Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home

            I was in the throes of a panic attack.  I was lying in a twin-sized bed with ratty sheets, staring up at a ceiling with chipped paint, sweating in the oppressive heat of a 6’x6’ hovel in Morningside Heights.  It was a bright sunny morning in August 2004, and I had been a New York City resident for three whole days.  I had also been in the throes of a panic attack for three whole days.  I missed my friends terribly.  I missed my apartment.  I missed my job.  I even missed my car, a black Honda Accord with two cigarette burns in it from my ex-boyfriend who insisted upon smoking even when I told him not to.  He was a son-of-a-bitch. 

            I flew out of Alabama crying.  I landed at LaGuardia sniffling.  I took a cab to Morningside Heights and was calm until we pulled up to my new residence.  An eight-story building.  Looked nice enough from the outside.  But inside.  Every floor had a different odor, depending on which floors had hot plates and which floors had workable toilets.  The lobby probably had white tile at some point.  Now it was a dingy brown.  The cab driver didn’t help with my bags—all five of them.  So I dragged them into the lobby and to the front desk.  A three hundred-pound black man named Patrick stared at me through bullet-proof glass.

            “What you need?” he growled.

            “A one-way ticket to Alabama?”                                                                                              

            He eventually showed me to my new home.  Fourth floor.  A 6”x6” room.  A twin bed.  A waist-high refrigerator.  A desk.  A chair.  A closet that I couldn’t fit into.  This room didn’t look like the room I saw on the internet. 

            “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

            “Down the hall.  You’ll be sharing with the other three rooms on this floor.”

            Oh Jesus.  I immediately started thinking of a way to find a better apartment.  However, since I moved to New York without a job, signing a lease was out of the question and this was it.  Patrick left me to my own devices, and I began to unpack.  But when I looked around for the air-conditioning unit and saw none, I lost it.  I sat down on the end of the bed, which almost tipped over since it was resting on blocks.  And cried. 

            Luckily, an obnoxious acquaintance of mine from Birmingham happened to be in town on business and invited me to join him and his friends for dinner at a Thai restaurant in the East Village.  I showed up for dinner and was delighted to see a table full of cute gay guys.  My delight soon turned to horror when I realized that my obnoxious acquaintance had inferred to the table full of cute gay guys that I was his ex-boyfriend.

            “So you actually went out with Dan?” Dumb Jock asked.

            “How was he in bed?” Hot Slut inquired.

            “Uh.  I don’t really—“

            Dan interrupted by waddling back to the table and crashing down beside me. 

            “How’s my New York City girl?”

            I cringed so hard I almost pulled my back out. 

After dinner, they went out for a few drinks.   But I was on a strict no-cocktail diet so the booze wouldn’t make me have the blues the next morning.  I explained that I had job hunting to do and should probably head home.  Dan offered to share the cab as far as 72nd Street with me, and the only reason I accepted was because I figured he would pay.  He expensed his dinner anyway.  The cab stopped at 72nd Street.  He got out and turned to me.  

“I enjoyed it.  I’ll call you before my flight tomorrow.”

            He slammed the door.  No cab fare, no free meal.  Nothing.  On my first night in New York City—jobless—I threw down $50 for dinner and $35 for a cab ride up to Hell. 

            On the third day, I started questioning my sanity.  I couldn’t get through a phone conversation with my friends back home without losing it.  My shrink from Alabama was on speed dial.  I left a good job, a great apartment, wonderful friends to move into a slum.  I woke up that third day, staring at the ceiling wondering if it would hurt if I jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.  I emailed my shrink who in turn replied with a two-page email outlining the grieving process, tips to assimilate into a new lifestyle, and a small pep talk.  Basically, the kick-in-the-ass that I needed.  I went job hunting.  Within a month, I found a less than desirable temp job at a stuffy midtown law firm.  But my fellow temp was hot and I could pay the bills.  And slowly with time, the crying stopped.  I still missed home.

            My next-door neighbors were a smelly French tourist and an Asian transvestite.  The tourist’s name was Phillipe.  I knew this because that’s what his towel said in the bathroom.  And his shampoo, shaving cream, and toothbrush.  All bore his name written in permanent magic marker.  I guess he didn’t think to keep his toiletries in the refrigerator like I did.  The Asian transvestite never locked the bathroom door.  So I was constantly walking in to see Jack or Jacklyn pulling and tucking.  I’m still not sure if s/he was a prostitute or just got damn lucky every night.  There was a parade of men constantly, and each night the same moaning and groaning and knocking about.  The poor thing probably weighed only a hundred twenty soaking wet, so s/he had to have been sore from being slammed around so much. 

Eight months of living in this extended-stay hotel would drive anyone mad.  So just as I was about to check myself into Bellevue, an acquaintance told me about craigslist.  And the really great apartments on it.  After a few weeks of apartment hunting, which ranks right up there with trying to find a soulmate on match.com, I found a temporary home.  I moved into the basement of a cluttered little apartment on West 10^th Street in the heart of Greenwich Village.  The owner and my new roommate was Bette Davis.  Not the actress, but Miss Bette Davis, as I liked to call her.  She was a former dancer/chorus girl/teacher, and I was just crazy about her.  She cooked a mean Lean Cuisine and made an even meaner whiskey stinger, and she regaled me with stories from old Broadway. 

 When I first moved in, I thought she was around eighty-five.  Then it became apparent that she was actually one-hundred fifty-six.  The lady was pickled.  My Thursday weekly ritual was to help Miss Bette Davis carry her two bags of Johnny Walker Black in from the stoop.  She sat up watching television until around midnight every night and would get hammered.  Then sleep until noon the next day, go out to exercise and have dinner, and come back home to repeat the process.  Somehow, she managed to find time and circle jobs in the Times that she thought would be of interest to me.  She seemed to have a sixth sense about everything.  However, she assured me that eighty-odd years of living in New York would give anyone an inside track into the minds of others.

            Throughout the first month on West 10^th Street, I was going through the motions of living.  Same dull job, a dismal basement bedroom in an octogenarian’s apartment, and a new group of acquaintances who I shared no history with.  I wanted my old life back.  My job, my friends.  An easier way of living.  So I planned a quick trip to Alabama for the July 4^th weekend, almost a year after I moved to New York.  I lined up a job interview and made plans with friends.  I left New York for the weekend with one small suitcase.  However, the other four were all packed up.  Because I had every intention of accepting this job and moving back to Birmingham.

            The weekend was interesting.  The job interview went well, except that I felt nauseated the entire time.  The job would have been at a small bank in a suburb of Birmingham.  No tall buildings, no delis, no street vendors hawking pitas and falafel.  But, according to the rather large interviewer with an obvious sweat gland problem, there was a Red Lobster just around the corner!  Of course, I delighted in my friends’ company.  But every gay bar that we went—all two of them—there were the same faces.  The same ex-boyfriends, the same one-night stands.  And they weren’t going anywhere.  A few actually approached me, assuming I was moving home.

            “We didn’t think you’d last up there as a Yankee,” I heard more than once.

            I walked into Miss Bette Davis’ apartment after returning from my whirlwind trip down South.  She was in the kitchen, and I quietly walked downstairs to my room.  I did miss my old life.  The familiarity, the comfort, the sameness.  But that’s also why I left.  For diversity, opportunities, the prospect of really sexy investment bankers.  I could stick out this job until something better came along.  I could stick out this apartment until something better came along.  I could even continue to get to know my new friends until they loved me just as much as my Alabama friends do.  For the first time, I looked around and thought of New York as home.  And got really excited about it.

            “I’m making some dinner for us.  Come sit with me,” Miss Bette Davis called out from the kitchen.

            ‘What are we having?”

            “Lean Cuisine and whiskey stingers,” she yelled.

            It was that moment I realized that my four other suitcases had been unpacked.  I joined Miss Bette Davis in the kitchen.  She handed me a strong whiskey stinger and gave me a knowing smile that only an octogenarian who has seen it all could.

I took a sip and smiled back. 

My kind of dinner.  In my kind of town.

Guess Who's Not Coming To Dinner

                                                    
            I was dressed to the nines at the Birmingham Civic Center.  It was the Apollo Ball.  The gay social event of the year.  And very exclusive, unless you were a member or at the very least, fucking a member of the Apollo Club.  I was neither.  But lucky for me, my friend Paul treated “screwing for social status” as some kind of sport.  And after a few weeks of rolling in the sack with the Apollo Club’s treasurer, he was golden. 

We had a prime spot at a table near the front.  Mardi Gras beads and decorations adorned the tables, and a runway jutted out from the stage where a procession of drag queens and other notable dignitaries would strut out throwing beads to party revelers.  The atmosphere was festive.  But I was livid.  Because there at the next table was Stuart, the mop-headed thorn in my side.  Stuart, a prissy four-star bitch, never liked me for whatever reason.  And he constantly was knocking my clothes or trying to steal my men.  Again, lucky for me, Paul hated him too and spit in Stuart’s drink whenever possible. 

            But this night was different.  Stuart was seated with the guy I was supposed to be seated with.  The guy who was to be my date.  His name was Jim.  He was tall and successful and very handsome.  Kind and considerate, funny even.  So why in the hell was I on a date with my best girlfriend Marilee, while Stuart was sitting across the aisle making out with Jim?  Why wasn’t I making out with Jim?  We had dated for almost two months.  We were into each other.  He even overlooked my ornery mood swings.  So what was the problem?  Oh.  Yes.  I forgot.

            He was black.

            I was raised in Linden, only forty-five minutes from Selma, Alabama.  Selma.  One of the birthplaces of the civil rights movement.  And we were also close to Montgomery.  Rosa Parks and the bus.  And I eventually moved to Birmingham, site of the church bombings that killed four little black girls.  So I knew racism.  In Linden, there was even a doctor’s office with separate waiting rooms for blacks and whites.  Complete with separate water fountains.  And this was in the nineties.  However, I always sat on the black side.  Not because I was radical or anything.  I simply didn’t want nosy white women in my business, asking me what’s wrong and why I was at the doctor’s office.  I knew that if I sat on the black side, no one would talk to me.  Until one white woman walked into the black waiting room and leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“You’re not supposed to be sitting on the colored side!”

Maybe I felt a bond with colored people who were discriminated against and taunted just because they were different.  Or maybe it was because I had the flu and felt like shit.  Or just maybe it was because I adored Diahann Carroll on “Dynasty.”  Whatever the reason, I looked up at this white woman who always sat in the choir loft in church.  Above everyone else. 

“I’ll sit wherever I goddamned wanna sit,” I rasped.

“Your mother will hear about this,” she replied.

“She’s in the restroom.  She’ll be out in a second.  I’m saving this seat for her,” I shot back.  With that, the nosy white woman left in a huff.

So even though I’ve been exposed to racism all my life, I never bought into it.  Or so I thought.  Both of my parents are well-educated.  Both taught in the public school system early in their careers.  While many of our friends extolled the virtues of the Ku Klux Klan, we never heard those words in our house.  By the time I moved to Birmingham, I was well-adjusted in race relations.  A few years after I came out, I met Jim at a dance club.  I had seen him around but was always too nervous to say anything.  So he finally approached me.

“I always see you out, but you just look at me without smiling,” he said.

I’m imagining how many sexual positions we could get in without breaking any bones.

“I’m just shy,” I said aloud.

“Well, I’d love to take you to dinner sometime.  That is, if you’re into black men.  ‘Cause I’ve been interested in white guys before who suddenly have a problem dating black guys.  And I don’t wanna do that again.”

I assured him that I was more open-minded than that, and we made a date.  The next week we went to a small Italian restaurant in the historical district.  He was fantastic company and so easy on the eyes.  He could have been Blair Underwood’s twin…and I love Blair Underwood.  Conversation flowed, he put me immediately at ease.  We spent a lot of time together over the next two weeks.  Jim and I had so much in common.  Likes and dislikes, goals.  Even horizontally, it was well worth the wait.  My feelings for him had gone from warm and fuzzy to hot and fiery.  My roommate, Alan, finally noticed that I was spending an unusual amount of time with my new beau.

“You’re spending more and more time with him,” he observed.

“Well, I like him.”

“You know I don’t care about things like this, but…”

“But what?” I asked.

“Some people in the gay community here tend to look down on dating black men.  You could get a certain kind of reputation for dating black men.”

“Reputation?  What kind of reputation?  That I like fried chicken?”  I was getting angry.

“There’s just a stigmatism attached to dating black men, and a lot of white guys won’t want to date you anymore.”
            “Well, I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks,” I yelled.  “AND…it’s a STIGMA.  Astigmatism is in your eyeball!” 

With that, I went to meet Jim for dinner.

Again, the dinner was lovely.  Jim held my attention and was a charming date.  However, after my conversation with my vocabulary-challenged roommate, something was different.  I started noticing the stares.  Here were two gay guys out on a date.  Two gay guys.  And one was black.  I saw a small group of gay acquaintances across the restaurant. 

Were they whispering about us?  Snickering behind my back because I was dating a black man?  Or was it my imagination?

 I found it increasingly difficult to focus on what Jim was saying.  I was sure we were being talked about.  Jim noticed my change in behavior, especially when I turned him down for an after-dinner cocktail and a sleepover at his place.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.  Nothing is wrong.  I’m just tired,” I lied as I kept one eye on the gay guys across the room.

The next few times we were together, our dates followed this same pattern.  I was nervous, aloof.  When we went to a gay bar, I stood by him but didn’t allow him to show affection.  It wasn’t long before he saw right through me. 

“I asked you at the beginning if you had a problem dating black men.  You said no.”

“I thought I didn’t.  Maybe I do, I don’t know.  I’m ashamed, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

“You’ve already done enough.  I thought you were different than these simple-minded people.  And to think I was falling in love with you.  I should leave,” he said.  And he did.

I was crushed.  Embarrassed by my behavior.  I prided myself on my sophisticated world-views, my staunch liberalism, my compassion for the disenfranchised of the world.  But here I was.  Letting a great man slip away because he was black.  Only worrying what others would think.  I was no better than the idiots who would call Jim a nigger.

I sat there at the Apollo Ball in my rented Armani tux as Marilee made out with a bisexual and Paul made out with half our table.  I sat there and watched Jim and that Stuart.  Having a ball at the Ball.  Jim looked over at me and gave me a half-smile.  I smiled back, and my chest ached.  He turned back to Stuart and kissed him passionately.  For once, I envied Stuart.  Stuart who was kissing what should have been mine.  Unable to stomach anymore, I headed to the cash bar.

I ordered a stiff Crown and Coke, turned around and ran right into Stuart.  I rolled my eyes and tried to get by him.  But he held my arm at the elbow.

“I’ve always been jealous of you,” he began.  “Always with friends, dating different guys.  But now I just feel sorry for you.  You didn’t know how good you had it, but now he’s gone.  And you’re alone with nothing but a cocktail.”

There was nothing I could say.  He was right.  Stuart walked back to his date, and I walked out onto the terrace that overlooked downtown Birmingham.  The cold February wind stung my face, and my eyes started to water.  I thought about marching back inside and telling Jim that I wanted him back.  Telling him that I liked him and was possibly falling in love with him.  But I didn’t.  I just downed my Crown and Coke alone.

Besides…what would the neighbors think?

I'm Coming Out

I’m Coming Out

            “Mom, I’m gay.”

            “Mother.  I am a homosexual.”

            “Mama, I’m a big ‘mo.”

            I was twenty eight years old and, ready or not, about to come out of the closet. And unable to find the perfect way to break the news.  It was June 2001, and I had just moved back to Birmingham after an unsuccessful two-month stint in New York City.  Throughout the previous year, I told a few close friends who, to my surprise, were not really surprised.  I guess my penchant for fashion and Barbra Streisand spoke volumes. 

One evening, after a few too many beers, I told a childhood friend who was notorious for being loose-lipped.  Three weeks later, I discovered that news of my sexual proclivities had made it down the interstate, through the woods, and around the hollow to my tiny hometown of Linden, two hours south of Birmingham.  After an emergency cocktail meeting with my roommate, Allison, she told me what I already knew I needed to do.

            “Craig, you have to tell your parents.  What if they hear it on the street?  Besides, you moved back here from New York because you had unfinished business, right?”

            “Fine, I’ll do it.  But only over the phone,” I replied.

            “Over the phone?”  She was incredulous.

            When I was growing up, I stayed in my room most of the time and talked to my parents through the walls.  So I figured that coming out via the telephone wouldn’t be much different.  So on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in late June, I made a phone call.  I rehearsed various versions of my speech for an hour but still didn’t know how I was going to say the words.  When she answered, my mother was busy in the kitchen cooking something.  I took a deep breath.

            I always knew that I was different.  I distinctly remember having strange feelings for other boys even in grammar school.  Not that I knew how to act on them.  However, our next-door neighbor, Barry, did.  He was a grade level ahead of me and liked to watch “Wonder Woman.”  Apparently, Lynda Carter locked lips with someone on the previous night’s episode, because the next afternoon, Barry pulled me into our laundry room to show me something. 

“Let me show you what Wonder Woman did last night to Steve Trevor.”

He laid a big fat kiss on me, right on the lips.  It was by far, the grossest thing I ever felt.  The lips, the tongue, the smell of Doritos.  But as disgusting as it was, it opened something up inside my gut.  For better or worse, I knew that everything changed with that one kiss. 

            I went on through grammar school playing occasional games of “doctor” with Bobby Barkley, a boy in my class.  But I always pushed the thoughts aside and tried to focus on girls.  Usually to no avail.  In junior high, after my clandestine year-long affair with Steve Avery ended, it was back to the occasional tryst with Barry, who by this time, had grown out of his “Wonder Woman” obsession but not his love for Doritos.  I assumed that these feelings for other boys would one day disappear and I could date girls, marry, and have children.  I even dated a few during high school and college, but most girls don’t want a boyfriend who can also style their hair. 

            After college, I moved to Birmingham and went to my first gay bar.  The men, the music, the energy.  I was mesmerized.  So were they.  Gay men love a fresh-faced blonde just out of college.  And I was so emotionally retarded, I didn’t realize this.  I just assumed they all wanted to date me.  Sure, they wanted to spend time with me, but the time they wanted to spend with me was horizontal.  I became somewhat of a tramp.  During this entire period, I assumed still that I could play around with guys, maybe even have a short-term relationship, then put it all aside and marry a woman. 

After three years of this behavior, I was a wreck.  I slowly came to the realization that my homosexuality was here to stay.  And the pressure of keeping it a secret was about to make me implode.  So I made a decision.  I told my friend Lindsy.  She was so supportive and happy that I finally came out to her.  She gave me the confidence to tell my other close friends.  Their reaction was all the same. 

“I’ve known for quite awhile.”

“Seems like somebody could have clued me in,” I would always say.

I also had a moment of false clarity.  Still firmly entrenched in denial, I figured that coming out to my family would be easier if I moved to New York City.  I could build this fabulous “Sex and the City” life, be out and proud, and live amongst all the gays.  So, in 2001, I said goodbye to Alabama and moved to New York with no plan, no leads for a job.  I was also much younger than I thought I was.  I moved in with a gay guy and a straight girl that I met through an online roommate finder.  I butted heads with Mark immediately.  He was too brash and pushy for my taste.  Valerie and I, however, hit it off.  She guided me through two months of job rejections, drunken nights, and one night stands.  She was going through a break-up, so we often found ourselves sitting on the fire escape, mid-afternoon, drinking Coronas.  She in her robe and me in my ill-fitting, banana-yellow swimming trunks working on my tan.   

Something happened during those two months of negativity though.  I changed.  I got stronger and realized that to succeed in New York, I needed to move back to Alabama and finish some unfinished business.  I needed to learn to live like an out and proud gay man in a place where “out and proud” isn’t widely accepted.  Because if a gay guy can make it there, he can make it anywhere.  After much soul-searching and several thousand dollars down the drain, I decided to move back to Birmingham.  I bought some cheesy self-help book called “Now That I’m Out, What Do I Do?” to prepare me for the life I was dealt, said a temporary goodbye to Valerie and to New York and flew home.

A month later, I was making the phone call.  As the phone rang, I was strangely calm.  But when Mom answered, everything I planned to say flew out the window.

“Mom.  I need to tell you something.”

“What’s wrong?” she immediately asked.

“Nothing’s wrong.  I just need to tell you something….you know…how…I haven’t had a date in a long time?”

“Yes,” she casually replied.

“That was rhetorical.  And…you also know…how much I…um…love Barbra Streisand?  And…I do like…um….’Will and Grace’ a lot.  And…Bette Midler.”

“Are you trying to say what I think you’re trying to say?”

“I think so.”

“Well, that’s your choice.”

I began to get irritated. 

“No, it’s not a choice.  It goes all the way back to birth.  Back to the birth canal.  Back to you.” 

“You don’t have to get rude.  You’re my son.  I don’t understand it right now, but I still love you.  Now I have to get back to this recipe.”

We got off the phone, and I was confused.  I expected either complete acceptance or fireworks.  I got neither.  I didn’t really know where we were.  The phone rang.  It was Dad.

“Your mother just told me what you said.  I wasn’t surprised,” he deadpanned.

“Well goddamn it.  You could have let me in on the secret that everyone else seemed to be privy to.”

“Don’t cuss,” he continued.  “I just meant that I suspected so I did some research on the internet.”

My mind was agog.

“It’s just the way the cards fall out of the bag.  I know you didn’t choose it, and someday your mother will know too.  Just be careful and know that both your mom and I love you.”

We got off the phone.  That was the first time I ever heard my father say that he loved me.  Wow.  Fireworks of a different kind. 

Allison came into my room and asked how things went.  I told her I needed a beer and that she should change clothes for happy hour.  I sat down on my bed.  It was done.  No turning back.  It felt strange but exhilarating.  Everything was out in the open now.  I could have gay friends and openly date.  Go to gay clubs without having to pretend I was going to a sports bar.  Bring strange boys home and not have to sneak them out the window in the morning.  I changed into my tightest little tee-shirt, because I was taking Allison to happy hour at a gay bar.  It was time that my parallel lives converged into one.  I looked down at the book that was lying on my bed.  “Now That I’m Out, What Do I Do?”  I picked it up and read the author’s answer to this question.

“Relax.  Be yourself.  Have some fun, and spread your wings and fly.”

So I did.

Once Upon a Mattress

Once Upon a Mattress

            I was eighteen years old and a freshman at the University of Alabama when I learned that it’s hard to maintain a friendship with someone after you take a crap on his floor.  It was an accident, and I was insanely drunk but for whatever reason, none of that mattered to Jim.  He wanted my head.  Or more importantly, he wanted a new mattress.

            The University of Alabama is located in the heart of Tuscaloosa, an otherwise unremarkable town with not much else going for it than the Crimson Tide.  The football team is the main draw, but their academic program is quite stellar.  For my entire life, I wanted to go to a school far away and study acting, writing, and dance.  When the time came, I bowed to the pressures of my conventional little town, chose the University of Alabama, and decided to become an accountant.  I was an Auburn fan but chose UA because I had gotten a blow job in the Sears restroom in Tuscaloosa during my senior year of high school.  So I figured there must be more.

            By some strange twist of fate, David, my high school classmate, asked me to room with him as he was going to the community college in Tuscaloosa on a baseball scholarship.  His girlfriend, Cindy, and I weren’t particularly fond of each other, nor did I share a fondness with her roommate, Lynn.  But the pros outweighed the cons.  Besides the daily chance of catching David naked in the hallway of our apartment, it was inevitable that there would be plenty of hot baseball players coming over to drink beer.  And the only difference between a gay guy and a bi-curious guy is a six-pack of Budweiser and a marijuana cigarette.  Our parents moved us in late August of 1991.  Strange feelings began to surface.

            Emotionally, I moved further away from my family during the course of my senior year in high school.  Dad was deployed to Bush War I in November 1990.  Another episode in a series of what I perceived to be abandonment that I learned to handle with irritability, misplaced anger, and withdrawal.  The entire country was awash with patriotism, and our house looked like Uncle Sam had thrown up on it.  Red, white and blue ribbons adorned every door.  Yellow bows hugged our trees and mailbox.  Mom wore patriotic sweatshirts, patriotic ribbons, patriotic badges.  She put patriotic bumper stickers on our cars.  We were the poster family for keeping the home fires burning. 

            I didn’t like to cry in front of people, much less my mother.  So I simply quit going anywhere there would be talk of the war, parents, spirituality, or my father.  No more church, no support groups for the families left behind.  No patriotic assemblies at school.  Nothing.  Dad missed everything that year.  State championships, talent shows, graduation.  Even senior prom, although I was dumped by my date who got back together with the football player who knocked her up.  Dad returned home from the war just in time for me to move to Tuscaloosa.

            So as my family drove off and left me alone in my new home with David, Cindy, and Lynn, I was shocked by my welling emotion.  I waited eighteen years to be out of that house.  Now that I was, it didn’t feel good.  I was almost jealous of Mom, Dad, and my brother Keith.  Driving away, the perfect family going to their perfect home.  The three of them.  Without me.  I walked inside, and the other family of three were deep frying deer meat.  It was like we were in high school again, only with a comfortable couch and a Fry-Daddy.  Too bad I hated high school and fried meat gave me the cramps.

            As I settled into college life, my homesickness didn’t last long.  With a little time, my fondness for Cindy and Lynn grew.  We bonded over Jane Fonda workout tapes and “Steel Magnolias.”  They introduced me to Ms. Fonda’s aerobics tapes, and the skinny Cindy and I would laugh at the heftier Lynn and her reaction to any new form of exercise.

            “Fuck you Jane!” she would yell as she got up from the floor and walked into the kitchen for a doughnut.

            Cindy and Lynn hated their dorm, so they spent many a night with us.  Lynn and I would share my bed, and a jealous Cindy would often sneak into my room and sit up with us giggling until a horny David came in and dragged her back to bed.  If there was a downside to our living arrangement, it was that David never walked around naked.  Only Cindy.

            Classes were okay.  I had certain rules pertaining to my class attendance.  If it was above 90 degrees or below 50 degrees, I didn’t go.  If it was raining, snowing, or too windy, I didn’t go.  If “All My Children” was wrapping up a huge storyline, I didn’t go.  Of course, anytime a hangover was involved, there was no class for me.  My grades suffered, but my social life had never been better.  I was hanging around friends from high school who were introducing me to a whole new set of friends.  My younger gal pals were driving up to see me on weekends, and life was good.  For a while.

            Jim and Will lived together in an apartment just off campus.  Both were pretty good friends of mine in high school and still were.  Will was in a fraternity, and Jim attended the community college with David.  One Saturday, all six of us loaded up and went to a football game.  Game days in Tuscaloosa are huge.  Crowds everywhere.  You can’t swing a stick without hitting a redneck.  We taped flasks of whiskey to our legs and snuck it into the game.  So by the end of fourth quarter, we were lit up.  That particular game day, we followed it with a party at a friend’s house.  To this day, I’m not sure exactly what got into me.  I do know that I remember every single detail of what transpired.  Too bad I didn’t black out.

            I started with bourbon and coke.  From there, I segued to shooting tequila and chasing it with swills of whiskey.  Next up, keg stands!  Before I knew it, I was dancing on a coffee table with some strange chicks singing “Straight to Hell.”  When we finally left the party, it was well after midnight.  We trekked across campus to Jim and Will’s apartment.  I immediately headed for the bathroom where the vomiting was so sudden and violent, I couldn’t pick my head up out of the toilet.  There I was—the guy voted Most Likely to Succeed—on my hands and knees, my head resting on a toilet seat as I vomited up my spleen.  I crawled out of the bathroom, unable to walk while everyone was still boozing and laughing.  I made a few funny remarks, yelled at them for being assholes in high school, and made my way to Jim’s room.  I fell down, hit my head on a vacuum cleaner and passed out cold.

            Maybe two hours later, well after my friends should have taken me to the hospital to have my stomach pumped, I woke up.  Everything was quiet.  I walked around the apartment still in a stupor and looked for everyone.  I was alone.  I felt the urge to use the facilities.  So I walked back into Jim’s room which in a stupor looked like the bathroom.  I pulled my pants down, squatted, and crapped right there on his carpet.  Shag carpet.  I suddenly came to and realized that I was, literally and figuratively, in deep shit.  I made my way into the bathroom, cleaned myself up, and somehow drove myself across town to my apartment.

            The next morning, I opened one eye expecting to see God telling me I’m dead.  No such luck.  It was David, Cindy, and Lynn.  The looks on their faces told me that the night before was no bad dream.  A wave of disgust washed over me.  Their jabs and one-liners didn’t help.  I called Will, apologized and made plans to clean their apartment.  Will laughed it off but made it clear that I was expected to come over immediately with cleaning supplies.  To make matters worse, their air-conditioning broke on this 85-degree day, so their apartment was warm.  Very warm. 

            I arrived at their apartment with sixty dollars worth of cleaning supplies to find them hanging out the second-story window for air.  Will was still laughing.  Jim was eerily quiet.  I cleaned the apartment from floor to ceiling.  I cleaned rooms that I never even touched.  I vacuumed, dusted, mopped, scrubbed.  When I was finished, their place was pristine.  No one could tell that someone had shat the place up the night before.  I was about to leave when Jim spoke.

            “You owe me a new mattress.”

            And he was dead serious.  I’m still not sure how his mattress got muddied, but with that sentence, a two month long battle of words began.  Friends took sides, vicious personal attacks were common, and Jim and I spent an inordinate amount of energy declaring the other mentally unfit.  The whole thing ended when I was forced to tell Dad what happened.  He threatened to send me to rehab and told me to have Jim’s father call him where they could work something out.  Obviously, Jim’s father wanted no part of it, because when I told Jim what Dad said, he told me to have my parents send the money over to him directly.

            “Are you fucking kidding me?”  I was livid.  “For months, you wanted me to tell Dad and that’s exactly what I did.  It’s between him and you now.  If you want your goddamned money, go talk to my father.”

            He didn’t talk to my father, and the damage was done.  Dad watched me like a hawk from then on.  Jim and I didn’t speak for over a year, and since Will was his roommate, we didn’t speak either.  And I realized that both of us accomplished our goals.  I didn’t have to buy Jim a new mattress.  And Jim made sure I was utterly humiliated.  Our months long battle of bitchery came to a close, and even though blood was shed, I could declare victory.  And so could Jim.

            We began our college career as adversaries, but David, Cindy, and Lynn stepped up to the plate and stood up for me every chance they got.  We finished our freshman year. David got a starting position on his college’s baseball team, Cindy continued to walk around naked, Lynn threw away the Jane Fonda tapes, and I got a blow job from one of David’s teammates. 

And I didn’t even have to break out the marijuana. 

           

My Vagina Monologue

My Vagina Monologue

            I was searching for Michelle’s clitoris when I suddenly realized, “Oh dear, I think I’m gay.” 

The news didn’t come as a complete shock.  By the time I was a junior in high school, I already had a year-long affair with Steve Avery, our star quarterback, and several liaisons with a classmate. I was also fondled by a thirty-year old football coach in a public restroom in Mississippi, but that was just plain scary.  I never wanted to believe that I was gay, so I kept plugging at it.  Being straight, that is.  I wanted desperately to date girls but couldn’t seem to get past the friendship stage.  They wanted me near them, not in them. 

            The summer before my junior year, I started hanging out with Meredith who was a year younger than I.  Our parents were close, so we forged our own friendship.  I was crazy about her.  Not in a boyfriend/girlfriend kind of way.  I just looked out for her, made sure her outfits matched her shoes and that she didn’t wear too much blush.  Soon, our parents started letting us go out to parties together.  In Linden, Alabama, most of the parties that teenagers threw took place in pastures.  Meredith and I would load up in Mom’s Crown Victoria, the Ford equivalent of an army tank, and head over to the projects to score some Budweiser or Boone’s Farm. 

            I worked part-time at the local bank, so I knew the whole town.  For the most part, a white person could live their whole life in Linden and not know but a handful of black people.  Not me.  I knew at least twenty.  And every month, like clockwork, Eddie Lee Johnson walked up to my teller counter and cashed his SSI check.  And I never charged him a fee for being a non-customer.  So, every weekend, like clockwork, Meredith and I hunted Eddie Lee Johnson down in the bowels of the projects, and, for a two dollar fee, he bought us beer or Strawberry Hill.  On Saturday night was the pasture party.  And on Sunday, Meredith and I escaped to the Linden Country Club pool, baked in the sun, and tried not to vomit.

            Since I had never been with a girl, Meredith was more sexually versed on boy-on-girl things than I was.  We worked during the summer for Miss Nell, our school’s lunch lady, out at the baseball diamonds, selling greasy hamburgers and stale popcorn.  Meredith was joking about doing the ’69.’

            “What the hell is 69?” I asked.  I was a lot younger than I thought I was.

            “You don’t know what 69 is?”  She was skeptical.

            “Where the hell have you been?” Miss Nell piped in.  “Even I know what 69 is!” 

            We never kept many secrets from Miss Nell.

            “I probably know what it is but call it something different.”  I was trying desperately to seem cool, even though I was wearing ripped denim shorts and a tie-dyed t-shirt.

            “Come over here, I’ll show you,” Meredith offered.

            She walked over to the popcorn machine, picked out several pieces of popcorn, and delicately arranged them on the counter to look like stick figures.  It looked like stale popcorn strewn about at first, but soon the visual aid combined with Meredith’s voice-over instruction made perfect sense.  I was in awe.

            “People really do that?”

            “Hell yeah!” Miss Nell yelled across the concession stand.  “Now get your asses back over here and help me cook these fuckin’ hamburgers!”  She never minced words.

            Meredith was instrumental in helping me with a delicate transition from junior high school outcast to senior high school somebody.  I would never have gone to any of those parties by myself, and we became partners in crime.  I had the car, and she was my crutch.  But we genuinely liked each other and laughed constantly.  After she joined the softball team, she introduced me to Amanda, a bullish girl who was a year older than I.  Amanda’s tough exterior intimidated me at first, but I soon warmed up to her brashness.  Meredith sassed her one day.

            “Bitch, if you talk to me like that one more time, I’m gonna wrap that Goldilocks hair around your neck and make you smoke it,” Amanda shot back.

            Amanda also informed me that I had an admirer.

            “Michelle has wanted to go out with you for months.”

            “As friends, right?”

            “No.  She thinks you’re really cute.”

            I was flabbergasted.  But with Meredith’s insistence, we arranged a group outing.  Amanda, Meredith, Michelle.  And me.  Michelle was in my class, but we never really talked to each other.  Until I learned that she thought I was cute.  Nobody—except for Steve—had ever voiced the opinion that I was cute.  It was decided that Amanda would drive her mother’s car which was even bigger than Mom’s Ford tank.  Michelle and I were comfortable in the roomy back seat when I suggested to Amanda that we head over to the projects for beer.

            “Are you out of your mind?  We can’t go to the projects!”

            “Me and Craig do it all the time,” Meredith offered.

            “Well you and Craig are dumb asses!  You’ll come out of the projects with a bullet in your neck one night and won’t ever be able to buy beer again!  We’re going to Uncle Dick’s.”

            We drove about fifteen miles out of town to Uncle Dick’s who was of no relation to any of us in the car.  He was a Santa Clause-looking man that regularly sold alcohol to minors.  Amanda walked in and ten minutes later walked out with four bottles of Country Quencher, some sort of cheap fruity wine in a twist-off bottle.  We passed around the Dixie cups and hit the back roads, singing along with Bon Jovi and Poison.  We made it to the pasture party du jour and were already lit up.  Meredith and I immediately started making snake eyes at two cheerleaders who we considered to be our arch-enemies.  Amanda sat down in a lawn chair and began mocking people that she didn’t like.  And Michelle made it clear with a quickness exactly what she wanted from me.  Just as I turned up my cup of Quencher, she grabbed my crotch.  And that was all it took.

            We headed back out to the car and got in the backseat.  Steve and I made out in his car all the time when we were hanging out, so I was ready for this.  However, when I hit my back and waited for Michelle to climb on top of me, I got quite a look.  I shifted my brain around and positioned ourselves to where I was on top of her.  We made out for awhile, and I missed the scruffy feeling of a guy’s whiskers.  I missed the smell of Polo cologne and Listerine.  Instead, all I got from Michelle was some cheap Avon perfume and the taste of raspberry lip gloss.  Soon, we were undressed.  I’m still not quite sure what we were planning on doing.  We didn’t have a condom between us. 

            Maybe she had her diaphragm in.  Or whatever the hell those things are called.  Thank God for “All My Children” or I’d be lost.

            Now was the time to try out Meredith’s suggestion.  Only this time, no popcorn.  We got in position.  I was looking around for the clitoris, not even sure what I was looking for.  I was trying to suppress my gag reflex.  At that moment, I would have sucked my own dick rather than put my tongue in there.  But I did.  I held my breath, and I gave her head.  I always thought that when I finally got to go down on a girl, the feelings toward boys would disappear.  Simply dissipate from my brain.  Nope.  I finished up down there and still wanted a penis.  Still wanted the weight of a man on top of me.  Still hard, I had to finish somehow, and her attempt at a blow job was not working.  So I put it in her and after about five quick thrusts, I pulled it out and shot it on Amanda’s seat. 

            Shit!  Amanda is gonna kick my ass!

            “You have your diaphragm in, right?”

            “Um.  No.  I’m on the pill.  Let’s go back to the party.”

            We dressed and joined the rest of the party.  I felt weird but a little exhilarated.  Even though it was gross, I just fucked a girl.  Maybe there was hope for me after all.  Maybe I could have both…guys and girls.  It became clear, however, that I wasn’t going down on Michelle anytime soon.  If ever again.  The next day I got a phone call from her.

            “Hey there.  Meredith told me last night that you could show me how to put on eye shadow better.  I always put on too much and Mama tells me I look cheap.”

            Oh well.  Another girl, another friend. 

And a few hours after that I got another phone call.  Meredith and I were hanging out in my room listening to Belinda Carlisle.  I answered the phone.  It was Amanda.

            “You little shit ass!   I’m on my way to your house!”

            “Why?”  I was suddenly nervous.

            “You know why!  You shot your load in Mama’s backseat, and I’m gonna rub your fuckin’ little nose in it!”

            With that, Meredith and I bundled up some mixed tapes, jumped in Mom’s Crown Victoria, and laughing all the way, hauled ass to Uncle Dick’s.  Leaving Amanda alone with four empty bottles of Country Quencher and my DNA.

Every Day A Little Death

Every Day A Little Death

            I was a freshman in high school, alone.  Steve Avery had graduated.  Now here I was.  In ninth grade, hormones raging and not another queer in sight.  Seventh and eighth grades were tolerable.  Maybe because of Steve.  But ninth grade?  No way.  I hated everybody and felt like everybody hated me.  I was too skinny, too awkward.  I had too many zits, not enough muscles.  Basically I felt what every other fifteen-year old felt.  But there was something different.  I liked boys and didn’t want to.  I was teased a little for being ‘girly’.  But nothing I couldn’t handle.  I had a few friends but longed to be in the “in crowd” again, like I was when Steve was still at school.  But my classmates that were in this crowd were having sex and drinking.  And I wasn’t. 

            Home life wasn’t much better.  My brother, Keith, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at the age of twelve.  He spent over a week in Children’s Hospital in Birmingham while I stayed with one of my favorite families in Linden, the Glass family.  David was in my class at school and was on the periphery of the ‘in crowd’.  We got along very well though.  Besides, I loved looking at his ass.  He had a younger brother named Jimmy and a little sister named Jessie.  They were all wild as hell.  During the week I spent with them, there were baseball fights, pitchfork fights, car tag fights.  I got flea bites from their army of dogs that marched in and out of the house.  But I loved it.  Then it was home again.

            I fit into the norm of most fifteen-year olds in one aspect.  I was a self-centered brat.  So while my parents and Keith were trying to adjust to his new dietary needs and two insulin shots everyday, I was causing commotion after commotion. 

            “I want to go back to David’s!” I yelled on a daily basis.

            I pitched tantrums over doing chores, I talked back to my mother.  Anything I could do to make them notice me is exactly what I did.  Finally, at the end of his rope, Dad decided to have a “grown-up” talk with me.

            “You’ve got to calm down.  You’re driving your mother and me crazy.  It’s not good for Keith either.  He’s trying to adjust.  We’re all trying to adjust, and you’re not helping any by telling us you’d rather live with David and his family.”

            He was calm.  I was not.

            “I don’t care about any of you!  You all hate me anyway!  You wouldn’t even notice if I was gone!”

            “Shut up.  You know that’s not true.  You’re just being a spoiled little shit ass.”

            I buried my face in my pillow just to piss him off.

            “Look at me.”

            I didn’t budge.

            “Look at me goddamnit!”

            I slowly looked up.  And thought I saw a tear.

            “You don’t know what it’s like—and I hope you never know—but you don’t know what it’s like to have your son look at you in a hospital bed and ask if he’s gonna die.  Now you straighten yourself up and at least pretend that you like us.”

            And he walked out of my room.  I buried my face in my pillow again.  Not to piss him off.  But so they wouldn’t hear me cry from shame and embarrassment.  And for my brother.

            So I took my dad’s advice.  I straightened up.  As much as a self-centered fifteen-year old brat could.  The school’s annual talent showcase was coming up.  I performed in it the year before, so I auditioned again and won a solo.  Even school was beginning to look up.  Until one Friday afternoon in Mrs. Wood’s biology class.

            In some circles, Mrs. Wood could be considered eccentric.  In most circles, she could be considered certifiable.  She told stories about everything.  How she read a book about freeing one’s spirit and how she freed her spirit from her entire body…except her big toe.  How she drowned as a child and came back to life.  How her daughter saved herself for the man she loved and he in turn broke her heart because he screwed a guy.  Nothing was off limits. 

That particular Friday afternoon—Black Friday, she read an article aloud in class from one of Alabama’s newspapers.  It was a scathing expose’ about closeted gay men and how they initiate sex in public places such as restrooms at the mall.  The more she read, the redder my face got.  This was not an article for fifteen-year olds.  Especially not for fifteen-year old boys who liked boys and lived in fear every day of being found out.  According to the article, a gay guy would sit in the restroom stall and tap his foot until someone who was also in on the ‘code’ would tap his foot back.  Then it was off to Fuckland.  There were quotes from closeted gays, experts, psychiatrists.  The entire article seemed to tell us that straight was good, gay was bad.           

            With each word, I was getting more flushed.  I felt as if everyone in the room was looking straight at me.  Then there was a quote that Mrs. Wood read from one of the ‘experts’ that interviewed several closeted gays.  The quote read something like “gay guys can have sex with women but must think of a man to get it up.”  With that, Mrs. Wood dramatically put the paper on her desk and looked up at the class.  In my mind, she was looking directly at me.

            “And ladies, if that doesn’t make your blood run cold, you are dead!”

            My OCD kicked in.  Was she directing this entire spiel at me?  Was everyone talking about me behind my back?  Did they know about Steve?  I was in a full-on panic attack.  I left school that day still flushed and felt like I had the flu.  I didn’t eat dinner that night.  Instead I adjourned to my room and tried to focus on my upcoming solo for the talent showcase.  But I couldn’t. Her words kept running through my head.  I was doomed to a life of having to think about dick just to stick mine in a vagina.  Doomed to spending my days in restroom stalls at Sears, tapping my foot while waiting for a blow job.

            No.  Absolutely not.  That will not be me.  I’m not gay.  I will never look at another boy that way again.  No more hanging out in the locker room.  No more looking at David’s ass.  None of that.  I will like girls.  Maybe I’ll even go out with fat Shelley who keeps leaving notes in my locker.  I’m not gonna touch her twat, but maybe I’ll just kiss her instead.  I am straight.  From now on.  I am straight.

            My new mantra seemed to work.  Every time I would catch myself daydreaming about boys, I’d pinch my arm or slap my face.  Then I’d start thinking about the cheerleaders.  Football practice was still a challenge.  So was David’s ass.  After practice, I would just get my work done, focusing on the floor the entire time, and then leave.  And whenever I was around David for any length of time, I’m fairly certain he wondered why I kept slapping myself.  For the most part, it was working.  The gay thoughts weren’t as prevalent and were being replaced by straight thoughts.  Soon, I was even able to jack off while thinking about cheerleaders. 

            I went through the remainder of my freshman year with nothing but girls on my mind.  I asked out a few, but they all turned me down.  Not many girls want to date guys who can also give them makeup tips.  The talent showcase was a success, and my rendition of “Splish Splash” wowed the crowd.  Especially when I ripped off my robe, revealing Pepsi-Cola shorts and a tank top.  After school ended for the summer, I worked part-time at a baseball park’s concession stand and part-time as a lifeguard at the Linden Country Club.  I’m not sure whether it was all the guys in their baseball uniforms or their bathing suits.  But whatever the reason, the old feelings started to creep back in.  But this time, I was a little more rational about it.  I figured that I could do both for awhile—girls and boys.  Then quit the boys in college and get serious about marrying a girl.  I had already proven to myself that I could get hard thinking about girls.  Easy.  Now I could masturbate thinking about whomever I chose. 

            And about that time, my grandfather died.  We drove over to Jackson, Mississippi for the week.  All the grandkids were getting on the adults’ nerves, so Dad and my uncle took several of us to watch the local university’s football team practice, where Dad’s best friend was the coach.  After drinking four too many iced teas at Grandma’s house, I needed to go in a bad way.  So I went to the restroom just off the practice field.  I was peeing when I heard the door open and shut behind me.   Of all the other urinals, this older guy walks over and uses the one next to mine.  I looked up at him, startled, and recognized him from the field.  He was one of the assistant coaches, younger than the others, but ancient to me.  So, he was about thirty.  And a looker.

            “How’s it goin’?” he asked.

            “Fine, I guess.”

            He glanced down at my penis which, surprisingly, was becoming erect.  He smiled.  He had dentist-white teeth.  I glanced down at his.  It was monstrous and hard as a rock.  And he was playing with it.  He was thirty years old.  I was fifteen. 

And then he tapped his right foot.

            So that’s what Mrs. Wood was talking about.