From the kitchen window, as he poured himself a glass of wine, he could see Castro Street begin to throb with life on another Saturday night. He wondered, not for the first time, is this it? If only, he thought, he could restore himself as he had his house and peel back the accretions built up by the years of struggle and shame. Would he find that his heart was still beating? Would he then at last look upon Bill Ryan’s soul?

8.

8.

I found perfectly plausible reasons to eat my meals in restaurants other than Gold Mountain after my last run-in with Adam when he had dropped the f-word, but the mere fact I had to justify to myself avoiding the place proved how deeply the incident had affected me. It was the last thing I thought about before I went to sleep and the first thing I thought about when I woke up. Well, not so much thought about as obsessively reenacted in my head, triggering over and over the shock, anger and hurt Adam’s casual use of “fag” had caused me, and then wondering whether I had overreacted.

One evening, on my way home from an AA meeting in the Castro, my head once more spinning over the incident, I peered into the Twin Peaks bar and thought, I could really use a drink. Instead, I found a payphone, called Larry and blubbered the whole story to him, ending my incoherent narrative with, “I don’t understand why I can’t let go of this.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Larry replied. “You’re attracted to him.”

A chilly, overcast night had fallen on the city and the smell of incipient rain was in the air. I watched a line of headlights move slowly down Market Street beneath leafless trees and a grid of wires and my heart sank because this was the thing I had refused to admit to myself and it was hard to hear.

“Adam’s straight,” I mumbled.

“But you’re not,” Larry countered. “You’re gay and you like him. You’ve been flirting with him and you thought he was flirting back until he said this ugly thing. What are you feeling?”

“Anger.”

“Yeah, sure, but if it was only anger, you’d have told him off and let it go.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I was hurt too. And, I guess,” I hesitated because it was painful to say. “I guess I was disappointed that, you know—”

“That he doesn’t feel the same way about you,” Larry said, finishing my thought. “I understand, but hurt and disappointment isn’t what’s keeping you awake at night.”

A male couple walked passed me holding hands, one leaning into the other affectionately.

“What is it then?” I said quietly, watching the men.

“It’s shame.”

“Shame? I don’t understand.”