As the days passed, his fear began to abate, replaced by a new feeling he slowly recognized as freedom. If this urban world was indifferent to his survival, it was equally indifferent to his quirks and to who he was and what he desired. A city that could accommodate a six-foot, five-inch transvestite in a purple wig and fishnet stockings offering dates to passing motorists surely had room for an eighteen-year-old gay boy.

Waldo showed him what this freedom could mean; he was like a brightly colored bird who had escaped its cage and soared above the city. Waldo, who applied glitter to his eyelids and slashed his lips with deep red lipstick and, when Bill asked nervously, “Are you going out like that?” looked at him and said, “You’re right, doll, I need some blush too.” Waldo, who flipped off the teenage boys who screamed “Faggot!” at him while screaming back “Asshole punks! Suck my queer dick!” Waldo, who flirted with MUNI drivers who, to Bill’s amazement, flirted back, and who cruised the young Mexican bagger at the roach-infested supermarket where they shopped and succeeded in getting him into his bed. And when, one night, Bill woke up screaming from a nightmare of being beaten by his father, it was Waldo who held him and said, “Oh, honey, it’s okay. You’re not in Kansas anymore,” and when Bill said, “I’m from Illinois,” howled in laughter as if Bill had made the best joke ever, until Bill laughed too.

Waldo’s apartment was too small for privacy, and in any event, Waldo kept little to himself. He always emerged naked from the bathroom after his morning shower. Bill became accustomed to Waldo’s pale, skinny, nearly hairless body, his long, pencil-thin penis, flat butt, big feet and the jagged scars around his wrists.

“What happened?” Bill asked him, not the first time he saw them, but later, after they were friends.

“I didn’t think pills would work fast enough,” Waldo replied, “so I used daddy’s straight-edged razor to teach the motherfucker a lesson.” He sighed, “You know what they say about hating, Billy? Hating is like drinking poison and expecting the other guy to die. I lived and I had to stop hating them.”

“Who? Your family?”

“Uh-huh,” Waldo. “Well, my relatives. My friends are my family. Yeah, I stopped hating them but I don’t want anything to do with them, either. We were strangers on a train.” He peered at Bill. “Your relatives too, hon. They were just strangers on a train. That part of your trip is done and you don’t ever have to see them again. You’re free now, Billy. They can’t hurt you anymore.”