CHAPTER 1
GAYLORD LE CLAIRE LOVED THE space around him, the furniture, the rug, the etching, all of it. But as he looked around, he longed for something else. Longed for some demonstration to equal the bitter violence he felt within himself. He looked again at the etching and shutting his eyes, wished desperately for something to happen. The time was approaching for him to have a girl and act like a grown man instead of like a timid, adolescent child. Why, why, he cried within himself, can't I be like fellows my age … why can't I feel grown up. He stood still a second longer, a helpless figure in the brightness of the room. Somewhere, somehow, he was certain that in the pattern before him lay the answer to the old conundrum of his life. It was all dim and puzzling, baffling with its secret, and as he sought to understand, it blurred and spun even more before his closed eyes.
For many months he had felt this uneasiness grow. No one he knew was beset with the melancholia, emotional frigidity, or feminine symbolisms he found in himself. And instead of decreasing, as they should, they grew with each passing day. He wanted to fight them, but how? He could not fight things he didn't understand. Why couldn't he understand them. Why couldn't he be at ease among boys his age instead of drawing meekly away. Oh, if only he could. That would at least be one accomplishment.
With a feeling suspended between erotic hunger and intellectual curiosity, he thought of Joe Konarik. Joe Konarik. Big man. A father and only seventeen. His age. He could see Joe's huge physique turning over and over in the slow spiral, moving away from their schoolroom. From time to time one hand held a baby, while the other held the
