Chapter 12

James Dean beautiful. Summer air and night flowers. So many condoms.

Photo credit: https://www.life.com/people/james-dean-in-the-rain-the-most-iconic-photo-of-hollywoods-most-enigmatic-star/

I’m not avoiding the issue (oh, maybe a just a little) but before I can tell you about Andrew you need to know about Danny Sweeney. Danny was my first love, my first everything, and he was beautiful. Beautiful the way James Dean is beautiful walking through Times Square in the rain; the way Brendan Fraser is beautiful in School Ties. Danny was 6’2” of natural athlete—a swimmer and cyclist—with thick black hair he wore long on top and trimmed short on the sides, emerald eyes, and a mouth that always looked a little bruised. At 17 he already had an easy panther saunter that made grown women turn to look at him, brows arched, when he walked by in his OP shorts.

We met in July of ‘85, at a party I got dragged to by a boy whose name I don’t remember. Danny was 17, going into his senior year of high school, and I was a year younger, about to be a junior. That summer Nate …