Shuttlecock

------------ ShutUecOck - - -- - . Phil Andros Books in Perineum Press Editions Below the Belt, & Other Stories My Brother, My Self Roman Conquests Shuttlecock Greek Ways The Boys in Blue Different Strokes, Stories by Phil Andros & Co. PHIL ANDROS SHUTTLECOCK A Perineum Press Book San Francisco Copyright© 1972, 1984 by Phil Andros All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts in critical articles, no part of this book may be reproduced by any means, including information storage &. retrieval or photocopying equipment, without the written permission of the publisher. Cover Drawing by Tom of Finland© 1983. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Andros, Phil, 1949Shuttlecock. Previously published as: Renegade hustler. "A Perineum Press book." I. Title. PS3537.T479R4 1984 813'.54 83-18434 ISBN 0-912516-78-X (pbk.) Distributed by Subco, P.O. Box 10233, Eugene, OR 97440 To Stanley Reade with gratitude and affection Contents 1. The Guy in the Gutter 2. Doing and Done 1 10 3. One of Three 24 4. Cop and Copout 37 5. Twin Screws 49 6. Surprise, Surprise 62 7. A Change Begins 73 8. Two Good Ones 88 9. A Redheaded Faun 99 10. A Kind of Triumph 11. Red Ridin' Hood 12. Traitor 113 125 138 13. Point Counterpoint 146 14. Deep, Dark, and Dirty 154 15. OnMyWay 165 1. The Guy in the Gutter The fresh Pacific winds blow almost unceasingly across the wide basin of San Francisco Bay; they sweep over the water and cleanse the air of smoke and smog. By nine in the morning the fog has usually burned away in Berkeley, and the light is everywhere-the hard, severe, eternal sunlight of northern California, scorching the eyeballs, closing pupils to pinpoints, and encouraging most people to don sunglasses. One fine morning I was near the entrance to the University's Sproul Plaza, lounging against a concrete post and letting the sun warm my back though my leather jacket. I gazed idly at the passing throngs of students and compared them in my memory with their counterparts I knew as an undergraduate at Ohio State. A mere ten years ago they were short-haired, clean-cut, and sleekly dressed, the boys in tight slacks and the girls in tight sweaters and knee-length skirts. And now there had been a startling change. The boys' hair was long, and jeans were patched decoratively in many places, American flags on their butts, peace symbols on chains or sewed on their shirts and blouses. Beards were the sign of maleness, braless breasts of femaleness. These were the eternal adolescents 1 searching in the flea market of fads for therapies of all kinds-polysexual, mystical, vegetarian, holistic, homeopathic, transcendental. They were the true inhabitants of the land that time seemed almost to have forgotten. Directly in front of me three Hare Krishna disciples were hopping up and down, first on one foot and then the other, banging their tambourines and hollering "Hare Krishna" at the top of their voices. Two of them were dogs-one a heavily acned young man whose pimples ran like a string of garnets clear to the top of his close-shaved head, and the second a short, bespectacled ugly boy with buck teeth and a nose that turned up so far that rain could easily have fallen into his nostrils. But the third-the middle one-ah, there was a beauty if ever I saw one! He was tall and straight, about my height of six feet, and his eyes-though glazed a little, as were the eyes of all three for that matter, from the selfinduced trance they had put themselves in by their yelling and jumping-were deep brown, staring straight ahead, unseeing and isolated. His face had a virile beauty, the kind which Leonardo might have craftily slipped in