#21stbirthday | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

timtrent · 2 months ago

Text

The Live of my time

It was 1985 when it happened with Dr.Finkelstein.

* * *

First I have to start in New York when I met Louis. We met on September 21, 1980. It was 9 days before my 21stbirthday. We met at a sex club in the meatpacking district called the Mineshaft. It was a very famous underground sex club at the time. It was the kind of club that men did not have takes off their clothes and there were lots of dark places to have sex with you clothes half-off. And they had ver. strict rules about what to wear, denim and leather, no dress pants, (once I had to go home and change clothes), no colognes, and no Le Costae shirts. Nothing feminine or commercial labeled, except for maybe Harley Davidson. It was a three story club right in the heart of the district with dark cavernous wall a bar on the first floor a basement full of closet sized rooms, rooms with glory holes and a big center room with two three empty bathtubs (don’t ask me).

“They are going to eat you alive.” The big burly guy in the flannel shirt at the front door said.

I went up to the bar and ordered a bud in a bottle. . I fooled around a little with a couple of guys. And then made the decent to the basement. It was dark and spooky like a kid’s spook house, but it was a sex spook hose. Guys glided by me shirtless, groping my groin and feeling my butt, I pushed my way thru the night of the living sexy dead and made my way to corner where thru the dim light coming from the staircase I could see what was going on. Men where having sex with each other mostly standing up on their knees., men were making out with poppers such up their noses and other guys were trying to join in with other guys having sex.

It was debauchery. It was so wrong. And yet it was so right for the time. It September was 1980 after all.

I saw him standing in an abandoned closest with no door. He was just standing there. Well I think he was smoking a joint. Our eyes locked. I moved closer to him and joined him in the hollowed out closet. We started making out heavy. And he reached for my belt buckle and undid my jeans. He gave me a blowjob right here. He came up and whispered in my year. “I do whatever you want,” He said.

OK” I whisper back just keep sucking.”

He sucked I came. I pulled up my pants ready to move on when our eyes locked again.

“Would you come my place I got some great pot?”

“Uh,” I said I just came and all wanted was to home. But there was something about him. I could barely see him but what the hell I was attracted t something and it wasn’t just his blowjob.

When we got out on the street it was raining and we hurried into a cab, which was one lined up around the block all these cabs knew of this underground place.

“22nd between 7th and 8th.” He barked at the cab driver. I stared at him as he held my hand. He was dark. (I later found out he was Greek Armenian) He looked like a crow with slicked back rich black hair and the beak to go with it. He had a slightly pocked marked face, which let to him handsomeness. Some of his friend who always say he looked like Robert DeNiro although I never saw the resemblance. Nevertheless he was a catch.

We entered his small railroad flat on the ground floor of the 20-unit tenement. He place was all done up like the 30’s and 40’s he had a cabinets full of all kinds of chochkees, every type of salt and pepper shaker that was made. Dice, ballerinas, dogs, cats you name it he had it. He had his apartment painted this Miami Pink color and I would usually think pink was a little much but, he make it work. He green and pink abstract drapes. Don’t get me wrong this was no faggy decorated place. This guy had class. And the place was beautiful.

So he smoked some more joints had some more sex and I spend the night. I was off in the morning to get back to my apartment I shared with my sister and her two lesbian lovers in Park Slope, Brooklyn. They were used to my sexual exploits and weren’t surprised by me staying out all night.

Just as I was getting dressed Louis asked if I wanted to come back tonight and have dinner.

“Ok, sure, that would be nice. I answered.

He handed me a piece of torn paper.

“Here’s my address and my phone”

The next night I took the F train all the way from Brooklyn, which made allot of stops before arriving at 23rd and 6th. I could have chosen a better faster route but I still a little new to New York having just arrived there in June after by post college 3 month trek across Europe. I was so drowsy from the night before and the long train ride that I almost missed my stop.

I dragged myself up the dirty steps to the exit and walked down 6th to 22nd and then I was going to walk the ½ block or so to his apt for a date.

As I was walking, a big man grasped me from behind in the crux of his forearm, elbow and bicep around my neck. Another man punched me in the gut.

“Give us your money or you a dead man.” Whispered the man grabbing my throat.

I gave them the $36 00 I had in my pocket.

Then the other guy took off my glasses and broke them and said, “Now where’s the rest you got hidden?”

When he slapped my face I came out of shock and realized I was being mugged!

“That’s all I have I swear.” I cried out.

“You’re lying. Go down this alley with us come on.” The gripper said.

I don’t know what happened but I am glad that he slapped me because I became aroused enough to break away from them and run down the street, God knows what they were going to do to me in the alley and I gave them all the money I had. Some people in New York at the time I later learned carried around “Mugger money” separate from their wallet and would just had it over when they had more money in their billfolds. I didn’t know that trick.

So I ran down the street, towards Louis’s place. Everything was a blur because I am somewhat nearsighted but I saw a young woman walking down the street toward the direction I had just come from.

“Don’t go down there I just got mugged. There are two black guys down there.” I yelled at her. She was quickly taken aback and stopped dead in her Capezios.

“Huh?” Is all she could eek out? “Ah yea OK OK . Sure. Sure. She said as she scampered away back from whence she came without an ounce of concern for my well-being.

I rang Louis’s bell frantically. He answered the door all dressed up for a date- a vintage Hawaiian Rayon short sleeve shirt. Khaki pants and Huaraches.

“Don’t wanna rush the seasons,” He would always say even if it were cold in September. Wait until the official date of each season before you dressed for the next. You had to abide by the Amy Vanderbilt rules of no white after Labor Day, No Velvet after February some etiquette book he tried to abide by. Funny how I still try to stick to that but a scaled down California version.

I broke down at the door sobbing

“I’ve just been mugged!” I cried out.

He took me in and comforted me and we had a little dinner in his dinky railroad with all his vintage kitchenware. It was impressive. We talked into the night about Europe and languages and acting. Where I was from, what was I doing in New York? I found out he was a florist and a struggling actor. He loved the theatre and had every Playbill from since he saw his first Broadway show at 7. He was from New Jersey, he used to teach High School Drama for 7 years and decided to move to New York and try to be famous. He told me how great studying with Stella Adler and did a few plays and a couple of NYU student films and supported himself by doing flowers for Tavern on the Green and several other restaurants.

. He gave me culture. I remember I would always take from his bookshelf and an autobiography of Jean Cocteau and read parts of it and relate to it and want to be him. I thought I could never date anyone who didn’t know who Cocteau was and Dada. (Years later I did date a man I though was the love of my life who had no clue of the French Avanti Garden world.)

OK. Here we are and we have sex and he invites me to sleep over. I ended up staying for almost seven years. He used to joke to our friends,

“He’s the man who came to dinner AND STAYED!” He would cavort this line to anyone who mentioned any interest in how we met. . Sometimes I thought he thought I still be a nothing living in Brooklyn if he hadn’t taken me under his wing. Truth was I was too afraid to even go outside for a few days after the mugging and we would rush to get a cab to get somewhere. The street scared me for while. Especially at night when we would come home from the theatre.

THAT’S one of the reasons it evolved that I moved in with him (and it being a $300 rent controlled apartment in Chelsea) He was 12 years older than me was 20 he was 32 and some of his friends didn’t approve and I had to earn my way through their dinner parties where at first they looked at me with a kind of wariness.. But I grew on them and age difference-nobody seemed to care. Sometimes people give you a look but it was 1980 and it was on between us.

On May 18, 1981, the New York Native, then America's most influential gay newspaper, published the first newspaper report on the disease that became known as AIDS. We it seemed were at the epicenter of the plague. But we made the most of our little railroad flat (one room goes into another and into another in a straight line) not allot of privacy but we were young, I was way young and he accommodated us and it was real cheap and right in Manhattan. The sex. Well, it only happened when he wanted it to. If I initiated it he would start giggling like a little girl. He would fuck me, cum in me, and then suck me off afterwards. That was it. He was a gentleman and always got me a warm washcloth as I sat to wipe the cum off my dick while I sat on the toilet waiting for the cum to void. So I fucked around on him. I think he was monogamous but not me. I was a rabbit. Bath houses, Sex Clubs, Back room bars, the Piers, Not Central Park I was too scared for that. But I was a mother fucking sex monger and he supposed just didn’t know it or looked the other way.

So I started to go to therapy, a guy I tricked with gave me the name of this place called Madison Counseling. It was made up of 4 therapists each with their own patient load but every week they would have a sessions talking about their clients. So it was like having four shrinks helping you fix your problems.

I wanted to see this woman Joan, who looked like mother earth in Upper East Side Chic but since a patient of hers recommended me already they all agreed that I would be assigned to Betty Zais. Betty looked like James Cagney in drag, She was short with like a English Bulldog build, a nose that looked like it had been scrunched into her face and kind of hunched over shoulders. But she always looked great and dresses in Chanel and wore full makeup, Every time I saw her it was though she had just been shopping and to the hairdresser. She makes the most of her not your normal features and was as darling as a character played by Claudette Colbert. And she started helping me. I didn’t tell her about the constant pot smoking we did back then, but she probably knew. I never told her or showed up stoned, sometimes I wish I did maybe it would make what I go thru now to stay sober easier.

After a couple of years of being telling her my problems with Louis, my sexual acting out and my day lying about everything to everyone. She told me it was time to tell my parents that I was gay.

“No way.” I countered, “They would disown me and I would never get over it.

For months we discussed it and I finally came around that it was the best thing to do. By now it was 1984 and the world was different then the morals of the 50’s and 60’s that they raised their eight kids with. The seventies kind of tore it all up but they did the best they could to be good Catholics. My father gave up drinking in 1980. My mother went back to work as a Dietian and their kids where all mostly grown and out of the house in Thousand Oaks, California. But how should I tell them? “Mom, Dad I’m gay.” Too much like a TV movie. We decided on a way to say it that would out me without seeming cliché or dramatic. Some of my siblings knew and my outspoken, demon pot smoker told me=

“NO! They are going to freak out and cut you off. The church doesn’t even accept it and they go once week and they want us all to get married and have grandchildren, and you won’t be able to give them a kiss thinking you might give them AIDS!”

I could see her point but it keep nagging at me. Louis was what 36 now and still never told his parent in New Brunswick, New Jersey. They didn’t need to know. When his mother would call I would answer the phone as if I was a friend dropping by, who happened to and answer his phone! She was old school New Jersey and wouldn’t even sleep in a hotel because it was not her regular bed. I had this bleak portrait of them eating dinner at the same time talking about the neighbors. I think his father was a Welder.

So Betty Zais and I rehearsed. Betty would be them. We would switch. They were coming to New York to visit my stodgy Uncle Jerry, her brother who they were staying with on the Upper West Side and my wisecracking wild East Village artist actress, sister Aileen. I got tickets for us to see the Van Gogh Exhibit that was in town at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Aileen wouldn’t go above 14th street so it would just be My Uncle Jerry, Mom and Dad and me. I was to take them thru the show and then tell Uncle Jerry to go that there was something that I had to talk to my parent’s house and they would meet him back at his place on West 75th street.

It was Halloween that day I was 25. The three of them met me on the steps and we went thru the terrific exhibit. My mother got the audio follow along which was the readings placed on the walls next to the paintings’, talking out what was written with some extra commentary but I wanted to go at my own pace. Well I still moved along with the four of us sticking together from the lines of people.

I came across the section on Gauguin and what an influence he had on Van Gogh when Vincent stayed with him in the tropics. As I was reading it alluded to something along the lines that they were lovers or something? I saw the look on my mothers face when she heard that part and she stopped her recorder.

“Do you think that’s true what they said about Vincent and Paul being homosexuals?

“I almost blurted it out to her then but the way she said homosexuals stopped me dead its it track. Like they were Satanists who eat small children.

The exhibit was nearing its end and I was a nervous wreck. Finally we got outside to the crisp autumn morning air, which did nothing to snap me out of my anxiety. I feel terrified.

Luckily Uncle Jerry was out of there first and I told him to go. He left oddly perky. I told them he went home already and I would lead them thru Central Park from the Eastside where the Museum was to the Westside to his place. They seemed ignorantly ok with that. They had no idea what I was going to do.

I was a fast walker and I kept them at a brisk pack thru the National Geographic pictorial of Central Park. My dad was huffing a bit being overweight at the time.

“This is quite the trek!” he exhaled,

“Yea, Tim slow down I got this damn artificial hip.” My Mom exclaimed

OK sorry! I’m just a fast walker.” I told them

But I kept briskly striding,

After about 10 minutes or so I turned around to see them and they were way back.

“Tim, wait we need to sit down.” My Mom yelled to me.

“Sorry you guys, I made my way ½ way back to where they where coming along.

“Let’s go sit on the bench over there is has a great view.” I coerced.

“OK, just a minute.” My Dad was really out of breath,

“Awe!” My Mom expired catching her breath.

After a few minutes my dad goes,

“They’re having THAT parade downtown today?

I couldn’t answer just nodded and looked at the around. Finally after a couple of beats I stood up before them both on the green winding bench.

Here it goes.

“Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you…” I said shakily

“Is it bad? Mom asked,

“No.” I said unsteadily

There was this long pause and then this voice came out of me so deep, it was not my usual register. It was like James Earl Jones deep or Fred Munster.

“I’ve been… I’ve been living with a man for the past four years,” I said like a foghorn.

Nothing was said for quite awhile after that pronouncement.

Finally my mother says, “Are you happy?” But she says it with such forced sincerity its like she does when Grandma’s fruitcake arrives,

“Yes I’m happy,” I say like a new pair of shoes feel.

My dad picks at his nails and zips up his jacket.

“Well we kinda suspected.” My Mom says defeated

“Yeah, guess we knew we just didn’t want it to be true.” My Dad mumbles out.

“Well everything ok then?” I say ending it.

“Yes!” They both say in quickly oddly in unison.

I walk them back slowly to Jerry’s place and there is an awkward silence but this euphoria is bubbling inside me.

“OK,” I hug them both. “Gotta go, Love You Both. Great seeing you again, Thanks for coming.” I walked down Columbus Ave like a brick had been lifted from my chest.

0 notes