At first it was hard to make anything out in the dim shadows. There was a small corridor with several doors: a padlocked fire exit, one marked Men, the other marked Ladies. There was usually a small crowd milling about, some men leaning against the wall smoking, others keeping moving in and out of the toilets. The stalls inside would be the scene of frantic movements, low moans and occasional piercing screams of delirious pleasure. The action made the cinematic sex nearby redundant, distant, and...

Bbucko

Soundtrack

I grew up on Boston’s South Shore, the Irish Rivera. It runs from the bleak and gritty urban wasteland of South Boston and Dorchester right through to the disappointingly familiar barnboard tourist traps of Plymouth. I lived in the chainlink jungle of Weymouth, part scruffy beachtown, part dead milltown, part Levittown of cramped capes and ranch houses. A bus ran on the main road at the end of my street to the subway in neighboring Quincy, and from there I could be in downtown...

Bbucko

I rang his bell at the appointed time, and a big, burly guy met me at the door. Obviously one of JD’s straight trade drug buddies. I didn’t know what to expect, but suspected no good could come of the evening. I was led down to a basement apartment in total disarray, with pizza boxes and beer bottles covering the coffee table and much of the rug around it. I could hear JD’s voice cackling and joking with someone in the kitchen. I took off my coat and cleared a spot on the sofa, taking a beer offered...

Bbucko

We left Sporter’s almost immediately and jumped into LB’s Subaru. I pushed a cassette into the stereo and blasted Siouxie and the Banshees as we made our way through the light nighttime traffic to Medford, JD directing me the five miles there. He lived at home with his folks at the moment, having just left a bad situation (JD was always just emerging from a bad situation). As we exited off I93 I asked where we could find some privacy. After much tooling around and red-light facesucking, we settled...

Bbucko

Soundtrack

I have no photos of JD. But I do have this particularly poignant picture from the time. The man in the trucker’s cap is LB, I’m the guy next to him with the Amish beard and glasses. One could say that LB saved my life, and there’d be merit in the claim. When I met him I was twenty years old and my life was in tatters. Endless nights of drugs and men had taken quite a toll on Bucko. My best friend was a hopeless speed freak. I worked seventy-two hours a week in a liquor store,...

Bbucko