Free Where The Boys Are by William J. Mann

about how to live with it, even make friends with it. She said I inspired her with such talk; I told her she was the true inspiration. In the ensuing months, we attended many workshops together, and I saw her brighten, emerge from her shell of grief and despair. She told me that my friendship was a beacon of light to her, offering her a direction, a promise that life wasn’t over.
    And she’s provided similar hope for me, too—especially a few nights ago, sitting in her living room, musing about the future, when she was suddenly struck with the idea of a guest house, and I jumped on it. “Let’s do it, Lloyd!” she said. “You and me!”
    Does it really seem so impulsive? It doesn’t to me. It feels right. I think of Eva’s strength, her compassion, her wisdom. People come into your life for a reason, I truly believe. This is fate. We’re meant to do this together.
    All at once, she stands. “Lloyd! Come with me!”
    She takes me by the hand and leads me across the room. We climb the stairs to the second floor. “This was Steven’s room,” she says, opening a door at the far end of the hall. It’s the one room of the house I’ve never seen. I look around. A canopy bed with a very gay white veil. In a silver frame hangs an enormous photograph of a flower’s bright yellow stamen. I recognize it immediately as a Mapplethorpe original.
    “You and Steven had your own rooms?” I ask, and immediately regret the question. Of course they did—at least for the last few years, after he told Eva he was gay.
    “Yes,” she says softly, looking down at the bed and patting the blue velvet comforter. “We thought it best.” She takes a deep breath. “This is where he died. I sat here, in this chair, holding his hand.”
    She walks over to the closet and slides back the mirrored door. My jaw drops. There’s an array of leather jackets, some with shiny chrome chains on the shoulders. Next to them are dozens of pairs of blue jeans, all neatly pressed and folded over hangers. I can’t help but smile. Javitz pressed his jeans, too, and hung them up like that. The mark of a generation. Steven had been the same age as Javitz.
    “I want you to have Steven’s clothes,” Eva says. “My goodness, all this beautiful leather just hanging here untouched. Steven loved leather. He had jackets, pants, shirts, chaps...” She reaches in and pulls out a pair of black motorcycle boots. “And the footwear! My word! You did say you were a size eight-and-a-half, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, but Eva, I couldn’t just. . .”
    She looks at me earnestly. “Of course you could. You’re the exact same size as Steven. This will all fit you marvelously.”
    I smile. “That’s very kind of you.” I can’t stop my smile from turning into a broad grin. “But Eva, you never told me Steven was a leather queen.”
    She laughs. “Oh, he wasn’t into sadomasochism or anything.” She’s blushing. “He just liked how he looked in leather. See?”
    She picks up a framed photograph from the bureau and hands it over to me. A dark-haired man with a walrus mustache in leather motorcycle jacket and cap, a harness and no shirt, chaps over his jeans.
    “Very Tom of Finland,” I observe. I noticed a cardboard box in the closet, a shiny flash of chrome from within. I bend down and extract a pair of handcuffs. “Not into S and M, huh?”
    She looks down at the cuffs. “I’ve never gone through that box,” she says in a small voice.
    I feel suddenly uneasy standing there with Steven’s photograph in one hand and his handcuffs in the other. I toss the cuffs back into the box and return the photo to Eva.
    “Steven taught me a great deal,” Eva says, carefully replacing the photograph back on the bureau. “When he told me he was gay, of course I told him he was free to go and find himself—and another man if he chose, someone with whom he could spend his life.” She’s gazing down at the picture but then turns quickly to focus again on me.