me like clinging fog. Creep! someone said in my right ear. I turned in the direction of the voice, and immediately to my left someone said, Letch! I turned my head again, and directly into my face a woman spat, Pervert!
Go on, mister, said my rescuer. Just keep moving.
At the doorway, she raised an eyebrow at me, which was pierced by a tiny ring. And remember, little buddy, she said in a kindly voice, it’ll be worse next time.
I hurried across the parking lot, shivering as my sweat met the cold night air.
I marched down the short street to the dark boulevard, then stopped, searching for evidence of the elevated roadway, for any sign of the route that cab had taken. I walked in one direction then another, striding, the taunts of the women sounding in my head. Creep. Letch. Pervert. That’s what the students at the university had called me. But it was all wrong, very wrong. I always went alone to student haunts. I never approached—never even thought of touching anyone. The boy intrigued me, that was all. It was only my way of trying to understand him!
Somehow I came to the elevated roadway. Somehow I found the route the cab had taken, Folsom Street, I thought. Not a block from the roadway was the neon sign of what seemed to be a diner. Hamburger Mary’s, it said. I opened the door to a rush of warm air.
Table? asked a waitress.
I slid gratefully into a booth, took a menu, asked for coffee. As I sat and felt the blood coming back into my hands, I noticed there were many men in leather jackets in the diner, some with chains on their wrists and around their necks. After the waitress brought my coffee and took my order, I asked her, Is this some sort of biker hangout?
She laughed, a hoarse laugh. You don’t know where the hell you are, do you, honey?
I ate a hamburger, fried potatoes, a salad, finding myself starved despite my dinner earlier in the evening. Feeling warmed and fortified, I asked for the check, paid it, and prepared to go back out into the night to find my way home. It was only when the waitress brought my change that I noticed it: her height, the size of her hands, the Adam’s apple that bobbed at her throat.
She must have seen the look in my eyes, for she said, Honey, you don’t look so good. Let me call you a cab.
Then she shrieked: You’re a cab! You’re a cab!
Her laugh was so shrill that I instinctively slid to the far side of the booth. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the other patrons, the men in leather and chains, were glancing over, amused, but otherwise showed no interest. Was this a common occurrence? Could anyone wander in from the street for a hamburger and find himself pressed against the wall while a looming man-woman shrieked at him in utter ridicule?
Please, I said. I’ll just—
Oh, don’t be so sensitive! She had abruptly stopped laughing. I’ll let you know when your cab’s here. Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to you.
42.
I could not bring myself to go home. Not knowing where else to go, I asked the taxi driver to take me to the Palace. The hotel must have a bar, I thought, where I could prepare myself for the long ride out to Ocean Beach. But in the lounge I found only two drunken men accompanied by three prostitutes. Stretching out behind them, all across the back bar, was a large, garish mural painted by Maxfield Parrish: the Pied Piper leading children up a rocky promontory. There was something grotesque in this larger-than-life-size Piper with his hooked nose, the children’s phony, chub-cheeked innocence, the impossibly purple sunset behind them; the live prostitutes painted almost as shamelessly as the mural. I fled the bar, crossed the street, stepped over the desperate men sprawled in the doorway, and rode the elevator up to my office.
There I lay in the dark, trying to make myself comfortable on the small settee. The Palace’s rooftop pink-neon sign, three stories high, loomed over the window. The first letter A was defective, and I watched the restless oscillation of Palace, P lace, Palace, P lace, as I tried to empty my mind of the evening’s events.
I must have dozed off, for the next thing I knew, I was being startled awake by a thundering slam. It took me a moment to