Kevin Corrigan and Me
Page 18
When Mom asked Kevin what he was doing with his life, he explained that he lived with his girlfriend on Madeira Beach, where he helped crew a commercial fishing boat; it sailed weekly from the John’s Pass Marina in search of grouper.
“I’m out in the Gulf for days at a time,” he told us. “My girl doesn’t like it, but the money’s good and the guys on the boat are fun.”
I’ll bet they are, I thought while I studied Kevin’s inscrutable visage.
I’ll bet they are…
No photograph accompanied Kevin’s obituary when I read it this morning. I suppose the Times charges extra for that sort of thing. But since today is Saturday, I took the time to leaf through pages of a photograph album I’d found at my mother’s house several years ago, not long after she passed. The album was the kind with heavy black pages that mumbled when I turned them. The crinkly edged black-and-white snapshots in the album were held in place by little gummed corners Mom had carefully positioned on each page.
Most of the photos depicted me and my sister during various stages of our childhood and adolescence, but then I found one of Kevin and me, taken back in our Jungle days. We wore our hobo Halloween costumes. We had smudged our faces with burnt cork so we looked like we hadn’t shaved in a week, and we stood before the Corrigans’ front door with our arms draped across each other’s shoulders.
We looked about as happy as two boys could be.
About the Author
Jere' M. Fishback is a former journalist and trial lawyer. He lives on a barrier island on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Website: http://www.jeremfishback.com
Other books by this author
Tyler Buckspan
Becoming Andy Hunsinger (Coming Soon)
Coming soon from Jere' M. Fishback
Becoming Andy Hunsinger
Blurb
It’s 1976, and Anita Bryant’s homophobic "Save Our Children" crusade rages through Florida. When Andy Hunsinger, a closeted gay college student, joins in a demonstration protesting Bryant’s appearance in Tallahassee, his straight boy image is shattered when he’s “outed” by a TV news reporter.
In the months following, Andy discovers just what it means to be openly gay in a society that condemns love between two men. Can Andy’s friendship with Travis, a devout Christian who’s fighting his own sexual urges, develop into something deeper?
Also Available from NineStar Press
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