going. I never did, though. The people I met were too young, or too old, they thought, or too scared, or too fucked up. I did meet some nice people, though, and I had a couple of relationships with guys I saw pretty regularly until either the other guy moved away or one or the other of us just lost interest and stopped calling. You know how that works.

"Anyway, this went on for—God, five years. Almost every night I was on the phone to somebody, or in the park—or in the bars; I'd started hitting the bars pretty regularly by then, even though I'm not much of a drinker. One night the Terminal, the next night the Bung Cellar—Mary-Mary's it was back then— and the next night back to the park.

"It was a pretty messy and wild kind of life, I know, and I didn't really wise up until after I picked up some weird, awful NSU and it took me nine fucking weeks to shake it! God, the VD clinic tried everything—tetracycline, penicillin, Septra DS, the works—but for nine weeks whenever I pissed, it was like pissing needles. I always had these little plastic vials of pills in my pockets, and when I went dancing it sounded like castanets.

"It was really a very chastening experience, and after the NSU went away, whatever it was, I slowed down quite a bit. Maybe it was for the wrong reasons, but anyway I decided to start paying less attention to gay men's bodies and even more attention to their fucked-up minds. I tried to get the alliance moving—I was chairman of the political-action committee by then—but those guys are such a bunch of old ladies, I couldn't get them to budge. I wanted to zap the State Assembly and they wanted to put on luncheons. I saw that I was wasting my time with that DAR chapter they were running over there, so I dropped out. I almost went to California to join Kurt and the FFF, but they were having their own troubles by then and splitting up, so I decided to stay in Albany for a while longer.

"I was glad I stayed. I met Huey around that time, and then Frank. Also, I had a hot thing going for a while with a guy named Dennis Kerskie. He was going to help me start an FFF branch in the East, but unfortunately Dennis freaked out and took off for Maine to cleanse his intestinal tract, or some weird thing. Actually, it was just as well. Dennis could be pretty flaky, and I don't think he would have had the discipline for the

things I wanted to do. I did meet Mark through Dennis, though, and I'm grateful for that.

"Anyway, by the time I met Steve Kleckner that night, I'd pretty much settled down. I was seeing Huey once a week—we had a nice, relaxed sexual friendship, nothing heavy—and I was seeing Frank once a week, but not too much else. Well, actually there was this one guy from Lake George I met in the park one night in August. Mark was staying at my place with a friend, so I took a chance and we went to my parents' place, and that turned into a very bad scene. Stu and Jane came home the next day unexpectedly and caught us smoking a joint in the front room without the vent on, and it got pretty ugly. After that I sort of swore off having sex with people I didn't know—it was just getting to be too much of a hassle—when Mark and I went out to Trucky's that night three weeks ago and I met this really neat guy. That was Steve Kleckner.

"It was funny—a couple of years ago I wouldn't have gone for Steve. He was sort of young and loose and goofy, and I usually went for more intense kinds of people, or guys who were savvy and cool, like Huey. But I guess somehow I was ready to just let go for a while and be a kid—I'd never done that when I was a kid—and I really fell for this happy-go-lucky young jock.

"At first I thought, oh Jesus, I really shouldn't. Not another involvement. I had the feeling right away that it might lead to something like that, and I was reluctant. My life was already going along pretty well—I had my job, which, shit job though it was, I enjoyed and it kept me solvent. And I had my friends, Mark and Huey—and Chris, who was always there when I needed her. And, of course, I had Frank, who gave me something nobody else could—I really don't want to go into that, if you don't mind; it's sort of embarrassing. Okay?"

I nodded. We'd come back to Zimka.

"Maybe all that sounds to you like kind of a crazy, fragmented life," Blount said, "but I was just thankful, even after nine years, to be out and on the loose and in charge of my own life. And anyhow, who is there really, gay or straight, who finds everything he wants in life in one place or in one person? I think it doesn't exist, and people who say they have it all—in a wife, or husband, or lover, or family, or great house or perfect

job—those people are kidding themselves, and what they really mean is, they have the one or two things they want most, or that society approves of most, and to keep those couple of things they're willing to give up a lot of other things they'd love to have: variety, money, good sex, security, adventure, or whatever.

"Actually, I did have it all, in a way, even if it was spread all over town, and it would have been beautiful—damn near perfect—if I'd gotten my parents to accept me, too. That's the one thing I've never had, and—well, I guess that's the one thing I'm not going to have. You've met them, and you must have seen how hopeless they are. If I'd had a brother or sister, that might have taken some of the pressure off, but I didn't—I don't—so—what the hell. Fuck Stuart and Jane. Just—fuck 'em."

He sat silently for a moment. Then he reached for another cigarette and offered me one. I declined. He lit his, dragged deeply, and exhaled. He went on.

"So anyway, I'm cool, right? I went out to Trucky's that night with Mark, and we were going to dance and maybe meet some people we know and go get something to eat, to the Gateway or out to Denny's, and then I guess I had it in the back of my head that I might call Frank later and see if he wasn't busy.

"But I met Steve Kleckner instead. I'd seen him around some, mostly through the glass in the DJ booth, and I'd always thought he was attractive, but I really didn't know him and hadn't thought much about him. He was off work that night, though, out at the bar, and acting kind of mellow and funny and having a real good time, and one of the bartenders who knows me a little introduced us.

"We clicked right away. You know how it is, probably, when two gay guys who are physically attracted to each other meet, and each is sort of up—and ready, even if you don't know it—and you're both a little high, and there's this warm, simpatico something that goes back and forth. You're trading lines and laughing at the same things, and you recognize in the other person's stories of his life a lot of the downs and hassles you have yourself, and you know he's understanding yours, and

then there's the sexual tension underneath it all that both feeds the closeness and makes it feel incomplete, and of course the atmosphere around you is saying do it, do it, do it.

"Well, that's what happened with Steve and me that night. We danced and drank and carried on and had a great time together, and then we left together to go do it, to make it complete.

"We left Trucky's around three. Mark had left earlier with this tall blond number he'd turned on to, and we rode into town in Steve's old junky-ass Triumph Herald. We had the top down, it was a warm night, and I remember the car making this awful racket, ka-bang, ka-bang, ka-bang as if there were firecrackers under the hood. Steve said it wasn't important, not to worry, the car always did that, something to do with a worn drive chain that would set him back three hundred to replace, and the car wasn't worth it, he'd just drive it till it quit."

The time had come to find out something. I said, "A question. Did you notice who left Trucky's around the time you and Steve left?"