SHAVINGS FROM MY HEAD

Long before Jasper visited Palm Springs or ever even entertained attending the White Party, his love for Easter began with the enormous baskets the “Easter Bunny” would leave at the bottom of the stairs every Easter morning.

Until the age of eight, each year, his mother would give him a bath, rub him dry with a big terrycloth towel, then help him into his Doctor Dentons’—before tucking him into bed with a story of how the Easter Bunny would make the treats, arrange them in a basket then deliver them to every little boy and girl.

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The massive Convention Center seemed as if he were experiencing one of those rare-worldly occasions; a festive lunar eclipse appeared before Jasper as he entered the great hall. It was both dark and light, day and night, all at once.

There was anything you could envision featured in white. Some expected: like jockey shorts and sneakers. Others not as much: like massive wings made of feathers.

The thump and thud of the music seemed, as he stood perfectly still in awe, as if each musical thud of base propelled him inch-by-inch in the direction of the enormous dance floor of harmonious, exuberant gay men—all gyrating like snakes following the spell of some massive flute.

************************************

After spotting the basket at the base of the staircase, Jasper padded down the seventeen planks—the rubber dots on the feet of his Doctor Dentons’ securing each step of the decent. Along with the giraffes and elephants on his pajamas, he sat on the bottom step to join the duck and the purple bunny caged behind the wall of cellophane.

Hungry for the sugary taste of a few pre-breakfast jellybeans, he began to pull at the flocked blue chick coiled to the handle of the basket—causing the cellophane to crinkle sounds of disruption.

“Jaaaasper! Not yet!”, his mother yelled from the kitchen. “I want to take a picture first!”

He stared down at Pop-Pop the chocolate bunny, with considerations of hacking into that instead—as the box would be quieter. But the bunny’s sugary eyes looked away as if to say, don’t even think about it!

Several moments later, he found himself standing on the back stoop of the house, his hand placed atop the basket like his mother had instructed.

“Now smile” she coached, and he began to think about the lady named Carol— the one from the television, from the Price Is Right; the one who turned the doors with the numbers and displayed the new cars. He wanted to be just like her.

He wanted to grow up and be a Game Show model.

As he waited for his mother to take another picture, he glanced down at Pop-Pop and thought about how much he was going to love biting the ears off the hollow chocolate rabbit then pulling off the eyes and hearing their sugary crunch inside his own head. He thought about pulling the plastic colored grass from the basket and wearing it on top of his head like the comb-in nest of his curls his mother wore for parties. He thought about rubbing the soft plush chick and duck against his face; just like Carol from the Price Is Right did—each time she wrapped a mink stole around herself before taking it off and giving it to some lucky winner who had guessed the right amount. And he thought about eating all the candy until it made his teeth hurt.

But, as Jasper posed for another picture, like the clear cellophane that surrounded the Easter basket, like the fluffy duck and the purple bunny, he too felt bound, suffocated. They were all on display; but without movement or personality.

********************************

From across the dance floor emerged a tall, black boy, modeling cutoff white jeans and a pair of rabbit ears affixed to a headband that cut into his cropped afro. Behind him trailed three additional African American man-boy-bunnies in the same outfit.

Every so often, as they made their way across the dance floor, they would stop and pose, then sweep their arms across the floor as if to say, see my shoes, my legs, my body, my ears…you could win this!

Hardly anyone noticed, except Jasper. They were, to him, The Supremes reincarnated then mistakenly miscast in a commercial for muscle-enhancing powder. They were dark chocolate-covered-delight amid a box of white, chocolate. In spades, they were Carol from The Price Is Right.

He must have been staring, causing them all to stop, then pose in front of him.

“Nice basket!” said the Diana Ross lead-Carol.

Jasper smiled, and then asked, “How do you do that?”

“What?” replied Miss Ross-Carol.

“That?’ said Jasper, motioning to their modelish poses. “You all look like you’re from a game show!”

“Honey, we got game and we were made to show it! We’re from the House of Peeps!”

“Well, can you show me how you make your leg go away from your body like that?” asked Jasper.

“Here gurrrl. Hold my basket!” Miss Ross-Carol said, thrusting the white basket filled with sugary Peeps into Jasper’s hand.

With that, Miss Ross-Carol began to pull and twist Jasper’s body into an s-like configuration.

“There!” he said, stepping away to admire his handiwork, before removing his cell phone from the basket and lifting it for a photo.

“Now smile! And let your game show gurrrrl!”

After snapping a photo, Miss Ross-Carol turned the phone to show Jasper the snap. The person he’d always seen in his imagination smiled back at him. Like the chocolate bunny of his boyhood, his hollow insides were gone; he’d gained his game show girl. From that moment on, the reality of Jasper’s life became a game, white became a color, and his Easter basket never again felt empty….

Dr. Denton or Dr. Denton’s is a (historically) well-known American brand of blanket sleepers, formerly manufactured by the Dr. Denton Sleeping Garment Mills of Centreville, Michigan. The company was founded in 1865, originally as the Michigan Central Woolen Company, and from the late 19th Century through the first half of the 20th Century was probably the single best-known manufacturer of blanket sleepers in the United States. The brand was so well-known that Dr. Dentons became (and remains today) a genericized trademark. The trademark has since changed hands several times, but has remained in sporadic use by various corporate entities into recent years.

The name Dr. Denton derives from Whitley Denton, an employee of the company who created the original design on which its product line was based. The appellation of “Doctor” was a marketing gimmick, intended to give the impression that the garments were designed (and implicitly endorsed) by a medical doctor.

“Now come on you two”, coaxed Wade’s mother. “Move in closer! And smile!” she choreographed from across the lawn.

Her directive made the boys uneasy.

Throughout the years, to conceal their mutual desire, they’d carefully concocted a studied manner; a style for appearing disconnected in public—especially around their parents. With high school graduation only a month away, they were more determined than ever to hide their covert affection. No one could discover the affair. Or their plan: to escape to Manhattan once summer arrived and diplomas had been dispensed.

“If she only knew,” Wade quipped like a ventriloquist, through his forced smile. “And take your hand off your hip! You look like you’re posing for Seventeen magazine.”

“Fuck you!” AJ sputtered back through clinched teeth.

“You wish!” Wade countered.

“What was that boys?” Wade’s mother queried from behind her instamatic camera.

“Nothing mother” said Wade, while pinching his elbow to keep from laughing out loud.

**************************************

Since the age of eleven, in public Wade and AJ were seen as best friends.

In private they were lovers.

Introduced through their mothers’ at the start of the summer between sixth and seventh grade, the boys first met while having tea.

“I had a feeling you two might like each other”, announced Wade’s mother while selecting finger sandwiches and a napoleon from the teacart.

The women had met several months earlier after AJ’s family had been accepted at the club, and after his mother Louise was invited onto the women’s tennis team; once, of course, they’d passed all the requirements—or restrictions, depending on how you saw it—for admittance to the Stony Ridge Country Club.

Subsequently, Gloria Pastor and Louise Holden became doubles through the women’s tennis team at the club, before building on their budding friendship—eventually folding their adolescent sons to the mix. Between sets one day, they made a plan to meet for lunch at The Bird Cage restaurant inside the Lord and Taylor department store downtown.

“Oh Gloria! You must try it!” gushed Louise. “I hardly ever go into Washington anymore! But honestly, the dress department at Lord and Taylor…it’s perfection! Besides…it’s become a sort of ritual with Wade and me. He just loves to have tea and help me shop! And he has such an wonderful eye for finding what looks good on me!” she boasted, accentuating her waifish figure with a wave of her tennis racket.

****************************************

“Tell the waitress what you’d like from the cart,” instructed Wade’s mother, stubbing out her complimentary cigarette before turning to AJ.

“Go ahead dear!  Select whatever you’d like. Wade just loves the egg salad sandwiches here! He says they taste better with the crusts cut off the bread” she bragged, before turning to Wade.

“Honestly Wade!” she mock-scolded, “I don’t know how you got to be so particular!”

Wade smiled back, bits of cucumber sandwich glued to the roof of his mouth.

“AJ eyed Wade’s plate to decipher the appropriate amount of finger sandwiches and pastries. His assessment became both comforting and unsettling. While he’d coveted all the same things Wade had already chosen—which brought a certain calm—as he raised his gaze from Wade’s plate, their eyes locked from across the connected tray tables and something odd began to happen: a confusing feeling that stole his appetite; a sort of excited queasiness he’d not felt before.

“I…I…I’ll have the same” AJ sputtered, pointing to Wade’s dish.

The colored waitress gave the boys a knowing look, then smiled, before lowering the delicate plate of sandwiches and pastries onto the daisy printed placemat before AJ.

“There! These should sweeten your day together boys. You’ve both made wonderful choices!”

When AJ’s eyes followed the warm voice—scaling her gray uniform; past the white apron, over the little pocket with the folded lace hanky, and beyond the name, embroidered in black script that read Rita—he eventually landed at her eyes: coffee-colored coins that seemed to envelop his odd, unexplainable feelings, as if coating them, in warm, lovely chocolate—like an éclair. Her smile expanded, further accentuating the warm feeling—as if to say, I understand, don’t be frightened.

While Gloria Pastor and Louise Holden gossiped about tennis and a rumored affair between two married members from club, the boys ate in silence; simultaneously devouring the identical items off their plates while drinking in their undeclared magnetism. Between delicate bites, the boys smiled at each other from across the tray-tables. It was a new smile: a smile that on the surface, bore perfect white conformity, while from behind, just beside the tongue, a vivid hunger had ignited their taste buds.

Along with that first unexplained encounter, there was only one person who understood their love, and that was Rita. Because she too was confined to a world of conformity, a world of white bread—where the brown crusts were removed for a more appealing presentation, for better digestion.

*******************************************

Everything and everyone in their suburban neighborhood was white.

White was right.

It was the element everyone held desirable. Straight, white smiles from behind white picket fences. White patio furniture sprinkled around kidney-shaped pools, bordered by bleached flagstone patios, surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns, that lined identical streets, engulfed by precisely planned communities that served sandwiches on white bread.

“Color(ed)” was bad.

Except when it came time to clean their pools and patios and yards and streets. And especially when it came time to cart away their trash or make the sandwiches—removing the brown crusts—while cooking in their big, white kitchens and ironing their white shirts to wear to their white-collar jobs.

In 1968, boys who liked pink was akin to whites that liked black.

Knowing this, Wade and AJ hid their pink beneath their white. But in secret, like their pink, they loved black; it brought them comfort. They loved Rita the waitress who pushed the teacart at Lord and Taylor, and they loved the maids that cleaned their houses and made their favorite cookies. They especially loved the mostly-black neighborhood downtown, where the closest gay bar stood—a raggedy establishment that smelled of stale beer and musty men.

On Saturday nights when escape was possible, as they drove the old Dodge Swinger through the dilapidated Washington neighborhood—to dance and drink and kiss freely among their people, the capital’s majestic dome illuminated against the sky, they would pass the elderly black men who sat on the stoops of their row houses and smoked. They would occasionally wave to the hookers—clad in sausage skin-tight tube dresses—who flirted with the slow moving cars and played with their synthetic wigs. They felt akin with the gangs of teens who danced in the street and drank from paper bags. Because like the residents of that neighborhood, neither Wade nor AJ knew what their pink-colored future might hold. Would they get through college once each set of parents discovered their love? Would someone hire them if they knew of their secret, their gayness, their pink? Or would their future need to exist as a bigger world of white? And, although they felt disdain for their colorless cage, they too felt comforted by their option, their disguise of white; it held a certain hue of freedom. Both boys understood that, unlike the streets of black, their color, their pink, could pass for white.

************************************************

“So I guess you must be the butch one!” slurred the drunken Tom Jones lookalike. “Trying to be all James Dean…all, all, tough in your teeeee-shirt! Huh?”

“And you!” he continued, turning away from Ward toward AJ. “You must be the bitch-boy… all clad in your oxford cloth!”

The startling proclamation came with a woozy arm gesture accentuated by the sloshing and clinking of ice cubes against a glass.

After only a few minutes at The Stonewall Bar the boys were stunned by the assessment, the narrow-mindedness of the decree. How could someone find fault with their white while safely swathed in a world of pink? How could another gay man so effortlessly box them up into a sexual preference, a category…. a shirt?

Not the cocktail party they’d expected, the boys left the bar and made their way back home—through the beatnik vibe of New York’s Greenwich Village; the humid summer air permeating through their shirts like an arduous coat of oppression.

As they strolled home in silence, Wade thought of the photo he’d taped to the refrigerator—the one his mother had taken on the lawn a few weeks earlier; of them wearing the same shirts.

When they turned off Christopher street and made their way west toward Washington Square Park, toward their cozy studio apartment on McDougal Street, toward home, he wondered: Would they ever really feel free? Would it always about the white—only more labeled, further dividing them by their shirts, their preferences further scrutinized instead of protected?

“Well, I happen to think you’re sexier than James Dean” AJ boasted, breaking their silence.

“Well,..I…I think you…look like a Seventeen magazine covergirl!” Wade countered, grabbing AJ’s hand and kissing him on the cheek.

“Fuck you!”

“When we get home”

**********************************

“What can I get for you gentlemen?” queried the waitress, her arm fanning the teacart of finger sandwiches and pastries.

The question, although they’d heard it for years, seemed different this time. Their hunger had been altered; their taste buds enriched by experience. Their choices had conviction—even the simplest ones.

For their anniversary (the first day they’d met) the boys returned to Lord and Taylor, to The Bird Cage—only this time on New York’s Fifth Avenue, a bigger, seemingly freerer city; a refined tea of emancipation and finger sandwiches.

Seated at the signature tray tables, each chose a multitude of pastries and sandwiches; their tea plates piled into an elaborate confectionary mound.

Once the waitress disappeared, the boys began devouring their sandwiches.

“You know”, said Wade, in between bites. “This egg salad taste different. It tastes weird now. Like it’s missing something without the crusts.”

AJ nodded in agreement, before biting into his éclair.

While savoring that first bite, he began to beam—causing a smile to emerge.

“You’ve got chocolate on your teeth” said Wade.

“Really? Good!”

His smile broadened as he thought of Rita.

As he licked the chocolate frosting from his teeth, he thought about how much he loved Wade. Then he thought about the man from the bar, looked across the table and into Wade’s eyes and smiled again. He finally understood: everyone has their just desserts, only some taste better than others.

* Lord & Taylor’s Bird Cage restaurant and tearoom was opened in the late 1930s. It continued on the fifth floor of the Fifth Avenue New York City store until the 1980s when it was updated and renamed Café American Style. Until the mid-1970s the Bird Cage was outfitted with armchairs with trays connected to them. In the early years each tray was supplied with a complimentary cigarette. Diners selected sandwiches, salads, and desserts from rolling carts modeled on Italian racing cars. As Lord & Taylor branches were opened after World War II in locations such as Westchester NY, Millburn NJ, Hartford CT, and Washington DC, they too were furnished with their own Bird Cages.

During the summer of 1951, shortly after Doris moved to the sleepy beach town of Mar Vista…she met Agnes. Their speak began with a spike in a spoke. A bent bicycle spoke to be exact.

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“Agnes, get out and get some fresh air” her grandmother nagged, grabbing the book from between Agnes’s fingers before shoving it into the pocket of her housedress.

“It’s a beautiful day out! And here, you, are!…buried in that book, again! It’s like Sleepy Hallow in here!”

Agnes stared at her vacant hand where the confiscated book once sat, then back at Nanna. The prospect of outdoor recreation versus vanishing further into the pages of The Secret Garden, brought nothing but disdainful thoughts. The bothered expression on her face reflected back at Agnes from the toe of her patent leather shoe—dangling listlessly from the edge of the daybed. She fanned the glossy mary jane, causing her features to expand then diminish—each distortion framed by the hedge of white lace that sprouted from her ankle sock.

Defeated, she exited the family room and then the bungalow—with a kick at the screen door—before mounting her bike to escape.

“Doris Hollingsworth! Don’t you go riding off before those boxes are unpacked!” her mother barked, the shrill proclamation fading into the depths of the house as Doris coasted away on her bike.

The daughter of a longshoreman, Doris, along with her mother and 2 older brothers, was required, without protest, to relocate from the eastern shore of Maryland to southern California, to Mar Vista.

Until that sun-drenched afternoon she met Agnes; everything about the move, about her life, had left Doris feeling broken.

*****************************************

Frustrated, Agnes tugged at the bent bicycle spoke, while the harsh California sun burned at the back of her legs and neck. Then, as if someone had thrown her in closet, the glaring rays abruptly vanished. The shadowy respite was followed by a gravelly voice that sounded like the sailors who lived in the neighborhood—the men who smoked cigarettes and repaired cars all day in their driveways’.

“Looks like you need some help with that?” declared the voice.

When Agnes turned, the shadow moved, causing the sun to knock a glare into her eyes. All she could make out was a head of curls haloed by the sun, and a bellybutton that pushed outward and into her face.

Dusty and annoyed, Agnes gave in to the stranger with the gravelly voice.

“Sure. Um..that would be great” she replied to the bellybutton. “Thanks.”

“I’m Doris,” said the gravelly voice, before knocking the kickstand into place and stepping off her bike.

“Hi I’m Agnes,” she replied, standing and turning to meet Doris face-to-face.

Doris bent down and took several tugs at the bike wheel.

“Gimme your shoe” Doris said.

Agnes removed her mary jane and handed it to Doris.

Doris took a few whacks at the bike before locking the spoke back into place then securing it with the piece of chewing gum she extracted from her mouth.

Her job done, Doris returned the shoe, then stood up then gave Agnes the once-over, tip-to-toe like a prison yard searchlight, before mounting her bike again.

“How can you ride your bike in those shoes?” Doris asked, coasting around Agnes in circles like a wagon train.

“I’m only wearing them so I can ruin them” Agnes replied, matter-of-factly while refastening the ankle strap. “My mother makes me wear them, and I hate them! Every time I wear a skirt, they reflect my underwear and, and…then all the boys bother me for the entire day!”

“Really? They try to see your underwear? That’s retarded.”

“Well..what do you expect from boys?” Agnes answered, admiring her reflection from the toe of her right shoe.

“True” said Doris, shrugging her shoulders in agreement.

“But this is how I make it stop. This is how I make them go away. Watch!” Agnes announced, before taking off down Marblehead Road on her newly-restored bicycle. Once her bike had gained speed, Agnes raised her shoes off the pedals, and then lowered the tips of her mary janes’ to the concrete pavement—causing them to drag along behind her as her bike sped down Marblehead Road. Even though Nanna would be mad, it always made Agnes laugh out loud; she knew she would be free of boys.

Doris trailed behind, thrilled by Agnes’ outlandish act. When the two girls reached the intersection of Delanty and Marblehead, they both stopped to survey the results. The once shiny mary janes’ were now dull and marked—their reflections creating a mangled Picasso-like result.

“Wanna ride to the park?” asked Agnes, still giggling at the sight of her shoes.

“Sure” said Doris, excited to have a new friend.

“Thanks for fixing my bike.”

“Sure.”

“I’ve never seen you before. Do you live here?” asked Agnes, while simultaneously peddling and readjusting the elastic on her tube-top.

“My family just moved here a few days ago from the east coast…from Maryland. We had to move for my Dad’s job.”

“Oh.”

The girls rode for a while in silence, the brush of the palm trees rustling above them like dancing angels in taffeta petticoats, the Santa Ana winds mangling their curls into untidy nests.

“Do you like boys?” Doris asked, breaking the silence, as they rode by the Laundromat on Woodhurst Avenue.

“Naw’ “said Agnes. Boys are stupid. All they want to do is fight. Or steal the dessert off my lunch tray. Or..or, kiss me…or try and look up my dress.”

“Yeah…I know what you mean”, said Doris. “Life would be so much easier if there were no boys!”

Agnes nodded, pushing the hair off her face as she looked over at her new friend Doris.

Eventually the girls stopped near an empty corner of the park.

“I wonder what the big deal is?” Doris asked.

“Beats me”

“Wanna try? Wanna see what a kiss is like?”

Agnes looked around. There was no one else around the vacant lot; the only sign of life, of movement, was the sway of the oleander bushes being pushed about by the breeze. It was just the two of them and their bikes.

“Sure”

And the last thing Anges remembered before closing her eyes, before feeling the cushiony pads of Doris mouth brush into hers, was the birthmark on Doris’s forehead.

**********************************

Amid the rough-n-tumble mob of lesbian bikers—all clad in combat boots and leather jackets—the pair of patent leather boots stood out like a puddle of oil that had been spilled onto velvet. Doris followed their shiny tips, scaling up the denim legs and past the sweatshirt before landing at the helmeted face.

They could only belong to one person, she thought. They could only belong to Agnes.

“Agnes?….Agnes Griggs? Is that you?” Doris asked, abandoning her Harley and walking toward the patent leather boots.

“Do I know?” asked the helmet.

“It’s me!” said the gravely voice, from underneath the approaching helmet.

That voice could only belong to one person, she thought. It could only belong to Doris.

“It’s Doris! Doris Hollingsworth from Mar Vista!” said the voice, while removing her helmet.

And then she saw the birthmark.

“Oh. My. God! I don’t believe it!” And before Agnes could say another word, Doris reached in and pressed her mouth against the supple lips of the young girl she’d fallen in love with decades earlier.

The sway of the trees came alive and the gaggle of lesbians around them hollered a series of banshee-like sounds, as if they were being surrounded by tribe of rowdy indians.

“Your breath smells like peanut butter,” said Doris, after puling her mouth away while trying to regain her composure; not believing she’d finally found Agnes. “What have you been eating?”

Pulling a fist from the pocket of her sweatshirt, Agnes opened her hand it to expose a palm of wrapped candies.

“Mary Janes” she said, smiling. “They keep the boys away.”

**************************************

Strap On…..

….dating from the early 1900s, the original Mary Jane shoe—worn primarily by young girls—was a low-heeled, round-toed slipper with a strap across the instep of the foot and typically made of shiny black patent leather. Today, Mary Janes are still popular as formal shoes for young girls, though have also been adapted as informal footwear for adult women.

The most widely accepted theory is that Mary Jane was a character in the Buster Brown comic series, created in 1902. Depending on the story, Mary Jane starred as Buster Brown’s sister or love interest.

Eventually the style of shoe worn by both Buster (boy) and Mary (girl) became known in popular culture as Mary Janes.

Though Mary Janes have proved popular since their introduction, their origins may be largely forgotten, yet the shoe’s influence remains strong.

“Shall we meet at The Wrinkle Room first? Say nineish?”, my friend Robin asks toward the close of our phone conversation.

“Sure. That works. I’ll be on my usual stool”, I volley back before hanging up.

Three days pass before we meet.

Akin to the regularity of our gatherings, the same stools are sat upon; the same drinks ordered from the same bartender, while around the same bar, garnished with the mostly identical cast of elderly, all gay characters.

“The Wrinkle Room”—a nickname bestowed by East L.A.’s hipster set—is a small piano bar wedged amid a cozy stretch of Silverlake’s landmark establishments. If you’re not used to a covert, speakeasy brand of gay, then at first glance, you might miss it. In a class all its own, there’s nothing like it left in Los Angeles.

It is (actually) called The Other Side.

Since discovering The Other Side—fresh from New York City some eighteen years ago—everything has remained unchanged: an accepting haunt for the gay elders and lovers of the cabaret. Like Dorian Grey’s portrait, the music seems to suspend everything in time, holding the bar and its patrons someplace in the seventies. This I find alluring—always bringing me back, like the catchy refrain to a beloved song.

Both Robin and I bloom amid the creases and cabaret songs; we are old souls among the elderly.

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With a very heavy heart, I sadly acknowledge that this year marks thirty years of life with AIDS; an epidemic still festering, still exterminating chunks of the gay community—only, due to drugs, with less palpable effects.

As many years ago, when I was a budding ‘Mo, investigating my community for guidance—the ins’ and outs’ of coming out, of becoming a gay man—instead of grabbing onto the hands of my elders for support, they grabbed onto mine. It started with a beloved boss, next my college roommate, then a coworker, all before exterminating chunks of my neighborhood. One-by-one the men around me began to splotch over like some twisted version of a dalmation, before withering into something resembling a dried apple— eventually disappearing into the folds of a hospital bed forever. At 20 when all things equaled possibility, it also came to equal the possibility of death. Thus I learned very quickly to embrace old, because young was old, and then old was gone.

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As I wander into middle age, there are few places I can turn for a glimpse of what life might be like as an elderly ‘Mo. While my “old” remembers the halcyon days of the eighties’ cabaret bars that peppered the West Village—before the men who wrote those songs were struck silent by the ravages of AIDS—my “young” is still nourished by one place and its patrons: “The WR”.

But as I’m forced to acknowledge thirty years of AIDS—while remembering those I’ve lost—perched on the cusp of two worlds; too old for young and too young for old—one belief permeates about aging: it is an unsure bet; no one can evade its process.

In conjunction with my cusp-midlife status, it appears within my community, age is (generally) viewed with disdain. Old = bad. Young = good. Perhaps with so many lost to AIDS, as a community we’re afraid to abandon the gay-iety of our youth, for we have yet to value the gay-iety of our elders?…as we’ve been left with so few.

*****************************

The “WR” is a relic: (and depending on your view of aging) something to be either cherished like a precious antique, or feared like a fat person approaching one of those delicate little gilded chairs used for fancy dinners and fussy fashion shows. You either face old (and perhaps sing-a-long) or you run from it.

But, if you’re like me: questioning from the cusp, thirsty for examples, and you should happen upon the The Other Side, you may just find the yourself of tomorrow whilst listening to songs from yesterday—sung by a wonderful group, all delighted to teach the words…..

.                  ….. either way, like the Happy Birthday song, it eventually ends the same for all of us: the candles get blown out. But for this year, I’ll keep singing. And while waiting to blow, I’ll keep wishing for an end to AIDS………

I am a gay man.
I’ve grown up amid a generation of gay men that formed our place amongst the ravages of the Aids Epidemic—an epidemic that cast a blanket of fear over our desires.
We were out and loud. And we were mad. Our innocence stolen, our desires thwarted, our actions rife with questions.
Not since my journey—as an adult gay man—began, have I witnessed something so honest in its dialogue and depiction….
…at 50 it took a couple of 15 year old boys to convey the truth.
There is no in your face, no soapbox, it just is.
And it is as perfect….
…..as a kiss on the eyelids.

:

A Penny for your....

As fifty approached, he grew filled with despair…

…For He hadn’t an idea, of what He might wear!

As closets were not, a place for he…

He looked to the world, for how to be.

He sought out his look, and a fit to define…

…He checked in the stores, and He searched on line.

And though freedom came, with his birthday suit…

…. plus a hat, cuz’ his hair, would no longer take root!

Still….

…. He worried he might, no longer appear cute!

All around him each day, his friends would say…

“You look great for your age, come have fun, let’s play!”

Then it smacked him at fifty, He had unsurpassed flair…

….He’d been clad, in the finest of styles out there!

While busy counting pennies, till it got him quite tense…

…He’d forgotten one add, to make fifty sense.

“It’s not the clothes”, He grasped, “or the money one spends!”

”I’ve been dressed all along, in my fabulous friends!”

So this is the part….

….where this story transcends!

Now fifty, He counts alliance, like valuable coins…

….to be held in his hands, with the friends that he joins.

So, this small little token, fifty cents, a half dollar….

….is because of your friendship, that I’ll never feel squalor.

Thank you for making sense of my fifty….

….I feel like a million dollars!

I haven’t written for several weeks! Caught in the up and down and in and out of life—eventually crossing the country from L.A. to New York and back to my favorite place: Fire Island.

Here for another visit, all I have to say is that I love and miss Fire Island as I figured I probably would. It is still that one place in which, although I cannot (and do not) return the same each visit, still this place, its dock and shoreline engulf my emotions as eloquently as ever.

And then, I went to tea.

Admittedly, for all the years I’ve delightfully recalled the odd, varied and fantastical concoction of gay life that assembles at tea, quite simply, it has changed. To put it bluntly—while openly acknowledging my age—instead of being a middleman, I am now one of a small group that make up the elderly demographic of tea-goers. Sadly, FI has lost that ever-inclusive teatime crowd of 20 to 70—fussy decorator to muscle-twink, artist to banker. The elderly (it appears) have had enough and the twinks—perfectly chiseled and outfitted in the same Aberzombie cargo shorts, now form a line that dominates the dick-dock as if a row of dominoes has been flicked by a drunken index finger and knocked into a haphazard, yet nearly identical configuration. This probably discourages the elderly queens, as it (now) does me, while instantly propelling me to the head of the elderly class. And, although it does not influence my daily life—especially because I have been living in across the country forever—it taints this thing that happens to me when I’m here.

It is like homo coming home.

I have always cherished Fire Island, finding a place in myself that is deeper than usual—more emotional. And said feelings have forever fostered imaginings of more peaceful, clandestine encounters with other man of like mind and spiritual connectedness. Thus, tea was a bit of a shock, and all I was able to do—while nursing my cranberry and tonic—was single out men from the crowd; familiar, albeit weathered faces from my past life…..now oldies, searching for goodies.

Tape Off

For Fifty years, he’d measured the events of his life with marked precision—as if standing on a scale, staring down between his feet, aware that one wrong move, and the black stick would flutter, then lunge in the wrong direction: a fat chance this would only add more weight to his distress over purpose.

With a lifetime of calculated focus, he’d been the ruler of his destiny—inching toward success, while only possessing a dim understanding of what that might be.

The mid-century mark, forced him to reconsider his existence, to assess its length. Had the scored achievements of his life led him to the appropriate stage?

A Measured Man has much at stake.

His life’s been marked, with cuts to make.

The tape employed, has determined marks….

….from serious scoring, of life’s remarks.

A Measured Man is good you see.

He stops and gages how to be.

But to what degree….

….should he or shouldn’t he?

Concern himself with life’s decree?

Cuts, sharp and deep, sliced into him.

He thought of Edward.

Art instead of destruction.

….The final shot rolled in his direction.

Life now assumed a black and white viewpoint.

He considered his angle, each hole, each option.

With measured perspective…

…the relationship cues’ had each played themselves out.

Points, both won and lost, had all been taken then tabled.

Ball to ball, with each decisive angle, every calculated shot now complete….

….was life a numbers game?

Shots to be played?

Won or lost?

Eight, he thought…

….game over or the victorious beginning of a new setup?