Metro didn’t believe it was that bad. But what did he know? A white boy from Louisiana, New England prep schools and college. “Don’t worry, baby,” he said when I told him what had happened. He held my head and hands until I calmed down. “It’ll be all right.” And we made love slowly, deliberately, believing we were doing something right. Still, I should have known better than to take so much for granted, even in Greenwich Village where we lived. And I should have known better than to leave him alone by the pier in the condition he was in, just for a dance improvisation. He had a cold, wild look in his eyes. How could I tell how many pills he’d taken? He could have fought back. But then why hadn’t I fought back when those Italian kids started yelling, “He a black nigger faggot, yeah, he a faggot, a nigger, too,” and shouting and laughing so close they made acid out of every bit of safety I thought we had? Now their hate had eaten up everything.

I could still hear them, making each prove himself a man—“I ain’t no faggot. Not me, man”—and drawing blood. And when Metro left the black underground of trains and screeching wheels, when he reached for air in the thick ash of night, they spotted him like found money through the stinking grates of smoke and beer. I imagined how they followed his unsteady walk, his wavering vision, his fatigue. Curses like baseball bats swung out of their mouths. The first ones were on target: “There go a faggot.”

“Hey man, you a faggot?”

Metro kept walking. Like I did. Please keep walking. Please, Metro.

“I say that man call you a faggot. You a faggot?”

Metro said nothing. Did he even hear them? They came closer. The streets were empty. No witnesses, no help. And I was back home waiting for his knock that never came.

“Yeah, you a faggot all right. Ain’t he?”

“Yeah, he a faggot.”

And Metro walked faster, skipped into a run, but they caught him. Knives slipped out of their pants. Hands reached for him, caught him in a tunnel of angry metal. They told him to put his wallet back. “This ain’t no fucking robbery, man.” They knocked him down. Metro sprawled about wet and hurt, couldn’t pull himself up.

“Who stuck him?”

“Get up, faggot. We ain’t through that easy.”

“Look, he’s bleeding.”

“Who went ahead and stuck him before we all could stick it in? Who?”

They jostled him to his feet, feeling his ass.

“When can the rest of us stick it in? We all wanna fuck him, don’t we, fellahs?”

“Yeah. When can we fuck him?”