Journal Entry - January 3, 1978

This freezing afternoon I walked up Broadway in a thin leather jacket. I steped into Mayer's Art, Fran's place of work. My eyesight was blurry, since I wasn't wearing my glasses and thought she wasn't there, but then I spotted her standing behind the counter with two co-workers. She stepped away from them and said, "Peter, I was thinking yesterday that I might not ever see you again."
"Here I am."
"With a new jacket." She fingered the leather and said, "It doesn't feel that warm."
"It isn't, but my body runs hot. I wanted to see you."
"Without James. He never had anything good to say about me. I thought you were my friend."
"You never acted it always going back to your boyfriend, who you don't answer the door, when he's knocking."
"That's something else. I'm talking about your friend, James, He loves you and hates me, becasuse you never gi e it up for him, even though he lets you live for free in his apartment. I can't stand James or how he looked at you and speak to me. I could have been something to you, but you preferred James' company. Friends don't do that."
"Not anymore. I don't live there. I got an apartment on West 11th Street.

"You did?"

I moved on New Year's Day. You look good." Her long mane was more kempt than before.
"My ass is big." She showed her profile, her hooked nose inspring my penis to hardness.
"You want to go out someplace now?" We hadn't had sex in two days.
"It's too cold for sex outside or even in a hallway. I have to go back to work."
"I could come over tonight?"
"And I'd want you to, but I have to work early tomorrow and, if you stay I'll never get any sleep. All you want from me is sex."
"Same as you from me. Come with me now. I promise to be quick."
"It's never quick with you and I hate the feeling the ghost of you dripping down my thighs, when you've left me."
"It's not the same with your boyfriend."
"He is quick and he lets me sleep, but I don't want him or you. I want to be warm in Arizona ." She leaned forward and murmured, "I'd love to get a tan and lie naked with you in real heat."
"I dream of that day," I said knowing it would never come this winter.
@At 1/5th
Last night at the bar a blonde woman in her thirties said, "Are there any Jews here?"
"Are you a Nazi?"
"No, a neo-fascist," she snapped with hatred and I was surprised by Fran's's silence in the face of such raw anti-Jewishism. She is 100% Brooklyn Jew.
"Death to all fascists, you Nazi cunt."
The barman asked me to leave for her safety. Zach knew my temper. Fran cried underneath the Washington Square Arch adn asked, "Why do people hate us so much?"

I didn't have an answer other than to hold her in my arms and say, "You are always safe with me."

Later at at Serendipity 3, William Lively, my fellow queer busboy at Serendipity 3, bumped into me, as I carrying a stack of plastes and the Carolina queen made fun of my stutter, saying, "You are s-s-stupid carrying glasses like that."
"William, I've ignored you your comments. I know you want me and I won't fuck you, but you call me 'stupid' again, I'll slap the shit out of you."
"Oh, I love the rough stuff."
"Except I'm not playing rough. Understand," I said before the entire kitchen staff, including Michael Dutton. The manager.
"Yes, sir."
As we walked back to the dining room, he said, "Sorry, I don't think you're stupid, but you should know that I was kidding."
"William, I had speech impediments all my life. People always thought I was stupid and treated me the same way. It's not a joke to me."
"Sorry, Pebbles," he said, using my nickname at the ice cream shop.
"All is forgiven." I kissed his cheek.
When I left to go back to my SRO hotel, it was freezing and the air was colder than old steel dripping into my lungs. I recalled someone telling me about ranchers finding cattle frozen to trees by Alien ray guns. It was a myth or the truth, but I was cold and my leather jacket was no help at all.