John asked.

"Be careful, John Bateman, I could learn to love you so easily."

"Maybe it's this place. But, Alan, I wouldn't want you to unless I could return that love. I'm not ready and I don't know if I'll ever be ready. I hope that doesn't make you want to give up on me, does it?"

"No, the thought never entered my mind."



On to Chapter Seven

Back to Chapter Five

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Singer Without a Song is © 2005 - 2006 by Chris James.
    This work may not be duplicated in any form (physical, electronic, audio, or otherwise) without the author's written permission. All applicable copyright laws apply. All individuals depicted are fictional with any resemblance to real persons being purely coincidental.


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