The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lawrence Block
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

No, just a joke. There is no lettered edition, no spelled-out version of those asterisks.

There are, even in this confessional age, matters one keeps to oneself.

22

“Wow, Bern.”

“Says it all, doesn’t it?”

“There’s a voice in my head telling me that this doesn’t change a thing, and there’s another voice saying it changes everything. And I have the feeling they’re both right.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Really? Because I’m not sure I do. This is about as good as I’ve ever felt in my life, like I’m floating on a cloud, and I’m loving it, but at the same time I’m terrified of falling.”

“What I’m feeling,” I said, “isn’t all that different.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been to bed with a man. You knew that, right?”

“It seems to me you mentioned it.”

“Ages and ages ago, before I was completely out. I mean, I always knew I was gay, and that I didn’t have the kind of feelings for boys that I had for girls. But when I was in high school, girls didn’t take each other to the junior prom. I gather it’s no longer unheard of.”

“Very few things are.”

“Well, I wasn’t in the running for prom queen, but I wasn’t a complete bowwow either, and I got asked on dates. And my date might kiss me goodnight, and if I dated somebody more than a couple of times we might make out a little. And I didn’t find it disgusting. It didn’t do anything for me, but it didn’t make me vomit.”

“Which might have been awkward,” I said, “in the back seat of somebody’s father’s Plymouth.”

“Anyway, everything got amped up in college. Orientation Week was barely over before a third-year Phys Ed major orientated the hell out of me. One glance and she knew what I was, and after one evening in her dorm room, so did I.”

“And you never looked back.”

“That’s mostly true,” she said, “but you start wondering if maybe this is a phase you’re going through, and if you’re comfortable with the whole idea of never getting married and never having children and never being able to let the world know who and what you really are, because back then—”

“Right.”

“And you get the thought in your head, like how do you know for sure you wouldn’t enjoy sex with a guy if you’ve never had it? And, you know, Bern, it’s a fair question.”

“Sure.”

“And, you know, a couple of drinks makes it easier to go through with something like that. Maybe more than a couple, maybe enough rye and ginger to shut up the voices in your head, or at least turn down the volume.”

“That’s what you drank? Rye and ginger ale?”

“Or the occasional Seven and Seven. That was Seagram’s Seven and Seven-Up.”

“I remember. It tasted—”

“Like crap, but it got the job done. And so did I. I did my research, I performed my experiment, I analyzed the results and drew the only possible conclusion.”

“You were a lesbian.”

“I was,” she said, “and I am. Even in a universe that decided to turn a somersault and put me in bed with my best friend.

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