I took out my wallet and found his card, wondering how many other of these crude, homemade, handwritten offerings of himself were moving through the city, forgotten in wallets, left on the floors of men’s rooms or coffee shops or taverns or dormitories, or even libraries. I looked at the writing for the first time. It read: Alfred Bowles: 17 Brewster Street, Apartment Number 21, Telephone Number: 351–5210, Poet. Nothing was abbreviated; nothing that might misdirect the holder of the card was left to chance. It was a sad summation of himself, a crudely pleading invitation to invade a privacy he did not want. The card was a limited, almost secret, declaration of himself, cut and set and written, not by his own hands, but by the subtler, more powerful hands of men who had discovered girls very early in life in closets and school play areas, and who had learned, as he had not, that a man’s place in life must necessarily be that of the hunted and he must hurry through the hunter stages before something stops him from becoming a lion.

IV

MY FRIEND GERALD IS ONE of the hunted. His specialty is girls. Although his reputation is firmly established as one of those to be sought out, he modestly prefers to call himself a cock-hound; and when in private company, but especially in the company of girls, he takes great pleasure in getting down on his knees and crawling around on the floor and declaring: “I am a cock-hound, gimme-some, gimme-some” in a voice very much like a bark. He is not crude, because he drinks good scotch and only does his dog thing in the company of honest girls who, he is always confident, will laugh immediately and not later, when they are alone. He has a keen eye for these girls, a virtue with which I was never blessed. He is a lion and is quite successful. Like me, he is a bachelor; unlike me, he knows how to live by his wits. He is my source. Whenever I do not have a girl, it is only necessary to call Gerald and he will arrange for me to meet one, usually the rare ones who do not laugh at his cock-hound bits.

“I need one,” I told Gerald that Thursday in our favorite barroom. “I need a date bad.”

He looked at me, thinking. Gerald is the kind of person who believes in the credit-debit system of life. He does not give anything away.

“I drove you to the airport last week,” I reminded him.

“Yeah,” he said from his carefully trimmed moustache. “You did. Well, all I have for you is a dog.”

“Your kind?” I asked.

He laughed. “No, a real dog. I already had it. She’s a real bitch. A real community chest. Do you want it?”

“Sure,” I said, knowing that Gerald dislikes immensely anyone with tastes different from his own. “How do I play it?”