Like People in History by Felice Picano

Author:Felice Picano
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: AIDS (Disease), Gay Men, Gay, Cousins, Medical, Aids & Hiv, Fiction, Domestic Fiction
ISBN: 9780140245257
Publisher: Abacus Books
Published: 1995-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

"Guilty?" I couldn't believe my ears.

"Bu'chy'are, Blanche! Y'are guilty!" Anatole said in the worst Bette Davis imitation I'd ever heard.

"I know that. But it's the principle of the thing!"

"Give the rhetoric a rest, if you don't mind," Therry Villagro, the ACT UP attorney, said.

"We're on your side," Anatole agreed.

Perhaps I was jumpy because we were sitting in one of the sleaziest offices I'd ever seen. It appeared to belong to some minor functionary connected to the public defender's office, and was reachable only by long, dim, badly painted corridors. Anatole assured me that it was attached to one of the numerous small night courts connected to the Tombs. Although, after the night's activities, I wasn't the cleanest person myself—I'd climbed the side of a building, slid across its filthy roof, been thrown to the ground and frisked—this place disgusted me with its years-old layer of untouched grime, its odor like that of old hamburgers and uncleaned cat boxes, its audible rustle in the wainscoting of what had to be hummingbird-sized roaches—or worse! Anatole sat on newspaper he'd carefully spread on the slatted wooden chair he'd selected. Therry had turned her chair and sat astride it, leaning over the back.

She didn't seem to notice the sanitation problem at all. I wondered, not for the first time tonight, exactly how nearsighted she was.

"Here's the deal," Therry spelled out. "You plead guilty to trespassing, which is a misdemeanor, and you pay the hundred-dollar bond as a fine. The judge drops criminal mischief and endangerment charges and lets you off with time served. Case closed. No one in the city can ever go after you again on this."

"This judge a close personal friend of a sister's ex-boyfriend's mother?" I asked Anatole.

"Better. He's queer."

"And closeted!" Therry said.

"So far!" Anatole said in the man's defense.

"What about the kids?" I nodded toward somewhere within the building. "Junior and James?"

"Same deal for all of you," Therry said.

And when I still demurred, Anatole said, "You can't get better!"

He suddenly sounded as his father must have sounded fifty years ago, selling bolts of material on Orchard Street. I loved him for that.

"What's the problem?" Therry asked.

"Wally! My lover." I explained further: "Lenin in denims."

"It's okay with Wally. We discussed it with him."

"It is?" I was surprised. "Where is he anyway?"

"Sitting in the last row of night court soaking up atmosphere," Anatole said.

"Soaking up years of future indignation is more like it," I said. Indignation that I knew would be expressed at me in weeks to come.

But Wally wasn't in the courtroom when we entered fifteen minutes later. And the judge turned out to be not only queer and closeted but also someone I knew. In fact, over the past twenty years, I'd come across him sooner or later in most if not all the less savory gay male haunts the city had to offer. Not a bad-looking guy, though a little careless of his appearance, he had a face composed of two similar if slightly ill-fitted halves; I'd more than

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