The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

SANCTUARY.

At age 17, Randy Mesmer discovered the Cambridge Bird Sanctuary. Predatory, promiscuous homosexuals, it turned out, weren’t nearly sinister as advertised. Men stumbled in and out of the reeds like professors lost at garden party. Some even carried little plastic baggies with a few forlorn wild fruits so that when the Vice Squad appeared they could say, “Officer, I’m just gathering berries!”

All summer, as the wind bent the reeds in the sun, men ruined their good shoes chasing each other through the muck.

Randy Mesmer was immediately hooked. Happy to romp with the Harvard boys, with the loons and the trolls and the unemployed.

“I’ll take a later bus,” he said. Pretty soon it was dark. (It’s important to note that this wasn’t a stage to which Randy later sank, this was the starting point.)

Still hopeful in the pitch black, Randy Mesmer found a marvelously tall stranger standing very still just at the edge of the reeds.

Just this one more, Randy promised himself. Then I’ll go home.

He walked past the guy and waited. Then he turned and looked again.

Oh hell. The tall mysterious stranger was only a nice-looking birch tree.