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“They dont call this Y the French Embassy for nothing,” the merchant marine laughs. He has sized me up slyly: broke and green in the big city—and he said: “You wouldnt be broke if youd been at Mary’s last night—thats a place in the Village and everything goes.” He watches me evenly for some reaction, determining, Im sure, how far he can go how quickly. “So I spot this cute kid there—” Hes still studying me carefully, and when I dont say anything, he continues with more assurance: “So I spot him and I want him—yeah, sure, Im queer—whatya expect?” he challenges. He pauses longer this time, watching me still calculatingly. He goes on: “And the kid’s looking for maybe a pad to flop in and breakfast—hes not queer himself, I dont like em queer: If I did, Id go with a woman—why fuck around with substitutes?... So this kid goes with me—Im feeling Good, just off the ship, flush—I lay 50 bucks on him.”
               A strange new excitement wells inside me.
               He adds slyly, confident now that hes got me interested: “If youda been there I woulda preferred you....” He places his hairy hand on my leg. “Unfortunately, Im almost broke now,” he says, “but I got some more pay coming soon.”
               I stand up quickly; pause only for a moment at the door.
               He calls after me:
               “Hell, if you decide to make that scene later, try Times Square—always good for a score.... And play it dumb—they dig that.”
              
               I stand on 42nd Street and Broadway looking at the sign flashing the news from the Times Tower like a scoreboard: The World is losing. The hurricane still menaces—the sky ashen with night rainclouds, and looking at it, which is suddenly like a shroud, I panic, I think about this wailing concrete island, and I cant even swim: an island—and the shrouded sky makes it a Cage.
               Along this street, I see the young masculine men milling idly. Sometimes they walk up to older men and stand talking in soft tones—going off together, or, if not, moving to talk to someone else.
               The subway crowds surged in periodic waves, blank newyork faces, as if, for air, they had just crawled out of the little boxes in the automat for say a quarter and two nickels.
               I feel explosively excited to be on this street—at the sight of the people and the lights, sensing the anarchy.... The merchant marine’s story about the youngman he had picked up—and the implied offer of sexmoney to me—have acted on me like a narcotic that makes me crave it.
               Predictably (and the life I have come to find is unfolding swiftly before me) the newyork cop comes by, to Welcome me, I will think later. He was shaped appropriately like a zero. Watching his approach, the other aimless youngmen leave their stands along the street. Stopping before me, the cop says to me in a bored, automatic, knowing tone: “Why dont you go to the movies, kid?... I aint seen you before—so I dent feel like running you in.”
               I take his advice. Two Sexy foreign movies at the Apollo theater: I surrender to the giant cavernous mouth with decaying brown seats for teeth—gobble!—Where you’ll see me often later, in the balcony. But I kept thinking about the hurricane. Im nervous.
               Outside, the rain is coming furiously. I stand under the marquee wondering where to go. Im reacting instinctively to this world, studying the stances of other obviously drifting youngmen.
               Then he walks by me, hat slouched to one side, dont-give-a-damn walk: a grayhaired middle-aged man—and says—exactly how he came on: verbatim: “I’ll give you ten, and I dont give a damn for you.” I follow the man, who has paused a few feet from me.
               “What did you say?” I