Vancouver, while not a safe haven, was less dangerous to queers than small town Ontario, at least in the West End. You still had to watch your back, and did not dare come out to anyone, but except for homophobes that would come in from time to time to cause trouble, we encountered safety in numbers. I started visiting the bars and was also looking for employment. I actually even thought of hustling, or selling my body in the short term, but then I met Barney at a pub, the Castle. He would have been sixty at the time, rather more than my twenty-four years of youth, but we strangely hit it off. Barney was English, and had immigrated to Canada post war, for employment opportunities and somehow ended up in the antique business. Even though he was old, I found him strangely beguiling, and even downright sexy, so that after he plied me with a few highballs I went back with him to his lovely penthouse apartment. When he found out I was struggling between jobs (I had just been fired from a waitering position), he invited me to work with him in his store. Barney was, himself, quite a piece of work. He had a special flair for sequins and gold lamé, kind of like an even kitschier Liberace, and he pulled it off because he didn't seem to take any of it, or himself, very seriously. In fact, I have never known in my life anyone so funny and prone to having fun as Barney. I became his business partner, then twelve years later, Barney was felled by a heart attack, he left me everything and then..."
"And then just months later, I came along", says Michael..
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