After Pet Shop Boys
I met Michael out behind the old mill in Lexington one night. An old boxcar sits on the tracks there, wide open to the elements. When Rage, the club, was at its heyday, the parking lot would be packed with cars. I’d go, too. Sometimes I’d go in and dance a while, especially if some of my girlfriends were dancing. But usually, I just hung around the parking lot, and when it got late, you know, close to midnight, the gay boys would climb inside the boxcar, out of sight of the cops and the bouncers. The bouncers knew we were there—they had to see the smoke from our clove cigarettes—but they never ratted on us.
He wasn’t from Lexington, or any of the towns thereabouts. I’d already kissed all the boys that showed up in the boxcar. I saw this guy wandering around the cars. He’d glance at the rope line and then he’d look away. He was wearing a little cap, looked like an overgrown newspaper boy. His nose was hooked, and he had bad skin. I thought he was lost. So, in the dark (cause, you know, that parking lot didn’t have any lights back then), I rolled my Camaro up, long side of him, and leaned out.
“Lookin’ for Rage?” I asked.
Michael tried to look anywhere except at me. He tried to keep walking but my car blocked him in for a sec. He mumbled something I couldn’t hear. So, I got out and jogged in his direction til I caught up to him. A tiny spark glinted from his left earlobe. Like myself, he wore ankle-high Doc Martens. I think we all did, if we could afford them. I’d bought mine in Verna’s Vintage Shop.
“Leave me alone,” he squealed. I mean he really squealed. I didn’t expect that. He was a tall kid. I was probably twenty-four-ish at the time which means Michael must have been at least twenty-five then. But still he looked like a kid. He had covered his stupid cap with his arms and had balled himself up like he was about to be punched.
“I’m not touching you,” I answered, half-sorry and half-defensive.
He stood back up and readjusted himself. He wore a leather vest over a concert tee for the Psychedelic Furs. I remember that perfectly because I loved that T-shirt. And the vest looked like some second-hand find a biker would wear driving his Harley to Arizona. It didn’t fit Michael at all.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Frank. Frank Rudd. I live beyond Erlangers. That way,” and I pointed in the general direction. Erlangers was an auto body joint at the edge of town that everyone seemed to know. Michael didn’t. He tried to fake it with a nod, but I could tell. “What about you?”
“Michael St. John,” he said. Hearing all that, I thought maybe I shoulda told him my real name, Franklin Scott Rudd Jr. But really, I’m just Frank.
“Do you go by Mike?” I asked. He just said no.
“Where are you headed?” I asked again, trying to be helpful.
“Nowheres.”
I got back in my car, found a new spot, and parked. He disappeared from view for a few minutes and when I saw him next, I was climbing up the chunks of concrete to get into the boxcar. Tommy, with his spiky blond hair, reached out to help me aboard. He had spotted me talking to Michael St. John and asked me about him. But at that moment, I didn’t really have nothing to share.
It turned out Michael St. John lived in Cary, in a regular neighborhood—not like my ma’s shitbox up in the hills. But I didn’t know any of that then.
Five or six of us gathered in the boxcar, including Max who carried his Sony Discman and a speaker he hid in his pocket. Gino passed out some ponies. I handed Max my CD, a party mix I had burned off my albums. I sat in the corner sipping my beer and listening to my own music on Max’s little speaker. Tommy knelt down in front of me and kissed me like it had been two years ago. When I opened my eyes, Michael St. John was inside our boxcar reaching for a beer. I introduced him as though we were friends or something, and that introduction kinda made it true.
When the boys couldn’t get his attention, they’d ask me about him—questions I didn’t know how to answer. But I knew Michael was skitterish. That meant a lot. Boys who were nervous had seen shit. So I gave them answers that might protect him.
I think he had a good time that night. We just hung out there on Friday nights, across the parking lot from Rage, listening to our own music, sipping our own beers. No one ever got smashed that I remember. Once in a blue moon, someone would bring a joint and we’d pass that around. Sometimes a boy would finally tell his parents and we’d all talk about that. Mostly we all dreamed of moving to LA, or New York, or The Castro—anywhere but the barbecue capital of North Carolina! We read magazines all the time that told us what the scene was in those places, the combination of everything we ever wanted and wrenching despair. Alvaro came back from San Francisco because his lover, a man from Denver, died seven months into their affair. He never got over it. When we talked of those places, sometimes he’d stand outside and wait for the topic to change. I’m glad Alvaro was one of us in those days because he reminded us that those big cities weren’t perfect either. But still, I wanted to meet people like us. I wanted to be welcome on a dance floor.
I grew up just outside of Lexington, which in 1985 was a pretty respectable southern city. It’s a place to eat and go to church, not to have sex. I say ma’s house was in the ‘hills’ but really that’s not true in the North Carolina sense anyway. Yes, her tired doublewide is on a hill, a knoll between some woods and two giant farms—but it’s hours away from the hills. Both farms grow corn and wheat now, but one used to grow cotton and the other rye. The Smiths used to grow the cotton. That takes some doing to switch over. Me and ma and my little sister, Gail, helped for two summers go over every inch of that Smith land looking for white puffs. If we spotted one, one of us would dig up the roots with a shovel and Mr. Smith took them all to the dump! Wasn’t even gonna chance the seeds in the compost heap. The rye to wheat switch was much easier. Mr. Riley owned that land. He just plowed the dead rye under and planted new wheat plugs. It was a lot of work that first year, but once it was done, it was done. Anyway, our place was on a knoll between the two so we could see what was happening in both fields.
Dad died when I was a kid, about twelve or so. I remember him when I was a little tiny kid. Then he joined the army. I barely remember him when he came home. He slept a lot. Had a really bum knee that gave him lots of trouble. And then one day, ma said he died. Later, the preacher told me he killed himself. The church hosted a barbecue to celebrate all the high school graduations. At the one for my graduation, I was talking to Rev Goodlaw. He said he did the service “when my pa shot himself.” I was shocked. Asked where it happened. He said he had “the decency to do it in the woods behind our house. Left a note in the kitchen cabinet” for my ma.
My ma raised me and Gail. She did a good job, too. When I told her at fourteen that I was a faggot, she told me not to use that word. It “wasn’t nice.” She said that if I was that, I was gay. She asked me questions about how I knew it. Or if I had a boyfriend. Or would I still love her. But at least she didn’t throw me out as I half-expected to happen. My grandparents were less enthusiastic but even they were willing to ignore it. Compared to what anyone else in the boxcar said their coming out story was, I had it easy.
When the evening ended, Michael was sitting between Tommy and Alvaro. He seemed to be having a grand old time. Max snapped off the music and returned everyone’s CDs. Kisses and hugs were exchanged as if we’d never see each other ever again. Tommy gave me a look I didn’t want to answer. Instead, I asked Michael if he had a way home. I had no idea where he lived or how he had arrived. Tommy got the message and left without another deep dive.
We climbed out of the boxcar and wandered down the half empty parking lot. It must have been about 2:30 in the morning. Michael thanked me as if it had been my party.
“You’re very handsome, you know,” he said.
I thanked him and said I did a little modeling. In truth, very little. I worked in retail—for The Gap. Twice each year, the mall held a fashion show and the clerks from each store would model their garments down the central staircase and then back up the opposite escalators. It was stupid, but I loved it and prepared for it like it was a real thing. He said I should “parlay” that into something. That word sounded so fancy.
Eventually he told me he didn’t need a ride home. I learned, sitting on the hood of my Camaro, that he was a year and two months older than me, a Gemini, and that he lived in Cary, miles away.
“Why did you come to the boxcar?” I asked.
“I heard, you know, gay people would be here.”
It sounded so strange to hear someone else say it. All evening me and all the others had been saying pretty much the same thing. We came here for that reason, too. But hearing that an outsider felt what we felt—I don’t know; I can’t explain it—but it made me uncomfortable to think we could make him feel okay. It’s weird.
He wanted to come again. I shrugged and told him it didn’t get any more interesting than tonight.
“Will you kiss me?” he asked.
At that point, I’d kiss pretty much anyone, and my hood was as comfortable as a double bed. I leaned over, laid my hands on his ears to steady his face, and I kissed him, tongue and all. At first, I’m not sure he liked it but then he did, and he kissed back, grasping at my head, biting my lips. He was all over the place. I’ve kissed the type before.
“Slow down,” I whispered. And as if he realized I wasn’t going to shoo him off the car, he calmed down and we made out. He was skinny, with barely a hair on his chest. Not like me. It was exciting to be with someone new—someone who I hadn’t known since I came out at fourteen, a decade earlier.
“Your body,” he said, which scared me.
“Yeah?”
“Do you work out?”
“No. Sometimes I’ll run to blow off steam, but no, not really.”
“You’re strong. Muscled.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I mean “muscled?” Who says that?
I thanked him and took his number, but he told me not to call him. He said if I wanted to talk, I needed to call and hang up when someone answered. Then he would know to call me back. It seemed messed up, and I told him so, which made him look ashamed.
When I got back to ma’s, she was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of orange juice, relieved to see me home. She reminded me of my morning shift at ten. Moms are good alarm clocks. She didn’t very often wait up for me, but Gail had just gotten home an hour earlier, and she was three years younger. When I think about my ma that night, in her stretched-out T-shirt and cut-offs, I gotta hand it to her, she was okay.
From then on, Michael and I were a duo. We just palled around together; the make-out was just a one-time thing, it seemed. He met me that next day at The Gap and tried on shirts. When I said one looked better than another, he bought it and ended up with three. He probably could’ve “fallen into” a half-dozen different Gaps nearer to Cary, since Cary is a suburb of Raleigh. But I thought it was sweet that he drove for hours to shop at mine.
One afternoon, he called me from a payphone in Cary. Said he couldn’t go home. A boyfriend had broken his heart. He was crying. Michael was not a pretty boy; his face always looked like it had been clobbered a few times. And tears didn’t improve it. He was not “muscled,” either emotionally or physically. Because I happened to be bored, and always wanted to drive my ‘78 Camaro, I drove to Cary and picked him up at the 7-11 where he waited. It was almost dark. I asked him to show me around since I had only been there once or twice.
“Want to see my house?”
“If you want,” I said.
“We can’t go in.” We drove by.
He lived in a regular neighborhood filled with houses that had second floors. He pointed to his window in front and to the tree he had told me he climbed down on nights like this one when he had to get out. It was like something out of Eight is Enough. I was ashamed to show him my house with its bashed-in corner and loose gutters. Dad’s pickup still up on blocks like when he died thirteen years ago. Of course, I hadn’t hauled off the junk, either.
I drove us around Cary, and he played tour guide. We passed playgrounds and churches and fast food joints. It’s a big town. He said he studied graphic design and worked in a print shop on Main St. We passed it, and he hissed. It was the first time he talked about his work.
“Don’t you like it?” I asked.
It turned out the owner was a jackass. Everyone treated Michael like shit. He was working all the time and getting paid peanuts. I wanted his father to beat the crap outta the guy, but his father would be more likely to beat the crap out of Michael. I told him he should look for a new job and his sad eyes agreed.
“Thank you, Frank. You are so beautiful.” This is something we all said, never meaning physical beauty, but as a gratitude thing. I did a nice thing by driving down to keep my friend company, and he was telling me I was a beautiful person. That’s how I heard it, anyway.
“No probs. But what are you going to do? Can you sleep at home tonight?” I had had friends before in similar dilemmas. Their parents kicked them out or threatened them or even beat the crap out of them for no good reason. They weren’t really safe at home. Michael didn’t answer.
“What happened tonight? Why can’t you go home?” It turned out the ex, who really was just a fling, had called the house and asked for Michael. When he got on the line, the guy started screaming at him, accusations and lies, shit that wasn’t nice and wasn’t true. Michael couldn’t help himself and he started to cry. He tried to swallow it, but it happened. His folks were right there to hear the argument and then his father saw his tears. He belted him across the face and told him, “Get the fuck out, sissy.” So, Michael’s evening had been a double whammy. He lost his beefcake and his pillow.
“Can I drop you someplace, Michael? A relative’s maybe?”
“I got nobody. You’re my only friend—well, you and the boxcar guys.”
“My ma doesn’t have a spare room,” I explained, partly relieved.
“Can I pitch a tent?” he asked.
I never imagined he owned a tent, but he said he did. So, I parked in front of his neighbor’s house, and he snuck into the garage and came back with a green roll that turned out to be his tent. I drove him back to the 7-11 where he picked up his VW GTI and followed me back to our hill.
By the time we got back to ma’s it was nighttime, but not late. I put on the flood light and carried a flashlight to help him put the tent together. In fifteen minutes, he had a little makeshift bedroom out there beside the old truck and its rusting parts. My mother thought we were a couple, which I assured her we were not. She made a couple of dogs out on the grill. When we were finished, we sat round the kitchen table, all four of us because Gail joined, and ate Ruffles and hotdogs with mustard.
He stayed there in that tent through hot summer nights, thunderstorms, and into the cold autumn. He was looking for work but didn’t find anything near my house or even as far away as Winston. I started leaving a five-spot under a sandwich beside his tent flap every week or so.
One night, I suggested we go to McDonald’s for something to do, and he hesitated. I thought it was the money thing, but it wasn’t.
“I can’t,” he said. He didn’t offer more than that, but I knew there was more to know. I followed him into Lexington, but, afraid he’d hear my car tailing his, I backed off, and he got away. He drove his GTI right to the core of downtown where all the BBQ joints are. I wondered if he had decided to wait tables as I had suggested. They were always hiring.
He missed a couple of Boxcar Fridays, as we called them. I missed him there. It seemed the other guys did too. They all were talking about him. Queens are full of gossip, and not all of it is true. I didn’t believe half of their stories, but even the half I did believe surprised me. And when had they spent time with him without me? I wasn’t really jealous, but I couldn’t make sense of it.
One morning, heading to The Gap, I found a note on my car’s windshield. “Meet me at the Gazebo at six tonight—in Wash Park.” This was in Winston, not Lexington. I passed it on my way home, a fact Michael knew. I parked on the city street and walked in. He had hung a mosquito net inside the gazebo. He sat under its canopy, his scrubbed face lit by candlelight. A bottle of grocery store wine was open and “breathing,” and an unopened box of breadsticks would be our banquet. He lifted the netting for me to enter and gestured for me to sit down.
“Frankie, darling,” he stretched as he poured two paper cups of wine. It was a damp evening with a slight fog lying in the valleys.
“What are you up to?” I asked, knowing I wouldn’t get a straight answer.
“Kiss me, Frankie,” he said, leaning my way. He wore eyeliner. Only Alvaro ever wore eyeliner.
I wanted to kiss him, and so I did. I knew we could be seen through that silly white gauze, but inside, it felt safe. We kissed for a long time. Finally, Michael pushed himself away and sat up.
“You’ve been so kind to me, Frank. I’m so sick of sleeping with jerks. I want a real partner, someone who gets me. You, Frank. I want you. Your big shoulders and your burly chest. Say yes. I need someone to fix me when I’m broken.”
I was so mixed up in that moment. I mean, like, no one had ever really declared they wanted me in that way before—I guess I mean for more than a hookup. It felt good, sexy—kind of grown-up. But it was a lot of responsibility to partner. None of the guys, myself included, did it. I mean, Alvaro had done it and look how that worked out. The rest of us just screwed around. We talked in the boxcar and hooked up with whoever we could find. Every month or so, a few of us would drive to the gay bar in Winston. Raleigh had three or four, but we had to land a hook up in Winston or we had that long drive home. Anyway, the fixing thing kind of freaked me out. I wished he hadn’t said that last part. I hemmed and hawed. I tried to make an excuse, but my dopey face gave me away. I have honest eyes.
“Oh Christ. You don’t want me either!” he bawled. He didn’t really bawl, like, cry. But the way he said it, it was like I tore his arm out of its socket. The thing was—I did want Michael. I liked his quirky little cap, and that goalie’s nose of his, and those skinny black jeans that I could never squeeze into. But I didn’t tell him any of that.
I stuck my tongue back in his mouth and kissed him as hard as I had ever kissed anyone. We did everything except fuck in that gazebo. We never got entirely naked, but flies were opened and re-zipped, shirts unbuttoned, tees lifted, practically torn. I wanted to say yes as much as him—but I was afraid. I was afraid to love.
Before dawn, we packed up his little setup and walked arm and arm back to our cars. He felt okay, I think, but he knew I hadn’t said yes. At my car, he pressed against me, bent me to the car’s contour. I could feel all his desire against me, and I bet he felt mine too. He laid his head under my chin, which he probably could only have achieved with me bent back like that. And he just stood there, against me all quiet like, until I put my arms around him and held him. He needed kindness more than any man I’ve ever known. Just kindness.
Even though he was still sleeping in that tent beside ma’s house, I really didn’t keep tabs on him. I’m sure some nights when I came home his GTI wasn’t there, and sometimes it was. But one night, I saw a flashlight glowing inside the tent, and I scratched at the nylon as a joke. He knew it was me and invited me in. I just stuck my head inside the zipper and told him I was off to bed.
“Hey, Frank, I got a business proposition,” he said. So of course, I went inside and sat down.
“I’m sick of sleeping in a tent, and you say your house isn’t any better,” he began. “The boys pay me a few bucks now and then to, you know…”
My confused expression must have told him I didn’t know, for he then added, “Fuck them.”
“You hustle them?” I asked in disbelief, a) because we talked about that all the time in the boxcar and everyone was against it, and b) Michael was so unlikely a boy to sell himself, and c) because I didn’t want him to be doing it with everyone else.
“It’s money. I need money. Everyone is always fucking someone.”
This was a sentence that was said at least once every Boxcar Friday night. In fact, I think someone had Sharpied it onto the wall. It wasn’t literal, for God’s Sake! It didn’t mean Michael should really fuck someone—everyone. It meant the boss screws over the worker, the worker screws over the grocer, the grocer screws over the farmer, etcetera.
“You can get a job,” I said, but as soon as the words fell out, I realized how lame they sounded.
“Come on, Frankie,” he implored. “Let’s go to New York. We’ll make lots of money there. Leave it to me.”
“How?”
“We’ll hire boys, take a cut.”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
He laid his long fingers across my thigh, and I quieted.
“Listen, my car parked out there? It stopped working two weeks ago. I can’t even get to the goddamned boxcar unless someone picks me up.” He shifted gears, “I don’t mind the work. It pays okay, and no one breaks my heart. They’re jerks—all of them—jerks. I’m so tired of jerks. New York will be a whole new world!”
I laid down next to him, turned out the flashlight, and let him tell me his stories about his crazy-ass father who beat the living crap out of him. Then about his brothers and cousins who were looking for him. Then about the boy he met in Winston who had called his house with some insane story he made up as to why he couldn’t see Michael anymore. Then his bestie in high school, a girl, who said she couldn’t hang out with him after graduation. Then his boss at the copy shop threatened to sue him. Then his doctor’s office informed him that they wouldn’t see him because they didn’t believe in his lifestyle. I mean, it went on and on.
I had some of that, sure. We all did. The other boys had run into that kind of doctor, the churchy ones who were afraid of us. But it kind of pissed me off when I encountered it. Maybe because I felt like I could slug someone if they got in my face, and Michael didn’t. I don’t know, but I could feel him tremble as he told me about them. I couldn’t even tell him he had the boys in the boxcar because he had ruined those friendships. He had made them customers. This was beyond what ma could help with, so I just lay with him and listened until we fell asleep.
He woke me up gently before the sun rose. “Come take a walk with me,” he whispered, pulling at my hand. I rose and followed him out into the semi-darkness. We walked down the dirt road, not far, to an old farm driveway that looked like somewhere else in that rosy shadow. We pissed into the bramble, side by side. I loved this broken man. He was the brainiest kid I knew. He said he had a college degree. Used big words and everything. But what could I do?
“What’s your day like?” I asked, heading home. “Need a lift?”
He just walked by my side, looking at his Doc Martens in the red dust.
I drove him to a crappy motel on the outskirts of Winston. He paid the twenty dollars for a room and went in. I watched the door from the Camaro. A stranger knocked, and he let them in. When the stranger left, I saw Michael’s bare shoulders in the shadows. I recognized his bones and imagined the scent of his pasty skin. I stayed there for almost two hours, hoping he would return to the car and give up the business.
We existed in this stalemate for another month, one or the other of us needing the other’s touch or kisses or sweet words. Then his “work” would intrude, and I’d get pissy or angry or jealous. He took me to a movie, and we held hands in the dark. In a hundred different ways, he’d ask me, almost beg me, “Don’t you wanna be rich?” I don’t think he wanted to be rich any more than I did. He wanted to be free and unafraid, like me and all of us. But trying to get rich by hustling seemed easier somehow.
He took off when he made enough for a train ticket. Seventy-five bucks one-way. I drove him to Greensboro to pick up the train. He was sweating, and his acne was real bad. He didn’t look happy about going.
“Stressed?” I asked.
He nodded and looked away. When he pulled his lousy duffle bag from the back to carry it to the platform, he leaned over the shifter and gripped my pants in his palm. He caressed me. Told me again I was beautiful, rugged, brawny. Then he kissed me here, low under my ears on my neck, a place he’d never kissed before, and whispered the most delicate “I love you, Frankie.” I’ll never forget it. I said it to him, too, but it didn’t make him stay.
He died in a shelter in New York City four months after Alvaro died up in the hospital in Wake Forest. Me and the boys visited Alvaro there once. He barely saw us, all glassy-eyed and swollen. He was so sick. But we saw him, and cried and cried. We stopped going to the boxcar for a while after that. We all walked over to the funeral, but when his mama saw us coming, she asked us to wait outside the fence. She asked nice and all, so we stayed there behind the old metal fence trying to hear what they were saying about him. By then, I knew Michael had it, too, and when I heard their prayers, I was thinking them for Michael, even though he was still breathing somewhere in New York City. I didn’t tell anybody about Michael. I didn’t know who had done what with him. I told myself it didn’t always transmit—but I was afraid for all of them. I sang so loud, I bet Alvaro’s people heard me.
I went home. Everyone else went to Billy’s BBQ. It was the only barbeque joint where we dared go. It was right on Main Street, and you bought your ribs at a window so nobody had to be seen with you or nothing. I’m glad I went home because there was a big row. Punches landed. Lips got busted. One guy puked. It was bad. But at least they were alive. Nobody was at ma’s house when I got there. I went to my room and shut the door. Took out Michael’s letters—all three. I read them again, and between the lines, too. I could tell he was broke and alone. Afraid like me. And lonely, so lonely. I kept my gas money in a little jar on the top shelf out of reach from Gail. The jar sat on top of the letters normally. I pulled it down. Counted out sixty bucks. That was a fortune to me, then, but it still left me with twenty, enough to keep going.
I folded it inside a sheet of paper. With a red Bic, I covered both sides in the curvy hearts I liked to draw, big ones, little ones. It was nothing like the beautiful drawings Michael could do, but I knew he would like it. I found an unused envelope in a shoebox my ma kept in the kitchen and put the paper and money inside. Before I sealed it, I kissed the paper. Only his third letter had an address. Maybe he wouldn’t be there anymore; it was a chance I had to take. I drove to the town post office, bought a stamp, and sent it to New York City.
The money never came back, so I guessed he got it. Four months later, I mailed a letter to that same address. One night, I had got myself all jealous thinking that maybe he mailed letters to other guys, too. I mean, marketing and all. So, I wanted him to know it was me who sent the dough. I typed it on ma’s old typewriter so Michael could read it. It said a lot of things, private things. But mostly I told him I missed him, and I asked him to come home, where I was seeing a lot of opportunities.
His letter came back two weeks later, unopened, with a sticker that said, “addressee unknown.” When he died, no one told us. His family didn’t give him a funeral. Maybe they didn’t even ship his body back to North Carolina, I don’t know. I called the hospital where Michael said he went for treatments. Treatments—there really wasn’t any treatment. They put medicine on his sores and helped him breathe—until they couldn’t. They had an AIDS unit, a shelter, for forgotten guys like Michael who were too poor to pay. I wanted to tell the lady on the phone that really he was rich, rich as a millionaire, but she wouldn’t understand. He died a couple of days before I spoke to her. I think she knew I cared because she let me breathe into the phone for a long time, like she felt me leaning on her.
That day, I went to the fucking boxcar, and, all alone, I painted over all our old graffiti with white paint. It took loads of coats, but I just kept painting it and painting it until it was clean. And then I cashed my paycheck from The Gap and went to Pier 1 and bought bright cushions in rainbow colors. And I loaded up the Camaro with milk crates from behind the Food Lion. And I sprayed those white too. And when they were good and dry, I laid the pillows on those damned crates. And I hung ma’s Christmas lights inside and turned them on with an old car battery. I had to jigger it, but I knew how. I put on my brightest pink T-shirt and climbed aboard like a beauty queen on a float! And I didn’t cozy up in a corner like I always did before. I sat right in the fucking middle, looking out and waiting for the others. When they arrived, Max played his Discman loud. I stood up and swung to the music. Others did too. And we danced—danced and danced—like we weren’t never going to stop!
