Next stop, Christopher St.

Last friday after school I decided on, and had planned earlier that week, that I'd wander into Manhattan with no particular purpose or destination. I couldn't withstand the consecutive hours of school and the lonely minutes after dismissal. Boy after boy I would pick out and watch, and this time my eyes caught a small boy, skinny and short, with an innocent smile and cute brown eyes, curly brown hair like a Roman statue. My love of innocent boys who seem to me like paintings or sculptures come to life, their colors dancing as they move, as they smile and look nervous. A passionate sympathy strikes me, and for that moment I enjoy this chromatic feeling, not thinking of the time the moment's over. Ah, a boy! A boy's temperament is not like that of a man's! It is nervous, tender, soft. I didn't wonder why I myself didn't seem to manifest this color of tenderness. At that moment, I wanted to embrace him. The beauty then leaves my sight, I perambulate through more high school students, then suddenly I'm outside of the building and on my way home.

Its dark, completely black because of winter's early night. I get on the bus to the Staten Island Ferry. Its a long, sightful ride, as I watch a man in work clothes sit at the very front by the door, nervously knowing my eyes on him, glancing a couple times. I don't hide my curiosity or admiration of the way the hair on his head looks to me. I wonder what it feels like, not like that of a boy's I'm sure. Moments after my eyes shift to a young boy no older than 8 years old. I remember what its like to be around strangers at his age. He is bored, restless. Not like me, I was curious. I sat quietly, smiling, and watching the people while I sat not in a car or a bench or a classroom, but in the wonderment of my young world. I feel compassion for the boy as I would for a younger sibling if I'd had one.

The bus ride is over, I arrive at the ferry. As I see how small the crowd of waiting people is, if you could call it a crowd even, I feel pleasant. I watch them with the book from my English drama class in right hand, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. I sit, after circling around looking for someone interesting, finding nothing. There is a large group of high school boys who probably attend a technical school, talking loudly about a boy who only wants to go to college to fuck all the girls, but how his parents wouldn't pay for it. They look to be 17 to 18, seniors. I'd only been 16 since last June, and I'm a junior. I notice a fashionable modern punk, more hipster really, young girl from maybe 20-23, who I'd seen and possibly spoken to briefly in my boring, culturally impaired neighborhood. She's with her...boyfriend? Yes, I think so. They shared a playful closeness. I feel warm, the feeling of others' content happiness influencing me.

I look to my right, standing now, in front of the soon to be opened doors, as the ferry docks. I see a young gay couple, wearing big fur hats, hugging and smiling as they speak. I like this going on around me, the tenderness and playfulness of the couples makes me smile. I feel alive, infinite. Going nowhere, going anywhere. With no one and anyone around me. As I've been so insecure about my short height, 5'6, I watch a very small man pass me by and feel a sense of guilt and amendment with myself realizing the instant relief it had influenced on me. I'm empathetic with him, as he seemed insecure himself. Being small in a big world, as a man at his age, 34 maybe, must have taken some toll on his confidence. The ferry docks. The doors open.

I find a place to sit, by a window in a horizontal row of green and wooden seats, so I can see outside, the lights and bridges though the darkness and the water, and also see the people on the boat I'm riding with at sea. I read a few lines from the character of Blanche DuBois from my book, but cannot resist the wonderful feeling of not being alone in a tiny room. How lonely it has been for me! To have nothing, nothing, in a horrible mess of a room the size of your closet for months. But I smile, thinking, I'm living just outside of the the greatest city in the world. I can wander and wander through it, maybe even be so bold to try entering a gay bar on Christopher St with my young face unshaven, possibly appearing old enough to, which had this day, gotten me mistaken almost for a substitute teacher at school. No, I think, I am much too small to be 21. My face is old! But my body has, most unfortunately, not had major breakthrough, except for the improving results of my weight lifting I'd started in August. Maybe all in good time, but not this night. I get up as the ferry approaches Manhattan's docking station, feeling good and calm, not like the previous times I'd ridden this boat.

I walk quickly but calmly as part of the crowd, watching the people indoors waiting to dock the arrived ferry. I walk down the stairs, out the door, and walk into the subway. The 1 train arrives, waiting for its passengers. I walk into an empty car, sitting there for a couple minutes before a few more people enter. The gay couple in the fur hats from the ferry walk in, and it makes me happy that I'm traveling in the same car as them, because I didn't get a good last look at them, and would maybe have never seen them again. One of them, the smaller, thinner guy, I swear, had glanced at me several times. It makes me remember how I'd always felt like I'd given off a crazy vibe, an alien presence, but I now rationalize it, thinking maybe he's looking at nothing, or if he is starring at me there may be something interesting he sees, perhaps the book I'm holding with half nude Marlon Brando.

I wondered if we'd get off at the same stop. Christopher St. I get up, they don't. I leave the train car, and look at them and some of the others...I walk towards the exit and up the stairs to Sheridan Square. First, I go the wrong way, opposite of the pier, which is where I decided to go. I end up walking around a fenced in baseball field I think I'd passed before going to some gay art event that would make me the only minor there, once again. I walk past Christmas trees lined up on the sidewalk. I end up in a nice neighborhood of apartments. I see lights on, TV's flashing. I walk past two men entering their apartment. I want to follow them, I smile and laugh to myself when I think of something bizarre. I imagine me smashing into their door screaming "HELP!" They open the door and say, "What is it, who are you?" I reply, "...its cold out there, and I'm lonely." Then I hand them my jacket and jump into their bed with my arms outstretched smiling saying "Ya know, this bed looks softer than it really is. Come give me a hug. Go get me a drink, will you? Whiskey. On the rocks."

I think of my other two gay cousins, I like the one who's 30 better than the 19 year old college student; I think he's autistic or something, but the older one, I remember pictures of him when he was14 and I was just born. He looks the same, but hairier. I hope I'm never that hairy! All three of us are really hairy, but he's the hairiest. It reminds me of Teen Wolf with Michael J. Fox - the scene where he's in front of the mirror panicking because of all the hair on his body, that's me. If I'd have been alive in 1985 he woulda had nothin' on me. Even though they'd never get a REAL teenager to play a teenage boy.

After being on the phone with ______, I walk back the other way where I came from, and head towards the pier passing a bondage leather store, a tattoo shop, some food places, and other things I seem not to notice. I do think about my next tattoo, but know I'm not quite prepared for it this night. Not enough money for that. I reach the pier, the only one there other than, oh my what a shock, two men hugging. I wish I was hugging someone, a sweet tender boy who feared danger but craved it, so he can bring out the devil in me and I can rock his little world. After being there a few minutes, I go back to Christopher St and sit by this bar starring up at a building. I like the way it looks inside this particular window. There's a kitchen lit with a simple light fixture, its yellow, the lighting. The walls are white, there's a wooden pantry that looks old. There's some kind of plant by the window. My view is interrupted by two big queeny Hispanic men. One of them cocks his head to side, smiling, and says something to me. Either he hit on me, or said something rude. I couldn't hear him. The guy behind him is smiling, wearing glasses, and holding a cigarette in one of his hands. I laugh playfully with my sly look, but they're gone almost instantly. I wonder how old I appear in this motorcycle jacket, dress shirt, slacks, and my messy curled beard.

As I walk towards the subway, I think I see someone I kind of know. Big bearded Latin fashion queen. I cross the street, in front of the cigar shop by the 1 train. A black tranny passes me to the left, then back to the right with a very flamboyant thin black guy. I feel his gloved hand touch the opening of my jacket, he winks, then goes on his way. I smile, and think its funny that the only people who hit on me are trannies and men over 85 since I was 15. Though, there were a few other subtleties that I wasn't quite savvy of picking up on, mostly because I subconsciously didn't want to. I longed for someone to hold, a boy my age. His eyes would glimmer, they would want me. Need me. He'd be soft, tender, smooth, with absolutely no sign of facial hair. He would hug me affectionately, with his head on my chest.Or a man in his early 30s, who would be short in height with a scruffy but clean beard. He would be handsome and funny, as would I be, and we'd laugh together. I'd want to fuck him, probably watching his ass at the moments he's in front of me, sometimes our warm knees would touch and I'd be filled with passionate desire, but he wouldn't do more than hug me because of my illegal age, but I would see that he'd want to.

I'm on the subway, not paying much attention to anything. I get off at the ferry...After hearing an old black couple "discretely" discuss their anger over a bad drug deal, the ferry arrives. THANKYOU. I get on, feeling the night still. I watch the people as always, and get up when the ferry is approaching Staten Island. A ferry worker is talking to a woman, he is very short in height compared to her, compared to ME. I get off, walk outside where I end up waiting for my bus in the cold, but I don't mind it. I don't wait more than 20 minutes. I get on, the bus ride isn't as long as it is getting there, as always. I stare at my reflection the whole ride, wondering if I could be attractive, and what I'll look like as a man. I don't care because its now that matters. The future doesn't exist, and good looks don't seem to either for me. Sometimes I feel handsome, sometimes I feel like a small, pale, white boy with no sex appeal. I admire tall skinny boys. I think I want to look like those twinkie boys more than I want to touch them sometimes. I get off at my stop in Rossville, by the plaza of stores. I walk around the L shaped plaza, and empty parking lot, to the side road where my parents' house is around a few winding curves. I walk into my parents' house...I'm "home."