hatchet-faced, late twenty-something, stringily muscular man in cargo pants and a tank top, with afternoon beer 18 Richard Stevenson on his breath.
I asked, “Had you been acquainted with Hunny previous to your accompanying him to his house?”
“Yeah, I’d talked to him a few times in the park. But only talk.
I was cherry.”
“Washington Park?”
“Sure.”
“Are you a naturalist, or did you hang out in the park trying to get picked up?”
“I was bi-curious, yeah. But I never did much of anything with guys till Hunny lured me into his car and took me over to his place and committed a lewd act. So, Hunny owes me. Hunny owes me big.”
“You said, Stu, that you believe Hunny should give you half of his lottery winnings. Do you honestly believe Hunny owes you half a billion dollars for a blow job? That sounds steep to me. These days I’m guessing you only get twenty or thirty bucks.”
“Sometimes fifty,” Hood said. “Anyways, with Hunny I just did it for the beer. He was nice to me, and I was nice to him back.”
“So you and Hunny had a continuing relationship after your initial visit?”
“Yeah, I’d ride my bike over there, and sometimes Art would show up and get a little, too. I’m not saying they weren’t nice to me. All I’m saying at this point in time is that Hunny did turn me into a homosexual, and then he did make certain promises. Like maybe I could move in sometime and be part of their alternative family. That would have suited me fine.”
The bar was surprisingly busy for a summer afternoon. The air-conditioning probably served as an attraction, and in any case the two dozen or so patrons did not look like either beachgoers or men who might otherwise have been off on Adirondack birding expeditions. Some of the men in the bar glanced our way from time to time, maybe wondering who Hood’s new friend was.
I said, “Stu, you’re a cyclist. How come?”
I knew what was coming. “I lost my driver’s license. Too many DUIs. It sucks, but I’m sort of used to it. It’s rough in the winter, though. People give me rides.”
“Have you had any other legal troubles?”
“A few.”
“Hunny says you like to set fires.”
Hood looked down at his draught beer. Almost inaudibly, he said, “I guess so.”
“He said you had an arson conviction as a juvenile.”
“Yes, I did. But I’ve been to counseling.”
“You left a message on Hunny’s voicemail threatening to burn his house down if he didn’t split his lottery winnings with you.”
He shrugged. “That was bullshit. I was drunk up to my eyeballs when I said that. Shit, Hunny should know.”
“I’m here to tell you, Stu, that if Hunny and Art’s house goes up in flames, you will be arrested in a short time. And if you set the fire, you will be convicted and you will go to prison for a very long time. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Hood mulled this over and had some more beer. “I guess Hunny must be pissed at me.”
“He is concerned about you. Hunny likes you, and he doesn’t want to see you locked up in Dannemora for twenty years. He said to tell you also that he would be willing to help you out financially, some small amount to tide you over. But half a billion is out.”
“Hunny is so cheap. How much did he say?”
“He said he heard you had been laid off at Target, and he said he would be happy to spring for a thousand to help you along until you located another job.”
“Hmm. Check or cash?”
“Whichever you would prefer.”
20 Richard Stevenson
“Cash money, please.”
“But no more threats, okay?”
“Well, shit, it’s more than I got out of the Catholic Church.”
“You sued the church?”
“I wrote a letter to the pope. He never answered it. A priest at Sacred Heart fucked me seven times when I was eleven.”
“But there were lawsuits over sexual abuse by priests, and victims were compensated. This was several years ago.”
“I heard about that later.”
The music playing now was Donna Summer’s “On the Radio.”
It occurred to me that the first time I had heard this song could well have been in this very bar some decades earlier, perhaps on the same night I met Timothy Callahan under a bush over in Washington Park, and we had been together pretty much ever since. I raised my bottle of Saratoga Water with a chunk of lime jammed down into it. To Donna Summer.
To Hood, I said, “The church did shut down the compensation machinery at some point. Didn’t your friends urge you to file a claim before it was too late? Did Hunny know about this?”
“I didn’t tell anybody back then. In fact, I kind of forgot about it. A guy I was involved with for a while kept asking me why I didn’t like to get fucked, and then I remembered.”
“And that’s when you wrote to the pope?”
“Another guy I used to date who had a computer helped me send an e-mail to the Vatican. Maybe the pope only speaks Italian, but there must be other dudes who work in his office who speak English. I think the guy is just a geek, that’s all.”
“You said you’ve had counseling. When was that?”
“At the farm the judge sent me to. I was thirteen years of age.
Anyway, that wasn’t about sex, it was about fires.”
“Have you had any problems with the law since then? Hunny said he was unaware of any run-ins. But he said that when you drink you sometimes threaten to set people’s houses on fire, or CoCkeyed 21 their cars, and it is very frightening to people.”
“That’s just the Bud Lite talking,” Hood said. “I would never do it. Hunny doesn’t have to worry. Though I would appreciate a little compensation for Hunny turning me into a homo, since it looks like the friggin’ pope is gonna be of no use to me whatsoever.”
“Hunny told me about your parents,” I said. “And about the terrible way they died. That must weigh on you, too.”
“Hunny has a big mouth.”
“It’s why even though he is fond of you, he is somewhat afraid of you.”
“Yeah, well. Mom and Pop never replaced the battery in their smoke alarm. Does he know that part of it? Let that be a lesson to Hunny.”
“Stu, what you are saying to me isn’t all that reassuring.”
“What I’m saying to you, Strachey, is that I don’t set fires anymore. I’m all talk. Talk and beer, beer and talk. And if it’s reassurance you want on a Saturday afternoon, this homo bar is not the place to find it.”
Hunny was back on the Channel 13 news Saturday evening at six. This time he was defending his lottery boodle not against blackmailers but against a co-worker at BJ’s Warehouse who claimed that half of Hunny’s winnings were rightfully his. Dave DeCarlo said he had given Hunny ten dollars to buy twenty dollars’ worth of tickets for the two of them, and they had agreed to split the winnings from any of the tickets purchased.
DeCarlo, who was interviewed first, along with his attorney, Thurmont Fewster, said it was the deep pain of being betrayed by a man he had always thought of as a friend that was hurting him most of all. His lawyer focused
