Author's note: slash. Title shamelessly stolen from simon and garfunkel. This may be converted to original fiction at some point and moved to fictionpress. Also, I'm not a gay man, I was born in the eighties, and I've only been to New York once in jr high, so forgive me if I mess things up in any of those areas. This is a sequel to my story Afraid ( ) but you don't have to read that unless you want to. Now please read. And review.
Only Living Boy in New York
Prologue
"Ramblin'
outa the wild West,
Leavin' the towns I love the best.
Thought
I'd seen some ups and down,
"Til I come into New York
town.
People goin' down to the ground,
Buildings goin' up to
the sky."
-- Bob Dylan, Talking New York
It had taken Johnny most of a year to get used to the noise in New York. The horns, the yells, the music playing in the room a floor above theirs. When he and Dally had first moved into their crumbling studio apartment, he'd spent most of his nights lying awake, startled back from sleep by a car horn or a loud laugh below the open window. Some nights, his tossing and turning would wake up Dally and the other boy would grumble and push him out of the bed onto the floor with a blanket.
But within a year, he'd gotten used to the hustle and bustle of New York. He wasn't sure that he liked it exactly-- sometimes he would prefer an open sky instead of dirty buildings crowded in front of the stars; he'd like a lazy summer afternoon playing football with the gang in the empty lot. But it had occurred to him that this place felt more like home than Tulsa ever had as he lay there on a summer morning in bed with Dally sleeping next to him. Sun was coming in the open window, falling across the discolored walls and dingy furniture in the room, making all of it look beautiful.
He remembered one moment in particular for years: the color of the sun, the smell of coffee and scrambled eggs wafting up from the grimy diner downstairs, the feel of Dally's hair as Johnny reached out to touch it where it spilled across the pillow.
He carried the memory with him, through all of the hard times when the sky was gray and Dally wasn't next to him. He carried it across the city with him, through grimy apartments where the sun never touched, when he walked down the streets with people whose hair wasn't soft like Dally's. He wasn't sure if he carried it with him as a promise that things could get better, or a reminder that his life would never be as good again.