For June 16, 2023

Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets here https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets/posts/9356440601092585/?notif_id=1686959529961284&notif_t=group_activity

This week’s story,”Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp-Ground” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2023/05/26/tenting-tonight-my-seventh-anniversary-post-friday-flash-fics-from-jeff-baker-may-26-2023/ features my wandering teenage Gay runaway Bryce Going and was written for my seventh anniversary of posting a weekly flash fiction story on (now) Friday Flash Fics. It incorporates some of the experience my late husband Darryl had decades ago when he was homeless for about a year. Darryl and I made a home together and he encouraged my writing and was proud of what I accomplished. So this one’s for Darryl.

It was 1975, I was fifteen, Gay and on my own. Nobody guessed I was Gay but the on my own part was pretty obvious from my dirty jacket and worn sneakers. I was shivering, and I thought I smelled food but that may have been from the nearby store.

The hell with it. I walked over and patted the side of the tent.

“Go ‘way!” came the raspy voice from inside the folds of towel and paper.

“I’m cold.” I said, shivering.

“I said go away!” the voice rasped again.

Can’t leave him out in the cold. Here’s a few more than six lines.

“I got no place to go,” I said. “No place to go…” My voice broke for a moment. I’d run away months ago not wanting to go to a Boy’s Home after my Mom had bailed on me. Didn’t know where my Father was. I was halfway across the country from Philly. So far I hadn’t cried.

I heard a rustling in the tent. Then a flap opened, not where I thought it would and the voice told me to get in. I saw a glimmer of light inside which surprised me, I hadn’t seen it through the tent.

“Get in, quick. And take off your damn shoes.”

And I imagined the great Ray Walston playing the man in the tent. Be back next week with something for Y.A, readers that works for the rest of us, from a fine author who is not me! —-jeff