What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?

           “I quit.”

            With those two little words my life changed for the better.  I quit my job last week.  I quit my job last week with basically nothing lined up.  I have options and ideas sure.  But nothing tangible is lined up.  And I love it.  I hated my job.  Cliché, yes, but true.  It was finance, and I loathe finance.  Growing up in a small Southern town, boys were encouraged to be football coaches, doctors, or businessmen.  Since blood makes me squeamish and I throw like a girl, business won out.  I had no idea that you could major in drama or English, so I majored in accounting.  I never got above a “C” in any of my accounting courses, so that should have told me something right there.  So basically, my job bored me to tears.  There was nothing exciting about it.  Literally, the most exciting thing about my job was being able to purchase theatre tickets for my boss.  And I would absolutely cringe whenever I had to utter those tragic words, “I’m behind on my filing.”  

            My boss.  Truly a piece of work.  The tantrums were regular and legendary.  No phones were thrown, but words sure were.  People were sent home on a regular basis to “think about whether they want to stay or not.”  His line of fire was intense.  If you found yourself in that line of fire, it could be days, even weeks you would stay there.  We called them beatdowns.  He would constantly pick apart something that he considered wrong and harp on it for days.  In front of everyone.  We had group lunches every week.  And every week, he held court like a puppet master.  Choosing people to tell jokes over and over and over.  It didn’t matter if they were the same jokes…and the more offensive the better.  Nobody escaped unscathed.  Jews, Mexicans, African-Americans, the Polish, blondes, gays, women.  Some were funnyish, most were not. 

            Humiliation was his forte.  Of a junior member of the firm, he once announced to the entire office at group lunch, “He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he tries hard.”  He was an expert at finding a weakness and capitalizing on it.  Especially weight.  For overweight employees, group lunch was an exercise in remembering one’s self-worth.  He constantly rode them about exercising more, always “jokingly” of course.  If humiliation was his forte, empathy was not.  Just last month, he called me into his office.  Apparently the day before he saw one of the cleaners in the kitchen with her mouth full.  Our kitchen is always stocked with fruit, so he assumed she was eating the fruit. 

            “Craig, I think you should hide the fruit everyday before you leave.  I don’t want those people eating it.”

            I stood there, dumbfounded.  A man worth a ton of money couldn’t let a woman who probably made minimum wage have a fucking banana?  I was livid.  And everyday, I hid the fruit.  With great shame.  A series of smallish events led to my decision to leave.  After over five years, the toxic atmosphere had seeped into other parts of my life.  My creativity was zapped.  I was drinking at night to forget about the days.  So I handed in my notice, gave an extra three weeks until they found someone to replace me, and I left.  I handled the notice so well, he agreed to pay me for my two weeks of unused vacation.  Until he didn’t.  After I left, he accused me of unauthorized usage of his credit card.  And cut it down to one week.  Basically, I was accused of stealing.  And I haven’t stolen anything since I was twelve years old when I lifted a Playgirl magazine and a set of Lee Press-on-Nails from the local drug store.  So, that was the final nail in the coffin for me.  Any doubt I previously had about leaving flew out the window. 

So to answer the title’s question…I don’t know.  I don’t know what I am doing the rest of my life.  Maybe something in the theatre.  Maybe I’ll teach.  Maybe I’ll move to Provincetown for the summer, schlep drinks by a pool, and screw my way through tourist season.  Maybe I’ll wind up in the welfare line.  Or turning tricks like the trannies on the West Side Highway.  Oh wait, they’ve cleaned up the West Side Highway, so that option is null and void.  Maybe I’ll finally get paid for writing—more than the $50 I was paid for a published piece on broadwayspace.com.  But I just don’t know.  I do know that I’ll never walk into that office again.  And that fills my soul.

            And what did I get from all of this?  Over five years of browbeating, verbal abuse, uncomfortable situations, and having to watch my boss’ utter disregard for another person’s humanity?  Well, first of all I got a life experience worthy enough of an essay.  Secondly…and most importantly….I got a new group of friends.  A small but weary handful of friends who made the days go by a little faster, made the verbal beatdowns a little easier to swallow, and the long group lunches a little less uncomfortable because every time, I was silently laughing at their fake laughter.  So I got friends out of an enormously difficult life experience.  And that’s what counts the most. 

            Because friends would never make me hide the fruit.

Make Me A Match

            I do not condone torture.  However, if I were to meet the guy or gal that invented the online dating service, Guantanamo Bay would look like a time share on Fire Island.  After a few months of hitting the internet chat rooms and other virtual meeting halls for sex-deprived gay men, it was inevitable that I try the G-rated version.  Match.com. Obviously, mucho dollars are spent on advertising for these sites, and they take great pains to coax the lonely and needy into a world where everyone meets their Prince Charming or Sleeping Beauty.  So color me lonely and needy, because I bought into it and excitedly signed up. 

After I paid the hefty admission ticket to enter for three months, I was asked to create an online profile and answer a dazzling array of questions.  I hadn’t been that excited since filling out my senior book in high school.  Ten pages where I got to talk about ME!  My physical features, my favorite vacation spots, hobbies, future plans, favorite food and drink.  Like Christmas for the emotionally unfulfilled.  So I sat down and went to work.  I butched up parts of it in case a baseball fan wanted to take me to a Yankees game.  I toned down my love of show tunes for fear of stereotype.  I could be any person I wanted.  In hindsight, I should have settled for being me.

When it came time to search for my new husband, I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store.  I “winked” at or emailed practically every hunk on the site.  Each email was custom-made for each prospective beau.  When finished, I reviewed the emails and was quite proud of my witty repartee and intelligent anecdotes.  Funny how three glasses of Merlot can make the most mundane of sentences sparkle.  I went to bed that night tipsy and satisfied.  Satisfied, knowing that the next day my mailbox would be chock full of suitors.  It’s horrifying how wrong a human being can sometimes be.

The next morning I went about my day, going to my loathsome job at a downtown Manhattan bank, kowtowing to my uneducated boss, and hitting the gym with a semi-gusto.  I practically skipped home, overflowing with excitement and confidence that soon I would marry.  There were several responses in my mailbox, all unsolicited.  I was crushed.  No one that I reached out for reached back.  I couldn’t understand this.  I was so methodical in my choosing.  If the guy was hot, then he got an email.  Wait. Maybe I should have actually read their profiles.  Looked for similarities and differences.  Suddenly, clarity.  Despite all of their hard work trying to convince us otherwise, the internet dating world is just like the real world, only with emoticons.  Guys that aren’t interested in me in 3-D aren’t interested in my picture/profile combination either.  And the guys that follow me down Eighth Avenue in Chelsea unsolicited will also follow me down the virtual dating highway as well.

So I sifted through the junk.  I reluctantly set up a couple of dates, one of whom paid for dinner.  He turned out to be a nice guy.  A copywriter who accidentally almost form-tackled Katharine Hepburn on a busy Manhattan sidewalk years before. He offered to take me to a Yankees game—being I love baseball—but when I offered just my cheek for a goodnight kiss, that was the last I heard from him.  I retreated to lick my wounds which entailed several glasses of wine and a one-night stand to make me feel worthy.  After getting an unhealthy dose of faux self-worth, I hit it again.  This time I was more realistic about my wants and needs and tried to look for men who were more willing to reciprocate.  The new formula worked.  I started getting some responses from guys who I really wanted to follow me down Eighth Avenue.  At first. 

I accepted a date with John.  A cutie with wavy brown hair.  A buyer at Bergdorf-Goodman.  I met him at the mother ship of gay bars, G.  I was standing at the bar, nervously looking around for my date.  John tapped me on the shoulder, and I was pleasantly surprised.  He looked just like his picture.  I breathed a silent sigh of relief, and his facial expression told me that he did the same.  He bought two drinks, and we headed for a table.  I noticed his oversized man-purse.

“I like your bag,” I offered.

“Thanks,” he dramatically sighed.  “Fifteen hundred dollars.”

I almost swallowed my tongue.

“Really?  My entire outfit costs barely over a hundred.”

“Oh, how could that be?”

Easy.  I went on to explain how the jeans came from a really cool thrift store, my nice fitted shirt came from Century 21, and my new boots were on sale.  He looked at me in disbelief.

“That is so funny,” he went on.  “These jeans alone cost almost a thousand dollars.”

The night proceeded in just this fashion.  Everything had a price tag.  And not only did he tell me how much he paid for his clothes, his house, and every stick of furniture in it, but he also told me how much he made and the huge amount of his recent bonus.  And here I was.  Working for a shitty commercial bank using credit cards almost to their limit and shopping at thrift stores.  If the constant bragging wasn’t enough, each time he told me how much something cost, he dramatically rolled his eyes and looked so put upon as if to say “I stitched every last thread of these jeans” or “I laid every brick of my house.”  I was secretly plotting excuses to get out of going to dinner with him.  Turned out I didn’t need to.  Our income disparity and my obvious disgust were enough.  He didn’t ask.  Instead, he paid the check, and we headed home.  Separately. 

Still stinging from John and his gold-dusted jeans, I reluctantly kept a date with Stan, a date that I had agreed to go on the week before.  So three nights after my lesson in the economics of dating, I met Stan at Gym, a gay sports bar—which I’ve learned is not an oxymoron.  We were to have a couple of beers and then head to dinner at an Italian restaurant.  I walked in, saw him, and we both smiled.  Again, he looked like his picture.  Tall and handsome.  A blue-collar look.  Like he could pour cement or something.  We introduced ourselves, and he bought two beers and turned to me.

“So like I said I’m Stan originally from the Midwest but I would never claim that to anyone HA HA HA HA HA HA no kidding I love the Midwest it’s so provincial and pure and my parents are still there who I adore and my siblings and their kids who I just love do you love kids? I LOVE kids I want three do you want kids?  It would be so neat if you took my last name and then we could name our son Henry!  How much fun would that be?  I love my job I’m a contractor and am so busy all the time and can never find time for a relationship but you’re too cute to pass up and you seem so interesting and fun and cool so what do you say?”

My eyes crossed. 

“I beg your—“

“What do you say about going steady?”

I downed my beer, put five dollars on the bar, and walked out.

“Well, you seem too wound up to have kids anyway!” he called out behind me.

Two weeks later, having given up Match.com for good, I got a message in my inbox.  I didn’t even look at his profile and picture.  I wasn’t interested.  Until I read his email.  No talk of walking on the beach or income level or how many children we were going to have.  Just simple and direct.

“Fuck this match.com bullshit. Do you want to go out to dinner with me?”

I met him for dinner the next night.  He was already seated when I arrived.  He stood up as I approached the table.  Well over 6’4”, he had the kind of smile that made my stomach flip.  Firm in all the right places with a little bit of gut.  Classic features with just a hint of flaw.  I said a silent prayer and sat down.  His name was Doug.  He was a successful visual arts designer from California who had only been in New York for two years.  Conversation was easy.  We talked about our likes and dislikes, the perils of online dating, and our respective horror stories.  Dinner and drinks turned into a three hour date.  I felt like I had known him for a lot longer.  He had exquisite taste in wine and was well-versed in just about everything, including theatre which I love.  Even his flaws were cute. 

“Do you want to go see a play sometime?” I asked.

“Um, yeah.  But I get kind of anxious when I’m boxed in with a lot of people, so I may need to sit on the aisle.  I actually had to get up and leave ‘Mamma Mia’ last month.”

“Well, that probably didn’t have so much to do with your social anxiety as it did with ‘Mamma Mia’,” I offered. 

At the end of the night, he wanted to walk me home.  Walk me home!  I couldn’t believe it.  We got to my front door, and he kissed me.

“This has been the best date.  I really want to see you again.  I haven’t met anyone in a long time that really grabbed me like you did,” he said.

This was it.  My last blind date.  I just knew it.  We made plans for the next week.

“Next time when I walk you home, I’ll come up,” he grinned.

I watched him walk away.  I was happy.  Content.  Smitten. 

I got an email from him two days later.

“You’re a fantastic guy and a great catch.  But dating is just not where I am right now.  Take care, Doug.”

Just like his first email.  Simple.  And direct.

The Way I Am

                              

            In the first thirty-eight years of my life, I’ve had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, small pox, hepatitis, a brain tumor, gonorrhea, syphilis, and a recurring case of homosexuality.  None were diagnosed by a medical professional, yet more than once I asked my mother for a living will.  I brought this up to my shrink once, and she said, “Craig, I have to go to the bathroom.”  Upon her return, I completed a series of tests, and just like that, she wrapped up all of my previous diagnoses and even tied a pretty little bow on top.

            “Craig, I think you have OCD,” she explained.

            “Oh God.  Occasional Crabs and Dysentery?”

            “No.  OCD.  Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” 

            She explained that OCD is an abnormal brain function where a person has intrusive and unwanted thoughts and feelings and/or engages in repetitive behavior in order to halt them.  She told me that medication is not necessary since mine is a mild case and assured me that my recurring case of homosexuality obviously decided to stay.  It seems that part of my OCD causes me to project symptoms of various illnesses on to myself, but unlike hypochondriacs, I keep these feelings trapped in my brain.

            “So, my worries are unfounded?”

            “In most instances, yes,” she assured me.

            What a relief!  Now I could have sex with men without the nagging worry of giving them the Clap.

            At the time of diagnosis, I was twenty-eight, living in

Birmingham, Alabama 

and tip-toeing out of the closet.  Now with this newfound knowledge, my life began to make sense.  The faux illnesses, the angst and sense of dread, the constant praying.  Not to mention the typing in air.  I always thought I was fucked up.  Come to find out I’m just screwed up.

            As a pre-teen, I had an abnormal fear of being kidnapped after I saw a special report by Barbara Walters.  I also have an abnormal fear of Barbara Walters, but some things even medication can’t help.  Her report unleashed unfounded fears in my brain that could be so gripping and immediate, they often paralyzed me.  I went through phases where I never played outside after dark, even though we lived in a tiny tranquil burg where the talk of the town for an entire summer was the bank secretary’s affair. My dad spent many a happy hour at our local country club, and I waited by the window every night for him to come home.  Without him at home, I was more susceptible to being kidnapped by some deranged fanatic in a windowless van.  Each night, like clockwork, I saw his truck lights coming down the street and was relieved whenever they turned into our driveway.  Dad would come inside, sometimes sober and other times blitzed.  Either way, his presence served a purpose:  my physical security.  With him at home, I felt safe and could adjourn to my bedroom for the evening to do homework and watch “Dynasty.”

Things really got odd once I hit puberty.  It was 1985, Rock Hudson had just died of AIDS, and an older football player at my school, Steve Avery, was giving me hand jobs on a regular basis.  I was skinny and unsure, an awkward kid who enjoyed attention from both girl and occasional boy.  I enjoyed a modicum of popularity but quickly learned my role was the class clown, the jester with the effeminate gait.  I also had braces which paved the way for all sorts of nicknames and catcalls and also irritated my gums.  So they bled easily.  Our biology teacher added a new unit to our curriculum that year about AIDS, which was quite revolutionary for a small Southern town in the mid-80’s.  I’m still not quite sure where she got her facts though.

            “One of the first symptoms of AIDS is bleeding of the gums,” she instructed.

            Pangs of horror shot through my gut.  Goddamn it!  I knew I shouldn’t have let Steve touch it!  I went home, locked myself in the bathroom, and looked in the mirror.  With all the melodrama and nuance of Susan Lucci, I wailed at my reflection.

            “Oh GOD!  I’ve got AIDS!”

            Steve couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t play around with him for six months.  I didn’t want to tell him that I possibly had AIDS and that I needed to wait six months for any other symptoms to appear.  Again, not sure where my revolutionary science teacher collected her data.  I waited and occasionally worried that each new zit was a lesion.  Each bleeding gum episode was further AIDS infection from Steve’s hand jobs.  Every cough was AIDS-related pneumonia.  However, six months passed, my gums healed, and I didn’t die.  All clear. Steve was thrilled.

            Throughout my teen years, I was getting reborn and baptized as a result of my pastor’s sermon on homosexuality.  The word ‘reborn” triggered something in my brain, and I had regular engagements at the baptismal pool.  I also prayed.  Constantly. At the time, I subscribed to the Southern Baptist Laws of Christianity and Tolerance.  “If you don’t believe in God, you go to Hell.”  Easy. So to avoid the down under, I prayed the same prayer every night of my life, verbatim.  My brain dictated that any deviation in the prayer would cause my world to fall apart, and I would keep the devil company for eternity.  But when my Sunday school teacher said that we must vary our prayers and not recite something that we don’t mean, I simply reversed the sentences and prayed with conviction!

            “Dear God. Please don’t ever let me or my family get kidnapped, killed, or robbed. Keep us safe from all sin and evil. Please forgive me for my sins. And please let me get a hard-on with my girlfriend without having to think about Steve.”

            Looking back, I’ve exhibited classic symptoms of OCD as well:  keeping everything in certain order, doing tasks a certain way, not readily accepting change.  I’ve always hated cleaning, but my bedroom has always been kept just so.  Everything has a place, albeit sometimes a strange place, but a place nonetheless.  Condoms always in the same drawer as the Bible.  I’m not sure why; it just seems like God intended.  But some things even perplexed my shrink.  After I learned to type in junior high, I began to simulate typing random words that I would hear in my head. The principal could be lecturing me in the hallway. Before I knew it, my arms would be at my side, and I’d be typing in the air with my fingers:   

W-H-A-T  A-N  A-S-S-H-O-L-E! 

            Balance has always been very important to me.  I’ve gone through phases where if I scratch one arm, the other deserves a scratch too.  Smooth the right eyebrow?  My brain would be in a state of fury until the left one was smoothed also.  In gay bars, I’ve gotten more than a few odd looks from men who would playfully pinch one of my nipples, and I would turn and say, “Wait, you have to do the other one too.”

            There are darker compulsions as well.  Since coming out ten years ago, I have discovered that all men, straight or gay, are horny pigs.  The only difference between the two is that straight men don’t have the luxury of sex in the gym.  And never has there been such easy access to compulsive sexual behavior than now in the age of the internet.  It’s easy to mask the fears and doubts of self-worth and the disappointment of rejection when you’re sexually compulsive. Instant validation with the aftershocks of regret and depression.  Sort of like snorting coke with the added benefit of orgasm. But with time and therapy, I found myself surfing the virtual sexual highway with irregularity and confronting the taunting thoughts and fears head-on.  Spontaneity may be gone, but so are the crabs.

            OCD, just like homosexuality, is my DNA. Both needed to be hidden for awhile. Both needed to be eventually accepted. And in the end, both were embraced. And every so often, I’ll meet a kindred spirit. A few years ago, I met a guy at New York’s gay pride parade. He was a tall blonde strapping fellow from Nebraska on his first trip to our fair city.  We talked all afternoon among the revelers and drag queens. We had dinner with my friends, and I walked him back to his hotel. Standing in front of the Gansevoort on a breezy June evening, I was feeling quite randy. Using my substantial sex appeal and with all the romantic intention I could muster, I slowly brushed one side of his blonde hair back behind his ear, a la Streisand and Redford in “The Way We Were.”  He looked at me rather sheepishly.

            “This sounds so weird.  But can you brush the other side back too?”

            I smiled.

            “Absolutely.”

Urinetown

      Six months after moving to New York City, I decided that life wasn’t fucked up enough, so I began dating an alcoholic.  I worked as a temp at a prestigious yet insanely dull midtown law firm.  I lived in an extended stay hotel in Morningside Heights and was awakened each night to the sounds of my next-door neighbor, an Asian transvestite, entertaining her gentlemen callers.  I had met a few acquaintances but spent large chunks of time by myself.  At the time, I was not accustomed to being alone much.  In Alabama I was always surrounded with friends and never did much of anything on my own.  Upon moving, I found that there are worse things than being alone, but occasionally alone wears thin.  And it was wearing thin.  The loneliness was palpable.  I didn’t set out to meet an alcoholic, but he was just too tall and dark and, yes, handsome.  His name was Frank.  And he was very flattering and complimentary.  Two things I love in a man.

            We met in a West Village bar called The Dugout whose clientele generally skewed older and hairier than most.  Frank walked up to me, and he did not fit into this norm.  He was tall with a shaved head, sharp features and brown eyes that were startling in their intensity.  He had a lean muscular frame, and he drank Canadian Club.  Instead of extending his hand first, he did what most gay men do upon meeting other gay men.  He checked out my ass.  I was smitten.  After about an hour of conversation, we left the bar for a little restaurant on Bleecker Street. He ordered the roasted chicken and another Canadian Club and took a deep breath.

            “I’m a recovering alcoholic,” he said.

            “Oh,” I replied and pointed to his newly arrived cocktail.  “Medicinal purposes?”

            “No,” he deadpanned, not really getting my “humor”.  “I went to rehab and dabbled in AA.  I followed the twelve steps but now just do my own thing.  I don’t get drunk anymore but occasionally like a few cocktails.  I know my limits.”

            I never really knew that AA is for “dabbling”, but I didn’t want to judge someone else’s decision.  I figured that as long as he wasn’t hurting animals or small children, then he’s datable.  Christ, my shrink was going to have a field day with this one.

            The relationship started smoothly.  For once, I was all for taking it slow.  Coming from a dysfunctional family with little emotional communication skills, I am now a dysfunctional adult with little emotional communication skills.  So slow is good.  I’ve learned through therapy that I tend to seek out men with some sort of problem that I can try to fix.  Sort of like a home improvement project for the emotionally retarded.  It gives me a sense of purpose and feeling of control.  I knew that this was the case with Frank from AA, so I entered with both eyes open and proceeded slowly with caution. 

Our dates were fun though.  He was a great conversationalist, and we had many things in common.  We both loved the theatre and movies and art.  We had the same taste in literature and politics.  And he looked fine in a pair of leather pants. He took me to see “The Glass Menagerie” on Broadway with Jessica Lange, and I didn’t even flinch when he put his arm around me halfway through the second act.  Coming from Alabama, I have a hard time with even the slightest display of affection from members of the same sex.  In New York, it’s sweet.  In Alabama, it can segue to getting your throat cut.

About three weeks after we met, he invited me to a piano bar where a friend of his sang.  He showed up, visibly intoxicated.  He drank two Canadian Clubs for every one beer of mine.  He carried himself remarkably well considering he was drinking his weight in whiskey.  We decided to call it a night early and headed back to my place.  By this time, I was living in a friend’s vacant studio in Murray Hill where there were no unwanted sounds from an obviously hard-working Asian transvestite. 

After three unsuccessful attempts at sex, he passed out and I fell asleep.  At about four in the morning, I heard him get up and stumble across the room.  Apparently, he was sleepwalking and thought he was in the bathroom.  I opened my eyes and focused just as he began to urinate in the corner.  I ran across the room and looked down in horror.  He was relieving himself on my favorite pair of shoes.  My denim sandals from Kenneth Cole with wooden soles.  They were being used as a urinal.  I lost it.

            “You idiot,” I shouted.  “What in the hell are you doing?  You can piss on anything in this apartment, but don’t piss on my shoes!”

            That was a mistake.  He turned toward me.  Seconds before he woke up and realized what he was doing, he peed on my legs.  He stood there, his dick hanging out, in utter humiliation.  I stood there with his urine dripping down my legs and thought of the irony.  Most gay men would consider that foreplay.  I did not.

            “I don’t think this is going to work.  You really need to go,” I told him after he emerged from the real bathroom.

            I’ve never favored normalcy.  But Jesus, will normalcy ever favor me?  As I mopped up urine at four in the morning, I wondered if there were any normal men or if I would ever be attracted to one.  But I knew in my heart what Frank from AA was.  He was a filler.  Just like on the Academy Awards, when an actor steps onstage to accept his Oscar, a filler takes the empty seat until the real thing gets back.  So that’s what I was doing.  I was waiting on my own Academy Award winner and biding time with guys who were merely keeping his seat warm. Even disregarding the alcohol intake and the urinary misfire, I knew that Frank wasn’t my type.  But loneliness and flattery make a potent cocktail. 

Frank from AA called me one more time, but we both knew it was done.  People think New York City is a huge place.  It is a huge place unless you’re talking about running into guys that you dated but wished you hadn’t.  I’ve run into him in bars, on the street, even in my doctor’s waiting room.  Is anywhere sacred?  I saw him just last summer at a Gay Pride event for people into leather.  It’s also open to people like me and my friends who love to go and gawk.  I was not pleased to see Frank walking around with a drink in his hand but pleased despite myself to see him wearing nothing but a pair of leather chaps.  He still looked damn good.  He gave me a nervous wink.  I gave him a forced grin, and we moved on. 

He’s still an alcoholic, and I’m still emotionally retarded.  I sometimes miss him, but nobody pees on my shoes.

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.