BEACHES

I seem to remember reading the jacket on a VHS copy of the movie “Beaches” that read something like, “Two friends who have nothing in common except a lifelong friendship.” That perfectly describes my relationship with Steve.

I met him at one of the worst times of my life just after coming out to my parents and being dumped by my first love. I’d turned seventeen in January and I met Steve right around the end of February 1972 just as he’d turned nineteen. He was with his boyfriend John Paul and I ran into them in the lobby of the Carolina Theater I worked after school, we hit it off right away. Like most people I’ve become friends with over the years, Steve liked me because he thought I had a great sense of humor and I wasn’t effeminate like a lot of the guys he’d met. Since he was in the Air Force stationed at Pope Air Force Base there in Fayetteville he couldn’t afford to have nellie friends. For some reason I’d been told of a strict rule back then that “sisters” didn’t have sex. I think we may have heard it from my friend Charlie, so at all times during our friendship, even when we shared the same bed, we never touched one another.
I began spending a lot of time with John Paul and Steve and soon met John Paul’s roommate Gordon. Gordon had been married and had a nine year old daughter. He didn’t look or act gay which I’m sure worked in his favor since he was a mechanic at the Buick dealership. It wasn’t long before Gordon and I pared up and began having sex. He wasn’t really my type, but the dirty fingernails and his ruggedly handsome face attracted me to this tough acting guy. He was kinky in bed and insisted that I open my eyes and look straight into his when he came while fucking me. I guess it was a power trip with him. He was the one who gave me my first case of crabs and I refused to have sex with him after that. It was the same time I suspect he gave the crabs to a pretty young girl who worked in Charlie’s father’s jewelry store. Charlie almost laughed in her face when she said, “Gordon’s the kind of guy that would give you crabs.” I guess we both had a thing for “Grease Monkeys”.

Within two months of meeting Steve he had to go out of town to spend a few days with his parent’s in Charlotte. John Paul and Gordon invited me to go out drinking with them one Saturday night. I guess John Paul was jealous of my friendship with Steve because when we got back to his mobile home that night he started some shit with me about my relationship with Steve. “You two are fucking aren’t you?” he wanted to know. I said, “No, we’re just friends. “Oh don’t hand me that shit. I know you two motherfuckers are sleeping together behind my back!” his voice suddenly growing louder. We went back and forth with him accusing me and me telling him nothing was going on between us. Then he said, “You know what? Not only do I not believe you, I don’t like you and I’m going to beat the shit out of you.” As I was trying to get out the sliding glass door at the front of the trailer he reached around me, locked it, and started punching me in the face. Gordon just stood there watching, but at one point John Paul told him to go and get the gun and he disappeared down the hall returning with a pistol in hand. John broke my nose and chipped a front tooth, so blood was pouring everywhere. I decided he might beat the hell out of me, or kill me, but I wasn't going to make it easy for him. I kicked the glass door until it shattered in a hundred pieces, then rushed out the door to my mothers car yelling at the top of my lungs, “Help, help, somebody help me!” At that point I’d opened the door and got behind the wheel, but he blocked me from shutting the door and held a piece of the glass to my throat. It was then that I realized he had the keys to my mother’s car because he'd driven us home. I started yelling louder and honking the horn so much that it broke the metal horn ring of the mother’s green 1969 Mercury Monterey. “Give me the fucking keys you bastard, give me the fucking keys!” I screamed. He slapped me across the face and my head jerked to the right slinging blood all over the inside of the windshield. By that time dogs were barking and lights were going on everywhere so he threw the car keys at me and threatened, “If call the police you little faggot I swear I’ll kill you.” I slammed his hand in the glass of the door and locked it, then as he was trying to pull his hand out, I got the keys in the ignition and stomped the accelerator causing the tires to squeal. I turned the car around and tried to run him over as I was leaving. I’d have done it too, but he stepped behind his ancient red Triumph before I could reach him. I’d always been taught that if someone threatens you with harm don’t go quietly, raise hell, scream, yell, do whatever it takes to get attention and get the hell out of there.

My parent's called the police and filed charges against him, but he always hid from them and didn't show up in court. He and Gordon went AWOL from his rented trailer and their jobs. He had prior charges and outstanding warrants, but as far as I know nothing ever happened to him at least while I still lived there. A few months later I saw Gordon and him at a light. I was in my dark blue 1965 Chevrolet Impala convertible and he was in some car I’d never seen before. They started cruising me, but as soon as they recognized me they hauled ass so fast I couldn't get their license number.

After that Steve and I became even closer and began spending every free moment together. By that summer I’d been promoted to projectionist and had Saturdays off while I worked the evening shift for three hundred dollars a month. We must’ve put five thousand miles on my old convertible “Samantha” that summer hitting the gay bars in every city in the state of North Carolina. Even though I was only seventeen I was only carded once in Charlotte and when I said, “I left my driver’s license in the car I’ll have to go back and get it,” The guy said, “Don’t worry about it, you look old enough.” I was actually standing in the “Pegasus” bar in Chapel Hill, when a troll of an ABC liquor control board agent pulled a college student out of the bar and arrested him. The guy had been standing right next to me. Back then people still harassed gays in any way, shape, or form, they could. On one of our trips the Loretta Lynn tour bus passed my car and honked as they pulled ahead. There were four of us in the car with the top down drinking beer and we waved and honked back. I’ll never know if the “Queen of Country Music” herself saw us or not.

I’m not sure when he did it, but Steve had put in a transfer to Taiwan, or Thailand, I can’t remember now which one it was, but I was heartbroken at the thought of loosing my best friend and we did everything we could that summer before he had to leave in November. When we were both broke, which was often, we would go around to car dealerships looking at the new cars when they were closed. Steve was certain he wanted a new Oldsmobile Toronado, while I was torn between a boat tailed Buick Riviera, or a Thunderbird. We had all kinds of dreams and plans and we decided that after high school I should enlist in the Air Force and get stationed at the same base. We even found our dream home by going around to all the mobile home dealerships in town that had their trailers open on Sundays, so people could walk through them. We found one called “The Bachelor II” it had a master suite at each end of the trailer and you shared the living room, dining room, and kitchen. We decided that would be the perfect home for us. Steve and I spoke often about our hopes and dreams for the future and we always saw ourselves as being best friends forever. We even decided that we’d go to the old queen’s home for the aged when we got too old to take care of each other and we’d laugh about sitting out on the front porch looking at all the young cute guys as they walked by. Steve always insisted he wanted to die before he turned thirty because by then he’d be too old to attract anyone. We often talked about what it would be like knowing someone for twenty years, it seemed like such a long time to us back then.

I cried when we hugged for the last time before he left to go overseas. He sold his car and only took some of his clothes. Whatever else he had went to his parent’s house in Charlotte. I always admired the relationship Steve had with his father, they were close and his father truly loved him, something I’d never had. The year he was over there we exchanged letters constantly. One of my biggest regrets was when in one of my many moves I decided to throw those old letters away. By that time they seemed silly with all that talk of him saving up to buy a big stereo and a TV to bring back with him and all the trials and tribulations of boyfriends I couldn’t even remember after all those years. We discussed the latest records of The Supremes, Diana Ross and Barbara Streisand, they sure seemed important to us at the time. I’d give anything if I still had them, it was a great timeline of my life back in 1973 and 1974.

When he came back he re enlisted and he got enough money to pay cash for a new butterscotch colored 1973 Cutlass Supreme with a black vinyl top and interior. He then transferred to Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo to be close to me in Texas. We got to visit on a few weekends, but by 1975 there was some over zealous officers at Goodfellow that were having men suspected of homosexual activity followed around town. That made Steve nervous because he’d been questioned on one occasion, so he transferred to Los Angeles. I didn’t see him again for four years.

In 1979 I flew out to L.A. twice to visit him, and we had a good time seeing the Queen Mary, Universal Studios, homes of the stars. On my last visit he had a lover and I had to pay for the three of us to go everywhere. I didn’t mind, but for some reason Steve and I had an argument and I ended up in the bathroom crying. He was angry with me because my attempt at joining the Air Force had failed and I think he resented it deep down. There was also the fact that I was selling cars and making enough money to afford Cadillac’s and Lincoln’s while he couldn’t. I lived in a beautifully furnished apartment and I was making the dreams we talked about as teenagers come true and renting Rolls Royce’s for us to drive while I visited him. He was living in cheap apartments and using public transportation when his car broke down. We were cordial when he took me to the airport, but I left with a heavy heart. I had no idea that it would be eleven years before I would see him again.

A year or two afterwards Steve decided not to re enlist. He sold his car for five hundred dollars and moved to San Francisco. He was sharing an apartment with several guys in the Castro District and got heavily involved in drugs. Any phone number I ever had for him was only good for a few weeks before being disconnected and the only way I had of reaching him was by calling his parent’s and getting his new number from them. Even after I went to considerable trouble to reach him he was usually so high he would cut the call short and promise to call back which never happened. He once admitted to me that he was shooting up with all kinds of stuff and would wake up at times and not know where he was, or who he was with.

I finally gave up trying and didn’t hear from him until he called me from Oklahoma in 1986 where he was staying with friends while making his way back to his parent’s in North Carolina. His lover in San Francisco had died and Steve drove his car to his parent’s somewhere in the Midwest and was now trying to get home. He sounded more like himself than he had in years and he would laugh in that deep baritone voice of his as we caught up on the past couple of years. I was hoping he’d come to visit me and stay for a while. He spoke more softly as he told me, “Sammy, I’m going home because I found out I’m HIV positive and I haven’t been well.” My heart stopped, I couldn’t believe my ears he was actually the first person I knew personally who had HIV. Back then there was nothing anyone could do it was a death sentence. In my heart I’d always known it would happen. Being a gay man and an IV drug user in San Francisco in the early eighties he was bound to get it. I held back tears as I asked, “Do your parent’s know?” “Yes, I told my mother a few months ago and I just told my father last week, he cried when I told him and he told me to come home.” he said.

Over the next few years we talked on the phone frequently, and he even found a new lover at his AA meetings who was also HIV positive. They moved in together and by 1990 they both had full blown AIDS. He once told me that when he saw the movie “Beaches” it reminded him of us. “Really, which one was I?” I asked. “Who do you think bitch!” he said, as I laughed. I couldn’t afford to go see him because it cost so much more to fly on Southwest Airlines to the east coast than it does to the west coast, I don’t know why. Then in June of 1990 we had a contest at the Cadillac dealership I was working for in Dallas selling Vogue Tyres. I didn’t win the contest which was a trip to tour the Kelly Springfield tire plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but when the girl who won it didn’t want to go. I went to her and told her I had a friend in N.C. who was dying of cancer and it might be my last chance to see him. She went to the managers and told them to give the trip to me. I have been eternally grateful to her for doing that and we still run into her from time to time. Steve agreed to drive from Charlotte to Fayetteville to spend the night with me. He had a choice of driving his car with air conditioning and no radio, or driving his lover’s car whose air was not working, but had a cassette player. Steve, being Steve, drove the one with no air so he could listen to his music. It was so hot and humid that he got sick after driving home and was in the hospital for three weeks.

Steve’s skin had taken on that sickly gray color that you saw so often then on people with AIDS back then and his once coal black, shiny hair was getting gray and dull. We tried to visit some of our old haunts in my rented white Pontiac, but we discovered that the downtown Hay Street area that we practically lived on had been raised to the ground. Virtually nothing was left but flat deserted blocks where formerly there were hotels, movie theaters, and department stores. It was depressing and sad. I bought rum and Coke, but Steve couldn’t drink any. That night in our hotel room we lay in bed together and Steve told me he had many regrets about how he’d lived his life. He said he never should have left the Air Force and stayed in L.A. He also said he regretted the fact that we’d never had sex. I held him and cuddled with him that night for the first time in our lives as we fell asleep. The next day he followed me to the airport and stayed with me until my flight was ready to leave. One of my co workers took a photo of us sitting together. As I walked to the plane, I kept looking back. He stood there watching me, we both knew it would be the last time we’d ever see each other. One Friday I woke up with Steve on my mind. I just felt I had to call and check on him, we hadn’t spoken since the fourth of July. I was ironing shirts that night as I watched the clock for the rates to go down to call him. Something told me when the phone was answered not to ask for him. When his mother answered I said, “Hi, this is Sammy, I was just calling to check on Steve.” There was a pause, and she said, “Oh honey, Steve passed away this morning. I’ve been meaning to call, but things have been so busy around here.” I choked back the tears and told her how much I loved him and admired her for taking care of him in his final months. She said, “I wouldn’t have had it any other way.” I don’t remember what else I said, but she promised to call me regarding his funeral arrangements. When we hung up I just stood there in the kitchen ironing those God damned shirts and sobbing. He died on July 23rd, 1991 at the age of thirty eight. We’d known each other for nineteen and a half years, we never made it to that twenty year milestone we’d always talked about.
I guess he was really right; we really were “Two friends who had nothing in common except a lifelong friendship.”

THE TWILIGHT ZONE

“The Twilight Zone” was my favorite TV show as a child. Although I didn’t understand the meaning of many of the episodes like the one where Burgess Meredith was the last man left on earth after a nuclear war and he emerges from the ruins of a public library and is ecstatic because he has all the time left in the world to read all the books he wants only to drop and break his hopelessly thick glasses. The one that sticks out in my mind is “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” written by Richard Matheson.

It was early October 1963 when I was eight and my brother Danny was six that we watched the episode where William Schatner sees a “Gremlin” on the wing of the airplane he and his wife are on tampering with one of the engines.
All through the first half of the show he keeps trying to get others to see the man thing on the wing, but it always flies out of sight whenever anyone else look, until finally the stewardess gives him one of her sedatives to him to make him sleep in one of those cone shaped paper cups that folded out from being flat that airlines used in those days. It was the early sixties, so no doubt the sedative was Nembutal, Seconal, or something just as potent to make his crazy ass go to sleep. Isn’t that what killed Marylyn? A moment later, when no one is looking, he spits the pill into his hand and then throws back the curtain to reveal the hideous face of the “Gremlin” staring back at him. My brother and I jumped, screamed, and bumped our heads together, we almost peed ourselves. Schatner steals a gun from a sleeping security guard, throws open the emergency exit door by his seat and shoots the “Gremlin”, thereby saving everyone on the plane. As they remove his handsome young ass from the plane on a stretcher in a straight jacket to a waiting ambulance Rod Serling reveals that the next day they find evidence that one of the engines had actually been tampered with and maybe he wasn’t crazy after all. Then the camera pans back to reveal an engine cover that has been pulled back with blackened surroundings. That night my brother and I slept with the overhead light on and the bedroom curtains drawn shut.

To be fair my mother always told us we shouldn’t watch such things, but we always nagged her until she said, “OK, but don’t come crying to me when you can’t go to sleep tonight.” From the ages of six to twelve I don’t think I slept three hours a night.
My own “Twilight Zone” experience was when I was ten years old. We’d just moved from Odessa, Texas to Fayetteville, North Carolina and after living in a tiny rented trailer. We were happy to get to move into our beautiful, brand new, mobile home at the “Spring Lake Mobile Home Park”.
It was July 1965 and they were just finishing the streets at the trailer park many of them were still just beige North Carolina clay. One afternoon while my mother was making dinner she said, “Sammy, we’re out of tea and I need you boys to run up to the gas station and buy some Cokes for supper. Go get me my purse.” I went to my parent’s bedroom, got her purse and took it to her. After digging around in the bottom of it she said, “Here’s four dimes and take four empties from the pantry for the deposits.” As she started to hand me the money Danny was jumping up and down hollering, “Give me two, give me two, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.” She handed me two dimes, then reluctantly handed him two. “Don’t let him loose them.” She said in a stern voice looking at me. Oh great, now it would be my fault if the dumb little shit lost them. My brother couldn’t be trusted with anything. “That boy could tear up an anvil with a rubber hammer.” My grandpa used to say. The last thing she said before we left was, “You’re daddy will be home any minute, so hurry up and don’t fart around I don’t want supper to get cold.” We hurried to the gas station barefoot and after fighting over who would insert the money into the machine I finally gave in and let him insert his dimes, but I got to pull them out of the slots because if you didn’t pull them out in one long motion the machine would lock the slot and keep your money. I gave him two and while I was getting mine the little shit opened his with the opener on the front of the box. “Why did you open them stupid? We have to take them home and now you’ll spill them!” I said. “I won’t spill them!” He said, defiantly. We headed for home I carried two and he carried two, things had to be fair, so we wouldn’t fight. It had just rained for three solid days and the unfinished streets were muddy with huge pools of water. On the way home he said, “I’ve got mud on my feet and mama will be mad if I track it in the new house, so I’m gonna rinse off my feet in that puddle.” He headed toward a huge milky beige puddle of water. My patience with him was already thin, so I said, “Alright, but you’d better hurry up mother told us to be home before daddy gets home.” Our father often came home drunk so we couldn’t tell what mood he was going to be in. Just being late for supper could be reason enough for all hell to break loose and my brother seemed oblivious to all of it. I’d walked about fifteen feet when I turned around to yell “Hurry up!” He wasn’t there, he was gone. I stood there in total silence searching the area for any sign of him. I couldn’t see anyone and I had a good view of at least a hundred yards in any direction. I thought, “This is just like The Twilight Zone.” He disappeared, where did he go, what happened to him, how am I going to explain this to mother? Secretly I was delighted that he’d vanished into thin air, he was such a pain in the ass. But I knew I’d be held responsible for his disappearance. “Why did you let him walk through the puddle?” I could hear my mother scolding me. About that time two arms popped up out of the puddle a coke in each hand, then a head, then a torso. It reminded me of the movie “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” when the creature walks out of the water. He dropped the cokes as he pulled himself out and he was covered in muddy water. It was such a shock I’d never seen anything like this in my life. I couldn’t do anything but throw my head back and laugh. As we walked the rest of the way home with him crying and me laughing. My mother heard us and thought “Those Goddamn kids are fighting again!”
When we reached the front door I explained what had happened and she told him, “You’re not coming into my new house like that, you take all your clothes off right there on the porch.” His crying changed to a howl. Mother felt sorry for him and laid out towels inside the front door for him to undress on. He stripped naked and she brought extra towels and dry clothes for him. “Now just think of the extra laundry I’ll have to do.” She scolded.
We shared the two tall Cokes among the four of us for dinner, thank God they weren’t the small five cent ones.
We went back the next day to see if we could see where he disappeared, a manhole, a pit? But there was no evidence of any place that could have made him drop out of sight.
Only I knew he’d disappeared and come back from, “The Twilight Zone.”

CHRISTMAS WISHES

December 16th, 2006

Dear Family and Friends,

Its seventy seven degrees in my condo as I write this and “It’s A Wonderful Life” is on the television somewhere in the back ground. I don’t know what is wrong with the air conditioning, but needless to say it doesn’t feel much like Christmas.

I’ve struggled with writing this Christmas letter for a while now. I finally figured if you can tell people about all the good things that have happened in the past year, you must be honest enough to tell the bad things too.
August, 18th, I lost the best job I’ve ever had after seven years.

I’ve since found a new job selling Porsche’s in Dallas, but it takes me an hour and a half to get to work each morning and almost an hour to get home. So now instead of the usual ten to eleven hours a day I have an extra two and a half hour commute added. I have to start from scratch and I’m not making anywhere near the money I was before. I’m going to have to refinance my condo just to pay off my credit cards, but you all know me. Last week I figured out a way to get out of the bland metallic beige Volkswagen Jetta I bought the day I was fired and I leased a red Mercedes Benz C230 Sport for almost the same payment. Yes, they can knock me down and try to destroy me, but they’re not going to lick me. Just like Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” as God as my witness I’ll make it through this. If I have to drive to the poor house it will be in a bright red Mercedes.

Just this week I’ve received two Christmas cards I never expected. One from a family I’ve known since 1966, when we first moved to Germany. It was fat with materiel, so I was expecting new family photos only to find the funeral program of their beautiful daughter, who died of Cancer March 1st, just sixteen days shy of her forty fifth birthday. Needless to say I was devastated, she was a little girl I baby sat when I was twelve and she was six, along with her older brother and younger sister. I cried so hard I could hardly call my mother to tell her what had happened. I still cry when I think about it.

I know people at work felt it was strange that they send such a message in a Christmas card, but I didn’t feel it was strange at all. After all, we all know how hard it is to talk about such terrible things. Every time we have to tell it, or talk about it, we relive it all over again. I wasn’t offended just heart broken for the sweet little girl I remembered and the fact that I would never get to reminisce old times with her as an adult. She’d grown from an awkward, chubby little girl, into a beautiful woman, who I would have loved to have known. She had finally met and married a loving husband. Her last years were spent in Hawaii, so at least I thank God for that.

Then just tonight I received a Christmas card from the father of a best friend who died in 1991. For the past several years I’ve sent Christmas cards to him and his wife, but I hadn’t received one from them in two years. I wondered if I should send one this year, or just stop? Suddenly there was this Christmas card in my mailbox with only his signature. His wife must be gone, but he’s still here and he remembered me just as I will remember his son for the rest of my life. That somehow made me feel a little better. My friend and I still have still have that single thread binding us together through his dad.

Three nights ago I got a call from my best friend of the past thirty years. He’s never had to work a single day in his life and he’ll soon be fifty five years old. His parents have always paid for everything, yes, I’m jealous. I was having a few solitary drinks pondering my future and feeling sorry for myself when he called me to get my spaghetti recipe. I blew up and went off on him like you wouldn’t believe. I swear I haven’t made my spaghetti sauce in over ten years and he makes it at least every three months, so why does he always call me to get the recipe? Can’t he remember it? Or is he just rubbing my nose in the fact that he has the time, the money, and the occasion to make it? I spent the next thirty minutes telling him how miserable I was, how close to financial devastation I was and how worried I was. Throughout the whole conversation he kept trying to get the secret ingredients out of me. I refused to tell him I just held my ground. He has no idea of what a hard time is in no way, shape, or form, and I doubt if he ever will. The next day when I called to apologize he wasn’t concerned about my tyrant. He was only concerned about the fact that that there was something off in his spaghetti sauce and it didn’t taste the same as mine. I made him recite every ingredient back to me and then I told him he’d forgotten one of the most important things, salt. He didn’t want to believe that something as simple as salt could make a difference, but once he’d added it all was well. Then yesterday he called me to tell me about the most horrible tragedy of his life. He sounded so upset I was prepared to hear both of his parent’s had died in a head on collision with an eighteen wheeler, although that would net him well over a million dollars, or one of his three precious Schnauzer’s had died. He then began the long story of how his maid had been vacuuming the entry way and had knocked the leg out from under an “Art Deco” bar filled with several thousand of dollars worth of antique cocktail shakers and Martini glasses. They fell to the floor and shattered. He tried to put it into perspective comparing the loss of his cocktail shakers to the loss of my job along with another lady who just lost her job who’d just bought a five hundred thousand dollar home to console him self and understand our pain. What the hell? He’d spent the last three days photographing the pieces and cataloguing them for the insurance company, but they wouldn’t pay for them unless he had opened the door and created a wind gust that caused the accident. The vacuum cleaner story wouldn’t work, so now the wind did it.

I guess my message this year is something we all know, or at least I hope so. Life is very precious. If you have someone in your life you love hold them tight and tell them, or call them on the phone now. You don’t know when, or if you’ll ever get another chance. Don’t spend so much time worrying about tomorrow there may not be a tomorrow.
Live each day in “Day Tight” compartments like a great ocean liner and enjoy the moment because that’s all we really have. I miss you all and love you very much!

601

601 is an enigma I don’t know where to start with it, but there will never be anything like it again. It has a street name which I won’t mention since someone else lives there now, but we never used the street name anyway. Practically every gay man in Midland knew what you were talking about if you got an invitation to 601.

When I first laid eyes on it I wasn’t that impressed. It was 1978 and my friends Todd and Rick had just purchased it, or rather Rick’s grandmother had purchased it for them. It was simply a beige house built in 1938 with brown trim and a one car garage. It extended almost to the back of the lot since additions had been made to it over the years. I’m sure it started as a two bedroom one bath, but a master suite had been added to the back of the original house. It had a small kitchen with white tile countertops and the front bathroom was tiled in pink. It has central air and heat, but the back bedroom had a window unit in it.
It really wasn’t much to look at. The day they drove me over there it was in winter, so the grass was dead and there were still clothesline poles in the backyard. I pretended to be pleased for them as they told me of their plans for it, but I really couldn’t see much potential for it, boy was I wrong!

After a few months and several thousand dollars the place was transformed. Todd had a U shaped drive way put in the front, an eight foot privacy fence surrounded the entire front yard and even enclosed the front porch. He removed old trees and planted new ones, landscaped the yard, added an in ground hot tub, hauled in rocks, added lighting, statues, fountains, patio furniture and the place became a beautiful oasis. It was pretty during the day, but at night it was magical. The hot tub had a red light in it which seemed appropriate considering what went on in there most of the time. He even had speakers from the stereo inside the house disguised as rocks and hidden in the ceiling of the porch. They filled the house with beautiful furniture that was quite in vogue at the time. Oriental rugs on the hardwood floors, new appliances in the kitchen, oatmeal colored sofa with pillows covered in real fur, mink, opossum, fox, and beaver. There were wing back chairs, beautiful tables, lamps, a teak dining room set with a new chandelier, beautifully framed Japanese fans, Sarongs, and framed posters of the works of Marc Chagall, Monet, and Renoir. There was no television in the living room, but a huge Sony Trinitron in the bedroom with a VCR player and the entire house was wired with stereo speakers. I didn’t know it then, but the place would become legendary.

The glory years of 601 lasted from 1978 to 1983 and there will never be another time like that again. Disco music seemed to play continuously, liquor poured like water and sex was available any time you wanted it. There seemed to be a party going on all the time especially on weekends and you didn’t really have to have an invitation you could just stop by and Todd would make you a drink. The only rule was he’d make the first one then after that you had to make your own. He didn’t care how many you had, he just didn’t want to have to be getting up and down making drinks for people. Usually whoever was up would offer to make drinks for others, so you never really had to get up at all. Music played constantly on the stereo and often there was an old movie on television in the bedroom like “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, but more often than not a porno tape was playing on the VCR.

Usually there was just a small gathering of people in the living room in the winter and six could fit in the hot tub when the weather allowed. At larger parties you might walk through the house and someone would be having sex in one of the bedrooms, or there would be a pile of naked guys on the king size bed in the master bedroom. Rick was terribly jealous and would throw fits and tantrums whenever he thought Todd was about to be involved. A fight would ensue, or he’d get in his car and peel out in the driveway. Todd had silver 1976 Coupe De Ville they named “The Whale” and later traded it for a dark blue 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood limousine. Now that was a sight seeing “The Limo” parked in the front driveway of 601. You have to remember most of the years of 601 were pre AIDS and in those days you couldn’t catch anything a big shot of Penicillin couldn’t cure. I remember being in the hot tub and some guy would crawl in and be passed from lap to lap as we drank our cocktails and enjoyed him. Rick would get so jealous of Todd’s indiscretions that he took every opportunity he could to get back at him. When a group of us would be going somewhere in two cars Rick would always say, “I want to ride in Sam’s new Cadillac.”, or whatever I was driving at the moment. Then he would proceed to give me a blow job on the way there getting out and wiping his mouth as he smile at Todd. Once, when Todd went to get a bag of ice Rick wanted me to fuck him on the hall floor while telling me, “Hurry up, hurry up!” just so he could feel he’d gotten revenge for one of Todd’s escapades. Rick and I had dated before he met Todd and Todd didn’t care who did who he just wanted Rick to stop his jealousy and join in on the fun.

I remember one night in particular when there were just four of us at the house in the hot tub, Todd, Rick, Ken, and I. When Rick realized where things were heading he excused himself and went in the house. After quite some passed Todd got out to see what he was doing. Ken and I kept talking and touching one another and soon thirty minutes had gone by and no one came out of the house. I wanted to get up and see what was taking so long, but Ken kept telling me not to worry. Then the front door opened and there stood Todd fully dressed as he looked back into the living room and screamed “ASSHOLE!” then slammed the door. I swear he slammed the door so hard I don’t know how we ever got it open again. Ken and I looked at each other and I said, “We’d better go in and see what’s going on.” He said, “No, I’ll go, you stay here.” “I’m not letting you go in there alone.” I said, as we both got out and put on robes. When we walked into the house we could tell all hell was breaking loose in the kitchen. We rushed in and Todd was on top of Rick on the floor choking him. Rick was fighting back until he saw us then he pretended to faint. After dating Rick I knew what kind of anger he could arouse in a person and I honestly didn’t know whether to get Todd off him, or join in choking him. Ken ran over and got Todd off as I helped Rick to his feet. Ken and I had no idea what had happened in the thirty or forty five minutes since Todd had gotten out of the hot tub, but later Todd told us he’d found Rick dressing to leave. Todd got dressed too and Rick grabbed the keys to Todd’s car and started outside. Todd tried to stop him and ended up chasing him down the ally and tackling him. They both rolled around in the dirt and stickers. After Todd finally got the keys from him they went back inside the house, that’s when Ken and I saw Todd open the door.

The majority of the parties there were pleasant and without problems. People would show up who didn’t even know who owned the house. Once Todd walked out on the front porch, some young good looking guy asked, “Who are you?” Todd said, “I’m your host.” The kid said, “My, aren’t you the Gatsby type?” Todd took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom. Todd could talk the pants off anyone and he liked them young. He wasn’t a pedophile, but even in his mid twenty’s he liked guys who were barely legal, Rick was only eighteen when they met. I once asked him, “Just what in the hell do you say to these guys? Hello little boy, now pull down your pants?” It was like he hypnotized them, or something.

On New Years Eve 1980 Todd and I stayed at 601 while everyone else drove to the bar in Odessa to celebrate because he’d seduced a guy I’d been trying to get into bed for two years. Todd knew how I felt and asked my permission first. I said, “I don’t know how you did it, but I don’t care as long as you share.” So we took turns ringing in the New Year with him.

Often I would go over and make Jambalaya, or Spaghetti for a group of friends and we’d all have a nice dinner and an enjoyable evening. Once, Todd had an old boyfriend of his over for drinks. As usual Rick had to show his ass and excused himself to go to bed while they had a guest. Todd was sitting in the wingback and Steve was lying on the sofa talking quietly when after about an hour or so, Rick got up and tip toed to the mini blinds looking and see if they were in the hot tub. As Rick carefully pulled the blinds apart Todd said, “Yesssss?” from the behind him. It scared Rick so badly, he played those fucking mini blinds like a harp and turned and went back to bed without saying a word.

Once at a rather large party there were people all over the house in the yard and in the hot tub. Todd and I were inside and suddenly he noticed the music had changed from disco to something scratchy and horrible. “Go see what the hell’s in the stereo.” He said. I walked to the front of the house where the stereo was located. It could play LPs, eight tracks, or cassettes, but by that time Todd was using cassettes almost exclusively. There was a homemade eight track stuck in the player with “Andrew Sisters” written on it, so I removed it and started the cassette again. I opened the door to go outside and there stood Rick with his best friend Jim. They were in the middle of toasting each other with glasses of pink champagne. It suddenly dawned on me who’d changed the music and I said, “Oh I’m sorry, did you put that in there?” Without saying a word Jim threw his glass of pink champagne on me. I was wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a white pearl snap western shirt with a western belt and buckle. Rick immediately rushed me to the bathroom and began trying to clean me up. When I caught sight of myself in the mirror I went berserk. I ripped my shirt completely off, since it now stank of cheap champagne and was stained pink. I charged for the front door and looked around, “Where’s James?” I yelled, as I stood there shirtless. Someone pointed to the garden area behind the hot tub and said, “Over there.” I ran for him and started beating the shit out of him. I had him flat on the ground and I was trying to shove his head in the hot tub. I was on top of him and he was face down. I was determined to drown his sorry ass, but every time I had his face within an inch of that water somehow he would pull his head up. Someone went and got Todd he came out and broke us up. Todd didn’t have a clue as to what had happened, but all of us were quite drunk by that time and I wanted Todd to make Jim leave. He wouldn’t do it, so I went in the house got my shirt and headed to my Cadillac. Todd was standing by the car trying to keep me from leaving while I screamed at him for not being loyal to me. Rick wandered outside and saw Jim sitting in his car, disheveled, and drunkenly asked, “Did you know Sam got in a fight with somebody?” Jim looked up at him in disbelief and said, “Hell yeah, it was me!”

There were quiet times there too. I can remember Todd calling me after Rick had moved out and saying, “Hey I’m doing some planting around the drive way. Why don’t you come over and keep me company?” I was restoring a green 1957 Cadillac Seville at the time so I drove it over there, and polished the chrome with chrome polish and steel wool while he planted “Monkey Grass” and “Dollar Plants”. I drank rum and Coke and he drank rum and Dr. Pepper while we talked about anything and everything that came to mind. I guess it’s the wild things that just stick in my mind.

In all the years I’ve known Todd I probably haven’t seen him visibly drunk more than four, or five times. Most people slur their words, or stagger, but the only way I can tell Todd is drunk is that he’ll start making obnoxious noises, bird calls, and start slapping his hands on furniture, shaking his foot, or twirling his ring. Not that he hasn’t been legally drunk hundreds of times he just doesn’t show it and it usually catches me by surprise.
One evening in 1982 we planned a dinner party and I was going to make Jambalaya. He’d invited eight people and we usually split the grocery bill three ways with another friend while I did all the shopping and cooking. By this time Rick had moved out and Todd’s elderly grandmother had bought the house next door, so he could help keep an eye on her. I was in the kitchen chopping and cooking while I sipped a rum and Coke. One of the guests was a friend named Andy, he was in the kitchen keeping me company as I prepared our meal. Everyone else was in the bedroom with their drinks watching a movie. It was hot as hell in the kitchen, so I opened the door so some air could come in through the old screen door. I had just enough to drink that I was getting a headache and I asked Andy to go turn the stereo down since no one was in the living room anyway. Apparently Todd walked in just as Andy was turning it down and confronted him. They both hated each other and only tolerated one another because of me. Todd went over and started shouting at Andy, “This is my house and I’ll decide when the music is too loud.” as he turned the volume back up. I started wiping my hands on a towel and went into the living room and stood between them. I told Todd, “He’s turning the music down because I asked him to. I don’t care if it is your house, I’m in the hot kitchen and no one’s in here listening to it anyway.” We got in a slight shoving match and I realized he was drunk, but I pushed him aside and turned down the volume then returned to the kitchen. He followed me and continued ranting about it being his house, etc. He started shoving me backward and every time he’d repeat himself as if trying to make his point. The kitchen was small, so it only took three shoves until my back was against the counter. I’d been trying to reason with him up until that point, but when he shoved me the forth time I quietly reached up took off my glasses and sat them on the counter. Later he would say that was when he knew he was in trouble. I tore into him and began beating the shit out of him. I knew from years of experience with my heart problems that I had to win a fight quickly before I went into tachycardia. He kept body slamming me into the wall, but I finally got his arms pinned behind him and had him on his knees in the floor. I begged him to stop, but he kept screaming at me to get out of his house. In the meantime, all the other queens made a mass exodus out the front door and screeched away. Andy was the only one who stayed. I told him if he’d calm down I’d leave and this would be the end of it. I made him promise, but as I helped him stand up he body slammed me into the wall while yelling, “Get out of my house!” I’d had it by then, grabbing him by the collar and the back of his pants, I said, “Not until you go first!” and threw him through the latched screen door. He landed on the back porch in a pile of dusty screen and broken wood, but he got up and started at me again. My heart was already in tachycardia and I was loosing my breath, so I knew I wouldn’t last long. I beat him to the floor and since I didn’t want to risk him getting up again I kicked him repeatedly until I split the side out of one of my expensive anaconda loafers. I turned off all the burners on the gas stove and Andy and I walked out to our cars just as it began to rain. I was living with Kate again by that time and he and I drove over there and went to my room. As I was in the floor doing everything I could think of to stop my tachycardia, Andy was in the bathroom drying his hair with my blow-dryer. I was upset and crying because Todd wasn’t moving when we left. I was afraid I’d killed him. I asked him, “If I drive you back over there will you go in and see if he’s OK?” “No!” he said. “Why not?” I asked. “Because if I go over there and find out he’s not dead I’m going to finish the job you started!” He screamed. “Why did you stay then?” I asked. He said, “To see if you were going to need any help and obviously you didn’t. I don’t give a shit, I hope you did kill him. I’ll testify it was in self defense.” After more begging and pleading he drove me over to a friend’s house who agreed to go back with us and check on Todd. Andy parked several feet away in case Todd decided to attack me again. The friend came back and said, “Todd is OK.” and we all went home.

The next day Todd called me and asked me if I wanted to come over for dinner. He’d put all the food in the refrigerator and saved it including the garlic bread I hadn’t baked yet. I went over and we had dinner and never mentioned the fight. Later we went to a movie and ran into a couple of our dinner guest. We could tell by the looks on their faces that they were shocked that we were there as if nothing had happened. Todd and I are like brothers and ten years later when he and I were having a huge screaming argument his lover at the time tried to step in and take Todd’s side. Todd stopped in mid sentence, turned to him and said, “Shut up, and keep out of it. Tomorrow we’ll be over it, and you’ll still be pissed, so just go back to bed.” Somehow we’ve just always accepted the fact that we will always be friends and no matter what happens we’ll get over it.

The next year Rick and his mother finally made Todd move out. Todd went to her house and tried to get his dog back, there was an ugly scene and he finally let her have the dog and moved out. He kept all the furniture since he’d done so much work landscaping the house he deserved it. There were many parties and fights, to come over the years, but there will never be another 601.

HANOI JANE

Believe me there weren't many pieces of good advice my father ever gave me, but one thing I remember as a teenager was, "If you expect to get any action, don't go out with a group of your buddy's, go out by yourself."
Another thing was when I was eight, or nine and we lived in that house in Merced, California. My brother and I were only two years apart, he was younger and when we weren't fighting with one another it seems we were always getting into fights with our best friends, boys and girls alike.
Other parents would come up to our door knocking, and yelling, threatening, and making total horses asses of themselves over real or imagined slights against their children. My mother would get into it with other parents once in a while, she used to love a good fight, but my father never said much of anything. I once asked him why other parents took up for their kids, but he never took up for us? He said, "Because you kids will be over it by tomorrow, playing together and will be best friends again, the parents will still be mad at each other."
Once in 1970 when I asked him to drive a group of my fifteen year old friends to a place just outside the gates of Fort. Bragg, North Carolina to protest her for protesting the Viet Nam war he refused. At the time I was only fifteen, so I had to rely on my dad to drive my friends and me over there. And par for the course as any normal fifteen year old I accused him of being lazy. It was 1970 and he had a red 1969 Mustang and my mother had a green 1969 Mercury Monterey it was huge car that could have taken all of us. When I asked him why? He said something I'll never forget. "Son I may not agree with what that woman has to say, but I fought in two wars for her right to say it." I've always admired him for that.

As time has gone by, he turned 79 last January, he has said something he never would have said when he was in the Army. That America should not have been in Viet Nam. It was a "Conflict" that we withdrew from and didn't win.
He cried when he visited the Viet Nam Memorial, for all the men who lost their lives and he believes to this day that if JFK hadn't been killed America wouldn't have been so involved in a war we couldn't win. JFK was the reason he wanted to get into the Special Forces, he did it in 1965 at the age of thirty five something that is impossible today.

I worry that Iraq is the same thing. Thank God we haven't lost fifty eight thousand young people and I pray that it never comes to that. I also see the young men and women in uniform and I have the utmost respect for them and I pray for their safe return. I only hope this war isn't as pointless as Viet Nam and that one day we will look back on this as something necessary. Iraq and Saddam Hussein didn't destroy the Twin Towers. My heart goes out to the young people and all people who've died in this war.
Please God save them a special place in Heaven. And that they all return to their loved ones safe and sound.
As Christians, or any other religions I believe forgiveness is essential to life here after and as hard as it is sometimes we must forgive to be forgiven. And believe you me that's a hard pill for me to swallow I've got a lot of forgiving to do.

So if forgiving Jane Fonda is a small step let's remember she's human like the rest of us and sometimes we need people to forgive us for the stupid, thoughtless things we do. The Bible says all we have to do is ask for forgiveness and we shall be forgiven that isn't verbatim. God doesn't speak to me directly, but let's start by trying to forgive others and as hard as it is to do. Didn't she apologize? Sometimes you do stupid things and later realize you were wrong. I hated her at the time myself she appeared two doors down from the Carolina Theater where I worked when I was seventeen and I wouldn't go over there to see her then, but now I'd love to meet her.

“I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did," Fonda said.
"I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm . . . very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families."
Jane Fonda

A miserable piece of human garbage, deranged man, spit tobacco in a ladies face! What a pig, how disgusting!
Only in this crazy O.J Simpson, Scott Peterson, kind of world we live in today that decent people wouldn't be shocked and appalled that a man in 2005 could do something that disgusting to a woman.
Tell me? What did you people think about the man who threw a pie in Anita Bryant's face in 1977 when she openly expressed her hatred of gays? Do you think he's a hero too? She was expressing her freedom of speech, however misguided it was, just because she decided she wanted to rid the world of homosexuals? Was what she did OK? Acceptable? No, it wasn't then and it isn't now, but
gentlemen don’t treat ladies like that.

I just finished watching the last 30 minutes of the interview between Tim Russard and Jane Fonda. I must tell you that even though I've taken up for her in recent years because of things I've read in print nothing I've read has ever made me believe from the bottom of my heart that she was really sorry for what she did during the Viet Nam War.
Seeing and hearing her tonight made a true believer out of me. She didn't back down from any questions, or make excuses for her self and admitted when she'd done something entirely stupid and wrong, including posing on the anti-aircraft guns. This woman has come clean to her wrong doings and apologized for what she did point blank without any excuses or beating around the bush. She has said that what she did was wrong, but it may have brought an end of the War in Viet Nam sooner and saved lives.
There's something about hearing her explanations coming from her own mouth and not the press that actually make me truly believe what she has to say with one hundred percent sincerity. She's not a young “Barbarella” bombshell any more, but she's still very pretty and very much a mature woman. I have no doubt that she's a "Born Again Christian" no matter what my own feelings are about such things.

I can't help but remember when the press interviewed the mother of one of Jeffery Dahmer's murder victims when he was killed in prison. They told her about his acceptance of the Christian faith and asked her if she thought the man who'd murdered her son had gone to Heaven? That little old lady said, "If he repented for his sins and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior, then yes, I believe he is in Heaven.” I remember thinking what a true Christian that woman was. More of us need to be that way when it comes to forgiving others.

HEAVEN AND HELL

Just being in love is wonderful. The euphoric feeling you feel even the little things in life take on a whole new meaning as you spend every waking hour thinking of that person and how much it hurts until you can be together again. The candle light dinners, the whispers of “I love you”, kissing so hard that your lips bleed and wanting to eat them up when you’re making wonderful, blissful, love. It isn’t just sex when you’re in love. Now take all that and think really, really hard and try and remember the first time it ever happened to you.

When I was sixteen in the summer of 1971 I got an after school job working at the concession stand of the “Carolina Theater” in Fayetteville, North Carolina for seventy five cents an hour. We used to occasionally steal a box of candy because it cost two hours wages and we couldn’t afford it. Apparently when the theater was built in 1926 it included retail space for rent and when I worked there we had a diner with a soda fountain on one side and a jewelry store on the other. I met some colorful characters there, but there was this guy named Charlie whose father owned the jewelry store next door. They had to use the restroom in the theater, so he’d come in a couple of times a day. He walked as if he were walking on air, I then realized where the term “light in the loafers” came from. He was twenty three, but it wasn’t long before he began striking up conversations with me. I told my father about him and snickered that I thought he was a queer and my father said, “Maybe he’s lonely and just needs a friend.”
Charlie soon began introducing me to some of his friends and then in October they asked me to go to Wilmington with them one Saturday night. I couldn’t figure out what to tell my parent’s, but with a few tips from Charlie I concocted a story about a party at Debbie’s house where the boys were going to go to another guy’s house to spend the night. My mother was working nights then, so I only had to tell the story to my father and he didn’t seem to think anything of it. They picked me up that night in Mark’s red 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass and Mark, Lamont, Charlie, and I rode to Wilmington. I didn’t know it until I got in the car, but they’d decided I was going to be Mark’s date for the evening that was fine by me. Mark was twenty five, tall, blond, and handsome. I had a thing for blonds in my younger days and I got to ride in the front seat with him while he drove. I got my first real look at a gay bar that night and I couldn’t believe there were actually places out there where men could dance together and kiss right out in the open, I was dazzled by all of it. It was one of the most enlightening and exciting nights of my life, a whole new world had just opened up to me.

They rented a motel room with two double beds and Mark and I decided to stay there while Charlie and Lamont went off bar hopping in Mark’s car. I hadn’t been with another man in over a year, so I was thrilled to be in bed with someone as good looking as Mark. We had at least two hours to ourselves to make love before the other guys returned to the room. The next morning I put my briefs on under the covers and got up to take a piss. Charlie let out a groan and threw the covers over his head. I didn’t understand why he did that, but Mark later told me it was because when he saw my hairy chest he was upset that he’d let Mark have me instead of keeping me for him self. We drove back to Fayetteville and I was worried about making it home in time to get ready for work. They told me they would park down the street from our trailer and wait there while I changed and then take me to work. I walked in the door and the shit hit the fan!

Unbeknownst to me my mother had found a school directory and began calling my friends to see if they knew anything about the party at Debbie’s and the sleep over afterwards, of course none of them did. She was already at work, but my father was full of questions wanting to know where I’d been and who I was with. I told him I’d gone to Wilmington with some guys and they’re waiting to take me to work.” “What kind of guys and how old are they?” he asked. I got to thinking about what he’d said about Charlie needing a friend and the fact that he really didn’t care about me anyway because I didn’t play sports, all this while I was quickly changing clothes and brushing my teeth and hair. “Just some guys, they’re seniors.” I lied. My parent’s had to know I was gay, hell I knew I was different when I was three and walked around the house with my aunt Ruby’s purse wearing a pair of her clip on earrings. He insisted on driving me to the corner where they were waiting, so he could get a look at them, grilling me with questions all the way. I finally thought what the hell and said, “Daddy you know exactly what kind of guys I’m talking about.” He didn’t say one single word as I got out of his Mustang and got in the car with Mark and the others. As soon as I arrived at work the phone calls started coming in from my mother and I finally told her she would get me in trouble, so stop calling and I would talk to her when I got home. When I’m on my deathbed if God speaks to me and says I can live nine more months, but it would have to be those nine months, I will say, “Take me now Lord, no matter what awaits me, take me now.” If I thought the shit hit the fan with my dad it was a tiny turd compared to what my mother had in store for me. I hadn’t seen such screaming and carrying on since we lived in Germany, she begged, she pleaded, “Quit your job.” I said, “I’m not quitting my job, that’s the only way I have to buy school clothes and I’m saving up for a car.” “We’ll buy you a car, we’ll pay for your clothes.” she said. I knew money was tight, or she wouldn’t be working at a convenience store. What the hell kind of car could they afford to buy me? “No, I want to do it myself.” I said. She wanted to know, “Have ever even had sex with a girl, then how do you know you won’t like it?” “Because I just know.” I said. She got down on her knees in the living room floor and started swaying back and forth with her hands in the air clasped in prayer saying, “Oh Lord, Lord, Lord, why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?” I almost laughed out loud, if she could just see how crazy she looked down there swaying back and forth like some TV evangelist. The book “Carrie” by Stephen King hadn’t been published yet and it would be five more years before the movie came out, but I swear to God my mother acted just like Carrie White’s mother. It was all about her and how I was just doing it to hurt her. “Yes, I went out and sucked a dick just to get back at you mother.” was what I wanted to say, but I knew in her state of mind that it would generate a full fledged scratching, clawing, slapping attack. When she finally let me go to bed the tension in the house was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

I guess she decided if begging didn’t work she would just ignore me and for the next three weeks she didn’t say a word to me. She would come down the hall to the room I shared with my brother and flip the light on and say, “Get up!” Whenever I had a date with Mark she just couldn’t stand it, she finally told me that I couldn’t wait in her house, or in front of her house for him so I had to go down the street and wait in the dark alone for him. My brother Danny was always supportive of me even when my father told me I was worse than a dog licking another dog's dick. Danny said, “I don’t understand being gay, but I’m not going to be mean to you like mother and daddy.” as he sat with me in the dark to wait for my Mark to pick me up.
My evenings with Mark were wonderful, he listened to all my problems with my parents and said, “If things get too bad at home I’ll just take you up to Washington, D.C. and marry you, I’ll take care of you.” I was so ignorant I believed him, but hey when your sixteen and getting a blow job in a car parked out in the woods while Rod Stewart’s singing “Maggie May” on the radio you’ll believe anything. I was so in love with him I’d have done anything he asked me to. Some people act like they just can’t understand teen pregnancies, well I say those people have forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager in love.

My mother denies it to this very day, but I know she somehow got Mark’s number and called him. I’m sure she threatened him with statuary rape, or something, because after about a month Mark would make a date with me and then stand me up. He didn’t do it just once, he did it several times even when I pleaded with him to be sure and come get me. While I’d get dressed and sit and wait for him, mother would berate me the whole time, “See, this is the way men are, men do these kinds of things, a girl would love you and worship you not make a date with you and not show up.” It was bad enough Mark dropping me like a hot potato, but I didn’t need to hear all her shit pilled on top of my misery. When I could borrow a car I’d go and search for him and once found him playing pool at a bar. He had some sort of sorry excuse for being late, but still assured me he intended to come get me.

I did what every young gay guy did on TV and the movies in those days, I took an overdose of aspirin and all it did was make my ears ring. When that didn’t work I walked down to the drugstore, bought a bottle of Sominex, and took the whole thing. When I started acting goofy at work they called my mother who took me to the emergency room at Womack Medical Center. I wouldn’t tell anyone what I’d done and I don’t know how he missed my dilated pupils, but the doctor decided it was an allergic reaction to the penicillin I was taking for an impacted wisdom tooth and gave me a shot as an antidote. On the ride home I saw a spaceship land in the pine trees on the side of the road and a cartoon mouse sitting on the dash board talking to me.

The New Year came and went and I still couldn’t get used to the fact that Mark didn’t love me. I listened to the Diana Ross album “Surrender” over and over, and the song s like "I Can't Give Back the Love I Feel For You" and "Simple Thing Like Cry" just made me more depressed. To make matters worse Beverly Bremers released a song titled, “Don’t Say You Don’t Remember” and that one sent me into crying jags every time I heard it. Eight years ago I ordered a CD of it thinking I’d gotten over it years ago and after listening to it three times I put it away because of all the pain it brought back thirty years later. I’m glad to say I can now listen to it and sing along. I can now laugh about it, but the pain is still there way, way, in the back of my heart.
I went through phases where I bleached my hair blond, started drinking, wore a little makeup and started acting nellie, but when I realized that wasn’t what I was looking for in a date I soon changed my look and my ways.

Eventually my parents came to terms with my sexuality after sending me to a psychiatrist who simply told them I was gay and they were just going to have to accept it. By the next summer I could look myself in the mirror and see the guy I used to know and that was a relief. Although once on my way to work Mark and Lamont pulled up next to me at a stop light, I nodded hello, but when the light changed I was shaking so badly I almost couldn’t get the clutch in to get the car in gear. Hell yes love hurts, how can something so wonderful turn out to be so awful?

IF I DOOD IT I GET A WHIPPIN

I think that was an old line from the Fannie Brice "Baby Snooks" radio show from the 1940's. Did you ever do anything as a child, or teen that you knew was going to get you in trouble, but you did it anyway?
I know I did it dozens of times, but the first time that sticks in my mind was when I was around five and I was sitting in the front seat of the car in between my parents. I have no idea where my brother was because we always sat in the back with me on the right and him on the left. He might have been asleep in the back and my parents had allowed me to sit in the front seat with them, I don’t remember. We were sailing through the Hill Country of Texas in our two tone, pale green and white, 1957 Mercury Monterey when I asked, “Daddy, what would happen if I turned the key off while we were driving?” In a very serious voice he said, as if trying to teach me a life lesson, “That would be a very bad thing to do son because the engine would shut off, then we’d loose the power steering and the power brakes it might cause us to have a wreck.” I grew silent and sat there watching that key chain swing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in the dash. I was transfixed, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, the key chain with the “God Of Mercury’s Head”, went back and forth, back in forth, until I just couldn't help myself. I leaned forward and turned the ignition off, we must've been doing at least seventy.
My father was only thirty one, still young and quick, he shifted the car into neutral, restarted it, and shifted it back into drive, then he slapped me hard on my bare leg saying, “Sammy don’t ever to do that again! You could’ve caused us to have a wreck!” I was happy the slap didn’t hurt that much and it was worth it just to see what would happen. I knew I'd get in trouble, but I just had to see for myself and we didn’t wreck like people did in the movies. No tires squealing, brakes burning, no crash, hubcaps flying off, doors flying open. So I knew my father had been wrong. Why did your parent’s always warn you about things that never happened?
About that same year when I was five and Danny was three, my father planted these huge “Elephant Ear’s” on the side of the driveway going to our garage. Once they’d reached a pretty good size and height our best friends from next door, Ava and Alonzo Gonzales, convinced us they would make great umbrellas. I said, “But it’s not raining.” and they said, “We can use them for parasols like people in the movies while they were walking in the park to keep the sun off them.” Well, that sounded good enough to us, so we broke them off at ground level and walked around in the sun twirling them around like the people did in the old fashioned movies probably singing the “Easter Parade” song from a late night TV movie, until there were none left, just an empty flower bed. We’d pretty much forgotten about it by the time my father arrived home from work. He stepped out of the car and immediately looked at the flower bed along the drive way. “Boy’s, what happened to those Elephant Ears I planted?” We stood there silent wondering what to tell him. I think I muttered something about, “We didn’t know, or maybe space men had taken them during the day while we weren’t looking.” Hell, it happened in the movies didn’t it? Or something equally as unconvincing. He said, “If you tell me the truth you won’t be in nearly as much trouble, if you lie about it you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.” I stood there wondering what he meant. Was the truth going to get us a whipping and a lie a really big whipping? Did one mean a belt and the other a paddle? Did one mean pants on, or pants down?” Then after thinking about it I realized we’d never gotten a spanking with a paddle, or with our pants down like I’d heard other kids had received, so I said weakly, “We used them for umbrellas.” He than said, “Thank you for telling me the truth. You’re not going to get spanking’s this time because you didn’t lie, but don’t ever do that again. Do you understand?” “Yes, daddy we understand.” Wow, was it that easy being a kid, screwing up and then admitting it? No, but it’s seemed a good life lesson for my entire life. My father once reminded me when I was around eighteen that, “Not everyone tells everything that happens to them in their lives the way we do some people keep secrets.” I remember thinking that was strange because couldn’t everyone read your mind and know what you were hiding anyway, so why bother?”
It was one of the last times I remember him actually being fair before his drinking over took all our lives while we lived in Germany.