Leo tightens his grip on my arm.
“Do you know how many hate crimes go unreported even in a community like Palm Springs?” he asks. “It doesn’t just happen to those on the margins. It happens to people like you, every single day, and it has to stop. That woman’s hatred flamed because it has been given oxygen in our country, and her sole goal is to silence your voice. It’s the same thing happening around the country with book banning, and the only way to extinguish that hate is by speaking out.” Leo gives me a pleading look. “Speak out, Sid. And don’t just do it for yourself but for every person this is happening to right now that you can’t see and will never know. Do it for all those who fought for you to be right here, right now. Believe me, if it’s happening to you, it’s happening to a little boy or girl this moment—a kid feeling as much shame and self-hatred as you once did and still do, a kid who is out there somewhere fighting to survive. When we’re silent...”
“I know,” I interrupt. “We give up.”
“No,” Leo says, shaking his head. “We’re complicit.”
He releases his hand, and my forearm pulsates, missing his touch.
“I told my GM about this, and he’d like you to be my first feature for ‘Gray and Gay,’” Leo continues.
“Me?”
“I actually think it could make for an amazing launch. We could cover so many issues all via a lifestyle segment on you,” he says. “Your friends here filled me in a bit on your communal living and health care situation, your show that mirrors your life, and—despite all of this—how none of us are immune to hate. Say yes.”
I look at Leo.
Yes, I think.I will marry you.
“Did you come here to ask me all this?”
“I did. I’m a tireless reporter.”
Mario leans across the bar and whispers to me, “Say yes. You’ll get to see more of him.”
I look down the bar at Teddy. I think of what happened to John.
What happened to him and what happened to me will happen again and again and again if I—we—don’t take a stand.
I turn back to Leo to say yes, but Barry now has him cornered. He is handing him yet another drink and has him pinned against the bar. In the blink of an eye, Barry removes his shirt and tucks it into the back of his jeans.
“Well, aren’t you a tall drink of iced tea,” Barry says. “And I am parched.”
Barry’s six-pack hardens with every word out of his mouth.
I can’t watch. I turn away and see Teddy leaving. And then I see my reflection in the windows of Streetbar.
I’m wearing a sport coat.
At a gay bar.
I look like I should be leading a tour of bird watchers. I’m about as sexy as Bernie Sanders.
God, I’m delusional.
And what the hell is a sport coat anyway? It’s neither sporty nor a coat, and yet I’m wearing one, just like I was wearing an eggplant blouse when I met Leo.
Barry laughs at something Leo has said.
“Well, I do declare, you make me happy as a clam at high tide,” he says, running a finger down Leo’s chest.
“God, you’re a bad actor,” I say to Barry as I stand. “And I’m getting diabetes from your terrible accent.”
“Sid?” Leo calls after me as I part the crowd with my elbows to leave.
I rush onto the street to catch my breath. I see Teddy through the window of the show tunes bar across the street, talking to Larry and Phil.
God, what an awful night for both of us.
