The moment I let loose, he laughs about my hooking him. “No sweat, buddy. Hurts about like a mosquito bite, tops. Just shows how many you’re gonna land ahead. You got some touch on you, know that? You just did what they say do, in the books: ‘Concentrate, then “spot” your trout, then flick ’n’ hook.’”

Oh God, here comes Mother wobbling on high heels and carrying that clanky glinting tray. “I hurt him,” I apologize, partly bragging. Mom hostesses me aside. Soon I’ve inchwormed up into my tree house. I am coughing with sobs, staring down at my gentle, bloodied trophy.

Mother, like some comic waiter, keeps the silver tray level at all costs. Kneeling, ministering, she offers Dan his Cutty first.

(Carolina, 1957, The Golden Age of Silver Trays.)

I yell down, “I didn’t know it hurt. To fish. Hurt the fish, Dan.”

“Mustn’t blame yourself, pal. You’ve got the sporting touch…. You’ll land hundreds more ahead, and ‘rainbows’ too. Glad to be the first in line—a great long mess o’ keepers. Your only problem is, your aim’s too good. Every man should have such trouble. Definitely no more crying, umkay, m’buddy-ro? Promise your Dan?”

“I pwwo-mise,… D-D-Dan.”

How could you not love such a fellowshiper? Had my big buddy just talked to me in code? Did he even deeply mind or notice as I—leisurely, entranced—felt his dick’s noble heft? And did Dan allow me or prevent me or invite me? Who’d had whom?

Even today, when I hear the phrase “child molester,” I think, not of One Grown-Up Who Molests Children, but of some kid who diddles unsuspecting innocent adults, grown-ups who glaze over immediately, going child-passive.

I’m told that the victim-adults—wracked with equal parts guilt and interest—sometimes never get over it.

Dan? I count on that.

Inside your right wrist, even with the lights out, can you still touch a little scratchy signature of scarring?

XIII. Over and Out

I “came out” in whatever room was left, after Dan—whatever space remained to stand up in. That zone proved no larger than one store’s men’s room, one stall of it, a tree house, one closet door laid horizontal, opening downward, only onto spine-cracking gravity.

Me? Born guilty as any Calvinist sinner (guilty prior to even getting it up once, much less forcing myself on another male). I struggled past the threat of local arrest. I didn’t even feel safe in Norfolk. I needed four to six state borders between me and Home before I tried anything. It was way out of town, up north in Boston, before I dared unzip for any reason beyond legal peeing (and even after that, I scrubbed these paws but good). I’d been well trained in pain—pleasure was a night course I would have to teach myself. (Not to brag, but I found I had a certain latent talent for it.)