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“Are you two runaways?”
I snorted. “Eighteen-year-olds don’t run away. They write themselves new stories,” I said looking off into the distance.
Unlike back in Locust Hollow—I refuse to call it “home”; it was never my home; home is where Jackson is—MJ is interested in us, in learning about us. Instead of repeating rumors or speculating, she asks us questions. She doesn’t treat us like foul curiosities in a shop window.
When we first met, MJ seemed intrigued by the novelty of two guys so openly paired up, by our easy affection, and seemed to hold us in different esteem. But then the novelty wore off and we are just her friends now.
That’s another new thing for us here—friends. There’s Faiz and Sue P and Pauline. Pauline is a big-boned girl, buxom, with a washtub-sized ass; she looks like every cartoon figure of a sexpot you’ve ever seen. She’s a freshman like us, but she’s twenty-one. “I took a gap year that turned into three,” she admits, shrugging charmingly; and Diogenes Alejandro Xenos Sanchez, whose mad romantic mother named him after a character in Harold Robbins’The Adventurers. He goes by DAX like the character in the book and is the only other gay guy Jackson and I have ever met.
“So is your dick head purple?” I asked him when MJ introduced us.
“Ah. You’ve read the book.”
I nodded. “I’ve read practically all of Harold Robbins.”
“What about Jacqueline Susann?” DAX asked.
“Of course. And Kyle Onstott and Lancer Horner—”
“Mandingo. Falconhurst Fancy. Master of Falconhurst—”
“The TattooedRoodwas one of my favorites.”
Jackson looked from one of us to the other, then shrugged. MJ tried not to roll her eyes but failed.
“How did you get your hands on those books?” DAX asked. “They were pretty forbidden.”
“I found my grandmother’s stash. Until then, I thought she’d only ever taken care of my grandfather and baked. Reading those books, I really wished I’d gotten to know her—to thank her, I mean. Those books taught me everything I know about sex.”
DAX stared at me for a minute as if measuring me. “What aboutChild of the Sun?”
“The one where the future emperor of Rome loved men? Oh, man, that book changed everything for me.”
“Me, too.” He grinned. “So you’re…”
“Yeah, we both are,” I said indicating Jackson. “We’re a couple.”
“Did your mother really name you after a character in a novel?” MJ asked, appalled.
“Oh, yeah. When I was seven, she had it legally changed—my name before that was Jorge. By the time I was ten, her hopes that I would be some kind of lady killer, like the original DAX, were dashed.” He laughed, a light tinkling sound as bright as his hair.
“You have gray hair,” Jackson said suddenly, staring at DAX’s tangle of silvery hair.
“Yes,” DAX said. He sounded amused. “All the men in my family start turning gray at puberty.”
Monday, February 20, 1978, University City—“So, Jackson is a preacher’s kid?” MJ asked, chewing her gum furiously.
I looked up from my textbook and nodded.
“Is he, like, super religious? Should I not curse in front of him?”
I laughed. MJ is pretty foul-mouthed. “No, He doesn’t really believe in his father’s notion of God and religion. Actually, he thinks he’s full of shit.”
MJ seemed scandalized. “What about you? Do you think his father is full of shit?”
“I do. I think all religious leaders are. I mean, I don’t believe in organized religion. It’s just a bunch of power-mad men exploiting people’s desires and fears. Dante reserves a special Circle in hell for them.”
“The Eighth Circle, right?”
