Night of the Strays -- Tales from the Fourth Ward

                 On April first, I saw the first robin, as I walked home from work at the church.  
     That night I walked to the gay bar three blocks from home.  No one was there who cared or who could make me care.  I left when the cigarette smoke began making me sick.
     The bar fronted on a busy street.  We all left by its’ back door, which opened into a blind alley.  I came out of the alley onto a side street to find a stray dog with its’ tale between its’ legs.  This young bedraggled dog of an unnamed color began following along behind me.  
     I spoke to it.  It startled, shied away from my voice, but then began wagging its’ tail - gamboling in joy.  It was terribly frightened but terribly attracted to me.  I walked on then stopped to look back, it began slowly approaching, smelling my foot prints as it came, but came only so close.  If I offered my hand to be smelt, the dog ran back, tail tucked under. 
     After two blocks of this approach, flight and approach in the abandoned streets of east Waterloo, I entered my dark street, passed a couple houses, then turned.  The stray stood at the corner in the shadow of a tree to watch me walk away.  When I looked back this one last time, it was still watching me, happily wagging its' tail.
     It was exactly like the boy I loved, but who had not gone out that night.

   

Taken on: April 1, 1984

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Waterloo, Iowa

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Sets appears in: • Tales from the Fourth Ward • Log more » • Autobiography « less

Groups appears in: • FLICKRGAYS • Anything Goes No Limits more » • Gay Male Portraits (from the waist up) • Gay Lifestyle Project • Being Gay is NOT always FabUlous. • Gay Male Photographers • Diary (...) • GLBT Self Portraits • I love gays! • Gay & Lesbian Interest (NOT PORN) • Portraits - gesichte - faces - ritratti (hard selection) • Pictures of Men • Our Waterloo • Expressions of Male Beauty • Pictures and Words your Homosexual Life « less

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