When intrusive thoughts of a naked Marco had first begun to trouble Bill’s sleep, he had gone to the city library, a place he rarely visited. He furtively searched the card catalog for the subject headings Homosexual and Homosexuality and then the cross-references to Deviance and Abnormal Psychology. Too fearful even to write down the call number of the half dozen books he had found, he instead committed them to memory. He went into the stacks and pulled the books off the shelves, one at a time. He hid them in other sections so that if anyone approached while he was reading, he could shove the book back on the shelf and pretend to be looking for works on baseball or gardening. The books told him homosexuals were mentally ill creatures who preyed upon boys or haunted public toilets where they tried to force themselves on unsuspecting men. They were easily recognized by their physically weak and hairless bodies and lisping speech. Some wore makeup or even, in extreme cases, paraded around in women’s clothes. They were deceitful, cowardly and, while oversexed, incapable of love. Emotionally stunted if not deformed, they could be found working in female occupations such as hairdressers or interior decorators because, fundamentally, they were not men at all, but women in men’s bodies, freaks of nature.

Although Bill failed to recognize himself in these descriptions, he could not deny that he shared the one defining characteristic of these creatures: a sexual attraction to other men. And if that was true then, even if all the other particulars did not match up, was he not also, unavoidably, homosexual?

“Yes,” he whispered to the priest. “I’m sorry.”

The priest sighed. “I’m sorry too, Bill. I had hoped this was just a mistake.”

“I don’t want to be this way,” Bill said. “Can you help me?”

The priest shook his head. “I’ve met other men like you,” he said. “What you have is a mental illness, like being retarded or schizophrenic. There’s no cure.”

Bill reached back into the memory of his confirmation classes to ask, “Can’t you absolve me?”

“I can absolve your actions,” the priest said, “but I can’t change who you are. All you can do is abstain from that kind of behavior.”

“I swear I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“That’s good,” the priest said, “but it’s too late for you here, Bill. Everyone knows.”

“I’m going away, to college.”

The priest looked away for a moment. “Your folks aren’t going to pay for your college now.”

“What?” Bill asked, despairingly.

“You’re eighteen now, legally an adult. Your folks aren’t responsible for you anymore. Maybe it would be best if you just left.”

“Leave?” he asked, panicked. “Where would I go?”

“There are places where you’d find other people like you. The big cities. Chicago, New York. There are a lot of you in San Francisco.”