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241 Dave King­ Gay-boy friend­ ship, ­ pre-gay: what cu­ ri­ ous mag­ ne­ tism draws us to each other, even be­ fore we’ve ac­ knowl­ edged the sex? Re­ call­ ing the lit­ tle co­ terie that or­ bited my ­ friend D in those years, I think of danc­ ing in our dorm rooms. I think of learn­ ing the lyr­ ics to No, No, Nan­ ette and per­ form­ ing “I Want to Be Happy” im­ promptu on the stair­ case, long after ­ lights out. My God, I re­ mem­ ber a slew of dull win­ ter even­ ings when other boys gath­ ered to hear me read aloud from ­ Auntie Mame and The Wind in the Wil­ lows, no one doing the ob­ vi­ ous math, no one look­ ing too ­ deeply at his own soul. Then we’d re­ turn to the world and be main­ stream again, some of us kiss­ ing or even fuck­ ing a hip­ pie girl­ friend, each of us don­ ning the oddly tail­ ored man­ tle of ­ early-’70s mas­ cu­ lin­ ity. For the world then was one of com­ munes and right­ eous pol­ i­ tics, gui­ tar feed­ back, both types of Deep ­ Throat, War­ ren ­ Beatty, H. R. Halde­ man, and TM. How did a ­ Y-chromosome fit into all that? And how did a ­ Y-chromosome jibe with nos­ tal­ gia fash­ ions and uni­ sex hair—so very neu­ ter­ ing on pu­ bes­ cent boys—or with the sup­ ple sex­ less buzz of the drugs? In a few years we’d be sen­ iors, and when our birth­ days­ rolled past we’d ­ rooster up and reg­ is­ ter for the draft. Al­ ready I’d spent years im­ a­ gin­ ing the war, which I saw as a ghoul­ ishly height­ ened Boy Scout Jam­ boree, set in a rain­ for­ est and cal­ i­ brated to ex­ pose my fail­ ings: Cal­ i­ ban Dave King 242 my cow­ ar­ dice and lack of pa­ tri­ ot­ ism; also my lit­ tle ­ girl’s throw­ ing arm. The wan­ der­ ing eye I still be­ lieved I could keep se­ cret. Per­ haps we all had such wor­ ries, we eight or so ­ blithely ac­ cept­ ing­ friends gath­ ered for win­ ter story hour. In the end, ­ though, it was not Viet­ nam that took out a quar­ ter of our num­ ber; a ­ decade later came the virus. And in the val­ ley of the ­ shadow of child­ hood? No one was yet gay, and friend­ ship was ­ largely a mat­ ter of in­ stinct. Each of us hid him­ self be­ hind ­ screen con­ ceal­ ments; all of us ­ trusted the ­ scrims the oth­ ers put up. My ­ friend D com­ manded a room. Out­ spoken and bois­ ter­ ous, he had a ter­ rific laugh and ­ strong opin­ ions and an air of being fully him­ self, even at four­ teen. And flair—flair!—which came down to a per­ sonal dress code, an iron will, and a cool walk I at­ tempted to em­ u­ late. We­ looked noth­ ing alike, but we had the same first name, and I was a com­ pe­ tent if crude mimic. So is it ­ really any won­ der peo­ ple saw us as one per­ son? I don’t re­ call how we met. He’d en­ tered our prep ­ school the year be­ fore I did, and by the time I ar­ rived he was part of the stew. For a while dur­ ing my first term, we ­ weren’t yet ­ friends, and I wan­ dered the cam­ pus ­ draped in the bleak iden­ tity I’d ­ packed up and ­ brought from home. ­ Really, it was like some dry husk I stum­ bled ­ around in, even as I at­ tended ­ classes or ­ dragged my fat butt to the soc­ cer field, even as I tried out for drama and band. Who knows how this husk ap­ peared from the out­ side, but in­ side stood a boy who’d grown up shy and in­ dif­ fer­ ently nur­ tured, who ­ lacked the imag­ i­ na­ tion to do other than suc­ ceed in­ school, who’d al­ ready mas­ tered the fine art of being for­ get­ table. Whose bland­ ness and do­ cil­ ity must have been con­ vinc­ ing, as they went...

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