Sean, still smarting over how the League treated his friend Mark, decided to take a break from gay circles and hangout with his straight friends.

He made a bunch of phone calls that afternoon and arranged to go to a Wall Street bistro with the straight guys, to enjoy an early dinner and some spectacular drinks. The bistro was a glitzy place near Battery Park, the part of New York where one catches the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Analysts, associates and vice presidents were hanging out. The bar specialized in garish-looking hamburgers, steak fries and buffalo wings. It was a gaudy place for gaudy yuppies.

Sean told his buddies about his activist frustrations, saying, "I mean, here was this poor guy so badly treated by the League. How can I keep showing them loyalty after what they did to Mark?"

The clique of straight friends soothed Sean. Alan was there. An office assistant who once wanted to act in television, Alan was now married to a woman lawyer who worked in the Midtown area. Terri was there, too. She was a paralegal who was going out with a younger man these days, which tickled everybody. He was an analyst at one of the junk-bond financial houses. That tickled people, too.

One of them said, "Sean, I think it's great what you're doing with this activism. I did that sort of thing for ecology in school. You know, leafleting, marching. If it weren't for activists, who'd be around to challenge the status quo?"

"Besides," laughed an accountant friend. "Politicians are a bunch of assholes. Real losers. They deserve whatever trouble you activists give 'em."

After dinner, Sean said goodbye. The weather, so torrential that morning, was clearing. Strips of turquoise shone through the gray, with a couple of piercing stars, too. It was still cold.

"I'm horny," thought Sean. The frigid breezes punished his face. His circulation throbbed downward, to his loins.

He had wanted to rebel against his own minority by avoiding them for at least one night, but he couldn't follow-through.

Alone, he hit some gay bars in the West Village.

Sean dropped in on an old piano bar at Sheridan Square, where guys of all shapes and sizes were lounging beside tropical flowers; they guffawed, their voices rising over the tinkling sound of Broadway tunes.

Sean ordered a drink and gave the bartender the once-over, for although the man was in his early forties, he was muscley, and still had a party-boy look.

Meanwhile, a macho-looking dentist named Thad took note of Sean, then maneuvered about the floor, drawing closer and closer. Suddenly, he came into Sean's line of vision and growled a sexy "hello". As they introduced themselves, the dentist looked up at Sean's tall frame and eyed his long neck the way a wolf eyes the neck of a lamb.

"What do you do for a living?" the dentist asked, in his gruff, masculine voice.

"I'm an activist," Sean said, tipsily. "No, I mean, I'm a word processor operator."

"I see," laughed the dentist. "And what group do you belong to as an activist?"

"I'm a member of the Gay and Lesbian Social Defense League."

"I heard of them. They do the same sort of stuff that GLAAD or Lambda does, right? Or Pride Agenda, or whatever?"

"We're supposed to be the new kids on the block, but we seem to be running into problems, internally."

"I don't do activism myself," the dentist said, staring hungrily at Sean's square chin, and then up at Sean's dark auburn hair. "Only one way to change the Establishment: buying power." The guy grinned.

"But a lot of queers don't have much buying power," Sean said, perturbed.

"Too bad for them," laughed the dentist. "They'll have to benefit from the trickle-down effect, same as anyone else in their shoes."

Sean made a face, and the dentist laughed.

They talked about the dentist's line of work, then quickly got back to politics. Sean said, "In all these college psych classes, we read guys like Freud, Hoffer and Bettelheim. They kept dismissing political malcontents. Pop psychology calls us sexually frustrated or Oedipally fixated. I rebel not to act out my problems; I rebel because there are so many terrible barriers worth rebelling against. Besides, there are better people than I who have sacrificed on the activist front. I want to pay them back, somehow."

The dentist put his arm around Sean's slim waist and said, "Relax, Babe. Come home with me. I'll show you what activists really need."

Sean obeyed.

At the dentist's home, Sean stripped, for he loved it when more mature men glazed his tall, naked, coltish body with their hungry stares.

The dentist manhandled Sean in just the way Sean liked; making Sean's eyes roll upward; making little grunts come from his lips and nostrils.

In the heat of their fucking, Sean wept, "Please, tell me you don't have a rubber on."

"But I do have one on," moaned the dentist.

"But tell me you don't."

"Okay, I don't."

Now, Sean's pleasure skyrocketed. He screamed.

Both men came, then Sean lay back on the bed, panting. His hair was sweaty and cool and his long slender limbs were completely relaxed. He felt melancholy, but satisfied. His chest and its two pink nipples rose up and down, as though to the rhythm of waves.

Sean stared quietly at this dentist, and found things endearing about him, despite the guy's obvious materialism and tough exterior. The dentist had a wry smile, for one thing, and was like a grabby little kid in ways that made Sean tingle. But Thad didn't seem as emotional toward Sean after sex as Sean felt toward him. Sean assumed, correctly, this was just another one-night stand.