Oh, Molly Bolt. Was she my first crush? Maybe just the first one toward whom I was evenly split between wanting and wanting to be a category that only grew over time, and included heartthrobs of all genders.
I read Rubyfruit over and over, starting around 11 or 12, still a couple of years out from my first kiss with a girl. I, too, felt misfit for the place I was from. I, too, wanted to hitch to New York where the other artists were, where the other queers lived.
Would I have been so willing to indulge the fetishes of strangers for a living if I hadn't read about her indelible episode with the grapefruit guy? Probably not. Either way, her story felt like destiny. Molly was my Huck, my Holden, my Pip, my doorway to seeing hardship as adventure, my entreaty to blast forth into a future in which my desires could be realized.
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