Introduction: Some crime stories you read they stick with you in a bad way. You keep aching for the victims and you keep wishing the perpetrators got a better justice than they did. Even sometimes when it was the death penalty they eventually got. And much Much too often certain things you cross paths with in your day suddenly remind you of those crimes and you just start feeling that ache all over again. The human brain was probably not made to absorb so much bad stuff as we can now in the twenty-first century.

I suppose a shrink could help me figure it out, but I’ve always had my art to rely on when it gets too much. I am mostly a graphic artist…I paint, I draw, I make photography. But I also write. I daydream a lot, maybe way too much, and every now and then I’m able to hammer my daydreams into something like a story. This is one, and it’s about a crime I cannot get completely out of my head, so I decided to give it my own ending…something I thought better fitting to the crime.

This is pretty much a horror story, and I’m a bit surprised it came out of me the way it does because I am Not into grisly sorts of horror stories. So if those sorts of stories put you off, then don’t bother with this one. I understand completely.

It probably won’t be very difficult at all to figure out which crime it is I’m reworking here, and if that disturbs anyone related to the actual victims of this man I am sorry. Also, if this creeps you out in a way you never expected to be creeped out about Bruce, I am sorry about that too. But I needed my own form of closure. Some crimes really bother me too much. This was one of them. There are others.

The Final Trick

by Bruce Garrett

No bright light announced his arrival, no strange unearthly sounds. Only a slight deepening of shadow in one area of the alleyway, as if the light that settled there was abruptly siphoned off to elsewhere. That, and a soft noise like the opening and closing of a far away door.

From the darkness a figure walked forward. Slight, graceful, with purpose. A teenage boy, though at first glance he might have been mistaken for a young girl. His hair was long and blond. It cascaded around the face of an angel. He stopped. With a pair of darkly alert eyes he scanned his immediate surroundings. He wore only a closely fitting white t-shirt, a pair of very short cutoff blue jeans, white socks, and tennis shoes of a brand popular with local teenage boys. A small backpack was slung over his shoulders. An inexpensive dime store watch was strapped to his left wrist.

His eyes fixed on a few items in the alleyway. A small cluster of metal trash cans huddled nearby. Further away some battered boxes, crates and random litter. He walked over to the crates and for a moment studied the labels on them. Then he carefully turned them over, noting how the wooden pieces joined together. He seemed fascinated. Then he put them down, stepped back, and looked up at the city skyline overhead. 

It was long past midnight on a hot humid big city summer day in 1978. There was no moon. The heat and humidity made the air hazy, ever so delicately blurring the outlines of skyscrapers in the distance. For a moment the youth stood absolutely still, his eyes darting here and there, as though seeing his surroundings for the first time, with eyes that had seen it many times.

He glanced at his watch, nodded, and strode toward the street at the end of the alley.

Soon now…

He emerged to a hushed and darkened street empty of traffic. This was not the busy part of town, at least not at this time of night. Windowless brick and concrete block walls crowded up against both sides of the street where he stood; warehouses silently waiting for the morning shift. Light came from a bus terminal a short distance away. It seemed almost deserted. There was a parked car on the other side of the street which he studied, then with his eyes discarded. Further down was a dimly lit phone booth. He paused, seemed to consider walking toward it, then looked at the watch again. 

He stepped up to the sidewalk on his left, positioned himself next to the curb, and began watching the darkness further down the street.

The minutes passed. A car drove past. Then another. A battered pickup truck pulled up briefly near the bus stop, took on a passenger, and drove away. For a while it was quiet again. Then a sleek white sports car appeared out of the darkness, low to the ground, rumbling from its powerful engine and illegal tailpipes. The youth studied it briefly, looked away, and stepped back from the curb. 

Not you…

But the car pulled up to the sidewalk where he stood, and a window rolled down. Inside was a man of perhaps 50, hair neatly combed, dressed casually, looking intently at the youth. The faint scent of very expensive men’s cologne and money came from inside the car.

This must be my lucky night…can’t be more than fourteen…

“Hey kid,” said the man, “Need a ride somewhere?”

The boy came forward, bent down to the passenger side window.

Good god he’s beautiful…nice legs…

The boy gave the man a radiant smile. Something about his eyes was wrong. There were depths of darkness in them, and they appeared much older than the face. When he began to speak, it was in a voice that sounded decades older than it should have.

“Mr. Baylor, don’t you think it’s about time you told your wife Ellen that you’re homosexual? Chasing after runaway teenage boys at the south side bus stop is no way for an airline executive to spend his life. Get yourself out of that damn closet. Be proud. Find a good man.”

The car squealed rubber leaving the scene. The boy watched it go, then resumed watching the other direction.

Soon another car appeared in the darkness. A large Detroit sedan, painted a dark blue, drove up to the curb.

Ah…yes…

The passenger side window rolled down. Behind the wheel was a middle aged man of perhaps forty. His face was round and his eyes small. A weak chin poked tentatively out, but there was almost no jaw line to speak of. Sweat glistened slightly over a pronounced five o-clock shadow. His stomach rested against the bottom of the steering wheel. He was wearing an evening suit with no tie, and the shirt collar open. He looked at the boy with a hunger just barely concealed by the friendly smile he wore. 

“Hey kid…looking for a ride somewhere”?

“No sir. My uncle’s going to pick me up in a few…” He spoke with the voice of a teenage boy of fourteen or thereabouts. The accent was local. The man figured him for a Roger’s Park kid. His interest grew.

“This isn’t a very safe part of town kid. Guy your age shouldn’t be out alone here at night. I can take you somewhere.”

“Thanks mister but I’m okay.” The boy shrugged and looked sadly around. “If there’s anything I need it’s a job somewhere else. Dad sent me here to go work for my uncle this summer. He’ll be here soon.”

“What’s your uncle do?”

The teenager shrugged again. “Boring stuff mostly.”

The man’s expression changed. Now it was a look of fatherly concern. “Well what would you like to do kid?”

“I’m pretty good at woodworking if I have the right tools. I’ve been helping mom and dad remodel the house. It’s actually kinda fun.”

The man smiled. “Well you’re in luck kid. I do contracting work of all kinds. If you have some time I’ll take you to my place and show you some of what I have going on. Maybe I can sign you up. I’ve got a big job starting tomorrow and I need some extra hands. It won’t take long.”

The boy looked away. “I don’t know…my uncle will be expecting me to be here…”

“I pay five dollars an hour to start.”

“Wow!” The youth glanced at his wristwatch. “Well, but I’d better be back here in an hour”.

“No problem. Get in. This could be your lucky day.”

The boy grinned happily. He took off his backpack, opened the passenger door and sat down with it between his feet. Then he reached out and closed the door. The car drove off. 

“What’s your name kid?”

“Seth.”

“Mine’s John. Where are you from?”

“Oh…here originally. Mom and Dad moved to Iowa when dad got a better job. But it’s boring. I like coming back to visit here, even if I have to go work for uncle Max. I still have some friends here. We hang out.” 

“I hear that about Iowa. I lived there myself for a while.” The man shook his head ruefully. “I’ll never go back.” 

He glanced again at the youth who gave him a radiant smile. My God this one’s a beauty. The man drew his breath, turned his eyes back to the road. Eventually he said “You got a nice smile there kid. My customers will love you.”

The youth looked away and smiled again, softly, to himself. 

The trick is having the key…

“This is a good town.” the man said. “I do a lot of business here.” He glanced at the backpack on the floor. “You got your things in there?”

“Some. And a few books to read on the bus.”

“Oh? What do you like reading?”

“Science-fiction mostly.”

“You like those outer space adventures do you?”

“They’re about time travel. It’s interesting.”

“Huh. Boy if I could go back in time…” the man began, then his voice trailed off.

“What?”

“I’d do some things differently.” He sighed. “But no sense living in the past.”

“The youth nodded. “You have to be careful. Even changing something small can undo the future you came from. Ray Bradbury wrote a story once about a man who went dinosaur hunting and accidentally killed a butterfly, and when he got back to his time everything was different. Bad. Really bad.”

The man chuckled. It was a generous good natured sound.“Sure, but what if you went back in time and killed Hitler though. That would keep Germany from going down the tubes, right? Then the war never happens and Poland and all those others would still be free countries.”

“Everyone wants to go back in time and kill Hitler. But maybe then someone even worse than Hitler comes to power, and then the whole world falls to the Nazis.” The boy looked down and for a moment seemed genuinely sad. Then he said more solemnly, as though repeating an oath, “You must be careful what you do…”

“Heh, yeah, but say…all that science-fiction stuff is just for kids….”  the man glanced at the youth, gave him a perfectly charming smile. “But then you’re a kid aren’t you. So it’s okay huh.” 

The boy returned the man’s smile. “You’re the guy who does the clown act aren’t you?”

The man looked ahead, startled. “You know me?”

“I recognise you now. You came to my school once. Everyone loved your tricks. I wish there were more people like you that just want to make everyone laugh. I bet you’re a great guy to work for.”

The man smiled, kept his eyes on the road ahead. You can really lay it on thick for five bucks an hour can’t you boy… “Hey thanks kid. I’ll show you some clown tricks when we get to my place”

The boy settled back in his seat, put his hands behind his head, and stretched languidly. For an instant the man caught a glimpse of bare stomach, and a small bit of white underwear elastic showing above the beltline. 

“I’d like that,” he said. “Very much.”

The car pulled up to a garage next to a house in a suburban tract neighborhood where every house looked like every other house. The man got out, saw the boy looking around intently, with fascination, at the house, at the neighborhood, like he’d never seen anything like it before.

Live all your life in the city did you kid…?

“Just leave your backpack in the car. We won’t be long. Gotta get you back to your uncle before he starts worrying.”

The boy nodded amicably, a lock of golden hair falling across one eye. He walked ahead of the man to a side door. Something about the deliberate way he moved his hips as he walked finally aroused the man’s suspicions.

This kid…was he really looking for a job…or is he cruising..? Is he really as young as he says?

His eyes narrowed. Those shorts…that’s a working boy. I’ve seen his type before. Face like that lets them get away with murder. He might be twenty. Looking for old guys he thinks he can rob or blackmail. Well…so much the better. They won’t be looking for him…nobody cares about a prostitute from the poor side of town…

He looked at the ass in front of him a bit more closely. It was the nicest ass he’d ever seen on a male. The way it moved when the kid walked shot a thrill through him. Between enchantment and a deeply felt resentment never far from the surface, the man thought to himself, He knows he can get away with anything with an ass like that… Then came thoughts of what was to happen soon and his groin began to stiffen. Sex was tame compared to murder. 

There was a time when he couldn’t get enough sex. Teenagers were the best, their skin was so smooth, their buns so hard. And the terrified look in their eyes when they realized it was too late was the best part. No adult could express fear so completely as a child. A twenty-ish something would do, but a trembling crying terrified teenager was the best.

Once, sex was all there was to it; but that was long ago, or so it seemed now.  The intense orgasm he experienced the first time he killed one of his tricks, an accident, he hadn’t meant to, was a revelation that ushered him into a new world of pleasure. He was almost completely disinterested in the sex act itself now. Sex was just another instrument of torture, another way to inflict pain and terrorize before the final magic trick. Murder was the ultimate thrill.

He studied his prey carefully. He always did. He was good at it. Maybe the best that ever was. He had a body count to prove it.  

I can see a wallet bulge there in the right pocket…nothing else. He can’t possibly have any weapons on him wearing that. Not even a switchblade. Good…

They went inside. The man flipped on a light, saw the boy looking around as if in a museum. He touched one of the pine wall panels almost reverently. Then he noticed the man watching him. “Nice place mister.” He pointed at a painting of a clown on the opposite wall. “That you?”

“Na. It’s just something a friend gave me. Nice though. Here, come with me…I want to show you something. You remembered my clown act. Let me show you where the magic begins.”

The boy followed him down a narrow hallway, to a room in the back. It was sparsely furnished, like a largely unused guest room, though it had been carefully cleaned recently. A single chair and a wooden chest of drawers sat against the wall at one end. A footlocker rested against the bottom of a small iron framed guest bed set against the opposite wall. The boy studied the iron rails of the headboard, then looked over at the chair. The man walked over to the chest of drawers and pulled the top one open.

“Here’s where I keep my magic tricks and makeup…”

For the next half hour the man regaled the teenager with various clown tricks and gags. He told jokes, did a little dance after each magic trick, carefully showing the boy how each of them worked at the end. The teenager applauded after each one delightedly and said, “You’re amazing. I would never have guessed how that worked.”

From the top drawer the man pulled out a pair of chrome plated handcuffs. “Now I want to show you my favorite trick. I call it the handcuff trick.” He held the handcuffs out to the youth. “It’s a killer. Here…put these on me.”

The youth took the handcuffs from the man carefully, as though handling an artifact of great significance. 

So these are…the very ones…

The man put his hands behind his back. “Put them on as tight as you like.”

Grinning happily, the youth complied. The man turned around, smiled, then brought his hands back around, with the handcuffs dangling from the finger of one hand.

“Wow…how’d you do that?”

“I’ll show you. Put them on.”

The youth gave him a delighted smile. “Okay…but first I have to tell you a joke.”

It wasn’t in the script, but the man was agreeable. “A joke about handcuffs?”

“Just a joke. You’ll love it. One day a teenage boy was hitch-hiking. He’s young, he’s sexy…” the youth tossed his hair and shook his hips. ”…and he’s hitch-hiking long after midnight, on a dark and deserted street all by himself. All by himself! Can’t you just picture it?”

The man grew vaguely suspicious but kept smiling pleasantly. He was not alarmed. Whatever he’s got planned I can take him easily…

“Then a car comes along and stops. A man inside asks him if he wants a ride. And the kid says yes, thanks mister, and he gets in.” 

The man nodded, his eyes expressionless.

“So they’re driving down this dark and lonely road. You gotta picture this. The kid’s all alone with this man who picked him up. There’s nobody else for miles around. And the man leans over to the boy and says,” the boy imitated a low throaty male voice, “‘aren’t you afraid of being picked up by a serial killer?’”

A pause. “Go on…” said the man slowly.

The youth in front of him was almost dancing with glee. “And the punchline is…oh this is just hilarious…the punchline is the kid says ‘Oh no sir. The odds of two serial killers being in the same car at the same time are just astronomical!’”

There was a moment’s silence. The boy smiled broadly, his eyes sparkled with delight. “Get it?”

Some feral instinct made the man lunge forward. Stupid little punk… It was his last coherent thought. In the next instant the air in front of him exploded in fire and light and a sound of thunder. There was an impact, like being kicked in the head by a horse. He staggered back.

The derringer appeared in the boy’s hand as if out of thin air. It was flat, shaped like a wallet, with two barrels and a hole for a trigger, which he pulled again. There was a flash of light and fire and dozens of tiny lead balls tore through the man’s head at nearly the speed of sound. He staggered and fell, blood gushing from dozens of tiny pinpoint wounds.

Calmly, still grinning delightedly, the boy tipped forward the barrels of the derringer, and extracted two empty 22 rimfire magnum shotshell casings, which he placed into his right pocket. From his left he extracted two more cartridges with copper plated hollow nose bullets. These he slid into the derringer, and locked the barrels back into place.

He knelt down to the man’s head, beautiful eyes alive with an orgasmic pleasure. But first, a final dispensing of pain. Sensual lips parted. An old man’s voice spoke.

“Your father was right about you. But you know that. They will find all the bodies. Everyone will know what you are, and what you did.” A pause. Then, “Do you believe in Hell?” 

A wet gurgle escaped the man’s throat. The boy leaned back, sighed softly in ecstasy, placed the derringer to the man’s head, and fired again. Twice.

Days later, after his friends reported him missing, the police entered the man’s house and found his body. On it was pinned a note, detailing where the bodies of 16 young men were to be found, each with a name and contact information for their relatives. 

A nation was properly horrified. A search commenced for the man’s killer. Some wanted to reward him. Some hoped he was never found. 

In the decades to follow theories would be offered to explain what had happened that night. Most held there was an accomplice who had helped dig the graves and got into a final, fatal argument with the man and shot him. A popular competing theory was the man had picked up a trick for the night who turned out to be another serial killer like himself, targeting older homosexual men who preyed on boys. The killer trick had found the note among the man’s trophies and simply pinned it on him. The disciples of this theory would all agree the two killers were made for each other. 

Driver’s licenses, random personal belongings and jewelry from the man’s young victims were discovered in one of the drawers next to his magic tricks. Neither the accomplice, if there was one, nor the killer trick if he existed, were ever found. The note was dusted for fingerprints but none were found. Eventually the note would be given to the FBI forensics lab, which would puzzle over it for decades, wondering where the uncanny artificial fiber based paper was manufactured, and what strange printer had been used to print it. Decades later it would be lost due to a bureaucratic error. 

The bodies were all found, grieving families notified, victims finally given a decent burial, and the people of the city suitably shocked that such a respectable man could have done such an evil thing for so long without anyone noticing. The media spotlight would soon go elsewhere. Pinning the identity of the man’s killer on other known serial murderers, former Nazi war criminals in hiding, mafia hitmen, shadowy government agencies, time travelers, and space aliens would become a staple of cable TV unsolved mystery shows and the pages of paperback books and tabloid magazines sold in airports and bus stations. 

The TV cameras circled around the man’s house, the reporters gathered, and the gawkers stood watching the bodies being removed, as if at a circus act gone terribly wrong. No one noticed the slender old man at the fringes, watching carefully with dark captivated eyes.

Yes, the old man thought, he was right about one thing: murder was the ultimate thrill. However it could cause chaos, heartbreak and dangerous social instability if not properly managed. And he was being very properly managed. He was actually grateful for that. The dangerous passions of a few had to be carefully managed, and if some innocent lives could be saved in the process so much the better. But first more simulations would have to be run. Let’s not be killing any butterflies shall we. 

He turned away from the scene, and began walking down the street, away from the crowds, old, slight, graceful, and with purpose, to some elsewhere only he could see, eyes shining in anticipation. There was a faint sound of a far away door opening and closing. Nobody noticed he was gone.

This came across my news feeds just now…

NEWS: New reporting from POLITICO reveals Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has been hospitalized multiple times for stress while carrying out Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda.

According to officials, Lyons faced intense pressure from the White House to ramp up deportations, amid reports of heated calls and internal chaos. It is also said that Stephen Miller frequently yells at him on calls. In one incident, he was rushed to the hospital overnight. In another, officials feared he may need emergency intervention on the spot.

I went and looked him up only to find he was born in 1981, almost a decade after I graduated from high school. Is this even the same planet I lived in when I was a young man, let alone a teenage boy. I don’t generally feel old, but for a moment there I really felt the years I’ve lived. I guess sometime soon there won’t be anyone left who remembers the America that was, before Reagan promised us that shining city on the hill.

I know stress. I’ve felt its clutches on me. It’s driven me to tobacco and alcohol and I know it’s shaved years off my life. If what this reporting is saying about you is true Mr. Lyons, Get Out Of There. It isn’t worth it. Whatever it is you think you’re accomplishing in there it’s rotting your soul and killing your body. These aren’t patriotic conservative men, they are the bottom of the human sewer, and if you don’t want to spend your last hour in there with them and be remembered along with them then get out. Go find the better man you can still be, while you still have some hours left.

I’m up in my den idling away the precious minutes of my life sitting at my computer desk when I hear a knock at my front door. I get up from my chair and look out the window behind the monitor. Down at street level I see some dressed men walking past my house. This looks familiar. Clue one.

Early mornings I leave my front door open and the screen door locked to allow some morning sunlight into the living room. As I walk down the stairs I observe a well dressed man standing outside wearing the sort of pasted on smile I have seen many times before. I note that he is holding some brochures in one hand. Clue two. Pretty sure I know what’s coming. No…you’re not a salesman…exactly…

Yes?

Good morning sir. Are you ready to experience Jesus’ promise for eternal life?

I’m not a believer. This conversation is over.

Proselytizer walks off, no further trying, facial expression totally unchanged. I begin to wonder if I’ve just spoken with some new kind of ambulatory bot. Maybe it was the pride flag hanging off my porch. Or my long hair and the tie dye t-shirt I was wearing. Or my face just then. I have often wondered what my resting face looks like after hours staring into a computer monitor.

First proselytizers of the season…start of spring was a few days ago wasn’t it…

I go back upstairs. As I walk back into my den I begin regretting that I didn’t thank the man for getting me away from the darn computer, even if it was just momentarily. I still have to do my taxes.

Scrolling through some old blog posts here I came across this one, did some double checking and…yeah…it’s just four months after this other one. It just really crashed everything I was up to creatively then. And then I spent another decade living in a wonderful dream only to crash and burn even worse.

Nat King Cole is singing on my iPod and it’s drizzling freezing rain outside and I’m nursing a glass of Kahlua and there is a face and a name that I just can’t get out of my thoughts, and it’s been like that for days now and I’m sorry. I had a couple of cartoons I wanted to get finished before today and I just haven’t been able to put pen to paper for days now. This is why I stopped drawing, stopped painting, stopped working with my cameras, for over a decade…it’s why I’m a software engineer now, and not the graphic artist or photographer everyone from Woodward assumed I’d become someday…this bundle of feeling that I have to deal with every time I walk into that space inside of me where all my creativity comes from. There’s a piece missing from what should have been my life and before I can sit down and do anything in my art room I have to deal with that and sometimes I just can’t. There’s a bit of that loss, that quiet, waiting, life-on-hold emptiness, in Everything I’ve Ever Done since 1975 and by the late 1980s I just got so sick of seeing it staring back at me from my artwork that I just stopped doing anything…I took my easel down, put my oils, my pens and charcoal sticks, my drawing pads away, put my cameras away, and just plinked on a computer (just like I’m doing now) for creative release.

I want that part of me back. I really want it back…

Yeah. But it’s not coming back.

[Update…] I moved forward a few days in the blog posts and came across this ode to Scarborough Fair…

…it’s all just ambiguous enough that you can see in it almost anything you want to.  Maybe this was medieval England’s 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.  Maybe its a devoted couple having a good laugh together that while they aren’t the perfect lovers of the folk tales and ballads, they’re still happily in love all the same.  Maybe its a couple who’ve let each other down, angrily hurling impossible demands at each other.  Maybe the song is about how love makes us rise above ourselves, brings things out of us that we’d never have known were there, never have known we could do or become, until we met that one person we would do anything for.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,

Perhaps once upon a time there were two people who might have loved, but time and circumstance just made it impossible.  And now all they can do is wave at each other at a distance, smile a little, laugh a little, and ironically give each other these little absurd tasks to win each other, knowing full well it can never be.

Remember me to one who lives there,
He once was a true love of mine.

What do you do when your heart is breaking? Write a song. Write some poetry. Make art that gets it out of you, before despair makes you want to go jump off a bridge.

Posts on Facebook today celebrating the release of Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick and Christopher Walken, who is amazing in his role (as usual) as Sergeant Toomey, but I cannot even think of that movie without remembering the scene where they gay soldier (private Hennessy, played by Michael Dolen) is taken out of a troop line by Toomey and some MPs, presumably after they pressured the other private he was involved with to name him, and driven away between them in a jeep. I can still see the look on his face and while I understand he was an actor playing a part it was so very disturbing. Great acting on everyone’s part but I cannot think of that movie without thinking of that scene. That Hennessy was the only one to stand up for the two Jews in the troop against the bigots (the character has a great line when asked by one of the bigots if he’s Jew too) just added to the impact of what was about to happen to him.

But of course, if you didn’t know very much of the history of that time and what happened to homosexuals who were caught in the jaws of the laws back then, you might just think it a sad little subplot in a movie about a young soldier enduring a slightly crazy drill sergeant and having his first time getting laid. If that story really was based on Neil Simon’s recollections of his time in the army then I am wondering if that character and was what happened to him was based on a real person and did they survive.

During World War II, U.S. military personnel suspected of homosexuality faced intensive interrogation, psychiatric evaluation, usually to implicate others in exchange for leniency. If found to have committed acts of sodomy, they were court-martialed, imprisoned in a federal penitentiary with terms of hard labor, and then given a dishonorable discharge. After the nightmare of what prison life was for a homosexual, that dishonorable discharge would keep him from getting any kind of a good job, and the conviction for sodomy attached to it would more than likely mean he’d lose his family, friends, and have to leave wherever he’d grown up for somewhere nobody knew him. It might have even been reported in their local hometown newspaper, and his entire family ostracised.

If he was a real person you wonder what happened to him, with a very dark pit of your stomach feeling that you know damn well what happened to him.

Yay for private Jerome losing his virginity! To a female prostitute, when we wasn’t old enough to drink or vote, which was a rite of passage and certainly no federal offense.

…and leaves the rest of us behind. Too bad we couldn’t have lived in this better world back then…

Munich. Who’d have thought. 

Happy Stay Inside Your Comfort Zone Day! And by pure coincidence this came across my news feed just now…

I have this little tick whenever I see a picture of someone’s original Canon F1. I look for an image of its back so I can check the serial number to see if it’s lower than mine. So far…nope.

Pretty sure I bought one of the first ones imported into the USA. It has the Bell & Howell import sticker in the film compartment because they were the importers of Canon cameras here in the 60s/70s. According to the code inside the film compartment (you can’t go by the serial numbers) mine was made in June 1971 in Oita Japan. I bought it in July with money I made summer working at Burger Chef, and from selling my Miranda Sensorex. Production had only begun in March of that year. It was my first professional grade camera and I was so proud to get one when I did because they were so hard to find. It became my constant companion in my senior year of high school, and my workhorse during the time I was trying to make it as a photojournalist. It has been all over the country with me, and an artistic companion from my teens to my 70s.

I find myself using my Canon F1N more often now, it feels just as solid as the F1, and the F1 is so precious to me anymore that taking it out and about from time to time worries me about it getting damaged or stolen off me. But there are days I just have to have it in my hands, and it will always be the one camera I will never get off of no matter how much money I might suddenly need. I’d sell the Mercedes first. I’d sell the house first.

This came in the mail yesterday, and I gave it a first try this morning here at Casa del Garrett…

How Deep Will You Go is advertised as a connection conversation card game to play among friends or lovers. “What if the next time you hang out, phones were away and you saw a side of them you never knew?” There are three types of cards: Ice Breakers, Confessions, and Going Deep. But I didn’t buy this deck to play with others. I’m really not comfortable exposing myself that much to anyone, except the boyfriend I never had, I bought it because it looked like it would give me a more structured way to deep dive into my own self, by randomly picking a card every day and thinking about its question. Self psychoanalysis if you like.

This first morning I tried one of each type. Going forward I think I’ll just pick a card from one type depending on my mood when I wake up. The going deep card I pulled asked me to describe my biggest heartbreak and what it taught me.

Oh boy…

That would not be when I discovered my first crush had moved far away, like out of the country far away, and I’d probably never see him again, and I almost jumped off a bridge in front of a train. Which I didn’t do when it occurred to me that it would probably traumatize the engineer. Isn’t it always the case that when you think about how your life affects others it makes you a better person. But then Elon says empathy is western civilization’s biggest weakness.

No…it was my second crush, a few years later, which when it hit me left me overjoyed to think I’d been given a second chance at love after I was certain it was over for me, and we became very close, to the point of intense heart to heart conversations when we were alone, sending love letters while I was away with other friends on a road trip, then only to realize sometime later that I’d fallen in love with a straight guy, and it would never be.

I think I knew then what the future held. And in a culture that back then gave gay guys nothing but venom and static from every direction…

Mad Magazine, July 1978 by Jack Davis

…who was I to think it would be any different?

Well the card deck is working. I probably gave that question more serious thought than I ever did before. What did I learn? Well…it wasn’t a lesson I was ready to take to heart just then, but I knew it all the same: that we are all utterly, totally, completely alone in this life. That the universe does not care about our deepest heartfelt hopes and dreams, and if we cannot make that heart and soul connection with another, then we either treasure and care for our own heart, so as to at least keep being good people and doing our part to keep civilization moving forward, and loving as best we can our families and friends in this life, and somehow some way endure the empty loneliness ahead of you, or you just go find a bridge and jump.

Obviously I haven’t jumped. But there have been moments it really came close. What I have to think about now is I made a bunch of young gay friends during the Love In Action protests, some of whom still stay in touch with me, and I don’t want to set that example for them. It’s such a stereotypical way for gay guys to go. I don’t want them thinking its inevitable. I want them to see a future.

Empathy isn’t a weakness. It’s what makes civilization possible. It’s what makes moving on with your own life possible, absent that body and soul romance you never got.

My new GP set me up with appointments with a neurologist and a CAT scan, to try and get to the bottom of why I’m tired all the time, slightly dizzy all the time, and have a hard time focusing on tasks for more than short bursts of concentration. She also wants me to schedule a sleep study. So naturally I keep ruminating about the results I might get, particularly regards the CAT scan and what the neurologist might tell me.

I’m 72, and I can feel myself losing it. But if I look at it logically I’m actually in pretty good shape for my age. I’ve outlived some of my classmates, but most of the one’s I’ve kept in touch with are still hanging in there. But anyone with the artistic nature I possess, plus a powerful imagination that I’ve daydreamed in since I was a kid…

…can’t really help but ponder all the possible things a CAT scan might reveal, and what that might me for how much longer I have to live, and all the art projects I never got around to starting, let alone finishing.

So it really doesn’t help when you wake up in the morning hearing your mom calling your name. Especially when she’s been dead for over two decades.

(Panel above is from A Coming Out Story)

And it’s one, two, three, What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam…

In my news streams today I see that Country Joe McDonald has passed away, and I don’t think there is anyone of my generation and those older kids who came of draft age during the Vietnam war who aren’t replaying that song in their heads now, like when they were teenagers back in the day wondering if they would live to be adults, or breath their last in some far away jungle for the sake of Realpolitick, the Domino Theory, and the egos of various presidents, generals, and cabinet members. Or get fried in a nuclear holocaust between us and Russia. For all the same reasons.

I’m sure a lot of us have vivid memories of those times, most of them horrible. Let me tell you about mine. The day I almost got drafted and sent to war.

It started, as it did for young American males in the late 60s – early 70s, with the obligatory trip to the local draft office when you turned 18. At 18 I was a skinny little gay teenager, coming off his first broken heart after my high school crush’s family suddenly moved away, and so rail thin a friend’s mother once asked him if I was a heroin addict. But no…I was your usual teenage boy with a physiology that could snarf down candy bars, doughnuts, cheeseburgers, fries and sodas and not gain so much as an ounce. How I wish some days I still had a body that could do that.

Looking at me back then you wouldn’t think I was G.I. Joe material, but when a nation needs cannon fodder for a war nobody but the politicians and generals wanted size doesn’t matter. Much.

And it’s one, two, three, What are we fighting for?

My draft office was in the basement of the old Rockville post office. After my 18th birthday I presented myself to them as required by law, and as I sat while the clerk behind the desk typed up my forms I glanced around the room, and saw a sign they’d posted over the door…

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Ha ha. And happy birthday young man! Maybe you’ll have another one.

I was issued my draft card, which by law I had to carry with me at all times. And as it turned out, almost immediately afterward I got this letter in the mail…

Notice the word “ORDER”. You are ordered to report. Not asked. Not told. Ordered. That’s how it was. There was a war on and nobody really understood why we were in it until Daniel Ellsberg leaked copies of a 7,000-page top-secret Department of Defense study to the New York Times and The Washington Post. That study detailed 25 years of American involvement in Vietnam, and not so incidentally the torrent of lies aimed deceiving the public and congress about the Realpolitik motivating that war, it’s actual scope, and our glorious progress in defeating world communism and keeping the dominoes from falling. 

There was no declaration of war, there was only the Gulf Of Tonkin Resolution giving the president authorization for a “military action” to defend US military forces. But the basis for that resolution, that our destroyers in the area had been attacked, was a lie. There was no attack. The American public would not know that for decades. But it got us where the generals and the politicians wanted us.

You hear people speak after these mass casualty disasters, of all the lost potential, all the things that could have been, all the progress in the arts and sciences that might have been made, only to end up buried in so many thousands of graves. But in the rarified halls of power where their Realpolitik hallucinations mattered more than the lives of the kids they were sending off to war, of course war had to be the case and never mind the cost. Those were other people’s children.

You hear a lot of things said about my generation and the 1960s/early 1970s. If you want to really understand those times you need to look at, really look at, what that war did to this country. How many parents never got to see their kids have families of their own, and grandchildren they could dote on. And Vietnam went communist anyway.

So there I was the early morning of October 4, 1972 waiting at the designated draft office bus stop with several dozen other teenage boys, wondering if that morning would be the last time mom ever saw me alive.

They loaded us onto a couple Greyhound busses to drive us to Fort Meade for the pre-induction physicals. But before we were driven off, some men from the Navy and Air Force got on the bus and told this group of trapped and terrified teenage boys they’d get a better deal from them if they enlisted now. Some left the bus with them.

When we got to Fort Meade we were made to strip down to just our underwear, weighed (I did not know this at the time, but the moment they weighed me I failed the exam, but they kept on with it anyway), and then led to stand in two lines for an initial examination.

I’ve told this story here before…

…about the morning I came to my sixth grade class and I saw that some kids from the previous year had come to class before we got there to visit their old teachers. And they’d written about their experiences in junior high on the chalkboard, and how much fun it was going to be for us when it was our turn. I started reading…and then I came to this line…

Tell them not to worry about group showers. It’s no big deal.

I wish I had a picture of my face just then. My jaw dropped. I was horrified. What!? WHAT!? WHAT!!!??? Suddenly I was no longer looking forward to high school, junior or otherwise.

So there I am in this line of several dozen other teenage boys in their underwear and you might be thinking as you read this that I‘m in gay kid paradise and it wasn’t that at all. They wouldn’t let us put our clothes back on for the entire two hour ritual and I spent them in a kind of state of shell shock. I am just not a clothing optional kinda guy, and that was the most degrading thing I’d ever experienced up to that time or ever since. But it was the point being made, right then and there: From now on you are government property. 

And it’s one, two, three, What are we fighting for?

A pair of doctors went up and down the lines, making us take deep breaths while listening to heartbeats, checking pulses, examining teeth, skin (I guess looking for tattoos). They made us drop our underwear, bend over and spread our butt cheeks while they walked up the lines looking for I have no idea what. Then they walked the lines feeling each kid’s balls and telling them to cough. I’m told that lets them detect hernias. We were cattle being sized up for grade. One kid across from me started laughing uncontrollably when the doctor cupped his hand around his balls and the doctor quickly moved on.

We were allowed to pull our underwear back up. Then led to booths where eyesight and hearing were tested…still wearing only our underwear. Then, still wearing only our underwear, we were led into something like a classroom where were put under oath, and told to sit in some small student desks. We were handed sheets of paper, told to fill out our names, and then look at each of the line items and check Yes or No. Are you an American citizen? Were both your parents citizens? What is your race? Ancestry? There were the names of various subversive organizations and we had to check if we’d ever been a member of any of them. I forget now if the American Civil Liberties Union was one of them, or the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Then I came to this question…

Are you a homosexual?

I looked at it carefully, weighing my options. I had just sworn to tell the truth, and the truth was I knew damn well by then that I was, and the honest answer was Yes. And answering that question honestly would have probably kept me out of the army and Vietnam. But it would have also probably got me placed onto some police and FBI lists somewhere, which would haunt me for the rest of my life. It was 1972, sodomy was illegal in nearly every state, and those laws were used against us in so many ways never mind having sex. You could be denied employment, housing, an array of professional licenses. They would have probably told mom and I still don’t like thinking about what would have happened then. It could have been that every time somebody’s child disappeared I’d get a couple policemen knocking at the door.

So I lied. I checked No.

At the end of the ritual I was told that since I was eleven pounds underweight I would be put back on the bus for Rockville. As I remember there were a couple others of us on it. I was told they’d call me back for another physical in six months. But before that could happen Nixon turned off the draft and I was never inducted into the Army and never had to go to war.

I have no idea how many of those other kids that were with me during the pre-induction ritual never made it back to their country alive. But I can still see their faces.

After Nixon turned off the draft, for a brief period of time, nobody had to register for the draft. There’s a subset of baby boomers who never felt its touch, and who keep being lumped in with the rest of us. I met one of them once on a gay BBS I did some volunteer work for. He was staunchly conservative, and a big fan of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. 

Eventually they bought draft registration back, but so far nobody has been forced to join the Army or go die in another war nobody wants. Yet.

And it’s one, two, three, What are we fighting for?

The trip back on the Silver Meteor was nice, but I’m glad to be back. My deluxe week in my DVC one bedroom villa was worth the time spent, even though I didn’t do much but eat at the nice restaurants and drink at the good bars and wander around Saratoga Springs. This is a problem that’s only getting worse as time goes on. I have no energy, and no motivation to do art much anymore, other than work on my “ghost” story novel. Which I hope to start serializing here eventually. If I can get motivated to make the illustrations I want to include.

Tomorrow morning I have a first visit with the doctor who will hopefully become my new GP, since the one they connected me with at Whitman-Walker after my prior one retired has been very indifferent. My new one will be affiliated with the same hospital my cardiologist and the surgeon who did my ablation are, and hopefully this results in better care for this 72 year old body. I’m going to talk to them about how I’m tired all the time anymore (it was almost too much just to walk to the grocery store a few blocks away to restock some items), and getting way too forgetful.

I put a lot of things down to being single and lonely, but I’m pretty sure I don’t fit the description of someone who is clinically depressed. On the train ride back I had a wonderful time chatting with my fellow travelers in the dining car and at various stopping-refueling points along the way, where passengers have a few moments to step outside the train and get some fresh air. I am not so introverted that I can’t enjoy the company of people I’ve never met before, where the situation provides natural ice breakers. It’s different than the highly competitive and very cliquish crowd at a gay bar, which was my problem with socializing in that environment. Not that they likely ever wanted to give solitary me an assist anyway, but all I ever needed was an ice breaker, and all I ever got from them was gaslighting about being too shy. Tico once told me I was good at getting a stand-offish table at Biergarten talking to each other and having a good time together, but that was Disney World which has an assortment of built-in icebreakers I could use. Actually, I really dislike sitting quietly by myself when I’m out and about. If I want solitude I can get it at home. Or just take a long walk. Go on a road trip.

But that’s probably also a problem, and partly at least, if not more, why I’m so tired and unmotivated anymore. My house is a lonely place. I walk alone. I go places, driver here and there and meet people along the way, but on the road it is just me and my car. That has been slowly killing me for years, I see now. 

There are dark times I keep picking at that I shouldn’t by now, but I can’t help myself. Tico telling me to go away would be one. But seeing, finally, the total indifference of the gay guys I trusted, and thought of as friends, was another, and it is worse. Tico got angry at me. The others stuck a knife in my heart like it was no big deal, and I’m pretty sure to this day they think I overreacted. It is indifference, not hate, as Elie Wiesel once said, that is the opposite of love.

I would add one more thing: friends get angry at each other, strangers just stick the knife in and walk away.

It began, as these things often do, with tequila…

Ten years to the day…

I was at Biergarten just now. It’s still a nice place, and there are still people there who remember you, but some things have changed and not for the better. You may be glad of being retired now.

The one thing I liked most of all (besides you) was the Oktoberfest seating. When you are a single traveler it’s nice to be able to be seated with others you can chat with. Table for one isn’t that. It’s pretty lonely actually, which is why I usually sit at the bar. But Biergarten had this really nice Oktoberfest seating thing and I loved it not only because it made it very easy for a single diner to get seated, but also I could have a good time with the others at my table.

You told me once, and this was a very helpful thing you did for me, that I was good at getting a stand offish table talking to each other. But that was because you have a bunch of built-in ice breakers at Disney World. Hi…where y’all from? This your first time here…? What’s your favorite park? Where are you staying? And so forth. I told you once about the gay friends who had me convinced I was too shy and that was why I am single. But no…I’m just a little introvert who needed ice breakers to talk to anyone. You said back then that I needed better friends. You were right.

But Oktoberfest seating at Biergarten is no more, because apparently Americans don’t like being seated together with people they don’t know. And it’s not just a Biergarten it seems.

I took the train down from Baltimore this trip. I had a bunch of Amtrak points from cross-country rail trips I’ve taken and I used some for this vacation. I’ve taken the train a bunch and something I like about rail travel that reminds me of Biergarten is the dining car and being seated with some other passengers and being able to chat with them as we go. In my mind it’s one of the best things about rail travel…meeting and chatting with people in the dining and lounge cars.

This trip, for the first time, I heard the dining car staff as they called for passengers with reservations at whatever o:clock to come to the dining car to be seated, warning the passengers that they would be seated with other travelers who they might not know. Because seating is limited in those dining cars and they use every available space to seat people.

Have Americans become so insular they can’t stand eating with other people anymore?? Oh well…

I just don’t get it. But I’m weird I reckon. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had were in a dining car, or at Biergarten. Not counting the ones I used to have with you.