Trysts : A Triskaidecollection of Queer and Weird Stories

So I wondered why this boy had lured me into stalking him. My first glimpse was on a side street to Royal. He looked vastly different from the other young men walking the French Quarter. Slender and pale, with almost platinum-colored hair that hung loosely down his neck. His dark sunglasses and worn clothes lent the impression he was a night dweller that had crept out for some reason to take a glimpse of the sun.

He left the cafe to walk down the alleys that led back to Bourbon Street--the infamous thoroughfare of the Quarter, but truthfully a disappointment during the day. Those walkways had the rare person traveling besides us, but still I followed, my mind often urging me to turn back but never quite vehement enough that I listened. I wondered why he did not turn around and confront me. My footfalls were neither quiet nor calm. Perhaps he simply chose to ignore my existence. No matter, I was saved when he left the known parts of Bourbon. He passed the Line.

Newcomers to the Quarter hear of the Line if they spend any serious time downtown. Eventually the tourist trappings fall aside, the restaurants fade back, and you are only left with gloomy looking buildings. Most are bars of ill repute squatting down ready to gorge themselves on sodden customers. From the few fellow grad students I occasionally socialized with, I learned that beyond the almost visible line were places a normal guy, a straight decent fellow, just should not go. Gay bars, rough spots, leather dens, areas where your ass either got shoveled or kicked in. And though the warnings were taboo entreaties, I had not the courage to cross.

So I watched him go with a sigh of regret. He never looked back, and neither did I. And the walk back to the streetcar stop seemed bland in comparison.

-- Excerpted from "Path of Corruption" by Steve Berman