This poor guy that I used to be. I feel so afraid for him. He is so happy now, but does not know what’s coming…

September 22nd, 2007

Message In A Bottle

It’s been almost a year now since we talked. It was amazing that last time, to hear your voice after so long: you sounded just like you did way back when. It took me back…almost like that first time I called, and heard your telephone voice. Well…actually it was better, because that first time, I think I might have gotten you into some kind of trouble. You remember. You gave me your phone number that Friday before school was over, and we agreed that I’d call you Saturday and maybe we could both take our cameras for a hike somewhere…like maybe Great Falls. By the way…I still have that roll of film of yours you had me develop. I think I gave you the contacts I made, and some prints, but somehow I ended up with the negatives. I can mail them to you if you like. Anyway…I called and asked whoever it was who answered if you were home, and then you got on the line and you were all like…uh…sorry…I didn’t think you’d call…why did you call…I can’t go anywhere…I didn’t think you’d call…like I wasn’t supposed to call, which really confused me because we’d agreed I would call and you gave me your phone number which isn’t the sort of thing you do when you Don’t want someone to call you. Next Monday morning I met you at school it was like nothing had happened. There were times while we were seeing each other, when I wasn’t sure when you were teasing and when you were serious. And you always kept me at arms length from your family. For years afterward I wondered if I’d gotten you in some kind of trouble with your parents for giving me your number. Maybe we should have agreed you would call me.

Say…maybe you should call me now. It’s been almost a year. It would be nice to hear from you again. We’re too far away from each other to go for that camera hike like we were going to back then. But we can chat now, can’t we…without it getting you in trouble…right?

Wave back sometime. Please. It would be the best birthday gift ever.

I still vividly remember how I knew it was him even before my brain was parsing the words on that answering machine recording, just by the sound of his voice. After all those years. It was 1972 all over again…and I was that kid all over again…and that should have been the warning sign, because it didn’t end well back then either.

I was flipping through some old blog posts, and came across this one from December 2007…

Message In A Bottle

See…This is why I wish you’d let me email you…I could just bop these little questions back to you and maybe get a quick answer, instead of putting them into the Christmas card I’m sending.

My friends up here are just a tad too disorganized this year to count on them doing anything all together this New Years, alas. I’ve pinged them and pinged them and it looks like it’s just going to be catch as catch can and I tend to slip right between the cracks when it’s like that. I have a week off between Christmas and New Year and I don’t want to spend it moping around the house alone. Be nice to take a drive in my new car somewhere…particularly somewhere it’s warm. Somewhere I’ve never seen before.

So…basically…will Disneyworld be open during the week between Christmas and New Year…?

And…

What part of the complex, in your experienced opinion, would most appeal to a single adult? I’m not interested in the kiddy stuff, or the thrill rides so much (Unless I had a companion to thrill along with). I’ll probably just be wandering around all by myself. So maybe something to engage my mind and my curiosity? If such as that even exists at Disney? Epcot Center maybe? Or is there something else you think would be better?

And where would you suggest I get a room for a few days. Something basic, and not horribly expensive.

And…

Photo? Please?

Followed shortly by this one…

Now Where The Hell Did I Put Plan ‘B’…?

Well I reckon Disney World’s out. Thanks for the warning about the crowds during Christmas week guy. And here I was wondering if they were even open then…

This takes me back to a time Before. Before what you ask? Before everything changed. That poor guy writing those words. I feel so…not sorry…afraid…for him.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind postulated a technology that allows you to erase unpleasant memories, but what if you can go back to the moment before you stepped on the path that brought you to the place where you were even considering it? What if?

A choice. To have lived the life you did…not to be able to revisit that past or change any part of it. Just…not to go there. Knowing only that I don’t reconnect. That’s all. Chose. Accept what came of doing the thing, or don’t do the thing.

Would I? Would I chose the path not travelled? That question is going to haunt me now for days.

Well…for one thing…Pretty sure I wouldn’t have spent so much money on Disney parks and stuff. I mean…I told him I wasn’t interested in theme parks. He had to talk me into going. Not very hard I admit…he did want to see me again after all. And after thirty-four years of searching for him, I sure wanted to see him again.

Maybe instead I spend that money on travel to other countries and places. Maybe I do more road trips. There’s still a lot of North America I haven’t walked on, and now probably never will.

What if I could decide not to do the thing that brought me back to him? What if I could decide to stop looking for him? Just…stop. End it. Ache forever not to see his face and his smile again, and hear his voice, because that’s what it would be. I was aching all those years I searched for him. And afraid. Never to know if he was even still alive, and did he survive the HIV epidemic.  Stop.  Stop asking. Stop needing to know. Stop needing. Chose differently.

Could I even do that? Would have even been in my power to do that? I’d begun drawing A Coming Out Story to make sense of what happened to me back in high school. I figured I’d never see him again and I just had to get it out of me, and also hopefully make some sort of peace with it. By the time I started on it so many years had passed I had to figure if I ever did find him again he’d be set with an all around better guy than I could ever be, much more good looking, not a geeky little artistic weirdo like me, and I’d just have to accept it. He was a catch, and I was an unhandsome oddball. But at least I’d know he was still alive.

And then I did the thing, and I found him again. And that set me on the path to now. And…Knowing.

I know exactly the moment I could chose not to do the thing. It’s right there. That one moment. What if I could stand in that exact moment, knowing how it turned out when I did the thing, and decide not to do it, and lose that thread of my life. Forever. Never to happen. Never to Know.

Could I really chose not to do the thing?  I don’t know. This is going to haunt me.

Something amazing and wonderful happened to me just now. Never let it be said that it’s all over when you hit 70.

I was at my local Texas Roadhouse for an end of the week dinner and margarita. When I asked for my check, I was told somebody there had paid for me. I had to ask for clarification twice because I wasn’t sure I’d heard it right. But yes…somebody there paid my check. That has never happened to me before. Ever.

I suspect I know who it was. Sitting next to me was a friendly older man and his wife. He complemented my tie-dye t-shirt and I explained to him about the lady in York who does them by hand, and for a brief moment we reminisced about that time in our lives. He seemed a cheerful friendly sort and I think it was a gesture of one aging 60s kid to another. But I don’t know that for a fact.

All I know is for the first time in my life I went to a bar/restaurant by myself just to relax and enjoy a nice dinner and a margarita, and when I asked for my check I was told someone there paid it for me. There’s a young gay guy somewhere deep inside who is all kinds of over the moon now. After all this time…

“The gay world then was somewhat brutalized–it was enormously sexualized. New York was absolutely wild. People were just [having sex] all over the place, literally. But nobody was actually free; it was all an illusion. The laws were terrible. I did not see a society that was progressing. It was extremely commercial; people were making a lot of money out of it. It was in its way not dissimilar, I thought, to what Germany was like in the Weimar era.”
-Martin Sherman, Playwright, author of “Bent”

“But nobody was actually free; it was all an illusion. The laws were terrible.”

Larry Kramer wrote a novel about that period in NYC, titled Faggots. It got a lot of static but he had a point, distilled down to this one line toward the novel’s end: “The fucking we’re getting is not worth the fucking we’re getting.”

Had you come of age back then, you could understand why the freedom to be our sexual selves was so important. The sodomy laws practically defined us as criminals, sexual deviants, perverts, queers, that needed to be isolated from the rest of society, for the good of society. If many of us fixated on sex it was because that’s what we were told was all that was all there was to us. But there was a necessary element of Yes We Are defiance to it. I can appreciate that too. Progress, as George Bernard Shaw once said, is made by the unreasonable man. Also the unreasonable woman.

But it was never just about sex. We needed wholeness. Getting the sodomy laws off our backs was a big fight, but not the only one. There was still the rest of it. Making that space for our sexual lives was important, but also the space for our love lives; Our whole lives. We couldn’t be neighbors so long as we were criminals. We couldn’t be people so long as we were sodomites.

I reckon I don’t really need to hide who it is I’m talking about in these remembrances anymore. He doesn’t read my blog (Hi!) and his comfort zone turned into the Berlin Wall a decade ago anyway. But I get these memories posts on Facebook now and then that remind me that it was real…

Some days I visit he’s being a jerk and doesn’t want to talk to me. Others, like last night, he’s all warm smiles and cheerful eyes and just can’t stop talking and we stay long past park closing time and I’m walking on air all the way back to my room. But then it’s always why can’t we spend some time together outside the park and his comfort zone won’t allow it.

So either way I have to struggle to get my vacation started back up again. If he’s grouchy then I’m miserable and just want to go home. I’ve called vacations off early when it’s been that. If he’s full of sunshine and smiles then I feel like I’ve hit the high point of my trip and why bother staying. There’s that back to the reality of things after the visit let-down to climb back out of somehow. I have to remind myself I need the break regardless.

This morning I’ll hit the grocery store for some perishables I couldn’t bring down with me, and more ice tea, and maybe something from the liquor store so I’m not always paying Disney prices for alcohol. Then spend the rest of the week chilling out, maybe working some more on A Coming Out Story (I brought my drawing things). But I’m in a state now I really have no words for, or at any rate words I’m willing to speak. He said something to me that lifted me out of myself in a way only someone who really gets you can. And it took a load off my psyche certain other gay someone’s I know weighed me down with for years.

It was all about how I don’t interact well with people. Too shy, too self absorbed, blah, blah, blah, your photography has no people in it, blah, blah, blah… Biergarten is “Octoberfest” seating, which means you get seated at a table with other random guests and you’re expected to talk and share a good time together. This time I was seated with a group that seemed really stand-offish. They just gave off chilly vibes. But after a while I got them talking about where they’re from and what they do, and of course when they found out I work at Space Telescope and on Hubble and James Webb they got all interested in that. And by the end of the night we were all chatting happily.

And after they left he and I were chatting and he noticed too how chilly that group was initially. He’s worked this line of business for so long now he can probably read a table the second he walks up to it. Then he said he’d always seen me open people up and that I was good at it and that I was always getting everyone talking and having a good time no matter how chilly the table seemed at first.

Well…yeah… One thing is you always know you’re with other Disney people here…so that’s something. It’s not like you’re in some random bar with bad mood people. We’re all Disney people here. And that Disney kid just comes out of me here. It’s a kind of freedom to be that kid I once was I never really appreciated I was missing before I started coming here. But I’m not the hopelessly detached single certain other people somehow managed to convince me I am either. I’m not that…so how did I get to thinking of myself like that? He just pulled that out of me with a few words and the look on his face when he said it.

He does that. It’s when someone shows you things about yourself you didn’t know, but should have known, that makes it serious. And…it’s been like that since we were teenagers. When he’s not in a touchy mood, it’s still like that.

But we never got the chance other kids did. And now he has his comfort zone, and I need to get on with my vacation. Somehow.

And speaking of those certain other gay someones…

Hi! I’ll be 73 in a few weeks, just a couple months after I got my Parkinson’s diagnosis. The search for someone to love and be loved by is in my rearview mirror now. I will die having been single all my adult life. You could have made a difference in one gay guy’s life. And…actually…you did! You and every other homophobic nutcase. Be proud!

A few weeks ago I received a glossy oversized flyer in the mail, advertising a silver and gold buy in Hunt Valley. BACK BY POPULAR I have some silver and gold I dug up during my downsizing adventures here at Casa del Garrett that I inherited from mom that I didn’t think was a good fit for the Greensburg Historical Society since it didn’t directly relate to mom or that part of Pennsylvania; not very much but enough I thought I could get a few hundred bucks for it maybe. So when I got a flyer in the mail advertising a gold and silver buying event…

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! GOLD BREAKS THE 4K MARK!
WE BUY NO MATTER THE CONDITION!

…I decided to go see what they’d offer for it.

It was a big oversized glossy flyer, so I was expecting some sort of large venue with tables and buyers to look over what was being offered. And a big line since it was BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

What I found when I got there was it was being held in a small office suite with nothing at all to suggest it was even being held at that address, other than the security guard in the lobby who knew it was happening and directed me to the right floor. There was nobody at the front desk to check me in.

So I wandered around for a bit and eventually a young lady appeared from the outer hallway. I’m guessing she’d just taken a bathroom break. I showed her the flyer I was mailed. She looked at me very seriously and told me there was only one buyer and I might have to wait as long as an hour and a half or two hours to see him.

I thanked her and walked away. I think I know what was going on…do you?

Big glossy advertisement. GOLD BREAKS THE 4K MARK! WE BUY NO MATTER THE CONDITION! Yeah. Yeah. There’s the bait. Someone willing to sit and wait for up to two hours to have their stuff appraised is probably desperate enough to take whatever they’re offered.

Or they’re bringing them stolen goods, and maybe this is a sting of some sort.

I don’t know, and I don’t care. Even if I was desperate for money I wouldn’t touch something like this because I’m either likely to be cheated or investigated. So it’s all back in my safe, all but the two 24 carat gold rings I found with the letters LBC on them and the date 1913. Those are mysterious enough I might let the Historical Society look them over. Near as I can research it, the rings either indicate they belonged to a Women’s Co-ed branch of the Independent Order of Foresters, a Fraternal society popular across Pennsylvania in 1913, or the Lackawanna Business College of Scranton. I cannot pin down who in the family would have been associated with either but it would be interesting to know more.

Last night around 1:30am I got an alarm from my home security system. It was a water detector I’d placed next to the hot water tank. Given that unit was close to twenty years old, I pretty much knew what happened, I just hoped it wasn’t flooding the back of my basement.

I ran naked down two flights of stairs to the basement, and was relieved to see it was just a small stream of water coming from under the tank, not a torrent. I turned off the water to the tank, turned off the tank heater, mopped up the water on the floor with some bath towels I’d staged next to the washing machine for cleaning, went back upstairs, got dressed, then went back down for a closer look and ponder. I am about to retire (again) and I was hoping to save a few grand to help me bridge the gap between paychecks and 401k withdrawals. Now it was looking like I’d be spending a few grand on a new hot water tank instead.

I put a bucket under the draincock and opened it, figuring I should start draining the tank before the leak gets any worse. Hardly anything came out, probably because sediment and/or corrosion was clogging it. I never did any of the usual preventive maintenance on the tank, which mostly involves periodically draining the tank and letting it refill to prevent sediment buildup. My bad. So now it’s looking like it might take me all day to drain the tank. But a little online research and I got a tip to open some of the hot water spigots to allow air into the tank as it drained. In retrospect I should have figured, but it’s the middle of the night and my brain isn’t at full steam. So that improved the drainage but only barely.

I set a timer to periodically check on how the bucket was filling, went back upstairs to my den, started up one of my computers and went online to Blue Dot, the place that did my new central AC/furnace. They did a super job on the new unit and while they were here they offered to replace the hot water tank as well and give me a quote, which I passed up. I figured I’d ping them to do the job. I set up an appointment to have someone come out and give me an estimate. Then I began figuring out my new budget reality and how to work around not having hot water.

Luckily I’d already done a load of dishes and laundry. There’s a shower in one of our unisex bathrooms at work I can use if I have to, and a laundromat just down the street that I’ve used before when the washing machine that came with the house failed. Figured I could boil some water on the stove to do dishes; the first apartments I lived in had no dishwashers and when we moved into one that did I thought we’d hit the big time. And some things like my Disney mugs and classic Fiestaware aren’t dishwasher safe so I do those by hand anyway.

So I had a plan, went back to bed and tried to get some sleep. I had a presentation I had to make at work the next morning and having lost most my night’s sleep I wasn’t sure I could manage it. But I did, then went back home to wait for the guy who wasn’t from Blue Dot after all (they don’t do plumbing stuff it turns out) to come and give me an estimate, which I accepted. I’ll have (hopefully) a new hot water tank by this evening as I write this, and a few grand less in my savings. So it goes. Tell you how it went later.

This came across my Facebook feed the other day, from user Ty Garner…

If I could go back and tell my 12-year-old self one thing, it would be this:

Love is one of the strongest forces you’ll ever know. It will make you believe, endure, forgive, and wait longer than you should. But no matter how unstoppable your love feels, it can never carry the weight of two hearts alone.

The purest intentions, the deepest loyalty, and the kindest soul cannot make someone choose you. Love isn’t proven by how much you’re willing to suffer—it’s proven when two people keep choosing each other.

Never mistake the strength of your love for the promise of theirs.

Memo to my 12 year old self. Take this man’s advice. You’re a good kid, a beautiful kid. You deserve a boyfriend when you’re older, who will bring you coffee and road trips.

Also…you will need to learn to use a straightening iron…

This came across my Facebook stream yesterday. Another chapter in the old heartbreaking story of what bigotry has done to our lives…

Paul Bettany’s father came out at 63, fell in love with a man, and spent 20 happy years with him. Then his partner died – and what happened next is heartbreaking.

While most people know him as Vision, far fewer know about the story that shaped him. After his father Thane’s partner Andy Clark died in 2015, the elder Bettany – in his 80s and a lifelong Catholic – went back into the closet.

He told people it had all been “a big misunderstanding” because he was “concerned about getting past Peter through the pearly gates.”

Paul has spoken openly about how devastating that was to witness. “He was unable to mourn the person who I think was the love of his life,” he said.

It’s part of what drew Paul to star in “Uncle Frank”, playing a closeted gay professor – his very first film role had been in an adaptation of the gay play “Bent”.

“I want everybody to just live authentically as the person they are,” Paul has said. “However hard that is, it’s absolutely better than pretending to be something other than you are.”

I have witnessed people my age and younger going back into the closet after a period of outedness rather than stand up to the pressures of family, religion or career. I’ve stood up to those same pressures and I know it can be frightening and painful, but the alternative is, as C.S. Lewis said in a different context, damnation.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.” -C. S. Lewis, “The Four Loves”.