BROOKLYN, NY

We get out at the Seventh Avenue station and walk up to the park.  I follow Nicholas down a small paved road that empties out a massive field, stretching black and green before us.  We slink our way across the plain until we get to an empty softball diamond with a metal fence that runs behind home base. Nick drops his bags and pulls his video camera out of the backpack. I ignore it and walk back out onto the playing field. A wall of forest behind Nick and the fence is bordered by a dimly lit path, so we can see if anyone starts to come near us. The mouth of openness on all other sides gives sufficient warning if anyone cuts across the field. I try to see into the woods, remembering this is a notorious pick-up place for gay guys. I imagine hundreds of eyes staring out at us from the tangled trunks and branches.

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BROOKLYN, NY-

A recent hangover found me still under the covers at 2:00 PM. I called out to my boyfriend Casey, but instead of asking for water or Advil, I asked him to look up details about the murder of Konerak Sinthasomphone, Jeffrey Dahmer’s thirteenth victim.

From under my pillow I’d been half-listening to Casey talk about the death of Ted Kennedy. Casey is young enough that Ted’s incident at Chappaquiddick, in the news once more, was a revelation. He was reading aloud about the crash from my desk across the room, and it got me thinking about the guilt one must feel when responsible for the death of another human. That in turn made me remember that after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught, reports surfaced about a fourteen year-old boy who had briefly escaped him. (more…)