Boystown 06 - From the Ashes by Thornton Marshall

Author:Thornton, Marshall [Thornton, Marshall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-02-19T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The next morning I looked out my window and it was snowing. I stared at the falling snow until I knew what I had to do. I’d been to the place a couple years before when I was trying to find Roger Doty. A coffeehouse for teens run by Gay Vistas out of the basement at The Jane Addams Center. I’d gone there and unknowingly encountered the Bughouse Slasher for the very first time.

I took a shower in the cramped bathroom attached to my room, thought about shaving but didn’t, dressed, stuck a cigarette in my mouth, and left to go find my car. I drove down to Broadway and Belmont all the while thinking about coffee. I could have stopped and gotten some but that seemed ridiculous given my destination. When I got to the neighborhood I drove around for almost ten minutes until I found an unmetered parking space on Orchard. Then I doubled back.

The second building in from Belmont, The Jane Addams Center, was a three-story building the color of soured milk. I only had the vaguest idea of who Jane Addams was. Some suffragette with too much money, I guessed. Though the money must have run out long ago since the building wasn’t in what you’d call great shape. I remembered that the coffeehouse was held in the basement, so I found the stairs down to it.

Inside, the place hadn’t changed much. It was one large room crammed with a bunch of furniture that seemed to have been rescued from a thrift store or a garbage heap. There were a couple of couches covered with the kind of Indian bedspreads they used to sell at head shops and now sold at fancy import stores. I remembered that the last time I was there, there had been a large coffeemaker on a card table with some cookies. That was noticeably absent. I also noted that the few people sitting around the room were not teenagers.

I kept looking around. Against the wall was a sagging metal bookshelf with a small library of books that made being gay seem about as much fun as studying bugs. One of the shelves was devoted to stacks of cheery pamphlets promising to help with coming out, feelings of suicide, addiction, and STDs. At the back of the room was a hallway; I went to check it out.

At the far end was the restroom that had “Men & Womyn” painted onto the door. Along the wall to my left were two doors. I headed down the hallway and peeked into the first door. It was some kind of office. Behind a desk sat a man of about my age. He looked to be tall and thin, had a van dyke, eyes that reminded me of a Bassett Hound, and wore a black turtleneck. Right away I guessed that Jack Kerouac was his favorite author.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for the teen coffeehouse. Are you not doing that anymore?” Just talking about it made me feel a little dirty.

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