Chapter 1
On my way to the terrace door with a laundry basket tucked under my arm, I remembered it was June 1, which meant Pride Month was once again upon us. Trying to balance my clean, wet clothes against one hip, I grabbed a handful of shelled peanuts for a bedraggled but friendly squirrel who’d become the building’s unofficial mascot. Then, I stopped and opened the closet to attempt to bring my rainbow flag, too.
“Time to show my true colors,” I said to Nutter Butter through the glass, her little squirrely tail twitching with anticipation on the other side.
It was a cool day for June. The sun was shining, though, and there was a nice bit of breeze, perfect for drying my underwear and socks.
First things first, I slipped the flagpole into the bracket.
“Lucky bracket.”
Yeah, it had been a while. Just when I thought I might be ready to get back in the game after a broken heart—why do men cheat?—the pandemic hit. Since mid-March, I’d barely left the house. No meeting up, hooking up, or getting it up. Well, not with another guy, at any rate.
I did my part. I social distanced and wore a mask when going out for essentials or takeout to help keep the local family owned pizza joint afloat. My hands were chapped from so much washing, but on the bright side, the clothes drying rack I’d paid four hundred bucks for was actually being used as an exercise machine again. With the weather nicer now, I could hang the wash outside.
Air-dried laundry, the scent was comforting and pleasing. The loud squeak of the pulley as I tugged on the rope for the clothespin bag, that I could do without. An early bird most of my life, I tended to my task before five in the morning, the first hint of a new day just breaking over the Lowell, Massachusetts cityscape. I loved the feeling of having it all to myself. On the flip side, I couldn’t help but imagine sharing it all with someone special.
My unit was on the top floor of nine—way up there. The clothesline, already up when I arrived September of 2018, after moving out of Trevor’s, ran a good thirty feet across an alley between my building and the next one over. The neighbor on that side never hung laundry, preferring the dryer method, apparently. Having never met them, I didn’t know for sure. To me, there was nothing better than snuggling down in sheets that had been out in the sun all day. Sharing that experience with someone else might have been better, but that would have to wait a while, now.
“‘Morning, Nutter Butter.” She finally acknowledged me beyond “How about more peanuts?” A squirrel’s company, as I tended to my daily chores, beat no company at all.
* * * *
Laundry, treadmill, work from home, and more squirrel treats, the next nine hours got no more exciting than that. When I went out to retrieve my dry clothes and the sheets I’d put out an hour later, I did notice something interesting across the alley, though. The terrace railing below the other end of my clothesline now had a bracket as well. Coming out of that bracket was a pole, and at the end of that pole, a rainbow flag fluttering in the breeze just like mine.
“Well, well, well, Nutter Butter. How about that?”
* * * *
Intrigue got the best of me. I stood in my bedroom window longer than I would care to admit that evening, trying to get a glimpse of someone out on the terrace or inside behind the glass door. Was it a couple? Were they two men or two women? Were they family or allies? Maybe I would find out in time.
* * * *
Nice flag!
I was out on the terrace the next morning in nothing but rainbow boxer shorts. June was all about rainbows. Over the next month, my clothesline showed as many colors as my flag, T-shirts, socks, and especially boxer shorts. In July, I wore a lot of red, white, and blue, except on the twenty-fifth, when I’d put on undershorts with Santa or candy canes for Christmas in July.
Nice flag!
It was written in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple Sharpie on a plain sheet of white printer paper. Delivered via the rope and pulley between our buildings, it had been attached with two wooden clothespins. I had to smile. Then I panicked a bit. Could they see me? My hair was wild, the hair on my head and my chest, the latter dotted with crumbs from my English muffin. I did my best to pat down and clean up both, as I sucked in my gut and tried to sip my coffee like a GQmodel.