I am autistic. My mates protected me. I had a big mouth. They did not have words for it. “We know you are a weirdo but we love you.” This was a rust belt factory town. Bar fight town. Football town. Poker town. Hunting and killing animals town. Lawn mower town. Car factory town. Beer town. I have known these guys since kindergarten. I have had sex with all of them (don’t tell anyone, okay). Okay. But are we going to kiss. On the mouth. Yes. We will definitely do that. Straight boys are great kissers. Girlfriends teach them how to slow down. We were having sex then up to the day they were married. And beyond. No one grew up. They all went to Vietnam. Three did not come back. We felt free enough to weep in some guys arms. But no one outside the group could see. We would have been ashamed. Working on the line in a factory was what was called the future. Education failed us completely, and we never even knew it. Religion failed us completely, and we did kind of know it. Everyone had a new car. A color TV. That was all you needed from life. I stopped going to reunions. “You think you are better than us.” True. While they were fighting a war, I was driving desperate teenage boys over the Blue Water Bridge to Canada. Being autistic helped keep me out of war. Scenario: Gay writer goes home to see if his friends were still his friends. My bad. I seduced all of them. They had read my books. My books are all about secrets. They read the sex scenes in astonishment. It was all about them.