A Million Stories

Jim Deferio couldn't get away from the rain or the rainbows at Sunday's National Equality Rally. The evangelical preacher drove to Independence Hall to hold a sign with Bible verses and speak through his megaphone.But the crowd wouldn't let him. Every time he held up a sign, groups of gay-rights activists clustered around and blocked it out with multicolored umbrellas. Eventually, Jim rested his arms and struck up a conversation with Ian Hefele, 26, who recently came out as gay after a stint in the Peace Corps.

"I don't think you love yourself very much," Ian said, holding his umbrella over Jim's soggy head. "Because you're here telling me, someone you just met 10 minutes ago, that I'm wrong. You don't know what's happened in my life. You don't know anything about me, except for the fact that I'm finally happy with myself."

"You're not happy," Jim replied, stroking drops of water out of his dark beard. "Happiness depends on happenings, and there's going to be a big happening one day when God takes the breath out of your lungs." Ian sighed.

On a recent gray afternoon, Ed Jakmauh and his wife, Joan Countryman, stood on Delaware Avenue, staring through a barbed-wire fence at the hulking passenger ship, the SS United States. The couple met on the ship in 1966 while traveling as Fulbright scholars. It may soon be sold for scrap, so they came for one last photo. The rusted, faded ship, which still holds the record for the fastest Trans-Atlantic crossing, seemed ghostly in the mist. "It really used to hustle along," said Ed.

Life's good for Ed and Joan. He's a principal of an architecture firm. She's the former head of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy School in South Africa. But their courtship was complicated. Joan was relaxing on deck with her two small children when her then-husband, Peter, also a Fulbright, introduced her to Ed. "In my version, it was love at first sight," said Ed. "In her version, she could have cared less." The two remained friends and married some years later. Now, they remembered their fateful trip. Joan recalled the elegant lounges. "It was like a fine hotel," she said. Ed and Peter played shuffleboard when it wasn't raining, and at night, there was moonlight and the sound of wake. "I don't want to see it go," said Ed. The couple smiled for their photo.

Around 2:30 a.m. on April 11,a black-and-white cab pulled up to the corner of 44thand Locust, dropped off two girls, and refused to take Nicholas Ellis, 23, as a fare. Nick, a friend of mine, was upset by the snub. He pounded his fist onto the hood of the cab, drawing the ire of the driver, who promptly drew a 9-inch butterfly blade, inserted it into the side of Nick's stomach and drove away in a car with his contact number painted on the side.

Nick was lying in HUP 20 minutes later, his chest cut open by surgeons. They had to work fast: When he arrived he was given a 3 percent chance of survival. If horrified onlookers hadn't stopped him from removing the blade, that chance would have dropped to zero.

Today Nick looks like himself again. His assailant, though, was able to drive off without being identified. As of press time the police have no serious leads.