Seaton - The Palisade

Denver, 1981: To the residents of The Palisade, the brick wall behind which their apartment complex lies protects more than the body. Behind that wall, being gay doesn't equal being an oddity, an outsider, or a threat.

Table of Contents

THE PALISADE

GEORGE SEATON

mlr press

www.mlrpress.com

Denver, 1981: The residents of The Palisade apartments find solace behind the six and one-half foot brick wall that surrounds their homes. They feel no threat from the unkind world that lies beyond that wall. But the times eventually demand a reckoning, an epiphany that none can escape, that none can ignore.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by George Seaton

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Published by

MLR Press, LLC

3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.

Albion, NY 14411

Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet:

www.mlrpress.com

Cover Art by Deana Jamroz

Editing by Kimberly Brandt

ISBN# 978-1-60820-431-1

Issued 2011

This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher.

Palisade - 1 a : a fence of stakes especially for defense b : a long strong stake pointed at the top and set close with others as a defense 2 : a line of bold cliffs

Merriam-Websters 11th Collegiate Dictionary

CHAPTER ONE

They watch him dance. The G-string ties slip up into his ass, the exaggerated bulge in front is caressed by thin gold lam; the pecs are defined, youthful; his stomach is flat with those delightful bumps up (or down) the road to his special treasures.

The writer goes up the road. The boys lips are full, his nostrils slightly flared, his eyes green, and his hair red-brown. His name is Buck. The writer suspects not. The writer believes this boy is a Michael, a Kevin, or a Trevor. Right now, though, the boy does buck . He sweats.

The writers tongue quite involuntarily slides across his own lips. That sweat!

Theyve gathered in the small party room, just off the entrance to the line of washers and dryers that live on dimes. One dryer hums as Buck bucks and the writer is inclined to kill the machine to quietude.

But he doesnt. He is entranced. The performance is too... The performance is too nasty, too feral; too essential to who they are, here in The Palisade.

Queer. All of them. They are queer in the spring of 1981.

The Palisade is a thirty-unit apartment building, three floors with ten apartments on each level, owned by the good doctor and his pretty wife. The pretty wife bulges with her unborn child. She is a small woman with a high voice and constant smile. The writer believes she and the good doctor see them, the queers, as puppies left on their doorstep. They will do what they can to understand the queers, and attempt to provide a safe haven for them to live their unfortunate lives behind the walls of The Palisade. They expect reciprocity. The doctor and his wife believe they, the queers, will add value to their investment. They believe the queers will keep up the place with more aplomb, more care, and more attention to pretty than the general class of heterosexuals who inhabit this particular neighborhood.

This neighborhood: Denver. Across the street is the suburb of Aurora. Across the street are folks who find themselves lost in the gloom of an unkind world where they perceive no opportunity for the betterment of their lives and the lives of their children. Or so the writer believes. The writer has heard some of the queers refer to those across the street as white trash and black trash. The writer sees that their neighbors live huddled in boxes, three stories high, with outside entrances/exits only in the front and back of their buildings. The writer envisions that their neighbors, encased in their boxes, open the front doors of their apartments and see hallways depressed by the desperate footslog of those who have preceded them there. The writer envisions grayed and soiled carpets in those hallways, effusing the musty remains of hopelessness, of defeat, of a perception of lifes cruel edge cutting their dignity into slices of raw nerve, sour suet.

The writer sees the mommies across the street emerge from the stone boxes. He wonders if they nurture the next generation of what they themselves have become.

The writer sees the daddies across the street. He sees their wives inured to fists, slaps, shoves, black eyes, and bruised thighs. He sees the children with smudged faces, snot-encrusted noses, clothes dulled by the passing down from elder to younger.

A half-block from The Palisade is Colfax Avenue, said to be the longest, wickedest street in America. And it is there the writer sees the Air Force boys. The Air Force boys roam from the base. They walk Colfax, looking, yearningtheir yearn throbbing from their dicksfor the kind of women who will take them for the ride of their livesin most cases their first ride. They seek the old in-out that they, the Air Force boys from Des Moines and Dubuque, Paonia and Pueblo, will talk about until their dicks go limp and their prostates harden. No, that is likely not the case. As they age, buried in their La-Z-Boys, staring at the flash and roar of NASCAR on their color TVs, after their children have deserted them, after their wives have begun to ignore them, after their impotenceafter all of that, they will remember. They will cherish the memory of Colfax Avenue, of the first time they fumbled through the old in-out. They will remember the feel, the texture of the twenty bucks they handed over for their first trip to a fleeting nirvana.

The writer believes the young people across the street, the Air Force boys, the heterosexual young people are destined only to emulate the petty destinies of their progenitors. But the writer is queer. What does he know?

The queers have planted daisies and petunias, red sallies and pansies in flower boxes hung from the black metal railing outside the front doors to their apartments. They have painted their walls in earth tones, and have adorned their spaces with hanging plants and cane furniture. Copious amounts of Pine-Sol, Windex, Ty-D-Bol and Mr. Clean have purified their space, their homes.

The building is an L. From the ends of the L, a six and one-half foot brick wall a palisade surrounds a courtyard that encompasses a swimming pool, spruce shrubbery, spots of flowers, and a lawn. Around the pool are metal tables and chairs, chaise lounges, and inflatable mattresses. This is where they gather in the spring, the summer. Two steel doors give entrance to the courtyard from the street at the front of the L and abutting the alley at the rear. The steel doors open by electronic access code. The queers are safe here. The good doctor and his pretty wife have made them safe here.

The neighbors across the street do not have outside entrances to their apartments. They do not have a courtyard, a pool, or balconies just outside their front doors adorned with petunias and pansies beaming red, pink, blue, and white throughout the spring and summer. Their neighbors wonder, through moments spent gazing beyond their smoke-fogged windows, how queers can be so happy, so demonstrable in their gayness. They do not like the queers. They despise them. To them, the queers are the most pitiable of any of them. The queers serve a purpose. As low as any of them have descended, the queers remain lower.