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I just sit here and wait for the reaper.”

“What adout associating with elderly people?” I
asked.

“Don’t be mad. What have we got in common?
I’m an old fag. I’ve had more tail than all of them
~ put together. And that about sums it up. Do you
think I can sit around a couple of little old lavender
and old lace ladies and tell them about the night
seventeen ‘of us took over one of the baths in Paris
and then called up a seaman’s bar and asked them
to send over seventeen sailors? That would rock the
sewing circle, wouldn't it? , |

“Sex, sex, sex. That’s all the queens think about.
How am I going to get it tonight? They go to a
party and their eyes shift all night. The same at the
movies. Even at their jobs. So they get their quota of
sex. And that’s all they get. Where’s the rest of it?

“It isn’t. It doesn’ exist. They don’t learn their
jobs well. So they end up like me—a floater. Going
from place to place. Thank heavens, there was the
war, or I’d have been on relief long before my time.
I kept going as long as I could. That much can be
said. I did keep myself going.

“You have to build resources for your old age,
interests even more than money. And that number
you had an affair with forty years ago on a