Part 27 (1/2)

drinking, late at night, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Brian's flat. This time,

Johnno had pinched whiskey from his father. The stench of garbage had

been rank as they sat with a candle between them, pa.s.sing the bottle

back and forth. On the dented portable record player, Roy Orbison had

been soaring with ”Only the Lonely.” Johnno's confession had come out

with drunken weeping and wild threats of suicide.

”I'm nothing, and I'll never be nothing else. Living like a bleeding

pig.” He'd guzzled whiskey. ”My old man stinking up the room and Mum

whining and nagging and never doing nothing to make it change. My

sister's working the streets and my little brother's been arrested twice

this month.”

”It's up to us to get out of it,” Brian said with boozy philosophy. With

his eyes half closed he listened to Orbison. He wanted to sing like

that, with that otherworldly melancholy. ”We've got to make a

difference for ourselves, Johnno. And we will.”

”Difference. I can't make it any different. Not unless I kill myself.

Maybe I will. Maybe I'll just do it and be done with it.”

”What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l are you talking about?” Brian searched in their

crumpled pack of Pall Malls and found one.

”I'm queer.” Johnno dropped his head on his folded arms and wept.

”Queer?” Brian paused with the match an inch from the tip of the

cigarette. ”Come on, Johnno. Don't be daft.”

”I said I'm queer.” His voice rose as he lifted his tear-stained,

desperate face to Brian. ”I like boys. I'm a freaking, flaming f.a.g.”

Though he was shaken, the drink was enough of a cus.h.i.+on to make him

open-minded. ”You sure?”