And, vowing to tell every-fuckin’-body how I got so orange and wet and why I smell of Hoboken brewery, I soon make myself into something of a party hit. Our specialty: a brand of bravery as flashy as some new perfume’s name. Cheap yet necessary, it’s the comic art that only other survivors will all recognize. I am become a tale of woe transcended—I am my own only sole excuse. I am the opposite of apology. Maybe I courted grief by being too far “out”? But I don’t seek to become a nose-rubbing-in Target, believe me.

I have not been tortured fully. I am in good health, and have had hundreds of lovers, and I’ve never been arrested, yet. My heart’s been broken, but that’s pretty normal, right? I am not sick, nor do I think of myself as “sick.” My parents still ask for credit, having somehow heroically accepted my “life-style choice.” They still remember my birthday. But they swear I’ve rubbed their noses in it.

Mother took me aside one year after Dan was driven from town, when she saw me still gloomy and jumpy about the speed and injustice of his going, and—trying to help, I’m sure—she said, “There’s something we never told you about Dan, when you were younger and all?” I felt scared, seizing her white wrist, begging for news. “He was not exactly smart, Dan. He had other qualities that made up for it, and sweet as the day is … but not like your father or our doctor-lawyers, he was sort of always along because of his charm and the way he looked and his … not retarded, just not all that swift really, and …” She saw my face and added, “I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. Maybe trying to make it easier for you to …” And I knew, in that absolute way we, so hooked genetically, knew each other, that Mom was about to say “get over him,” but stopped. See, that sounded too much like a boy-girl romance. “Maybe I’m trying to make it easier for you to forget him, son.” It was the wrong thing to have said. This close against my face, she saw that.

XII. The Captain Hook

I once literally hooked literally all of him. It proved to be a fad. This was the year those others caught, then vanished him.

He had station-wagoned over to pick up Dad for further golf: shave and a haircut. Dad, fighting his latest financial reversal, was late. Those guys never tired of golf. Maybe their dick jokes helped? I owned a new green Spaulding fly-casting rod. I’d been practicing alone a lot.

I felt I was getting pretty darn accurate. I could place my weighted silver hook just about where I wanted it. (Be careful what you aim for.)