I Can See Clearly Now - Part 21971
I have often wondered if that visit from his father had not occurred, what path our relationship would have taken; I am certain it would have been different.Clearly, even though Mark did a much better job of parking his car so that it would not be seen, we could not take the chance of resuming our previous pattern. We could no longer spend long hours together on weeknights, though we did see each other at least once or twice each week, it was only for an hour or so at the most. Daytime became our usual meeting, either afternoons when I did not work or, more often, weekends. The real impact was that we had to get to the sex a lot quicker and in that it surely slowed any development of the relationship beyond sexual. We could no longer chance visits to the bowling alley, nor see a movie, nor really go anywhere together in public. On the positive side, I think Mark came to trust me a lot more. My actions in protecting him had carried weight. And those five days on the porch, well, the effect there was beyond measure. Mark might deny their significance but I couldn’t. He didn’t do that, take those risks, just because it was fun or felt good. He was in love. And so, by extension of the most pure logic, was I. I was filled with love, I could not hold myself behind my walls in his presence, I was in love and I wanted to tell everyone, but I couldn’t even tell Mark, he wouldn’t hear of it. For a glorious year we pursued this love affair, never saying it, always knowing it. The sex grew more practiced, diverse, passionate, than ever; and to my amazement he never stopped smiling when he saw me, and never failed to return. Thus I remember the very moment I really came out, out for the first time; the first of an endless series of comings out; out in its real meaning. I don’t know the date, but it was in this year of love, on my couch one specific day at one specific moment. I was pleasing him, and was feeling pretty good, enjoying the sex, realizing that I had a real sex life in fact, and suddenly it came to me, a ray of sun making its way through the closed blinds by sheer brute force. This was no sin, no crime, no wrong, no perversion. I could not justify it or explain it, but I knew that this was love and it was all right, and so was I. I knew with a driving conviction that this love could never be a wrong thing. Could not be evil. Could not be dirty. For the moment I did not extend this revelation to all gay people, to homosexuality in general, to just any acts; it was reserved for the nonce to us, to our sweet dance. The rest might be perverts, probably were, but not us. Our love was pure. You might think it made things easier, but in the end it made the stresses of being in the closet ever more intolerable. I did not want to hide our love. The booze was out most of the time, too, though not if we really had an entire Saturday together. We began to play strip poker a lot, though to my frustration he almost always won. But I’ve always said it’s a game nobody loses. He brought the cards from his house. I kept that pack for twenty years. 1972
1971 passed, Nixon went to China, and the Air Force had new plans for me. I was going overseas for 18 months. I had been promoted again, and with the longer enlistment I was targeted for shipment to Turkey. Well, Vietnam had not ended when the orders came, and though it was not a plush assignment - I had hoped for Italy or England- it was not a bad one as such things went. But for another reason it was very sad indeed. Though I had ten months advance notice, it was still dreadful. We had a trial separation as I had to go to Washington, DC for training in advance of my assignment. The Watergate break-in went down not long before I left; I was gone for a month. McGovern was nominated while I was there. I was twenty-three. I had thought of letting him use the place, but figured that was a recipe for problems. And how much time could he have spent there without detection? So I let a high school friend use the apartment and when I returned he told me that Cary’s brother had come by several times. I guess he forgot, or maybe he wanted to see if I was really gone. Or just couldn’t stay away. As to the move, Mark said nothing, pretended he didn’t know, didn’t care that I was going. Why would it matter? There was nothing between us, we didn’t love each other, we didn’t have sex every time we laid eyes on each other. Nothing going on here. That made it so much more difficult for me, but what could I do? Marry him? Take him with me? Ask my command to cancel the assignment so I could stay with my teenaged boyfriend? On the other hand, moments were exquisite. I spent long hours softly memorizing his body by touch and taste, storing his scent and his face in my heart. He would still not let me kiss him, though. Just too queer. I marked him with hickeys that would have been a disaster had they been discovered. But then, I didn’t think anyone was looking in those places but me. Those coyotes seemed far away. He turned seventeen. Nixon was reelected by a landslide. The Chevy was gone, I had more money and figured a change of car would lead to fewer chances of getting caught anyway. I was due in Turkey two days before the New Year, 1973. I had to leave two weeks earlier to get cross-country, they were shipping my car from New York to Turkey, so I spent Christmas with a sister in Boston. He didn’t show up for the last week before I left, an unprecedented absence. I took it as his way of dealing with it, not wanting to say goodbye. I didn’t know when, if ever, I would see him again. It was a lonely Christmas. 1973 - Turkey
The thing about 1973 is how much my life paralleled Richard Nixon. The year started out OK, pretty good, but it sure went to hell pretty quickly. For him, it started out with his inauguration. A week later Vietnam effectively ended. After that . . . Well, I had one good spot at the very end of that year and he didn’t. As for me, I was stationed at Incirlik, a NATO base near Adana, a large city. The Mediterranean coast was just an hour away, beautiful wide white beaches with water so clear a boat might seemed to float on air. The coastal plain is hot and dry in summer, wet and mild in winter. I even saw cacti. The climate is very much like the desert I knew. Eating on the economy was very cheap, and the food universally delicious. Of course you had to get past the fact that you might not know what you were eating. But there is always adventure in travel. The Turks are very friendly people, very proud and most hospitable. I roomed in the barracks with a coworker I’d know in Arizona, and we had shared an apartment when we went to Washington, DC for our training. He had arrived a few months before me, and I quickly settled down. We had as friends another airman and his wife and daughter, and spent much of our free time in town, at their apartment. Weekends we would go out to dinner, or to the NCO club with them, perhaps play charades at their apartment. After just three months, my roommate and I were both sent for more training, this time to Italy, an Italian air base south of Rome. We spent eight weeks there, I graduated first in my class, lost some weight, visited Rome and Naples on the weekends. On the way back we could not find commercial transportation, the embassy almost had to book us to Istanbul on a cruise ship, getting onto Alitalia only at the last minute. We spent a week in Istanbul waiting for space on a flight back to Adana. That was a treat, we were in a luxury hotel. The Bazaar was a delight, exotic, curious. Dinner in the hotel nightclub, with belly dancers for entertainment, Filet Mignon and flaming baked Alaska cost $7. The third world has its advantages. But Adana presented its challenges. Boredom. And of course, this was Turkey, so there was the hashish. I mean that there was no grass, nothing milder, fortunately there was likewise little stronger, and nothing much to do. So we became, not unlike most of the others in our age group and place in life, rather frequent smokers of the very inexpensive and universally excellent hash. My roommate had not known I was smoking marijuana when we were in DC, but I eventually hinted around and he hinted around and we knew. And when I was stoned, I would often think of Mark. The hash was powerful; once or twice I could actually taste him. I had to keep in control, I surely did not share these fantasies with my companions. Spring came to an end; and the good part of ’73 was over. We couldn’t see it on TV, of course, but read about the Watergate Committee. I could tell you everything that happened, but it could only cause pain to others and I think it will be better to focus on consequences not causes. So let us say that drugs, alcohol, and a young man who too closely resembled my lost gymnast buddy led to some very disastrous consequences for me. Suspension of my security clearance, and from working. Being investigated, actually at one point tailed by a security agent. Isolation. Temptation to betray others. Hating myself. Feeling a fraud, a phony, a liar. Lying, especially painful, to people who cared about me and trusted me and tried to help me. Missing Mark, missing my cornerstone. There was a small refrigerator in my barracks room; I took to punching it as hard as I could, leaving many dents. It helped for a while, and did my hand no permanent damage. And one day I couldn’t take it any longer and I drove into the countryside, parked behind a windbreak of trees on a farm road, and ran a hose to my tailpipe. Hello, John. Once, much later, a therapist maintained this had not been a serious attempt, that people who were serious used guns. Lots of chances to stop yourself. I didn’t say anything. I had no weapons. I picked it because I knew it worked. How lethal can you get? A gaggle of Turkish children came by at an opportune or inopportune moment; a spell was broken. I gave them all my money, then found I could not, would not continue. The sun was hot. I drove to the base hospital. September 1973
Two months later, I was back in Arizona, an Honorable Discharge in my pocket, thanks to a very accommodating psychiatrist who hated the military, but I was in the midst of a severe and deep depression, which was to last another six months. I lived for a while with my brother. I had no job, but savings in the bank. No car - mine was not to arrive until Thanksgiving, in New Orleans. I spent $150 on a junker, slapped in a new battery and figured it would work for a few months and was cheaper than renting. No way to contact Mark. I had made the acquaintance of a couple college coeds when living in the apartment complex, really sweet girls who had proven to be a lot of fun, and knowing where they had moved, looked them up. Just to have someone to see, to get away from my moments of depression, which lasted about 18 hours every day. Then it occurred to me that if I couldn’t call his house, one of them could. I don’t know how I explained it, but she called, his mother answered, she asked for him, when he came on she handed the phone to me. "Mark, it’s Phil." "Phil? Phil WHO?" We met that night at the Big Boy restaurant, sat in the car and talked. I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. It was September, he was eighteen. "How old are you now?" "How old do you think I am?" "Old enough that your dad can’t put me in jail any more. And I’m not in the Air Force anymore." "Where did you go, your landlord said you went to Turkey." We tried finding a place to park, went to a dark place in a park, but he couldn’t when we did and finally I decided to get a hotel room. This turned out to be a good thing. For the very first time we slept the night together. It was a joyous reunion, though we had to interrupt it to make a drop off and pick up at his back alley. Then it was 5 a.m. His father was an early riser; I had to drop him at the alley again. After, I drove to the edge of the city. The desert was beautiful that morning. Not the green of spring, this was late September, but the monsoons and heat of summer were both past. I sat on the hood, cocooned for a few moments in peace and contentment and the remembered warmth of his sleeping body. I watched dawn light turn pink, sky turn blue, silver edging sparse clouds, until the sun finally rose above the mountains, shedding the cool of the night, wrapping me in silent warmth. I spent that entire day in a daze, I was in love; we were in love. Still in love. The coyotes were at bay. He told me that on the phone I sounded exactly like a friend of his, so I should just call and pretend to be him. For six weeks we met as often as I could afford to rent a room. We had more sex than we had ever had, cuddled, touched, spoke softly to each other, slept. Peaceful, secure, safe. These moments were the few when my depression didn’t overwhelm me, when I didn’t feel suicidal again. It was only when I could smell him, feel his warmth next to me, that I felt real, whole. I had come by this time to understand some of Mark’s problems with all this. He loved his family and his mother as much as I hated mine. Whereas I wanted nothing more than to be apart from mine, he could not imagine being parted from his. He loved me too, but he feared he might have to choose. And a terrible choice, one he could not make. He wanted to keep our relationship going, just as it was, safe, secret. He wanted me to be in his closet with him - no, he wanted to be in my closet with me. But I was shedding that aspect of myself, not so much just yet, but soon it was to happen. The next problem came when I found a job. 1973 OctoberT he Saturday Night Massacre I remember well, it had dual significance for me. While we didn’t know it at the time, it meant the eventual downfall of Nixon, of whom I was no fan at all. No more was Mark, one of those things we had in common. My family was inveterate New Deal New Frontier Democrat. One of the few things we really had to talk about was politics, in which he was naive but liberal. And it was still the Sixties in a way. His brother once said he’d rather be dead than own a Cadillac.The other significance was that I left the next morning on a flight for Washington DC. Mark didn’t say goodbye. My new job was in the suburbs, and I was there for three or four months of intensive training and then reassignment; where we didn’t know. I lived in a townhouse with three other trainees. In my memory I break my days there into three parts. Work time which was tolerable; I was receiving some very good training and was always an extremely good student, eventually recognized as the class leader. I was able to function during the days. Roomie time, which was sometimes pretty good, I met new music, got along with most of my roomies, watched TV, went to restaurants, had my first Chinese food. Taught my boss to inhale an experience that led me to believe Clinton years later. Took my first hits of acid, peyote, reds, hash oil J’s. This is not something, by the way, that a severely depressed individual should be doing, the trips were bad, almost disasters. I was not always able to function in roomie time, but I was able to hide it. Depression time when we went to bed, when I was alone, when they weren’t looking. I woke up at 4 or 5 every morning, common of depression. They had no idea how depressed I was. I had hooked up with Audrey, a psychologist at the local hospital, and she helped me make it through the nights. Once I slept on the floor of her apartment. One weekend she made me go into the hospital, she was afraid I was going to run my car into a bridge abutment. She saved my life. And helped me hide my desperate circumstances from my employer. At that time the only hope I had in life was my job, she understood. I had my housemates pick me up at the hospital Sunday night but couldn’t let them see me in the psych unit, so I signed out against medical advice, went downstairs, waited in the lobby, told them I had been hospitalized for ulcers. Their shock at my haggard appearance was obvious; they believed it. And through all this were phone calls to Mark. I couldn’t have a real conversation, talk to him at home, just make a contact if necessary, but we had set up some plans before I left. I got a post office box for him, and the number of a phone booth a few blocks from his house. It’s not there any more. We set it up for me to call at a certain time on certain days, and usually that worked; if not I’d call at home to set up the next time. All through those days I spoke to him two or three times a week just to hear his voice, let him know without saying it that I loved him. Without saying it because the calls were made from the kitchen of the townhouse. There was so little that I could say. But we still talked for hours. Well, too, he didn’t want me to say it. It was true and we both knew it, but he didn’t want it said. I started to send him some money now and then, not much ten or twenty dollars, to be sure he had money for phone calls, or whatever. I was well paid and didn’t mind, but he finally told me to stop. I had known people who used me for money, took advantage of my generosity. Mark and I would not do that to each other. He didn’t want this to be about me paying him for anything. Of course he didn’t say that. We had so much in common. At Thanksgiving I flew to New Orleans, picked up my car, drove up to Washington. It took most of the weekend; it kept me busy. I didn’t miss my family; I missed Mark. When I got back to DC, before my roomies returned I opened the trunk, pulled out the hose and cut it into small pieces. Christmas 1973
Toward the north end of the beltway, in Silver Spring, near the University of Maryland campus was a head shop. I suppose it’s long gone, strip-malled away, supplanted by a Spencer’s or a Subway. It was distinctive for several things, one being a large, old-fashioned cash register that was actually functional though coated with the remains of hundreds of melted candles of all colors. I would buy blacklights, posters, incense, pipes. The incense memorable because the shop reeked of it; it burned constantly, the pungent sweetness permeated everything. I loved going into that store, it was so very real, it had such a sense of place, and the heady odor was the best part. I’ve probably been in fifty head shops since but never another that I remember with affection. They also had a selection of T-shirts, and I bought one for Mark. Nothing spectacular, it was gray, had a stylized silk-screen of a rather well built shirtless man seated on a throne, but his head was an eagle’s or bird’s. It had something of an Aztec look to it. I don’t know why, I just thought he would like it. What I liked most about it was that the shirt held the scent of that shop, of all that incense, I hoped it would last until he got it. I suppose I felt like I was sharing my experience of this place with him. I wrapped it up as a Christmas present in a box with silver foil wrapping and a gold string. I had not gotten him presents before because there was no way to explain them, but I figured "who’d notice a T-shirt?" And he didn’t have to wear it if it was a problem. They shut down training for a week at Christmas. A snowstorm hit the Washington area. We barely got to the airport for the snow, but the ride back to Arizona was fine and I was in a great mood for once. I had thought ahead, and made reservations at a hotel for five days, the rates are very low during Christmas week. While I was staying at my brother’s I expected to spend my nights with Mark. It was the 23rd as I recall, when I arrived, and that afternoon I met up with him at the alley, and then drove over to the hotel. We had a view of the central patio and the pool, fairly plush furnishings. It was much nicer than the places we had been using before. We had a drink, I think it was Seven and Seven, but just one. I was bursting with joy at the sight of him, and I could tell he was happy too, though he didn’t admit it. He was all smiles and grins and shy looks away at his feet. So, even though I had thought I would wait, I pulled out the gift package and gave it to him. "I don’t want anything." He was such a strange kid, it was like giving something to a nine-year old, he couldn’t wait to open it, and yet as he tore the paper, "I don’t want anything." When he saw the shirt, he continued in the same way, telling me it was OK, but it really wasn’t something he’d ever wear. "You don’t really know me, you know, you don’t know what I like. This is nothing like what I like, I don’t wear stuff like this at all. I wouldn’t ever wear this." He clutched it tightly. "That’s OK, you don’t have to wear it, I just thought you might like it." I was not that disappointed; my expectations were not high. "But smell it." I told him about the head shop. He gave me a look and held the material to his nose, and he didn’t say anything but the shirt still held that scent; and he smiled at it. And he continued to deprecate the gift; at the same time he was taking off his shirt and putting this one on without ever acknowledging his behavior. I was nonplussed by this dissonance between word and action; but in retrospect it was often his pattern, just like hitting my hand to make me take it away when he knew I would bring it back. Wanted it back.
We had been sitting at the edge of the bed, and once he had the shirt on, he immediately laid back on the bed next to me, and started touching my arm with his, not using his hand, just lightly contacting me. I took this for a signal. When I had him undressed, all but the shirt, he stopped me from taking it off. Didn’t say anything, just moved so I couldn’t get it off. It was quick and intense for him, it had been two months after all. I was not in a hurry to have my own pleasure, and he was now completely relaxed anyway. I undressed and pulled the covers over us, with my arms around him, his back to me, spooning comfortably. We lay there for a bit, not talking, just being together. The scent of the shirt commingled with his, mine, held us gently. He commenced a nonverbal discourse with me. When this thing happened, as it had before, the communication was very intense; we engaged at a deep level. It looked to me then - and still does - like nothing more or less than mind reading, telepathy. He was talking to me without words, motion, actions. Then he rolled over onto his stomach, something quite unusual. And I thought for a moment and as I did his legs imperceptibly parted, and he spoke and I knew then. He whispered so quietly I could barely hear him, "I didn’t get you anything." I had no lube, no condom (well, this was pre-AIDS; we were virgins), and most of all, no experience of intercourse except pain. I had only saliva and gentleness. But there was only pleasure and it was very much mutual. We spent nearly three hours at it playing, experimenting with our Christmas toy. I marveled his obvious feelings, and sought to please him ever more. He was almost paralyzed with his own enjoyment, he wouldn’t verbalize it but there was no doubt. That day, for the first time we made love instead of just loving each other. I had reached the core of him. Finally. I’ve never had another experience quite so wonderful, a partner more appreciative, an encounter more tender. When we finally stopped he sighed his contentment as I held him, savoring this wordless Christmas present he gave us. He wore the shirt home. I left on December 29th. My New Year’s/going away present was our first kiss. 1974 - January
On my trip up from New Orleans, I had picked up a huge box of fireworks in South Carolina, and we had a New Years’ Party. The police were very entertained by the display, the Roman Candles were particularly spectacular. And then it was 1974. Training was coming to a close and we were advised of the postings available to us. A Time Magazine editorial called for Nixon’s resignation. This was the time when I caused him the most pain, I hope the only pain, in our relationship. I plead ongoing youth, ignorance, insensitivity, but not intention. I don’t know what I would have done had I really understood, but I did not understand and I did what I did. Only two postings made any sense, Los Angeles, because it was close, and Baton Rouge, LA. The latter would have been a really poor choice, but it had one thing going for it. Mark had been born there. I spent a lot of time on the phone asking him where he wanted to go. Of course, I wanted him to come and live with me in a fairy tale world, in my closet with me, not knowing quite yet that I was going to close that closet. I was the one who didn’t want to see reality this time. He didn’t want to go anywhere. Maybe I did get it, but figured he’d change his mind. I don’t know anymore, I just knew that I expected to live my life with him, and he had to move, and I was sure he wanted that too. And even today I think it’s what he wanted, but I had really not understood the hold his family had on him. And I did not understand how unfair it was to face him with this choice, but I had my own issues, my depression, my blinders. The strain on him was intense, but I never saw it, I just saw the results. He was telling me to pick wherever I wanted to go, told me not to take Louisiana. He never said, "I’m not going." He didn’t want to hurt me either. And of course if he came to live with me, there would be no hiding THAT from his family, there was no chance he would keep this from them. He was not the kind of kid who could even take off for a weekend and go to another city, it was just too out of character for him. And so February came and I had chosen Los Angeles and prepared for the cross-country drive, first to Arizona to clear up unfinished business and get my property, then on to Los Angeles. I can’t recall now how sure I was he would come with me. On the way, I picked up a hitchhiker. I was going up an on ramp at night, I had just had my final appointment with Audrey, we had focused on closure for a few sessions, and I was actually feeling better, stronger, than I had in a while. A blur to my right and it was a cold night, and it was the seventies, we didn’t know about serial killers yet. I stopped and picked up Paul, who was twenty and rather nice looking, and going nowhere in particular. And so I had a traveling companion, though he eventually turned out to be on the run from the law, wanted in Colorado for selling acid. Well, that wasn’t so bad, this was the seventies. Everybody was a drug dealer in those days. He was good company all across the nation, a much longer trip than anticipated because we hit bang into the oil embargo; he ended staying at my brother’s with me. He had jumped bail, and needed some respite, and then he took my urging, and turned himself in. He turned out to enjoy male companionship more than I had anticipated; I figured out the score, knew what was available, appreciated him. But I would not be unfaithful to Mark. His presence for that week in Arizona made it difficult to fully pursue things with Mark. Maybe my subconscious made me drag him there just to give me a diversion; maybe I knew where Mark was coming from. An evening came when I was with Mark, trying to figure out what we were going to do, dealing with his hurt feelings, he was hitting the sauce again because of the pressure I was putting on him. That particular evening he accused me of planning to tell his father about us so that he would be kicked out and have to come with me. A year or two earlier, who knows, he might have been right. But loving him had changed me, I was better than that. I knew myself better. I could not hurt him. In fact, the thought had flitted across my mind, once, and been instantly dismissed. I would not entertain such a thought and I told him so. Lying with his back to me, drunk, crying, his voice breaking with pain he at long last told me what happened after his father found us together that night two years earlier. The next day his mother had told his brother, his sister, all the neighbors. He told me, sometimes he just wished he could go to sleep and never wake up. HOW DARE SHE! I was so angry, I was speechless. I wanted to confront her, I wanted to rip her apart with my bare fangs, to defend him in all his vulnerability! I had had no idea; never conceived of the pain she had caused him. I knew one more thing. I was not going to hurt Mark; I was not going to manipulate him. We loved each other, and I believed love conquers all. It doesn’t you know. That night I realized for the first time how hard I was making things for him, how much he was tied to his family. Despite what she had done, he loved her, could not conceive of leaving his family, being rejected by them, walking away from them. And on that last night we slept together, and he put his leg over me and held me, and I held on. I too was crying, for I knew what it meant for me. We said goodbye in moon shadow under a Palo Verde tree. February 1974 - Los Angeles
The move was simple enough, and I quickly found an apartment in the Wilshire district, a flat on a block of Normandy street that was routinely used as a movie set to represent New York city. It was a difficult time for me. I did not know the city, I did not know anyone there, except, curiously, Mark’s oldest sister, who lived in the San Fernando Valley and was pretty much on my "do not call" list. I was still depressed and at moments suicidal, but depression has a natural cycle to it, and even bad events don’t necessarily keep you down. Mine had been running full tilt for almost eight months and it just began to run out of steam. And then too I knew it was time to come out for real, I was almost twenty-five. I figured the way it worked, you went to a gay bar and found someone to love. Or got laid. Well, I wasn’t clear on the details. A few years later a friend asked me "When you go someplace new, how do you find a gay bar?" In the 70’s you bought a guidebook that listed them. But just then, I didn’t know how it was done, and one day I walked past a place, during the day, and saw photos posted outside. OK, so I didn’t know the difference between a gay bar and a drag bar. Lots of people still don’t. I went in late that evening, got too drunk, and was basically petrified, terrified. No one there looked like Mark. Smelled like Mark. No one I wanted to even talk to. I don’t know how I found about the Gay Community Center, it was on Wilshire in an old house in those early days, but I heard about it. To any young person of today it will probably sound silly, but I know that my experience was a common one in that time. I drove around the block past it for days, too afraid to stop and walk up. There was a sign. GAY. But I did, eventually manage to do it, one sunny afternoon, and there I was, gay and out. Well, OK it took a while to get to that point, but in six months I was a much happier guy, with a fair number of friends. I watched the impeachment hearings from my bedroom. Not always alone. I knew where the gay bars were and knew how to get laid. Knew that it was OK even if it wasn’t love. But it was not the same, it did not feel like love. It never filled me up. I missed him so. I wrote to Dear Abby but she never answered me. 1974 - Summer
I started to talk to him on the phone again. No, I wasn’t stupid, I didn’t think he would change his mind, I didn’t even think any more that I wanted him to come to me; I knew I needed someone who was healthier, who was able to be out, who could be more an equal to me. I wasn’t over him, but I knew what the ending of our story looked like. I still loved him, I needed to know what he was doing, to see how I could help him find happiness, you don’t walk away from someone you love even if you break up. And so when I came to town for a visit with my brother, I asked him to come out to dinner with me, and for once we did go somewhere together, somewhere public. I picked one of the nicest restaurants in town, because he was still special to me. Now, I had no intention of more, I just wanted to see how he was doing, see his face again. So I was not ready, when I stopped at the alley to drop him off, for what he said. Cary had moved out at some point, Mark was back in the old garage room. And he had told me that he had redecorated the room, with psychedelic rolling black lines and white, purple and black paint. I hadn’t paid much attention. But as I was saying good night to him, he said, "Aren’t you going to come in and see the room?" I was taken aback, of course. It was late, but what a risk he was taking, I knew I was certainly not welcome in that house, much less his bedroom. But I would do almost anything to please him, and he was sure that his father was in bed and would not know. And he seemed so eager for me to see it. I was naïve, I thought he really wanted to show me the room. He wanted sex, of course. He had craftily tricked me into his lair; maybe there was a bit of coyote in him after all. It was a hot night; summers in Arizona are like that. As I touched him, as we made the practiced love of old lovers, I told him I loved him. I told him I would always love him. He did not understand. I knew it was the last time. I could no longer be his rabbit. I was a man. I left as the sun rose, kissing him farewell in his sleep. Our long national nightmare ended. Nixon resigned on his nineteenth birthday.
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