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jawnbcI came out sexually well before I could live with the notion that I might love men. My years of fucking around gave me a instinctive, visceral understanding of the power of two men together sexually. Even so, the notion of forming bonds (emotional and spiritual) with other men nauseated me. Until I fell in love with one during my 3rd year of university. Yet, it took another couple of years before I could say without anxiety that I was a gay man. By then it was 1987 and I was living back in NYC, stretching the bounds of my life away from working class Rockaway Beach to a life alone. Among other queers. By then the first surges of the family flu had hit: I came out, socially, into a community pre-occupied with illness, death and grief.
I have always been attracted to clones: the archetypal late 70s moustache man. When you're 22, most of your peers can't really pull that look off. So the objects of my desires were all men in their 30s or 40s. And while I did make the obligatory appearance at Friday happy hour (2 for 1) at Uncle Charlie's downtown (I was a lame-assed guppy, that's where the guppies went after work), I spent more time at Ty's on Christopher Street. Having already cultivated alcoholism, I could at least keep up with the moustache men when it came to drinking. But for the most part, I was politely ignored: in my mind because I wasn't hawt enough, in theirs I now understand most of them were in survival mode. I went to the bar to get loaded and hook up. They went to get loaded and find some respite.
But Billy took a shining to me. He liked the way I drank and he liked the way I looked. He was about 5'8", had a thick brown moustache. He was a high school teacher and the partner he lied about when I asked him (yes, even a drunkard has standards: I didn't fuck married men...when I was sober enough to ask) was in finance. Bill and I wobbled down to their Soho loft, at which point I sent him up to his husband and passed out on the sofa. Raymond was appropriately snarky to Bill and I the next day. Still we had connected and Bill decided to take me under his wing.
We whooped it up a lot. Neither of us was big on drugs, which set us apart from a lot of the Ty's guys (mostly weed, but there were a lot of the Saint crowd there). He introduced me to the regulars--who called him Mitzi, but couldn't agree on a gurl name for me--and I became sort of a part of things. And we never discussed AIDS or HIV, though when Bill and I did play (of course we did) it was always safe. And once, to try and sort things at home for Bill, I even did Raymond...whose attempt at being a mean top was kind of tragic, though I didn't let on at the time.
In 1987 I was preoccupied with being "a respectable fag". When I'd not yet found a husband in early 1988--including a rather boring affair with a Wall Street lawyer (which only persisted because of my total cluelessness), and a charming man from Bogota who kept my nose powdered so I could stay up longer and drink more), I grabbed the first person who was willing to take on alcoholic, self-loathing, mad me. In March I met DemonExLoverFromHell, whose possessiveness, insanity, and psychosis--not to mention chronic unemployment and rather fluid ethics--kept me pretty busy. Bill freaked him out, so we spent less and less time together.
In 1989 I moved to Canada. Then the Demon left town (after I left him in early sobriety). I went back to NYC annually, but felt Ty's was too "slippery" for the first several. When I went back, most everyone was gone. I tried finding Bill in the phone book a few times. But tonight I found his name On the AIDS Quilt.
I loved you Billy Verost. You were the first gay men who made me feel comfortable. And you taught me to take care of myself, no matter what. I have.
I have always been attracted to clones: the archetypal late 70s moustache man. When you're 22, most of your peers can't really pull that look off. So the objects of my desires were all men in their 30s or 40s. And while I did make the obligatory appearance at Friday happy hour (2 for 1) at Uncle Charlie's downtown (I was a lame-assed guppy, that's where the guppies went after work), I spent more time at Ty's on Christopher Street. Having already cultivated alcoholism, I could at least keep up with the moustache men when it came to drinking. But for the most part, I was politely ignored: in my mind because I wasn't hawt enough, in theirs I now understand most of them were in survival mode. I went to the bar to get loaded and hook up. They went to get loaded and find some respite.
But Billy took a shining to me. He liked the way I drank and he liked the way I looked. He was about 5'8", had a thick brown moustache. He was a high school teacher and the partner he lied about when I asked him (yes, even a drunkard has standards: I didn't fuck married men...when I was sober enough to ask) was in finance. Bill and I wobbled down to their Soho loft, at which point I sent him up to his husband and passed out on the sofa. Raymond was appropriately snarky to Bill and I the next day. Still we had connected and Bill decided to take me under his wing.
We whooped it up a lot. Neither of us was big on drugs, which set us apart from a lot of the Ty's guys (mostly weed, but there were a lot of the Saint crowd there). He introduced me to the regulars--who called him Mitzi, but couldn't agree on a gurl name for me--and I became sort of a part of things. And we never discussed AIDS or HIV, though when Bill and I did play (of course we did) it was always safe. And once, to try and sort things at home for Bill, I even did Raymond...whose attempt at being a mean top was kind of tragic, though I didn't let on at the time.
In 1987 I was preoccupied with being "a respectable fag". When I'd not yet found a husband in early 1988--including a rather boring affair with a Wall Street lawyer (which only persisted because of my total cluelessness), and a charming man from Bogota who kept my nose powdered so I could stay up longer and drink more), I grabbed the first person who was willing to take on alcoholic, self-loathing, mad me. In March I met DemonExLoverFromHell, whose possessiveness, insanity, and psychosis--not to mention chronic unemployment and rather fluid ethics--kept me pretty busy. Bill freaked him out, so we spent less and less time together.
In 1989 I moved to Canada. Then the Demon left town (after I left him in early sobriety). I went back to NYC annually, but felt Ty's was too "slippery" for the first several. When I went back, most everyone was gone. I tried finding Bill in the phone book a few times. But tonight I found his name On the AIDS Quilt.
I loved you Billy Verost. You were the first gay men who made me feel comfortable. And you taught me to take care of myself, no matter what. I have.
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Oh my God man!
Date: 2006-12-01 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 12:10 pm (UTC)And today, I get to teach the history of the pandemic in my History of Sexuality in America class, to Georgia kids born around 1985-86.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 01:09 pm (UTC)thank you both for your story and for the reminder that we are witnesses. and we are witnesses who must tell our stories.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 03:59 pm (UTC)What a fucking bastard arsehole disease.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 07:35 pm (UTC)