Au revoir, Hotlanna’

16/03/2013 By gaydinosaurtales in 1974-1975 Atlanta, NYC 1972-1983 Tags: Atlanta, born again, Dodie's Diner, gay relationships, grits, Mason Dixon Line, NYC, Phipps Plaza, the other woman 2 Comments

No matter where we go during our time here on earth, we cannot help but collect people along the way. Some we welcome into our hearts and they become friends-casual or close and all remain with us in some form until the end of the road. Many are simply personalities who flash before our eyes. Their photographic images are burned into memory. The time I spent in the South made so clear why the likes of Faulkner, Williams and O’Connor blessed us with the caravan of characters they created out of the red clay of their peculiar America. Here are some who remain with me from my Atlanta days.

Miss Lettice was the lady across the hall from me in my apartment on Lombardy Way NE. She was somewhere between forty and fifty, not diminutive, but as fragile as Belleek porcelain. Marshall knocked on her door the day I moved into the building to let her know he was leaving and I would be taking his place. I glimpsed only a snippet of her form as she opened the door enough to allow the width of her mouth to be visible, clutching a jungle print robe to her throat. She breathed a gentle salutation welcoming me and questioned where he was moving, before softly shutting her door. He admitted he’d never seen much more of her than that. She ventured out of the building only a few times each month, waiting to do so when no one was around. I might have seen her dressed for those infrequent outings less than half a dozen times. Her outfits always included matching handbag, hat, shoes and gloves as though she were going to tea with royalty, when most likely she was taking the city bus to the Buckhead section of Atlanta to shop at Phipps Plaza.

Whenever I was coming or going, I would catch Miss Lettice peering out into the corridor, her door typically cracked only an eye’s width (there were no peepholes) checking to see who was where. At first I would acknowledge her eyeball with an appropriate greeting of ”good morning” or “good afternoon” but she would blink silently and pretend she wasn’t there. After a time I began to play along, acting like her covert snooping was as invisible as she evidently believed it to be. Often I would go to my mailbox in the small vestibule while she was gathering her mail. Then she would smile shyly and greet me. She always called me “Young Man” as though it were my christian name. After one or two polite sentences concerning the weather she would glide back to her apartment.

She wore voluminous dressing gowns to the floor, styled decades before-things I had only seen in movies of the 1930s and 40s. They might seem costume on anyone else, but she moved so comfortably and with such panache that she carried them off as though they were sweater and jeans. Her dyed light auburn hair was always perfectly in place, arranged with hair pins in a sort of French twist affair and girlishly curly in the front. She wore little make-up: thinly penciled brows, dark red lipstick following cupid shaped lips between heavily powdered cheeks. She was delicate and still pretty in a tragic sort of way. She never married and the mystery as to why she never did hovered about her like a perfume.

One morning, as I drank my coffee and savoured a companion cigarette, I heard a smashing clatter coming from the hall, or so it sounded. The crash was followed by a weakly plaintive shriek. Before I was able to detect which direction it had come from, there was a rapping at my door accompanied by a muffled “Young Man. Young Man”. Miss Lettice was in trouble. I threw open my door to see her full-on in the hall, wearing that jungle print robe over one of her gowns, waving her arms and babbling. She was animated and agitated like I had never imagined she was capable. Something horrendous had transpired in her apartment and she beckoned me follow her.

Just beyond the door, a wobbly wicker stand with three glass shelves had crumbled from either the weight of cosmetic jars and bottles or perhaps just the years of use it had obviously seen. It left a bit of a mess, but Miss Lettice had become a total mess. “Can it be…mended, do you think?” she spoke eloquently, while trembling thin hands tried forcing together a large shard of glass shelf with a crumbling chunk of wicker. I suggested we first begin cleaning up the shambles of broken glass and goop before a proper diagnosis could be made. She rearranged her morning fright hair, which poked out in all directions, as she left me to retrieve a broom and trash can.

While she was out of sight I surveyed the home of Miss Lettice, more a museum of vintage clothing and bric a brac. It was as though I had stepped into a colorized version of the snapshots my parents had of their early years of marriage, BC (before children). Layers of curtain and drapery covered all the wonderful windows, blocking the sumptuous southern sunshine. Heavily fringed once-white lampshades were everywhere, perched atop lamps on various tables compensating for the absence of light. Her bed was dressed in ruffles and flounces and was the focal point of the room. An AM radio cabinet and old heavy black phone were the only visible pieces of technology. Although a bit cluttered, her apartment was clean, but it lacked air and what was there smelled stale.

We salvaged a few items which hadn’t broken and she arranged those on one of the many small tables. The shelf had self-destructed and I carried its remains to the trash barrel out back in the yard. She was still horribly shaken, her eyes darting nervously in their sockets each time I returned for more. I invited Miss Lettice for a cup of coffee at my place but she declined, confessing she needed to lie down before a headache came on. She thanked me profusely and I left thinking perhaps her mini-tragedy might make us better neighbors. Stepping back into my apartment I heard her lock and then double lock the door, confirming that nothing would change. And it didn’t. She peered at me as always. Her eyeball was the last thing I saw the day I closed my door the final time on Lombardy Way NE.

* * *

People who work in restaurants tend to eat in other restaurants a lot and one of my favorite Atlanta breakfast spots became DODIE’S DINER. I began frequenting it several days each week after a waiter-friend from work first took me, citing DODIE’S a genuine Southern treat. It was a classic diner out of the 1950s, complete with a giant horseshoe-shaped counter, behind which reigned Dora, more a character than any movie stereotype one might conjure. (I know, Dora from Dodie’s Diner smacks of fiction, but honest-to-god I have not strayed from the real truth on this, one iota!) It was a busy joint all day with two other waitresses, yet folks waited to sit in Dora’s section which was more than half the horseshoe.

Not only was Dora a master server, she was a priceless human being whose enormous heart hung visibly from her short sleeve, which barely covered plump arms. Everything about Dora was pudgy. Her cheeks, neck, back, rear end-hell, even her fingers were porky little fat sausages which struggled to hold a pen to write your guest check. A two sizes too small pastel-colored nylon uniform hugged her descending rolls of fat so snuggly, that she appeared to be built like the little Michelin Man. She was a bleach blonde well beyond her years and each day she wore a pony tail hairdo with poodle pom-pom bangs. Dora used heavy liquid make-up base of a ruddy orangish hue. This was evident by the glaring line of demarkation where it stopped at the jaw line. From there down her chins gave her up as a china white Southern Belle. Pinned artistically like a corsage each morning was a uniquely beautiful hanky. It was requisite to ask Dora, the minute she greeted you, the significance of that day’s kerchief.

My waiter friend and I were boys from her collection of mostly male customers. She holds the distinction of being the only person in this world who consistently called me “Shugah”. My friend was “Darlin’”, another “Sweetness”-endless terms of endearment for each Tom, Dick and Clem who parked his ass at her counter. Dora carried on with us all, quasi-flirting in her chubby coquettish style. At no time did any one of the men cross the line of decency, all treating her with reverent respect, but playing along as though she were every one of our Scarlett O’Haras.

She advised you personally about the daily fare: “Y’all better stay away from that ham, ‘less you love lickin’ salt” or “Musta’ used old stockins for a filter, ‘coz coffee’s mighty mean tastin’ today”. She taught me to love grits, (which this boy from Ohio had never seen let alone tasted before), and when questioned as to how I should season them my first time she instructed: “jes’ lottsa’ buttah and peppah’d nahsly”. She then proceeded to prepare the grits on my plate for me in a gentle motherly way. “Want me to fix those for ya’ Sugah?”, she would ask each time as she finished anointing them with black pepper. Dora also introduced me to replacing my usual morning juice with a small glass of room temperature ‘Doct’ Peppa’, although many customers preferred ‘Coke-cola’. I had never considered it before DODIE’S DINER, and haven’t enjoyed it with breakfast since.

* * *

His name was Rob, my waiter-friend who introduced me to Dora. While the majority of the wait staff were in their early twenties, he had just entered his thirties. He was a man while we were still clinging to our boyhood and silliness. Most of the waiters were single, or dating or finding a new beau every other weekend at the bars. Rob had been in a committed relationship for almost ten years. It made sense because he was a serious guy. Rob was quiet when others were loud and campy. I had easily become part of their shenanigans and enjoyed myself, yet I was drawn to Rob’s quietude. He was the one I was assigned to ‘follow’ when first training as a waiter. Even though he didn’t appear as open as the other guys, he dropped his guard with me. Not having a car myself, he offered to drive me home each night after closing. Once behind the wheel, he gained confidence and a voice and revealed himself, bit by bit on those car rides home.

In high school back in Alabama, when he was sixteen or seventeen, he’d gotten a girl pregnant. For some bizarre reason, instead of giving the baby up for adoption, his mother took the child and raised her for him. Thus he had a daughter/sister back home, a teenager now herself. It is unclear today if she knew that he was her father or not, but it was definitely the reason he left home and moved far away to Atlanta. That anxiety-producing part of his past he spoke of very little and I did not press him for detail.

His current dilemma which monopolized most of our conversation those first evenings concerned the boyfriend of nearly a decade, Parker. He’d cheated on Rob a year before. As a result of his transgression, Parker had gone back to church and was born again. In 1975 I believe this was the first time I had ever heard about this phenomenon. By accepting Christ as his personal savior, of course he could no longer practice homosexuality. He wanted to continue living with Rob, still loved him, they just couldn’t make love together-ever again. Rob was so committed to him, so loyal that he was consumed by this bullshit, dying a little himself along with their relationship. Why he ever chose me as confidant was unclear. It was painful to listen to and watch. And schmuck that I am, Rob innocently pulled me slowly into the fray with him.

Rob was no taller than me; in truth, I was perhaps an inch or so taller but he gave the appearance of being bigger. He had broad shoulders, a beautifully developed upper body and small tight waist. His hair was sandy brown and full, eyes grey and he had a ruddy complexion. His skin was heavily textured from acne scarring, but like Richard Burton, it enhanced his sexiness. Deep creases on either side of his mouth only added to his masculine beauty. Between those folds lay an inviting moustache I would watch dance as he spoke softy. To look at him it appeared as though he didn’t have a gay bone in his body, especially when compared with the nelly crew which was our wait staff. It was not that he was hiding anything-he was an out and proud gay man, something that unnerved Parker greatly. He was just a guy perfectly comfortable in his gay skin. After two weeks, with each of us exposing our naked souls, I could no longer help myself. Adding to Rob’s problems, late one night in his car in front of my apartment building, I announced I had fallen in love with him.

He was not surprised, nor was he ready for the consequences. Within seconds of my proclamation, he leaned over from the driver’s seat and kissed me like I don’t remember ever having been kissed before. Although I had no doubt about the genuineness of his passion, I believe many months of frustration from Parker had colored the emotion behind it. So began my stint playing ‘the other woman’ in a convoluted storyline written by someone else. Prior to meeting him, I had already been preparing to shorten my Atlanta promise of “give it a year” to “I’m going back to NYC in the spring”. I was having a fine time, but deep inside I understood I did not belong anywhere near the Mason-Dixon line. Suddenly this guy Rob had me back-pedalling.

Parker had a day job, so by eight or nine each weekday morning Rob was at my door with plans for the day. It would be breakfast at DODIE’S or brunch or an early lunch somewhere intimate. He avoided being alone in my apartment for more than a cup of coffee and good morning kiss. He never took me anywhere near their apartment even though Parker knew I existed. I was referred to as ‘his co-worker from NYC’. I’d certainly been called worse. According to Rob, Parker had no clue about our relationship. I told him that was only fair, seeing as I had no idea what the two of us were all about either. We’d go shopping at a mall, or sometimes just drive around Atlanta, rehashing his predicament. Once my heart became entangled, it was difficult to remain neutral or suggest some way to make their relationship work. Staking a claim for him myself, there was only one viable outcome I could campaign for which was a totally selfish one. This went on for over two months.

In all that time there was only one day, one rainy, grey and glorious day when we spent nearly all the twenty-four hours alone together in his apartment. It was a Sunday and Parker had gone on an all-day church bus trip. Ron picked me up at the first light of dawn. He’d set a pretty breakfast table and cooked for me. For one of our very first times we talked about us and the possibility of an us replacing the nonentity which had once been them. I suggested he run away with me to NYC. It had been something I’d mentioned in jest as a possible scenario early on, which grew to a secret dream I harbored once I’d fallen for him. We spent the day in each others’ embrace saying very little, naked and hot making up for his celibate frustrations and my long anticipated ‘other woman’ desires. We enjoyed each other in every corner of that apartment except their bedroom. There was even an unforgettable shower scene. He drove me home, well after midnight, actually coming into my apartment this time to kiss me goodnight. Then he thanked me for saving his life.

And so in early March of 1975 I took the train back to NYC, a little more than six months after arriving. I did not find a real theatre job, nor had I taken much of a bite out of the Big Peach, but I had found something more wonderful. As thrilled as I was to be back in the city where I belonged, I had left him and so much of myself behind. He was pragmatic and knew he couldn’t just take off without properly closing the door on Parker and all that comes with ten years of life with someone you have loved. What I did not count on was the fact that Rob was weaker than the man I saw in my mind’s eye. Without my presence there to lovingly prod and push, there was the fear that he might lose his momentum.

We spoke long distance several times each week. Sometimes I would catch him in a super-positive mood and he’d talk about looking at jobs in the Sunday Times. I would send him the Village Voice with circled apartments that sounded perfect and he’d ask about the neighborhoods. Other weeks he would talk about Parker as though he hoped things would go back to how they used to be. Still other calls he’d be packing suitcases and driving up on the weekend, or he’d hint that I should come down to see him because he missed me. After a month of phone calls, his voice sounded thinner and I sensed Atlanta had grown further away from me and NYC might as well have been in the middle of the Sahara for Rob. It became the worst case of broken heart imaginable, some of the emptiest feeling my soul has ever endured. At two months, almost as long as he had been in my life, I knew it was not healthy to be bearing such pain. It was our last phone call that I got angry and told him “stop saying you love me, because you’re hurting us both when you do”. I begged him to leave Parker and the very moment that he did, no matter what time of day or night, I prayed I’d be the first one he would call; I would be waiting. My phone never rang.

A Cavalcade of Birthday Memories

27/12/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in Childhood, College 1968-1972, Junior/Senior High School, NYC 1972-1983, The Nineteen-nineties Tags: Le Cirque, NUNSENSE, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, surprise parties, Y2K 3 Comments

I’ve had many, many birthdays since my earliest recollected fifth, and even many that I don’t remember at all. Like thirty. I know I was living in New York City, yet there is not a glimmer of recall at how I spent it and thirty is such a nice round number you would think there should have been some memory. And yet I see vividly my seventh, because I had my first “kid” birthday party with boys and girls from both school and the neighborhood. There was my mother, hosting over a dozen rowdy rugrats in our rec room, while being nine months morbidly pregnant, carrying my soon-to-be-baby brother.

The theme was circus, so of course it was clown everything: plates, cups, napkins, tablecloth, party favors and matching cake. The only thing NOT clown was the Pin the Tail on the Donkey game which I hated playing, because already at age seven I understood the meaning of passe. Mom’s ankles were swollen like the balloons hanging from the ceiling and she was feeling miserable, (she was only months away from being forty years old), but she was smiling and cordial to all those rambunctious little bastards who were my guests.

About half-way through the fete, after traveling up and down the basement steps schlepping for the umpteenth time, I caught a glimpse of the angst and discomfort show through her own painted smile. She resembled the clown faces that surrounded us everywhere we looked, pretending to be happy for my birthday while these rotten kids were making a mess of everything and creating still more work than her poor, expectant body could ever handle. On top of all this, my father was on the verge of his first ‘nervous breakdown’, a concept we were all learning to comprehend and work into the daily routine of our simple lives. I can never look back at seven and not first flash to that seminal period of our family history when crazy took over the reins.

At sixteen a friend from high school named Gemma attempted to throw a surprise party for me. She was supposedly cooking a birthday dinner at her parents’ house at 8:00 p.m. which was tres chic for West Buttfok, Ohio where by 5:30 most everybody had already finished doing the dishes even on Saturdays. We were super-close pals and had been hanging out together for a year or so. I’d gotten ready way ahead of schedule so I decided to walk over a little early. Maybe I could help her out with the cooking. I showed up at her door a bit before 7:00. I still remember her little sister’s face at the door, totally shocked which seemed odd as she adored me and enjoyed when I visited because I fussed over her. Gemma came up from behind her with shower wet hair, clutching her bathrobe to her chin. She looked really pissed and before I could say a thing she announced something to the effect of “So surprise, asshole”, (she definitely used that particular term of endearment), “you just blew your own surprise party by being the first one here!”.

Twenty-five was one of those birthdays that I judged as a traumatic mile marker. I was aggravating myself for several weeks before, announcing to anyone who would listen that I would soon be celebrating my Silver Birthday. It sounded like such a pivotal number. You could be in your early twenties and still be considered just a crazy college kid. That had long been my excuse to family elders my first few years in NYC trying to land an acting job. They viewed it as having no career and absolutely no direction in life. (Forget about the fact that I was unmarried with no sign of a girlfriend.) Twenty-five I was somehow interpreting as a serious signal that my frivolous years were behind me. I took the day off from work. I spent my entire birthday alone going out for breakfast, lunch and dinner and in between meals traveled from one cinema to another, taking in three different movies. I was home in bed and asleep by nine o’clock that night, over-fed, filmed-out and now seemingly devoid of my youth.

My fortieth birthday was spent in NYC even though I was living in an eight-room Victorian on the common of a sleepy New England town with my partner Alejandro. We went into The City for the weekend to celebrate. My good friend Giuseppe took me to lunch at Le Cirque and spent a fortune on a simply amazing afternoon of food, wine and conversation. To this day I don’t believe I’ve ever enjoyed a more magnificent luncheon! Then it was off to the theatre to watch a college friend play Mother Superior in NUNSENSE. She was incredibly funny in the role and just seeing her ultra-Protestant self in her nun’s habit was a scream to this forty-year-old lapsed Catholic/lapsed thespian.

Turning fifty looked to be an inexorable milestone. The year was 1999. My mother had died that June, so it was official – I was now an orphan. Everywhere we turned we were being bombarded with Y2K hysteria. I refused to stuff my mattress with my meager life savings and my retirement package likewise was going to stay put, doomsday advocates be damned. Certain unnamed relatives of mine in Michigan were stockpiling dried beans and rice in the cellar to no doubt observe their End of Days final meal. What sort of last hurrah style celebration would be appropriate for my golden birthday with all these factors considered? I settled upon a trip for David and me to see our dear friends Mickey and Minnie in Orlando. My younger brother and his family flew down to meet us, as we had vowed after Mom’s funeral that we would get together before the end of the millenium to do something together that was actually fun. It was a childishly wonderful fifty we all celebrated that year.

Once you have tallied these many years, birthdays seem to take on another meaning all together. You truly miss those friends and family who aren’t around any more to mail a card, make that phone call to sing an off-key version of the birthday song, or send an email. Now your refrigerator’s face is peppered with those ubiquitous little doctor’s appointment cards reminding you (sometimes seemingly into the next millenium) that you are mortal, slowly falling apart piece by piece. Yet even though I begin each new morning with an aspirin and three different pills for my blood pressure, I am still that foolish twenty-five-year old. When I pull on a pair of jeans I wonder why the tag reads W34 when I am certain my waist is the same 29 inches it has always been. Passing the medicine cabinet mirror as I stagger into the shower each a.m. without my glasses on, why do I catch a glimpse of my grandmother? The woman has been gone since 1990. I have always adored her, so why should she haunt me?

I think for my seventieth, if I am still around and still possessing all my marbles, I shall throw for myself a surprise party with a clown theme. I am betting I can pull it off without a hitch. And by then, so much time might have elapsed that Pin the Tail might have come round full circle again.

Double-O-Seven, Mrs. Robinson and Bonnie Parker

04/11/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in Childhood, Junior/Senior High School, NYC 1972-1983 Tags: 007, classic movies, late late show, movie stars 1 Comment

I was weaned on the black and white films of the late 1930s and 40s which were the only movies you could watch on television as I grew up in West Buttfok. On Friday nights two of the three TV channels in Cleveland showed old movies and my Dad stayed up till they signed off, sometimes after two a.m. Usually I was snoozing on the sofa by midnight, unless it was a detective movie or a film noir epic. I had been captivated by the big screen on the little screen. Movie stars for me were Bogart, Claudette Colbert, George Raft, William Powell and Myrna Loy. Saturday nights there was something called Milkman’s Matinee and depending on the film, it could be close to dawn before the second film ended. I typically passed out sometime after the credits for the second feature. These movies I viewed in fits and starts while drifting in and out of REM sleep. Often they were British cinema classics and as a youngster, it fascinated me to hear the Queen’s English instead of America-speak. Already at ten years old I wanted to be a movie star myself so that Greer Garson could be my mother. She was the consummate female in my book. I own a copy of Mrs. Miniver on my iPad and watch it several times a year and weep harder each time she dies for me in Goodbye Mr. Chips.

In the mid 1960s I was old enough to start going to the movies with my friends. I met a girl (a transfer student my freshman year of high school) who was unlike any other human being in West Buttfok, Ohio, then or since I would wager. Her name was Gemma. My English teacher shared with me in strictest confidence that her IQ was nearly 160. She spoke French fluently, sketched effortlessly and read and reread the classics voluminously. She was totally withdrawn and loathed anything that was typical high school. Gemma was my first atheist and diagnosed me the first week as most probably agnostic. At school she connected with only a female student in her art class and me. Shortly after our meeting, she lamented the fact that neither of us had licenses, because the only Art Film House in greater Cleveland was on the far east side. I remember not even knowing what-in-the-hell an art film was in 1964, but certainly never let on. I longed to be a member of the West Buttfok cognoscenti which was composed of Gemma, her art friend and myself – if only I kept my ears open and my mouth shut. But what I did know was how to manuever the Cleveland Transit System’s buses and trains, so we began taking in films twice a month.

Gemma was greatly chagrined that at fifteen I still had not seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or Les Parapluies de Cherbourg as she persistently coached me to pronounce “en l’original”! We saw the film twice. Then came Georgy Girl, The Collector, Darling, A Man and a Woman. My movie stars list morphed to include Terrence Stamp, Julie Christie, Alan Bates and the Redgrave sisters. It was at this time that American cinema began to change and even we started making some ‘films’ and not just ‘movies’. Likewise, British imports became mainstream American favorites when 007 invaded our shores. Even Gemma went to see Goldfinger.

By graduation in 1968 our cultural relationship cooled considerably, but my passion for movies only grew stronger. Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate were life-changing cinematic milestones for me. They came at the same time as my realization that I may be going to college the following school year to become an English teacher for my parents’ sake, but in my heart of hearts I knew I would live a life in the theatre. After a few successful roles on Broadway to establish myself, I might consent to do a film – if the story were worthy and the part a real challenge to my craft. Now I would no longer be content with simply meeting movie stars to ogle and have them scribble in my autograph book, but instead become their colleagues and peers.

Due to reasons way beyond control, my road to fame dead-ended about six years after moving to NYC. Yet as a resident of Manhattan one of the greatest perks is all the famous people you see just by walking down the street in the course of your daily routine. I once followed Barbra Streisand (along with a snaking line of about twenty others) up Third Avenue for six blocks one fall afternoon. I literally bumped smack dab into Steve McQueen, each of us walking full speed in opposite directions on West Eighth Street – and at five foot eleven I towered over the tiny ‘man’s man’.

Lunchtimes I frequented a small restaurant off Lexington Avenue near Bloomingdale’s, when health food was a relatively new thing. They made sprout sandwiches and fruit and veggie shakes. I would stop in for a pita pocket at least once a week for take-out. There were ice cream tables along the window where seldom anyone ever sat. Waiting for my order, I glimpsed this very attractive woman at the table nearest the door eating alone. Something about her made me want to take a better look, but I didn’t dare stare. Not so nonchalantly, I glanced over my shoulder as though looking towards the open door. She caught me mid peek and coolly smiled with gorgeous eyes. There was this familiarity about that sultry smirk and full mouth. As he handed me my lunch, I asked my friend the sandwich guy “Who is that woman by the door?”. He leaned in close and whispered right into my face “You don’t recognize? Man, that’s Faye Dunaway”. He then put a finger to his lips, signaling our secret. I turned, taking my time towards the door. I was a foot from her table as she wiped the corners of her mouth seductively, looked directly into my eyes and delivered her only line: “You have a good day now”. I had been seduced.

Those brushes with movie stars are fun and memorable, but I was able a few times to get a chance to crack the stellar veneer and get a glimpse of the person underneath. While shopping for a bath robe for my Dad one Christmas at Wallach’s, an exclusive Fifth Avenue men’s store, I found myself in a smaller salesroom off the main floor where fine scarves and gloves were displayed in elegant glass cases. A stately woman was shopping, her impeccably tailored winter-coated back towards me. When her salesman left for the stockroom, she turned to study the display on the counter nearest me. Immediately I recognized the regal Angela Lansbury. My face instantly lit up but I stopped myself from gushing and pouncing on the woman. “Good afternoon” she delivered like an entrance line in a play. She asked if I was enjoying the holiday season and had I found what I was looking for, as though she were on staff. We agreed that Christmas shopping was meant to be a pleasant pastime rather than a chore. I explained I was waiting for my father’s robe to be boxed. She had chosen some scarves she felt would be perfect for some difficult giftees. She was so pretty, so fresh and genuinely warm and made our few minutes alone together heavenly. I remember feeling she’d shared with me as she would a dear friend, chatting about how she was spending her holiday. As I was handed my box, I took the liberty to be a fan and thanked her for her incredible stage work, referring to her perhaps a few too many times as ‘Miss Lansbury’. Eloquently again, she thanked me for my compliments. She reached out and shook my hand, wishing “A very Merry Christmas to you and your family. I’m sure your father will love his robe”. It made my holiday. It could only have been better had she sung a chorus of Need a Little Christmas.

My job at the custom furniture business afforded me several of these episodes. Our showroom was cozy in comparison to some of the others on our floor. At the end of the hall was a huge space specializing in business furniture that dealt with designers who handled large corporate firms. The man who owned the company was a friendly older guy, whose only fault was that he would pimp his grandmother to sell a fifty dollar desk chair. During a slow period one summer, he rented out his space for a week to a movie crew filming a Sean Connery picture. He was playing an Arab diplomat. Using lots of expensive executive furniture they reconstructed a boardroom. The first two days they did nothing but haul equipment into the showroom. The rest of us on the floor were instructed to stay away. Our office was right inside the doorway, so sitting at my desk I had a view of the comings and goings and incessant food deliveries, but couldn’t see anything of the set unless I was out in the hall. The third day a dozen or so actors arrived, all of them unknown faces, but no Mr. You-know-who. It wasn’t that he was one of my favorite stars, but he was mega-famous in 1975 and the thought of being so close for an entire eight-hour day was akin to foreplay.

The morning of his arrival techies with headsets swarmed the hall. A small entourage exited the elevator surrounding him so I barely got a glimpse of his Double-O-Seveness. Bummed, I assumed chances of my meeting him were dashed. By the noon hour I grew weary of waiting and immersed myself in the daily routine. Summers saw little foot traffic into the showroom so my work was accomplished over the phone. Late afternoon grew deadly quiet. I heard slow, heavy footsteps in the hall coming close. It was Sean Connery, alone, carefully pacing down the corridor – all six-foot-two inches of him – in a perfectly tailored European business suit wearing bronze make up to give his pallid Scottish coloring a believable Arabic glow. He was forty-five and although I’d never seen him before or since, I would say he was at his pinnacle of sexy good looks. He stopped at my doorway briefly peering to look inside, nodding silently with a faint smile. My heart pounded at the sight of his beauty. He continued walking, the sound of his footsteps diminishing as he went back the other way.

At least I got to see him up close, I thought, closing my eyes to record his image on the backs of my eyelids for posterity. No sooner had I opened them, when I heard his now signature footsteps approaching once more. He stopped again at my door, looking as though he was about to speak. Of course “Bond. James Bond” was what I expected to hear. Instead he began “This is what I dislike about this job – the waiting around” or words to that effect. “Please come in and sit down”, I invited him. We had a showroom full of beautiful, comfortable chairs. Surprisingly his candor had put me so at ease that I’d managed to not make an ass of myself by behaving even remotely like a giddy fan. He explained he’d already spent the better part of the day sitting and waiting. They had decided to reset half of the lights so he knew this was going to be a long day. He told me a bit about the film’s story and as he talked, I got up and carefully walked closer in small stages to get a better look at the British hunk. He spoke gently and softly, but there was a masculine aura you could feel that made him more attractive than his exceedingly good looks.

“What is it that you do here?” he asked me. I laughed, embarrassed at my silly job that seemed a zero compared to his.

“I’m just …an office worker”. I was nearly tongue-tied, a rarity for me. “I just wait around for someone to come in or call so I can sell them an expensive sofa or chair”. What a stupid thing to fall out of my theatre-trained mouth, I thought instantly.

“So the both of us do about the same thing. Wait around for other people to eventually tell us what to do”. This certainly is not a direct quote, but still the gist of his statement. What a gentleman, I remember thinking, trying to find a common denominator to attempt to put us on equal footing. No wonder he was such a cool James Bond. That is my definition of true class. I asked about his shooting schedule and he gave a rundown of the next month or so. My boss always kept a bottle of J&B Scotch in the office for special clients, but I couldn’t imagine offering 007 a small white Dixie cup of Scotch with a splash of water from the sad cooler in the corner of my office. Within a few more minutes of small talk, mostly directed by Himself, we shook hands, wished each other well and he sauntered back to his set, leaving me in mine.

An interior designer who was a client of that same showroom down the hall was doing work for some special residential clients. The husband and wife were VIPs, I was told and the wife was coming in alone to shop for club chairs. A designer typically NEVER allows a client to shop without them, but these people were being given some TLC because of who they were. I assumed they were some super-rich nobodies whose names I wouldn’t recognize anyway. The designer asked if it would be okay for the wife to stop in our showroom to look around as well. It didn’t matter to me and now my curiosity was peaked in case this was a possible famous movie couple. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were the only possibilities that came to mind.

The day arrived and I came to believe this VIP would be a total bust. Early that afternoon a woman appeared in the showroom. She was average height, nicely built and wearing a white linen suit – collarless jacket and tailored pants. It was the kind of outfit most well-dressed designers might wear on a hot Manhattan summer day and that is what I took her for. As she neared my desk I got up, walking around to greet her when all at once I recognized this was my mystery client. “Miss Bancroft”, I nearly squealed, covering my mouth with my hands in disbelief. “I’m Anne”, she said through a big wide smile, reaching her hand out to take mine. I was standing before Annie Sullivan and Mrs. Robinson and I still had her in my grip and could not let go as I gushed on and on.

“It’s you. They didn’t tell me who was coming…” I babbled like the village idiot I had transformed myself into at the sight of one of my idols. Then I started apologizing and she calmed me down by saying something like “What would you do if you met someone really famous” and threw her head back laughing hysterically at her own joke. I joined in and relaxed enough to realize this woman was here to look at chairs. I began leading her around, asking what she was looking for, where it was going and she shopped like any client might. She found one she particularly liked. Sitting in it she said she needed a pair and that she and her husband were more concerned with how they felt rather than what they looked like. I giggled a little inside, knowing the husband she was talking about was the nutty Mel Brooks. Seeing her there before me I still couldn’t imagine those two a couple.

She said she liked the feel of the chair she was in and wiggled her butt deeper into the seat cushion as she comfortably grinned. Rising from her chair she began “This may sound strange, but can I throw myself into this chair? That’s how I sit down in it”. Giving her the go ahead, I watched her collapse into the chair from a standing position – once, twice, then three times. She nodded in approval. I just remember looking down at her face not more than a yard away from mine. She remarked that I must think she was silly, putting my poor chair through such a strange test. I assured her I had seen much stranger behaviour in my days in the furniture biz. I confessed that I still found it hard to believe I was talking to her and stranger yet that she was talking to me. “My God”, I announced, “even I wanted to go to bed with Mrs. Robinson. And I ended up gay!”. She sat back in her chair, howling hysterically.

“There was a compliment there somewhere, I’m sure” she remarked through her laughter. “I gotta’ tell my husband that one!” And the two of us roared some more.

P.S. Her designer never ordered our chairs, but she was certainly my best customer ever.

What’s the Story, Simone?

27/08/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in NYC 1972-1983 Tags: acting resume, JGE Appliance Stores, S & M, tequila shots, What's the story Jerry? 1 Comment

I am so ancient, such a dinosaur, that I can remember when even cable television was a novelty in New York City. I arrived there in late 1972 and according to Wikipedia, the both of us were laying down roots about the same time. Within the first six months of my life in Manhattan, I lost my television in a custody battle after being evicted in an apartment share gone bad. I learned to exist relatively TV-free for the next five years. No one I knew with a television had access to the new cable industry but from reading about its early history, it sounds as though none of us was missing very much. What was there was mostly public access fare – nothing to catch the attention of regular TV connoisseurs of the day.

Something which had quickly gained popularity on the tube in those early 1970s was a series of badly produced commercials on greater New York local TV for JGE Appliance stores. The chain was open to “union members and Civil Service workers only”. It’s owner, Jerry Rosenberg, who was also it’s only spokesman, became an overnight New York legend. Sporting a hard hat, the pot-bellied loudmouth was always perched atop a large appliance of some sort, while an off-camera voice asked “What’s the story, Jerry?” He responded with “What’s the story?” then went into reciting a list of appliances and their brand names in his gruff, unpolished Newyorkese. What’s the story caught on like wildfire and even Upper East Side elite had incorporated it into the vernacular.

In these same times I was buying my weekly copy of BACKSTAGE, checking for auditions in hopes of landing the job to kick into motion my still-dreamed-of theatre career. In my quest I continually saw an ad seeking actors for a weekly entertainment show on Cable Channel “B” . They were looking for talent to perform spoofs of current media topics and the news. The ads never were specific as to age, gender or physical description and no one I knew had ever ventured to check it out. Because it had been awhile since I’d auditioned for anything, I was longing to satisfy the actor in me. Phoning the number from the ad, I chatted with a guy who was friendly and informative. He invited me to come a few days later and “hang out with us”. I asked outright if this was legit and he answered that it was non-union, but certainly not porn if that was my concern. “What harm could it do?”, I wondered, though I distinctly remember telling no one of my plans. At worst it would end up being just a little something to add to a stagnant resume.

It was a great apartment on Central Park West, filled with video equipment in an almost furniture-empty living room. There were three guys on the production team talking with two young women actors. All were seated in wooden kitchen chairs that somewhat lined the perimeter of the make shift studio. Prominent was a badly bleached blonde chick who dominated the group. She was brash with an acute Bronx accent. The guys were getting a kick out of her because she was such an air head, proving it with each sentence that fell out of her big mouth. I’d brought my portfolio of $400 worth of modeling photos that the guys were politely leafing through as they openly guffawed at the big breasted ignoramus commanding the center of attention.

After an uncomfortable fifteen minutes of feeling totally out-of-place, another two men showed up, obviously already part of the mix. With their arrival, the guy from my phone call brought out a bottle of booze, a large container of salt and some limes. “Let’s do some tequila shots and talk about what we need to get through tonight” he announced, filling the area between his left thumb and index finger with salt. I’d heard of tequila, but had never tasted it – knew what shots were, but where the limes and salt came in was way beyond my ken. I refused to not look like anything but super cool and compared to the Bronx bimbo, I had to be able to pull it off. The tequila was so medicinally foul-tasting to me that the salt and lime were a welcome relief. The bottle passed between us at least three times before we finished hearing the evening’s schedule.

One of the two late arrival actors would be doing the booth announcing for this week’s show. The only piece they would be video taping was a spoof on the JGE Appliance commercial. It was for a fictitious Simone’s S & M Warehouse, and the most likely candidate for the role of Simone, a dominatrix, was hands down the blonde bimbo. The more likable woman left. The guys thought I would be great as the voice who asked “What’s the story, Simone?”. The bottle was passed again as we went over ‘the script’.

This would definitely be Simone’s piece in which to shine. I would begin by posing the pivotal question and she would go off into reciting a litany of S & M paraphernalia featured at the warehouse. She was given a cat o’ nine tails whip to use when accentuating certain items on the list. There were things neither she (nor I for that matter) had ever heard of. She insisted knowing not only what they were, but how they were used. Our rehearsal was truly enlightening on multiple fronts. Certainly these many years later I cannot recall them all, but I distinctly remember the first two items which were tit weights and ball stretchers. There also were the basics: handcuffs, gags, restraints, and leather hoods. The poor thing couldn’t keep the items straight. We were all of us pretty well loaded now after polishing off the bottle of tequila. The production staff was adamant she recite them in the exact order written, so they ended up making cue cards to insure she remain true to their script.

Then there were the costumes. Simone wore a black leather bra and panties, fish nets and 5″ spiked high-heeled patent leather boots. She was only 5’2″ or thereabouts, weighing perhaps a hundred pounds, but the girl was all breast – easily 40 D or better. She spilled over the cups of her bra. She loved it. Her concern was she wouldn’t know what to do with her hands. They added to her whip a black double-headed dildo, at least a foot long, which she would brandish in her other hand. Oh yes, and I had a costume as well. I would not be just an off-camera voice like in the commercial we were spoofing. There was a full harness with black leather pouch and a leather hood with zippered mouth opening for me. At the time I was just a hair under six-foot tipping the scales at a hundred forty pounds with a 29 inch waist. The chest portion of the harness could be adjusted to sort of fit, but the waist was fashioned for a much beefier dude. We made it stay on, but the pouch was loose, only remaining in place if I stood perfectly straight and didn’t move.

Problem was, as the scene begins, I am on all fours, ass to camera with masked head turned to deliver my line “What’s the story, Simone?”. There I remain the entire time. Simone is perched on my lower back, straddling me backwards, my naked ass framed between her thighs and knee-high boots. The firm leather pouch holds my penis in place, but my scrotum dangles visibly somewhere below. The production guys are roaring with a visual even they could not believe we’d created. I am so buzzed from my tequila christening that even I think my pendulous balls are funny. Our actress Simone is the only one not laughing, worrying about reciting her list of sadistic accoutrement in the right order.

The camera rolls.

ME: What’s the story, Simone?

SIMONE: What’s the stawh-ree? We got tit weights! We got boo-awl stretchas. (she cracks the whip).

Simone is supposed to get up at this point and walk to the right to continue. She walks totally out of camera range.

SIMONE: Here at Simone’s S and M Warehouse….

CREW: Cut!

They explain to her she must stay in camera range. She nods, thinking she’s got it now. We begin again and this time, a bit further on her list, she walks too far to the left. We have done at least four takes and she has barely gotten half-way through her list. I marvel at her stupidity. Even the guys aren’t finding her as funny as they had before the tequila. Deciding to make it easier for her, she will now stay put on my back and simply alternate the appointed whip cracking to either side of us. This works well except when she needs to whip to her left. She gets confused “becawze I got da’ dildo in dis’ hee-and”. A few times she smacks my ass with the big dildo instead of whipping and once again the guys are hysterical, like this chick is Lily Tomlin.

After what feels like umpteen takes, all of which we’ve stopped to review together, we agree we will do it only one more time. I don’t believe in these days video equipment of the more ‘affordable’ variety has the capacity for editing. Simone feels confident she can get through it. I had come down from my tequila high long about take number three. Now I just want to go home. Production is ready to buy another bottle. Instead we begin our final take.

Miraculously, Simone is performing flawlessly. She hasn’t failed even at the complex left-sided whipping. She is actually funny. Each whip crack is expertly crafted and stronger and more deliberate than the preceding one. She senses things are going so well that at one point, she gets up and moves left. We all hold our collective breath. She realizes she’s erred just prior to her whip crack and tries to self-correct by quickly sitting back down on me. She strikes my bare ass in the process. I flinch slightly in pain, muffling an audible “aaahhhh”. The crew cannot stifle their laughter. We actually have made it to the near finish. Simone reaches the last item on her list, delivering it spot on. Then comes our ending.

ME: So, that’s the story, Simone?

SIMONE: That’s the stawh-ree!

(FINAL WHIP CRACK)

Which she delivers, unrehearsed, between her own legs, flagellating my dangling, unprotected ball sack, dead on. Instantly I collapse in beyond-excruciating pain, wailing. Simone slides off me, falling ass over tit, hitting the floor. The crew is howling, so hard in fact, that no one can call “Cut”. Now Simone, the accomplished cable TV star out flat on her butt, sits up and screams “Cut!” Again, “Cut” (with a seated whip crack) “Cut gawd-dammit”.

Of course it was better than anyone could have hoped for. They retained every moment of Simone’s brilliant improvised ending. Although my testicles were still aching, even I laughed like a fool when we watched the play back. You couldn’t have planned something so hysterical. It was like a trained stage animal shitting on the floor in the middle of an important scene. They decided to use the piece regularly on their show. They invited me to come back and to please keep in touch.

I did neither. At first I worried it had truly been a bad decision to sign the release form after making such a naked fool of myself for absolutely nothing but a few slugs of awful tasting booze. Knowing my ridiculous behavior had been captured FOREVER on video tape continued to gnaw at me for weeks. But how many people even had Cable Channel B at the time? And of that miniscule percentage of the eight million people in the city who did, what were the chances they were so bored they were actually watching anytime it might have aired? Besides, anyone who could recognize leather-hooded me from those three minutes of video, certainly had to be an extremely familiar intimate. It did become a NYC credit on my resume plus a great anecdote to pull out at cocktail parties.

The Corn Stand Caper

07/08/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in College 1968-1972, Junior/Senior High School, Musings, NYC 1972-1983, The Nineteen-nineties Tags: AIDS, best buddy, class reunions, college jobs, friendship, gay relationships, summer jobs 2 Comments

That schmaltzy poem about ‘friend for a season/friend for a reason’ has made its way into nearly everyone’s email inbox, but the truth is you are extremely fortunate if you have made even one friend for life. The high school clique that had formed in my sophomore year, due to a formidable yet ephemeral young drama teacher, hung together even after we graduated and left West Buttfok. Deb Mae remained home our first three years of college. Billy, my closest compatriot attended a small state school in southern Ohio. Selma and Eddy went to Kent State with me, although with twenty thousand students it was easy to lose hometown acquaintances, so we tended to lead separate lives at university.

Deb Mae had been Debbie until The Group went to see Bonnie and Clyde our senior year of high school. The two of us were so taken by the film, we went back the following day and sat through two consecutive showings (remember when you could spend the day in the movies for the price of one admission?). We adopted these truly lame southern accents, so in order to make her a more believable belle, I christened her Deb Mae and it stuck. The two of us had solidified a friendship the first year of high school, long before Mr. Allen came and worked his magic. She was new to the school, having gone through eight years of Catholic indoctrination. We often walked home together, living just a few blocks apart. Debbie’s mom died when she was eight, leaving her father with three children – another daughter, five and a baby boy, three. The day her mother passed away, her father returned from the hospital, took her aside and announced “your mother is dead, so you’ll have to be the mommy now”. She assumed the role seamlessly, cooking, cleaning, raising her siblings and keeping everything in line, including a sometimes unruly Dad. She did a remarkable job, seldom complaining about her lot.

I would stop in regularly on our way home. She’d make a pot of coffee for me (she only drank Tab) and we would smoke cigarettes and kibbutz as Debbie cooked supper. We realized a few months into our friendship that we had been in the same kindergarten class. It was easy to remember the only kindergartener in the entire school with pierced ears. She was of Hungarian descent on both sides, and a blonde beauty to rival any of the Gabor sisters. Wonderfully female, curvy and attractively big-busted Deb Mae possessed the sweetest, softest voice and a loving heart.

Eddy and Selma I had known since sixth grade chorus. Eddy had always had this ‘thing’ for Selma and they related to one another like a feisty, sparing couple who’d been married for at least thirty years. She was tall and lanky with long, straight hair and bangs – the perfect hippie. He played piano and loved the Motown sound long before we even knew there was a name for that kind of music. Eddy needed to hear a tune on the radio only two or three times before he started banging it out on the keys of the nearest piano. He was our accompanist whenever we wanted to sing, possessing a biting sense of humor that made us roar. A Polish American, he bore the brunt of all those horrible pollack jokes which were the mania of the time.

Billy was my nemesis turned counterpart. Sitting in the desk directly in front of me in homeroom from seventh grade on, I hated him because he was so heinously obnoxious. He was loud and silly and so horribly fey it made me uncomfortable to be in his presence. I was acutely aware of my own feminine propensities, doing everything I could to keep them at bay. Here was this flaming fairy mocking himself in a desperate attempt to gain attention anyway he could. I either ignored him or ridiculed him until Mr. Allen cast us in productions and our characters were forced to play off one another. In time we grew to become brothers. I’ve had no closer friend in this world than my best buddy Billy.

The first two summers everyone came home from college. Returning to the womb to work and save for the following year, no sooner would we be back when those group dynamics would kick in and we were tenth-graders again. Eddy would be bossing everyone around trying to get us to do whatever he selfishly wanted. Billy, ever the idea man with a relentless drive to see it through, choreographed our lives as a group, scheduling each minute and chaufering us in his family’s pale turquoise Rambler station wagon. Deb Mae was our heart and our den mother. Selma was the misfit in this group of misfits. She was there because Mr. Allen had put her there and neither Selma nor any of us ever challenged his decision. She was one of those sad souls who meanders through life with a dark cloud hovering overhead. Me, I was the mediator, the peacemaker who smoothed the ruffled feathers which regularly came from five people foolishly attempting to live life as a single entity.

We’d started our own West Buttfok Summer Theatre after graduating from high school, so at night those first two summers we rehearsed for a show like we always had. Even though we all loved theatre, it was more of an excuse to not be apart. As if this extreme togetherness wasn’t already more than unhealthy, and our summer jobs were not enough, Billy devised a scheme to make some easy money on weekends. We would open a corn stand – yes, a CORN stand.

Billy’s Lebanese grandfather had done this for years. He lived on the last rural route in West Buttfok where a handful of old family farms still existed, although none were in operation. Some of the families kept large vegetable gardens, selling tomatoes, peppers and the like on the roadside when there was an abundance they couldn’t consume themselves. Being business savvy, his grandfather had hooked up with a farmer about thirty miles away who grew sweet corn and he bought it weekly to sell with his homegrown vegetables. He told customers he grew it all out back in his fields.

Billy figured we could do even better, being college students working to pay our way. Selma’s folks lived on that same road but at the opposite end from Grandpa. Our only problem was her back yard was small, which was evident from the road. The story we would tell was we grew the corn, but “on our farm in Aurora”, (exactly where the corn did come from – so we wouldn’t really be lying). Selma’s parents thought our scheme was brilliant and loved helping our enterprise.

The first weekend we had one hundred dozen ears delivered. At the crack of dawn Saturday morning the farmer’s truck dropped off these oversized burlap bags filled with more corn than any of us could ever have imagined. Concerned we surely had been cheated, Eddy charmed the girls into helping him count each bag full. There was a substantial overage. We paid 35 cents per dozen for which Grandfather-up-the-road charged a dollar. Being new, we opted for 75 cents a dozen. We sold out early that first day, more than doubling our money, disappointed there was nothing left to sell on Sunday. The next week we increased the order to two hundred dozen. Greedy Eddy longed for more, so he talked Billy into visiting a wholesale produce market in Cleveland at five a.m. and buying tomatoes and cucumbers. Again, there wasn’t a veggie left by Sunday afternoon.

Billy and I realized that with blonde, buxom Deb Mae and long-haired, hippie chick Selma kept front and center, cars were stopping, looking and buying. Eddy worried that the girls might give incorrect change, cutting into the profits, while Billy and I feared that his obnoxious personality might frighten customers away. In the end, we all hovered around the corn stand the better part of the weekend. Between our theatre background, group dynamic and the delicious Silver Queen corn, we were moving lots of produce and having a great time together doing it. We planned on running through the last weekend in August. We’d built up quite a following our first month and regular customers were bringing us new ones.

Early in August Billy got a phone call from the Corn Man. They had over picked their fields and would not be able to supply us for the coming weekend. Billy and Eddy were devastated. The girls and I said no big deal, we’ll just sell the vegetables from the market. Billy worried that no one would stop without the corn piled high on the side of the road and promised he’d figure something out. Friday night, when typically we all took in a movie, he announced the solution. He contacted a neighboring farmer near our supplier who could give us as much corn as we needed, but….we would have to pick it ourselves. “How hard could picking corn be?” I can still hear the pollack saying.

The plan was for the three guys to drive separate cars in a caravan before dawn, pick enough corn to fill the first car and return to Selma’s so the girls could open. We would drive the other cars back when they were sufficiently corn-laden. Deb Mae and Selma would go to the wholesale market to buy the produce. The most remarkable news was the corn would cost only 15 cents a dozen since we were doing the real work. We could all hear the cash register which was lodged somewhere in Eddy’s chest going”ka-ching”.

My bedroom was pitch black when Billy and Eddy frightened me awake with their cackling taunts to “git up boy, we gottsa’ pick us some corn!”. As we reached the farm, the sun was finally visible and the owner gave his five-minute lesson in corn picking. The three of us had dressed for perhaps a backyard barbecue, but certainly not to manuever our way through the tall August growth. There was barely enough room to work your way down the endlessly long rows. We were shooing off pesky bugs who were busy biting as the early sun was toasting us. The long green leaves on the stalks had razor-sharp edges which microscopically sliced our arms and legs and there was no avoiding them as we reached into the plants to pull off each ear. We were giddy and sweaty and scratched and achy but we were picking with a frenzy, filling up burlap bagfuls of corn, desperate to take advantage of the 15 cent price point. Eddy drove the first car back, eager to check on the girls to see how they fared at the market. He was uneasy leaving this task to anyone other than himself.

We spent another several hours picking, but by noon the overhead August sun was unbearable and we still had to fill the cars with so many bags full of corn we barely had room to drive. Unloading the corn back at Selma’s, we guesstimated we’d picked way over two hundred dozen – much more than we paid for or had ever sold in one weekend. The girls bought two crates of beautiful Chiquita brand cantaloupes at an incredible price along with the customary tomatoes and cukes.

As I came out front to sit with the girls, I saw an obviously heated and animated lady hanging out of her car window, gesticulating with a cantaloupe under Deb Mae’s nose. Our Deb was so gentle she would never defend herself so as I ran to her rescue the woman leaned out further. “Is there a problem, Ma’am?” I asked approaching. She slowly began “I was just asking your college friend here how you grew these beautiful cantaloupes with a built-in Chiquita label? Special seeds, maybe?”. This was a huge oops. Well-intentioned Deb Mae had been telling people the cantaloupes were grown on “our farm in Aurora”, without checking for the colorful label stuck to each melon. Thankfully there were no other customers around as I attempted to make Deb Mae look innocent, however this lady felt she’d been duped. We gave her all her money back, plus a half-dozen ears of corn with our apologies. Luckily my corn-picking battered body served as proof to her that we did grow the corn and she apologized to us profusely once Billy and Eddy joined in Deb’s defense, similarly bruised and bleeding. “You kids are really hardworking. Your parents should be so proud of you!” and off she drove.

We chastised the girls for not peeling the labels off the cantaloupes and we waited in fear that someone else might show up and cause a similar scene. No one else did complain, but at some point that afternoon, we agreed this weekend should be the swan song for our corn stand. We’d made an incredible amount of money, deciding it best to quit while we were far ahead.

Epilogue

Billy left for acting school in London midway through his junior year of college. Deb Mae moved to Houston with an aunt and uncle who were ex military to find a husband. Her mission was accomplished quickly but she was divorced after only three or four years. I never even met the guy. There she remained and ended up with a Texas drawl which sounded remarkably like her bad Bonnie Parker imitation. I moved to NYC and Eddie landed a public relations job in San Francisco after we left Kent State. Selma began teaching and moved to Florida a few years later, eventually marrying and having a son. We’d managed to get out of West Buttfok as we had always dreamed, just all to separate parts of the world. The years began to pass quickly. Around Christmastime we would make our way back to the scene of the crime, but never all of us at the same time. We didn’t see Billy for years while he was in Europe, but he corresponded regularly. Before the end of the 70s he came back to the states and moved to L.A. It looked as though time and distance were wreaking havoc on The Group.

It probably shouldn’t have seemed anything but obvious that inevitably all three of us guys came out around the same time and later settled into long-term relationships. I never met Eddy’s partner, but Billy and I shared several wonderful visits both on the West and East Coasts with significant others in tow and alone. The piece de resistance was 1988 and our West Buttfok twenty year class reunion which I’d vowed since graduation day I would never attend. The group came together, deciding we would meet in spite of the high school we all loved to hate. It was a three-day weekend I treasure to this day. We celebrated our five years of breathing as one – laughing, crying, holding on to our youth for dear life. Each of us left our spouses in their respective homes so as not to bore them and to give us the freedom to be our silly tenth grade selves. We were all thirty-eight, grown up and responsible, each of us stunning in our own way, yet malleable enough to sneak back in time to our golden callow days. It was seventy-two hours of unabashed bliss in which we relived our life moment by moment, memory to memory.

It was there, on the last evening before boarding planes in all directions back to real lives that Billy told me his partner of nearly ten years was HIV positive. Billy wasn’t being tested yet, because he was healthy and needed to begin his role as caregiver. His companion was gone in a little over a year. Deb Mae was visiting Eddy in San Francisco and the two went to the memorial service. Eddy announced shortly after that, he too was positive. It was something I had almost grown accustomed to hearing about in our community in those days, but when it came so dangerously close the hurt was all the deeper. A few years later Eddy was hospitalized for the last time with pneumonia. I called and spoke with his sister who stood vigil over him and she held the phone as I told him to keep fighting, knowing from the feeble, broken voice he had long-lost the battle. He was buried in a small cemetery in West Buttfok. All these things came so swiftly together I cannot say exactly when Billy told us he also had fallen prey to the insidious plague. THIS was more than I could bear.

Luckily he was able to get the cocktail and though he battled a laundry list of incredibly gruesome diseases, he lived and worked and traveled and we corresponded and spoke regularly for several wonderful years. He spent a few days in Boston while in a period of exceptionally good health and we had a fabulous visit, even though it was obvious there was a third party coming between us that we neither wished to name or face. My best bud Billy died in 1998, six days short of his forty-eighth birthday. He requested that I speak at his memorial service in L.A. but I knew he was always the stronger of the two of us and that I could never weather the pain of such an ordeal. I wrote a piece entitled A BEST FRIEND and his sister delivered it for me at his celebration. His passing was one of those slap-across-the-face realities that causes you to sit up and marvel at the gift we so take for granted.

So it was Deb Mae and me. Selma had drifted from us soon after the reunion, cutting off all communication. Deb learned she was divorced and battling an auto immune disease which made it difficult to teach and raise a son on her own. Deb Mae and I made it a point to chat together monthly. She held a top position for a huge corporate travel company – imagine – the girl Eddy doubted could make proper change for 75 cents worth of corn. She never remarried but had a long-term relationship with a guy who could not commit for over a dozen years. She and I now met in West Buttfok every other year during Christmas. And as wonderful as it was to be together, as much as we laughed, reminiscing about The Group, our bad jokes, pranks and fights, I sensed we both were thinking the same thing: who would it be? Who would bury whom? She had written on the back of her senior picture “If you die before me, I’ll kill you”. She often said it to me in jest, until the deaths began and it ceased to be funny.

One of those years we didn’t get together for Christmas, we also hadn’t touched base until a few months afterwards. When I finally called, she was short with me, asking why I was calling. I was totally taken off-guard. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” I asked my friend of a million years. She assumed someone from her family had called to tell me the news she couldn’t bring herself to share with me. The virus she thought she’d been battling all winter was actually stage four lung cancer. It looked bad. No, it was grim. She had an appointment with a new oncologist who was doing a drug study. She would try anything, she told me sobbing. I began literally shaking in fear of her words, making those horrible grimaces you can when invisible on the other end of the phone, finally breaking down to cry along with her. THIS JUST WAS NOT FAIR, GOD DAMN IT.

In six months the tumors had shrunk remarkably and she was feeling good. She could laugh again and make plans. We met in West Buttfok and spent a weekend visiting and she got to meet David. We had begun planning our committment ceremony for the next spring, and she was excited to finally get to see Provincetown and to celebrate with us. Other than a wig, she seemed to be her old self. Everyone was hopeful.

Then there were these spots on a brain scan and a whole new treatment regime began. It nose-dived from there, but she still talked about what she was going to wear and what we would do in Cape Cod after the ceremony. In a few short months she ended up in the hospital. Once again I found myself making another deathbed call, talking with yet another sister. The cancer had spread rapidly throughout the brain. She was losing motor functions and the ability to speak, but she could still hear. Her sister held the receiver for her. What could I say to the girl I met in kindergarten, the woman I adored like a favorite sister? All I managed to get out was “I love you, Deb”, over and over. Palpable emotions and this awful moment in time had caused me to lose the ability to speak myself. She babbled some unintelligible sounds into the receiver. Her sister assured me her face had registered she knew it was me and that she understood. She died the following afternoon, April 2, 2003, a month before our committment ceremony.

So it was me. At fifty-three I was the last one. What were the statistical chances of my surviving them all I wondered? Who cares. What a sense of loneliness I was feeling! I longed to know if there was some purpose in being the last one. Was I saved because there was something left undone for me to do, or was this all some grand cosmic joke? Though I had decades ago shed the mantle of The Group to take on my own persona, there was still a comfort in remembering the safety we had shared in our cocoon. It shielded us as outcasts in a place where none of us felt we’d ever belonged. And when I needed some protection to not be so alone, I found I’d been left instead the lone custodian of memories for people and stories and laughter that had now fallen silent.

My Big Break Into Show Biz

30/06/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in NYC 1972-1983 Tags: audition, bruised ego, dinner theatre, gay actor, Lovers and Other Strangers, Mount Airy Lodge, Mount Pocono PA, New York City 1970s, theatre 2 Comments

At the end of my last semester at University, a good friend gave me a Saint Genesius medal as a bon voyage gift, telling me the story of the ancient Roman actor turned patron saint of theatre. It was a neat little treasure and although a lapsed Catholic, I nevertheless had great faith in charms and trinkets, trusting anything might help launch my acting career. I wore it around my neck to every audition I went to my first few months in NYC. No luck – it wasn’t even bringing me call-backs. Deciding it might heighten the powers, I tucked it chain and all into my shirt pocket, closer to my heart, but this brought no detectable changes. Every several weeks I relocated him: right front pants pocket, left back pocket and so on and so forth. Still at each audition I was just another face, a dark brown, curly-haired, big nosed “18 to 25-year-old” skinny guy who showed up, as did dozens of a remarkably similar description for the same ONE role. I didn’t seem to elicit anyone’s interest - could not stand out from the crowd.

I had auditioned for what seemed like every non-union dinner theatre from New Jersey to Kansas. I sang out brightly when it was a musical, or acted (quite possibly over-acted) scenes from the many popular contemporary comedies which were the typical fare of this popular American theatre genre. To paraphrase a dear friend who made a lucrative living during these times, dinner theatre was most often a bad smorgasboard interrupted by two hours of mediocre entertainment where the rolling in of the dessert cart got more applause than the curtain call. I wanted at least a chance to judge for myself, please Saint Genesius.

Somewhere around month five or six in my life in The City, I spotted an ad in Backstage for an audition for replacements in a production of “Lovers and Other Strangers” at Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos, the honeymoon haven. I believe it was for ten or twelve weeks and it alternated with another production of a similar comedy during each week. Casting would be by a guy with a name like Jerry Silver or something, a supposed comedian who I don’t think anyone but a Borscht Belt aficionado might possibly have ever heard of. I reminded myself that this time could be the time and I remember struggling with leaving my questionably not-so-good-luck medal home, in the event it might be working against me. As I put my key in the door to lock the apartment, an uncomfortable sensation went down my spine. I shook off the feeling and ran back in to grab Saint Genesius. I closed my left fist around him, where he stayed the entire trip uptown, opening my hand periodically to focus on his martyred face. Once I entered the rehearsal studio, handed in my picture and resume and got an audition form to fill out, I had to put him somewhere, so I stuffed him into my sock against my ankle where he’d never been before.

In from the hallway bounded Jerry Silver or Something, a small, slight man most probably mid-forties, radically thinning hair brushed back in the hopes of still being considered a pompadour and what was there a noncommittal grey. His face was unmemorable even then. He acted hyper, but was using the energy in hopes of coming off zany and effusive and funny. He was none of these things. What he was, was the man with the jobs, which all of us actors instantly understood and so politely we chuckled at his sham. He was dressed in a beige or brown pure polyester blazer with some uncoordinating colored trousers and a very noteworthy paisley print shirt. The entire ensemble looked as though it had been slept in numerous nights. For certain he resembled none of the directors I had become used to seeing in my brief audition experience. Typically they were hip looking, or had some wacky ‘theatrical flair’. This guy could well have been mistaken for a Soviet refugee.

He explained the show had been up and running for several weeks, but some actors were leaving for other commitments. They were looking for one guy in his early twenties and two women. The resort was also putting together a new brochure and they would be using the younger actors to model as honeymoon couples, paying a separate per diem modeling fee. Surveying my competition, there were no Robert Redfords, thus I felt I stood as good a chance as any of them. There were many more women than men, so each of the guys got to read several times before being given the “thank-you-you’ll-be-hearing-from-us-soon” spiel. By the end of the afternoon it got down to about a dozen women and five or six guys. He asked that we come back the following afternoon. I promised myself to not say a word to anyone or get my hopes up the least little bit, yet my heart was doing a little song and dance inside about what a great job I must have just done.

I told only my roommate about the call back, though wrestled with calling my parents in Cleveland. If I did call and then wasn’t cast, it would have stung even the harder. I longed however, to make my theatrical un-career seem more plausible for them. The next morning seemed to take an eternity, but as it turned out, I needed the time to put together the best possible wardrobe to make myself look believable as a “straight” newlywed. Lines in a script I knew how to interpret, but this honeymoon brochure thing had me a bit concerned. Whatever I ended up wearing, it also included Genesius tucked back into my sock, because he truly must have possessed powerful magic to get me this far.

Waiting for Jerry Silver or Something at the studio, I recall chatting with a couple of the actor wannabees outside in the hall. They were questioning his competency. No one had ever heard of him and the image he projected, or lack thereof, was also unsettling to say the least. We all came to the same conclusion, that being, a job is a job and ten or twelve weeks is hardly a lifetime. He arrived manic and as disheveled as the day before – same jacket and pants, different ugly shirt. We read scenes, changing partners as he carried on his tired banter and delivered new, bad one-liners. He temporarily excused the women and asked that the guys remain in the room.

He announced he wanted each of us to tell him a joke before we left. We looked at one another, thinking this was the joke. It was absurd; we weren’t stand-up comics. My thoughts raced when I realized the only jokes I knew were filthy and most of them trashy gay ones. He called on each of us like an elementary school teacher. No one’s joke nor their delivery was terribly funny and each was excused once he’d finished. It left me the last man in the room. “You…..are a funny guy”, he delivered at me like Jackie Mason. “I could tell the minute I saw you. Come on”, he beckoned curling his fingers towards his face, “make me laugh”. I had decided on doing a joke an uncle used to tell when I was a kid. Now my uncle was not a terribly funny guy, but he could make the entire family roar whenever he told the joke about “this guy who saves up his money and buys a custom-made suit”. It’s an oldie that requires the teller to stand and do a lot of physical, body-posturing, but I was desperate and had pulled it out of my ass at the eleventh hour. Jerry Silver or Something went hysterical, just like the first time my eight-year-old-self had when Uncle Mike first performed it.

“You could be a tummeler!” he announced. “A what?”, I questioned, not knowing if that was a word or perhaps just a crude noise emanating from somewhere in his gut. A tummeler, he went on to explain, is a funny guy who works the hotel lobby or the dining room before the show, warming up the audience and creating interest to sell tickets. “You…are a natural. You would be bee-oo-ti-ful” he added, obviously trying to sell me on his idea. He told me there was no role for me in the other production, so this would justify my hiring for the people paying the bills back at the resort. I had the role in “Lovers and Other Strangers”, the modeling brochure gig and the tummeler job – $175 a week, room and dinner nightly. It happened just like that. I was beyond elation; I floated out the door. Saint Genesius, having worked his way down my ankle, now rested between my heel and my sock. I tromped on him with every other joyous step I took to the subway home.

Within one hour’s time I told: my roommate, my downstairs neighbor, the guy at the deli, my super’s wife and my handful of New York friends. I called my parents that night, telling them I was off to Mount Pocono, PA in less than two days. My mother didn’t want to talk too long, not because I was calling collect, but because she needed to start dialing the rest of the family in Cleveland. It was as though I’d won the Nobel Prize, only better. There was now a professional actor in the family. I had to take the bus Sunday evening to be there bright and early Monday morning to meet the man who signed the checks and the rest of the cast to start rehearsals. I would be on stage the following weekend. To this day, I can still summon a flavor of the euphoria and excitement I experienced by landing this job.

All the way to the Poconos I tried to envision what this honeymoon lodge might look like. I had never stayed anywhere except an economy hotel in Manhattan (twice) and a few cheap roadside motels in Ohio and surrounding states as a kid with my family. I didn’t expect Vegas style splendor, but I decided I would settle for no less than semi-posh. A banged up van was waiting to take me to the resort when I pulled into town that night. I remained positive during the short drive to the place. In the dark, lighted up in the distance through the trees, it looked quite promising. It was overdone for sure but thankfully not a run down dump. Once inside the lobby and walking to the front desk, I got a better sense of the flavor. It was very sixties – lots of dark, faux wood paneling and fake beams with an abundance of glittery lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling and mounted to the walls. I was shown my room and told I should meet the other “entertainers” in the dining hall for breakfast the next morning. Both the public areas and my room had that lingering heavy odor of stale cigarette smoke and mustiness that simply opening windows would never clear away. The place did not live up to its name; Mount AIRY it was not.

It was easy to spot my fellow actors at breakfast. Taking-over one end of the dining room and crowded around two tables, a cloud of chain smoke hovering over both, they were the ones looking half asleep and slightly hung-over. As I introduced myself to the group, they sat me down and immediately began to fill my ears with advice and complaints from all directions:

“Don’t sign anything. This gig is the pits.”

“Our checks are never on time and when they are they’re post-dated.”

“The resort hates the shows and is trying to get rid of all of us!”

The best came from this silky, long-haired beauty – sultry, tall and lean: “Get your ass back on the same bus that brought you here and go back to NYC where it’s safe!” And at that moment Jerry Silver or Something magically appeared and asked me to follow him to the office of the Big Boss. I wanted to believe the actors because they had no reason to be anything but truthful with me, but I needed this job to fulfill my dream of so many year’s waiting. Nervously following him down the dark hallway I called him Mr. Silver or Something and warmly he asked me to just call him ‘Jer’.

We entered a tiny hole-in-the-wall office, windowless and very dark, barely wide enough to accommodate a large wooden desk, laden with piles of receipts, bills and invoices. The figure who sat behind it, hunched over this mess of papers was so acutely round-shouldered his face could not be seen. “Close the door”, he barked at us. “I wanted you to meet our tummeler”, Jer cheerily announced. He also explained I was replacing actor X in the first show and would probably work well in the skiing shots for the brochure. At this suggestion, the Big Boss jerked his neck to twist his head up and I was able to this time glimpse just a portion of his face. He was reminiscent of an illustration from WIND IN THE WILLOWS or Lewis Carroll – a shrew-like, bespectacled animal dressed in men’s clothing. Leering at me for only a millisecond, he dropped his head back down onto his work. “He’s wrong”, he growled and my stomach knotted in disbelief. “But he’s a funny, funny guy”, Jer began in my defense, “and he’s gonna’ work really well in the scenes with …”. Cutting him off mid sentence Big Boss definitively repeated “He’s wrong”, never shifting focus from the papers before him.

Once again Jer began justifying why I was such a good choice, however Big Boss continued working, now as though neither of us were even in the room. I was growing uncomfortable both with my situation and the fact I was being discussed in the third person as though I were either absent or invisible. “Sir”, I entered into the fray, “can you tell me why I’m wrong?”. He snapped his head up abruptly and glared at me as best he could with his tiny, close-set eyes. “Yer’ ugly”, he stated with neither venom nor hostility, but rather as one might state any great truth such as the earth is round or fire is hot. My question had been answered and I had been dismissed with two words. Worse than that, as quickly as Jerry Silver or Something had handed it to me, Big Boss had taken away my job and killed my dream.

I remember so much of my distant past, and yet the bus ride back to Manhattan that same afternoon is a total memory void. I can only guess it was tearful and long and lonely and all those things that were the antithesis of what the ride to Mount Pocono had been the day before. I do remember being back in Manhattan, embarrassed to face the people who had cheered me on only days before. And totally letting down my family and the countless people wonderful motor-mouthed Mom had bragged to in Cleveland – people I didn’t even know. Once back among the living and facing the reality of what had all gone down, there were times I blamed Jerry Silver or Something and other times I cursed Genesius and the entire Catholic Church. The worst was the sting of that gnarled little man’s succinct diagnosis, “Yer’ ugly”, which had fractured an already tenuous ego. Here was truly one of the ugliest creatures, both inside and out, telling me it had nothing to do with talent, or timing or anything I could have changed, but simply how I was perceived. In time I went to plenty other auditions. He hadn’t dampened my desire. Still I carried his words with me as baggage for years after.

The D and D Building: “Naked and Unashamed”

18/06/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in NYC 1972-1983 Tags: DEEP THROAT, Design and Decoration Building, exhibitionism, fabric samples, gay beach, Jones Beach, naked, nude beach, Riis Park, The D and D 4 Comments

It took more than twenty-three years for me to finally stand on a beach and see the ocean for the first time – Jones Beach on Long Island, summer of 1973. A few months earlier I was forced to take a full-time job in a fabric and wallpaper showroom to earn enough just to keep my head above water. I’d worked for the same company back in Ohio summers while going to University, slaving in their warehouse. One day, as I was killing time before an audition on the upper east side where NYC life had previously never taken me, I happened to find myself at the Design and Decoration Building – or the D and D as it was more often referred to. Remembering this was home to my summer job’s largest showroom, I thought I’d drop in for a visit, never realizing I would end up spending more time at this address my first four years in The City than I would in all the apartments I inhabited during the same time period. In fact, it had been a client from this very showroom, an older gentleman, (at least 40), who took me on a picnic date to the ocean that very first time.

Walking into the reception area of the showroom was quite an impressive sight. There was a gigantic round glass table in the center, surrounded by expensive English armchairs where designers were leafing through the latest decorating magazines while waiting for their fabric samples. At a mahogany desk sat an attractive young woman who processed the sample orders as well as screened incoming clients. All the showrooms on the eighteen floors of the building were open only to the trade. Their customers, (even though they were paying the bills), would not be admitted unless accompanied by their designers or architects. Stopping at the desk on my visit this day, I explained to the pretty girl my history with the company and she insisted I meet the Showroom Manager. She pressed one of the lighted intercom buttons on the dial telephone and quietly explained who I was and asked did she want to come out to meet me. I heard this abrasive voice squawking annoyingly out of the receiver, while at the same time the real life version was loudly grating from behind us through an open office door at the far end of the showroom. It was clear she did not need the Bell System to make herself heard – possibly for blocks. “Give me a minute. I’m coming out”, she screeched. I could hardly wait to see what this harpie must look like.

Out through her office door she gushed, attempting a Loretta Young entrance, but she halted midway to get out a hearty and lengthy smoker’s cough, covering her hacking with a manicured fist to her matching red-painted lips. A small, overly thin woman, she was smartly attired in a tailored dress, wide belt cincturing her tiny waist with a coordinating fringed shawl swaddled about her. She extended her hand immediately to me, before she was even within reach, introducing herself. Her name sounded totally made-up (yet it was real). For purposes of this story, I shall dub her Meg Juneau. “But please, just call me Meg”, as she opened her mouth into a forced and quite obviously faked toothy smile. Her make-up was perfectly applied and although I would have to say she was not at all attractive, her face was pleasant looking but certainly did not fit with either her voice or her abrasive manner. She insisted I come into her office to chat – about what or why I had no earthly idea. I was so regretting making my spontaneous visit and now worrying that my Ohio-ness would betray the thin veneer of hip New York actor that I had cloaked my own self in; it takes a phony to spot another one.

She closed the double doors behind us and bade me sit in a chair directly opposite her oversized throne behind the desk. The moment she had taken her place, she lit up a Marlboro, offering me one then picked up the phone instructing “Janice-sweetie” to hold all her calls. She asked when I’d come to New York so I started in on the saga of my move to The City and my theatrical desires, the two of us puffing away like the tobacco sluts we both were. “You remind me of my brother!”, Meg shrieked in an un-sisterly fashion. It was hard to imagine this sort of person could even have family. What the hell was she up to, I wondered? As the conversation progressed, it became clear she was of the understanding that I had come looking for a job. I was quick to get that notion out of her head. “Noooo, I came to New York to act, not work in the interior design business”, I chuckled in clarification for the aggressive shrew. Good lord, the more time I spent with this woman, the more it grew evident her entire aura was fingernails on a chalkboard. I needed to find a graceful way out and pronto.

She assured me that just like her brother, I would quickly learn show business was too tough and that I always had something to fall back on here. She demanded we keep in touch. Luckily I still didn’t have a phone, so I gave her my address and smoothly worked my way to the other side of those closed double doors. Meg walked me to the reception area and I said goodbye to the pretty girl at the desk, who smiled warmly and gave me a look that roughly translated: do you believe this lunatic we work for?

Swiftly exiting down the hallway to the bank of elevators and freedom, I wanted to lose myself in the crowd and get back to the real world. As I carefully studied the dozens of people waiting, it was clear that it would be impossible to lose myself, because I was the only fish out of water. There were women dressed as smartly as Meg Juneau and meticulously clad gay men in either custom tailored suits or crisp, open collared dress shirts with expensive sweaters draped artistically about their shoulders and every one of them wearing gorgeous shoes and boots the likes of which I had only seen before on TV stars or in fashion magazines. Taking it all in I smirked, exiting the elevator into the too opulent lobby, swimming now amidst a sea of these clones and realizing that the pushy woman upstairs truly was mad to think a guy like me could ever pull off the Tony Award winning acting job it would take to fit in with this crowd.

No more than a week later she began her postal assault on my mail box. It was a handwritten note or a card, boldly penned in tall and sweeping cursive flourishes at least once a week. Meg Juneau had found a way to capture her brash obnoxity even in the written form. They were brief missives: “In the area soon? Let’s do lunch.” or “Talked to some of your old buddies in Ohio. They miss you loads.”. If it were longer than a few sentences, she signed off “Fondly, Meg”. I got more mail from my crazed stalker than I did from family back home. The final post came on a black day of devastating disappointment from an ego-shattering audition experience. It was my rock bottom, all time lowest of low moment and her oversized scrawl stung even harder. The long legal envelope contained only her business card with two two-word sentences written over the face of it: “Hungry yet? Call me.” It was as though, aside from being this brusque barracuda, she was also a witch who knew precisely when to tempt me with her poison apple. I was on the phone to her the next morning.

My initial job was running the sample department. The guy who was there was being squeezed out by my hiring, making my first two weeks (until the poor schmuck stormed out the door in a post coffee break rage) an uncomfortable hell. It was pure Meg Juneau management style and I was a fool to not see what little regard she had for human beings, but I had been desperate and hungry. In six months, if I stuck to it, I would go ‘out on the floor’ as a salesman. Aside from Her Megnificence, or Miss Juneau as we were forced to call her, the others in the office were a fun and friendly group. On the floor, we were only allowed to refer to one another as Mister or Miss, NEVER FIRST NAMES, just as our phone number was always to be given out as ELdorado-5 and not 3-5-5. The two gay men who were full-time sales staff were a bit stodgy and stiff but quite likeable and easy to get along with and the Office Manager/Operator, Janice-sweetie, truly was a sweet and crazy New York movie character. But I immediately bonded with that pretty girl at the reception desk whose name was Miss Randazzo, a petite and dark Sicilian-American beauty not quite five feet tall, perfectly proportioned and sexily curvy, with wonderfully coiffed raven hair and always dressed to kill. She lived at home and paid no rent, so her salary went to dynamite outfits and higher than high, stylish come-fuck-me-pumps.

Teresa Randazzo, or Tree as everyone called her, was my joy and salvation in the place. She confessed from day one she had purposely called Meg out to meet me because she wanted “a fun fag” (which was only endearing when pronounced in her acute Brooklyn-ese) to play with at work. Her favorite word was outrageous and she strove to make everything in her world as outrageous as possible. Soon after my starting there, her boyfriend Ronnie, a high school sweetheart who lived in his parents’ basement on the next street over in their Flatbush neighborhood, had taken her to see the film DEEP THROAT, and Tree was never ever the same. She was a good Catholic girl who hadn’t even been on a date with any guy other than Ronnie, but she so longed to be a sleazy slut. It was her one aspiration. She used to sign the pink, ‘While You Were Out’ slips for our phone messages as “Her Deepness”

She was mystified by a gay man’s lifestyle and I tried to explain to her my fledgling Manhattan life was faltering at best, yet she was keenly interested in every detail. Tree wanted to see me get laid – more so than me at times. Nothing in her life was too private to discuss and I found myself sharing intimacies with her, surprising myself at the candor we were able to enjoy. She was a true girlfriend, as so many gay men might often refer to their closest gay male friends. Tree was always looking for guys my type for me and heaven help them if they walked through the glass showroom doors. She would buzz my intercom and say under her breath: “Ohhhh…..moy…..Gawd! If you don’t blow this one, I will!”

The Monday morning after my Jones Beach date with my Daddy-man she was all ears and quizzed me on every detail. I was talking more about the beach and sun, the sand and the surf than I was about the guy. She suggested I go back but alone next time. I would have loved to, but it was an expensive day, as you needed to take the railroad out to Freeport and then a private bus. I was on a tight budget which meant I couldn’t eat that day and possibly even the next if I had to part with that much money. She told me about a beach near her house called Riis Park that was only a subway and short bus ride away that we could do for 70 cents each way. “Plus”, she wide-eyedly added, “there’s an outrageous section at the end where everybawdy gets naked!” I was just getting over the excitement of a day’s entertainment for under $1.50, but the naked thing had me totally fascinated. Since I was a kid and heard talk of nude beaches in exotic locations, I always dreamed of being amidst dozens of totally naked men romping freely under a hot sun, penises akimbo. Weather permitting, we would go the following Saturday, just the two of us. We were both ticking off the hours all week-long.

We met at the bus stop for the second leg of the journey. This huge long line of all types, sizes and shapes with coolers, beach umbrellas, chairs, ghetto blasters and various food stuffs snaked along the avenue. Surveying the single file crowd of the great unwashed, there weren’t many I would care to see in swim suits, let alone out of them. What do you expect for 70 cents I had to ask myself. Tree was super charged for the morning in a teeny halter top and miniscule short shorts. She was greatly chagrined when I admitted having a swimsuit under my cut-offs. I confessed being a bit self-conscious at the thought of getting naked even in front of her, let alone a beach full of people. Her advice was simply to “chill”. We loaded into the next available bus and off we went to Riis.

This beach was the antithesis of my previous week’s. At Jones, the beach goes on for miles and so wide you could easily find a spot that afforded some privacy and feel as though you had truly escaped The City. At Riis, it was as though every occupant of Manhattan had evacuated and was washed ashore here in The Rockaways. It was people-upon-people, their blankets, towels and mats joined together like some crazy quilt spread from one end of the beach to the other and ending right at the water’s edge with no room to spare. “Good that we’re early”, Tree stated, scanning the beach, “thaz still room in the naked section”, pointing to the far end to our left, still quasi masked in morning haze. We trucked along barefooted in the edge of the surf so as not to disturb sunbathers, hearing blasts of disco, salsa, blues and soul, accompanied by a melange of languages and accents. Approaching the section of great interest to us both, I knew we’d arrived when happening upon an amazon of a woman, tall but not fat with ginormous jugs and a tiny snippet of a bikini bottom not quite covering her pubes. “We ahh he-ya” Tree sang out. We walked a little further and arranged ourselves equidistantly between Ms. Treble D’s and the very end of the beach.

I was nervous, looking about with downcast eyes, noting there were already about a dozen guys both straight and gay totally nude with their cocks in various states from shrunken nothingness to full-blown and ready for launch. It was a curious frame of mind I found myself in: intrigued and captivated, apprehensive and shy, curious and hesitant, glad I was there with Tree and wishing I were on my own. Once situated, she took her top off as she took off her coat every morning when coming into the office – totally unphased. Just like always, she began a running commentary on the people around us, candidly and loudly as though either they were stone deaf or she were in some sound proofed chamber. “Look at the size of the cock on that kid will ya’ just.” or “She really should trim huh snaatch if she’s gonna wu-awk around like that”. I just sat back in my speedo enjoying her observations, sensing they were taking the edge off things for me. I’d wished I was stoned because that would have made it much easier.

“Let’s go in the waddah!” she loudly begged, jumping up to her feet and pulling at my arm as she did. I hesitated because I was finally getting comfortable checking out the men and their penises. It was a fascination I had always had, even as a young boy, studying a guy and wondering what his dick might look like – if it matched the rest of him. The last time I was able to play this game was in phys ed class my freshman year at University. This was even better than that. Tree continued to pull me up from the blanket, saying something about not to worry, the cocks will still be there when we come back. Once on my feet she trumpeted “Come on, let’s go naked and unashamed” and yanked down her bottoms, throwing them over her head. Grabbing me by the hand and pulling us towards the water I stopped, let go of her hand and whipped off my speedos while she screamed “OUTrageous” at the top of her lungs. At this point, half the beach had to have locked onto us as we laughed running full speed into the surf. We stopped to catch our breath and I really looked at Tree in all her beautiful nakedness. I said something about never being able to look at her in the showroom again after seeing her twat and she made a comment about my little ass. We had a fabulous day together at Riis Park.

Life in the showroom went on for two summers more, though it took only about a week before we could look at one another again and not see our bare assed selves. In less than six months from my hiring I did become a salesman and by that point Tree was now joined to my hip. We were Meg’s blessings and curse: adored by our clients, bringing in tons of sales between us, but totally unwilling to put up with her phony bullshit anymore. Together we revelled in defying her to the death. I quit three years later and she called me at my new jobs for weeks, begging me to return. I was impelled to insult her personally before the pesty bitch would let go of my leg. Tree eventually broke up with Ronnie and married some guy who treated her not so very nicely and they were divorced in a couple of years time. I lost touch with her once she too quit Miss Juneau’s House of Pain. For decades later I suffered reoccurring nightmares that Meg was my new boss at a current job and I would try to tell her off, but found myself mute.

But I did remain extremely faithful to Riis Park, going nearly every Saturday and Sunday while it was open during the season. It took a thunderstorm to keep me home. I went with Tree one more time, after she’d met her husband. She only went topless and her outrageousness seemed tempered once he’d put the rock on her finger. Most of my visits I made alone. I felt freer to enjoy myself and was able to savor being nude as well as to relish the sight of my fellow naked men. Even though over my years of Riis Beach days I did meet a couple of guys who ended up in my bed, or I in theirs, it really wasn’t a sexual experience. It taught me to find, develop then appreciate my sensuality. It was real-time pornography and although on a busy, hot summer’s day our bodies were often no more than an easy reach away, it was our minds that were working each other over. And that sex we were delighting in, as we lay back in the sand, taking it all in, was often times better than anything we might do between the sheets any night of the week.

The Afternoon The QUEEN Met Me

03/06/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in Musings, NYC 1972-1983 Tags: 1976, Bicentennial, Bloomingdales', Elizabeth II, Her Royal Highness, interior decorator, the Queen 1 Comment

I love the QUEEN – the real one – Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, aka My Majesty. That’s how I refer to her, because Her Majesty just sounds too detached, while My Majesty shows a much greater affinity I feel. I did not always revere her as I do now, though to say I have always been an anglophile is truly understatement. It all began as a young reader in the sixth grade, stumbling upon a richly illustrated copy of A Christmas Carol in our school library. I saw the original black and white film for the first time that same Christmas on TV. I was haunted by the story and it was sealed. Forevermore I was totally enthralled by anything remotely British. Of course I assumed that London and its environs were unchanged from my original Dickensian picture: dark alleys filled with filthy, streetwise urchins living life in the sewage-filled gutters versus the posh, hoity-toity upper crust who ate with sterling silver on the finest of china and spoke eloquently clipped English. I was clever enough to realize they had progressed well beyond the England of Shakespeare but not too far from that of Victoria.

Imagine my chagrin not two years later upon first seeing The Beatles and film footage of their Liverpugnian roots. It was a shock to the naively conceived image of my Britain. At that same point I figured out exactly who this Elizabeth II was. I could not believe their QUEEN, with the glorious history of ancestors whose royal bums had warmed the very same throne, could end up looking like this dowdy, over-accessorized plain jane. And what the hell was with that pocket-book, I wondered. If she felt she needed to schlep it with her all over the bloody world, couldn’t she find some lady in waiting to inconspicuously carry it for her, rather than hanging the goddamn thing over her arm like a huge wet sock?

Despite the QUEEN, as an English major my first two years at University, my taste for British literature added even more fire to the flame of love. I often lost myself in a faux existence that allowed me to live a fantasy life on the other side of the pond, taking on the persona of a Brit who was a pastiche of all the Alan Bates characters I enjoyed in films. I did everything but sport a fake BBC accent because I was so smitten. Oh how I wished I’d been born there instead of here! It must have been due to some errant stork who’d somehow got his signals crossed or a bit of topsy-turvy from a long-lost Gilbert and Sullivan plot.

So, it’s the summer of 1976 and I am living not in London, but rather in Manhattan in my first solo apartment and working in a small custom furniture business, while New York City is celebrating the bicentennial. Most other American cities might have made the celebration into a big church bazaar or carnival, but NYC was planning an “event”. The Tall Ships is still etched in my memory as one of the many incredible episodes that made up the ‘salute to American show’ we witnessed that very Red-White-and-Blue July.

My job at the furniture company was one of the coolest on my very varied resume. In a manner of speaking, I ran the entire circus. I wrote the sales, managed both the small showroom and office, paid the bills, did customer service, payroll and liaised with the owner/boss in his factory across the river in Long Island City. Because I was this one man band, along with a ton of responsibility I enjoyed an equal amount of freedom. I had to open the showroom every morning on time and rarely took an hour for lunch, closing for fifteen minutes to run to the bank or post office and grab something quickly to eat at my desk in between duties. But I could make and take personal phone calls galore, my friends freely visited to hang out, I had access to petty cash for perks (as long as they were modest) and I could and would be as nasty or nastier than some of the acutely obnoxious clients I was often forced to deal with.

Plus there was NO dress code. Our clients were interior designers – drek-o-rators – as those of us on my side of the business affectionately called them. They were an artsy sort, so that nearly anything and everything could be deemed suitable attire. I would safely estimate the design business in the city at that time was 60% female/40% male. Of those men, easily 75% were gay. I was a part of an industry that allowed me total freedom to be my own unedited self and I took full liberty. I dressed as I would to go to any respectable gay bar in town – casual queer. Since it was summer and the city can be brutally hot, it meant jeans (denim or white), penny loafers with no socks and a cute summer shirt. I hated short-sleeved shirts because my upper arms were willowy skinny. I took to wearing these gauzy Indian cotton shirts that were semi-sheer, very tight-fitting with three quarter length sleeves. They were embroidered in the same color thread as the shirt and came in pastel colors. I even had a bright red one which was one of my favorites that I was wearing to death with the white jeans these bicentennial days.

Everywhere you turned it seemed, the city was awash in patriotica and before it was all over many of us feared we would drown from overkill. The buildup was so grand how could they ever finish without blowing up the entire island of Manhattan as a grande finale? I remember taking a beginning jazz dance class at that same time in a studio in the west village after work. It met twice a week for an hour, taught by this wonderfully silly and very campy little gay boy, mid-twenties like myself. We were working on this routine to BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR. I will never forget him or the song; the choreography I never remembered even then. At the end of each hour, when we would run the whole number adding that evening’s new segment, after positioning the needle onto the 45, he would leap back to join us shouting “Everybody – Moms and Dads and kiddies too, let’s put on over very best Betty Ford bicentennial feet and five-six-seven-eight!

It is lunchtime on Friday July 9th and I am walking up Third Avenue on my way to a favorite deli for a sandwich. As I pass Bloomingdale’s, there are two cops setting up those grey wooden police barricades along the sidewalk at the back door on 59th Street. I am wondering if there is some robbery in progress with hostages taken inside or something similarly horrible. One of the cops tells me “da Queen a’ England is comin’ ta Bloomies in a coupla’ hours”. I chuckle thinking he is jesting. A lone lady in her forties is standing near with a small Union Jack flag on a stick and in the loveliest of perfectly formed English, assures me the police are correct. She is wearing a summer frock in an insipid pastel shade. The dress seems terribly out-of-place and what makes it so conspicuous is that it’s not only ugly but also something that she would have worn to a fancy day time party perhaps ten years earlier. I approach her and thank her for her news update in my best American-speak and once she sees she has ahold of my ear, she senses I am hers for the afternoon.

We introduce ourselves. All these years later I cannot be expected to remember her name, but just as it should have been, it was suitably perfect for her and that tired party dress so I shall call her Lydia. She is one of those persons who has the uncanny ability to maintain a nearly frozen demeanour to her entire body, while her eyes and facial movements seem overly animated and dance about as she gushes with excitement and joie de vivre. Lydia patiently explains to me, as though I were from another galaxy, that The QUEEN will be coming in a few hours to shop in Bloomingdale’s, walking through the store with her husband, Prince Philip, then exiting through the doors we are standing in front of to get into her waiting car to go to another engagement. Lydia is chatting me up as though The QUEEN is either her sister or a childhood friend and I, her only crony in town. She tells me that they will be closing off Lexington Avenue for twenty blocks in order to reverse its normal downtown direction to uptown, “since Her Majesty can only get out of her car from the right side”. She assumes this is something I understand the reason for and I am not admitting my ignorance of this elusive fact.

When she finally gives me a chance to contribute to the conversation, I say some terribly ignorant Yankee-ism like “I adore anything British”. She asks how many times have I visited the UK on holiday and I am loath to admit I have never left the US, yet I know I daren’t lie because she will surely quiz me. She begins to tell me about when she left her home in England to come here, and it is clear I need to be getting back to the office long before she will possibly be able to finish her story. Oh, but it’s Friday, I rationalize to myself and in The City most people are already on their way to their weekend plans. I continue listening intently to my charming gal pal Lydia, telling me her saga.

She begins to explain the odd-looking jewelry she has fastened to the top of her bodice. She is a nurse and proudly displays the pin which The QUEEN herself had given her upon graduation from nursing school. I am totally taken aback to think that Elizabeth II, Monarch of the Empire, has time to pin nurses on their uniform lapels. But then Lydia certainly wouldn’t make something like this up, I know. “That was the first time I saw Her Majesty”, she proudly reminisces as she reverently caresses her medal. I learn that the same QUEEN came to visit a new hospital in Lydia’s hometown and did a walkabout where she got to see her again. That is why she is so excited about this afternoon, because she is hoping Her Majesty will do a walkabout outside Bloomies. “Do you really think she might?” I question. Suddenly, at the thought of seeing a celeb in the streets of New York, I instantly become interested in the Pocketbook Toter myself.

I quickly run across Third Avenue to a phone booth in the middle of the block and call my boss at the factory. I tell him that the QUEEN is coming to Bloomies. After several minutes’ explanation of which queen I’m referring to, he asks me “So what?”. In a mixture of frustration and elation I answer “So I am NOT reopening the showroom this afternoon”. I hang up and return to our prime location directly behind the police rail which is slowly beginning to fill with curious assorted bystanders. It is a mixture of crusty, seasoned New Yorkers and polyester-clad bicentennial tourists still celebrating. We learn from the growing crowd that we have at least an hour’s wait before The QUEEN’s car even arrives at the main entrance on Lexington Avenue. No one seems to know just how long she will be shopping inside the store either. Common sense tells me she will not be shopping at all; The QUEEN does not go to stores, stores come to The QUEEN.

I begin to worry that the two of us may get squeezed out of our places. She assures me we hold the best possible location to see Her, because as they come out the door, the entourage will have to move onto the sidewalk directly in front of us in order to board her car for the trip uptown. The police barricades will hold us if pushing and shoving should ensue. Lydia is growing more excited in anticipation of a possible third meeting with HRH and her fervor becomes infectious, even though my opinion of the monarch Herself is still rather questionable. I have not once let on to my new dear friend that I have always felt Her Majesty was a bit of a frump.

Loads of people stop to ask what’s going on and now Lydia and I take turns, acting almost like tour guides fielding questions. I try discouraging folks, fearing how a crowd may impact my view and Lydia’s heart is unselfishly thinking about her QUEEN and having the best welcoming turnout possible. I gingerly advise her that here in the U.S. we are not very devoted to any monarchy, especially the one which we have been celebrating our long fought independence from. The good-natured Brit just smiles a bad toothy smile and looks happily forward to the royal visit. Soon someone spots the arrival of her car on the next block and we know in only minutes Elizabeth II will be entering the building.

Less than half an hour later her car has rounded the corner and is parked behind us. Police are coming from every direction and positioning themselves at the door, on the corners and a few are neatening up the crowd behind us, getting them out of the middle of the street, even though it too is now closed to traffic. I survey those behind me, guessing several hundred have gathered in approximately four rows behind us. Still Lydia and I hold firmly to our prime spot. There is visible stirring behind the glass doors and in seconds they are pushed open and held by what I guess to be store security. The first few out the doors are unrecognizable faces to me as they step out of the way and onto the pavement. From behind the door now emerges a turbaned woman and a tall blond man. “There she IS!”, squeals a jubilant Lydia. “Ohhhh, doesn’t she luke lovely!”, she coos. At this moment the bright afternoon sun catches the royal couples’ faces like a spot light as they move away from the building’s shadows. I audibly gasp at the sight. These two people are breathtakingly stunning.

Their Royal Highnesses are no more than twelve feet away from us. They are shaking hands with the store big wigs and smiling at the crowd. The QUEEN is wearing a beautiful silk dress of light lime green with small cream polka dots and matching turban hat of the same fabric. Pearls are her jewelry. Her shoes and handbag are a matching lime green. Her skin is nearly the same creamy white as her polka dots. Philip is blond and lightly tanned, walking behind her, straight and tall. They are the handsomest couple I have ever seen. Lydia begins to frantically wave her small Union Jack flag about her head calling, (not shouting) “Yawh Majesty, Yawh Majesty!”. The QUEEN begins to walk towards the car and the crowd. She has these blue eyes. People are reaching out to her over the wooden rail, extending their hands. She moves forward beaming a wonderfully bright smile, acknowledging the crowd but avoiding any contact. Now the distance between Her and us is cut in half. The QUEEN spies the flag and Lydia waves all the more feverishly.

SHE gently moves towards Lydia and once before her, Lydia falls into a deep curtsey. Elizabeth II reaches her gloved hand to shake Lydia’s and my friend beams, touching her nurses’ pin, telling Her Majesty politely when and where she had given this to her and I begin to swoon. The QUEEN is speaking with my friend, Lydia about the hospital in her town now. She is so close I can smell her perfume. Her eyes are this incredible blue color, like lapis with tiny lights behind them to make them almost glow. I’ve never seen eyes like this before. I become excited, so in awe of this woman who stands only inches from me, as close as Lydia is to me. Overcome by her presence, by this incredible moment in time and the magic which seems to be taking place, I begin to clap. Not clap as in applause, but clap like a baby does with great pauses in between each singular slap of my hands coming together. I fill the spaces in between the claps with a shout “the queen”. If this silly behaviour of mine isn’t enough, I add to the mix a jump. And with each succeeding CLAP – “the queen” – JUMP I kangaroo bounce higher and higher on my best Betty Ford bicentennial feet. In short, I am making a total ass of myself before the Queen of the Commonwealth, having totally lost all control. With one short, quick look SHE walks past me, her husband following behind on their way to the waiting car, swiftly putting an end to my silly dance.

I cannot say that Her Majesty leered at me, or glared at me or gave me a dirty look. But I do know she looked directly at me, this silly, skinny poof and her bright smile changed into a somewhat disapproving frown for an instant, which caused me to cease my foolishness mid-clap. But I had caused those majestic, incredible, intensely blue eyes to make contact with mine. For a second in her lifetime she recognized my existence in her world and that was all I needed. I was besotted with her. At that very moment she had become My Majesty.

My Majesty aboard The Britannia in 1971 and a side of her we never really have seen.

110 Sullivan Street

01/05/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in NYC 1972-1983 Tags: bubala, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, SoHo, St Anthony Festival, Sullivan Street 2 Comments

It was April of 1973 and I had long over stayed my welcome on Ron’s sofa. He never said a word in that regard of course, because he was a gentle, good-hearted soul who only knew how to be kind. Jacob was alternating between his obnoxious friend’s apartment and Ron’s. It had become evident that if I intended on staying in New York, it would be necessary to share an apartment and Jacob was the only person I knew that also needed to find a place. Although he was not what I would consider a friend, he was honest and trustworthy. After all the angst my first NYC apartment share had caused, those qualities now seemed to account for a lot. If only he weren’t so juvenile and silly acting and oh so very…OHIO. There just was no other way for me to explain his giddy behaviour most times. It served as a reminder that he had graduated from high school less than a year before.

My nest egg had dwindled down to the size of a pea – under $100. On Ron’s advice, I had signed up at a temp agency and began going out to work as a clerk/typist. I hadn’t taken a timed typing test since the tenth grade, yet actually did very well and was told I could get an extra dollar or so an hour because of my ability at the keys. The bad thing about temping was that even if you were available every day, they couldn’t guarantee a full week’s work. Sometimes on an assignment, you were not told until late in the afternoon that there was nothing for you the next day, so your services wouldn’t be needed. Often it was too late to call the agency to find anything for the following day. One positive was it did allow me the freedom to audition, and now that was the only theatre I had been doing since I’d moved four months before.

It was a real thrill to work in a New York City office though, even if the financial reward was somewhat less than paltry. My jobs were in Midtown Manhattan in offices in many of those dozens of 1960s “modern” glass buildings. On the twenty or thirty something-eth floor overlooking the city, the views out the window were ofttimes breathtakingly stunning, even to my hyper acrophobic eyes. And the colorful Gothamites who were my supervisors and co-workers for the day or week were character studies for me. It was on these jobs that I began to learn the distinction between a Brooklyn and a Queens accent. Here is where I adopted “waaah-dah” and “coo-aawh-fee” into my daily vernacular. Temping gave me money for my day-to-day Manhattan existence, but I worried that it was not going to give me enough to pay rent and utilities for any inhabitable apartment, even with Jacob’s corresponding half.

Our days of going out to eat, or even deli takeout, were over. We took turns shopping and cooking for Ron – poor payment for his generous hospitality. It became a form of entertainment and he would regale us with stories of when he had come to the city at my age, ten years before. It gave me hope that there was a future to be had for a gay guy from NoWheresville, USA: making a home, finding a partner AND steady employment in the theatre. “Be patient. It’ll happen.” was the mantra my guru assured me. Jacob was searching for apartments, studying the Village Voice like I memorized Backstage. It depressed me to even consider looking at rental ads, because I was realistic and had no idea how we would ever find the money for security deposit and first month’s rent. That did not deter the zealous teenager. What he wanted most was a Manhattan address. I told him I would only consider the West Village.

One day, when I had a work assignment and he didn’t, Jacob met me at the subway station as I was climbing up the stairs to the sidewalk on my way home. He was nearly frothing at the mouth with excitement, instructing me to follow him to see “the most FABulous apartment ever”. He babbled as he led me fast-footed to his “find” where the super was waiting to show us the place he had seen earlier that morning. He was afraid it wouldn’t last long. It was on Sullivan Street, south of Houston in what at that time some referred to as Little Italy, but now is named SoHo. The building was on the block between Prince and Spring Streets, nestled amongst many charming old red brick buildings.

110 Sullivan wasn’t charming red brick like most of its neighbors. The facade was white glazed brick and it stuck out on the west side of the block like a stark monolithic malignancy that jarred the eyes. Often I wondered what possible little gem might have been torn down to make room for this 1960s eyesore. Nora Ephron mentions the same building in a recent book. It was her first New York apartment in 1963 when she moved to the city. She says it was new when she moved in and her only adjective to describe the place was “horrible”. In those days it rented for $160 a month.

I suppose when you’ve been living on some kind stranger’s sofa for three weeks and you are desperate for setting down roots and making a home, anything will look good. It was an elevator building – a plus. It had air conditioning – another plus. The main room was decent-sized and had lovely hardwood floors. What they called a kitchen was really just the far right corner of this room clustered with an apartment-sized two burner stove, an under-the-counter mini fridge and a sink the size of the spit bowl in my dentist’s office – I swear. Jacob’s find also had a bedroom (O joy! O rapture!), the biggest of all pluses.

But then there was the bathroom. It was off the bedroom. I had lived in three apartments in Ohio and the studio in NYC plus Ron’s yet I had never seen this phenomenon before or since in nearly 40 years. It meant anyone who needed to pee had to tromp through your bedroom. It made absolutely no sense. We took it anyway. The rent was $225 a month which even we knew was quite a steal for what it was and where it was. How could we pass it up? And I know it would have been snatched up if we hesitated even twenty-four hours. Before we could actually say yes, we needed to find $450 which we neither of us had nor could get our hands on in a month let alone by the following morning. Still Jacob seemed undaunted. We needed to go home to Ron’s and seek his advice, he announced. And once he heard Jacob gushing about the place, Ron found our answer. “There’s no problem. I can go to my bank tomorrow morning as soon as they open and lend it to you”. I was dumbfounded. “But how in the world will we pay the rent and utilities and still find the money to pay you back?”, I questioned. He was confident we’d do it in time, little by little, as we could. I still cannot believe what a fairy godfather we had found in this man.

We moved in the little that we had salvaged from Matty’s apartment that was usable, plus our clothes and personal treasures. At first there were no beds, but almost daily Jacob began collecting hand me down furniture from his circle of weird friends. By the end of that first month we already felt the pinch in our pockets when May rent came due and our first Con Edison bill arrived. I remember that same week the agency could only get me work two days, when necessity had called for me to work at least a nine-day week just to break even. There was no money left for groceries, so we ate cream of wheat cooked with water (not a drop of milk in the house) with the dregs from an old bottle of Aunt Jemima Pancake Syrup sparingly drizzled on top for dinner three nights in a row.

Friday was payday and after buying my subway tokens (35 cents each) I was down to less than a dollar. At lunchtime, starving from lack of real sustenance, I walked past a street vendor who had beautiful, huge apples, absolutely delectable-looking to my hungry eyes. I chose carefully to find the largest, prettiest one. It would hold me until I picked up my check on the way home. I found a bench to relax and savor my treat and biting into it with relish, it turned out to be dry and mealy and brown but I ate it anyway. That was the first time in nearly six months of living in New York, that I questioned what in the world was I doing in this place. Going back to Ohio was NOT an option on the table, however, no matter how bad things might get.

Living for a little over two years at 110 Sullivan, quite a lot of life happened to me. I will not begin to bore you with all the details, but there are some highlights that bear mention. First off, the list of negatives:

The air conditioner we thought was a plus, was actually a useless piece of crap that was in reality only a wimpy fan that blew hot air into the apartment. No matter how many times we complained, they could never make it work.

The elevator often stopped between floors. Not to worry though, because the door could be easily pried open with frantic fingers making it possible to crawl out or at worst jump down to the floor a few feet from above. Its frequent misfunctioning served to cure me of my lifelong fear of elevators at last.

Our downstairs neighbor was this strangely attractive, beefy, middle-aged Jewish girl from Queens who was our own private Rhoda Morgenstern. She was so naturally funny and had the distinction of being the first person to ever refer to me not by name, but rather always only as bubala. She phoned constantly at all hours to complain about our walking with shoes on the bare wooden floors above her head. “Bubala darling, is Jacob practicing in high heels? You’re giving me a migraine already!” Or when there was low water pressure she’d call to gripe about not being able to rinse her hair “Are you boys running the bath and kitchen sink at the same time? Leave a little water for Mumalah”. When she couldn’t direct her complaints at us personally, she called to kvetch about no heat, her mother in New Jersey, or just the weather.

That poor excuse for a kitchen may have been impossibly small for me, but the roaches loved it so much they invited all their friends to share the space. We bought a can of Raid for almost every quart of milk and still they thrived. They sprayed the building monthly, but I secretly believed the exterminator used sugar-water or something the creatures craved, rather than poison, to guarantee themselves job security.

Far longer, however would be my list of good things to recount:

Number one was the super’s wife, who Jacob and I referred to as Our Landlady because everyone understood that this was her building. She was a middle-aged Sicilian-American woman with a set of pipes like a fish monger. She was literally as wide as she was tall. Everyone in a three-block radius knew her on sight and by first name. The super’s apartment was on the ground floor in the front of the building. I only saw her leave to go up the street to Mass on Sunday, or on Bingo night at the same church. She held court from her window right next to the front door, so she could watch all of our comings and goings as well as oversee the sidewalk traffic from early morning until she went to sleep. The window was always open (except when it snowed), her chair wedged against it and her ham hock-like bare arm jutted out over the sill, as though she were driving our building up the street. She was a fantastic cook and often the smells from her kitchen wafted into the lobby, causing one to drool before reaching the elevator button. Once in a while she sent up a dish of macaroni with her killer sauce for us to enjoy. She was immortalized in a WNET documentary about the street festival where she annually sold her baked pasta in a booth in front of our building.

The Saint Anthony Festival was a yearly summer street fair and people came from all over the city for the week-long party. That first year it began like magic, seeing the church block and our block transform to accommodate food vendors, musicians, carnival games and the like. Nobody cooked the whole week and friends came and we’d eat our way up and down the two blocks every night, sampling the delicious home cooking: sausage and pepper sandwiches, meatball heroes, pastas, cannolis and my personal favorite food discovery-zeppole. To refer to this confection as a donut or fried dough would be a huge disservice. It is as heavenly as a New Orleans beignet, only slightly chewier. Some evenings a dozen of these delectables were my entire dinner. The second summer, somewhere mid-week, I began to grow weary of the crowds assaulting my block and all the noise and mess the church festival brought to my home and neighborhood. Even though the city swept and power-washed the sidewalks and street after each night, I still now looked upon it as a great invasion of privacy. And the charm was totally erased on one particular morning, when dressed in a beige linen suit on my way out the front door to work, I slipped and fell on a water-logged, swollen zeppole that lay in waiting for me like an unexploded land mine. The party was over for this boy.

Jacob found a boyfriend our first year in the apartment and the guy ended up moving to the west coast that fall. Devastated, he was going out to visit him. Around that same time, a good friend from University who I’d shared an apartment with my last year there was moving to New York and would be staying at our place. He and Jacob overlapped for a time, not too long if memory serves me. Ken was renting a Uhaul to drive his things to the City, so I took advantage of the trip and went to Ohio and brought my bed and some other pieces of furniture back in the truck. It was good to reconnect with a friend from college days and someone with whom I had a history. Besides, I had grown weary of babysitting Jacob all those months. Somehow his trip to LA got him to Hawaii and that is the last I ever heard of him. Our final conversation was long distance from Honolulu, when I refused to let him charge yet another long distance call on the phone, as he had already run up over a $100 tab. Ken is a warm and extremely witty man and as a roommate he brought a welcome balance to the apartment. Whenever I think about those days, homemade biscuits, incredible cornbread and his wonderful talent for making breakfast fare into a five-star dinner come to mind. He stayed on through the two year lease and we are still friends to this day. I recall with a smirk how the both of us suffered crushes on the two Italian brothers who had taken over their grandfather’s hardware store in our neighborhood. Unrequited love for each of us, I think we would have been content with either of them.

In an ironic twist, soon after moving into the building, I learned two friends from the theatre department, Skip and Nicky, one of the first gay couples I’d met at University were living one block up from me on the opposite side of the street. And my dear friend and one of the most unique personalities from our theatre department, Jennifer, was on the same block in a street level studio only a few steps away from my doorway. I, who was dead-set on cultivating a circle of “New York friends” had managed to physically move right back into the close-knit group of cronies I had spent the previous four years with at school. Through the next decade plus, we matured as adults and New Yorkers together. Now none of us lives on Sullivan anymore, but some are still in the city. Whenever we get together, I remark that we are all like cousins. We have shared so much of life and fate has literally bound us together, like blood does, despite circumstances and ourselves.

I cannot close the book on 110 Sullivan without a final remembrance of the place. The doors from the lobby to the street were all glass and each morning I recall pushing the heavy panel on my right, out onto the sidewalk to begin my day. As I did so, I would glance through the pane and down the street, south, to the brand new twin towers of The World Trade Center, dedicated just before I had moved in. You couldn’t help but notice them, because they filled the entire space at the end of my street-so giant and lofty they looked to be only a block or two away. The towers served to remind me every morning, in case I was still a little groggy from not enough sleep, that I was living in New York City. Even on rainy or over-cast mornings, still they seemed to shine because of all the glass and their sheer stature on the planet. Somehow they made me proud. They made me feel a part of the city now too.

GAY BARS: My Own Personal History

08/03/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in College 1968-1972, Musings, NYC 1972-1983 Tags: cruising, gay bar, Julius', Mister Right, The 620 Cleveland 2 Comments

The first time I set foot in a gay bar was Saturday, February 13, 1971 when I was twenty-one years old. Even some of my good friends might say to me at this point, “Oh come on Matthew, how the hell do you expect anyone to believe you could remember such details after so many years?”. This milestone is easy to recall, because it was Valentine’s weekend and the entire cast of BOYS IN THE BAND went together, even the straight ones, under the guise of doing research for the play. Research – hell, not me! I was going because I wanted to, even though terrified by the prospect. As we walked through the door one of the straight boys remarked “well, there goes my reputation”, joking of course, but for me that was the reality. It was the act that clinched the deal for my gay-ness, not to mention the fact that I was accompanied by my first steady boyfriend, Guy.

As we entered the bar, an old, dark oaken saloon of a place, all heads turned to gawk at us young college boys, or rather fresh meat as the somewhat older crowd of regulars surely must have viewed us. I remember moving into the main bar area clustered together in our brood, looking for all the world like little kindergarten girls holding hands so they wouldn’t get lost in the bus line. Over the mirror behind the bar itself, hung a gigantic, tacky, handmade heart-shaped sign. It read simply: Mother Loves You. To clarify, the bar was named MOTHER’S.

That following summer, returning to my parent’s house to work before my last year of University, I visited a hometown bar which was not much better, only much bigger. The name of that one was The 620, the address of the building in the heart of downtown Cleveland. There were crowds of people, many younger like myself and loads of thirty/forty somethings – guys, who those my age considered to be older men. Everyone was dressed in finery, trying to look their best. Jeans were still just jeans then, too ordinary for going out to look and be looked at, (I can’t remember “cruising” to be part of my vernacular then). The horrible thing about the Cleveland bar was that a police officer in full uniform stood outside the door and carded you. They didn’t do that in any straight clubs in town. It was truly intimidating and the cops made the most of it as they glared at your face, glancing back at the picture on you license, as though they were committing to memory each and every gay person who came through the door.

It always gave me the creeps so I seldom went out in Clevetown and certainly never alone. I would go with my buddy Ed, who I met doing summer theatre in the area. Although I’ve always enjoyed spending time with him, I can’t ever remember having much fun going out in Ohio. It was much akin to visiting the dentist or getting your hair cut. So why do it then, you might ask? Because I saw it as a rite of passage and a sort of grace to finally be together with my peers. For the most part, every guy in that bar spent the better portion of his week hiding: behind an office desk, in a warehouse or factory, in a classroom or dormitory pretending to fit into a straight world. Here we could relax amongst our own and try to appreciate who the man inside really was that we’d been carefully camouflaging.

New York City had a different take on the bar scene. I once talked Ed into driving his late 60s gas guzzling boat of a car to Manhattan one Friday night after work. We planned to go out on Saturday night, only to climb back into the car Sunday morning once the bar had closed at 4:00 a.m. to return home to Cleveland. The trip is typically at least eleven hours each direction. THAT was a fun time for sure. The excitement of just being in New York made it sensational and we still laugh about that insane trip today.

And once I had moved to the City and experienced all those early unpleasantries connected with my time spent at Marie’s Crisis Cafe, I thought it best to find a better place to meet eligible men. I began to frequent Julius’ on Tenth Street and Waverly Place. It was (and still is) an intimate bar, long and narrow with fresh sawdust on the floor each night. To me it looked much like any comfy neighborhood watering hole with a great mix of ages and types. I was doing this on my own, so it wasn’t always a comfortable thing for a somewhat innocent twenty-three year old hayseed from Ohio. In those days, I could count the number of men I had been to bed with on two hands and still have several fingers left. I would walk into the front door, order a drink and find the least conspicuous place along the wall somewhere near the back door. There I watched, drink in one hand and cigarette in the other, puffing nervously and sipping carefully. From my vantage point I could scrutinize both doors and the traffic which came and went all night. New Yorkers seem to always be in a hurry and it was never more evident than in a gay pick-up bar, which is all Julius’ was. No dancing, no piano playing or singing drama queens – just two doors to move em’ in and move em’ out.

I was going to this place several nights a week, hoping to fall into the open arms of Mister Right the moment he waltzed through either door. I loved watching the regulars who would kiss each other as they oozed their way through the tightly packed, elongated room. There were men with greying temples wearing loafers and khakis with blazers or V-neck sweaters. There were shaggy haired guys in tight jeans, work boots and plaid shirts or white T-shirts and leather vests. Who would I go home with tonight, I’d ask myself as I fantasized the evening away. Sometimes a pair of eyes belonging to a guy I was studying would lock onto mine. Should I look away or return the glance and maybe smile? I’m sure I must have looked terrified most times and was woefully lame at both the rules and how to play this game they all seemed so proficient at.

I can recall the first time a guy actually cruised me and crossed over the room to speak. I have no idea exactly what he looked like or how he was dressed, only that he was thirty-something and alarmingly handsome. After a few minutes of trading smiles and cautiously eyeing each other up and down, he Rhett Butlerly sauntered across to my side of the room. Leaning in closely, he cupped my small ass in one big hand and as he did, whispered wetly into my ear ”wanna come home and warm up my bed?”. It was so forward and took my midwestern sensibilities by such surprise that I whispered back into his available ear something to the effect of “maybe you’d like to know my name first?”. Without a beat he released my ass cheeks from his clench, moving smoothly away, as I stood there, wishing the floor would collapse beneath me.

That had been a good night for me; at least I was finally attracting somebody. Why hadn’t I said yes and just left with him? Because I was still of the mindset that you had to know the person and care about them before climbing into bed together. I was playing by the rules of generations before me to find a life mate, rules originally tailored for a straight world yet the only ones I knew. There had been a game change even before our generation and those old principles were no longer valid for most straight people either now. Why did I persist in thinking any of it would ever fly in the gay world? With few role models, without ever having heard the terms life partner, long time companion or significant other, still I knew it had to be possible to find someone to share a life with, even if you were queer. But it looked as though I would have to bend a bit to make things work in my world. New York was a freer place that allowed me to be whatever person I wanted, but I had to be willing to make some big personal concessions.

I took a break from Julius’ shortly thereafter. My social life needed to take a backseat to my everyday existence: rent, employment, electric bills, food in the belly, these became my priorities. Even if I found my Prince, I knew I couldn’t expect him to foot the bill. Our rendezvous would have to wait.

to eventually be continued…

gaydinosaurtales

Musings and recollections by a gay man of a certain age

Category Archives: NYC 1972-1983

Au revoir, Hotlanna’

A Cavalcade of Birthday Memories

Double-O-Seven, Mrs. Robinson and Bonnie Parker

What’s the Story, Simone?

The Corn Stand Caper

My Big Break Into Show Biz

The D and D Building: “Naked and Unashamed”

The Afternoon The QUEEN Met Me

110 Sullivan Street

GAY BARS: My Own Personal History

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