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might bring them: a fugitive, a dope addict with contraband, an AWOL serviceman.
    Everything was familiar. Even the rich stench of frying grease and onions from hot dog stands recalled when I’d been hungry on this street. While on the escape from reform school I’d survived eight months by preying on the street. Gambesi had been my partner. Many nights we’d spent in the twenty-four-hour movie theatres, one napping while the other watched for police. One would buy a ticket, go inside, and open the rear exit for the other. Once Joe was waiting for me to open the door, became impatient, and began knocking. Instead of me (it was why I hadn’t opened it) a policeman stepped out, splitting Joe’s head open with a nightstick. Because of Joe’s youth, the cop was afraid to arrest him. We spent other nights in flop-house hotel lobbies, or in a truck parked behind a bakery. Sometimes Mary Pavan let us into the house after her father had gone to bed. We slept on the floor of her room and crept out into the city’s dawn before her father got up for work. Joe sometimes went home to see his mother and get us clean clothes. Mainly, we lived by robbing queers. One of us would entice a homosexual into an isolated spot, or even into their residence, and the other would rush in. We’d beat them up and rob them. The word went around and we were unable to find victims. The interlude ended after a high-speed chase in a stolen automobile. It smashed into the rear of a parked truck. Joe got away in a fusillade of bullets, but the door jammed on my side and I was caught. I’d never hung around Main Street since then, but from time to time, as now, I’d gone there to buy amphetamines. It was the easiest spot in the city to get them; the queens were great consumers because their use stimulated sexual pleasure.
    I had no doubt that one of us would see a familiar face—an excon, a Junky, a queen—on this street. But we saw nobody on the sidewalk that we recognized. We parked in a dark lot, threw the matchbox of marijuana near a wheel where it could be retrieved, and began walking along Main Street, stepping into bars and scanning the faces. We both wore business suits and the denizens eyed us with suspicious fear, thinking we were policemen.
    One bar was in a cellar and was jammed. Colored lights spun through filters and hurled grotesque silhouettes. Voices challenged the throb and pulse of electrically amplified guitars from the jukebox. My senses had been opened by the marijuana and now I was immersed in the naked heart of sensual chaos. The music penetrated, drowning me. Once such sensuality would have thrilled me. Life had consisted of sensation, of now , without moderation or meaning. But after years in the state’s monastery it was too rich. I struggled against losing myself in the vortex.
    Someone appeared on my right from the crowd. It was a queen I’d seen in prison, but didn’t know his name. There he’d worn skin tight pants and plucked eyebrows. Now he was conservative, though the bar was swarming with flaming faggots. He found out what we wanted, took two dollars, and returned ten minutes later with two rolls of pills wrapped in aluminum foil.
    Willy wanted to have a drink; he was eyeing a young blonde queen who was expertly frugging with another boy.
    â€œLet’s blow,” I said. “I’m not against buggering a boy, but I’ll be a dirty motherfucker if it’s the first sex I’m gonna have after eight years of nothing but fairies and jacking off.”
    We drove toward Chinatown and stopped for coffee to wash down the pills, and hasten their effect. Back in the car the stimulant spread through me, eradicating a sense of depression. It was great to merely ride the decrepit car through empty streets. I was free.
    â€œLet’s go check L&L Red,” Willy said. “He should be at his pad now. It ain’t very far.”
    â€œSo he finally