Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:23:02 -0600
From: michaelpete@hushmail.com
Subject: Promiscuity and Purpose Epilogue

EPILOGUE

	Well, here I sit in my wheelchair, almost half a century after that
Staten Island Ferry ride, both of them. We did it twice, pigging out all
four trips on hot dogs and pastries. From there it was back onto the IRT
subway all the way to its end at Van Cortlandt Street in extreme upper
Manhattan then back to Fiftieth Street and home to be there when Martin et
al arrived. It worked, well, almost. There were a few relapses, maybe a
half dozen trips to the Square over the next twenty-five years or so until
there were no more boys, just `wholesome' entertainment and gawking
tourists.

	Mostly, though, I've obeyed Sergeant Walter O'Malley's admonition
and been loyal to the series of boys I've loved, generally in pairs or
trios. All but one relationship involved sex even into the first few years
of the twenty-first century. The one platonic relationship knew about the
sex with his buddy, actually a distant cousin, but never did more than
frown about it. All my boys are men now. All but one graduated from some
kind of secondary school. Martin and two others made it through college.

	Okay, that first group: Martin is now a senior editor in a
publishing house living with his wife in a very nice upper Eastside
apartment, his grandkids often visit on weekends. Remember, he just turned
fifty-nine. Estiven, married and divorced twice, worked as a truck driver
for many years but smoked too much and died of emphysema four years
ago. Tommy, not gay as some suspected, married at thirty-two, has four kids
and, with his associate degree in accounting, works in a stock brokerage
house on Wall Street. Though we never talked about it, I think he just
enjoyed all facets of sex, even if they weren't part of the heterosexual
programming in his DNA.

Manuel went back to P. R.

	Juan Carlos' scholastic career was erratic causing a lot of
sleepless nights until he entered a trade school and seemed to find
himself, graduating as an electrician. In order to get his electrician's
license, he worked for an electrical contractor for three years, then
document in hand, came straight to work for me. Within a year, he, on his
own, set up what became `our' business as a legal entity. With his wife as
executive assistant (secretary), he runs it to this day though with plans
to retire at sixty, two years from now, and travel. He never had any kids,
afraid, he admitted, of having one like himself.

	Marsha Grant was never prosecuted. Willing witnesses, even the
doctor, backed off under relentless pressure from higher ups in the health
professions. When Walter O'Malley was the only remaining person still
agreeing to testify, the case was nol prossed, stuck in a file cabinet.

	Unfortunately, I lived in that damn basement until seven years ago,
breathing in a lot of things that weren't good for me. My doctor had been
warning me for years to get out of there but I loved that place even after
Juan Carlos moved the business into a larger building back in eighty and
the neighborhood became gentrified. I bought the building from Mandel in
eighty-one just to protect my home. Up to then, my boys had all come from
that area or the projects where Martin and the others lived. When the
poorer residents were pushed out, I met new ones via project contacts in
the South Bronx, all Hispanics.

	In 2003, my current pair in high school, by then convinced by a few
unpleasant incidents that my luck at not being dragged down by the anti-ped
hysteria was stretched to its limit, I moved back to my home town, living
with Ned until he died three years later from a weak heart and damaged
liver caused by an excess of cigarettes and booze. He'd raised his age
limit in the early nineties to over eighteen, bedding mostly hustlers he
met in bars. Then, a week before his passing, knowing his time was short
and ignoring his weak condition, he found a willing fifteen year old,
forked over a hundred dollar bill and managed to get the anaconda into him
but couldn't make it to orgasm.

	Patty's husband had died the year before that so I moved in with
her, getting some joy out of her four bright grandchildren. This will be my
last Christmas with them.