Still Practicing

S TILL P RACTICING WRITING

FROM THE

SAGE CENTER

CONTRIBUTORS MICHELLE BAKER MARVIN CORB CHELSEA DREHER CHARLES FATONE RALPH GRAY BEVERLY GROSS DAVID KERRY HEEFNER ALICE JACOBY BILL LARMER JOHN MCLELLAN JESSICA NOONEY FRED QUINTILIANI RITA SCHULTZ TONY SETTEDUCATE ROGER SILVA DICK STERNBERG GLORIA ZIMMERMAN EDITED BY JACOB THOMAS CRIBBS & TORY MERINGOFF

NY W RITERS C OALITION P RESS

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STILL PRACTICING Writing from NY Writers Coalition Workshops at the SAGE Center

NY W RITERS C OALITION P RESS S UMMER 2014 3

Copyright Š 2014 NY Writers Coalition, Inc. ISBN: 978-0-9911174-4-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942834

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Upon publication, copyright to individual works returns to the authors.

Editors: Jacob Thomas Cribbs, Tory Meringoff Layout: Rose Gorman Cover Image: Edi Holley Interior Images Contributed by: Chelsea Dreher, Tony Setteducate Still Practicing contains writing by members of NY Writers Coalition workshops at the center for Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) in New York, NY. NY Writers Coalition Press, Inc. 80 Hanson Place, Suite 604 Brooklyn, NY 11217 (718) 398-2883 info@nywriterscoalition.org www.nywriterscoalition.org Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) is the country’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older adults. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in New York City, SAGE is a national organization that offers supportive services and consumer resources for LGBT older adults and their caregivers, advocates for public policy changes that address the needs of LGBT older people, and provides training for aging providers and LGBT organizations, largely through its National Resource Center on LGBT Aging. To learn more about SAGE: Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) 305 Seventh Ave, 15th Floor New York, NY 10001 (212) 741-2247 info@sageusa.org www.sageusa.org/

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C ONTENTS Introductions by Jacob T homas Cri bbs Tor y Mering off

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Original Writing by Michelle Baker Mar vin Corb Chelsea Dreher Charles Fatone Ralph Gray Beverly Gross David Ker r y Heef ner Alice Jacoby Bill Lar mer John McLellan Jessica Nooney Fred Quintiliani Rita Schultz Tony Setteducate Rog er Silva Dick S ter nberg Gloria Zimmer man

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Acknowledgements About NY Writers Coalition

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INTRODUCTION I Jacob Thomas Cribbs NYWC Workshop Leader It is difficult to introduce something that is life changing and remain succinct about it. The things that are most incredible in this life live just beyond words; sometimes we can tether them with a bit of skill, poeticize them, relate them well enough to reenact the hologram of their visage for a reader or listener. This is often the best we can hope for, but it is still one of the most beautiful and sublime processes we know.

Writing with the people whose work is compiled here has been life changing. We write on the fifteenth floor of the SAGE building on West 29th Street, overlooking Manhattan rooftops and often the setting sun. Each Monday after workshop, I go home loving my human body, understanding experiences I did not know, feeling closer to a Oneness with the lives attendant (and all lives for that matter), and standing at the foot of a mountain range of spirits so vast and beautiful and complex each in their own right that I must, even as a writer, lay down my pen and say quite simply: There are no words just right to tell you how wonderful the SAGE writing workshop has been. So much ink. So much life. Such generous and exhilarating spending.

I am so thankful to attend a workshop each week with such incredible, incipient, intrepid, and sagacious humans. It is an honor beyond the attempt of this introduction, an honor which I could not dare lid-jar with more words.

Thank you all – and write on.

June 2014 9

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INTRODUCTION II Tory Meringoff NYWC Workshop Leader On any given Tuesday night, on the fifteenth floor of SAGE headquarters, time slows to a halt: Looking out onto the brake lights of taxi cabs on Seventh Avenue, watching other people in offices flicking off their lights against the sunset of a glowing Chelsea, this is all for us. Never mind the rushing people, the rushing cars, the rush of Manhattan.

During the workshop, this is our city. Our weird world.

Time stops so we can write. The bustle cracks open as we fill the room with laughter, tears, a sad story, a hilarious character.

Speaking of character, these writers bring heaps of it to our literal and figurative table. These are LGBTQ elders who came of age in a pre-Stonewall world, and they aren’t messing around. They are fierce, generous New Yorkers with loud and compelling voices and stories.

These writers, too, have inspired me to possess myself and own my voice. They will tease me sometimes about how far I’ve come since the early days of my workshop leader life, when my palms would sweat and I would whisper the writing prompt. What they don’t know is that’s because of them. I’ve inherited their intrepid energy, and I can’t imagine Tuesday without our sacred time warp.

Keep it comin’, my time travelers. I’m so honored to write in this group. Every single one of you is an inspiration.

Thank you all.

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MICHELLE BAKER Whose Hear t?

“Wise Heart.” That’s a load of crock. What is it about the heart anyway? Open your heart. Heart felt. Heart of gold.

Heavy heart. An arrow to the heart. Heart broken. Has anyone ever really felt their heart? Most of the time you’d never even know it’s in there. Only intense physical exercise, or fear maybe, sets it beating fast and hard enough to register something in consciousness. So where’d we get this heart shit? Have you noticed it seems to cut across time and geography?

I’ve read 15th century Arabic poetry, Hafez maybe, talking about the sore or wounded heart. Bilhana, even more ancient, writing love poems in Sanskrit, pleading, moaning, worshiping, all endlessly centered in his heart, his heart buried alive in snow, his heavy heart broken up, his empty heart...On it goes across the centuries.

If you ask me they should be talking about the gut.

That’s where you feel the sharp tickle and kick of new love.

That’s where you really feel the pain and fear and loss. Sick, nauseous, and impossible to ignore.

But convince me about the heart. Timeless and universal, there must be something to it.

No?

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Motor Mouth Twenty miles an hour on Route 81 and it’s fifty miles to Blacksburg. Shelia Walkins is sitting shotgun. She hasn’t stopped yapping since she woke up around Carlise, PA. That’s four states ago. Ok so fine, that little corner of West Virginia, maybe it shouldn’t count. Still there’s been a lot of hours between there and here and I’m beginning to twitch.

I’m from the city. I’m used to background noise. A jack hammer hardly registers. Saturday night party goers in from Long Island in a weekly frenzy of 2nd Avenue, 2am horn honking: white noise compared to this. The problem is she doesn’t just talk. Every sentence, often two or three times in the same sentence, she’ll pause and demand my acknowledgement. “You see?” “That’s crazy, right?”

“Get it.”

“Did you ever?” I try not to take my eyes from the road but a nod doesn’t satisfy this blockhead. She just keeps repeating “Right?” Staring at me like she’s going to burn right through me. So I answer. “Oh yeah,” and then she takes off again yammering about the misdeeds and problems of friends or family or acquaintances, bosses, neighbors, vendors, or who knows who.

At first I tried to talk with her. She’d tell me a story about how her sister planned a wedding party and couldn’t find a way to sort all the divorcees and remarriages into convivial table couplings. And I tried to join in and describe my exwife’s blistering anger and how she’ll never forgive me for not fighting her about the divorce. I wanted to tell her how my children have to swap turns on holidays because they know she can’t stand the sight of me. But Shelia Walkins has her own idea of where the conversation is going and she’s determined to take it her way. And determined that I listen.

So here I am on my four hundred and forty-ninth “umm humm.” My neck’s developing a cramp from the constant 14

nodding acknowledgments and my left eye is twitching so bad I’m afraid my distance perception is impaired.

So I ask her whether she’d like a little break at the next exit, “Maybe a coffee or a snack to tide you over until Blacksburg?”

“Oh no. Don’t you bother about me. I’m as easy as a butterfly. You just do whatever suits you. But you know stopping really isn’t a good idea. Don’t you think. It’ll be dark before you know it and you don’t want to be driving in the dark. It’s dangerous. Especially for a man your age. You don’t see as well as you used to. Night vision specially.

That’s just real poor when you hit forty five and it keeps going downhill. You understand?”

“Ummm hum.”

“I was just reading in a magazine, or was it yesterday’s newspaper? Well something like that, some journalistic thing. Bill Moyers maybe. Or was it Fox news? I watch them all. No one would call me a fanatic or bigot. I’m curious.

That’s what I am. Even if I don’t agree with them, I want to hear it. I’m a real listener. Listen to everything, everyone.

Probably the newspaper now that I think about it. Said that there’s big decline, forty percent, or would that be too much?” She pauses...probably needed to breath but won’t let me off the hook, sees an opportunity to make sure I’m listening.

“What do you think?”

“Umm…maybe...a little less?”

“No. Definitely 40%. Probably even more. You’re not really up on all this. But it’s a big decline.”

And off she goes again. By the time we’ve arrived in Blacksburg I’m having murderous fantasies, I’ve got a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel, and the twitching has progressed to my upper lip and left shoulder. Ten hours in the car with this motor mouth, worse than a lifetime with my ex-wife. I pull up to her father’s house where we’d 15

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planned to spend the night. I sit numbly, paralyzed in the driver’s seat while she gathers her things and opens the door.

“Coming? Dad’s waiting.”

“I think I’ll get a motel room tonight. Tell your father I’m grateful for his offer.”

“What? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you staying with me? We planned?”

“Well, I don’t know you well enough.”

She stops. Gives me this look like something’s not registering.

“Just too intimate. Too soon,” I said as I reach to close her door.

I can see she’s saying something but I don’t hear a word.

I turn up the radio, way up.

And with Stone Temple Pilots blasting I drive off back to the freeway. I’m heading as far away from there as I can get in a reverie of long delayed, exhausted peace and satisfaction.

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Done with Begging Johnny grabs a bottle of gin from the cabinet, sticks it under his shirt, and takes his father’s lighter off the coffee table.

“Going for a walk,” he yells towards the family room as he opens the back door and steps into the yard.

A little patch of yard separated the house from the garage and behind that was an alley with so little traffic that only the ruts, two tire tracks down the center, were bare of grass. Johnny passed through the garage and out a side door into the alley. The neighbor’s house behind had an apple tree, full with ripe fruit, that hung over a four foot fence. He climbed up and stood on the lids of steel garbage cans that stood alongside their garage and picked apples, throwing the fruit to the ground as hard as he could, listening to the snap, like little gunshots as the apples split. When he had stripped the tree of as many apples as he could reach, he jumped down and turned over the cans, dragging them to spread their contents across the alley and even out into the street.

Once emptied, he lined up the four trash cans across the middle of the street to create a barrier to prevent traffic from passing. He laughed as he sized up the difficulty a car would have making a U on that narrow street and imagined the anger of some old guy inconvenienced and too lazy to get out to move the trash cans.

Satisfied, he went back to his family’s garage where he’d stored a couple of bales of hay that had fallen off the truck of a garden supply store. He opened the bales and spread hay around the family car making sure plenty was strewn around the engine. He carefully piled it in a little tower that reached up and into the gas tank. Once he had it all laid out he sprinkled the hay with the gin, making sure there was a solid path like the wick of a candle that ran from the gas tank around the car and just out of the garage door.

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Hestood next to his gin fuse and faced the kitchen door across the back yard.

He called. “Maaa. Ma, wanta watch me make fire?”

Yelled. “Dad! Come see Prometheus. Come on see what kind of a son I am. You asked me. Come see what sort of a hero you’ve raised.”

He yelled louder. “Hey sports fans. Come see little Johnny’s hat trick. Ma, Dad. Come see. You’ve gotta see this. You wanted to see me score. Ma! Dad! I’m scoring.”

The door to the kitchen slammed open. His father stopped hard in the opening. “Johnny what is wrong with you? You’re going to have all the neighbors out here. Quiet down!”

Johnny grinned wide. As his mother appeared behind in the door, he looked down at the hay and flicked the lighter.

He knelt down slowly, coddling the flame. It was about twenty feet to the kitchen. Johnny had the hay afire before his father had grasped what was happening. A flame raced along the gin wick. His father ran forward as Johnny ducked into the garage.

Everything blew.

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There’s Little Learned Alone The first time I thought, if I gave it a thought, I thought I had it all together. Then love shook my neat regular days.

Love pulled them apart.

Boo Mason told me, put words to the situation, made sense of the disruption, made sense of the chaos. Boo Mason told me that’s what happens. It happens if you’re really in love. It happens if love catches you with your eyes open. It happens when you let go, let go of routine, let go of the ideas you’re so certain of, so sure of you don’t even know you have them. No one chooses that. No one will on purpose. No one decides to tear down ordered days and tumble into uncertain hours.

But I, like you, decided, like millions of other women and men, hundreds of millions, millions of millions, not to tear out habits and thoughts, but to love. And that’s when the learning starts. When you can’t resist, when you meet up with someone you want more than you want safety. When you meet up and they don’t quite get you, then you try to show them what you mean. You try to show them who you are. You discover things. You find much more you than you’d imagined. You’re so much more crazy, so much more complicated than you could have seen yourself to be.

When things were easy, before that lover drove you out, you spent your time doing whatever worked best for you, behaving however you felt most comfortable. With no resistance from someone whose affection withdrawn will send you into black, empty days, with no desire to question the common, self-involved expectations you have, learning is slow or not at all. You roll easy and things work. But love drives you into and out of yourself, makes you want to tear your heart out sometimes, or at least dig out your hidden 19

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tics and repair festering wounds. It makes you want to find the best parts of yourself and offer them up. Then again, you’ll want to make your lover fit your needs, shape them to your desires. You’re sure to try. But you can’t. So you study them too. And you learn something. Maybe you learn what you really need and what you can give. Maybe you learn previously unimaginable behavior by watching your lover, or by desperately trying to accommodate your lover. You become an explorer, an experimenter, a scientist. You listen.

You look. You change. And, if you’re lucky, you’ve found a collaborator. Boo Mason told me. If you’re lucky you’ll find someone eager as yourself for learning.

Absence Five years of absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder. Oh contraire. My heart hardened. All those memories of humiliation, the insults, neglect, impossible demands, and sneering disgust simmered and, expanded like strings of fettuccine, took on watery, nutritious, tangled bulk. Might sound bad to you but you’d be wrong. Delicious spiteful fantasy has become my spicy fare, my food.

In downtime, I often entertained myself imagining angry scenes of confrontation. I made up scripts wherein I told him how his ugly ungainly fat blob of a body repulsed any human being who came within sight of it. I listed the women who found him disgusting. I listed every woman I’d ever heard him mention and made up stories about just why they hated him, then scripted little sit-downs where I maliciously told him over dinner or in an automobile, in exquisite detail, exactly what Evelyn or Alice, Camille, Rosa, Jean or Greta had confided in me.

While showering I thought about swim meets where I played with him as we raced, his lane next to mine, and I 20

easily able to outpace him, played with him, allowed him to nearly catch me, watched his face redden with the effort, heard his puffing and sputtering as he, fiercely competitive in all things, tried desperately to pull ahead. I took great pleasure imagining him there lap after lap, getting more and more exhausted, and me teasing him along, pricking him with hope, until finally just near the end in a final surge of energy, he suddenly folded over with a heart attack and sunk, fat head first, then slowly unbent and took on speed as his body stretched and torpedoed to the bottom with a final blast that shattered that bare bald head against the concrete bottom and sent head chips floating up and out like a colorful confetti in all directions, an eerie, satisfying finale of conquest.

If they tell you that to dwell on anger will only hurt yourself. Don’t believe them. And don’t believe in the nonsense about absence either. No. Anger is a fabulous antidote to boredom. And absence is anger’s fine friend.

Without absence truth would ruin all the satisfactions of revenge. Hey, truth might even remind me that I often actually liked the guy and who would choose to be in a bind like that.

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MARVIN CORB Time Can you believe how fast time goes by? A blink of an eye, and the day is over. It is said that a day has 24 hours in it and of course that is true, but it seems like, all of a sudden the day is over. The twenty-four hours seem not to be enough to cover all the things we have to do. When we are young a day seems to drag, but as we age, this time seems to go faster.

This is true in several cases, but one comes to mind. When I retired to today, about three years ago, which seemed like yesterday, I asked myself when I had time to work, but I will discuss retirement later in this writing. Of course it is really the same time, young or old, but it just seems to go faster.

How fast it goes, it just seems as though it was yesterday, we were worried about Y2K, but here it is the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

It is said that humans are on this earth for a nanosecond, which is space time, but our time says we are on earth for 70, 80, 90 plus years, which flies by.

Once we are born, we spend four or five years just exploring and learning by instinct, as well as, what we are taught by our parents. From age six on, we do our own learning in school. Here is where we start developing for the future, yes even at the age of six, we can start to develop a goal for the future. Here is where we make new friends and many times for the rest of your life.

While we are in grade school and high school, we can’t wait until it’s over. This is when time seems the slowest and 22

then we graduate and from then on time just seems to fly by. This is an illusion, it doesn’t fly by. There are still 60 minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day and so on. In other words, what seems like a lifetime, when we are younger, seems like the blink of an eye when you’re older.

To me right now, once Monday is over the week just goes by so fast that I would ask myself, what happened to the week, even though I am retired. This brings up another point about retirement. When we are working, there is a structure of time. You get up and go to work for eight hours and then it is over and you go home. Once you retire, there is no more structure, or routine. Although the day has twenty-four hours in it, the same amount as when I was working, there seems to be less time in it to accomplish those tasks that you had time for when you got home from work such as cleaning and doing laundry. Well maybe I hated those tasks and now use the excuse that there is just not enough time in the day to get those, so, I don’t know about anybody else, but I procrastinate a lot, but that is another subject.

A week goes by so fast, but what about a year. We all suffered through a very cold and snowy winter, which did not seem to end. It did and happened in the same amount of time it did every year prior. Thirty-one days in December.

Thirty-one days in January. Twenty-eight days in February.

And thirty-one days in March. No matter how slow it seemed to go, here it is April already. The first quarter of the calendar year is over already, more than half the fiscal year for the US government is over, and since I worked for the government, I know this.

Of course some people who do retire don’t have the same outlook as I do, but no matter what, it’s still the same time, but it is used unwisely for some people, and for this reason time just seems to stand still.

Time seems to go faster and faster as we get older and 23

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older, but of course this is not true. It may seem to go by faster, but the truth of the matter is, there will always be 365 days in a year, except once every four years, when we tack on an extra day in Feb., which is a leap year.

I must say that most of us have a fear of time as we get older for one reason or another. Why fear it, we have no choice, after all look at the alternative and we don’t want that.

To live with time is really the basis of everything we do in our lives, including the end of our time on this earth, or is it?

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CHELSEA DREHER A Childhood Tale “Leave this room. You’re not fit to be in the same room with the American Flag ! “ The substitute teacher was pointing straight at me as she uttered these words. And, she didn’t even know my name.

My next memory was of being seated in the empty gym on a high bench that ran the perimeter of the huge room.

My feet dangled above the floor where so many dodge ball games had taken place. I was now a refugee from the familiarity of the classroom and miles away my friends. I watched my socks slowly slide into my shoes. I could hear the other third graders singing The Star Spangled Banner and I wanted to be with them, and not here in the cold and empty gym.

My mother, who had been summoned, arrived after hastily dressing and putting on her lipstick. She had once been a beautiful woman, but disappointment and stress had taken their toll.

I had shamed her once again, and I was pretty certain that whatever I had done would surely kill her this time. She often told me that I would be the death of her. I believed this. Hadn’t I been a breach birth and torn up her insides upon my arrival? And wasn’t she an old woman when I was born? She was the only mother I knew who had grey hair.

In later years I learned that she was forty one when she had me. I confess that I was ashamed of her. But, I digress. I was eight years old and being punished for some mysterious reason, and the principal, Miss Hatton and my mother are whispering about me.

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The day before, I had been playing Monopoly with Leone, a girl who lived in the next apartment house in the Bronx. While we played we chatted away. At some point, I remembered something I heard on the radio. The program was one where little known facts were revealed, and one of these stayed with me. I loved new facts as much as I loved sharing them. I still do, but now I have better judgment than I had at eight.

“Know what I heard ?” I asked. I told Leone my new fact. “Betsy Ross did not make the first American flag.”

Well, that’s not what we had been taught in school, so of course this was a big scoop and I had to tell someone. My playmate, Leone was, unfortunately for me, the one I told.

Leone told her mother what I had said about Betsy Ross and the flag and she, the mother went to the school and told the third grade substitute teacher what I had said. The following day, when the class stood to recite the pledge of allegiance, I had not gotten one word out when the teacher pointed at me and said the following: “You! Leave this room right now. You are not fit to be in the same room with the American flag.”

I was sent to sit alone in the cold and empty gym.

Some Things About That Time* Some things about that time:  There was a war going on, World War II. Nazis were murdering Jews in Europe. My Hungarian mother and Austrian father had relatives who were missing and later were found to be victims of the slaughter. Death and disaster permeated my home and my childhood. Fear was no small factor in our little family. We lived with it daily.

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  

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There was hysteria and fear in the air. The Japanese were being sent to concentration camps in the mid-west.

Foreigners were suspect. Did the fact that my parents were European play a part in Leone’s mother’s decision to report me to the school?

I was a child who sought information and facts wherever I could. My parents were smart, but not informed about many things American. They may have read Dostoyevsky and Gogol and listened to classical music, but didn’t know that peanut butter was eaten by most American kids. Why would they? There was no peanut butter back home.

In my mind, I was sure my mother thought we’d be deported to Europe where we’d all get killed thanks to me and my big mouth.

I attempted to keep my mouth shut, and usually failed.

Betsy Ross did not make the first American flag!

(Actually, this fact is dubious at best.)

I was taken home where I stayed for three days, refusing to return to school. I was then dragged back and forcibly turned over to my teacher. I have little memory of this incident but I see some aspects of it with great clarity.

Please be kind to the next child you see. She or he will remember you, and some day you just might wind up in a story. You never know.

*This event did not prevent me from speaking out against injustice wherever and whenever I could. I became active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. I went on to be an activist in the Radical Feminist Movement, as well the Gay and Lesbian Movement. I was an organizer, a speaker, and a journalist. My partner Laura and I have been together for over forty years.

This story is dedicated to her.

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Words Flying through the air Metaphors collide with Dangling participles Busy verbs and pronouns Work to make sense and meaning Words They clutter up the universe Words do On the phone Flying through the air Bringing good news Bad news No news The world is sustained by Words They are the cause of global Warming Words of prayer Cursing words Words, words Everywhere In the not so silent dreams Words escape the lips Utterances and mutterings Under the breath Hit their targets Grunts of pain and pleasure Words without intent Saying the rosary, prayers

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In synagogues, churches and mosques Humble words at alters Rising to fever pitch Carried on a tide of words We seek refuge in peace filled Libraries and schools Where words crowd and collide Causing chaos and confusion Words sneak in to make sense of feelings and thoughts Stop the words and butterfly wings will fill the void Clouds and sky Will be seen and not judged Sunsets will have their own rewards Peace will reign When words cease to be Words cause war We drown in words Internet, telephone, television Dance without words Music without words Will the world end Should words fail An idle thought Filled with Words.

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Ilona Ilona came to New York from Hungary in the late twenties. As soon as she saw the city from the boat, she wanted to go back to the vineyards and mountains.

She lived in Harlem with her brother Herman and made paper flowers on the Lower East Side for four dollars a week. This led to a career as a designer with a business card. Heady stuff for an immigrant single lady.

Famous hat makers used her handmade flowers on hats and gowns.

She was my mother. She married, gave up her 34th Street studio, and had me. Our little family moved to the Bronx, where there were parks. I moved to the Village when I was seventeen.

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY CHELSEA DREHER 30

The Face Beneath The Hat Before an unhappy marriage Before a baby and two lost Before a holocaust that would Erase all hope Ilona had possibilities.

New York had 34th Street Ilona had her studio Forgotten places Misplaced people Tragedy in faded photos An old woman Wrapped in a blanket Holds a piece of cardboard “Heartbreak-Please Give�

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Stationary Bike I ride my bike through Time and space With abandonment and recklessness Heedless of pedestrians And other restrictions that might brake my momentum.

With eyes closed I see Vistas wild with cacti And mountains housing Pueblos and other living things And when the bell announces Twenty minutes have gone by I know that I have travelled far Without leaving a single carbon footprint

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CHARLES FATONE A Portrait over the Credenza: An Excerpt The pain in my side started after we cam home from the movies and I tried not to complain that I felt sick. Mother Clara said impatiently, “It’s probably a dirty stomach!’” We had gone to the Sheepshead Theater to see a movie called The Picture of Dorian Gray. The movie ended when the portrait of the leading man had turned ugly and grotesque with all his sins in Technicolor while he was still as good looking as he was when it all started.

It was the beginning of June and I still had four more weeks of the school term to go before summer vacation would begin and I was worried that I might get left back. It’s what I feared at the end of every term. I was lagging behind everyone else in my class. Like a three legged dog I was always trying to keep up. Although my bad eyesight made me a slow learner I had very sharp powers of observation. I could usually tell when my parents were lying to me. Lying on my bed I worried about what punishments my parents would give me if I got held back. My marks were usually in the low B to C range. I was grateful my teacher Miss Abromowitz had patience with me. I shifted and fidgeted under the blanket, I didn’t want to make any noise that would disturb my parents sleeping. They were always warning me how important it was for them to get their rest since they both worked so hard all week. But the pain in my side would not go way. I was twelve and had just become a new boy scout. My mother took me to 13th Ave. no buy my 33

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official Scout’s uniform with the yellow neckerchief and Buster Brown shoes that had black rubber soles imbedded with strings to make them last longer. But the black rubber made marks on the kitchen linoleum which I was of course punished for. “What did you say you wanted for Christmas?” she said “Well forget it!” and it was then only June! I was in Beaver Patrol of Troop 101. We met every Wednesday night in the gym of PS 225 in Brighton Beach and had great relay races like running across the gym while trying to chew and swallow a saltine cracker before you tagged the next boy who tried to do the same. I was learning how to tie the different rope knots in my thick Boy Scouts Handbook with the wonderful illustrated instructions about scouting even though the print was so small. Masturbation was a tricky subject. You were supposed to control yourself.

I was falling behind in that subject too. I was one of the few gentiles in the whole school. And while I usually felt awkward none of the Jewish boys ever made fun of me about my religion. One afternoon a week I went for religious instruction at St. marks Church in Sheepshead Bay to prepare me for my confirmation. I wanted to go to Boy Scout summer camp if my parents permitted. There were two week periods and I would go to the kosher division with all the others in my troop.

I never made many friends, usually only one at a time and who was also an outsider like Sheldon across the street.

We both took violin lessons once a week from Mr. Franklin for fifty cents a lesson. Arthur Gershowitz, our landlords 14 year old son, who had a bike taught me how to ride it one afternoon. I was told that there wasn’t any money for a bike for me and there wasn’t enough room in our garden apartment to store it. I was wishing I’d get one for graduation next year but my dad reminded me it might get stolen like the three wheeler I had when I was 6when I had been allowed to ride it alone on he block when we lived 34

near Prospect Park. After peddling up the street I didn’t know how to turn the bike around so I left it there at the end of the block and walked home. It was gone when they went back to get it. My father said “OK. That’s the end of bikes for you! You don’t know how to take care of one.” It was like being a two month old puppy being punished for messing the floor before he learned how to control himself.

Their expectations of me would always stay beyond my ability.

As the week wore on the pain in my side didn’t get any better. My parents were gone all day so I had to deal with it myself. My father had always warned me, “You got yourself into it. Now get yourself out of it.” That Sunday my Uncle Jim and Aunt Josie came to visit in the afternoon for coffee and cake. By the time I was pretty much in and out of bed all day with the pain. The Friday before my mother decided she’d “had just about enough of your belly aching!” and said “You need a physic to clean out that filthy stomach.”

She gave me two chocolate Ex-lax. I ate them and tried to sleep. While the adults had their coffee and cake in the backyard with the young peach tree, I twisted and turned in bed. At one point my Aunt came into the bedroom and asked me, “How are you feeling, Hon?” Any better?” I moaned a little. She felt my head and went out into the yard. I could hear them talking in hushed whispers. She said “Something is wrong, Clara. He has a very high fever and is burning up. I think you should call a doctor to come and tell if it’s serious.”

My mother used our hallway telephone to call the family doctor who came in an hour. She had been shamed into it. When he came, the doctor pulled my sheet back and pressed my belly and asked if it hurt. “Yes,” I moaned each time he touched my right side. The doctor talked to my parents and left after using our telephone. A while later the doorbell rang and a young nurse punctured my finger with 35

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a sharp needle. She put my blood on a glass slide and left. I was still tossing and restless an hour later when the phone rang and my mom answered it. After she hug up she went to the yard.

“The doctor said to bundle him up in a blanket and get him to the hospital in a cab. And not wait for an ambulance. There was no time to waste.” So that’s what they did. I was so scared when they wrapped me in my bed blanket and put me in the back of Uncle Jim’s limousine that he drove for weddings and funerals.

36

RALPH GRAY Life is Tricky Otto entered Butte Park at Cardiff Castle, his excitement and anxiety soaring. Will they like me, I them? Will I have nothing to say or only my usual idiocies?

The sun seemed happy. The winds slept, but westward toward the Irish Sea where Uncle Basil had drowned (why isn’t it called the Welsh or the Celtic Sea?). A darkness was edging the blue. Rain? Forgot my umbrella of course. Now concentrate! Fastest way is across the field but all those games, all those running people. And the swimming pool.

Too many crashing kids in it and outside it.

Otto feared body contact. Dr. Hoeck said we often fear what we desire. He skirted the field, hurried to the Taff, inhaling its tranquil flow under the watchful trees with their wide protecting branches.

Would he regret the visit? Their letters had been so light hearted, so self-assured, funny. And mischievous. Reminded him of his cousins in Penarth. Oh, I’ll be there again Sunday next! Lots of croquet on that huge lawn, flowers everywhere! Lots of bantering and joking, and strange stories.

Why can’t I be like them? I am unlike anybody. How will it be now with almost total strangers?

It’s three already! Always late, like Papa. Pretentious, pompous, preposterous. Don’t you be like him. But maybe I am. Why else would Mother keep saying You’re just like him!

Maybe only when she was mad at me? And he’d sneer You are my son?

37

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3:07. Not so bad. There’s the hotel. The tearoom.

A board outside listed the day’s offerings in Welsh and English. Otto’s main experience with Welsh was in Albany Road Boys’ School. The history teacher, Mr. Jones, conducted class in Welsh except when contrasting Welsh heroism with English perfidy, Welsh culture and values with English grubbiness and sloth. Walking home his cousin performed Jones brilliantly.

Otto recognized Antony and Antonia immediately, as they did him. Them standing, waving and cheering. Pushing himself erect, “Now which of you is A and which one is the other A?” The twins pointed at one another, then said simultaneously, “I am THE A and that one is the other.”

“Thank you kindly for making that clear.” His anxiety waning, Otto crossed his arms, hands thrusting toward theirs. Joined, the arms swung up and down. “God Save the King,” chanted the twins.

Everyone sat four eyes on Otto whose eyes flitted between the twins. Silence. Abashed? No, to create space for birthing the next move.

Otto reprised: “I still wonder who is which A.” Again simultaneously, “I’m the one with the blond hair.”

“She’s the one with the long tresses; but naught compensates for her trashy dresses.”

“Lousy rhyme, lousy humor. Naturally, coming from him.”

“Takes a louse to know a louse.”

Antonia, in sing-song: “A louse in a blouse runs the house.”

Otto looked flustered.

Pointing at each other “See what you did? He’s going to crawl under the table.”

“I did?” (Antony) Antonia to Otto: “He’s such an ass!”

38

Antony to Otto: “Lousy ass at your service.”

The twins dove under the table, Otto halfheartedly following halfway. Another silence. Everyone returned to proper tearoom demeanor. Sudden guffaws.

Under the table Otto had fretted. I can’t do this. What am I doing here? when Dr. Hoeck’s words sprang up. You are more than you think you are in some ways, and less in others. Made no sense at the time, but now maybe. Surfacing, the first guffaw was his! Amazing.

The merriment subsided. Sitting straight and straightfaced Otto announced, “All right, we are properly introduced.”

“Yes,” said Antony.

Antonia, ogling Otto, said “I want more.”

“So do I. Tell me about your real and my epistolary Uncle Basil. For example, did he laugh or joke? When I met him in London he was like a fencepost, and all his letters were serious, though seemingly kind and caring. Seemingly is the right adjective, no?”

“Adverb. You’re a good observer, like us. Yes, ‘seeming’ seems right. ‘Neither a laughter or a joker be’ was his motto.” (Antony) “Along with ‘fences up, pockets tight’” (Antonia) “His blubber served as barrier, both physical and mental.

Kept him out from himself too.” (Antony) “A rigid puff, and dour.” (Antonia) “No, less dour than restrained; plenty puffed, maybe a poofter.” (Antony) “Poofter, what’s that?”

“Never mind. Anyway, a dour and stiff puff.” (Antonia) “Still, his letters didn’t seem restrained. They oozed. Is puffiness oozable? But in London he seemed cautious and cagey.”

“A puff can’t ooze, except perhaps oozy Basil.” (Antonia) 39

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“Funny, I remember thinking if he were a machine he’d need oiling.”

Antonia, interrupting the laughter, “That’s why he drowned. Seagoing vessels must be well oiled.”

Antony: “But there was something oily about him, lubricated his massive facades, else they couldn’t have been moved about. A Welshman, making himself super British.

And the British own the seas. Basil did Cambridge and posh clubs and other humbug things, but never lifted an oar or, I suspect, a bottle. And while blubber should help you float, his didn’t.” Antony stopped himself. “Shouldn’t talk this way about the waterlogged departed.”

“Oh don’t be so gooey-holy.” (Antonia) Otto held up his hands, warding something off. “Just a minute. All that concern and caring, was that blubber too?”

Antony wriggled himself into caring blubber. Antonia said, “Stop it! I sensed kindness buried far below the fluff and fuss. No point arguing this.”

“See, she’s the one with a heart of gold and long tresses.”

“The only kind of heart you’d know would have to shed dollars and pounds.”

“Are you all ready to order?”

“Worried, Otto?”

“What to choose?”

“Most anything is OK here, really.” (Antony) “The Welsh version here of English tearoom fare is very acceptable. Try the scones, butter and jam. The coffee is bearable but I suggest you prefer tea. Oh, they’ve run out of cream. Plenty of sugar though.” (Antonia) “Goddamned Nazis.” (Otto) Quiet conversation helped digest recent events and prepare for more. What was it like for Otto to move to the UK? (Difficult at first, then wonderful.) Did he enjoy life in Cardiff? (Yes.) Was it hard for him to find his way to 40

LLandaff and the tearoom? (No.) What were the twins doing here in LLandaff? (Visiting a sick friend.) And so on.

Otto loved baked goods. Scones lack sweetness, but Otto made them delicious, loading butter (luckily available at the moment) and spoonfuls of jam onto them. “Best I ever had, even better than in Uncle Basil’s London hotel.”

Each twin slid a scone of theirs towards him, plus butter and jam. “Go to it, man!”

Otto munched and grinned. Suddenly tears. He struggled against them. Lickety-split the twins were behind him, Antony patting him staunchly on the back, Antonia stroking the back of his head and neck. “You’re really a sweet guy.”

The dam burst. When his tears ebbed A and A returned to their seats.

You mustn’t! raced through Otto’s mind, but equally fierce was the craving for “more” catapulted into awareness by the unexpected, intense, and brief intimacy. His hand covertly sought the places Antonia’s hand had been. And quickly it again serviced a scone.

The twins mapped his struggle, Antonia focusing on the longing heart, Antony seeking the suppressed humor and mischievousness of a kindred spurting spirit. Presently his hands plunged into the knapsack below his seat, and he ducked under again. A ditty emerged: My kingdom for three cups, I say my kingdom for three cups!

One by one, three unfilled cups came into Antonia’s grasp and disappeared. The voice from below continued: Know ye, Austrian, you are in Wales where going below is in the genes. How else could coal for the Industrial Revolution have happened? How else could homes in miserable England’s dreary damp days enjoy cozy corners and cozy teakettles? Behold! Uplifted graillike, one by one the cups reappeared, filled. Antony sat regally.

Antonia arose and bowed. “Most honored guest, join 41

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us in quaffing the quaff renowned in all Llandaff, nay in all Wales, for making life livable, nay enjoyable.”

“Stop neighing!”

“Naaaaaaay” Holding the proffered glass, the honored guest masked his unease with prolonged sniffing, followed by cautious sipping. Quaff magic soon revved him up. “Sing us a real Welsh song?”

“Do you know any?”

“Only ‘The Ash Grove’.”

They sang, eagerly joined by the tearoom’s Welsh patrons. English tourists contributed gracious smiles.

“Now, honored Otto, sing something homelandishoutlandish!”

“With my voice, here in public?”

“Yes, it’s your debut,” Antony said, lifting his glass.

“Grease your vocal cords!”

Otto first tries standing on one leg but collapses.

Nonetheless he manages. Du, du liegst mir im Herzen, du du weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin… “I forgot the words.”

Antonia stopped humming along. “Never mind. So haunting. Schubert?”

“Could be but nein, it’s a German folksong, not truly Austrian. Mother would sing me to sleep with it.” The twins had a distant look.

Otto, heated and tight of breath, “May I make a toast?

Prosit neujahr!”

“Huh?” “Happy New Year to me! Because maybe something like a new year is beginning for me.”

“That’s fantastic!!” Arms again enfolded him. *** Time for Otto to return to Cardiff. The twins had taken a 42

room in the hotel. They suggested he stay and take the last bus back. Hesitating, he agreed. Upstairs the rest of the under-the-table bottle soon disappeared.

“Darkness in Llandaff.” (Antony) “But banished here.” Antonia lit a second lamp. “Otto, would you shed light on some intense experiences you’ve had? Really really intense ones.”

No reply. “You experienced the Nazis and Nazism first hand.” (Antony) “They’re all big black blurry clouds now.”

“Of course” murmured Antonia. “But things can get too piled up. They need daylight, don’t they? Could you, maybe…just a little bit?”

Otto shook his head.

Antony, sympathetically, “Words can’t ever equal the experience, even less long after. And what others pick up from our words is even less like the original.”

“Of course. A given we must accept, an unavoidable chasm.” (Antonia) “It’s very unsatisfactory, very frustrating…. Something powerful sits inside me but I just can’t get its bite or sweetness or whatever across to you.” (Antony) Antonia: “It’s sad, and terrible. Could photos be the solution? Not perfect but closer to the truth than anything else.”

Antony mimes snapping a picture. “May I photograph your sad insides?”

Bowing, “Be my paparazzo. Otto’s daddy could have snapped Otto’s mum singing Baby to sleep, but could he snap Otto’s or the mum’s experience? Or, we have a photo of Uncle Basil smiling at our birthday party, but nothing about how he —” Otto interrupting excitedly, “You do?! May I see it?”

“Of course. At home in St. David’s. But we have none of Basil’s parents or friends, if he had any.”

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“And nothing of the drowning man’s feelings, only his casket face.” (Antony) The conversation meandered to what it means to be an individual – can he be separate yet whole – a subject the twins keenly pursued. At one point, deflecting further from him, Otto ventured, “If Nature experiences the horrors we inflict on it, we can only photograph these and Nature’s physical reactions but not its feelings. And oh, I just thought does Life have feelings?”

Antony fills three glasses with water. “No, but we do! To Life!”

It was 10:30, nearly time for Otto’s bus. He would return the next morning for “a real Llandaff breakfast!” (Antony) “Yes, Ton, and you’ll go bring it.”

Jawohl mein fuehrer!

Otto corrected, “That should be meine fuehrerin. Fuehrer is masculine.”

“Was there ever a fuehrerin?” wondered Antonia.

Ich weiss nicht. “I always slept in history class, except in Mr. Jones’ class.”

Talk careened between personal and anecdotal, political and ideological, nonsensical and irreverent, all concentrating on personal.

“Otto, the last Cardiff bus is due! We’ll see you here for breakfast, but with your approval I’ll veto her appointing me as its fetcher.” (Antony) Talk continued, returning to an earlier discussion begun when Antony had said, “I’ve been thinking it’s good that words can never adequately convey exactly what we experience.” He elaborated, “It’s good because it leaves room for silences, and silences are good because they leave room for ingenuity and creativity. Also there’s space for the listener’s empathy to emerge, to the degree he has any, and that further enriches the entire thing, though it may give the 44

experience a twist it didn’t originally contain. Even true for you, sister.”

“I’ll ignore the chaff and settle for the kernels.”

“The colonels?” interrupted Otto, “military men?”

“No. It’s kernels. The grain’s seeds. Anyway, I have a connected thought. The fancier the words the weaker the essence. Look how well can exquisite words transmit the essence of, say, a severed head or a suddenly orphaned child? Even if they do, words somehow can get in the way of resonances and obscure the depths.”

Antony to Otto “She’s a poet and knows it, but I admit she’s right.” To Antonia, “Been reading Hemingway?”

“You know I have. Every night. His latest, sits on the night table.”

Otto at the window, “Hey, my bus just left!”

“Fancy that! No bus.”

“Must stay with us” “Without no fuss!”

Otto, highly anxious yet oddly pleased, “Well, you know, I always had my own room and my own bed, except once in a horrid children’s skiing camp. I don’t know how to share.”

“You’ve learned lots of things. We’ll happily teach you this one. As you see, there are only two narrow beds.”

Otto felt the terribly familiar dread of being trapped. At the door he read This room is for two occupants only, underlined.

“Two we are. You are one, brother, and I the other one.

So that’s settled.”

“You mean you two will sleep in one of these narrow beds?”

“Possibly. Or you could alternate sleeping with each of us.”

“You snore or kick?” asked Antony.

“Don’t know. No opportunity.”

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“Until tonight. If I kick, jab me.”

“Yes, jab him really hard” “And squeeze my nose if I snore. If both happen simultaneously, do both simultaneously. Among friends, what the hell?”

Otto insisted he’d sleep on the floor. He wanted a bed to himself but he couldn’t allow himself to be so selfish.

Brother and sister in one?

“Okay now. Sis and I will toss for who gets you.”

Leering at Otto, “The things expected of you!”

Otto’s breathing nearly stopped. He must get out! But if he can’t and worse comes to worst, he could turn off his mind and disappear. And be a coward forever.

Looking at the twins bedding down, did he notice a faint thrill? Otto began with Antony.

“You have a wicked punch,” Antony said in the morning, “but then I have the kick of a well-practiced goalie.”

“Or goat. And I’ll say for Otto that his punch isn’t all that’s wicked.”

“Well I do declare! Otto, you appear to have survived.

Hungry?

“No appetite.”

“By the by, did you feel deprived when you found yourself alone in bed?”

Otto, low key, “No Antonia, not deprived. More comfortable.

“Time to wash up and dress. Mind if we join you in the bathroom? Antonia and I don’t know privacy. We are either utterly depraved or free spirits, R and R Welsh.”

“Maybe both,” chirped Antonia. “Remember R and R, Otto? Rough and Ready.” Otto dressed quickly. A sheepish grin passing between the now quiet twins.

“Well that’s that. Antony, go get us breakfast. What would you like, Otto?”

46

“Nothing, thanks. Not hungry.”

“Nonsense man, after such a busy night….”

Otto looked out the window, staring unseeingly, hearing unhearingly. Nothing made sense and something was lost forever. But maybe something new. He could take in nothing more and nothing could come out. He needed to see Dr. Koeck.

The tearoom! Yesterday’s cheer and warmth and fellowship: Gone. Specters now. Faltering table talk. He was at the North Pole, his mind walking back through Butte Park along the steady Taff. Could it shed his strangling oppression, his images of shuttling between beds?

He wanted to hurl the grinning poached eggs, and the coffee was bad, as promised. He avoided all faces. Tattered bits of zaniness and zest, of camaraderie and immediacy swirled and mocked.

A quick glimpse of A and A - merry faces savaged by the dark of the dark night.

The twins ate wolfishly. Full mouths talk less. He condemned them, but by what right? He felt disgustingly inept and cowardly, craven and dishonest.

Afloat.

He walked along the Taff! Panic: how’d he get here?

Where’s his mind?

Was he being followed? No, nobody.

Approaching the safety of Cardiff Castle, he remembered scuttling from the breakfast table, nauseous, vomiting in the gents’. Enormous the chasm.

47

BEVERLY GROSS Outspoken I found my voice pretty late in life. As a child I counted on not being noticed. I was shy, introspective, introverted. This subsided quite a lot as I came to adulthood, yet I was still a relatively quiet person, passive in groups, observant rather than forceful. I might have stayed that way for life but like so many shy introverts I wound up getting a PhD and there was no other recourse but to become a professor. This meant standing in front of a roomful of people who, fortunately, had to listen politely to whatever I mumbled.

What I mumbled to fill the fifty minutes was a carefully wrought lecture — a script actually — that I read word for word.

I have kept some of my early teaching notes and I am now astonished at how much was written down, how fearful I must have been of spontaneity and looseness, how imprisoned I kept the students, how boring I must have been.

The process was slow, taking several decades but gradually I did away with the script, with lecturing in general.

I started asking questions, even questions to which I did not have an answer up my sleeve. My classes became more participatory, more like conversation, occasionally even like celebration.

A fabulous victory, but ironically a bit of a problem. I must have been voiceless too long because now my voice has a certain insistence to it. I’m not afraid to offer opinions and objections, in fact they come readily out of my mouth, surprising even myself.

48

I’m not really fearful of losing my voice now that I’ve found it. I’m pretty damn stuck with it, as are my friends, my family, my writing group. What I am nervous about is that my voice may get even louder, even more insistent, even pushier, offending everybody and I will wind up as isolated as I was before I learned to speak.

But I’ll take the risk.

Blue Steel When I was ten years old I picked a winner. I liked the name of the horse, Blue Steel, and convinced my father to place the bet despite the great odds against him.

Yonkers Raceway was a short ride from our house in the North Bronx. It operated at night as a trotters race track. My father went there often, occasionally accompanied by my mother and on this occasion by me. My father was a gambler. He loved cards, the track, even the stock market.

Gambling made him happy — the anticipation of maybe winning and the escapism of intense involvement in placing his bets. On weekends he played pinochle with his brothersin-law until my mother’s nagging finally got him up from the table. He rarely came out ahead, but the whole family knew when he had. There would be an air of festivity and profligacy the following Saturday and Sunday morning when he had a wad of bills in his pocket. My mother was always more relaxed on those mornings, playful with my sisters and me and even him.

The track was something he more often did alone.

Yonkers at night when his business required him during the day time. And afternoons at Belmont and Aqueduct when he was between businesses and had nothing much to do. These were real race tracks, not harness racing but the 49

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real thing where serious gambling took place with bookies and touts and my somewhat desperate father. He lost most of the time, whatever money he could wrest from my mother and later from my older sister. One time he sold his car in the morning of a big race whose winner he was confident he had picked. He hadn’t. We were without a car for the next few weeks.

I was able to go to Yonkers that night because my older sister was away at college and my younger sister was boarding with my aunt during the week while my mother worked for my uncle as a fur finisher, which is what she did between my father’s various and many business ventures.

I was excited to be taken to the track, loved the spectacle, enjoyed the unusual harmony between my mother and father. I was learning about win, place and show, and how odds worked. Before the fourth or fifth race my father asked if I wanted to choose our horse. I looked over the names, the odds, the pedigree and history of each entrant.

But the names were really what mattered to me. “Blue Steel,” I finally decided on. My parents looked dubious, but my father put ten dollars on Blue Steel to win.

The race could easily have turned me into an inveterate gambler. “Come on, Blue Steel,” the three of us shouted in unison from the grandstand. Amazingly, against great odds, probably something like twenty to one, Blue Steel came in first. I shrieked and jumped. Maybe the only time in my life that I actually jumped for joy.

It was easily my happiest outing with my parents. We sang in the car on the way home. We were winners.

I haven’t turned into that inveterate gambler from my success in picking Blue Steel. I had seen before and thereafter too many instances of losing. Too much tension, disappointment and anger between my parents. The night of Blue Steel was a great night, but there were too many other nights, far too many nights of losing and loss.

50

DAVID KERRY HEEFNER Ask for Carl Now, I like to call the name of this piece ASK FOR CARL. This whole thing begun just last night! I’ll tell ya’! It was amazing, absolutely amazing, what happened. You may not believe what I’m gonna tell ya’ now, but it’s the God’s honest truth. Honest.

So, there it was, last night, a real nice spring evenin’, and I’d gone out for a bit of a walk, I had nothin’ else to do anyway. So, there I was, walkin’ down Tenth Avenue, right in front of Roosevelt Hospital – between 58th and 59th Streets. You probly know right where that is.

And it was dark, maybe 9 PM – about then.

And right away, as I’m passin’ Roosevelt, wam-bam, a cute, expensive lookin’, Upper West Side kinda young couple come down the steps there in front of the hospital.

The cute husband was tall and skinny and looked like he worked too much, and he was totin’ one of them baby carryin’ devises in one hand, and in it he had him a newborn baby.

The misses was pretty ‘cause of hair dye and lots of makeup I Figured. I could tell that right away, and she wasn’t carryin’ nothin’ but a real nice leather hand bag.

Then, oh my gosh, I tell ya’, soon as I seen that cute, new, pink little baby tucked in its carryall, somethin’ really 51

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strange begun to happen.

I tell ya’. A rush…a sorta flush thing come all over me, somethin’ like I never felt before…ever. Honest to God. My whole body started tinglin’, and for a minute I felt kinda dizzy, and I didn’t know where the hell I was. Then, wam-bam, out of the blue – my nipples – can you believe this – my nipples begun to wiggle and twitch, honest to God. Then all a sudden that little baby kinda gurgled, like babies are always doin’, and of a sudden there was this soft, wet, warm feelin’ come all down the front of me.

And can ya’ believe it, milk come runnin’ from my nipples, and all down my shirt and jacket? Honest to God! And ya’ know what? Strange thing is…I wasn’t scared at all, ‘cause it felt good! It felt kinda natural. And then, smack dab, really fast, like nothin’ I ever thought of before in my entire life, a great idea come into my head, like a kind of miraculous happenin’. I decided right there and then that I was gonna get rich at last. I was gonna rent myself out as a wet nurse. At last I had finally found my place in the world, I figured.

Then somethin’ more come over me. Now, I’m usually a quiet, reserved kind of a guy, but not right there, last night, I wasn’t. Right up to that cute couple I marched, like the hand of God or somebody was pushin’ me, and out real loud I found myself askin’: “Excuse me folks, do you find yourselves in the situation of needin’ a wet nurse for your beautiful new baby there?”

The young mother, she screamed as if I had grabbed her in a dark alley or somethin’, and was gonna give her the Jack the Ripper treatment.

“Go away you filthy, drunken, foul old bastard,” the baby’s daddy yelled, real angry and turnin’ red.

“But mister,” I says, “here, just stick your hand inside my jacket” With that I grabs his hand, the one he wasn’t totin’ the baby in, and I shoved it right through my jacket 52

and shirt, faster than cat can wink her eye, and onto my right nipple. He coulda felt either titty ‘cause they was both pourin’ out milk as sweet as vanilla ice cream. I know ‘cause I licked my hand and tasted it. “Get away you crazy bastard bum,” that fella says. But I had his hand firm on my chest by then – hair and all – and you could feel the wetness there.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” the misses hollers. Next thing you know she’s wavin’ for a taxi cab, and she’s cryin’ “Bob, let’s get the hell outta here, fast.”

“Right, Honey,” Bob answers. “Taxi! Taxi!” Honey, screeches in the most God awful voice ya’ ever heard, that scared the shit outta the little baby, I can tell ya. And I seen in that babies eyes what she was thinkin’, ‘cause the poor little thing was lookin’ straight into mine. And I could read her little mind in them new baby eyes. Her eyes was beggin’: “Take me with you mister. Let’s run away like hell, ‘cause I can tell ya’ I don’t wanta spend the first eithteen years of my life with Bob and Honey.” I thought for a second I’d grab her quick outta her carryall like a small, soft football and run like hell away from there, but common sense, I think it was, took me over, and I found myself sayin’ to Bob. “Go ahead, mister. Taste my milk,” I tells him, real loud, drownin’ out Honey’s further cries for a Taxi Cab. “You just see if that ain’t the sweetest, healthiest milk you ever tried.” I continued. And then, despite hisself, Bob pulled his hand outta my jacket there and put it right up to his mouth and licked it clean.

“Bob!” Honey screams “have you lost your senses? That old man has probably got every disease the world has ever heard of and then some. And remember we’re not going to breast feed little Charlotte anyway; we’re going to bottle feed her” “Right, dear,” Bob says. “But just try this delicious milk. Go ahead, taste it Honey!” At that, Honey goes berserk and tries to grab little Charlotte and her carry-all away from the daddy. She’s wavin’ real crazy now for a cab 53

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that was comin’ up 10th where they get good business. And this cab stops real sharp. Anyway, still lickin’ my delicious milk from his fingers, Bob lets Honey pull him into that cab, and away they all went…uptown… little Charlotte and all.

Wam-bam! Thank you ma’am!

So, anyway, here I am today, the day after I met little Charlotte, more excited than I’ve ever been before in my entire life, and busy as a beaver, plannin’ out my new getrich scheme. I’m gonna hire me a secatary soon as I git the money to answer the phone and other things.

Right now I’m writin’ me a advertisement that I’m gonna’ take down there and run in the Wall Street Journal and maybe the New York Times too. Honest to God, swear it on The Bible.

“Need help nursin’ that new born baby of yours?” the ad’s gonna read. “Call Miracle Lactation Service, and ask for Carl. Satisfaction absolutely guaranteed!”

54

ALICE JACOBY Recovery You are in recovery. But the urge is very great. For three days, you’ve resisted the urge. Right after you stayed out all night and fell into work at 9:20 the next morning completely wreaked.

“Hey,” your cubicle mate yells from two feet away. “ What happened to you?”

“I got a bad nosebleed,” you mumble.

“Better get yourself cleaned up before the boss sees you.”

You sidle out of your cubicle and hug the wall on your way to the ladies room.

You look in the mirror. Dried blood crusts your lips, your mouth, and your front teeth. You splash cold water on your face, grab a bunch of white paper towels and roughly rub them over your mouth and teeth. And just look at your hands, dried blood and flakes of skin under your fingernails, red spots all over the front of your red sweater? Quickly you pull your sweater over your head and turn it inside out.

You meet your eyes in the mirror. The pupils are a bright red, the irises a sickly yellow. “I quit,” you say loudly.

“Finished! Finito!” The girl coming out of the cubicle behind you looks scared and runs for the door.

Immediately today, you start going to meetings. You go to one at lunch. You skip your usual rare burger, and just go. After work, you go to two more meetings. You learn 55

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that you have to be humble, surrender yourself to God. “Ýak, Ýak.”

You get up early the next morning and go to a seven o’ clock meeting in a church. The leader is tall, thin as a cadaver. You think he looks like Dracula. You giggle. If he looks like Dracula, what do you look like?”

But you do okay until Thanksgiving when you go to your aunt’s house. How you hate Thanksgiving! All the welldone turkey you force down your throat just to be polite.

Nothing to sink your teeth into! What you’d really like is a bloody steak.

Then your cousin, the fancy lawyer who has his own law firm on Wall Street arrives. Just a couple of years ago he was just like you, but now he’s quit and has a lovely young wife and a pair of fraternal twins who are turning a year old.

He smirks. “Give it up yet?” he sneers.

You try to turn away without answering.

“I see you’re still wearing red,” he says loudly.

“I like the color,” you say loudly and turn your back on him.

But this is so hard. The urge is so great. The undercooked stuffing sticks in your throat .You start to gag.

You excuse yourself early. Tell your aunt you have to get home early to study for the bar exam.

“Just make sure you pass it this time,” she says kissing you tenderly at the door.

Once outside in the freezing air, you feel energized. You start walking fast, downtown to Macys for Black Friday.

You want to buy a new red sweater to celebrate your three days of abstinence. The lines go round and round the block.

When you finally get inside, you figure you had to wait so long outside, you deserve two red sweaters, plus a new pair of red pants, red socks. You even find a new red pea jacket.

Your old one is lying in a bloody heap on the bottom of your closet floor.

56

It’s after three in the morning when you leave Macys, and you feel the urge more strongly than ever. You’re wearing all your new clothes to celebrate but it’s much too early for a meeting. The earliest one you can go to in the church is still more than three hours away.

What will you do until the meeting? You can feel the icy sidewalk through the thin soles of your sneakers, and realize you should have worn boots. You feel so hungry. What you need is something to sink your teeth in!

When you walk, run to the bar you feel like you’re flying.

You are only going there to look, just stay for a few minutes and then head straight for the meeting.

But my God, the urge when you get there, when you open the door, why does everything and everyone here feel so familiar, so comfortable.

You breathe in the smoke like its alpine air. Breathe in the smells all around you, beer, alcohol, sweaty bodies, sex, breathe deeply into the darkness…the loud drumming music is a thousand heartbeats.

And then you see her…not pretty really, her face is much too long and thin but what makes her beautiful to you is her long white neck, like a gazelle…You stand transfixed with longing. Home. You take one tiny step towards her.

57

BILL LARMER Upside Down Spring 1970: I was a student at Parsons School of Design The unopened letter was just sitting there as I stared hoping it would just disappear. The last letter I had received had taken me to a new life one that I had been happily living for the past six months. Right now my happiness was threatened and my new life living in room 1509 in The Hotel East Sutton was about to change .I could tell even before I finally opened up the registered letter.

At times I would open my window completely and just sit there taking in this extraordinary view of the skyline of New York City. The Plaza had its Eloise — the Hotel East Sutton, well, had me. Earlier as I returned from viewing the store windows along Fifth Avenue and 57th Street as I walked into the hotel even the manager behind the desk was quiet as he handed me the registered letter.

I had met a few school friends earlier and we had gone out---Thursday as we did every Thursday for the viewing of the store windows. Thanks to a stylist named Bob Curry window dressing especially with Henri Bendels on 57th Street had developed into an art form and other stores were soon to follow. Everyone in my industry from designers and manufactures to students came out to ogle at the inspiring windows. It was thrilling and the windows were always exciting. They were these street life of what to wear in the jungle if you were wearing Christian Dior Couture or if you were going to Palace of Versailles on a motorcycle dressed in expensive leather and sable. The creativity was unlimiting and inspiring.

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Ok, I’m not avoiding the letter. Yes, I am. It was my first registered letter and it was from the Army of the United States of America. Would you open it if you were me?

Actually the reality as I read was worse than I thought. My lottery number was up and I was up for a tour of Vietnam, leaving immediately. My instructions was to report to an address all the way downtown in one months time and if I couldn’t show proof that I wasn’t healthy to serve I would be leaving immediately. I could at that time show reason on my behalf to prove if I felt I was unhealthy to serve. It also said I could not be present with a lawyer or any spokesperson for that matter and then it said God Bless America.

For the next few minutes I sat transfixed and then decided to call my sister. Rick my bully of a controlling brother in law was a graduate of Virginia Military Institute. I thought I had gone directly to the source and if anyone could advise me perhaps it could be him. Wrong. His response was I should go to Vietnam for it might make a man out of me yet. Funny he was not off and running to join the service. I wondered how he got out of it. Having flat feet just didn’t cut it.

The next day I went directly to my doctor’s office. When I showed him the letter from the draft and sitting before him trying to calm down and asking don’t you have some Valium samples. Finally he said he thought he could help me. Then he took out a clean sheet of paper, not one of his stationery with his name and address, and started writing and then gave the piece of paper to me with a name and an address and directions. At the end he made me promise that I would never mention his name in this matter and then said he would call to let them know I was coming over immediately.

Then he stood up walked me to the door and as he shook my hand said good bye and good luck and then to let him know as to how things worked out.

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I proceeded to an address on the far west side and walked into yet another doctors office and gave the note from Dr. Rein to the receptionist. A few minutes later I was called into the doctors office. I was shaking at this point and almost ready to pass out. Oh, a Black Russian about now would really be nice, I thought as he spoke.

“Bill, I think I can help you with this matter. The fee is $2000 cash given to me before I write the letter.

“What letter?” I ask.

“Listen, listen carefully because I can’t write the instructions down but here are the dates and times for my schedule for the next week I will be on call as a doctor in the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. You will come in and pretend to have a mental episode, act crazy, I thought to myself that would not be acting right about now. I will fill out the necessary forms and will give you a letter that will keep you from going to Vietnam.” He said.

“That it. That all. “I responded with.

“Yes, it will be that simple” he said.

“Mother, can I have $2000?” I said.

“What?” “$2000.”

So I explained the situation and she said, yes, my baby is not going to Vietnam.

“Thanks” That seemed simple enough until I thought about it over the next several days and then I realized this would be on my record for ever and I decided no. I then tried to get advice from school nothing and the only other option was to go to Canada.

On the day of my physical I just decided to show up with nothing, no letter, nothing. I figured I had slayed more dragons in my time and I would just take on the United States Army all by myself.

There we all stood in line together all 100 of us young 60

firm bodied men in our underwear standing in a cold drafty warehouse. The good part was spending the day with some really hot men in either white briefs or white boxers. Where was Calvin Klein when you needed him? There was no fashionable underwear for men at the time but somehow that seemed irreverent with the job at hand.

We were put through a battery of test for the entire day going from one room to the next — eyes, ears, nose — Ahhhhhh! — weight, standing on one foot switching to the next. What I remember most was how quiet everyone was.

You could hear a pin drop. Then we were told to get dress and then we were divided into smaller groups and taken into groups of around twenty into smaller rooms for the finale, to be told whether we would be going to Vietnam or not.

Everyone was on high alert at this time. It was also at this time if we had any letter or any other information would be gone over for the final results.

“Son, seems like you didn’t give us a urine specimen,” the rough and ready sergeant at hand said.

“No, Sir I didn’t.”

“Why not,” “Sir, I can’t go in public,” I said and received my first shocked reaction for him that would not be my last.

He than looked at the man standing next to him and asks for a small container and said, “Okay, go over there to that bathroom. It is private and give us a sample and come back to me immediately” “Yes, sir. I did as instructed and went to the bathroom and brought back a urine specimen as instructed.

Are you getting it yet? Seemed like just my natural self was making an impact. Listen you can’t make this stuff up. I was a natural.

After answering a number of questions I saw something written down on a form and pointed. “What’s this?” I ask.

“It’s pertaining to homosexuality.”

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“Really, I’m a homosexual,” I responded and from the look on his face I played the right card. Bingo.

“You are?” he responded, and he actually acted shocked “Yes, you are damn right.” I didn’t say the damn part, but I wanted to.

“Okay, son. This is what you are going to do,” he said, as he gave me a pen. “Write out I am a practicing homosexual,” he said very slowly. So, I did as instructed and wrote out I’m a practicing homosexual.

“Ok ay, write it out again,” he said.

So I did. I’m a practicing homosexual.

“And now write it out again.” It was after writing out I’m a practicing homosexual. for the third and final time that he said I was 4F. Simple as that.

Then I ask if that’s it, and he said yes.

You know me. I couldn’t leave it at that and said, “You mean to tell me I had to stand in my underwear all day and catch my death of a cold and that’s it?”

As he stood up abruptly out of his chair and waved his arm out to all of the other young men waiting, he said, “Listen son, you are not going to Vietnam.”

It was at this time I turned and saw all of the panic on these young men’s faces. They were scared as they sat and stood with letters, large X-rays, and any information that would keep them from going to Vietnam.

As I walked out, back to my life and my freedom, I could feel a big weight leave my being. Something had shifted. I think I had grown up a little. Good. I needed to.

Over the years I have often wondered what happened to those young men that one day in the spring of 1970 I had the privilege of spending the day with.

Oh, by the way, I’m still practicing!

62

JOHN M C LELLAN Glistening Evening From his perch upon his high chair throne the little being reigned, sometimes softly, sometimes loudly and occasionally boisterously. The stained glass windows of the church across the street glowed briefly with the setting sun. Warburton avenue’s cobblestones glistened by the afternoon shower. It bore the shining tracks of the number one trolley and the air bore a refreshing silence.

Mommy’s kitchen noises, now muted, gave way to a satisfied sigh. The day’s clatter, trolley traffic, and vendors suddenly swallowed and evening took her hold.

The monarch, unaware of the world’s names for all these things, felt a delighted excitement arise from within.

He couldn’t know but he sensed that DaDa, his (and mommy’s) hero, would soon appear. Much of his sensing was caught because of his contagion to mommy’s feelings.

She was his hero too, but in a familiar, less conscious way.

And she committed the great offense much more frequently than DaDa did.

Only that morning, when he chose to use his scepterspoon to fling some oatmeal at the clanging trolley, landing instead on freshly-laundered curtains and a shade, did she pinch him, sigh, and they cry. She buffeted him with abusive words which hurt, a even though the only familiar ones were “bad boy!” and “Very bad boy!”

The joy and fun of dealing with DaDa would soon replace the still lingering annoyance (once rage) of mommy’s bad behavior 63

JESSICA NOONEY Before Coming Out He unrolled it slowly The kite ascended He was free Playing hooky from high school When the going gets tough Luke goes to Central Park His friends said that about him That kid out in the meadow So startlingly handsome So undercover and sad So angry He often joined this group of old men In the middle of the day One was the grandfather he wanted One was the father he wanted One was the father he would be one day All had dropped out beyond success They made a bright piece of tissue paper fly So high it almost disappeared Luke’s laughter ran up his kite string Across the bow Ad slowly ran along its flickering tail

64

The going had been tough But out here with the sun overhead With these old men friends They were kind Quiet Sober How could the boy understand his own genius Creating peace and liberation with men Who knew how to stand still And fish in the sky.

65

Late Date Tonight the head is Peg between my thighs.

Her arms, loose vines, flourish to push home. This Domestic wine near drowns our bed in bliss.

With drunken toes I press out what is mine.

The head is often Peg between my thighs.

Too old these women to be this near a miss.

The path ahead leads from her breasts. Drop kiss me off to home dear, I stagger backwards blind.

For now I wend my winesap days with Peg. Walk forward with two canes and come as one.

I trust her eyes to read the signs of what’s to come.

She being truly tough and kind we beg, this field I’ve mined return to verdant green, My plot for this late date remain unseen.

66

Coming Out: A Poem in Three Acts Butts, Ifs & Ands In the first act, she’s the butt of her years Raised at T.S. Eliot’s knee He was her Grateful Dead Oh Papa Those were butt years Act 2: Another life – as if – as an “if” Answering fistfuls of personals in the Village Voice Women Seeking Women they say – “You only need one woman” Here she’s writing one poem In this stanza sitting alone in Rubyfruit’s Single scene of second hand smoke – third hand conversations Off hand women – their hands off – not by her design – but by 58 It seems to her If…is anyone looking Act 3: Land’s End “Grow old along with me” She wanted that with old T.S. But she’s in a café at Lord and Taylor Writing a poem in a sea of dazed and angry and gorgeous women They come and go They’re not talking of Michelangelo Cause he’s a fuckin’ Ninja Turtle The joke’s on you old Tough Shit Eliot – old prissy butt head God I hate you

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Her back is literally up against the Coach bags scribbling away Desperately seeking a Gap to fall into She’ll play the Lord or the Taylor no matter “Let us go then you and I” To some Banana republic set the mermaids free she’ll push the hand Of the warm Gulf Stream between their parted thighs She’ll take on all butts for the and of her years And here is the And of her Acts.

With Altered Traditional English Nursery Rhyme She puts her cool morning hand to her head Cranium stuffed with old lovers All straining to get out men Come back all of you kiss me goodbye You forgot before you went off to work that day Time is ripe now for Post Nursery Rhyme Pumpkin – like bad girls and vampire mushrooms Lush moony moms riding on high Between witches thighs Like yours dear thought I Old woman, old woman old woman said I Where are you going up so high?

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To brush the cobwebs off the sky.

But I will be with you by and by.

Where are you going all night on your gander?

Old woman, my woman, why do you wander?

I soon will be with you over and under Upstairs and downstairs you will be led With my ravishing beak, I soon will the wed Your white downy breast arches to me.

Your thighs clasp your broomstick as I would clasp thee.

My ravishing beak will be yours don’t you see.

I’m your old woman now – set the kettle for tea.

Click & Drag at MOTHERS’ I barely made it out alive being a girl Hit or miss wild shots a long backward fall Into old age addled and alone Art is good for flirting so I am writing a poem Rant and brag on paper and be in your sight Strut and brag click and drag A newly-minted dyke MOTHERS’ is a gay bar and they’re asking you to park it Click and drag at MOTHERS’ beefcake for the meat market My mother was a Drag Queen 69

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chic and haute couture Darling I ate my heart out while the gay guys roared for more I feel the blast of Drag Queen rage I’ve turned to anger at every age Now I’m gonna take the stage “Like a civic minded, responsible, thrill seeking babe”* I’ll defend the right of my mother to keep what’s hers Defend her against Althea Loveless Tears for Fears and Psychedelic Furs I’m having fun at men’s expense as they have had at mine My Drag King personae is “cut them up” sublime Leave martyrdom to the followers of Kitty Boots Couture Leave guys to their demise and let’s make the race pure What if the women atomized all the men No more computer upgrades mass murders Sabrett vendors and then…

If you need copies of this or just more of the same My flyers say it Jessica Rabbit Domination is my name But if you want to join me at a truer alma mater I can now be reached by women only at Jessie Gertrudesdatter Two dollars with this invite three dollars for others Click and drag Click and write Click and fight for MOTHERS’ *Solanas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto. Olympia Press, 1968.

70

FRED QUINTILIANI The Merry-Go-Round Tony walked into the hospital room at NYU medical center.

Michael was lying in his hospital bed with tubes running in and out of his arms and nose. His chest was heaving ip and down, coinciding with the beeping rhythm of his respirator.

“Michael, wake up,” Tony demanded, but Michael did not respond. Tony did not believe that this was his friend helplessly lying there.

Michael and Tony had met twenty years before, in a gay cruise area in Flushing, Queens.

“Hi, I saw some of your drag shows,” Tony said, introducing himself.

After a cold “hello” from Michael, they became fast friends, discussing all the gay bars that Michael performed in and all the people they both knew. Their families became acquainted, and Tony became part of Michael’s entourage, attending many of his shows.

It was the 1970s, and Michael Rogers (which was his stage name) performed in the New York Gay Cabarets such as The Gold Bug, The Alibi, The Roundtable, and Harry’s Back East. Carol Burnett, Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, and Mae West were celebrities that were part of his repertoire. In fact, Michael one met Carol Burnett and she asked him, curiously, “Why would you want to imitate me? I’m not even pretty.”

“Because you are real,” Michael responded.

She loved his answer. Yes, Michael was real. He was not 71

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a diva. He was a comic, a clown, and he kept his audience in stitches.

Michael and Tony were on the phone almost every night, laughing and talking about their empty sexual escapades. It was after the Stonewall Riots, and many gay men were rampantly having anonymous sex. New York City was a sexual playground, and many gay men became “sexual outlaws.”

There were the “trucks” on Christopher Street, the piers on the West Side Highway, the back room bars, the parks, and the bathhouses. It was the time of Gay Liberation, and for many gay men, sexuality spun out of control. In fact, a later Documentary on the sexual revolution stated that promiscuity became a “badge of freedom” for many gay men.

For many gay men, sex became an “addiction,” a sexual merry-go-round, propelled by loneliness, that they could not get off. Michael and Tony, like all gay men, were not aware of the viral monster, AIDS, that was lurking in the shadows at the time.

One night, Michael called Tony hysterically crying, informing Tony that his employer, a dermatologist in Chelsea, had diagnosed a lesion on his arm as Kaposi’s Sarcoma, an AIDS-related skin cancer. It was 1993 before the successful antivirals and AIDS was a death sentence.

“You’re going to be alright, Michael,” Tony said, trying to console him.

Tony had some hope that the new medications were on the horizon but it was too late for Michael and Tony watched Michael’s health slowly deteriorate. Sometimes Tony would stay overnight in the hospital at the urging of Michael’s mother, Mary. Tony would try to cheer him up.

Then one night, Tony received a call from Michael in the hospital, while Tony was busy making dinner for some trashy guy that he had picked up on the street. Tony was 72

stressed out from all the hospital drama.

“Michael, I’ll call you tomorrow,” Tony whispered as he rushed Michael off the phone.

“I love you” Michael uttered to Tony in a weak, hoarse voice.

It would be the final words that Tony would hear from Michael. When Tony called the hospital the next day, a nurse answered. “Mr. Gardenia cannot come to the phone” she said abruptly.

Tony rushed to the hospital after work that night.

Michael was in a coma and could not communicate.

“Michael, wake up.” Tony pleaded.

Michael died that night, leaving his friend Tony with two guilty questions: Why had he survived, unlike Michael and many of his other friends?

Why didn’t he have the chance to say goodbye to Michael?

73

RITA SCHULTZ Eyes Fluttered Shut Her eyes fluttered shut, if you didn’t know her, you’d think she was asleep. I knew her and she was asleep.

This woman, my neighbor Betty, hairdresser to the stars, as she called herself was approaching a certain age. It was 1985 and she looked spry and game for anything. Blonde platinum hair, always a twinkle in those pale blue eyes. She lived alone next door and had been there for a number of years before I moved in.

She always had a great story, as when Betty Bacall came in with mousy brown hair and was screaming as she was in the process of suing the Salon at 75th and Madison for ruining her signature deep chestnut color. She was enraged but Betty took care of everything, gave her a Scotch, sat her down and renewed her picture perfect color. Miss Bacall was delighted. She also did nails and had some gruesome stories of one female film star that bit her nails so bad the blood would not stop pouring from her hands, like some statue of a saint that miraculously bled from the palm of her hands as tears dripped slowly from the corners of her eyes.

Betty had a million stories in that 80-year-old mind that had a memory of a young girl. Maybe because her mind was full of wondrous stories of stars and how happy she made them. No tales of woe, no tales of battering from the brutish four ex-husbands, Betty was no victim, she saw herself as a winner and was happy every day. She had two miserable sons, real sons-a-bitches, you could smell it - how 74

they wanted her to die so they could get their grubby hands on that adorable 1 bedroom.

Betty had a fall one night and the paramedics were called, not too serious - they just took a look and bandaged her up. I had to call one of the sons to come over and help her get around. He was such a misery. Mad that she fell, an inconvenience interrupting his favorite show. He showed up at her door a few hours later, traveled from Westchester. I was at Bettys watching the Twilight Zone, she loved that show, the music, remember the music, quite dramatic. She seemed to never sleep, her TV was always on, played solitaire while talking on the phone to her girlfriends.

One night around 4 am, I ran out of baking soda, which I desperately needed. I just put an 8-ball of coke in a small chemist bottle with water and the thing looked like diluted skim milk. My old friend Erika was there and spent 300 bucks to have this product turned into beautiful base cocaine- pure no additives, like that McDonald’s crack that was just beginning to hit the street. Cooking coke was a fine art, like a soufflé, one missed ingredient and puff a flat mess, no rise, no soufflé. We needed baking soda bad. I knocked on Betty’s door, she was delighted to see me - I told her I needed baking soda cause I was cleaning the fridge and baking a cake at the same time. She thought it was a fine idea and handed over an almost full box, though I needed just a pinch. Just the needed ingredient for pure base, rock hard coke ready to be torched in the 2 foot beauty of a glass pipe; a little Courvoisier at the bottom to smooth things out.

Some weeks later, I wasn’t running into Betty at the compactor or hearing her fidget with the doorknob trying to get the right key in the door. I asked around, it seemed those two bastard sons put her in a nursing home and lickety-split that apartment was on the market. I called one of those boys to inquire and ended up screaming that Betty had merely taken a spill, not a goddamn thing was wrong with the 75

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woman. You can’t argue with power of attorney. Betty was gone.

I remember that spring day with Betty splayed out on her settee, her eyes closed and if you didn’t know her you’d think she was dead. But I knew her and she was smiling. All the memories of aging starlets that she restored to some vision of their waning youth.

Betty smiled, eyes fluttered shut, she didn’t want to see the future, the past was alive gleaming with glamour.

76

TONY SETTEDUCATE Joey’s Story NINETEEN Nineteen was a great year for Joey. It was the year his life changed. He had a new job with a prestigious decorator.

Two nights a week he pursued his passion as an art student at The New School. But most important, he had developed into a man; a tall, handsome man with a shock of dark, curly hair, deep set eyes and a smile that could light up a room.

Joey hadn’t always been this good-looking. In high school he was a little weakling, the kid the jocks would pick on. He was too short, too skinny, and too weak to make any of the athletic teams. Nor did he have the academics to join the intellectual groups. No, Joey was the odd kid, liked but not loved. Then his body began to change. He grew almost three inches taller. He joined a gym. He found new friends through work and his classes. He met a girl. Joey never had a girlfriend before. He often thought it would be nice to have a girlfriend. All the other guys had girlfriends.

Audrey met Joey through a mutual friend. He didn’t pay much attention to her at first but Audrey wasn’t going to let that stop her. She charmed him with words, telling him how talented he was, how cute his smile was. He enjoyed the new found attention. One night while they were riding on the Staten Island ferry, going nowhere, just gazing up at the stars, she led him to a spot that was restricted to personnel only. It was dark. They sat on steps leading to the 77

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pilot’s cabin. They kissed. Audrey taught him how to French kiss. Hell, she stuck her tongue down his throat; put his hand under her blouse. Joey was aroused. He never felt this way with a girl before. It was a feeling he only experienced once before, at summer camp when he and Lance shared a tent one night. Joey always remembered that night. He often wondered about his feelings, too. Somehow that felt natural.

With Audrey he felt excited but it wasn’t the same. It felt dangerous.

Just then one of the crew came by and shined a flashlight on them. “Hey, you kids. You can’t be here. Move it!”

They stood up. Joey tried to hide the bulge in his pants.

Fortunately Audrey could not see how red his face was in the dark of the night.

Audrey tucked in her blouse and straightened her skirt as she stood up, smiled at the crewman and walked on.

LIFE DRAWING On Thursday evenings Joey looked forward to the life drawing class at The New School. Drawing wasn’t his forte, hell, he could hardly draw a straight line but it allowed him to tighten his discipline and pull in his abstract expressions.

Tonight Joey found himself facing a male model, a nude. He felt flushness come over his face. Not that he had ever seen a man totally naked before. In high school he had to shower with the other boys after gym class. And then there was that time with Lance at summer camp. But they weren’t totally nude then; they were wearing pajamas as they fondled each other under the covers, holding each other until they were wet and breathless.

Mickey was tall and lean, over six-feet tall with long, dark hair that brushed his angular shoulder blades and white skin, clinging to his chest in a way that allowed every rib to pop. The instructor emphasized that the class should pay special attention to the model’s bone structure. Joey was 78

fascinated by the anatomy, keeping his eyes glued to Mickey as he welded a stick of charcoal over his drawing pad. No matter how much he tried, going through sheaves of drawing paper, he would not, could not allow himself to draw the crotch.

After class he approached the model who was now wearing a robe that hung loosely over his taunt body. They spoke briefly and decided to meet for coffee at the shop around the corner in an hour.

Mickey was so different from anyone Joey had met before. A real bohemian living in a run-down loft on a West Village street. He came to New York from somewhere on the West Coast looking to further his career in theatre. Nude modeling put food in his mouth. He didn’t mention how the rent was paid.

Joey told Audrey about his mysterious new friend. He also told Audrey that he thought Mickey might be gay. This intrigued his girlfriend. They had been going together for nearly six months. Joey knew how she was intrigued by anyone who showed any signs of indifference to their normal group of friends.

AUDREY That fall Audrey entered her senior year at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn. As hard as she tried, she never made the top tier amongst her classmates. Just a little too chubby, a bit too short, her hair too curly. Audrey was rejected by the cheerleaders, turned down for the lead in the school play and fell face down during volleyball tryouts. This year would be different. She had a boyfriend, an older guy who was handsome and artistic. Not that Joey could compete with any of the varsity jocks. Heck, he could barely throw a ball or know which end of a bat to swing.

Of course, none of that mattered to Audrey. The important thing is that he was older, a graduate from 79

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another school, and he was studying art. Audrey never failed to mention that he was an artist, or that they had friends in the arts--bohemian friends who lived in Greenwich Village.

She was referring to Mickey, the actor-com-model Joey met in his life drawing class. Ever since Joey introduced his girlfriend to his newfound friend they became good buddies.

Joey wasn’t sure where this arrangement was going. Audrey and Mickey would chat several times a week on the telephone. He knew the relationship was platonic, Mickey is gay, but there was something strange going on and Joey couldn’t put his finger on it. Mickey was supposed to be his friend.

Among her circle of friends that Joey had met – Judy and Les, Annette, Bobbie and Bob, Trudy and tall Sally; long, tall Sally they called her – there was one they all talked about, Phillip. Joey had never met Philip but he felt like he knew him. Everyone said Philip was gay. The whole school knew Philip was gay. That’s because Philip told everyone he was gay. “So why hadn’t he met Phillip,” he asked Audrey one day?

PHILIP Philip wasn’t the most popular boy in the senior class at Fort Hamilton High School but he was the most interesting and without doubt the most talked about. His weekend adventures continuously gave the gang more than enough gossip to fill the following week.

Philip went to Greenwich Village and snuck into a bar.

He was missing for two nights. His mother frantically rang up all of his school friends, the ones whose phone numbers she was allowed to have.

Philip went to the Hamptons with an older couple, artists who taught him the joy of running nude through the weeds as the sun set over the trees and fireflies lit up the night sky. Then there was the time he hitched hiked out to 80

Long Island where he met a man who invited him to spend the night on Fire Island. Philip recounted the excitement of a costume party he attended. Everyone, well mostly men, was dressed in togas. His host draped him in a bedroom sheet fasted with a gold rope around his waist. There was a DJ to keep the music blaring and guests were invited to drink from the big punchbowl. – more like a galvanized washtub – until at one point the togas were stripped away and they all ran nude to the beach and splashed in the surf.

Audrey would listen to these tales of weekend debauchery as if they were the Canterbury Tales. She soaked in every word, carefully interpreting every nuance. Then she would recall them all to Joey. Joey, the man she adored. Joey who she once told her mother was the man she would marry.

Joey would then tell Mickey what Audrey told him about Philip.

“Could it be true?” he asked his friend.

Mickey who lived in a tiny flat in Greenwich Village was so much worldlier, so he thought. Mickey didn’t grow up in Brooklyn. He had traveled. He lived on his own. Everyone else he knew – Audrey, Judy, Les, even Philip – still lived at home with their parents. But mostly what Joey wanted to know Mickey couldn’t tell him. “Was Philip really gay?”

PROM As the calendar shifts to the month of June high school seniors turn their thoughts to prom night. Audrey and Judy had been talking of nothing else for weeks. What to wear?

White for Judy, pink for Audrey. They picked out their dresses over a month ago at Martin’s, the downtown department store; multi-tiered confections puffed up with a series of crinoline underskirts. Audrey insisted that Joey wear a white dinner jacket for the formal event, the last dance of their high school years.

Joey had never been to a prom. He skipped his high 81

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PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY TONY SETTEDUCATE 82

school dance two years earlier. “Just too tacky,” he told everyone. But the real reason was that he didn’t have a date.

Everyone he asked was busy or going with someone else.

No one wanted to be seen with the class weakling. “If only they could see him now,” he thought to himself. Joey had grown almost two inches since high school and lost all that baby fat that no diet could melt away no matter how much he starved himself.

The girls paid for the prom tickets but it was up to the guys, Joey and Les, Judy’s beau, to hire the limousine for the night and pick up the tab at the nightclub afterwards.

On the night of the prom Joey arrived at Audrey’s house with a corsage of four pink orchids that traveled up her arm from the wrist to near the elbow. Two elastic wristbands, one at either end, kept it securely in place. Fortunately the night was warm because there was no way she could slip that arm through a coat sleeve. A shawl her mother had crocheted will have to suffice.

The black Cadillac limousine drove them the three blocks to Judy’s house where she and Les greeted them with oohs and aahs. The girls kissed, the guys shook hands. Is this what adulthood is like, Joey thought? Then off they went to the grand ballroom of the Sherry Netherland Hotel for more oohs and aahs from fellow classmates before sitting down to a chicken dinner. That’s when Joey noticed the odd man seated to his right. He didn’t have a date.

“Who goes to a prom without a date?” he inquired of Audrey.

“The school wouldn’t let Philip bring his boyfriend and he didn’t want to miss prom,” she whispered back. “So I told him it was okay to join us. I didn’t think you would mind. Besides you wanted to meet Philip.”

Joey shook Philip’s hand as he gently nudged his chair closer to Audrey.

That night they went to Lou Walter’s club in Times 83

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Square after the prom was over. The Latin Quarter was up a flight of stairs on the second floor. The five of them sat at a long table facing the dance floor and sipped screwdrivers short on vodka. This was Joey’s third time at the nightclub so he knew what to order. The waiter never asked for a driver’s license. Philip kept smiling at Joey; his dark eyes seemed to sparkle in the dim lighting.

Later they all drove back to Brooklyn in the limousine.

The car pulled up to Judy’s house first and she and Les got out. It was nearly three in the morning when they arrived at Audrey’s place. Joey walked Audrey to her apartment. When he came out Philip was waiting.

“Would you like to go for coffee?” he asked Joey.

LENNY’S HIDEAWAY The week after prom Joey ran into Philip one evening while walking to the subway after work. At first glance he thought to cross to the opposite side of the street. The last time they were together, having coffee at The Corner Shack after taking Audrey home at three in the morning, Philip tried to proposition him, actually put his hand on his crotch. If Joey wasn’t so tired he would have punched him in the face. But he didn’t have the energy to make a fist. Besides, Joey always tried to avoid violence. He gently brushed Philip’s hand aside as he felt the bulge in his pants growing stronger.

“Hey Stud,” shouted Philip before Joey could make his getaway. “What are you up to?”

“Just on my way home,” he responded. “What are you doing in this part of the city?”

“My boyfriend lives around the corner,” Philip told him.

“I’m on my way to visit. Would you like to meet him?”

“Uh, no, not now,” Joey said with a bit of hesitancy in his voice. A strange feeling came over him. He didn’t know much about Philip, didn’t know he had a boyfriend. So why was he feeling this sense of hurt, jealousy if you will?

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“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend. What’s his name?”

“Christian, Christian Duncan Snow. Isn’t that a totally waspish name?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Joey murmured.

“Tell you what, why don’t you come out with us on Saturday night and you can meet him? We’re going to this bar in Greenwich Village, Lenny’s Hideaway. You’ll like it.”

Joey usually saw Audrey on Saturday evening. It was their standard date, but the thought of going to a village gay bar intrigued him. “I’ll let you know,” he said.

“You still have my phone number?”

“Yeah,” said Joey as he was on his way down the steps to the subway.

Joey called Audrey that evening and begged off of their weekend date, telling her he had to study for upcoming exams.

On Saturday he took the subway to Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village where he met up with Joey and Christopher on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Tenth Street.

Joey was startled at Christopher’s good looks; tall, at least six feet, maybe taller, with dirty blonde hair that fell across his forehead and bright blue eyes.

“This must be a god,” he thought to himself.

They walked half a block to an open doorway lit by a single bare bulb in the socket above and descended the staircase to the basement level. There in the dimly lit room was a jukebox against one wall and a row of small, square tables along the opposite side. At the back was a bar the width of the room. Theater posters hung on the brick walls.

Joey looked around. He had never been to a place like this. “Audrey would love this,” he told Philip.

They ordered a round of beers from the waiter as they stood by the jukebox listening to Ethel Merman belt out “I Had A Dream” from “Gypsy,” the hot Broadway musical Joey wished he had seen.

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Philip seemed to know most of the guys and kept introducing them to Joey. David, who was a few years older than Joey smiled at him, engaged him in conversation.

“David, Joey’s straight,” shouted Philip over the barroom noise.

Joey smiled as he gripped David’s hand and squeezed a little tighter. “Happiness is the ultimate risk,” Joey said to no one in particular.

86

ROGER SILVA In Search of His Ghosts It wasn’t his usual kind of bar. The party he had just come from was dull. He thought a little spice would rid him of the evening’s sour taste.

Hombre was close to where the trucks were parked. If he couldn’t find anything in the bar, then he’d hit the trucks.

A man on the far side of the bar caught his eye, Gaspare didn’t know why. He was fairly ordinary looking, five ten about 140 pounds, dark hair cascaded over his right eye, maybe he was thirty. He wore a black turtleneck sweater, it was July. “Beatnik.” he thought and cruised the room one more time.

“This sucks,” he thought and decided to leave. For no explicable reason he looked for the man with the turtleneck sweater. He scanned the room, there was one less person.

The night air was like a splash of cold water, he felt revived. He strolled to the trucks. It was two a.m., the busy time on a Saturday night.

There he was, Mr. Turtleneck. Leaning against a truck, one leg crossed over the other, his jeans sported a generous basket. Gaspare approached, slowly lit a joint and offered him a hit. Wordlessly he accepted. Took a couple of deep drags and handed it back to Gaspare.

“I have a place five blocks away, want to go?”

“Yeah.”

“You ought to know, before we get any further, that my body is scared; shrapnel.”

Why he answered yes he’d go, Gaspare didn’t know.

The guy had a hard look to him, his eyes were devoid of Continued 87

lust, but there was something that drew Gaspare to him; magnetism, chemistry? They walked in silence.

He lived on Tenth Street, a five floor walk-up. It was a studio apartment, not much furniture; a bed, an easy chair, a bureau with a mirror and some snapshots. A television set and a stereo player sat atop something, a book shelf next to it. “Want a beer?” Gaspare nodded yes. He was beginning to get second thoughts about being with this man in his apartment. “What’s your name?”

“Gaspare, my real name is Gaspare.”

Hector frowned, “Not a common name.”

“No it isn’t.”

“I’m Hector.”

Hector rose and stood before Gaspare, “I’m going to take my sweater off, take a good look. If you’re turned off, go. Just go, don’t say a word. But if you stay, don’t stay because you feel sorry for me. Understand?!” Gaspare nodded yes. Handing Gaspare his beer, Hector stripped off the sweater. His torso was riddled with craters, some small some large. Gaspare gazed at the sight before him, and thought, “This chest, this belly, these arms, that neck was once as smooth as mine. Now they will always be a reminder of terror survived, pain passed, pain never gone.” As if hypnotized, Gaspare stared and started to touch the mangled flesh before him. Catching himself he asked “May I touch you?”

His eyes had been studying Gaspare since he’d taken his sweater off. He studied his body movements, his eyes, and his face. He noticed that there was no pity there, perhaps sorrow, but at least he wasn’t pitied. “OK.” Gaspare’s finger tips softly touched his chest, his belly. Tears were swelling in his eyes. He asked himself, “What is wrong with me, why do I see beauty before me? What am I really seeing?” Gaspare didn’t realize that while his eyes were seeing a mangled body his soul was feeling its pain. As gentle as a breeze but as 88

forceful as gale winds, Hector raised Gaspare’s chin up to his face and kissed his lips as tenderly as he had raised his chin. The kiss released Gaspare’s tears as well as his passion.

They made love. “How gentle, yet powerful a love maker he is,” Gaspare thought.

“Stay the night.”

“The night passed, I’ll stay the morning.” With that, Hector spooned Gaspare and they slept. Later, when the sun insisted they wake, they opened their eyes. Hector threw off the covers. “In the light of day, can you stand looking at me?”

“I think you’re beautiful, like an El Greco painting.”

Hector laughed. “You’re one fucking sick puppy.” But his laugh had no rancor in it, nor did his tone. His head was turned away from Gaspare who couldn’t see the tears flowing down his cheeks. He shouted “I’m in the bathroom!” as he walked away.

Gaspare lay there thinking, what had he gotten himself into? Hector’s life held much suffering. Gaspare decided to get dressed and when Hector got out of the shower, he’d kiss him goodbye. He was always a speedy dresser, especially after one of these overnight stays. He was ready to leave but Hector was still in the bathroom. He’d have to wait. While he did, he walked over to the dresser and looked at the snapshots; a couple of pictures of Hector and other guys.

Then he noticed one that stopped him in his tracks. Three men, Hector and “Could it be? Was that George?!” His head was reeling. He had to sit or he would faint. The other photos slid out of his fingers and fell to the floor. He collapsed on the one easy chair.

Hector, naked, exited the bathroom. He saw a pale Gaspare slumped on his chair, a photo held between his fingers, others scattered on the floor. He walked to Gaspare, his suspicions realized. “That’s me and Smith and Lombardi.” He paused “George was your brother, wasn’t 89

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he?” Tears were streaming down Gaspare’s cheeks, he didn’t care. He couldn’t speak, just nodded his assent. It had been seven years since George was killed, “I have lived a lifetime?” he thought, “while George, so young, never had a chance at half the life I had.” The guilt of the survivor began to encompass him. Like a bolt of lightning, Gaspare realized he was not alone. He looked up and saw Hector’s concerned face.

“You ok?” The tears had stopped almost as suddenly as they had started.

“You served with George?!”

“We were in the same platoon.”

“Were you there that day?” A deep sigh and then a pause “Yes.” There was a silence between them. No words could breach the chasm that occurred. Hector dressed. “We need coffee and food.”

“Yes.” In a semi-daze Gaspare followed Hector out of his apartment and into the street. They headed to Bickford’s on Seventh Avenue; ordered coffee and scrambled eggs.

After they ate, in silence, Hector spoke. “He spoke of you often, his older brother, and the first in the family to go to college. He was very proud of you.” Tears once again flowed from Gaspare’s eyes, now they were accompanied by a lump in his throat. Hectors words were like a hot spike piercing his heart. “Sorry, thought you wanted to know about George.”

“I do, it’s just that it hurts. Please, go on.”

“Not much else to go on about.”

“Not much else? Not much else?!” his voice rose, he caught himself, several people were looking at them. It wasn’t as if Bickford’s had not had its share of drama. Hell it was in the heart of the Village, drama was the ordinary, not the exception. “Sorry.”

“What do you want to know? What do you think you 90

want to know?” Hector’s voice was hard now, not the compassionate tone he had earlier. Gaspare’s eyes were dry again; it was as if there was a faucet somewhere within him; “on, off, cry, stop crying.”

“Can you tell me about that day?”

“No. Not here, not now. Never!”

Gaspare asked Hector if they could hook up again. “Why, so we can talk about George?” Hector hissed out those words.

“Yes, but before you say anything, let me finish, please.”

Hector was starting to stand, he had enough. “Please Hector, please hear me out. Then if you decide to go I won’t stop you.”

Hector’s laugh was so loud, that everyone looked their way, again. “You stop me?”

“I know I can’t stop you physically. I meant I won’t try, won’t beg, won’t do anything but watch you leave.” Hector sat back down. “Look, last night was great. At least for me I thought you liked it too.”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“OK then, can’t we see each other again, get to know one another?”

“Why? What for? A good fuck is a good fuck. Last night was a good fuck. Why ask more than that?”

“I agree that a good fuck is sometimes all there is. But a good fuck might be repeated. We’re humans. Humans need more than a good fuck. Besides it was more than that for me. And, that was before I knew about you and George.

There’s something about you. Look you’re not the most handsome guy around. And I see plain as day that you’re not the easiest person to know. But, god damn it, I’m fucking drawn to you. And god help me, I don’t know the fuck why.”

Hector saw the sincerity in his eyes, his tone. “You’re a crazy fuck. What is it you want from me? What is it you think I have? What can I give you?” “I told you I don’t 91

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know, but I know that I don’t want this to be our last, our only time together.” “Eight, tuesday night, here. Don’t be late. I wait for no one, more than ten minutes. MTA fuck up or no MTA fuck up.” He got up and left. “You get the check.”

It rained that Tuesday, but Gaspare wasn’t taking any chances. He wasn’t going to be late. He arrived at seven fifty. He somehow knew that Hector would be there. At seven fifty-eight, he arrived. “Good, you’re not late. I hate late people.”

“Hello to you too.”

“I don’t like wise asses either.” But his tone was softer, he was glad to see Gaspare there. He knew that at some point George would come up; he really couldn’t blame Gaspare for wanting to know how George died. They all wanted to know “how.” But they don’t really want to know exactly how. They want to hear that it was quick, that their husband, son, brother, lover didn’t suffer. That was really what they wanted to hear. And Gaspare would be no different. Already Hector was getting that taste in his mouth, that dryness, sourness. “Let’s get a drink.” They went to Ty’s, it was the closest bar. Hector liked bourbon, but at those dry, sour mouth times, any alcohol would do. He ordered a double. He had every intention of letting Gaspare pay for the whole evening. “Got a joint?” Gaspare fished one out of an old can of mints, lit it, took a drag and handed it over to him. Two joints and three double bourbons later, they staggered to Smiley’s, a kind of deli sandwich shop; ordered two pastramis on rye, with mustard and two sixpacks of Bud and zigzagged to Hectors apartment. Hector was coaxed into finishing at least half his sandwich. Gaspare rewrapped the other half and put it in Hector’s near empty frig. It disturbed him that Hector was on such a selfdestructive path, and was equally upset over his own caring.

He liked Hector, well, he liked bedding him. He also felt a 92

vague sense of responsibility toward him. He served with George, knew George and was with George when he died.

“Oh my god, was that when he got all that shrapnel?” As George’s comrade, shouldn’t he try to help him? If George had survived would he be like Hector? No he couldn’t, the family would have been there for him. Whatever he may had suffered, they would have stood by him, supported him.

“What am I getting myself into?” But he knew he had to see it through, regardless of what was to come. Gaspare asked Hector where he came from, his family, where he went to school but Hector would have none of it. He just wanted to drink the beer and wash away the dryness and the sourness; he passed out on the floor. Gaspare left him a note with his phone number and left.

It took him three weeks to call Gaspare. “Hi, it’s Hector.” “Hi, you ok?” A slight smile in his voice, he replied that he was better than the last time Gaspare had seen him.

Gaspare laughed and said, that was a good thing. “Hey, I just got my disability check; let me buy you dinner before I blow it all.” Gaspare accepted and they agreed to meet on Friday at seven at Fedora’s, an inexpensive but legendary restaurant in the Village.

Hector was clean shaven, his hair combed back and Gaspare’s heart skipped a beat. He saw those eyes for the first time. They were as dark as his hair, large eyes set off by long dark lashes. Here was Heathcliff. Not from the moors but from the Mediterranean. He wasn’t movie idol handsome but he took Gaspare’s breath away. He was also wearing a shirt, not a turtleneck. The scars on his neck were exposed, it wasn’t pretty but Gaspare didn’t mind; he felt flattered that Hector didn’t have to hide them when he was with Gaspare. Gaspare told him that he cleaned up good.

Hector almost blushed. He hadn’t had a compliment in a long time. He managed a hesitant “thanks.” They ordered dinner and Hector started with an apology about their last 93

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meeting. Gaspare tried graciously to sweep away any importance it may have had. But Hector said he wanted to make things clear. He knew that there were two elephants between them. Twins, inseparable; George and Nam. He wasn’t going to talk about Nam and since George was a large part of his Nam, he couldn’t talk about him. Gaspare said he understood. In time, if he ever wanted to tell him anything, he would be there for him. But he would never again ask Hector about anything to do with Viet Nam. He was there to be with Hector, to get to know Hector. Hector gave out a big sigh; and their salad was served.

By the time desert arrived, Gaspare learned that his name was Hector Drakos, meaning dragon in Greek. He was from Chicago. His family owned a diner “What else?” they both laughed. His father expected him to take over the business, but Uncle Sam had other ideas. His father told him they would fight the draft, he was essential for the business.

But Hector told him no. They, papa and mama, had come as immigrants to this country, and though he and his sister Helena were born in Chicago, he felt that he wanted to pay the debt. Himself an immigrant from Sicily, Gaspare understood what Hector meant, and felt a little ashamed that he had not gone over to repay his family’s debt. But in a flash, he realized that the debt was paid, in spades, by his younger brother.

“So you see, Hector the warrior in the Iliad, and Hector the draftee, melded into one. Plus” he joked, his first joke, thought Gaspare. “My name is Drakos.” Hector had never before made such an effort to make light of Nam. But he knew he had a chance here, with Gaspare, to put it behind him. He had to try; this man liked him. He hadn’t had a friend in a long time, plus he was dammed good in bed. He knew he hadn’t been easy to know, to like. But here was Gaspare, handsome, kind, patient and bending backwards for him. Mostly, he wasn’t disgusted with his body; he 94

touched it, caressed it, kissed it, and made love to it. Hector knew he’d never get a break like this again.

They walked to the piers after dinner, laughed as they passed the trucks. There was no one there yet, it was too early; they went back to Hectors place.

It wasn’t an easy time for Gaspare. Hector was not always pleasant to be with. His mood swings, nightmares and binges became overwhelming. One day, when Hector was in a good place, Gaspare broached the possibility of rehab. Hector exploded. NO, he’d been there, in the VA hospital. If Gaspare couldn’t take it he should get the fuck out of his life. Gaspare tried that as well; he was beside himself. He called his best friend Ted, told him everything.

Ted said he’d done the right thing in breaking off the relationship. Hector needed professional help. Gaspare said he understood that. But when Hector was clean and dry and they were together, it was sensational. He loved Hector too much; he’d have to try again. He felt, somewhere deep inside of himself, a guilt, a need to be with him. He owed it to the men who fought in a war he avoided, he owed it to George, and he owed it to Hector.

But Hector had entered into another one of his spiral phases. Once it began there was no stopping until it played itself out. The nightmares increased. To calm them, pills were needed, lots of pain killers, sedatives. To boot, his drinking increased. His ghosts were unrelenting. He had to escape them. He’d rage, flinging plates, books, anything that was handy. His sobs were uncontrollable. One night, in the middle of a nightmare he attacked Gaspare; punching him, kicking him. Gaspare punched his jaw, and he woke, not knowing what he had done. Gaspare knew then that all the love he could give Hector would not put Hector back together again. Two days later Gaspare said goodbye to Hector. The following Thursday, Gaspare got word that Hector had taken a forty-five he kept from his time in the Army, put it to his head and went in search of his ghosts.

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DICK STERNBERG Up the Mountain After dinner Henry climbed up the stairs to his room where he lay down on his bed to look at picture books. He waited for his dad to read him a story before going to sleep.

Suddenly, he heard his mother shrieking and breaking dishes in the kitchen downstairs. He covered his ears to muffle the sounds that caused him to often shiver with fear. Then, it stopped. A silence overtook the house like the eye of a hurricane. He listened but the silence continued and Henry fell asleep upon his picture books.

In the middle of the night, he was being shaken. He awoke looking g at his mother whose eyes were a bright green like a feral cat in the darkness. “Sssshh,” his mother said as she handed him his pants and a shirt. He could see her suitcase sitting in the doorway. “Get up and get dressed.” A fear gripped him and he did as he was told. She grabbed him by his arm and enfolded him in her grasp so he couldn’t move and she pressed his mouth against her to stifle any sound from him as she picked up her old brown valise. Slowly and quietly, they walked down the stairs and into the night.

They walked through the grass and across the sandy road to Otto’s Aero. She soon sped away after grappling with the gear stick. Henry was crying for he didn’t know what was happening. And where was his father, what had happened to him roiled his mind.

They drove through the night. Henry awoke as the light 96

came through the window. He could see that they were no longer in Michigan as they were in the mountains. He had never seen these before and he could hear his mother trying to change gears. Suddenly the sky filled with dark clouds and a strong wind was whipping through the trees. Henry could feel the car rattle and could see the aerial in the back sway like the branch of a tree about to snap. Looking past his mother, he saw that they were at the edge of the road. He pleaded with her to pull over. She ignored him. Moving further away from her, he huddled next to the door.

As they drove slowly up the side of the mountain on the gravel road, Henry’s fright mounted. He feared the car would be swept off the road and tumble down the side of the mountain. He began to sob. “I want my father!” She yelled at him “shut up.” Leah had never dared to yell at Otto’s precious Henry. What she really wanted to do was slap him. She was having enough difficulty steering the car on sharp turns that she didn’t dare take a hand off the steering wheel.

A clap of thunder turned into a roar as if warning them not to continue. And the loud chattering of warring birds pierced the car. Then, the sky was lit by a bolt of lightning that raced across the sky. The veil of clouds that formed sent a barrage of raindrops. Since the car had no windshield wipers, Leah seemed to have no choice but to stop but she continued onward. Soon they reached the top of the mountain. They were above the clouds.

As the rain stopped, she could see a valley which probably had a general store or gas station in which she could fill the tank. Seeing the general store, she realized that she would need Henry because of her limited English. When they walked into the store, it was apparent he had been crying and his face was filled with fear. The general manager asked, “Is anything wrong?”

“Just the storm.” The manager felt something was 97

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wrong.

He asked Henry, “Where are you from?” He didn’t reply, but she knew he must. Then she said “We’re from Charleston, South Carolina” in German and Henry translated.

As the car drove away, the manager noticed it had Michigan license plates. Something was wrong. He sent a telegram to the police in Youngsville, Kentucky.

Angel As Bob knocked over his mother’s favorite glass vase, the water ran across her mahogany table and the flower splayed across it. His mother annoyingly said, “You’re no angel! Bob go upstairs to your room.” The confused three year-old climbed up the wooden stairs wondering what she meant.

What are angels? How could he become an angel? His mother apparently liked angels. He thought that he would ask his older brother.

When his brother came home from school, he would ask him. After all, he thought teenagers knew everything. As he stared at the ceiling he thought about angels, where would you find them, are they his age and where do they live.

When he heard the door open downstairs and his mother say, “Go do your homework first thing.” He knew his brother had returned from school. Now he would get the answer to his question. As he heard his brother’s footsteps, he scurried out of his room to meet him.

“How’s my Bob?” “Not good, I was sent to my room because I’m not an angel.”

Bob chuckled.

“Why are you laughing?”

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“Because there are no angels.”

“No?” “We’re Jewish and Jews don’t believe in angels” “Why did mom say I’m not an angel?”

“Just let it go.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll explain it later. I have to do my homework.”

He kissed his brother on his forehead. “Go play, you’re my little angel.”

Bob smiled at him.

Bob sulked in his room totally confused. If he was his brother’s little angel and his mother said that he was no angel, and then what was he? He decided to play with his Lego which he dragged out of the closet.

His mother said, “Put away your Lego. It’s time for dinner.”

At the dinner table, Bob looked quizzically at his mother.

“Tom said I’m his little angel except Jews don’t believe in angels” His father looked at him wondering where that came from. “I’m glad you’re someone’s little angel.”

Bob turned to Tom. I’m your little angel, sure?”

Bob knew Tom spent hours at the computer answering questions. He had seen Tom go to YouTube to show his dad how to set the time on his dream machine. Maybe Tom could help him.

He turned to Tom,” Could you show me an angel on YouTube?”

“No, but we can listen to a few songs about Angels and we can watch an old television program called “I Married an Angel.”

What about being Jewish?

The table turned and looked at Tom waiting for his explanation.

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GLORIA ZIMMERMAN The Odds Paradox Back in the day before I was even a fingernail dent in the apple of my latest dad’s eye, my soul was meant to be anointed in the latest fad of the time, protective oil from the constellation the Great Odds Dipper (known to the Ancients as Megál Árktos Apodóseis).

This, of course, was eons after the Great Odds Dipper ran dry, having been drained of its holy oleo by the Big Dipper’s bullying, younger stars. Moreover, this phenomenon occurred only after early humans had lost faith in christening by being dabbed with fake “great odds oil” from sky blue glass vials.

Yes indeed, that put an end to that debacle. Down the tubes went unctuous priests and lugubrious bottle blowers along with the few minor stars comprising their erstwhile meal ticket. Their offspring, however, lived to rule another day. Humans, being the frightened fools they are, devised other comforts which they called ‘religions.’ Only this time they used oils pressed from earthly produce. (There is something about lubrication that appeals to humans…I wonder…)

But I digress. Back to my pre-pre-gestation anointment.

It never happened. The Great Odds Dipper missed scooping up and smearing my essence with it’s heavenly petroleum. The Dipper was already on overtime and, well, the Association of Celestial Lubricants Union (ACLU) pulled out its contract and there it was: section 2. pt. 18: no 100

anointing after 12 AM on Sundays. No bright future waiting for me — Just schlepping moonbeams in around in a Mason jar. What are the odds of that kind of luck? Every reincarnation since has decreased the odds of a trouble-free life for me.

It’s always about oil. N’est pas?

I’ve always been a stupid gambler. Never could figure out good from bad odds. Odd thing, take my current mortal role. I didn’t even place bets on the events in it. Not in my control. So what are the odds of the following?

My parents were born a thousand miles apart in nineteenth century Latvia and Ukraine, both possessed by Russia at the time. As Jews, they shared a common, gloomy future. Their choice: stay and live in unending oppression or bravely board steerage in steamships sailing for Ellis Island and the Golden Land, America.

What were the odds of Yehuda Goldman from the Pale of Settlement outside Kiev meeting Bella Cohen from Grieva, Latvia, she having arrived in 1910, five years after Yehuda? Ha, I will hold that for another chapter. And how about I am born head-first after 25 hours in a breach position -— what were those odds? I am the last of 7 pregnancies. Bad egg?

I am a lesbian or at best/worst a bisexual — the odds? I marry a man despite of that and become pregnant. In 1962 the odds, according to the March of Dimes subway posters I ignore as I sleep to work are 1 in 200 that I will have a child with a birth defect. I have a 4 lb. 2 oz. baby girl with a very complex birth defect? Spina Bifida. Those odds: 1 in 1,000.

What are the odds that she survives in spite of the “compassionate” godlike men in white coats trying hard to allow her to die in the incubator? If there were a god, he’d know.

But she does survive because we ignore the doctors and the gods. What are the odds of doing so and growing a fruit 101

Continued

-bearing morals tree? The odds are very great.

Lately, you may find it and others in an arbor alongside the transverse named “Atheists’ Ramble” in the great central public park a few miles from home. Anyone can pick it’s fruit…and eat it.

We found a doctor, quite by accident who saved her life.

What are the odds that my sister would go to the dentist two days after Julie’s birth and find that his brother is a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon in Philadelphia? This doctor saves her life. What are the odds that she can survive the spine-mending and brain-piercing surgeries? They are not great. Through years and decades of sweating it out in and out of hospitals and rehabs, bringing up two children, with a husband who works two and three jobs to make ends meet, we keep this baby/child/adolescent/woman alive and thriving, with the help of family and friends and volunteering strangers who become family and friends.

What are the odds of turning ‘mistakes into miracles’? I can only tell you that I invented a game called Turning Mistakes into Miracles forty years later to teach my grandchildren how to build confidence in themselves. Does that help figure out the odds? Does it matter?

Fifty-one years later, Julie dies of ovarian cancer and not from her deformities.

What were the odds of her living that long when friends and others in that Spina Bifida cohort never made it that far?

Great Odds indeed!

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A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS As a small, grassroots organization, NY Writers Coalition relies on the generous support of those dedicated to getting the voices of those who have been silenced heard. Many thanks go to our foundation, government, and corporate supporters, without whom this writing community and publication would not exist: Amazon.com, the Kalliopeia Foundation, Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

We rely heavily on the support of individual NYWC members and attendees of our annual Write-A-Thon. In addition, members of our Board of Directors have kept this vital, rewarding work going year after year: Louise Crawford, Marian Fontana, Sandy Huang, Lisa Smith, Jonathan Tasini, and NYWC Founder and Executive Director Aaron Zimmerman.

We’d also like to thank Jacob Thomas Cribbs and Tory Meringoff, NYWC’s volunteer workshop leaders who have been instrumental in making this book happen, plus the dedicated contributors and workshop members at the SAGE Center.

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A BOUT NY W RITERS C OALITION NY Writers Coalition (NYWC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that creates opportunities for formerly voiceless members of society to be heard through the art of writing.

One of the largest community-based writing organizations in the country, we provide free, unique, and powerful creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk, disconnected, and LGBT youth, homeless and formerly homeless people, those who are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, war veterans, people living with disabilities, cancer, and other major illnesses, immigrants, seniors, and many others.

For more information about NYWC programs and NY Writers Coalition Press publications visit

WWW . NYWRITERSCOALITION . ORG

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NY Writers Coalition Press is proud to present STILL PRACTICING, a collection of poetry and prose written in NY Writers Coalition workshops at the community center for Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) in New York, NY.

SUGGESTED DONATION $7 US

WHAT SAGE WRITERS ARE SAYING ABOUT NYWC WORKSHOPS Without the writing workshop, I would not be writing, and my creative juices might have continued to dry up. I have always needed a story stimulant, a push – or, should I say, a kick in the ass.

RALPH GRAY Our communities are real, our differences are not threatening.

Communion. I think of it as different from group-think. It’s an oasis in my week. It reinforces my humanity.

CHARLES FATONE For me this workshop has made me want to write further. It has given me more confidence in my ability to write. It has also helped me appreciate the prose in literature. I now look forward to Monday afternoons more than any other afternoon of the week.

ANONYMOUS

LEARN MORE ABOUT NYWC PROGRAMS & NYWC PRESS WWW . NYWRITERSCOALITION . ORG

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