there with him, o f course. I had no place to stay. I was outside
all night. It rained the whole night. I didn’t have anywhere to
go or anywhere to live. I had gone with a few different men,
had places to stay for a few weeks, but now I was alone, didn’t
want no one, didn’t have a bed or a room. He came to find me
and he stayed with me; outside; the long night; in rain; not in a
bed; not for the fuck; not. Rain is so hard. It stops but you stay
wet for so long after and you get cold always no matter what
the weather because you are swathed in wet cloth and time
goes by and you feel like a baby someone left in ice water and
even if it’s warm outside and the air around you heats up you
get colder anyw ay because the w et’s up against you, wrapped
around you and it don’t breathe, it stays heavy, intractable, on
you; and so rain is very hard and when it rains you get sad in a
frightened w ay and you feel a loneliness and a desolation that is
very big. This is always so once you been out there long
enough. I f yo u ’re inside it don’t matter— you still get cold and
lonely; afraid; sad. So when the boy came to stay with me in
the rain I took him to m y heart. I made him m y friend in my
heart. I pledged friendship, a whisper o f intention. I made a
promise. I didn’t say nothing; it was a minute o f honor and
affection. About four in the morning we found a cafe. It’s a
long w ay to dawn when you’re cold and tired. We scraped up
money for coffee, pulled change out o f our pockets, a rush o f
silver and slugs, and we pooled it on the table which is like
running blood together because nothing was held back and so
we were like blood brothers and when m y blood brother
disappeared I went looking for him, I went to the address
where he lived, a cold, awful place, I asked his terrible mother
where he was, I asked, I waited for an answer, I demanded an
answer, I went to the local precinct, I made them tell me,
where he was, how to find him, how much money it took to
spring him, I went to get him, he was far away, hidden away
like Rapunzel or something, a long bus ride followed by
another long bus ride, he was in a real prison, not some funky
little jail, not some county piss hole, a great gray concrete
prison in the middle o f nowhere so they can find you if you
run, nail you, and I took all m y money, m y blood, m y life for
today and tom orrow a n d : he next day and for as long as there
was, as far ahead as I can count, and I gave it like a donor for his
life so he could be free, so the piglets couldn’t put him in a
cage, couldn’t keep him there; so he could be what he was, this
very great thing, a free man, a poor boy who had become a
revolutionary man; he was pure— courage and action, a wild
boy, so wild no one had ever got near him before, I wish I was
so brave as him; he was manic, dizzying, m oving every
second, a frenzy, frenetic and intense with a mask o f joviality,
