I Can See Clearly NowPart 1Today
Do you believe in love at first sight? A friend of mine thinks it’s a matter of pheromones, so perhaps it’s love at first smell. In my family, we have the story, handed down through three generations, of Great-grandmother Mary and her husband, Michael. Michael, a friend of her father’s, was to be the newborn baby’s godfather, but when he laid eyes upon her he said he could not be HER godparent; it would interfere with his plans to marry her. Maybe it was the baby smell. At the age of sixteen she was wed to him, and they lived in love until he died thirty years later. Improbable but all the evidence suggests it is true. She has no godfather on her baptismal certificate, and told the story herself before she died. Well, love at first sight, or scent, or - whatever - I believe. I do. It happened to me. There is a special quality to an April night at the northern end of the Sonoran desert. In May days will reach 100 degrees in the shade, by June it will be scorching hot, the plants will whither, shrink into themselves, the chaparral begin its slow fade to straw color. But in this brief April interlude the land is lush and balmy. The recently departed winter rains and sunny days force the desert into a green explosion, wildflowers, Palo Verde trees swarming in yellow blossoms; Mesquites in white; even the cacti bloom. The clear dry desert air has its light, subtle scents; and day gives way to a stunning arch of stars over the silent land. You can just lose yourself in them, in the desert. This beautiful interlude, desert spring, passing as it does with the rush of youth, into harsh adulthood, for me has the scent of romance, the aroma of young love. I often travel there just at this time of year. It is a place of peace. 1968
J ust before midnight the sliver of a moon is up, barely enough to throw shadows from the Saguaros and creosote bushes but not to illuminate the ground.I was 19. I was lost in the desert. Though I graduated high school with honors and several scholarships, I had dropped out of college, not sure what I wanted to do, what I could do. I knew I should have stayed. I couldn’t. Vietnam raged. John sat behind the wheel of his ‘50 Merc at the drive-in. Boy Scout, straight-arrow, drum major, Honor Society, handsome, serious, friendly John. We had run into each other by chance, set out for a night together with a mutual desperation we never recognized. We sat and slowly got wasted on rum and snack bar cokes as he railed at the war - a displaced anger. I could not understand his rage, his pain. I did not know what to say. A week later I woke, the curtains billowing a little in the early morning breeze. It was six a.m. I always had a radio playing by my bed, so I heard it in bed. Top of the hour, top of the news. He parked in the desert and ran a hose from the exhaust through a side window. Later, much later, I found out he was gay. Later, I understood all too well about John. It was not a good time to be gay. Stonewall was soon to be history, but we didn’t know about it, couldn’t foresee it in our town, and if we had we’d have laughed. What would a bunch of New York drag queens have to do with us? And even if I secretly knew I was gay, I could not relate. You’d have to admit you were sick, crazy, immoral. Pervert. For what? Liberation? What kind of liberation could that be? I needed to come out but was not at all ready to bear those costs, to face that part of me that I had so long feared and detested. I had fallen hard in love, with an eighteen-year-old, an artist, a gymnast, irredeemably straight. He was beautiful and treated me well even after I confessed my disgusting secret to him, and I could not have him. The pain was fresh. He would be my friend but my heart ached for more. I had been in band with Cary for a year, until I graduated. He was only sixteen, tall, fair-haired and blue eyed with a constant mischievous grin. My attraction to his so fine, round butt, androgynous lips and long eyelashes was effectively and carefully concealed. I had gotten drunk with him quite a few times and knew he often had beer or liquor. His Hispanic friend, Juan looked much older than 16 and could buy beer at a bodega where they thought he was 21 and "undocumented" - in those days we actually called them wetbacks - and didn’t ask him for ID. Dan, a close friend had just finished Marine Corps Boot Camp, and was passing through town on the way to a brief leave at his parents’ home in another state. We had gone to high school together for a while and then he moved away but we stayed in touch. He had only the one evening, he had to catch an early plane, and being nineteen and invulnerable and reckless we planned to stay up all night, and were looking for some fun. I borrowed my mother’s car. No matter how terrible the rest of my world, turbulent outside, whirligig inside, the desert promised respite. You could lose yourself, you could pretend to believe in the calm, the quiet illusion. Yet the desert teems with its night creatures. We drive through the winding streets of a little subdivision on the edge of the desert, on the edge of the city. Coming around bends, my headlights sweep across jackrabbits, feasting on the lush lawns of those who can afford to squander the water, rushing into startled motion. I don’t notice red flashes, eyes of coyotes. But I know they are there. Both inch cautiously into human land; moving in silence and tense anticipation. They will depart only with the dawn. Lives will change this night, as they do every night. But it isn’t always so swift, so final. Sometimes the dance is slow. Sometimes you can’t tell predator from prey. Two of the desert’s creatures are about to meet. Will either survive the encounter?
Of course, it was too late to come calling. We stepped quietly through the front yard, skirting a barrel cactus, our shoes softly crunching dry, hard packed sandy earth topped with a thin layer of pea gravel. The house itself was common for newer subdivisions, white painted concrete block, one story, flat roofed with green trim on the wood fascia. Middle class, middle quality, Middling. In me anticipation growing, amorphous, sourceless, mistaken perhaps for the excitement of Dan’s visit, the anticipated buzz of the beer, or the pleasant sight of Cary ’s fine body. Or maybe I could smell something. The front of the house was in moon shadow, afforded cover from even that slight illumination. Reflected moonlight offered just enough to ensure I had the right window. Ever so quietly, I tapped three times, pausing a moment and once, and once more. Curtains parted, Cary sleepy, puzzled, then recognition and ready grin. The aluminum frame window slides six inches to my right; we begin a short, soft exchange through the screen. A hasty introduction, the problem, and Cary explaining that he had nothing for us now, maybe tomorrow, perhaps we should go to Juan’s house. In the dark, even Cary’s face was mostly a blur, so I did not immediately realize who or what I saw when a head popped up, behind his right shoulder. The outline, smaller than Cary, younger, and sudden excitement flowed over me, not sexual, yet stunning, breath-taking, overwhelming. I suppose the air carried his scent to me, but I did not recognize that at the time. And as I spoke, so did the apparition, our words identical. "Who’s that!?" Cary didn’t notice, Dan didn’t notice. Though taken by surprise I kept the intensity from my voice. But the electricity in that exchange was mutual as we years later confirmed to each other. This was no casual query, the confusion of a twelve-year-old boy waking in the night to find his brother conversing with some stranger at the window. This was not ‘hey brother, who is knocking on the window,’ nor was it ‘hey buddy, who is that behind you.’ The need to know, the intensity was out of all proportion. WHO IS THAT!? We were smitten, those about us oblivious, but I knew, as surely as one can know, that we were destined to be more than passing images in a dim window. The awkward and wistful dance began, Cary did not make formal introductions, just said "It’s my brother." Within minutes we were gone, the beer foregone, our evening twisted in ways Dan was never to recognize. We did stay up all night, talking, catching up on lost years, sharing our journeys and confused directions. But I, I was holding in my feelings, a wall inside me that I dared not breach in the slightest. My life was already shattered, I held back the force of change by sheer will power. I put him out of mind. 1969I joined the Air Force, following my gymnast heartache on the buddy program, off to Texas, off to an extensive training program, then finally found myself assigned to my home town, the same base where my buddy’s father had been stationed. Close to Cary. Close to Mark. 1970
They had moved, closer in town, close to where I had lived, into an old brown stucco bungalow in a nicer neighborhood, the place a little run down, the boys’ bedroom in the old converted garage. By now he was fourteen, I was twenty. A car that lives its life in this desert has a distinctive, dried, scorched scent to it, no matter how much cleaning, polishing. Today when I visit I get into almost any car and that smell, the Arizona sun, brings back the oldies grinding out on the radio, transports me to that time.
I had my own time machine, a big cheap’61 Chevy Impala. Cary was a mechanic by inclination, and we indulged our mutual interest in cars, he taught me how to tune it up, set the points, change the oil, the plugs, install new brakes. We did this in Cary’s driveway. Mark’s driveway. I saw him several times every week, yet we rarely spoke, each engaged in our own part of this fear-filled desultory courtship dance. Fearful of discovery, fearful of rejection, fearful of our own, say it ever so softly, homosexuality. Mark was a shy, sweet child, product of a disturbed home. Mother was a mentally unbalanced harridan, and Mark often the target for her humiliation and disrespect. I later reflected that this might have to do with his being the only black-haired, black-eyed member of this blonde blue family. In fact, he bore no resemblance to anyone, surely not Cary, the older brother he adored. They could have passed for Germans, and his skin was dusky, almost olive. Adopted? Product of infidelity? I was not to know, and never dared ask. It would be hurtful to Mark to ask him, and pointless to ask anyone else. He had long since recoiled from the abuse, withdrawn inward, spirit trembling, light carefully guarded, his self-respect stolen. I understood all too well what that was about. And yet Cary and his two older sisters doted on him, protected him. Loved him. I was jealous. Of him, of them. His mother hated me, too. We had so much in common. Their room had its own door to the back yard, and so I could come in without having to use the front door and there was no more tapping on the windows. On several occasions when visiting Cary she would enter abruptly and sneer, "You need to get out of here." Cary’s father, a music teacher with a local school district, often apologized to me. He was unable to control his wife’s inappropriate and unmannerly behavior, she was several times hospitalized, I later discovered, in the psychiatric unit of the local hospital. I didn’t need the explanation. I grew up with a crazy mother. Crazy in a different way, she’d never have done that, but it was all the same, we had so much in common. It was doubtless part of the attraction. I figured I deserved her contempt as much as he did. Our casual disregard of each other was an elaborate show, we were intensely aware of each other any time we were in the house together. His face brightened every time he saw me, though we hardly spoke, though it took me years to realize that Mark felt as I did, and no one in Cary ’s family seemed to catch on. Well, we all were quite the experts at denial. One day Cary was passing Mark in a doorway as I trailed behind and was shocked to see him grabbing his brother’s crotch. Mark jumped in surprise and Cary laughed at that and at my shock, and made a comment that told me he often did that. Of course, he was just teasing the boy. Being a big brother. A few days later, as I walked past Mark, I did the same. I was not being brotherly at all. Though I was living in the barracks, I was usually working swings or rotating shifts. When I had a weekday afternoon off, perhaps once each week, I would park a few blocks from the high school on a side street along his route home. I would see him walking by; I would honk my horn and drive up to him. He got to expect me, yet the first time, and every time, he would break into a shy grin, look down and avoid my gaze. The first few times we just talked a few minutes then I drove him home. I’d let him off at the end of the alley that ran behind his house. Neither of us wanted his family to know what was happening. Good instincts. Later on, we would get a burger, check out the doings at the University, play pool at a bowling alley nearby. The pool hall was mostly empty at that time of day. I would goose him when he didn’t expect it, making it a joke, his brother sometimes present. Then I did it when we were playing pool, pretending it was to distract him, to keep him from making his shot. Though he made a show of protest, he would always expose himself to it in predictable ways, so that in time we both knew exactly when I would touch him. He would grab back. And he would be excited and I was, always pretending it was the same game. And both of us knew we meant - it meant - more.We spent time together, drinking each other in, being in each other’s presence. Being together. Being alone together. Surprising each other by wanting to be together. Surprising ourselves at how good it felt, how safe. We were not worthy. Our play could go no further. We were very immature, we were too shy, unready to take a step. We were both children. 1971
I was promoted. Being stationed in my hometown, and barracks space in short supply, I finally had permission to move off base and collect housing allowance, something usually available only to married men. Military pay was very low, I think I made $155 monthly before taxes, so it was impossible to do without the housing allowance. I was put on permanent day shifts; no more afternoon visits with the boy. And I found my humble first home, an 8 x 38 trailer parked aside a grassy lawn, with a washing machine in the outbuilding next door. The bedroom was hardly bigger than the bed with a sliding door to the bathroom, a shower and toilet but no bath, no sink; from the bath another sliding door to the kitchenette and next to it a sofa that comprised the entire living room. This $85/month gem was behind a complex of small apartments in a not too great part of town, a long ride to work each morning, but only a few miles to Mark. The first weekend there, Cary came by and brought Mark with him. And Mark was now 15, and had his learner’s permit. Most weekends I would rent a TV and watch football games. Back then you went to the local convenience store and rented TV’s for a few days to a month if you couldn’t afford to own one. Cary or another friend would come over to have drinks (well, I was 21 now) and watch a game. Once he brought Mark and we both got him drunk. When Cary was in the bathroom, the sliding door pulled shut I began to touch him. An evening, in August, Mark turned 16 that day. I was at Cary ’s house, hanging out in their bedroom, when Cary went outside to help his father. Mark came over and began to grab me, and I warned him I’d get hard if he kept it up. Of course I was already hard, but he just said "is that all" I said "keep it up and you’ll see" and he did keep it up, then I grabbed him and we were both stroking each other and saying "is that it? Is that all?" just to justify the activity. Monday night around 8 p.m. there was knock on my door. It was, of course, Mark. He had his driver’s license. I suppose he wanted his birthday present. 1971
I was really, in my heart, a virgin. I had never had sex with someone, never had an experience where I didn’t feel furtive and fleeting and dirty. Never been given an orgasm by another person. Never been intimate with someone, never mind the acts. Never felt this way. I had a number of fearful, tentative, painful sexual contacts in my short life. I had sucked perhaps a half dozen cocks, the first when I was just eleven but never permitted anyone to climax. I had been the victim of an abusive and unwelcome sexual relationship that ended in an aborted rape by an older boy when I was thirteen. It left its severe impression on me, no doubt accounted for much of my guilt and self-loathing. Another boy had angrily rejected my advances, calling me a "goddam queer." A few years later he came looking for it and it was most satisfying to reject him in turn. And I was determined that I was never going to press myself on someone. I don’t think I even imagined the possibility of mutual attraction. Some of you will understand immediately and some will never grasp the kind of terrified, abused children, age notwithstanding, that we were. Our dance was slapstick, our play a farce. Each acting the only role we could find, denying ourselves, denying the nature of the desires within, the reality of our actions. We had so much in common. We didn’t want anything to happen, didn’t want to do anything dirty, wrong, scary. Painful. Didn’t want to hurt each other. Didn’t want to be intimate, most of all. We had both learned never to let our guard down, for to do so was to expose ourselves to our crazy relatives. We were both so vulnerable, two rabbits in the desert, expecting everywhere the coyote. Still, we wanted something to happen. Neither of us knew what it was that we wanted, and yet like heat-seeking missiles we aimed unerringly for a hot target. And found it. But we had to learn to trust each other and that wasn’t to be rushed. The very first day he could, Mark came to see me alone, at my place. Put it that way, it seems clear what he wanted, doesn’t it? But all I could think was "He’s here, I’m so happy." I felt so unworthy, of even his attention, that I was actually surprised when he sought me out, I thought it would always be the other way around. I really could not conceive that he wanted me. There was a time when I could tell you day by day what transpired between the two of us. Each day for weeks was a new step toward a goal that, in hindsight was so obvious, yet while ongoing, a mystery to us both. I could have told every move in exquisite detail. But it’s gone now, this is the best I can do. That first day he took me for a drive, then we had some drinks. I was big into Vodka Collins and Screwdrivers in those days, easy to drink. I had become, courtesy of the Air Force, an enthusiastic drinker, though I had gotten past the part where I had blackouts and moderated a bit. No this part of the story is not about a problem with alcohol, the twelve-step will not be our dance. It’s about Alcohol as Baptism. Alcohol as Confirmation. Alcohol as Holy Communion. Alcohol as Absolution. Alcohol as Lubrication. KY taken internally, so to speak. Alcohol as Denial. A while later we started to smoke pot instead (too), but for such a time neither could face our relationship, our feelings, and so we abused these sacraments to permit us to hide not from each other, but ourselves. Precisely. So we were baptized; confirmed; we communed, we were absolved; Mark needed the stuff much more than I, and for much longer. I am sure it was that he had more guilt than even I did. But I didn’t understand. Didn’t know how desperately afraid and lonely and unhappy he was. Just like me. We had smelled each other out, we knew without being conscious about the quality of this match, and it was unerring. So that night Mark got a little in him, not much just enough to loosen the inhibitions that were already thin, and we touched. He began working on his denial strategy by hitting my hand to make me take it away, knowing I would return it at the first opportunity. And for many days we labored over that pattern, crafted it, honed it. I would make the moves, he would rebuff them, knowing that I would come back to it as soon as his attention wandered, and he would let it stay then pretend to notice it, and make me take it away. But oh so slowly it stayed there, longer and longer, less and less objection. And when he did it to me, I had to do the same to make him feel comfortable that it was not something I really wanted him to do, that it was his teasing me, not something he wanted to really do. He came by every day after, without exception, every evening just after suppertime. We wanted the nights to be longer, so we devised a new routine. After a time at my place, we would both drive our cars over to his house, I’d wait at the end of the alley, he’d come out in ten or twenty minutes. At the end of the evening I’d drive him home, my hand in his lap. I got good at driving one handed. For some reason he never complained when I touched him in the car. Even before the pajamas. One evening he came over a second time, in his pajamas, and wanted me to take him to McDonald’s but this was before the days of the drive through window, so I had to go in and buy the food for him. While he sat in the car eating, he was unable to defend himself, so I had my hand on him all that time. Inside the fly of his soft flannel bottoms. My heart was like a trip hammer at the boldness. He pretended not to notice. Back at the ranch, several times each evening he would bend over the stove to light a cigarette from the burner; one hand resting on the tacky Formica countertop. I would jab my fingers into his rear, forcing the cloth of his pants and shorts inward, making him jump. He always knew it was going to happen. It was a rule that he had to pretend not to expect it, to allow me my opportunity. It would turn into an excuse to grapple together, he being disadvantaged by the lighted fag. How’s that for a pun. I would reach around to grab his front, then we would be on the tiny, crowded floor, wrestling and laughing and he’d look shyly, out the corner of his eyes, black orbs flashing boyish delight, then away in fear, then back again. And we had to look for that damn cigarette before something got burned. Eventually he complained that I was leaving dirty marks on his pants, often white jeans, and his mom was going to notice. Marks on his cock, marks up his ass. I solved the problem by opening his fly, and grabbing all evening through his jockeys. He protested the inequality of the situation and so I opened my fly too. He protested again, but I reminded him of the night of the pajamas, and though he pretended he had not known my hand was inside his pants then, he took it as validation for the acts when I insisted it was NOT new, we had a precedent. That was important you see, if we had done it before it was not new and if it was not new it was OK. Crazy, insane, ridiculous you think. Yes. Exactly. All of that. That was Mark, that was me. Crazy, insane, ridiculous. You do what you can, we were survivors.
There we stalled for days, because I knew by then it was my role in the relationship to move things forward, I was the designated coyote, but couldn’t figure out a way to get into his shorts. You understand? I couldn’t just reach in, too queer, too direct, too threatening. Too crazy. Too real. I puzzled for days then came up with the solution, but had to be very drunk before it occurred to me. It was a weekend, I’m sure of that, because we couldn’t get too drunk during the week - he had to go home and I had to drive him. Weekdays I had to get up to go to work the next day. So it was a weekend, probably Friday night. That night we were both very drunk, when I suddenly suggested we take off our pants, get naked and run outside on the lawn. "If you take off your pants and run outside, so will I." Not as risky as might be; the lawn was at least forty feet wide, sloping down from the quiet side street, nearly five feet lower in elevation, to my trailer. No apartment or house had a primary window that faced it, and it was an unlighted area at night. I looked out, shades were drawn. There was no moon. Still, I shiver when I think of how dangerous that was. One of the blessings of youth is ignorance. Stupid it was, horribly crazy for an adult a member of the Armed Forces, with a boy. Wisdom isn’t a strength for twenty-somethings; we were both about twelve in our heads. His response was "Take off your pants." So I did, first turning off the lights, then I took them off completely, standing before him wearing only my T-shirt, my erection inches from his face as he sat on the couch, in the faint light. My first exposure. To my surprise, he was very interested, looking closely. Clueless, I was. I thought this was all me; I was the evil homo, seducing the innocent boy. The innocent boy who couldn’t look away. He was getting at what he wanted, in the way he wanted. I understood instinctively, my mother was a masterful manipulator as was his, it was part of our compatibility, I knew all about getting what you want without asking, without being responsible, without taking risk. Our nonverbal communication skills were excellent. We’ll be ok, just as long as we don’t say it. He knew the dance. So he did the same and we opened the door and he ran out first, I was close behind, both of us in only our shirts. tryin’ to get away, into the night
Perhaps there was a car coming, and I had to get us out of sight. Or perhaps, I was just anxious to get my hands on him. I tackled him. And I ended up with my face in that long, long black hair, it flowed down to his shoulders and then further down his back, my hardness against his smooth skin, his clean scent filling me, making me dizzy (or was that the vodka?). My hand fumbling for him. The smell of the winter rye grass. It was October; a chill was in the air. He lay motionless, unresisting, allowing me to touch him, my arms around him. And there was no sound. A moment of silent safety. A trip hammer again in my chest. We walked up into the dark trailer, closed the door, sat down and turned on the lights. We never put our pants back on until he had to leave. And every evening after, we got naked in the same way, but much earlier in the evening, and I would hold and stroke him, and he would touch me. On the way home, I’d open his fly and reach inside his shorts. For Junior. He never spoke of it as his own cock, just as Junior. Mark never did anything. Junior did it. And then the moon was up and we ran anyway, fearless, foolish, giggling, daring the world to watch our dance and terrified that it would. About a year earlier his brother Cary had showed us something he thought quite funny. He showed how two guys can pretend to kiss, one simply places his thumb over the other’s mouth and kisses the thumb. Seen from the correct side you can’t see the hand; it looks very convincing, and in 1970, it was very shocking. Mark thought it funny too, and I had grabbed him once and done it, a secret, hot, flash passing between us both as we enacted the gag. A little too close to the Mark, so to speak, and we stopped.So I did it to Junior. One night I did it with the motor running, foot on the brakes, at the base of his alley, bent over him in the dark. "Junior needs a kiss," I would declare, and he would giggle and cover his eyes in embarrassment, and I would bend over and place my thumb and kiss while he peeked around his fingers. Then one day of course, I forgot the thumb. He giggled that time too, pretending that I had not done what I had so very definitely done. And then I did it in the trailer. The first few times I tried, he’d pull on my head to get me off. Too queer, too real, too much responsibility to just let me. He wanted me to, just didn’t want to seem to want me to. Once I tried while he was lighting the cigarette at the stove. And then one day I just waited him out and he stopped tugging. Not the first time, but even so it WAS my first. It was the first time I had ever done this with the intention of making someone orgasm. It was the queerest thing I had ever done, and I just didn’t care. "He’s gonna," he warned. I had thought about this a lot. I mumbled, "I don’t care." But I did care. I cared that he would care enough to tell me; and he was as I was, sweet and anxious to hurt no one, to do nothing that would offend. His warning a signpost to trust. And so he did and Junior did and I did. Then there we were, we were past another step. Another precedent set. He grinned, avoiding my eye, embarrassed, pleased. I sat next to him, and asked him if he would do something for me, and he nodded, to my amazement and delight and I asked him to use his hand, which he did, and to no one’s surprise it didn’t take long at all. The next evening he was late and I was in a near panic. I thought he would hate me for being queer, I thought I might never see him again. Such was my lunacy. 1971 - Busted
And our little dance went on day after day, or rather evening after evening in that tiny trailer. But I was able to divorce it, to compartmentalize it, to pretend it didn’t exist except when he was there. So his brother continued to visit, I even went over to their house to visit, giving no clue to the whirlwind churning my soul. We kept our little secret very secret. Cary had a problem. He was 19, working some part time jobs, but his girlfriend was pregnant. Now in 1971 this was not uncommon, but it was not as common as it is these days. This was before Roe v. Wade, so abortion was not an option to even consider, and his parents had married at 19 so he decided to take the plunge. This had some impacts on us, because he and his girl would move into the room he shared with Mark, and Mark would move to another room and have no door to the outside. I don’t know how he managed to get in and out. It also meant that Cary came to visit with his girlfriend, and that trailer was getting damned crowded. And I was doing very well in the military, with my Top Secret work, and ignoring the little obstacle of a homosexual love affair with a minor boy, I decided to take an early reenlistment. It meant recognition, and substantially more money, a large bonus and more than doubling my pay as my career field was in great shortage and there were added monthly payments for those who reenlisted. This enabled me to get a real apartment, one with a pool outside the door, which meant no more dancing in the moonlight for Mark and I, and also meant that a group of coworkers would stop by many Saturdays. Now that was interesting, I noted it first at the trailer, that if Mark was there and someone stopped by, anyone at all, he would flee the scene. It happened a few times, fortunately we had not gotten down to business, a friend would knock, I’d answer and he would be out the door with a "bye," out the door like a frightened rabbit, so quick I could not have stopped him. I had a cover story, he was my cousin, his dad was my uncle; since everyone knew I was from that town it worked. One or two friends from town knew Cary, and to them he was "Cary’s brother". No one thought it was a problem, only that he was a weird kid. I told them he was extremely shy and uncomfortable around strangers. Duh. But at our new place, Cary and his girl came by often to visit, unpredictably, and it was no time before there was a problem. A big one. One night Mark showed up and we had not begun anything except talking a little, when there was a knock on the door, and to my amazement Mark flew out of the room into the bedroom closet. I was puzzled and opened the door to find Cary and his girl there, I later realized looking puzzled themselves. They came in, and sat down, I made an excuse to go to the bathroom and opened the closet door, telling him to come out, it was his brother. He refused, and I could not figure what to do. So after a few moments I told the visitors that I had to leave, to see my family, and we all left. As I drove out of the complex, I saw Mark’s car parked right next to the entry, and realized they had to have known he was there all along. I drove aimlessly for ten minutes then returned, and told him to go home. When he went out to get his car, it was gone. I took him home, and he did not come back the next day. One day later he showed up, having decided the other shoe was never going to drop. Cary or his girl had driven Mark’s car home, but said nothing to him when he arrived. We left our clothes on the living room floor and went into the bedroom. We had concluded, and he went to get dressed, then out to his car for more cigarettes, then returned to sit on the bed in the darkened bedroom. It turned out to be a stroke of good luck, the only one I was to have that evening, that he was fully dressed at that moment. He was smoking a cigarette and we were talking a little when I heard the door open. I had told him a dozen times to always lock the door. He never paid attention. Someone was in the living room. . In a moment his father’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. "You’d better put on some clothes. Mark, come out here." He had to call Mark three times before he would move. He actually started toward the closet before he finally went to the living room. How’s that for symbolism? It was my nightmare come true, of course, I later learned Cary had come over and driven Mark’s car back already. I offer to you that no matter how screwed up I was, there is this in my favor: I wanted to protect Mark. And decided on a preemptive strike. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" I asked as I entered the living room. "Yes. Mark, go out and wait in my car." "Please don’t blame Mark. It’s not his fault. It’s my fault. It’s all my doing." "What do you mean?" I was surprised that he was taking this so politely. There was little sense of anger and no feeling of violence. "This is the first time anything has ever happened like this, and it’s my fault. I’m homosexual, not Mark." "Well, why does he come over then?" "Just to visit, he likes me, we talk, that’s all." It was what he wanted to believe. "Thank you for telling me. I have to think about what to do about this." That night, wrapped in a blanket, shivering, I did not sleep. I spent the next three days in total panic. I figured I would never see him again, I was certain I would be reported to my commander and be court-martialed. His dad turned out to be a pretty nice man, after all. On the third day he dropped off a letter for me. It told me that he had been very concerned about Mark’s drinking, school, and about homosexuality. He said that he would say nothing but I was never to see Mark again, and if he ever found us together, in my apartment or car or anywhere else, he would blow the whistle.
I burned the letter.I had returned to working shifts, and was home the afternoon he came by again. He knocked on the door as if nothing had happened. I wouldn’t let him in. He wouldn’t leave. I went outside and stood on the porch, mindful of his father’s letter. He answered my questions. I asked, of course, what his father had said to him. "On the way home he just said ‘He leveled with me’ and he never said anything else." But he too knew how to lie, and it was two years before I heard the whole story. I told him he was not supposed to come over, that I would not let him in. I sent him away. As proud as I am of protecting Mark, I am just as embarrassed to say that at that point I was ready to give him up completely. The only justification I can offer is that I had not yet had time to understand the magnitude of the loss. No matter, irrelevant. I had not counted on Mark having his say. For the next five days he sat on my porch every afternoon. All afternoon. He sat guileless, as I crouched inside, wishing him gone, praying he would stay. He sat, waiting patiently for me to give in. On the fifth day I did. Love conquers all, doesn’t it?
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