Chapter 16 The Skill Crane Item 1

• SUSAN SAYS IF BABIES aren't touched enough, they die. She hugs everybody at the bar and the softball games and the Lambda meetings. Not me, boy. I don't need it. I'm no baby, Haven't been for thirty-six years, anyway. I don’t need any of that stuff.
• When Susan left me after six years, I cried some, but that was all. I missed her around the house, missed her cooking, mainly. And she used to come in from work with the silliest damn jokes. I missed that. Still do, I guess. But we were never that great in bed, anyway not since about the first couple of years, so I'd already found out that I didn’t need sex.
• Oh, we still had sex. But not often, and not very. . .well, not very enthusiastically, If you know what I mean. Oh, I was a lover in my day, babe, don’t think I wasn’t. But the really best thing about being gay, I've come to think, is nothing to do with what you do in bed. The best thing is being free to be my own woman. You know, dress the way I want, real butch, and cut my hair in a real crew cut, not some half-assed, boyish beauty-shop job. Susan used to cut it for me, but when she left, I learned to run the clippers over it my self, even in the back, and shave it right up to the neckline just like a barber. Took a few tries, but I got it right pretty soon and people quit asking me what the hell had happened to the back of my head. Hell, so it was a little lopsided for a month or so. So what? I didn’t have to pay no barber, did P And I didn’t have to beg no lover, either. I tell you, I don’t need nothing from nobody.