"I'm not letting you wither away like this," his mother told him. "I'm calling Dr. Barryte."

He glared at her. "You'll be wasting his time."

"Then so be it," she said, conclusively.

She didn't close the door after her.

It was ten thirty in the morning – way too fucking early. He rolled over, stuffed his face into the pillow, and imagined himself beating his mother to the phone and smashing it to pieces. It would be like the window incident all over again, except a hundred times worse.

There was something wrong with her, something seriously wrong with her. How did his father tolerate such a woman? She was so adamant, so boisterous – aggressive, even. It was her way or no way.

God, what a bitch.

Even though he was exhausted, having only fallen asleep around seven a.m., he wasn't able to fall back asleep. At one point, he heard the doorbell ring. He spent the next half-hour in grim await.

Then there was a knock on his door. "Kyle? Are you awake?" Dr. Barryte asked.

He rolled over and saw their old family doctor, feeling ashamed to be seen in this sorry state, still in his pajamas and everything. "Hello," he mumbled, forcing himself to sit upright.

Dr. Barryte pulled the desk chair over to the bed. "I'm glad you came home, Kyle," he said after sitting down. "I heard you haven't been doing well since, though."

"I'm not sick," Kyle contended. "I don't know what she told you, but I don't feel ill – I truly don't. I just –"

Dr. Barryte looked at him.

"I'm just having a hard time getting readjusted, I suppose," Kyle said.

"I heard you were all over the country working in the wheat fields," Dr. Barryte said. "Did you enjoy it?"

"Yes."

"It must be strange being home again."

"That's one to put it."

"Are you looking forward to starting college?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess."

"Alright," Dr. Barryte said. "Let's take a look, shall we?" He stood up and turned away.

Kyle got undressed, hating this, hating it always.

"So what have you been up to lately?" Dr. Barryte asked him while he was examining him.

"Uh, not much."

Afterward, Dr. Barryte asked him, "Have you ever developed a drug habit? Or an alcohol problem?"

"No. Why?"

"I believe you're suffering from a bout of periodic melancholia, most likely brought on by coming home," he said. "Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but one of the most useful drugs for treating melancholia is cocaine. I know, I know: the drug has garnered a terrible reputation as of late. But when administered appropriately, its usefulness is indisputable. I've cured two patients of melancholia using a very low dose of cocaine, and none of them went on to develop a habit." He went on: "I'm going to have you take a fourth of a grain every day for seven days. If you aren't sane again after a week, give me a call and I can write you another few days' worth, but that'll be it."

"Alright," Kyle said, shocked that their trusted doctor of eighteen years was prescribing him cocaine but hardly opposed to it.

Dr. Barryte handed him the prescription. "You can either mix the powder in a drink or get a rubber tube from the druggist and sniff it."

"Okay, great," Kyle said.

"You'll feel better soon," Dr. Barryte said with a smile.

Not long after the doctor had gone downstairs, Kyle heard his mother's booming "What, what, what?!" reverberate through the house. He got out of bed and crept down to the second floor to eavesdrop – this was going to be hilarious.

Dr. Barryte was speaking: "I know what you've read in the newspapers and magazines, and I know you've heard everything Hull House has to say. But I urge you not to be so swayed by sensationalism that you forget the drug has actual medical use."

"And what if he ends up developing the habit?" his mother asked, angry.

"Relax," Dr. Barryte said calmly. "He's not going to develop the habit. First of all, I'm prescribing him a very small amount. Second, your son is an intelligent young man with a strong nervous system and no propensity towards vice – he's the perfect candidate for this treatment. It should completely cure him of his melancholy."

"Isn't there anything else you could give him?"

"I think opium would do him more harm than good."

"Oh, God," his mother moaned.

"Listen, I would not in good conscious prescribe him cocaine if I didn't believe it would cure him, or if I thought he would develop the habit," Dr. Barryte said, probably losing his patience. "Please, Sheila, forget the newspaper stories for a minute and consider what's best for your son."

"I always consider what's best him."

"I know you do," Dr. Barryte said more kindly. "You're a good mother, that's why."

Then Dr. Barryte said goodbye, and Kyle quickly crept back to his room.

His mother came up shortly thereafter, looking deliciously bitter. "Where's that prescription?" she said, proceeding to snatch it off the nightstand the moment she saw it. Her eyes bugged out as they darted across the paper, and Kyle struggled to stifle his laughter. It was beautiful how this had all backfired on her, just beautiful.

She suddenly looked at him, sporting an impressive frown. Then she left.

"Hey! Where're you going with that!?" Kyle called out.

She halted in the doorway and looked over her shoulder at him. Then in a strange, even tone, she said, "I'll go to the drug store after I do something. Stay in your room."

"What? Why?"

"Because I have to make a phone call, dammit, Kyle!" she retorted with such suddenness that it legitimately frightened him. But before he could respond, she had marched downstairs.

Jeez Louise, somebody was a nut.

He didn't bother going down to eavesdrop. She was probably calling his father, who would likely respond in a similar fashion. All Kyle knew was that they better not stand in the way of his legitimate medical treatment. He was actually eager to try cocaine again, despite what had happened last time. He had probably just taken too much. But now he was taking it under a doctor's supervision, so nothing could go wrong. It might even help with his so called "melancholy," which was in reality a broken heart: a tragic condition, to be sure, but hardly a psychopathology.

Now he was getting hungry, but he didn't go downstairs lest his mother go nuts on him. He debated taking a bath, since he hadn't washed his hair in a while, but he was tired, so he just went back to bed.

Later, his mother stomped into his room. "Here. Take this." She was standing next to his bed holding a glass of water in one hand and a little white box in the other.

"What's that?"

"Your medicine," she said, tight-lipped.

"That can't be seven doses."

"It's one dose," she said. "I'll give you the next one tomorrow."

He looked at her. "So you're going to hide it from me? Wow. Wow. And somehow you were surprised I ran away."

In a tight staccato, she said, "Are you going to take it or not?"

He looked at the glass of water. "Didn't you get a rubber tube?"

"You're not doing that."

"What? Why not? He said I could!"

"I don't care," she said. "You're not doing that."

"Why not?!"

"Because that's what coke fiends do," she practically growled.

Then he remembered something. "Fine. Put it on the nightstand," he told her, gesturing with his hand.

"No. Take it now." She shoved the box and glass of water in his face.

"Just leave it on the nightstand!" he shouted. "Stop trying to control every little thing I do! I'm eighteen years old, for God's sake!"

She clenched her jaw and put the box and glass down on the nightstand, causing some of the water to splash over the rim. Then she stomped back out, closing the door forcibly behind her, but not so hard that it slammed.

Honestly, what a nut.

He was just grateful she left, even more so that she hadn't mixed the cocaine in with the water. That was very lucky. Maybe she thought he was supposed to eat it and wash it down with water. Ha, ha! What an idiot. He got out of bed and retrieved his wallet, taking out a one dollar bill and carefully rolling it up.

This was going to be great.

He went over to his nightstand and opened the little white box, his enthusiasm instantly dampening. What the hell? There was hardly anything in here! This wasn't fair! Yes, Dr. Barryte had said "a low dose," but this was practically nothing!

Still, it smelled wonderful: clean, fresh, vibrant, like perfume or cleaning solvent, like Texas, like freedom.

So he stuck the end of the dollar bill in his nostril and sniffed it all up.

Then the box was empty. Disappointed, he sat down on his bed, desperately wishing for more, which was probably a bad sign. While he knew this small amount was therapeutically appropriate, it nevertheless seemed very cruel, like receiving a little crumb of cake and being expected to be satisfied with it.

But maybe that was how coke fiends thought. Maybe he just needed to have some patience this time.

So he lay back on the bed, his feet on the floor, and waited. Soon enough, his blood started pumping a little faster, and everything began to seem pretty damn good. It wasn't quite the Mount Olympus-level ecstasy of the first time, but it was still good, very good, as if a dollop of sunshine had been plopped into his skull, glee soaking him all the way down to his toes. He was very awake now and no longer hungry.

He was also increasingly hard.

Panting a little, he scrambled over to lock his door and then shut the curtains, too, suddenly very excited. Then he got the little key from inside the book cover of his dictionary and opened his desk compartment where he kept his collection of menswear advertisements.

God, it was all so good: men touching each other (an arm on the back!); men in bathing suits (his legs!); men in their underwear (the outline of his dick!). But the very best, the really good stuff, was kept at the bottom of the pile: the sock advertisements. And the best of those, the absolute cream of the crop, was a lucky find from the Saturday Evening Post two years ago: an Interwoven sock ad with a guy in his underwear. The man was in a locker room, his foot up on a bench as he leaned over to run his fingers over the black fabric of the sock. And the garters on his calves, oh my God, those garters!

His mouth dry, he took the ad and scurried over to his bed. Then he pulled down his pajama pants and grabbed his cock with his right hand, using his left to hold the magazine ad.

Oh, those garters!

The guy in the ad would look up at him and smirk, and then he'd come over to Kyle and ask him, huskily, if he'd been watching him, but Kyle would be speechless, and so the man would slide his hand between Kyle's legs and say, "I thought so," and then the man would unzip Kyle's pants and start touching him while he kissed his neck and licked his jaw, and Kyle would moan and moan and moan, and the man would chastise him saying someone might hear, so he'd try really, really hard to be quiet, even though, oh my God, it was so much, so good, oh, and then – oh my God! – the man was fucking him, right there on that locker room bench, and his dick was so huge, going in and out of him so fast, and the man was grunting and huffing, and it was so intense, so erotic, so delicious, and Kyle never ever wanted it to end; he wanted to be fucked like this forever and ever —

He came, long and hard, his brain flooding with liquid Nirvana.

He lay there for a while afterwards, breathing hard, the ejaculate cooling on his hand. Then he looked at the sock advertisement with the usual slight disgust, this time overlaid with the awareness that he had known something true and real and not fetichistic. Ah, well, what could you do? Stan was a rotten tramp bastard, but Interwoven sock man would never leave him.

Still feeling quite good, he got cleaned up and went downstairs. His mother was sitting at the kitchen table, absorbed in the papers spread out before her.

"Oh, there you are," she said. Then, with suspicion, she asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Very well, thank you. And yourself? I came down to get something to drink."

"Not something to eat?"

"I'm not hungry," he said, to which she did not respond. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and then sat down at the kitchen table.

"What are you doing?" he asked her. "What's all this?"

"These are the recipes for the Anshe Emet cookbook. I'm trying to figure out whether I should sort them by type of food or by meal," she said. "The problem is we got six beef recipes but only one dessert recipe, and I don't want the sections to be uneven…"

"That's wonderful, Mother. Did you know that I'm changing my continuation group to physiology? Did I tell you that? Well, anyway, the reason I made it physiology is because I'm planning to earn my degree in psychology! Psychology is the study of the science of the mind. Some people wrongly believe it's a brand new field, but that's not true at all; it actually diverged from philosophy about, ooh, forty years ago? Even the Ancient Greeks were studying psychology! It's still a very up and coming field, though, by which I mean there's lots of intellectual enthusiasm going on, lots of fascinating research being done, lots of theories being made. Much of it's coming out of Germany, so I'm going to make German my modern language selection – that's what the description for this one Senior College psychology course says, that you should be able to read German. Isn't that great, Mother? Isn't it great that I can incorporate my field of study with my heritage?"

His mother pepped up: "Oh! That makes me so happy to hear! I could help you practice, too! I never thought I'd come to miss it so much. You know I used to have dreams in German when I was younger?"

"I suppose that's a sign of fluency," he commented. "But speaking of dreams! Have you heard of Sigmund Freud? He's responsible for developing psychoanalysis, which is about unearthing a person's unconsciousness and deciphering dreams, that sort of thing. The trouble is his work is all in German! Well, some of it's been translated into English, but not all of it, and that takes a while anyway, so I have to learn German. Maybe one day I could work at the laboratory in Leipzig! I could be a brilliant bilingual psychologist, publishing things in both English and German, that way everyone could understand exactly what I mean! Oh my God! I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner!"

"That sounds like a good idea," she said, then asked, "What would you study as a psychologist?"

Sex, insanity. "Oh, all sorts of things! The great thing about psychology is that it's science; it's about finding the truth behind people's thoughts and behavior and picking apart the complicated machinery of the human mind. To be frank, though, I'm no expert in it – they didn't have psychology at Everly, which is such a shame; it really ought to be required high school curriculum, if you ask me. So, anyway, I've only read two rather niche books on topic – there just aren't that many good ones at the regular library, let alone anything recent, which is why I was going to go to the university library, but you know how the past few weeks have been. It's just, you know, hard for me, being back here, and I've been worried about my friend, too. For all I know, he could be dead now, drawn-and-quartered by Mexicans."

"Oh. So you've been worried about your friend?"

"You would be too if your friend ran off to Mexico!" he shot back, maybe excessively.

"Yes, I suppose I would be," she said. "What's your friend's name, anyway?"

"Uhh. Swarm."

"What?"

"That's not his real name, obviously. Everyone on the road has a nickname, Mother. It's like being part of a secret club; you don't go around broadcasting people's real names."

"So do you have a nickname?"

"Yes! Handle. Because I have such a great handle on things."

"So there's a reason behind these nicknames?"

"Yes, usually."

"Then what's 'Swarm' for?"

"Oh." Somehow, he had never considered this. With some humiliation, he admitted, "I'm not sure. Maybe it's because it's a bit like his first name."

"What's his first name?"

"I can't tell you!"

"Why not?"

"Because it's a secret!" he hissed.

"Oh, right," she said. "So what did you say he went to Mexico for again?"

"To work in the gold mines. Mexican gold is very valuable, you know. It was used to build the Aztec empire. That's what they called the capital, 'the city of gold.'"

"Wasn't that a long time ago though?"

Scoffing, he said, "Well, yes, but if you read the paper, you'd know that a bunch of ancient gold mines were recently discovered in the Texcoco Mountains!"

"I read the paper every day, Kyle," she said flatly. "That's why I know how dangerous it is down there. It's no game of cowboys and Indians – it's radicals killing people left and right. I just hope you understand that."

"I know that!" he retorted, offended. "I told you I told him not to go!"

"Okay, good."

That was when Kyle realized he was starting to come down. "You know, Mother," he began, staring into the half-empty glass of juice, "I think it would be a good idea for you to start thinking of me as an adult. I'm eighteen now, and this business of hiding my medicine is very patronizing."

She looked at him with a drab expression. "You're not an adult."

"I am according to Jewish law."

Sarcastically, she asked, "Oh, do you care about that?"

He glowered at her. "This is going to deter my psychological development."

"I doubt it."

"How would you know? You're not a psychologist."

She laughed and said, "Neither are you."

"I know more about it than you."

"Two books' worth," she said in an infuriatingly snotty voice.

Darkly, he said, "I told you I have to go to the library."

"So why don't you do that?"

"Because I've been… busy."

"Oh, okay."

Grrr. "I would appreciate having access to my medicine, Mother," he said sternly.

"I'm not giving you that cocaine."

"Why not!?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"You know why."

"I can't for the life of me understand why a well-adjusted mother would horde her son's medicine."

"Then you can ask your father for an explanation when he comes home," she said. "I'm busy right now. Leave me alone." She went back to the recipes.

He thought about accidentally spilling his orange juice on the table but decided against it. Instead, he spat out, "Fine," and then stomped out of the kitchen.

He had to get ahold of that cocaine somehow, he thought, lying in bed again and wishing he were dead. While this wasn't as catastrophic as the first time, it was significantly worse than his usual misery: he felt gray, tired, and bored: a dull and steady gloom like an overcast sky. Last time, he had had Stan to take care of him afterward. It made him cringe remembering that Stan had given him a sponge bath, and then it made him fume realizing that Stan had probably construed that event as his having been right all along. Kyle remembered all his bitching about it: "Coke is bad, wah, wah," "Don't do cocaine, Kyle, wah, wah, wah." God, go join the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, Swarm.

Oh, shit, that's right – he told his mother about Stan! Shit! That was really fucking stupid! And oh, shit! He told her about psychology, too! Oh, God, why the fuck did he do that!? She was going to tell his father, and his father would be all, "Kyle, what's this I hear about you wanting to study psychology? Don't you think you should study something more practical?" Ughhhh! Why had he said all that stupid shit!? Damn it, damn it, damn it! Fuck, he was so fucking stupid!

New rule: don't talk to parents while high on coke.

Maybe he fell asleep at some point; he didn't know; he just knew that his parents were now in his room and it was awful and they needed to leave.

"It's time to eat," his father said.

He buried his face in the pillow and said, "I'll come down later."

"You haven't eaten anything all day," his mother said.

He groaned loudly. "Leave me alone! I'll eat later!"

His father said, "So you were all peppy for a half hour this afternoon and now you can't even get out of bed to eat dinner?"

"It takes a while to work, okay," he said. "Stop giving me such a hard time about it and call Dr. Barryte if you're so concerned."

"You have to eat something," his mother said. "I'll even bring you up a plate of food if you promise me you'll eat it."

"Alright, fine."

"Sheila –"

She ignored him. They both left, and then his mother brought him a tray of with a bowl of stew, which he did eat, feeling pathetic about it.

He was pathetic, wasn't he? Wasting away in his bedroom, crying over his "friend," masturbating to socks, doing coke again.

He couldn't even remember the last time he washed his hair.

As usual, Kyle struggled throughout the week, now with the added burden of resisting a growing stash of cocaine. He knew it would be a terrible idea to do so much coke at once, but it was also a great idea: this way, he could get the most out of it, rather than tolerating seven days' worth of mediocre ups and downs. Nothing about that seemed therapeutic, anyway, which meant that his mother had probably been right, as excruciating as that was to admit. It was important to note, however, that she was right for the wrong reason: moral outrage à la Ladies' Home Journal. Kyle's reasoning, on the other hand, was based in actual experience with the drug: he knew how coke worked and how it made you want to keep doing more of it. He also knew how great it made you feel – happier than you could ever hope to feel naturally.

For now, he continued to be miserable. His mother was skeptical and antsy, occasionally saying things like, "It's not even working!" and "Maybe we should get a second opinion," and the usual "Why don't we go (select one: shopping downtown, on a walk, to see Henry IV at the Blackstone Theatre)?" While he could've pretended to be happy and energetic, at least to get her off his back, it would've required a tremendous amount of effort he just didn't care to expend. So instead, he would respond with things like, "No, it's working a little bit" and "Would you just relax?" and the usual "Leave me alone!"

Currently, he was in the tub for the second time today, having gone back to bathing as a way to kill time. Resting his head on the rim of the tub, he thought back to that bathroom in New Orleans, where Stan had first kissed him. It hurt so much, remembering how beautiful and perfect the summer had been. How could it all be over? How could it have been so fleeting? Life was cruel; living was agony. He was going to die without love, without Stan, not that Stan loved him anyway. It didn't matter what Socrates said about love's inevitable rebirth; Kyle didn't want love if it wasn't with Stan.

He was never going to recover from this, and he would hate himself for it if he did, because this was not something a person should recover from. This was the ultimate pain: sharing wisdom with someone only to have it ripped away from you, and then being a fucking invert to boot, because that always made things easier.

God, he could kill him! Where the hell was he? And what the hell was he doing? If he was getting sloshed at some West Madison Street saloon right now…

Hmm…

Later, his mother came up to his room and said in a friendly tone, "Why don't you come to temple with us tonight?"

"No thanks."

"I think it would be good for you to get out of the house a little bit."

"If I leave the house, it's not going to be to go to temple."

"I don't know if there's anything that would get you to leave the house!"

He groaned and said, "Fine, we can go shopping next week."

This worked instantly: she pressed her hands together and said, "How about Monday?"

"Fine."

Little did she know he was leaving the house tonight.

Leaving a note was like déjà vu, especially since it included a lie again: "Gone to university library. Be back by midnight, probably sooner."

Even though the sun had set, it was surprisingly warm out, maybe fifty degrees, so he went back inside and exchanged his overcoat for a jacket. Then he walked over to Halsted to catch the No. 8. During the forty-five minute trolley ride, he tried to come up with a plan. He was definitely going to ask around this time. Maybe he could also inquire at the front desk at some lodging houses. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

He got off at Madison and walked two blocks down the street, into the very heart of hobo-land. On this warm December evening, the main stem was as booming as ever: hobos were everywhere, their voices ricocheting through the air; the buildings – saloons, lodging houses, shops – vibrating with activity; the possibility of hobohemia crackling with abandon.

The entranceway of a closed employment agency looked like the perfect place to do it. He went over and huddled up in the entranceway's corner, his back to the street. Quickly and carefully, he took the white box and pre-rolled dollar bill out of his pocket, tightened the bill, then shoved it in his nostril and meticulously snorted the white powder. Then, he shoved everything back into his pocket and flipped around, checking to be sure nobody saw him.

Well, that took care of that! Now the real mission could begin.

He went into the saloon next door and walked up to a couple hobos sitting at a table. "Have any of you seen a hobo with an eye patch around here?"

All three of them just stared at him, so he said, "Well have you?"

"And who're you?" the man in the hat asked, eyeing him up and down. "Some kinda rookie fly dick?"

"What?"

"A cop. You a cop?"

Kyle was flabbergasted. "I'm not a cop! I'm just trying to find my friend!"

"Yeah, sure, and I'm the President of the United States," another said, which made them all burst out laughing.

"I'm telling the truth! I caught out with him this summer!" Kyle protested.

The man in the hat said, "Don't be thinkin' you can walk around here askin' questions. No 'bo worth his salt would sell out one of his own, and you'd know that if you really caught out with this friend of yours."

"Well I guess I forgot about that!" Kyle said with a huff before storming out of the saloon, horribly embarrassed. Fuck those guys! Didn't anybody ever teach them not to judge a book by its cover?

Regardless, he took off his jacket and carried it, hoping that would help. He also undid some of his shirt buttons (he was sweating anyway). Maybe he should've thought this through a little better, but no worries! When at first you don't succeed, try, try again! And try again he would!

Then as he was walking down the street, something very lucky happened: he saw someone he recognized! He was standing outside an inn, smoking a cigarette. It was the boy he left Pittsburgh with!

Kyle crossed the street and called out to him: "Hey!"

This startled the boy so much he nearly dropped his cigarette. "Jesus," he said. Then he looked at Kyle and said, "Oh, hey. The kid from Pittsburgh."

"Yeah! It's me!" Kyle said, absolutely delighted. "I'm so glad I ran into you!"

The boy looked at him. "Um… Why?"

"Because I know you, so I can ask you if you've seen my friend without you accusing me of being a cop. Because I'm not a cop. I mean, look at me, do I look like a cop to you?"

Peering at him, the boy asked, "Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm great! I just sniffed some coke, after all. How about you?"

"Fine," the boy said. "So did you need something from me or what?"

"Oh, right! Thanks! I almost forgot!" Kyle said, laughing. "I wanted to ask you if you've seen a guy around here with an eye patch. He's about my age, with hair a lot like yours, actually – same color, even – and he's got the most handsome face. He goes by the name Swarm."

"Come to think of it," the boy said, "I have seen a guy like that around."

"You have?" Kyle said, inching closer. "Oh my God, I knew it! I knew it! Ha, ha, ha!" Then he asked, "Where did you see him? And when? And where's he staying? Do you know?"

"I didn't see him anywhere particular. Just around," the boy said. "I haven't seen him in a while."

"Oh," Kyle said, deflating. "But you're sure it was him? And what's 'a while'? Days, weeks, months?"

"Oh, I don't know. Three weeks, maybe a month?"

"And you're sure it was him?" Kyle repeated.

"Well, yeah," the boy said, "unless there's another guy like that around here."

Kyle moved his hand over his chin. "Do you think if I went in and asked at any of these lodging houses, they'd tell me if he was staying there?"

"I dunno," the boy said. "Maybe."

Kyle sighed hugely and looked at the lodging house before them. "Did you see him around a lot?"

"A couple times," he said. "Maybe four or five times."

"But you haven't seen him in three or four weeks, you said?"

"Nope," the boy said. "What's this guy to you, anyway?"

"He's my friend."

"Well, as I understand it," the boy said with an air of certainty, "friendships on the road are ephemeral."

"He's more than a friend," Kyle retorted.

"Oh?"

Uh oh! Quick, think of something! "Well you were catching out with that older colored man!"

The boy jerked back. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'm just saying," Kyle began, but then he realized he had no idea what he was saying. "How old are you, anyway? You look like you're thirteen."

"I'm twenty," the boy spat.

"What! No you're not."

"You wanna see my birth certificate?"

"Yeah!"

"Well too bad," he said. "Now get out of my sight, you coke fiend."

"Okay, first of all, I'm not a coke fiend – I have a doctor's prescription for this. Second of all, I don't understand why you're so mad? Look, I'm sorry if I said something that made you mad. Please don't be mad. I'm just trying to find my friend. I really need to find him."

Not very nicely, the boy said, "Well I told you I haven't seen him lately."

"Okay, but if you do see him, will you let me know?"

The boy snorted and said, "How?"

"Give me a call? Please? You're my only hope," Kyle pleaded. "Here, I'll give you some money." He attempted to dig a dime out from his wallet without taking it out of his pocket.

"I don't need your money," the boy said. "Maybe I'll give you a call if I see him. Maybe."

"Would you? Oh, God, I'd be so grateful – you have no idea. My phone number is Lake View 3679. Can you remember that? Do you have a pen and paper?"

"No. I don't." Then the boy groaned and rolled his eyes. "What did you say it was? Lake View 3369?"

"No, no, 3679," Kyle corrected him, emphasizing the seven. "You can remember it because the first two digits add up to the last one."

"Okay."

"Just say you want to speak to Kyle."

"Alright."

Then Kyle asked, "What's your name, by the way, just so I know? Or your nickname, I mean – you don't have to tell me your real name, of course, even though Kyle is my real name, not my nickname – that would be Handle, because I have such a great handle on things!"

The boy raised an eyebrow and said, "Berg."

"What, like a town?"

"No, like the name."

"Oh, right, right," Kyle said. "Of course."

Just then, the Negro man from before showed up. (So much for ephemerality!) "Hey, it's that kid from Pittsburgh," he said.

Berg suddenly stood up straight. "Hi," he said to the man, his voice shifting almost awkwardly.

"Yep, it's me," Kyle said. "I was just asking Berg here if he'd seen my friend."

"And has he?" the Negro man asked.

"I'll tell you about it later," Berg said, taking the Negro man's arm. "Let's get outta here."

"Uh, okay," the man said. And then they left.

Kyle thought it was very rude of them to just leave him here. They didn't even say goodbye, which sort of hurt his feelings, to be honest. He looked up and down the street, becoming even more depressed when he saw just how filthy it was around here: the street was littered with discarded cans, paper, and glass; the corner infested with peddlers; the whole place seething with vice. It was bad.

Was Stan still here? Kyle wondered if it was sheer happenstance that Berg hadn't seen him lately, or if Stan had actually left and gone elsewhere. If the latter were true, it would mean that Stan wanted to get as far away from Kyle as possible.

Gloom firmly settled in. But then the drug store on the corner offered a tiny ray of hope.

"I need Birney's Catarrh Cure," Kyle told the druggist, not caring that this was basically an admission.

He paid a quarter for the catarrh cure and left, relieved by how easy that was. Then he crossed the street to another closed employment agency and, hiding inside its entranceway, took the bottle and tube out of the box. After stashing the tube in his pocket, he threw the box away, got his dollar bill out, and awkwardly rolled it up while still holding the little blue bottle. Then he uncorked the bottle and sucked its contents up his nose. However, this proved unfeasible once the powder was half gone, since the dollar bill wasn't long enough. Angling the bottle worked somewhat, at first, but then there was still some powder at the bottom that he couldn't reach. Getting anxious now, he got the tube back out and stuck one end in his nose and the other in the bottle. Then he inhaled the remaining powder as forcefully as possible. While this wasn't how you were supposed to do it, it worked perfectly.

This was representative, wasn't it? Sitting around the main stem, having just publicly snorted catarrh powder, feeling like death: this was what his life was now: trash. And he was trash, too. He thought about drowning in Bubbly Creek and archaeologists finding his greasy, calcified mummy a thousand years from now. "Human male, 18-22 years old, preserved in various animal fats," his museum placard would read. People would come and go all day, gawking at his nasty, boogery corpse, as if he were some kind of sideshow exhibit, which wasn't entirely false.

It seemed like it was taking a long time for this catarrh cure to work. He picked the box up off the ground and looked at the ingredients: magnesia, menthol, peppermint leaves… but no cocaine? What? Was it just not written on the box, or did it really not have any? No, no, there had to be coke in here – everybody knew Birney's Catarrh Cure had cocaine in it.

But it definitely wasn't working. God, did those fucking Hull House crusaders get to catarrh cures, too? He bet they did. Damn them. Why couldn't they just knock it off and let people have their fun? Fucking Hull House.

This was it, this was the end, this was hell. The future scientists would study his corpse and find out he was an invert, and then they'd put that on the placard, too, and then everybody would know, and Jesus, he had just told that Berg asshole that Stan was handsome, on top of all that other stupid bullshit. God, he was such an idiot, such a fucking idiot.

All he wanted to do now was go home.

His mother pounced on him before he was halfway through the door: "Why didn't you tell me you were going to the library?"

"What? Oh. Because I only remembered about this event there after you left." He moved past her, heading to the kitchen.

She followed him, of course. "I don't think it's too much to ask of you to tell me your plans."

"I told you I forgot about this thing until after you left. And I left a note, so don't act like I just disappeared," he said as he got himself a glass, never in the mood for this shit, let alone when he was coming down from cocaine.

"Don't be so forgetful then," she said, then added, "Wait a minute – we talked about you getting out of the house right before I left! How did that not spark your memory?"

He stared her down as he drank the full glass of water, which gave him the opportunity to come up with something good: "Do you remember how you forgot to pack underwear that time we went to New York, and you had to buy all new underwear? And how neither of us were mean to you about it?"

"That's different!" she shot back, hopefully embarrassed.

"It's really not. People forget things," he said coolly. "Please, just give me a break. I'm exhausted."

She crossed her arms over her chest and said, "Just remember next time."

While refilling the glass, he rolled his eyes. "Fine."

Maybe when he was thirty she'd lay off him.

Probably not.

College, way up in January, was what dragged Kyle through the rest of December. He went shopping, twice, for new school clothes; he bought pens and pencils and notebooks. He brushed up on his physiology; he sent away for a copy of Principles of Psychology. He figured out his new class schedule; he imagined himself as a sleek upperclassman en route to History of German Psychology. These things gave him little touches of happiness, or perhaps not so much happiness as the capacity to tolerate existence, to swallow another day without hearing from Berg, let alone Stan. And while Kyle's blood was still black with misery, pumping through his very broken heart, he was, in fact, relieved to be being dragged from this hole, this place where he had spent autumn in summer, where the present was the past. Now, the days and months ahead were uncovered, scrubbed of oblivion, and he was able to see himself in them, trudging from Sunday to Saturday and then Sunday again. These days would be laden with unfamiliarity, passed in red-roofed buildings he'd never gone inside and with people he'd never met, but the reason for which they were divided was of utmost familiarity: the pursuit of knowledge. As of right now, he considered himself very knowledgeable, far more so than other boys his age (Gregory had been a rare competitor), and he was only going to become more knowledgeable at college. Furthermore, he was very pleased to be pursuing a psychology degree, and while it was disappointing that he couldn't take Introductory Psychology until he had completed nine majors, he was at least paving the way by taking German this quarter. Plus, this also meant he had more time to learn about psychology on his own. He might even be able to get access to the departmental psychology books.

His mother was, of course, extremely pleased to see him doing all this stuff. "That cocaine really worked!" he would tell her, and her face would instantly fall, which was extremely funny. For once, though, it was more or less peaceful at home, and even though his mother kept bugging him to go to temple, there hadn't been any big fights in a while, just the occasional spat over something little and stupid. Kyle felt calmer, and he bid adieu to 1913 with even resignation.

Now, at 5:30 a.m. on January 2nd, 1914, he looked at himself in his full-length mirror. For the first day of school, he was wearing all new clothes: a brown Kuppenheimer sack coat with matching trousers, a warm shade that his mother said looked lovely on him; a lighter, sand-colored waistcoat; gloves to match the waistcoat; a dress shirt, the collar stiff and prim; a navy blue necktie with thin white horizontal stripes; brown spat shoes; navy Interwoven socks; and under everything, new underwear. His hair – a frequent source of disdain – was as suitable as possible, short enough to be neat, but long enough that he didn't look like… well, like someone who wasn't him, that was for sure.

He went downstairs and fixed his own breakfast. It took him a while to locate the capers, but he finally found them hidden in the back of the icebox. As he ate, he heard his father walking around upstairs, getting ready for work. Once he was done eating, he went upstairs and bumped into him in the hallway.

"Oh, you're up already?" his father said.

"I've been up since five," Kyle replied. "I had trouble sleeping."

"Nervous?"

"I guess."

"You'll be fine," his father said, giving him a pat on the shoulder.

Kyle checked his briefcase one more time to make sure he had everything, and then he left for school. The sun had yet to rise, and it was very cold out. He walked to Diversey Station and waited for the Evanston-Jackson Park express, extremely glad that the El had recently been through-routed, meaning he could ride all the way to campus without having to get off and transfer in the Loop. His train soon arrived, and he boarded and paid, then sat down and looked out the window, his eyes gliding over the building tops as the train clicked over the tracks.

He wondered if he would make friends at college. He hoped to, sort of, yet at the same time, he had a very difficult time imagining himself being friends with a fellow student. Somehow, the idea of it seemed stupid, almost cheap. It hurt a lot when he remembered how meaningful everything had felt with Stan. When they entered the Loop, he looked down West Madison Street and felt numb.

He couldn't think about Stan now.

The sun was just rising when he got off at University Station. From here, it was a twenty minute walk to campus. He walked fast to stay warm, the wind whipping his face. Up ahead, beyond the bare trees, the castle-like buildings of the university spread out massively, and while he felt special and mature to finally be a student here, he also sort of wished this really were Oxford. He pretended it was as he walked down South Ellis Avenue.

His main concern this morning was matriculating and getting registered for classes before 8:15, when his German class started. He was now in the office of the Dean of Junior College, and it seemed to be taking forever. It was upsetting that all this had to be done on the first day of school – he hated that he was missing his first German class! To make matters worse, when he gave the secretary his list of classes, he was told that five majors was way too many courses to be taking – even just four required a sign-off from the university Medical Examiner. Kyle was upset about this, because he had planned to take Physiology 3 next quarter. But maybe five courses really was too much, so he crossed out Physiology 2, then told the secretary he would indeed get permission from the M.E. to take four majors, since that wasn't very much at all, especially considering one was a Physical Culture course. The last thing they gave him at the Dean's office was an emerald green academic cap.

"All freshman wear a green cap," the secretary told him, "that way, you can identify your fellow classmates."

"At special events, right?" Kyle asked to confirm.

"Oh, no, you wear it all the time."

"What? Is that a new rule or something?"

"It fosters a sense of belonging among the freshmen," the secretary said.

"Okay, but is it a rule?"

"Well, no, but it's not going to look good if you don't wear it."

Kyle wanted to argue and say it wasn't going to look good even if he did wear it, but instead, he took the thing and muttered, "I see."

He threw it away in the bathroom afterwards.

It was now eight forty-five, and he still wasn't done: now he had to go to the Cashier to pay his fees. As he headed over to the Press Building, he saw a few students wearing those green caps and was disgusted. It was bad enough being the youngest at school, but they expected him to advertise it to everybody? That was just cruel. And green, of all colors! He didn't wear green; he wasn't stupid.

By the time he was done at the Cashier, it was nine-thirty, making him fifteen minutes late for Rhetoric and English Composition, a mandatory class he did not want to be taking. It also had a woman teacher, which was a joke – Kyle didn't understand why they would have a woman teach a men's Junior College course. The University of Chicago was such a product of its environment. So he did not go to that class today. Instead, he went to file his supply and breakage ticket at the laboratory supply store. After that, he got some lunch in the men's dining hall, and then went to his first ever college class: Physiology of Blood, Respiration, Digestion, and Secretion, and Absorption. He felt very nervous as he headed over to the Physiology Building. He arrived fifteen minutes early, and thankfully, the professor was already there, so Kyle was able to explain that he was a new student and show him his matriculation and registration cards before anyone else arrived.

"Did they forget to issue you a green cap at the Dean's office?" Professor Lingle asked.

"Umm. Yes, they must have."

"Well, you'll have to go back to Cobb and get one," Professor Lingle said. "Anyway, welcome to the University of Chicago!"

Kyle liked college. His favorite class was German, and he often put more effort into it than any other class, taking great care to memorize the gender of words. He had his mother check over his homework for mistakes, but she never caught them all, which was upsetting, but admittedly understandable, since she had not studied or even used the language in over twenty years. She was useful for practicing conversation with, however.

His English class was boring but easy, as much as he didn't care for Miss Morgan, who was an old maid. Physiology was also easy, for he had a solid background in the material. His lab partner was a boy named Alexander who had gone to the University High School next door. Alexander was friendly, and Kyle enjoyed talking to him about random little things, but he only interacted with him during class. One time, he saw Alexander walking and laughing with a bunch of other boys, which made him feel ridiculous about himself.

Elementary Fencing Instruction was his last class of the day, beginning at four. He had never done fencing before, and it was as fun as it was refined. The class often went past four thirty, which was fine by Kyle. After fencing, he would go eat dinner in Hutchinson Commons. He always waited until at least six thirty to leave campus, because he didn't like riding a crowded train and getting jammed up in the Loop. On Fridays, he would leave immediately after Physiology and get home just as his parents were heading to temple. Then he would usually take a nap until dinner, though he didn't always fall asleep. It was exhausting, leaving the house at 6:30 a.m. and getting back at 7:30 p.m. Fortunately, at least, he was able to finish all his schoolwork while at school, so he didn't have to do any at home, but by the time he did get home, he was too worn out to do much, anyway.

He was grateful to be busy though – January had passed in a blink of an eye, and only today had he finally gotten around to inquiring about accessing the departmental psychology books.

"Are you in the Senior College?" the girl at the reference desk asked him.

"Uh, no."

She peered at him. "A graduate student?"

"I'm a freshman."

"Well, the Departmental Libraries are really only for advanced students," she told him.

Kyle felt like he'd been slapped. "I thought the point of a university was to encourage learning, not deter it."

She raised her eyebrows at that. "Listen, if you really want to access a Departmental Library as a Junior College student, you can try talking to the Adviser of that library. But I can't promise you he'll say yes."

"Alright. I'll do that."

"So which one did you want to access?"

"Psychology."

"Okay. That's in the Psychology Building, by the way, not here. The Adviser is Professor Angell. His office is in Cobb" – she paused to refer to something – "room 2A4."

"Alright. Thanks," he muttered.

This was complete bullshit – he had paid his tuition, so he should be able to read any book he wanted. Instead, he had to go beg this professor for permission. What was this, jail?

But as he was leaving the library for Cobb Lecture Hall, something occurred to him: if the Psychology Library was in a completely different building, then Sexual Inversion couldn't have been wrongly shelved in the General Collection that time last year. So that meant the book actually was part of the General Collection! He hurried over to the 100s to look for it. What he found was rather confusing: two books by Havelock Ellis: Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Modesty, Sexual Periodicity, and Auto-Erotism and Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sexual Inversion. What was this, a brand new book? Either way, it was about sexual inversion!

So now what? He certainly couldn't check this out under his name. But the library was for borrowing books, right? So did it really matter if you went through the process of checking a book out, so long as you brought it back? And surely nobody would even notice it was missing if he brought it back, say, tomorrow. So, after making sure no one was watching, he slipped the book under his coat and then went to the bathroom to put it in his briefcase. But as he was standing there in the locked stall, he couldn't resist opening it. As it turned out, this was the second edition of Sexual Inversion. He flipped through the pages, his mouth dry. Then, near the very end of the book, his heart stopped when he saw:

APPENDIX A.

HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG TRAMPS.

BY "JOSIAH FLYNT."

Had this been in the first edition? Had he somehow missed it? His fingers trembled as he turned the pages, his heartbeat so loud he could hear it in his head. At first it talked about prushuns and jockers – lambs and wolves – and then it mentioned "leg-work" and immissio penis in anum, which immediately gave him an erection. But then it went on to detail the horrible abuses committed by old hobos against young kids, and then Ellis came in, supplying direct quotations from an English tramp correspondent, who said that ninety to one hundred percent of tramps would engage in homosexuality if the opportunity arose, which was astounding if true. Then there were more depressing things, things Kyle believed but did not want to, and then someone came into the bathroom, which practically gave him a heart attack. Sweating and feeling like he might throw up, he listened to this person peeing, then put the book in his briefcase and left.

He walked outside in a haze. It was so bizarre, reading all that in a book. The jockers had given them a bad name, their predation apparently commonplace. So amongst hobos, it was either homosexual depravity or coincidence. While Kyle knew that he had been an exception, being a true invert who had actually fallen in love with a hobo, he still felt like he'd been exposed, his experiences on the road splayed across the front page of the Chicago Tribune: sharing a bed in a flophouse, engaging in intercrural and anal sex. And here he was now, in the middle of the quad at the University of Chicago, engulfed by these gothic buildings, by lectures and laboratory work, standing centuries away from last summer, from tramp life, from the high price of freedom. To him, a university student, homosexuality amongst tramps should've been an oddity, a sad example of lower class depravity, yet it had in fact been everything, and he was ruined for having known it, damned now to the smart click of his spats down Ellis Hall and praise from Herr Gronow.

On the Tuesday after Valentine's Day, Kyle was coming home after a long day at school. He had stayed up too late last night and was exhausted now, worried he might drift off to the rapid click click click of the train wheels and wake up in Evanston. Yet he somehow managed to hang onto the gray thread of consciousness as he traveled north. At Diversey, he got off and battled the wind up North Sheffield, his nose dripping. And then finally, his house came into view – Ithaca, at last.

"You got a letter – it's on the table there," his mother said from the parlor as he was putting his coat away.

His name and address had been written in pencil, and there was no return address. There were two stamps on the envelope. Who could this be from? Eric? In his room, he used his letter opener to open the envelope and took out the pages of notebook paper:

Dear Kyle,

I've started up so many letters to you that I ended up tossing out that I told myself I was going to send this one no matter what. I don't think things will come out right this time, but they never do.

Anyway I thought maybe there was a chance you went home so that's why I'm sending this letter to your house (I got your address from the directory here.) But if you really did catch out on your own like you said you would then to whoever's reading this, I'm sorry, but I don't know where Kyle is and I haven't seen him since September.

If it is you, Kyle, then I guess I'll start out by saying that I've spent the past few months thinking about last summer and what happened in Pittsburgh and not being able to understand how the best thing that ever happened to me could fall apart so fast. I always tried to do right by you, but I guess you didn't like putting up with some of the things I have to deal with. And that's understandable. But you didn't have to be so mean to me. I was honestly kind of afraid of you then. It was like you hated me. Do you? I tell myself that can't be true but then I think back to that day and I honestly don't know. I guess maybe you were just mad about being in Pittsburgh and decided to take it out on me. I wish you hadn't done that, but I forgive you for it.

I also wish you hadn't left, but I guess these things don't last forever. I just wish it had ended more amicably.

Anyway, yes, I'm in Chicago, staying at the Beacon Hotel (1011 S. State St. Rm. #11.) I got a winter job as an ice-cutter that should last a while longer before I have to find more work. Anyway I hope you will send me a letter (if you want to) because I'd like to hear from you and at least know that you're doing alright. I don't know if you ended up going to college but I hope you did. I think you would do really well at college. You're the smartest person I know so I hope you were able to go.

A lot of things happened since I got back in town and I haven't seen anybody in a while now, but I'm in a pretty good place now being on my own. I've been reading a lot of books (Marx and Lenin) and if I do go to the main stem, it's just to go to the Hobo College.

Mostly I just want to know that you're okay. I'm not asking you for anything else, but I also wouldn't be opposed to meeting up at some point if you wanted to talk about things, so long as you aren't still mad at me.

Sincerely,

S