Free Tango by Justin Vivian Bond

It let her know how deeply I loved her, and that her life was valued. It gave her courage to go on. It wasn’t the end of her problems, though. In a short time, she was sent away to live with her aunt and uncle in Ohio, and I didn’t see her again for quite some time.
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    WHILE SHE WAS AWAY, I HAULED ALL OF HER stuffed animals—a huge bear, a giraffe, and a tiger, along with dozens of others, some of which were at least three feet tall—to my house. I thought that somehow by bringing her energy into my room I would be able to recreate our sanctuary in my own home and somehow get by without her. It didn’t work. No matter what I put in there
I never felt comfortable. Before she’d gone away to the hospital, we had decided we were going to run away from home and stay with her sister, who had by now graduated from high school and gotten out of town. But Lesley couldn’t wait and I was left to my own devices.
    One afternoon, I went to a pool party held by one of my mom’s coworkers for the ladies and their kids. I loved swimming and was always very impressed by anyone who had a pool. In fact, Michael Hunter’s mother said that I was “using Michael” and pretending he was my friend so that I could swim in their pool. Of course at the time she didn’t know that while I was using him, I was sometimes submerged in the water, sucking his dick. Parents have no idea about the deals kids make with each other, and how wrong they can actually be.
    During the pool party at Ms. Nestor’s house, I heard one of the “girls from work” mention to my mother that she had seen in the newspaper that the local community theater group, the Potomac Playmakers, was holding auditions for The Sound of Music and was looking for kids
to play the Von Trapp children. I immediately started pleading with my mother to let me audition. I was afraid she would say no, just as she had said no to ballet and piano lessons, but to my surprise she said yes. Before I knew it I was at the Women’s Club on Prospect Street singing “Who Will Buy” from Oliver . I was cast as Kurt, the youngest Von Trapp.
    I immediately developed a kinship with the other actors playing the Von Trapp children, who were from other parts of the county. I knew I was good at what I was doing. One of the girls who was playing Marta, a girl named Carrie Whitely, and I developed a crush on each other, which all the other brothers and sisters thought was funny. My older brother in the show, who later turned out to be gay as well, dared me to kiss Carrie for five seconds, and said that if I did he would give me a dollar. Since kissing her was something I wanted to do anyway, I said I would.
    The first dollar I ever earned was when I was five years old with family in St. Petersburg, Florida, visiting my father’s aunt and her companion, a man by the name of Mr. Wick. I was very chatty
and precocious, full of questions and a running commentary on everything. Mr Wick offered me a quarter to be quiet for one minute. As this was something I did not want to do, and wasn’t even sure I could do, I demanded a dollar, which I got.
    The dollar from Bobby Higgerman, a.k.a. Friedrich, was one I looked forward to earning. Carrie and I, although we weren’t really boyfriend and girlfriend, remained close for many years. In high school both of us decided we wanted to be good at sex so we practiced with each other. Having seen Patti LuPone in Evita , Carrie wanted to be able to manipulate men with the power of her fierce pussy just as Eva Peron had done. So we helped each other develop our sexual techniques.
    I never knew how Michael Hunter really felt about me but sometimes he did silly things that could have been considered wildly romantic. When he discovered I had this girlfriend, his first move was to try to get her to be his girlfriend. Clearly he was more of a man than I was, but that didn’t work because Carrie,