It was the dyke clown story that got me, really made me sit up. “I got my feelings hurt last week,” she was sharing.
“This one girl I wanted, she had this friend who, like, had a fear of clowns and they were going to dress up like clowns and really freak her. She heard I used to be a clown and called me up for tips. You know, I thought at least I would be invited to help, and fuck it, I wasn’t. OK, OK. I know I should concentrate on the good side… I know she did call me up, she thought of me and all. Anyway, so I never let on about my feelings, and I told her everything… before I quit, I was…well, you all know. You can buy squeaky dog toys and stuff them in your pants, and one of them can be like the hot dog in a bun, and you can put a vibrator in there. When it drops out it wiggles all over the floor, it’s hilarious. I used to drop my pants and pull a streamer out of my pussy.”
She kept on talking, and it was good stuff, too, all about not being sure she really dug women, maybe it was those particular women, all she knew was that she liked being hit, and she wondered, did we know any straight guys, really mean ones that she could hook up with. Anyway, she’s in Orange County now.
I only half heard her, and even during the next guy, when he shared really heavy stuff, about an assisted suicide of his ex lover and how he couldn’t even make friends any more much less consider another partner, and how he had a resentment against his sponsor and he hated A.A.
All I could think about was this skinny girl before me dressed as a clown. Her drag queen hair and round face was transformed by the fright wig and the loud baggy clothes, the makeup, the funny nose. Standing on a table, maybe, pants around her bony ankles, pulling a streamer out of her pussy, as a large crowd of school age girls clapped rhythmically and roared with laughter.
I wondered why she quit?
5/2/07
STINKING BADGES
I didn’t notice them, all the way through the funeral, and half way through the wake. The name badges stuck on dark jackets, on synthetic blouses, and the occasional plaid. These were not the “Hi, my name is…” ones, but full-bore, preprinted, conference-looking nametags.
I was still in the tunnel, as if a week of grief since mama died had destroyed my peripheral vision. It had all been so physical; from the very first moment I heard she was dead, pushing the button on the message machine with the insistently blinking light. The voice of my brother Vince, subdued, with the news: she died in her sleep.
It was a story that would be repeated, they saw her that morning, she was having a bad day, didn’t want to go to Mimi’s for dinner, went over to pick her up the next morning for a trip to the doctor’s, there she was, in the bed. Jesus, I didn’t want to hear any more, no more words for the echo and din that governed my fitful sleep and days of pain. I had been driven to words, producing 2011 of them.
When my time came, I read those words from a lectern at the front of the quaint white chapel. I stood among some modest sprays of mums and glads. It was eulogy as therapy, certainly for me and perhaps for somebody else in the crowd of mostly strangers. Strangers all but my three lovely friends, Rich, Jeff, Kea: Gay, gay, fag-hag. My people, they showed up to hold my hand inside the cloud, and cried as I read my piece, at once pretentious and heart-rending. A confession and a tribute.
I was proud of myself for staying in my seat as my brother took his turn. He was a mail order kind of preacher at night. By day, he engineered weapons of death. He talked little about mama, more about Jesus. I felt his eyes bore down upon me, upon us, his words painting pictures of hellfire on a lake. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or pity I felt.
It was in the bonus room, stuck onto the side of Vince’s sprawling tract house, where I noticed the badges. Kea and Rich had just stepped outside so that Jeff could have a cigarette. I was munching on something from a casserole, when a pair of them walked up to my cloud. He murmured something about my talk at the chapel, his head nodding ‘yes,’ rhythmic up and down. He was tall and fat, a mat of brown fur escaping his plain white shirt. It was on the downbeat that I spotted the name badge.
My eyes focused on the printed words: “Family Counsel Healing Ministry” and underneath it, hairy chest’s name: “Ben Smithson.” I turned to the woman, her mousy blond head bobbing too. She wore a humorless smile, like a garment that was ready for Goodwill. Lydia Smithson, read the badge.
“Thank you Ben, thank you, Lydia,” I said. “You made it easy for me to know your names.” We all laughed, like coughs, short and painful.
“Why are you wearing these badges?” I asked, biting into a carrot stick.
“We all wanted to be here for Vince during his time of loss,” the woman said. “And of course, for you, I didn’t know Libby had two sons.”
“Yes, I’m up in L.A….But, about the badges”
Ben leaned over, speaking in a stage whisper. “Praise Jesus, it’s a day of healing, a seminar at our church. It’s all about healing sexual pain.”
“We need to make sure our kids don’t walk down that homosexual path,” added Lydia. “It’s so beautiful and comforting.”
I borrowed her used smile and put it on. I placed the plate onto the end table and pivoted away from the couple in a single movement, through the room to the black tar driveway where my friends stood by themselves, smoke spiraling towards the brown hills.
“We gotta go,” I said. “Get me out of here. Now.”
I was still in the tunnel, as if a week of grief since mama died had destroyed my peripheral vision. It had all been so physical; from the very first moment I heard she was dead, pushing the button on the message machine with the insistently blinking light. The voice of my brother Vince, subdued, with the news: she died in her sleep.
It was a story that would be repeated, they saw her that morning, she was having a bad day, didn’t want to go to Mimi’s for dinner, went over to pick her up the next morning for a trip to the doctor’s, there she was, in the bed. Jesus, I didn’t want to hear any more, no more words for the echo and din that governed my fitful sleep and days of pain. I had been driven to words, producing 2011 of them.
When my time came, I read those words from a lectern at the front of the quaint white chapel. I stood among some modest sprays of mums and glads. It was eulogy as therapy, certainly for me and perhaps for somebody else in the crowd of mostly strangers. Strangers all but my three lovely friends, Rich, Jeff, Kea: Gay, gay, fag-hag. My people, they showed up to hold my hand inside the cloud, and cried as I read my piece, at once pretentious and heart-rending. A confession and a tribute.
I was proud of myself for staying in my seat as my brother took his turn. He was a mail order kind of preacher at night. By day, he engineered weapons of death. He talked little about mama, more about Jesus. I felt his eyes bore down upon me, upon us, his words painting pictures of hellfire on a lake. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or pity I felt.
It was in the bonus room, stuck onto the side of Vince’s sprawling tract house, where I noticed the badges. Kea and Rich had just stepped outside so that Jeff could have a cigarette. I was munching on something from a casserole, when a pair of them walked up to my cloud. He murmured something about my talk at the chapel, his head nodding ‘yes,’ rhythmic up and down. He was tall and fat, a mat of brown fur escaping his plain white shirt. It was on the downbeat that I spotted the name badge.
My eyes focused on the printed words: “Family Counsel Healing Ministry” and underneath it, hairy chest’s name: “Ben Smithson.” I turned to the woman, her mousy blond head bobbing too. She wore a humorless smile, like a garment that was ready for Goodwill. Lydia Smithson, read the badge.
“Thank you Ben, thank you, Lydia,” I said. “You made it easy for me to know your names.” We all laughed, like coughs, short and painful.
“Why are you wearing these badges?” I asked, biting into a carrot stick.
“We all wanted to be here for Vince during his time of loss,” the woman said. “And of course, for you, I didn’t know Libby had two sons.”
“Yes, I’m up in L.A….But, about the badges”
Ben leaned over, speaking in a stage whisper. “Praise Jesus, it’s a day of healing, a seminar at our church. It’s all about healing sexual pain.”
“We need to make sure our kids don’t walk down that homosexual path,” added Lydia. “It’s so beautiful and comforting.”
I borrowed her used smile and put it on. I placed the plate onto the end table and pivoted away from the couple in a single movement, through the room to the black tar driveway where my friends stood by themselves, smoke spiraling towards the brown hills.
“We gotta go,” I said. “Get me out of here. Now.”
DON’T BE CRUEL
I finished the Scottish police procedural minutes before it was time to leave the house for dinner. I read somewhere that writers should stop reading other people’s stuff. Not me. I’m lost without the pile of books on my nightstand. I break out in a cold sweat if I don’t have a choice, craving the attention like a spaniel. I crawl into bed each night with a little anticipation, almost as if a lover awaits. The warm body next to me in the clean coolness of the sheets is a book, not a man.
The last time it was a man, I didn’t like the story. I had to put that one back on the shelf before I came to the ending. I knew it was over before it began, the relationship with G---. I watched as I let my longing trump my good sense. I longed too much for the warmth in the bed next to me. I missed the stillness and the fun, the fire. I yearned to be with one man again after so many years.
We met in a men’s group. It started as a carnal thing. He was shorter and slimmer and only a little younger. His salt and pepper hair poked up in a funny cowlick in the front. His Northern British accent was cute. In the beginning I loved the way he tripped over his convoluted sentences, screwing up his face to get it right. He tried so hard to get it right, to please. The need in his eyes aroused me. His trim little body was too tan for a Brit, brown all over except for the white pattern left by his tiny spandex thong. The tan covered his butt, too. The cheeks were firm and round, but seemed to be one size larger than the rest of his body. That was the clincher, that made me hard.
He admitted to a late start in the gay life, a long interior yearning of his own, put into gear the past few years. A furious devouring of workshops and men’s groups and the like. Each successive disclosure, each step into the honest terrain of intimacy, clarified just how large an iceberg would be lurking in the dark waters of his soul. My fires were insufficient to melt this cold.
It was Martin Luther King weekend, two weeks after another disastrous holiday spent together. It drove us apart, not together. Less intimacy, not more. I knew then that it was over, and did not let him come to the house.
How do you break a heart with your own heart open? We sat next to each other on the big down-filled cushions of the couch in my media room. I reached out for his hand. I would not be cruel, I would not hurt him.
“Baby, it’s not working, this has to end.”
His hand was clammy and much smaller than mine. His smell reached me, the sour of a man, the sweetness of soap, the sharpness of metal. I wanted to flick his cowlick of gray, its color flattened by the muted midwinter sun streaming in from the window. He needed a haircut. I could hear a single bird outside, its song cutting through the silence. G--- was so quiet that I missed it when he started to cry. His brown cheeks were awash and he did not wipe them dry.
He sat staring, looking nowhere, not at me, unable to look at me. I waited, holding the silence like a bomb. I held back a torrent of words: explanations, elaborations, justifications. I had learned how to hold the stillness. I held his hand and held my gaze. I took him in.
Still, I had the overwhelming desire to fix what I had just broken. I could not hold my gaze and I looked away from him. I noticed the time on the matte black cable box across the room. Why doesn’t he say something? Why doesn’t he hit me, push me away, let me in.
This is why it had to end. He’s waiting for me to tell him to fight.
The last time it was a man, I didn’t like the story. I had to put that one back on the shelf before I came to the ending. I knew it was over before it began, the relationship with G---. I watched as I let my longing trump my good sense. I longed too much for the warmth in the bed next to me. I missed the stillness and the fun, the fire. I yearned to be with one man again after so many years.
We met in a men’s group. It started as a carnal thing. He was shorter and slimmer and only a little younger. His salt and pepper hair poked up in a funny cowlick in the front. His Northern British accent was cute. In the beginning I loved the way he tripped over his convoluted sentences, screwing up his face to get it right. He tried so hard to get it right, to please. The need in his eyes aroused me. His trim little body was too tan for a Brit, brown all over except for the white pattern left by his tiny spandex thong. The tan covered his butt, too. The cheeks were firm and round, but seemed to be one size larger than the rest of his body. That was the clincher, that made me hard.
He admitted to a late start in the gay life, a long interior yearning of his own, put into gear the past few years. A furious devouring of workshops and men’s groups and the like. Each successive disclosure, each step into the honest terrain of intimacy, clarified just how large an iceberg would be lurking in the dark waters of his soul. My fires were insufficient to melt this cold.
It was Martin Luther King weekend, two weeks after another disastrous holiday spent together. It drove us apart, not together. Less intimacy, not more. I knew then that it was over, and did not let him come to the house.
How do you break a heart with your own heart open? We sat next to each other on the big down-filled cushions of the couch in my media room. I reached out for his hand. I would not be cruel, I would not hurt him.
“Baby, it’s not working, this has to end.”
His hand was clammy and much smaller than mine. His smell reached me, the sour of a man, the sweetness of soap, the sharpness of metal. I wanted to flick his cowlick of gray, its color flattened by the muted midwinter sun streaming in from the window. He needed a haircut. I could hear a single bird outside, its song cutting through the silence. G--- was so quiet that I missed it when he started to cry. His brown cheeks were awash and he did not wipe them dry.
He sat staring, looking nowhere, not at me, unable to look at me. I waited, holding the silence like a bomb. I held back a torrent of words: explanations, elaborations, justifications. I had learned how to hold the stillness. I held his hand and held my gaze. I took him in.
Still, I had the overwhelming desire to fix what I had just broken. I could not hold my gaze and I looked away from him. I noticed the time on the matte black cable box across the room. Why doesn’t he say something? Why doesn’t he hit me, push me away, let me in.
This is why it had to end. He’s waiting for me to tell him to fight.
AWAKENING
I started to quiver from inside, my eyes fixed on the near distance. I could not blink or cry. The other men in the room watched in silence.
Sam reached for my hand and spoke. “It’s happening for you, isn’t it Nick?” I looked at his black face and nodded slightly. His hair had been pulled back into a tiny ponytail and the pomade that made this possible glistened in the morning light streaming from the patio behind him.
It was rehab, the residence next door to the hospital. Sam was the counselor. I was the patient. He led me out of the kitchen to the bedroom I shared with Jeff. I stood at the side of the bed. My T-shirt and shorts scraped against my skin, suddenly tender. The closing door sound was a distant click, like a jewel box locking me inside. The air was still and thick. I gulped it and I found myself kneeling. I gripped my hands together tightly and placed them on the nubbly stained bedspread. Its color was a memory. An expanse of time appeared before me and I swallowed it. I almost choked, but I swallowed it, and when I was finished, I looked up.
I did not look to the right, where the nightstand held the evidence of my life here in rehab. A pack of Marlboro’s, a lighter, a travel alarm, a journal. I did not look to the left, at the pile of discarded clothes and the stack of books and papers. I saw only the painting on the wall before me.
It was an oil, the portrait of a man in three-quarter profile, dressed in an olive Army uniform. A wild cat roared from a round shoulder patch and a jaunty cap with a crease down the middle tilted at an angle on his head. He wore a slight smile, outlined by a pencil-thin mustache. My father.
A pose captured at the end of World War II by an itinerant French painter. That’s what Mama said when she gave it to me for my birthday the week before. Daddy had been in a closet somewhere until a relative sent him to mama. “I thought you’d like it,” she had said.
I remembered how long my hair was the day we buried him, nothing else. 20 years. The shiver inside me deepened and became a moan. A deep animal noise filled the room. It was coming from me. A light surrounded his face on the wall and I felt a release as I said the words.
“Daddy, I miss you so much. Please help me.”
Sam reached for my hand and spoke. “It’s happening for you, isn’t it Nick?” I looked at his black face and nodded slightly. His hair had been pulled back into a tiny ponytail and the pomade that made this possible glistened in the morning light streaming from the patio behind him.
It was rehab, the residence next door to the hospital. Sam was the counselor. I was the patient. He led me out of the kitchen to the bedroom I shared with Jeff. I stood at the side of the bed. My T-shirt and shorts scraped against my skin, suddenly tender. The closing door sound was a distant click, like a jewel box locking me inside. The air was still and thick. I gulped it and I found myself kneeling. I gripped my hands together tightly and placed them on the nubbly stained bedspread. Its color was a memory. An expanse of time appeared before me and I swallowed it. I almost choked, but I swallowed it, and when I was finished, I looked up.
I did not look to the right, where the nightstand held the evidence of my life here in rehab. A pack of Marlboro’s, a lighter, a travel alarm, a journal. I did not look to the left, at the pile of discarded clothes and the stack of books and papers. I saw only the painting on the wall before me.
It was an oil, the portrait of a man in three-quarter profile, dressed in an olive Army uniform. A wild cat roared from a round shoulder patch and a jaunty cap with a crease down the middle tilted at an angle on his head. He wore a slight smile, outlined by a pencil-thin mustache. My father.
A pose captured at the end of World War II by an itinerant French painter. That’s what Mama said when she gave it to me for my birthday the week before. Daddy had been in a closet somewhere until a relative sent him to mama. “I thought you’d like it,” she had said.
I remembered how long my hair was the day we buried him, nothing else. 20 years. The shiver inside me deepened and became a moan. A deep animal noise filled the room. It was coming from me. A light surrounded his face on the wall and I felt a release as I said the words.
“Daddy, I miss you so much. Please help me.”
GREAT LOVE
It’s 1981, New York, inside the relationship with Paul. An entry: “So, Paul and I went sailing. I practiced my swimming. I am getting more relaxed. All because of Paul. He makes me relaxed, confident, healthy, alive. I love him for that, and much more. I can’t put it into words. Only I will, and it will be a great story, a great love story.”
I don’t know if it was a great love. It never became a great story. Perhaps now, I’ll be able to turn the hints and scenes from the diary into something. Perhaps. But where’s the love to describe? How do I exhume those feelings, not the disintegration and the doubt, but the love itself?
It’s hard to write about it because I have stopped hoping for that kind of love. I’ve just stopped hoping. I am hopeless. I was a hopeless drunk. I am hopelessly unloved. Love will never come, I’m singing the blues. Love was a fluke, it’s only for the young. Nobody will ever love me again, I’ll die by myself, unloved.
I turned the key in the lock, and propped the door open with my foot. I could hear classical music coming from the other side of the loft, was it Vivaldi? I dropped my gym bag at the edge of the closet door and walked down the narrow hall into the main loft space while yelling, “I’m home…Paul?...Anyone here?’
The kitchen counter to the left was spotless, except for the sink: a pot handle stuck out of some greasy water. The freezer door was covered with reminder notes, and half a dozen pictures held by magnets we had bought at rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike.
A mirror on the wall to the right showed a late 30’s guy in shorts and a grey T-shirt, decorated with darker wet splotches at the chest and under the arms. It was me, back from the gym. My dark brown hair was disheveled, but the eyes were bright, clairvoyant. Something’s not right.
Beyond was the airy main loft with double-tall ceilings and refinished factory flooring, tossed with a few small oriental rugs. An off-white sofa bed faced me. The far wall was cleaned-up brick, punctuated by windows of shatterproof glass that had chicken wire threaded all the way through. The view was mostly rooftops and water towers, though you could see the crown of the Empire State Building if you angled just right.
I wondered where Paul was this time of day; maybe he finally got a job? Sure, I wanted him to work, but isn’t it wonderful to come back from the gym all pumped up and fall into bed with him? Isn’t it great to be in love?
A noise broke my reverie. I looked up to see Paul emerge from the door of the bedroom, shoving his shirttail into his shorts. His face was splotchy red.
“Oh, hi,” I said, walking towards him,” I didn’t think you were here.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m here.” A cough, and then, another body, shorter, younger, more compact, stepped into the room.
“I’m not alone, actually.”
I don’t know if it was a great love. It never became a great story. Perhaps now, I’ll be able to turn the hints and scenes from the diary into something. Perhaps. But where’s the love to describe? How do I exhume those feelings, not the disintegration and the doubt, but the love itself?
It’s hard to write about it because I have stopped hoping for that kind of love. I’ve just stopped hoping. I am hopeless. I was a hopeless drunk. I am hopelessly unloved. Love will never come, I’m singing the blues. Love was a fluke, it’s only for the young. Nobody will ever love me again, I’ll die by myself, unloved.
I turned the key in the lock, and propped the door open with my foot. I could hear classical music coming from the other side of the loft, was it Vivaldi? I dropped my gym bag at the edge of the closet door and walked down the narrow hall into the main loft space while yelling, “I’m home…Paul?...Anyone here?’
The kitchen counter to the left was spotless, except for the sink: a pot handle stuck out of some greasy water. The freezer door was covered with reminder notes, and half a dozen pictures held by magnets we had bought at rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike.
A mirror on the wall to the right showed a late 30’s guy in shorts and a grey T-shirt, decorated with darker wet splotches at the chest and under the arms. It was me, back from the gym. My dark brown hair was disheveled, but the eyes were bright, clairvoyant. Something’s not right.
Beyond was the airy main loft with double-tall ceilings and refinished factory flooring, tossed with a few small oriental rugs. An off-white sofa bed faced me. The far wall was cleaned-up brick, punctuated by windows of shatterproof glass that had chicken wire threaded all the way through. The view was mostly rooftops and water towers, though you could see the crown of the Empire State Building if you angled just right.
I wondered where Paul was this time of day; maybe he finally got a job? Sure, I wanted him to work, but isn’t it wonderful to come back from the gym all pumped up and fall into bed with him? Isn’t it great to be in love?
A noise broke my reverie. I looked up to see Paul emerge from the door of the bedroom, shoving his shirttail into his shorts. His face was splotchy red.
“Oh, hi,” I said, walking towards him,” I didn’t think you were here.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m here.” A cough, and then, another body, shorter, younger, more compact, stepped into the room.
“I’m not alone, actually.”
SUMMER OF TAB
I learned to kill a chicken with my bare hands that summer, on the way to becoming a man.
Once you caught one, you’d grab its neck and twist until the head came off. Then you’d drop the body, which would run around the yard spewing blood until there was no more left. After you brought the carcass to the porch for plucking, the dogs would come and clean up the mess.
It was women’s work, like everything that happened at the top of that hill. My Uncle Walter and Aunt Hallie owned the farm. My parents had parked me there while they were shopping for a new house. It was my sixteenth summer, and we were moving once again, this time from New Jersey to Louisville, so that Mom could help her parents die.
Dad had slapped me on the shoulder and said, “The farm will be good for you. Work hard, get into shape.” I eyed his big stomach. Look who’s talking, I thought.
The first morning on the farm, we all had a big family breakfast together, and then Uncle Walter and Cousin Charlie got into the battered green truck and drove down to the fields. I was left with the women. At least I was spared the cooking and cleaning up in the house.
I sat on the porch looking out; the morning was fresh and moist. A cherry tree framed the view down the hill, neat rows of crops lined up in green geometry. After a while, Aunt Hallie led me across the flat dusty yard between the house and the barn. As we got to the open door of the barn, Hallie turned to me and said, “OK, hon, this is where we work.”
The low morning sun invaded the cracks in the old board walls, cutting the cool gloom of the cavernous space into stripes. The floor was brown dirt, uncovered except for a dusty canvas tarp where Aunt Em and Cousin Igie were sitting on little stools, working and talking and drinking Tab. Tab was just out, and it was a miracle. You could drink it and it would make you skinny. I really wanted to be skinny again. A radio blared out from the other side of the shed. It was gospel music. These women were all Baptist teetotalers. That would have to go, I thought.
Igie was in her thirties, and she looked like Gale Storm. She wore a blue and white checked halter-top and jeans that were cut off above the knees. The flesh at the back of her tanned arms jiggled as she dusted off a beefsteak tomato that was bigger than her hand with a flannel rag. Old Aunt Em looked like the witch in the Wizard of Oz, maybe it was the name. Her wrinkled face had never been pretty. Her nose was round and too large, and she had a mole on her chin. Her scraggly gray hair was hidden under a bonnet, and she wore an apron over a cotton wrapper that fell to the dusty ground.
“This here’s your spot, Nicky,” she said, leading me by the hand to another little stool on the canvas tarp.
Just before noon, Aunt Em and Aunt Hallie would go fix lunch, while Igie and I gossiped and laughed and changed the station so I could listen to rock and roll, singing along when the Beatles came on. Lunch was always a banquet, fried and piled high. After saying grace, the men ate steadily without words. I could smell their sharp sour dirty sweat from across the table. After they ate, they smoked and talked about crops, and money and Richard Nixon.
They went to rest on porch chairs covered with brightly flowered chintz. I did too, not like the women, who finished up in the kitchen. I would try to read; that summer it was Faulkner. I never got far in a book before nodding into a midday nap before the hottest
shift of the day.
After a few weeks Charles invited me to get up early on Saturday and go with him to market, just the two of us. On the road by 5 a.m., truck loaded with perfect bushels of eggplants and cucumbers and those enormous tomatoes. Charles smoked Camels as we drove through the dark early morning. He answered questions, but did not volunteer any stories of his own. I liked it.
The next Monday, Charles told me I would not be going to the shed with the women. “Get in this truck, boy,” and I did. And so I left the Tab and the women and the radio to pick cantaloupe and eggplants from the fields, hoisting boxes into the back of the old green farm truck. With the other men.
Day after day of man’s work wrought what no amount of Tab could ever do. My baby fat, that’s what Dad called it, my boy fat and my slightly enlarged boy breasts became hard, leaner, manly. I felt taller, ready.
Ready for the Saturday nights with my cousin David and his friends. He drove a Plymouth Fury, and there was rock ’n’ roll and Southern Comfort. I road shotgun all over town like a real cool cat.
For some reason, I never told anyone much about that summer. All I know is that I liked it. I liked being skinny. I liked being with the men in the fields and the guys in the Plymouth Fury, the rock ‘n’ roll and the Southern Comfort they had. I hoisted the melons, killed the chickens, rode and drank with my cousin, it all happened so fast.
In late August we moved to the new house and I started my junior year. I was not in New Jersey anymore, and I was no longer a boy.
DOWN-LOW
I read the ad on Craig’s List. Like so many of them, he was in the closet, on the down-low.
Hey guys. In town working a trade show. I want to hook up with one or more guys. I don't get to play often (engaged to be married).
What does it feel like for this guy? What about his girl? Would it be different for them today than it was for my parents, back in the fifties?
Dad was a married soldier, and he had affairs with men. Mom found love letters and they were all from men. She told me this 25 years ago, the day I came out to her. After he died.
I had put off telling her my big secret. I delayed. I’d rather lie … or run. I can’t look you in the eye. I know you’ll hate what you see, and then you’ll leave.
Dad died and left us. Because I am so bad.
Mom flew to D.C. from Florida to see the gravestone. The Army had notified her that the marker had finally been installed above his body, one of thousands of GI’s buried at Arlington. We held hands as we placed the forlorn flowers on his gravestone. It looked so small and white. Death was everywhere and I could not tell her my truth. I might kill her, too.
I put it off as long as I could. By Sunday I knew she would be gone in a few hours. It was after brunch, there in my little D.C. apartment.
“Mom, there’s something I have to say.” I took a deep breath and my throat tightened. “I’m gay. I can’t hide it anymore.”
The hum of the cheap air-conditioner surrounded us. It was straining to produce enough coolness to fill the space of the small, white-walled room. At least it isn’t hot in here, I thought, glancing towards the machine that chugged away in the window. Something red caught my eye. A man in a Speedo on the roof next door shimmered in the glare of the hot sun. I wished I looked that good in a Speedo. The thought made me notice my stomach.
I looked up as Mom’s frail body squirmed in the canvas director’s chair, trying to get comfortable. Her flowered pants suit swallowed her tiny frame. Grief had stolen 20 pounds from her, and she couldn’t afford the loss. Humidity was wilting the rings of the thick silver hair that covered her head. I thought I saw a tear form and make a trail across her makeup, like a snail. Her purse lay open on the surface of the rough wooden cable spool I was using as a table. I could see a Kleenex inside. I wanted to reach over and get it for her, but I couldn’t.
I thought I saw a slight quiver in her delicate fingers. The movement pierced my heart. Each of my internal organs felt like they were vibrating at a different frequency. I thought I would vomit.
She found a way to smile, looking right at me and squinting the rest of her tears out and onto her cheeks. She was radiant when she spoke. “Of course I knew. A mother always knows.” I let out my breath. “I love you honey, I will always love you…Just like I loved your father.”
Then she told me about the letters.
Hey guys. In town working a trade show. I want to hook up with one or more guys. I don't get to play often (engaged to be married).
What does it feel like for this guy? What about his girl? Would it be different for them today than it was for my parents, back in the fifties?
Dad was a married soldier, and he had affairs with men. Mom found love letters and they were all from men. She told me this 25 years ago, the day I came out to her. After he died.
I had put off telling her my big secret. I delayed. I’d rather lie … or run. I can’t look you in the eye. I know you’ll hate what you see, and then you’ll leave.
Dad died and left us. Because I am so bad.
Mom flew to D.C. from Florida to see the gravestone. The Army had notified her that the marker had finally been installed above his body, one of thousands of GI’s buried at Arlington. We held hands as we placed the forlorn flowers on his gravestone. It looked so small and white. Death was everywhere and I could not tell her my truth. I might kill her, too.
I put it off as long as I could. By Sunday I knew she would be gone in a few hours. It was after brunch, there in my little D.C. apartment.
“Mom, there’s something I have to say.” I took a deep breath and my throat tightened. “I’m gay. I can’t hide it anymore.”
The hum of the cheap air-conditioner surrounded us. It was straining to produce enough coolness to fill the space of the small, white-walled room. At least it isn’t hot in here, I thought, glancing towards the machine that chugged away in the window. Something red caught my eye. A man in a Speedo on the roof next door shimmered in the glare of the hot sun. I wished I looked that good in a Speedo. The thought made me notice my stomach.
I looked up as Mom’s frail body squirmed in the canvas director’s chair, trying to get comfortable. Her flowered pants suit swallowed her tiny frame. Grief had stolen 20 pounds from her, and she couldn’t afford the loss. Humidity was wilting the rings of the thick silver hair that covered her head. I thought I saw a tear form and make a trail across her makeup, like a snail. Her purse lay open on the surface of the rough wooden cable spool I was using as a table. I could see a Kleenex inside. I wanted to reach over and get it for her, but I couldn’t.
I thought I saw a slight quiver in her delicate fingers. The movement pierced my heart. Each of my internal organs felt like they were vibrating at a different frequency. I thought I would vomit.
She found a way to smile, looking right at me and squinting the rest of her tears out and onto her cheeks. She was radiant when she spoke. “Of course I knew. A mother always knows.” I let out my breath. “I love you honey, I will always love you…Just like I loved your father.”
Then she told me about the letters.
TWO-SALE DAY
Somebody should have figured it out after I brought in the Barbra Streisand album.
I just couldn’t stand hearing Brazil ’66 another minute on those long drives to the far ends of the mid-South in the Ford Galaxie. We sold encyclopedias door-to-door from a home base in Memphis, but most of the sales came from small towns that dotted the highways veining out in all directions, into Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi.
“Just look at that sign,” Matt Borzello would shout in his New York accent, pointing out the window. “Caution Slow Children” he would say, “They need these books. Get out there and sell!”
He would drop each one of us off at a different corner to prowl for suckers and drunks and bored housewives, anyone willing to open the door and let us in. If you could get the pitch started, you had a 50-50 chance of closing the sale.
Like many a Friday night that summer, we met up at the office on Front Street, down by the iced tea Mississippi in a seedy office building a few blocks from the Holiday Inn World Headquarters. It was a road trip, so Matt told us to pack a bag. We were a crew. There was Sam, who never said a word, I never learned where he was from, but boy could he sell encyclopedias! Maybe it was the trophy freckles and the Southern white boy manner. There was Bobby, like me about to enter the last year of high school, only he would be spanking in Memphis, and I would go back to Louisville. And there was Dave, the big linebacker from Tunica, Mississippi, who had turned down football offers from both Tennessee and Alabama, or so he said. He was at puny Tunica Junior College instead, just to spite his Daddy.
Dave had been at me all summer to get laid. I don’t know how he knew I was a virgin. When it was our turn to sit in the back of the Ford together, he would talk about his wife Janelle, a sexy rich daughter of some kind of plantation gentry class they were both part of. A beauty queen, Miss Milk Jugs of 1963, something like that.
That weekend when we finished selling dirt, Janelle was going to pick up me and Dave for a blind double date with her brunette successor, Miss Milk Jugs of 1964.
I had a bang-up Saturday in Nashville --- my first two-sale day ever, bringing my weekly total up to four and a chance for the prize money they gave each week on top of the big commissions. Most of the money the suckers spent on those books went for commissions.
Bobby was my roomy in the cheesy motel. We were ready to collapse onto the linens after the hot day of pavement pounding and door knocking. We peeled down to skivvies and crawled under the polyester covers of the queen-sized bed.
This is the part where I describe the endless hours of arousal and rolling around, half sleeping, hard all night, wanting/not-wanting, frightened, touching, aching but never acting, pretending that neither of us wanted to electrify each other, ending the long winters of our bodies and our souls.
Sometime near dawn, he peeled back the sweaty sheets to tiptoe to the bathroom, failing to hide his erection as he passed by my side of the bed. Our eyes never met, not then, not as we packed up, not in the tacky coffee shop, not in the back seat of the Galaxie on the way back to Memphis, not ever once again. Neither of us could take it.
Matt was driving down the Interstate like a madman He wanted to get back to his wife Lydia, a local Memphis bottle blonde with a big voice and a bigger chest; Matt adored her. She sang freelance backup at the Memphis studios. Her biggest gig had been singing behind Lou Christie on Rhapsody in the Rain, I loved that record. Matt didn’t have it on 8-track for the ride home, only those damn instrumentals. Which is why I bought the Barbara Streisand in the first place.
Barbra san her heart out as we finished our take-out sandwiches and passed around a bottle of vodka to wash down the potato chips and cookies and the rest of the junk food.
The vodka was a bad idea, especially for Matt, who only had half a stomach left, some kind of surgery back East. The rest of us were shit-faced by the time we took the cut-off for Memphis. God only knows how Matt managed to stay on the road and avoid the arrest that he deserved.
I didn’t know why Matt drank so much, but then, I didn’t really know why I did either. It sure made it easier not to look at Bobby, who sat eating chips and staring out the window on his side of the car. I guess they call it a blackout, what descended upon me as the vodka took me hostage.
By the time we made it to Matt and Lydia’s apartment on the south side, only the vaguest of images were getting through at all. I sort of remember Janelle picking us up in Dave’s big Cadillac convertible, putting the luggage in the trunk, sliding into the back seat next to my Liz Taylor blind date, her name was Sue Ellen, a lot of drumstick for me, but it didn’t matter because there was more vodka to share on the road out of Memphis, past the wrought iron Elvis gates of Graceland, into the Delta and oblivion.
I remember Highway 61, we had driven it so many mornings in search of white people to buy our books. Dave would turn to me and say, “Do you see the river over there?” I would look out the window at the cotton and the soybeans, a low green expanse stretching to the tree line off in the distance. “All of that belongs to my daddy, the son of a bitch.”
There’s a nasty end to this story, the scene that breaks through the blackout, it’s funny how that works. It’s all still fragments, the party in the Tara mansion, the big bedroom where Dave shoved me and Sue Ellen, what happened there, and what didn’t, the ride home to my house, the failed end of the vodka, the luggage on the porch, Dave dragging me past the morning glories to the door, pushing the bell before he drove away, the two women, the blonde and the brunette, sailing off into the Memphis night.
Mama stood on the crickets in her silky pink nightie. There was lace at the neck and a ridge of flesh bunched up on her forehead, a map of dismay and disapproval.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, and pushed open the Valentine door. I staggered back, looking up. “Hi Mom,” I shouted, falling towards her.
She tried to catch me, but I stuck out my right arm to break the fall. It was a slow motion ballet, an exhausted finale, a complete gesture that would elevate this story into the realm of family legend for years to come: the night of Nicky’s first blackout, the night he threw up all over his mama. Dad would tell it, his stage laugh booming, his voice betraying a hint of pride as mama pursed her lips, every single time.
“Hell, he was just a kid,” he said, “Trying to be a man.”
I just couldn’t stand hearing Brazil ’66 another minute on those long drives to the far ends of the mid-South in the Ford Galaxie. We sold encyclopedias door-to-door from a home base in Memphis, but most of the sales came from small towns that dotted the highways veining out in all directions, into Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi.
“Just look at that sign,” Matt Borzello would shout in his New York accent, pointing out the window. “Caution Slow Children” he would say, “They need these books. Get out there and sell!”
He would drop each one of us off at a different corner to prowl for suckers and drunks and bored housewives, anyone willing to open the door and let us in. If you could get the pitch started, you had a 50-50 chance of closing the sale.
Like many a Friday night that summer, we met up at the office on Front Street, down by the iced tea Mississippi in a seedy office building a few blocks from the Holiday Inn World Headquarters. It was a road trip, so Matt told us to pack a bag. We were a crew. There was Sam, who never said a word, I never learned where he was from, but boy could he sell encyclopedias! Maybe it was the trophy freckles and the Southern white boy manner. There was Bobby, like me about to enter the last year of high school, only he would be spanking in Memphis, and I would go back to Louisville. And there was Dave, the big linebacker from Tunica, Mississippi, who had turned down football offers from both Tennessee and Alabama, or so he said. He was at puny Tunica Junior College instead, just to spite his Daddy.
Dave had been at me all summer to get laid. I don’t know how he knew I was a virgin. When it was our turn to sit in the back of the Ford together, he would talk about his wife Janelle, a sexy rich daughter of some kind of plantation gentry class they were both part of. A beauty queen, Miss Milk Jugs of 1963, something like that.
That weekend when we finished selling dirt, Janelle was going to pick up me and Dave for a blind double date with her brunette successor, Miss Milk Jugs of 1964.
I had a bang-up Saturday in Nashville --- my first two-sale day ever, bringing my weekly total up to four and a chance for the prize money they gave each week on top of the big commissions. Most of the money the suckers spent on those books went for commissions.
Bobby was my roomy in the cheesy motel. We were ready to collapse onto the linens after the hot day of pavement pounding and door knocking. We peeled down to skivvies and crawled under the polyester covers of the queen-sized bed.
This is the part where I describe the endless hours of arousal and rolling around, half sleeping, hard all night, wanting/not-wanting, frightened, touching, aching but never acting, pretending that neither of us wanted to electrify each other, ending the long winters of our bodies and our souls.
Sometime near dawn, he peeled back the sweaty sheets to tiptoe to the bathroom, failing to hide his erection as he passed by my side of the bed. Our eyes never met, not then, not as we packed up, not in the tacky coffee shop, not in the back seat of the Galaxie on the way back to Memphis, not ever once again. Neither of us could take it.
Matt was driving down the Interstate like a madman He wanted to get back to his wife Lydia, a local Memphis bottle blonde with a big voice and a bigger chest; Matt adored her. She sang freelance backup at the Memphis studios. Her biggest gig had been singing behind Lou Christie on Rhapsody in the Rain, I loved that record. Matt didn’t have it on 8-track for the ride home, only those damn instrumentals. Which is why I bought the Barbara Streisand in the first place.
Barbra san her heart out as we finished our take-out sandwiches and passed around a bottle of vodka to wash down the potato chips and cookies and the rest of the junk food.
The vodka was a bad idea, especially for Matt, who only had half a stomach left, some kind of surgery back East. The rest of us were shit-faced by the time we took the cut-off for Memphis. God only knows how Matt managed to stay on the road and avoid the arrest that he deserved.
I didn’t know why Matt drank so much, but then, I didn’t really know why I did either. It sure made it easier not to look at Bobby, who sat eating chips and staring out the window on his side of the car. I guess they call it a blackout, what descended upon me as the vodka took me hostage.
By the time we made it to Matt and Lydia’s apartment on the south side, only the vaguest of images were getting through at all. I sort of remember Janelle picking us up in Dave’s big Cadillac convertible, putting the luggage in the trunk, sliding into the back seat next to my Liz Taylor blind date, her name was Sue Ellen, a lot of drumstick for me, but it didn’t matter because there was more vodka to share on the road out of Memphis, past the wrought iron Elvis gates of Graceland, into the Delta and oblivion.
I remember Highway 61, we had driven it so many mornings in search of white people to buy our books. Dave would turn to me and say, “Do you see the river over there?” I would look out the window at the cotton and the soybeans, a low green expanse stretching to the tree line off in the distance. “All of that belongs to my daddy, the son of a bitch.”
There’s a nasty end to this story, the scene that breaks through the blackout, it’s funny how that works. It’s all still fragments, the party in the Tara mansion, the big bedroom where Dave shoved me and Sue Ellen, what happened there, and what didn’t, the ride home to my house, the failed end of the vodka, the luggage on the porch, Dave dragging me past the morning glories to the door, pushing the bell before he drove away, the two women, the blonde and the brunette, sailing off into the Memphis night.
Mama stood on the crickets in her silky pink nightie. There was lace at the neck and a ridge of flesh bunched up on her forehead, a map of dismay and disapproval.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, and pushed open the Valentine door. I staggered back, looking up. “Hi Mom,” I shouted, falling towards her.
She tried to catch me, but I stuck out my right arm to break the fall. It was a slow motion ballet, an exhausted finale, a complete gesture that would elevate this story into the realm of family legend for years to come: the night of Nicky’s first blackout, the night he threw up all over his mama. Dad would tell it, his stage laugh booming, his voice betraying a hint of pride as mama pursed her lips, every single time.
“Hell, he was just a kid,” he said, “Trying to be a man.”
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