Suddenly, Rudy came flooding back to me.

No, not the former mayor of New York City, with whom I had, in a way, an interesting relationship.

Another Rudy.

There I am. Sixteen years old. In the wake of a pretty amazing dream (which I think I described early on in this blog), I had realized that I was a homosexual. I had no idea what to do with this information, and how to live it out. The best course of action that occured to me was hitchhiking near my home in Pennsylvania. This turned up nada.

On rare occasions, I was able to connect with men for sex. As my hormones were reaching their apogee, this was all too rare for my liking. And so I conjured Rudy.

Rudy was a few years older than me. He wore his blond hair in a military brush cut. He had a tattoo. He drove a motorcycle. He was something of a drifter. He'd travel on his bike from city to city, getting by with hustling, petty thievery, and activities I didn't want to think about.

We met and fell in love. We found an apartment together in Lambertville, New Jersey. The heating was bad and in the winter time, we froze. We were barely able to pay the rent with the money I made cooking in restaurants and the job that Rudy found cleaning a bar. On the back of his bike, we'd head up and down the Delaware River. I showed him all the swimming holes I knew. He taught me the basics of motorcycle mechanics. Once, walking through New Hope late one night, some guys we passed called us fags. Rudy turned around and yelled, "Yeah, and the only thing I think I like better than sucking dick is kicking ass." They vanished. We laughed.

Rudy started to get sullen and distant. I knew it was coming, but I didn't want to admit that. One night, I got home from work, the grease from the restaurant saturating my skin, and he was gone. He left a note. He didn't want to be tied down. If he stayed here one more minute he'd go crazy. A buddy of his told him about a bike run in Arizona he wanted to go to. He said he loved me and told me to take good care of myself.

After that, when I least expected it, Rudy would blow into town and come looking for me. For awhile, things would be great. And just when I was thinking that he was here for good, he'd be gone again.

Rudy was pure fiction. Right outta my head. (Well, the thing about sucking dick and kicking ass actually happened, but it was my friend Kevin, all 230 pounds of him, that delivered that line. I'll have to make a point of doing a blog entry about Kevin.)

Here's an interesting question. Who was Rudy? Was there somewhere a guy on a bike dreaming of a boy with gray eyes living in a Pennsylvania river town? Rudy is so real to me, and he taught me so much, that I can't quite reckon with the idea that he's purely imaginary. There's a lot of real there.

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