It was raining that day. And cold. I think it was January 23^rd. Pages of yesterday’s Washington Post were strewn muddy and trampled on the floor of the crosstown bus. If it was January 23^rd, then the papers of course would have been from the day before, January 22^nd , that is. I didn't know it then, but I was on my way to meet the "boys". Moreover, I had no idea at the time that some twenty years later this strange and twisted encounter with “the boys” would come so unexpectedly to the surface. As if in their ultimate evil they had somehow stalked me across time. It hadn't made sense then and it didn't now. Sometimes that was the way things were. No one had told me about the "boys" so I hadn't any idea, couldn't have, you see, but I was on my way to meet them nonetheless.

Elizabeth had greasy hair. Brown. Past the shoulders but above the waist and finely matted together with body oils at the scalp. Pulled back styleless and plain. There was a guy too. A guy she lived with. And we were on the bus together, on January 23^rd. We were going to Silver Spring in the rain. To one of the large nameless white concrete apartment buildings that ring the Washington D.C. beltway. We didn’t have a conversation on the bus as I remember. We rode in mostly silence, which is probably why I stared at the muddy newspapers on the floor.

There are times when things don’t feel right. Sometimes it’s because you sense something external, but sometimes it’s internal, knowing you shouldn’t be doing something but doing it anyway and with a pit in your stomach. That’s the way it was for me on that bus headed toward Silver Spring on the rainy afternoon of January 23, 1979. Perhaps if I had listened to that voice, that pit, I would have never met “the boys” and wouldn’t now have them as a part of me I can’t seem to carve out. I see them still. Hideous and leering in all their evil. All of them.

Calling the apartment stark or modest doesn’t do it justice. It was fucking empty. Nothing on the walls and no furniture at all in the living area. Maybe there was a small card table and two chairs in the kitchen. Pushed up against a wall or crammed into a corner somehow. Somewhere to eat the minestrone in the rain I guess. And not that it was really poverty or anything, we were all poor enough then. This was empty through design, or maybe neglect or default.

At this point, let me be brutally straightforward. I was there to get drugs. That was the pit in my stomach. The search for drugs takes one many places one doesn’t like. Usually it’s because of threat or danger associated with the illicit. But not for me, not this time. There was something sicker behind all this. And I have to face now that it was probably me. But it doesn’t excuse “the boys” or make them ok.

Before I could get the drugs, there was some strained attempt at showing me the apartment. The empty apartment. As we walked to Elizabeth’s room she explained in detail that her and the guy were asexual. And she meant asexual, as she explained, not celibate, not platonic, but that they, both of them, were committed to personally denying any sexuality biology had so cruelly imposed upon them. And then she showed me her room. It was empty. Except for a pillow, some sheets and a blanket on the floor. Then we went to see his room. It too, was empty. Except for a pillow, some sheets and a blanket on the floor. Both of them. Asexual sleeping on the floor. That’s when they told me I was to meet “the boys”, that is if “the boys” said it was ok..

It was you see a three bedroom apartment. There was his room, her room, and “the boys” room. I was told to wait in the empty living room staring out the window at the rain falling on Silver Spring while they went in to talk to the boys about meeting me. I paced a little, wonder to myself what the fuck was I doing. But the pit reminded me. The pit told me. If I had to meet “the boys” to get the drugs, I would. It was just starting to make my skin crawl a little.

After about five minutes they came out. Greasy Elizabeth and the guy. They told me I was going to meet “the boys”, that “the boys” had said it was ok.. And they explained as well that they never did anything without asking “the boys” first. That was the way it was. They always did what the boys said. Always asked the boys when they weren’t sure.

So we walked back to the third bedroom to “the boys” room. And the room was empty, except for “the boys”. There were probably thirty of them in the room. All lined up sitting along one of the baseboards of the empty room. “The boys” were a collection of filthy disgusting chewed on and rag-tag torn stuffed animals. There were teddy bear “boys” and orange tiger “boys” and monkey “boys” and various other “boys” and greasy Elizabeth and the guy explained that they were all “boys” that none of them were girls, that that wouldn’t work out.

I was fucking reeling by this point, sanity screaming for escape inside my head. But there wasn’t any. That’s where I was, I was meeting “the boys” in Silver Spring in the rain.

And it was awkward. Now that’s a fucking trip, describing this scene as “awkward”. But anyway, it seems as if “the boys” weren’t exactly fond of me. Yes, it would be fair to say we didn’t hit it off. Not that there was any true dislike, it was more neutral than anything. Them sitting silently against the wall and me standing in the unlit bedroom staring back at them. And so it became clear it was time for me to go. But there was still the matter of the drugs, now that I’d toured the apartment and made my introductions of course. None of us wanted this to appear crass.

So she got out the drugs and gave me three tablets. Something like thorazine or perhaps a moderate barbiturate if I recall. And I got back on the bus, in Silver Spring in the rain.

And now, in looking back on it from some twenty-five years later it is time for me to face facts. I had decided on January 23’rd 1979, the very day after January 22^nd, to take the crosstown bus to get a fist full of prescription drugs from a greasy haired mental patient named Elizabeth.

And I’d ended up walking off into some very weird shit to do it. And I knew it, at the time, I did and all along I suppose but not the details - and so facing that now and writing about it with the memory of “the boys” and the day I had to meet them in Silver Spring in the rain, well, I have to live with that now you see, with the boys, with the memory of greasy Elizabeth. And perhaps worst of all, the memory of myself, going to get a fist full of downers from a mental patient in the rain.