Boystown 7: Bloodlines by marshall thornton Read Free Book Online Page A

bad idea though. I could however gossip about myself, so I told him about my living arrangement and my un-official, half-assed parenting of Terry Winkler.  
    “I wish I had more experience with teenagers,” he said, then corrected himself, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I wish I knew more about them.”
    “They’re not that difficult, they’re just adults with some parts missing.” I don’t know why I said that; I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with Terry. I wondered why I wanted to impress Joseph with my so-called parenting skills.
    “So, your friend Brian, you’re not boyfriends?”
    “No. We’ve fooled around. I guess he’s kind of a fuck buddy.”
    “Fuck buddy?”
    “Oh, you don’t know that term? Well, it’s a friend—”
    “You don’t have to explain. It’s vividly self-explanatory.”
    I mentally kicked myself. Did I really think a priest wasn’t going to be at least a little bit judgmental about the way guys behaved? Worse than just a priest, too. A virgin priest. His idea of what a relationship with a man should be like was probably something out of a Harlequin romance—but with a sex change for the heroine. Or some queer version of Father Knows Best , co-starring Robert Young and Ozzie Nelson without their bland little wives.  
    Our lunches arrived. I ordered another margarita. Joseph wasn’t even halfway through his. We took a few bites and agreed the food was good. Halfway through I asked, “Do you not have any gay friends?”
    “I do. A couple. We just don’t discuss anything directly.” He made me think of priests sitting around drinking cognac while discussing Oscar Wilde and the joys of male companionship. “They’re not very happy people,” he added, destroying my little picture.
    I made short work of my dinner and pushed my plate away.  
    “I think Brian may have met someone. He brought this guy home last night; he was still there in the morning.”
    “That bothers you?”  
    “Not for me. Brian was with my friend Ross.” I decided to leave out the part where Ross was also a fuck buddy of mine. It was a confusing enough conversation. “Ross moved downstate to be with his family. He’s dying of AIDS.”
    “And he didn’t want to be a burden to Brian?”
    “His parents are bible-thumpers. He thinks God is going to save him.”
    “God will save him. Though probably not the way he’s hoping.”
    “Does God ever give people exactly what they want?”
    “You’re thinking of Santa Claus. God gives us what we need.”
    “I can’t say I believe that.”
    “What do you believe?”
    “Human beings are attracted to patterns. We find them everywhere, even where they don’t exist. We make stories out of them.”
    “Which is the way God made us.”
    “You know, you have the same first name as the man I killed. Is that coincidence or God’s plan?”
    “If God created everything, then God created coincidence. Nothing is outside God’s plan.”
    “So you’re saying that God wrote the rules of nature and then tossed in a healthy dose of coincidence. Why would he do that?”
    “To keep things interesting.”
    My second margarita arrived and I realized I didn’t want it. Something about the idea of coincidence keeping things interesting wasn’t sitting well with me. Coincidence was all well and good when you happened to run into a friend you’d just been thinking about on the street, but illness was also a coincidence, AIDS was a coincidence, and that wasn’t making me especially fond of a God who’d create it.
    “Is something wrong?” Joseph asked.
    “I shouldn’t have ordered a second drink.”
    “Leave it.”
    “It was four bucks.”
    “It’s on me. I’m still getting my salary while I think things over.”
    I was a little embarrassed. Money was fine; I shouldn’t have said anything about the price of the drink. I could afford it. I could afford the whole lunch, and if I’d been a little faster on the uptake would have