Free What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

Rockets drive, let Rockets drive, let Rockets drive.”
    While I’m talking I catch myself doing a bruise check, and I remember Siouxsie asking if I have to touch them to know if they still hurt, and the answer’s yes, otherwise they don’t.
    So why do I keep doing it then, that’s what she really asked.
    If I don’t like the feeling.
    If I don’t like the hurt.
    And I don’t know.
    All I really know is bang bang the gang’s all queer again, but it’s a mystery to me, the method as in how in their acting as in now, till I realize we’ve still got our arms around each other, David and me. So Blitzer’s all, What’s up with you two fairies, and I wish he didn’t sound so harsh, I wish he’d laugh like Squid and Siouxsie, or wolf-whistle like Tim, and I wish it made no difference to me, one way or another, but it does.
    So here I am after all, wishing on the stars on Hollywood Boulevard.

14
    Fabulous Hollywood Boulevard.
    “Do you all actually live here?” Tim asks. “In Hollywood?”
    And we’re all, Yeah, and they don’t believe it. People living in Hollywood is like this alien concept. I guess all the apartments and houses everywhere haven’t registered yet. So they want to know where. They want proof.
    Well.
    All four of us snake-dance around it talking about staying with friends and stuff, I say I’ve got a key to Paul and Hellin’s on Genesee, they hold my things and I shower there and wash my clothes, and that’s the whole and nothing but, in fact they’re always telling me to sleep on their couch, but they’ve got a baby and it’s noisy and besides I won’t take advantage. And too I can stay with Stickboy, or Pleasant at Disgraceland. But with Stickboy you end up hustling, more than you want to, how fun. And with Pleasant you end up partying, harder than you want to. So I just hang by myself mostly, at the Jell-O factory. But anyways Tim and David are unionized as in Western and get the message pronto like Tonto.
    We’re
homeless
.
    This is something they’ve heard about, on the news I guess, it sounds like the on-fire topic if you follow what they’re up to these days in Washington, D.C., which I don’t, oh most defiantly, I didn’t even find out those hostages came home till just the other day. So now they want to flow us food. Now they’re saying we can stay with THEM.
    “I could use a shower,” Blitzer says, and elbows me to back him up.
    “Me too.”
    “But it’s still so early,” Siouxsie says. “First let’s go to the wax museum.”
    I just say Sorry, some dudes don’t do windows, I don’t do wax, and Blitzer says he doesn’t either, he’ll kick it with me while they do the horrors. Then he says, “Maybe we can wait . . .” and trails off his voice, pretty obviously on purpose, as in maybe in their van?
    Maybe in their room?
    Only it stays all quiet on the good turn front so finally he says, “Around here someplace. But if you don’t see us here afterwards we’ll meet in like an hour. In front of Frederick’s.”
    Tim wants to know why can’t we meet
inside
Frederick’s, and I wouldn’t be betting the rent-boy money he means in the men’s department. If they even have one. But Siouxsie says it’s already closed.
    After they bail Blitzer says if those fairies think Hollywood’s fabulous now, wait till they’ve got L-tickets to the wonderful world of color, so we jam to Wilcox then down to Selma, trying to find a travel agent for frying the friendly skies. And who’s that calling our names as soon as we turn left on south-side Selma, from the steps of the meat-market-I-mean-church there?
    Radar. The dealer formerly known as David Consumer. Who’s got what we’re looking for. Blue microdot, premium fry. But he’ll only sell a sheet. A hundred tabs. Two hundred bucks.
    “I ain’t small-timin’ anymore. Cops catch you with goods and a pocketful of ones and the D.A. calls it sales. Sales to kids. And you’re kids. Take it or leave it.”
    “What hey,