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pad: “How would you contact such a person?”
    “We wouldn’t know,” said Dennis Savage, “so forget it.”
    “You could write him a letter in care of the photographer,” I put in. “Or even call the photographer and ask—”
    “You bonehead!” Dennis Savage pointed out.
    “Let the kid have some fun. Why should he go through life only imagining where such paths lead? Everyone alive who isn’t a coward or a creep deserves one glorious night.”
    “Which are you? Coward or creep?”
    “Glorious.”
    He waved this nonsense away and concentrated on Mac. “I’m going to set you up with some very excellent Italian accountants in the West Seventies. They make the best husbands, believe me. Always remember The Three Advantages of the Italian beau: hairy chest, volcanic thighs, and the commitment of a Pope.”
    “Volcanic thighs?” I howled. “And dare I ask where the lava comes out?”
    Slowly he turned. He regarded me. He was stern. “You know, you should take care where you go. Fag-bashing incidents have been reported in this area.”
    “Such as where?”
    “Such as in this apartment in about three seconds.”
    “I dream of Nick,” Mac had written, and now showed us his little pad. “I think it’s always Nick.”
    “Another good boy goes wrong,” said Dennis Savage. “Is that why you left Racine? To meet Nicks?”
    Mac gazed at the photograph. “He’s such a beautiful dude,” I sounded, watching Mac’s face.
    “Will you shut up?” Dennis Savage roared.
    “It wasn’t me.”
    *   *   *
    Porn models are surprisingly easy to meet—as if their photos were meant as credentials for work. Despite Dennis Savage’s reservations, I helped Mac make contact with Nick. This was 1976, when dubious encounters were quaint adventure rather than mortal peril; so let the harmless fantasy come true for a night. Very little trouble yielded Nick’s telephone number, and I made the call for Mac and set up an appointment. Nick sounded as one might have expected, trashy and agreeable. No, you wouldn’t kick him out of bed—but you wouldn’t want your brother to marry him. He wasn’t in the least thrown to hear that his date couldn’t talk.
    “You should see some of the things I get with,” he said. “Once I went to a meet and this guy had no legs.” He laughed. “So whattaya think of that?”
    Instinct warned me to arrange Mac’s date for as soon as possible; I did not picture Nick keeping a terribly precise engagement book.
    “How about now?” he asked.
    It was a Saturday afternoon and Mac was game, so we cinched it—but it worried me that he didn’t want me to stay and set things up with Nick, not to mention check him out for weapons. I never heard of Mac’s taking an adventure alone. But he was adamant. “This fantasy I must not share,” he wrote. The urgency was unnerving.
    Worse yet, Mac refused to tell how the date had gone. That he had had a wonderful time was unmissable; the grin was showing about twenty-five more teeth and the nod came a hair more slowly now, as if Mac had grown younger and wiser at once. Bits of dish would slide out of him perchance: Nick had spent the weekend at Mac’s that first time; Nick lived in a hole in darkest Brooklyn; Nick was seeing Mac regularly at bargain rates; Nick was very pleasant under the mean-streets facade.
    Suddenly Nick moved in with Mac.
    Dennis Savage, when he heard, was shocked silent for a good two minutes, an ideal condition for him. Our Mac—so he had become, for to befriend him was to own him—consorting with sex-show debris? When Dennis Savage regained his voice, he went into a ten-minute tirade reproaching me for encouraging Mac in this vile stunt, for having the sensitivity of Mickey Spillane, and for living. How was I to know that a date with a hustler would yield romance? Whoever heard of the fantasy coming true? I had always thought hustlers were the ultimate tricks, guaranteed for one time only, impersonal and beyond reach.