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SUPPERBURGER
363
sometime. The thought scares me because most people end up liking
me much more than I like them, and all I can do is get up and
leave and not be seen for a while and perhaps pretend not to see
them if I pass them on the street. The street is the trouble, I suppose,
the one that curves down the hill to the river. I pass many people
there, especially now that I am out of school and see people who
only come out during the day as well as the people I used to meet
in the evenings. That means I meet a lot of ladies, the sort who
live by themselves in old town houses. They all know each other
and get together at the concerts on Friday afternoons and maybe
other times, like at their reading clubs. I have come to like the
concerts a lot because I go almost every Friday with one of the
ladies or another. I meet most of them walking their dogs. I say
something about the dog, and they say something about my hat or
my boots, and then when they find out I am a nice kid and know
how to talk to ladies they ask me for tea. So that way I get to know
a lot of them during the day. My friends from school get out about
four, and I run into them at the Doughnut Shop, and we sit around.
It gets boring, but I like to catch up on what they are doing. Most
of my friends are a year younger, so they are still in school. They
usually go home in the evenings, and I am pretty much on my own
after six, though I do have some friends my age on the hill. First
I stop by my room, just a small one without any bathroom which
I pay for by the week, and I change my clothes. During the day
I usually wear my suede cowboy boots because they do not look
so tough for the ladies. At night I wear the black ones, and I put on
my faded jeans. I spend a lot of money on colored shirts, and I
try
to wear a different one every night. Then I have myoId suede
jacket and of course my hat, which is what the ladies usually like
most even though I cannot wear it to the concerts. Then I go out
to see who is around. That is when I meet men or at least older
kids,
kids from college. I do not usually like
kids
from college
because, even though they are very nice to me and ask me to go
places, they get across the idea that they think they are better than
I am. But sometimes I do not mind them. I met Supperburger
in
the
evening. I knew who he was because they played one of his com–
positions at a concert I went to and he had taken a bow. He walked
past me and did not seem to notice me, but on an impulse I turned
