Free Any Way the Wind Blows by E. Lynn Harris Page A

is Miss Braxton. You just dropped me off. I have an emergency. Where are you?”
    “I’m crossing Madison Avenue. I can be back at your place in two minutes.”
    “Hurry,” I said as I heard Windsor let out a huge moan, which sounded like she was in labor. But she couldn’t be in labor if she was only four months pregnant. I hung up the phone and sat next to Windsor. I hugged her tightly and said, “Don’t worry, Windsor, help is on the way.”

Stray Boyz
    A week had passed and I hadn’t been able to catch up with Wylie, but I was dying to tell him about my date. I had to tell someone about my evening, even though I had promised Basil I wouldn’t say a word. But didn’t Basil know that the gay boy code of silence meant you wouldn’t tell all of your friends? Just your top two, at the very least.
    Wylie picked up the phone quickly, which meant he was probably on the other line.
    “Who you talking to?” I asked.
    “Well, hello to you, too, darling. I’m talking to LaVonya. Trying to find out the good tea before she publishes it in the paper. What’s shaking?”
    “I got something to tell you. Tell Ms. LaVonya it’s a family emergency,” I ordered. LaVonya Young was Wylie’s resident fag hag and one of the city’s most popular gossip columnists. She had her own radio show, and a syndicated column called “Lines from LaVonya” in which she would drop juicy one-liners without revealing the names. Once amonth in her column in
Diva
magazine she would go into a little more detail but still no names. People would visit her Web site and post their guesses as to who LaVonya was talking about, but she would never confirm or deny. I liked LaVonya well enough, but I wasn’t as close to her as Wylie. I knew better than to have a lot of women around me. Like that old saying, “No need to take sand to the beach.”
    “So what’s the emergency, Bart?”
    “I had the most amazing sexual experience of my life.”
    “I thought you had a couple of auditions today,” Wylie said.
    “I did. And that’s where the story begins and ends.”
    I told Wylie about how I’d seduced the handsome Basil Henderson, blow by blow, as it were. Wylie would occasionally interrupt me by saying, “No, you didn’t,” and “Nurse Bart, you gonna make me throw this phone out the window.”
    “Are you going to see him again?” Wylie asked when I finally took a breath.
    “Are grits groceries?”
    “Last time I checked.” Wylie laughed.
    “It was amazing. I think I might be in love.”
    “I ain’t mad a cha!”
    “There is one small problem, though.”
    “What? He doesn’t have the monster, does he?” Wylie asked. Monster was what some people called the HIV virus.
    “No. I mean, I didn’t ask him, but I’m sure he’s clean. Basil thinks he’s bisexual,” I said. “I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before.”
    “Maybe the bathhouse or the park, you think?”
    “I doubt it. He doesn’t seem to be the bathhouse/park type,” I said.
    “So he’s one of those strays, can’t decide if he wants to be straight or gay. Mark my word, very soon there’s going to be more of them than us. Then we gonna be complaining like our sisters how black men are either in prison or can’t make up their minds,” Wylie said.
    “I said he thinks he’s bisexual. He’s a top, but he liked me way too much to think he doesn’t know which team he’s on.”
    “Did you get the job?”
    “What job?”
    “The modeling job.”
    “You bet I got the job
and
a new man. I mean, Wylie, this may be the one! I feel that strongly about this.”
    “For real?”
    “For real.”
    “But what if he is bisexual? You know he’ll never settle down,” Wylie warned.
    “I can change him.”
    “Where have I heard that before?”
    “Wylie, don’t spoil this for me. Stop being a homo-hater.” I despised it when Wylie got jealous.
    “I’m sorry. Describe him once more, and go slow on the good parts,” Wylie pleaded.
    “Now, Wylie, sometimes a