The Summer of '73

I reluctantly started the summer getting a job as a delivery driver for a electronic supply company where I would have to drive all over Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. After a day of in house training and a day on the road with another driver I attempted to make a run on my own. I made half the deliveries. That night I packed all the clothes I owned, dropped them out the second story window of my bedroom and loaded them into the trunk of the Bumpmobile. I wasn't long for Paducah, KY.

I had just completed my first year at Murray State University--where I came out, suddenly had more friends than I could keep up with, dropped to 134 pounds, got a new fabulous wardrobe and started smoking pot. During spring break I made made a trip to Florida with my friend Randy, a hairdresser, for his cousin's wedding. We stopped off in Nashville at the Watch Your Hat and Coat Saloon where we had a cocktail and watched a drag show, the final number being Kate Smith's 'God Bless America'. As we were leaving there was a drunk stumbling and I said to Randy, 'I'm glad you aren't in that shape because I have never driven a standard.' He made me get into the driver's seat and I drove off in his orange Super Beetle. We had fun and it was my first taste of being an adult on the road.
At the end of the school term we drove to Lexington, KY, where Randy used to live with his boyfriend. It was exciting! I snuck into my first gay bar, The Living Room, where I met a lot of gay men and lesbians. A true taste of freedom and some good sex. This was a week before I packed my bags and decided I couldn't stay in Paducah, driving a delivery van all over redneck country and I couldn't deal with the tensions at home. Mom and Dad had been having marital problems for six years.

The morning after dropping my bags out of the window, I left a note on Greg and Ophelia's door (he was my eighth grade art teacher, she was a local actress, and they had a niece, Maude, from NYC with whom I had become great friends). The note had instructions that I had left the Bumpmobile outside the Greyhound bus station and I was headed out of town.

The bus took me back to Lexington where the folks I had met gave me some shelter. After two or three days I decided I would go to NYC to stay with Maude and her parents Bunny and Jerry. So I wrote a hot check to American Airlines and I was off to the Big Apple. I arrived at Maude's doorstep and was welcomed with open arms. Her parents were used to sheltering wayward boys and girls. Maude had her own bathroom, bedroom, studio and living room on the ground floor at 85th and West End. Some days I would sit in her living room and just watch the city all day until she got home from Parson's School of Design. I had never seen a family that lived like they did. Everything was so easy. Jerry was an assistant director and Bunny was a mad woman with wild red hair, chain smoked and cooked the most fabulous meals.

One day Maude and I were walking down 85th Street when we noticed a mannequin and a skeleton in a window of an apartment building and we were intrigued. The weekend came and the three of them took off for the country house (a converted church) in upstate New York, leaving me alone in the city to do as I pleased. I had finally made it into the Bike Stop, a gay bar three blocks away, after two days of being scared to enter by myself. I had met Steven who invited me to a party that weekend. We ended up in the penthouse of a 20 story art deco building with a surrounding terrace and lots of gay men. In particular was Alexis del Lago, dressed in a white satin jumpsuit and matching turban, and sounding a lot like Marlene Dietrich via Puerto Rico. He was Steven's friend and the three of us were chatting with an older man, Jordan, who insisted we go to his apartment for cocktails. He was little and ancient and his apartment was filled with treasures. The dining room was floor to ceiling framed drawings of Picasso and Matissse. His hall length closet filled with costumes from the Metropolitan Opera (we tried on many). I opened a door to find a young man asleep, naked, and in the window were the mannequin and skeleton Maude and I had spied from the street.

Later that weekend Alexis and I walked hand in hand roaming the streets of Greenwich Village. A week later when Bunny discovered I was gay (to her all southern men seem gay, so mannered and all) and she insisted I march in the Gay Pride Parade. That was one of the most liberating experiences of my young life.

During this time I had stopped trying to straighten my hair and let it grow into the start of a giant afro. At summer's end I took the bus back to Paducah. When I got off at the bus station my mom and sister were there waiting for me. As I walked towards them they were looking right past me. With big hair and Jackie O sunglasses they didn't recognize me at all. After we got home, and after I had changed out of my travel outfit, So and I were sitting in the swing in the back yard. So: "You're not gay, are you?" Me: "Yes, I am." So: "Okay, tell me all about it."

That was the start of a new relationship with my sister and the beginning of her championing gay people. It was also the perfect ending to a perfect summer.