She wanted them to think he was her lover, but more than that she wanted him as her lover. Even if only once…The Bird was playing. She tilted her heard toward the radio and listened to the hard sounds piling up on each other, yet not touching, waiting to hold Vinnie’s hand, the strange beautiful sounds moving her to a strange romance where love was born of affection, not sex; wanting to share just this, just these three minutes of the Bird with Vinnie, these three minutes out of space and time and just stand together, perhaps their hands touching, not speaking, yet knowing…just stand complete with and for each other not as man and woman or two men, not as friends or lovers, but as two who love…these three minutes together in a world of beauty, a world where there wasn’t even a memory of johns or punks, butch queens or Arthurs, just the now of love…         Page 53. “The Queen is Dead,” Last Exist to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby

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Photo: “Winter’s Hope” by Brush Strokes