Friday, February 13, 2015

My Best Man


Indiana, June 1969

When I was a kid, I knew that a boy who liked a particular girl called her a "girlfriend."  But no one gave a name to a boy who liked a particular boy.  It wasn't "boyfriend" -- I tried that, and got corrected.  Superman called Jimmy Olsen his “boy pal."  On My Three Sons, Robbie Douglas called the boys he liked "buddies."  But I found out the real word in the summer of 1969, just after third grade, when we went to my parents' home town of Garrett, Indiana to watch my Uncle Paul get married.

Uncle Paul was my favorite uncle because he was still a teenager, in high school, and he wanted to be called "Paul," not "Uncle" anything.  When I visited, we did cool things, like going swimming or catching frogs or playing hide-and-seek in the cornfield.  He drove us to movies (my parents didn't know) and to the Blue Moon Drive-In, where he bought us milkshakes and introduced us to all his high school friends.

There was no bathroom in my grandparents' house, so you had to use the outhouse or pee into the wind.  Paul taught us how, giving me my first glimpse of an adult penis.

 But in the summer of 1969 (the same summer I saw the Naked Man in the Peat Bog), Paul was a grownup, and like all grownup men he had to go to work in the factory and get married.  He was marrying a petite girl with small hands and freckles, who said we should call her Lana, not "Aunt" anything.

At the wedding, five men and boys lined up on the little stage next to Uncle Paul, and five women and girls lined up next to Lana. My Cousin Buster, only one year older than me, got to stand up there, but not me; I had to sit in the wooden pew next to my parents and little brother and baby sister.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mom said, noting my disappointment. “Someday when you get married, you can have anybody you want standing next to you.”

“Bill?”

“Sure. He can even be your best man.”

I beamed. When Mom said boys don’t get married, she meant they didn’t have wives, they had best men! So when I grew up, I would stand on that little stage with my best man, Bill or someone like him, and we would get married while all of our friends and relatives clapped.  Then we would go on a honeymoon trip to Hawaii to look at muscular surfers, and afterwards we would move into a house together.

Nearly a years passed before I discovered that "best man" meant something else altogether.  But I still used it as code, calling the boy I liked my "best man" through high school.

Meanwhile, my parents kept snapping those pix.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

The Marvelous Dollhouse

Racine, Fall 1967

Fall 1967, second grade at Hansche School in Racine, Wisconsin.  A girl -- I think she was Pam, who officiated at my wedding to Doug last year -- asked me to come over to her house after school to play.

Boys and girls didn't usually play together.  The teachers at school didn't even like us talking to each other.  We were herded through separate doors in the morning and to separate tables in the cafeteria, and at recess the boys had to play dodge ball far off in the grass, while the girls jumped rope and played singsong games in the shadow of the school. I liked to jump rope, but the teachers often shooed me away. Once when I was just sitting on the steps nearby to avoid the glare of the recess sun, a teacher screamed wildly at me to move away, as if deadly danger lurked there, against the cool bricks.

But Pam had a legendary dollhouse, so I agreed.

It was enormous, the biggest I had ever seen.  It opened up to reveal three floors, all with precisely detailed furniture. You could see plates on the dining room table, and tiny folios of sheet music on the piano


.  We spent hours exploring, hosting a music recital in the ballroom, cooking a rich kid's supper and serving it to 100 guests in the gold-draped dining room.  Then, because it was almost supper time for real, Dad arrived to pick me up.

During the five-block drive home, Dad kept turning and grinning at me. “Pam, Pam, Pam,” he repeated, as if trying to memorize the name for future reference. “Is she cute?”

I didn't understand the question.  Girls could be mean or nice, smart or dumb, brave or scaredy-cat, but how could they be cute? Only boys were cute. Maybe he was talking about her outfit? “It was ok, I guess.”

He laughed. “You guess. . .I’ll bet you guess!” He reached over to squash me on the shoulder as if I had won some prize. “Did you ask Pam to come and play with you tomorrow?”

“No.”

 “Well, why not? You have to be quick. If you’re not careful, some other boy will horn in, and then where will you be?”

At home, Mom asked the same questions --  is Pam cute? Did you ask her to come and play with you? Well, why not? And my brother Kenny, a roly-poly kindergartner, burst into singsong: "Pam and Boomer-y sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!”

“Knock it off!” I exclaimed. “We weren’t kissing!”

Giggling uproariously, Kenny lay on the floor and kicked his feet in the air and continued: “First comes love, then comes mar-riage. . . .”

“Knock it off, or I’ll pound you!” I yelled. “I’m not marrying Pam!”

Kenny leapt to his feet and ran from the room. He called back: “When are you gonna kiss your girl-friend?”

“I don’t like Pam!” I yelled. “I don’t like girls!”

Mom laughed. “Then why did you go to a girl’s house, Mr. Smarty-Pants?”

But now, finally, I understood. When a boy went to a girl’s house, it always meant that they liked each other. And not just a shy, casual liking – everyone thought that they wanted to get married!

That must be why Dad had only men friends. If he made friends with a lady, Mom would think “He wants to get married to her instead of me!”

That must be why the teachers kept boys and girls from playing together.  They were too young to get married!

After that I carefully avoided playing with girls, however fun their jump ropes, jacks, and dollhouses seemed. I didn’t want anyone thinking I liked girls, not boys.

It didn't work.  To this day, my parents insist that, whatever happened later on, in second grade I was heterosexual -- after all, I had a girlfriend!

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Marrying the Boy Next Door

Racine, Fall 1967

Long before I met Bill, before my first date, when we were still living in Racine, Wisconsin, I married the boy next door.

This isn't him; he would have about my age, six or seven years old, in first grade.

His name was Doug.  I remember a crew cut, a bare smooth chest, and a broad smile.

We must have sat at pale wood desks at Hansche Elementary School, we must have played army men and cartoon kits, we must run in swimsuits to the beach -- but I  remember only three incidents.




1. We have spread a blanket over the kitchen table to make a fort, and safely sequestered, we are watching My Three Sons. I think it was the episode where Robbie Douglas (Don Grady, left) falls in love with a bullfighter, so February 16, 1967.

Suddenly I say, softly,  "Someday I'm going to marry Robbie Douglas."

Doug giggles.  "You can't marry Robbie Douglas!"

"I know that!  He's not real.  I mean I'm going to marry a boy that's cute and nice, like him."

"I'm cute and nice," Doug protests.  "And I got more muscles!" For proof, he flexes his arm.  I cup his small, hard bicep in my hand.  "You should marry me!"

"You have lots of muscles," I agree.  "I want to marry you."

2. Probably the next day, after school.  Mom is frying baloney for supper.  The round fake-wood table with the seam in the middle is set with plastic plates and glasses, and paper towels for napkins. There is a bottle of ketchup, a jar of Miracle Whip, and a jar of “dull pickles.”

We walk up to her hand in hand, and I say "Guess what?  Doug and me are getting married."
She doesn't respond.  With her back turned, I can't tell if she is happy or sad or mad.
“Did you hear me, Mom?”

Mom stiffens abruptly, and says in a strangely harsh tone, "Boys can't get married."
"I know that!  We got to wait until we're big."
"Like Robbie Douglas's Dad and Uncle Charlie," Doug adds.
On My Three Sons? They’re not married.” Mom is still distracted, still not looking. "You can only get married if you fall in love.”

“Well – me and Doug fell in love, so we can get married, ok?”
“Boys only fall in love with girls,” she said. “Now go wake up your Dad for supper.”

3. Not dissuaded, we decide to get married anyway.  We march down to the deserted February beach with three of our friends.  A big, grown-up third grader named Pam officiates.  She says "I now pronounce you man and husband," instead of "man and wife."   Someone throws rice on us, and we have a brief but exciting kiss.

 I don't remember anything about Doug after that.  Maybe he moved away.

My mother claims that she doesn't remember my marriage in the spring of 1967.  It was a trivial incident to her, childish nonsense.

Or maybe something more. She tried to hide it, but she was really upset.  Maybe the incident brought her first suspicions that boys could indeed fall in love.

Spring 1965: The Book of Cute Boys

Indiana, Spring 1965

I love books.  Who cares about Kindles and Scribds and .pdfs?  I love browsing through used bookstores, driving home from the mall with a Barnes and Noble bag beside me, checking my recommendations on Amazon.

And reading every night before turning out the light.

Whenever I'm depressed, I rearrange my books.




I have a lot of them.  I've been buying at least 2 per week since I moved out of my parents' house in 1985.  That adds up to over 3,000, but actually I have only about 1,000.  Every time I move, I pare down my collection to 30 boxes.

Where did this bibliomania start?  Maybe with my parents, who disapproved of books.  They were at best a waste of time, and more likely sinful.  The only way I could get away with reading was to claim that it was a school assignment (evidently my teachers assigned a lot of science fiction and fantasy novels).

Or maybe it's all due to a traumatic incident that happened when I was about four years old, when we were still living on Randolph Street in Garrett,  Indiana.

 I had a Little Golden Book  I couldn't read most of the words yet, but the front cover showed two boys hugging and waving.  So I called it my Book of Cute Boys.

I think it was this adaptation of the Disney movie The Swiss Family Robinson, about a family shipwrecked on a desert island.  The publication date is right.

One day in the spring of 1965,  we were driving somewhere on a scary country road, and I was reading in the back seat (this was before car seats, or even seatbelts).  Dad yelled back, "Don't read in the car!"


But the book was too beautiful to look away.  Look at this man hugging a muscular blond boy.  He's wearing girls' shoes. They have v's of skin visible where their shirts are unbuttoned to their chests.

I said something like "I wanna see the cute boys."

"Dammit, Skeezix, do you want to get sick?"

I kept reading...







Look at blond boy now: he's much bigger and taller. The elephant is trying to unbutton his shirt, while the boy in purple pants looks on, his hand jauntily on his hip.

Dad always got mad easily while driving.  He may have warned me a few more times.  Then, sucking his lower lip  in his look of pure fury, he reached back, grabbed The Book of Cute Boys from my hands, and threw it out the car window.

It was lost forever!

There's a lot of gay symbolism in that distant memory:

Was Dad worried that I would get motion sickness from reading in the car, or that I would get sick from looking at cute boys?



When he threw away the book, was he trying to expel my same-sex desire in a sort of exorcism?

From that day on, my same-sex desire would be denied, suppressed, challenged, explained as something else, criticized, excoriated, qualified, discussed, or tolerated.

It would never again be allowed to just exist.

I've spent my life buying that book over and over again, but nothing will bring that innocence back.

L

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