Rome City, Indiana, December 1974The boy sat on the bed, reading about fairies.
It was very cold in his aunt's attic room, so he was under the covers. A space heater glowed orange beside the bed. Downstairs, a Christmas party was going on, with his parents and aunts and uncles and friends from town. Most he didn't know.
But they were all paired up into husbands and wives, male-female couples extending in all directions to infinity.
Even Santa Claus had a wife.
The attic door was open, to let some heat up. Downstairs he heard talking and laughter, and a song, "Winter Wonderland."
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he is Parson Brown.
He'll say "Are you married?" We'll say, "No, man,
But you can do the job when you're in town."
Wife, kids, house, job, his destiny. His doom.
Suddenly he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. A dark shape that quickly resolved itself into the form of a young man, probably college age, tall and slim with thick reddish hair and very pale skin. He was wearing a red sweater and jeans. Oddly, he was barefoot. The boy didn't recognize him from the party downstairs.
"Can I come in?"
"You already are in."
"Fair enough." The stranger sat down on the edge of the bed. "I saw you come up here, and wondered if you were ok."
Bogus! Why would a complete stranger come upstairs to check up on him? Why not his mother, or Aunt Nora?
"I'm fine, just tired. And this is my room. Mine and my brother's while we're visiting, so I can be here. Are you friends with Cousin Joe?"
He ignored the question. "What you reading?"
The boy had hidden the book -- his parents disapproved of non-religious books in general, and especially science fiction and fantasy. "Um...science homework."
The stranger reached up and pulled the book from under the covers. "Fairies?" he asked in surprise.
"Not that kind of fairy," the boy said, cutting off the criticism, He wasn't reading fairy tales -- he had always hated Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and their ilk, stupid boy meets girl stories with some flittery things added, shouting that the meaning of life is to be found in feminine smiles. He was reading about fairies, the dark, sinister figures of European myth, like Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream.
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.
"You look pretty solid to me," the boy said.
"Who cares? It got you to smile. Cold up here -- got room for one more, Jackson?" Without waiting for an answer he climbed under the covers next to the boy and put his arm around him. His hard bicep bulged against the boy's shoulder.
The full story, with nude photos and explicit sexual situations, is on Tales of West Hollywood.