Blood. I was scarred by seeing Rosie in the tub. Though I tried to purge the images from my mind, he was there every time I closed my eyes, a claret crane with clipped wings. I was haunted by the songs he’d sing. There was no moving past his pain, as it permeated every fold of my brain. I should have treated him better. There was no way to allay the regret. It was just another dark feeling I would have to clench in my chest. I wondered how many more I could hold before my ribs cracked.

My internal struggles should have numbed me to the shit going on in the papers, but the noxious news continued to report stories of “sexual morons” committing crimes. While I’m sure a small faction of the perpetrators were pansies, mostly they weren’t, a fact that didn’t stop journalists from purporting they were. Not only did the articles contain the unsubstantiated claims that the assholes were queers, most of the incidents hadn’t even happened in Chicago. The papers were running stories from other cities. The result was horrible headlines nearly every day and increased issues for ethels on the streets. Police surveillance of queer cruising spots soared. It was as though the coppers had nothing better to do than to stop homos from having sex.

The articles did a number on Cal, so much so that I began to make a conscious effort to keep newspapers out of our apartment. When he’d get his hands on one, he’d shake his head in disgust at each line.

“Did you hear about this little girl, Antoinette Tiritilli?” he asked.

“She was the ‘gorilla man’s’ victim, right? Murdered in November?”

“Yes,” he tsked. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

“It happened, like, two weeks after Rosie. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I thought we should discuss.”

Cal nodded sadly. “He took her right from the schoolyard, all he had to do was wave a candy bar and that was that. Why would he slit a child’s throat? I can’t comprehend how anyone could do such a horrific thing.”

“It’s awful,” I agreed. “Some people are born evil.”

“I don’t believe that. I think they grow up hurt and the hatred in this world makes it worse.” He bit his lip. “Did you know they’re claiming this ‘gorilla man,’ Andrew Capoldi, is a sexual moron?”

“Yes.”

“They put him in the same category as us,” Cal sighed. “They think of us in the same way they think of vicious murderers like Capoldi, people who murder children.”

“I know,” I nodded, placing my hand on his thigh. “It’s bananas.”

“It’s rotten bananas,” he sighed as he laid his head on my shoulder. “Rosie was the sweetest person to live, and he died with that same label attached to him.”