Sweeter Voices Still by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Your Father’s Car” was first published in 2013 in Issue 04 of Jonathan: Gay Men’s Fiction and was included in my short story collection Lincoln Avenue (Squares & Rebels, 2014).

The Island

Allentown, PA

EDWARD M. COHEN

In the middle of my home town—Allentown, PA—there is a park where the married men come to cruise and the middle aged queens come to watch. I suppose there is a park like it in every small town in America; islands bypassed by Gay Liberation.

The marrieds do not get out of their cars. I suppose they are afraid to be seen. They have left their sleeping wives at home with a story about walking the dog or buying a paper, and circle the park in their minivans, sometimes stopping with the motor idling. Sometimes turning down a side street, looking for someone to blow, or be blown by. Sometimes to pay, sometimes for free. One guy is a foot fetishist and he is looking for someone to walk on his chest. The local Elvis impersonator is a voyeur and his car follows the others around. In a place like Allentown, everyone knows everyone else.

There is a cadre of boys who come to get picked up; some on bike, some on foot. Some are newly arrived in town; some have been here for years. The high school dropouts who clerk at Macdonald’s lounge under the trees after work.

“You do it for the money?” I asked one kid.

Ordinarily, the hustlers talk to the hustlers and we queens talk to one another but, this night, I’d come out early so there were only the two of us, with no cars circling, and he seemed as lonely as I.

“I’ve got a job,” he snarled.

“Where?”

“Lehigh Valley Hospital.”

“Doing what?”

“Washing dishes.”

“You like it?”

“It’s okay.”

“How long you been at it?”

“Seven years.”

The pay was lousy, he added, which was why he had started to come to the park. Also, there was not much to do in Allentown at night if you were poor and had no TV. He had a girlfriend but she was pregnant which was why he was coming out so early because things were going from bad to worse and he was getting scared. I told him I knew the feeling.

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