"Can you handle my having feelings for you?"
"What?" I said. I felt myself blush.
He was smiling, but his eyes were serious, which made me feel even sillier.
"What do you mean?" I repeated. I thought he might be playing with me.
"I mean, just that. Can you handle my having feelings for you?"
I didn't know what to say, but I enjoyed the way his hands felt resting on mine. They felt warm and comforting, like Slide Step had been to me.
"I'm talking about caring for you," he said.
Unsure of myself, I started to laugh. "I thought we were talking about: I take care of you and you take care of me. That's the deal, isn't it?"
"No, that's not what I'm talking about. I want to know if you can handle feelings."
I looked up at the ceiling and then away. I was immature for my age, but it still never occurred to me that love was a possibility between two men. I grew up in the suburbs, in a working-class neighborhood, where I didn't see many blacks-much less queers. And I was still struggling to come to terms with all that had happened to me since I got here.
When I was younger, I attended Catholic School, at least until Sharon took a belt to one of the nuns who used one on her son-Sharon's Irish/German temper getting the best of her. After that, we were kicked out of the school, as well as the Parish, which was fine with me because it meant I didn't have to be told how wicked and vile my sexual thoughts were. And if my thoughts were so unnatural, how could there be feelings?
"Is that possible?" I asked.
He dropped his head and sighed. "Oh yes." He said it as if they were already there. He looked up and smiled. He wasn't making fun of me.
I had heard that when men went to prison for a long time, their boys often became their wives, so I guessed it made sense that these guys would develop feelings too, but I wouldn't know what that felt like. I had never been in love before.
I smiled at him with a goofy grin. "I guess so, sure."
He studied me and shook his head. "Nah. I don't think you can."
His right fingers were caressing the top of niy hand. He dropped his head and let out a long-winded, high-pitched "woo." The sound echoed off the walls of the empty room. The guards, as usual, were tucked away in their station on the other side.
Slide Step got up and tussled my hair. "We'll see, little squeeze. We'll see."
He walked out of the room and up the hall toward his cell. His head was down and slowly shaking. There was a playfulness in his swagger, a slow deliberate rhythm, as he twirled his key on a long string back and forth around his finger. That walk was how he got his name, and I stared after him as he disappeared, wondering what he meant by having feelings for me.
Anita Bryant came on the TV, the beauty queen-turned-spokeswoman for the orange juice industry. She was accusing gays of recruiting children into being homosexual and the news was covering a boycott of orange juice. A few months earlier, someone had pushed a pie in her face. I remembered it because it was a banana cream pie, which was my favorite. The news showed a bumper sticker that read: Kill a Queer for Christ.
I thought about my dad and wondered if he would be more upset because Slide Step was black, or that I was a fag. But it's not like he would ever know about it. He hadn't come to visit me, and I had been away for a couple of months by then. I hadn't heard from anyone, and I was feeling abandoned and alone.
Always seeking attention was the frequent note on my report cards from school. I craved it because I wasn't getting any at home. At least that's what a guidance counselor once said. I needed someone to notice me, to pay attention, and to let me know that I mattered. I wanted to be taken care of, looked after, and for someone to make me feel safe. I wanted to stop the world from spinning and told I was OR I would have given anything to bask in the glory of someone's affection, to see their face light up when I walked into a room. Even at age seventeen, I still wanted someone to be proud of me, to want to be with me, and I desperately wanted somewhere to belong, to feel like I was finally home. But Slide Step was a man, a black man, and this was prison.
An inmate named Manley walked into the room and told me that Slide Step had asked him to look after me-to make sure I didn't get into any trouble. I'm sure he was more concerned about others than he was about nee. Manley was a heavy-set black man, but manly he wasn't. He was in his thirties and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. He was wearing kitchen whites, which helped explain his weight. He was good natured and jovial, with a pockmarked face. He offered me a cigarette and then tossed me a pack.
"Let's hit the commissary, kid. Slide Step says you need a few things."
At first, I wondered if Slide Step wanted me to do something with him, but later on he told that I was too old for Manley. "Too old?" I was the youngest boy at Riverside.
"He likes 'em much younger than you," was all Slide Step said. "But don't worry, he's harmless. I just don't want you walking around by yourself, until it's well known that you're riding with me."
The grapevine would spread word quickly, but Slide Step wasn't taking chances. As my man, he was responsible for my safety, and he had already sent one guy to the infirmary.
"As
