my secret love affair with race bannon

a small town on the prairie gay child.  of course, back then we weren’t ‘gay’; it was queer, faggot, sissy, homo, pansy,  if you even heard what your neighbors, your classmates, your teachers, the preacher, the life guard at the public pool were saying about you behind your back or quietly to your mother over the backyard fence.  ”you know, evelyn, he is a bit effeminate, aren’t you worried he may be, well, you know,” delivered with a nod and a wink or with the euphemisms “light in his loafers,” “limp-wristed.”  what’s a mother to do?

my mother did nothing, at least nothing effective, for truly, what’s a mother to do when her boy child exhibits such tendencies?  i was not rushed off to a therapist or put under any psychological scrutiny.  there were no long talks about the birds and the bees and the way nature works (in the majority’s opinion at least).  at this time in my life (the pre-pubescent years, 10, 11, 12) there were half-hearted attempts at leading by example: boy’s club, boy scouts, big brothers, and other forms of male dominant surrogacy. try as they might to mark me, i was resistant (but not impolite–after all, i did want to see these men with their clothes off, not for sexual gratification, but to get an idea of what a man looked like, you know, for future reference.) it’s not that i was playing with dolls or dressing up in my mother’s clothes (well, maybe not always) when she wasn’t at home.  the fear of exposure, of being found out, i mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon at that age to know that you’re not quite like everyone else, but those fears lingered underneath the surface of my character until i was 20, perhaps even until today.

[an aside*: there was a period of time in these years when i would 'sneak' a spoonful of peanut butter, licking it clean sitting on the living room sofa, staring out the picture window, and when i was done, would slip the spoon underneath the couch to be retrieved at a later date for washing and replacement in its drawer.  this went on for some time until one day when my mother was cleaning she discovered a half-licked-clean spoon with dried peanut butter under the sofa that i had put there when she had come home early one afternoon and i thought i might get in trouble for spoiling my dinner and then forgot to retrieve it later.  "honey, you shouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed for having a spoonful of peanut butter before dinner," she said when i explained what had happened.  but for some reason i was. and so i added it to the list of other things i wasn't good at hiding.]

i played with the neighbor children; we rolled down hills in the summer, rode our bikes, explored, built forts in the backyard, climbed trees, roller-skated, tumbled, and fell, scraping knees, elbows, the occasional bruise as big as a hand-print; spanked for some infraction that seemed important to adults, much less so to us children.  if you had not stood with your pants/shorts around your ankles, held by your hands and whipped with your own cowboy belt, a hair brush, or the stinging slap of an angry adult hand across your buttocks <snigger, he said ‘buttocks’>, you really weren’t doing the whole ‘child’ thing the right way, now were you?  later, showing off where you’d been hit to the neighbor kids, a bit of swagger marking your gait, a survivor of the wars.

by this time in my child-life there were chores.  picking up dog poop (frozen dog poop being the worst, no matter how i tried to keep my mouth closed when i would go out in the frigid, oftentimes sub-zero weather to clean up our large backyard, hacking away with a garden trowel at the brown frozen waste; me wrapped and quilted in wool, scarves, gloves, hats, snowpants — or even with an extra pair of pants pulled up over; i’d be out there panting, sweating, possibly cursing my mother or mary, most assuredly cursing the dogs for shitting, stooped over with an old dustpan in one hand and the trowel in the other and a little fleck of crap would fly up–in slow motion–aimed directly for my open mouth, gulp.  i’m surprised i didn’t die from it, it happened so often); mowing the lawn in the summer, raking leaves, and weeding–to this day it, of all the garden chores, is my least favorite–now that’s marking behavior.

[i have grown to love dandelions--do you remember taking the yellow flower heads and rubbing them on your arm to see if your secret infatuation loved you? i despaired of being found out that my secret love was another boy, or robert conrad from "the wild, wild west" t.v. show--that hairy chest! i only watched that show for the chance to see his hairy chest and those tight blue pants. excuse me for wandering away from the topic (he sighed), but wasn't that swipe with the dandelion flower on your palm, or hand, or arm also able to tell you if you liked butter?  which also conjures up the tale of "little black sambo" and the pool of melted butter the tigers become in their dervish and the resulting delicious pancakes his mother makes.  even a dandelion's dried flower, each seed whisked by the wind or your own little blow, lips pursed together, and the delight of watching each little parachute of a seed fly off into the sunlight.  always more then to dig up eventually, but their gossamer charm in the meantime irresistible.]

it is impossible for me to remember exactly when we got our first t.v., although i do know when we didn’t have one which would be pre-1961.   i wasn’t particularly enamored of t.v. watching as a child–when mary lived with us, homework and chores took first and second place in my after school schedule.  there was something about sitting around doing nothing that irked the adults in my life.  in my memory of our first t.v.,  a black & white box that sat on a low table with metal legs in a corner of the living room by the picture window, it was turned on in the evening after dinner, after the dishes had been washed and put away, after homework had been completed, after the dogs had been tended to, after, after, after…

the september of the year i turned eleven, “jonny quest” premiered.  i was not then a big cartoon fan, those of you who know what i do for a living may be surprised to hear that; my favorite shows were ed sullivan and jackie gleason, carol burnett and later in the ’60s, sonny and cher, laugh-in and as i mentioned earlier, the wild, wild west or any western for that matter–cowboys always on my mind/groin.

jonny quest surprised me. they looked like a family unit to me (still do.)  of course that thought would not have been something i would or could have vocalized when i was 11 and in love with race bannon, but with dr. quest so distracted by his work, jonny a blond (not unlike me), his friend hadji, exotic and smart, too; the dog bandit and all of them cared for, looked after by the dashing, handsome, manly, practical race bannon (a macgyver before there was a macgyver).  i would sit on the floor in front of the t.v. engrossed in the action–so different from other cartoons, somehow more plausible; wanting with each passing second to be eaten by the t.v. and to become a part of the story unfolding in front of me–to be rescued by race, carried in his strong arms, delivered safely into the arms of my loving father; safe at last, cared for, loved by men.

i’ve just finished a new yorker story on the suicide of tyler clementi and the secrets he carried around with him and then took with him as he jumped from the george washington bridge–that impulse to disappear, to die, to just get out from under the burden of not telling someone, anyone, the world, how you feel and then to not have to worry about how they will react–combined with the daily fact that being gay is still marginalized and excused by “but i have gay friends” as if that excused their behavior, their vocabulary, their disregard for the deteriorating effect of their ignorance and their callousness.

i loved race bannon.  i still do.  his quiet way of looking after the people he loved, his life lived in service to his love; setting a standard of acceptance (unwittingly, i’m sure hanna-barbera had not set out to defend homosexuality) of a family unit different from the accepted standard.  i learned the lesson, did you?

*you might be thinking right now, “but robert, your writing is seasoned with asides, diversions, and digressions,” to which i would reply, “true, it is how my brain works and i see no need to stop now.”

a thank you note (bread-and-butter)

a manila envelope would be stuffed into my mailbox, it’s arrival unannounced by the sender even though we spoke every week.  i admit i’m not a big mail opener, i’ll take it out of the box and put it (sometimes i toss it) on the table or any other flat surface i first encounter when entering my home.  (of course, it’s different now with m. who is a committed “let’s open it right now”  kind-of-guy, but i’m speaking of those years pre-m. when i lived by myself.)

it would sit there unnoticed for a day or two, but eventually, i’d redirect my energies to slipping my finger under the glued down flap (after raising those little golden flanges in the center that had been pushed down as a security precaution) and ripping open the top.  sometimes it would be filled with recipes and news-clippings, along with a short note or even a longer letter catching me up on the news back home.

as my mother’s health deteriorated though, the envelopes came a little more often and instead of the recipes i would never have used she filled them with odds and ends of my young life, my childhood, objects and papers, some important, such as my naturalization papers, my german birth certificate (legitimacy being what it is, even that long ago–remind me to tell you one day how i nearly became persona non grata in the united states when i was 8 or 9 years old.)

the relics and their stored away mustiness, would slip out of the envelope and flutter down to the table or drop with a thud (see the boy scout knife above) and i’d wonder at the careful way she had saved parts of my life that had long ago lost meaning for me.   in my youth (shall i say “callow youth”? yes, possibly i should), i’d turn them over, perhaps give them a second turn, and then slip them back into the envelope and pop them into a shoebox in my closet.  please note that i did not throw them away.

this went on for a couple of years, until i had quite the collection of mementos detailing my life from birth (and before) up through high school.  not having children, i have to imagine this is something that all parents do–keeping the little things that make them realize how lucky they are to have had you (and your siblings, if applicable.)   and so today, because it’s sanctioned by the state and walmart, i want to say thank you to my mother for loving me so much that she had the foresight to help me remember my past.

child care (hairy chests, hot rods & reels), part 4

performance art

capezio entered my vocabulary around the age of 8.  there was a dance studio on 5th street, between main and omaha, on the east side of the street.  it was a white brick building, with store front windows and inside there was a small, wooden stage, ballet barres and a mirrored wall, if you were passing by, either on foot or in a car, you would be hard-pressed not to look inside and see what was happening–the action of dancing feet and little girls in tutus is irresistible to women, girls, fathers and future gay men.  once i realized that i could actually learn how to dance  i insisted on taking tap lessons–it’s quite possible that there was a tantrum/fit of pique/tears involved in order to get my way–there’s not much an only child of my particular temperament can’t do that doesn’t result in some form of self-gratification (somewhat tempered since then).

it may be that i had watched too much ed sullivan, jackie gleason or some other variety show on tv, it may be that i was having busby berkeley dreams, (who wouldn’t, i ask you), even though at that age i couldn’t have known a busby from a berkeley, but it had to have been something like that to have spurred my interest in taking dance classes.  i believe now that the adulation of adults was to me the most important form of respect (and the dearest) i could evoke during my childhood and to be on a stage, whether in a school play or dancing or reciting or debating, it didn’t matter, as long as adults were paying attention to me was the quickest road to that reward (achieving academic success an also ran in this heat).  it didn’t hurt that it saved me from being bullied as well for my effeminacy (do you see how close to effemi ‘nancy’ that is?)  i’m not girly, mind you, nor was i then, but i gesture, i pose, i am theatrical.  i can’t help it (you know that old canard, “it’s like breathing itself,” well, that’s the truth and there may be those of you who know exactly whereof i speak.)

so, tap.   once my mother capitulated to my demands and enrolled me in beginning tap, the next item on the agenda was tap shoes.  capezio capezio capezio, i couldn’t get enough of tights and leg warmers and tap shoes.  in order to get my size in boy’s tap shoes we would have had to order them which was completely unacceptable as i knew that if i had to wait the possibility of my mother changing her mind — i mean when she saw me tapping my little heart out, wouldn’t she realize how important this was to me? — how proud she’d be that i was so successful and admired, twirling, a tapping (step, ball change and turn) virtuoso, so young, so vibrant, such a star!  waiting would not do, what about those there, i cried, pointing to a pair of black patent leather women’s tap shoes with black grosgrain ribbons that tied across your instep–those would fit me, please, please, please.

“but they’re for women, robert, you should wait for a pair of men’s to come in, it would be better if you did that,” she said with a hint of concern in her voice.  but my need was too great and she relented and i proudly held the box with the women’s tap shoes in my lap like a favored lapdog as she drove us home.  did i tell you i was the only boy in the class?  i probably should have mentioned that earlier in the story lest you think i am embellishing; i assure you i am not.   as long as we were in class, there wasn’t much fuss about the shoes and i have to say i loved everything about moving my feet to music.  i would practice at home in the kitchen on the linoleum floor when i got home from school in the afternoon, and sometimes i would close the front drapes (is that a regionalism, drapes instead of curtains?) and twirl through the front room, from the hexagonal hallway on a diagonal through the living room and up to the full length mirror that hung on the coat closet door in the foyer–foyer does sound grander than what we really had, which was a closet on one side of the front door and a long narrow white wicker planter (the home to several chameleons over the years) filled with  variegated philodendron on the other separating the entryway from the living room.

you did note that i closed the drapes, didn’t you?  it wasn’t so i could do something perverse mind you, but this dancing thing was still new to me and i didn’t want an audience outside of my classmates and my mother until i was ready for the first recital.  this is also about the time when my mother was frantically trying to find manly role models for me.  Our prudential life insurance salesman, a handsome young man, newly married, became my ‘big brother’, but it didn’t last — “the demands of my job are such that i just don’t have the time, mrs. patrick,” he said (with what i noted as a distinct sigh of relief, although his backing out didn’t particularly perturb me, nor did i think it had anything to do with me, which is how children operate more often than not; their universe is parallel to that of adults and as long as there is no harm or abuse–both parties are quite happy leaving it that way.)

after the big brother thing fizzled out, i got enrolled in the boys club which was down by rapid creek, but still on the north side of town in a big concrete brick building with a small library (where i spent all of my time–my mother thought my character would benefit by being around older boys and the coaches that volunteered at the club–but i was afraid of them–that came out too easily–what i knew then is that i wouldn’t fit in with them–i didn’t know the secret handshakes of straight men and boys, that roughness didn’t appeal to me in the way it was intended and i often found myself on the sidelines watching, waiting i believe for a lightening bolt to spark out of the sky and strike me, transform me, into one of them, it would have been a minor miracle.)

as if all of this wasn’t enough, i became a cub scout.  which was horrible; the badges, the constant striving, the harridan who was the den “mother”, with her cigarette breath and aquanet-sprayed bouffant (do you remember the smell of hair spray?), cajoling, bribing, pushing, i loathed it–another opportunity to beseech my mother (with a tear or two), “please don’t make me go to cub scouts,” i’d cry and except for the smokey the bear ‘play’ we put on (see photo above, inscribed on the back “i’m the tree!” in my best nine-year-old script, sent to my paternal grandmother — and sent back to me years after her death by a relative cleaning out her house.)  you know, even though it was cub scouts, it was still being on stage and that, for the moment, trumped the anguish of not fitting in with the other boys.

i was pretty lucky after all.  try as she might, my mother eventually gave up trying to make me something i wasn’t and accepted the fact that i didn’t fit the model, that i wasn’t going to be the boy she had thought (did she hope for a different boy?  i don’t know.) she was raising.  the irony, of course, is that throughout this time, my mother was in a lesbian relationship.

“but robert,” you may have asked yourself, “what about the tap classes, the women’s tap shoes, surely there’s more to that story?”  and you would be right, but unfortunately i don’t know what it is.  there may have been some embarrassment, there may not have been.  i believe there was a recital, but i don’t remember it at all (i’ve been waiting to write this segment, to finish the “child care” chapter, waiting for the memory to surface for some weeks now, but no matter how i try to jog my memory, nothing surfaces. oh, well.)  i do know this, after tap lessons i took ballet and modern dance.  when i went to college i took more dance classes, studying with lar lubovitch and yuriko kikuchi (a martha graham dancer) in master classes.  in chicago, not only did i study with estelle spector at the goodman school, but she arranged to have us take classes with the newly formed chicago ballet led by the indomitable ruth page.  i was never going to be a famous dancer, i knew that (one can always hope though), but stardom — whatever that is — didn’t matter as much to me, what mattered was that it made me feel like me and not someone else, or what other people were expecting me to be.   it gave expression to who i was, not the boy of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails — okay, that was partly me too, but even though it may have tried their patience, the adults in my life let me explore outside of those confines, maybe even with a sigh of relief at my happiness.

child care, part one  –  child care, part two  –  child care, part three

horizontal vs. vertical

when i took these pictures of the sky last night, they registered as vertical images on the camera and when they were downloaded this morning, i contemplated leaving them as vertical images.  But after some back & forth, this way & that way, up & down, flipped vertically & flipped horizontally, i settled on horizontal (turned counter-clockwise).

why, you might ask, all the mishegas about the way the sky is positioned when it’s obvious to even the dimmest wit that the sky cares not a whit?  swirling, circling, stationary, flat or arched, the heavens (not in the religious sense) just are what they are.  and imposing my aesthetic (design sense-less) on it is like, like, well, it is senseless.

regardless, whenever i look up into the night sky it always reminds me of childhood dreams (and some adult dreams, too) and the lazy days and nights of summers past.   the cricket of cicadas and the fairy nature of lightening bugs and the scratchy feel of freshly-mown grass on the back of your shorts-clad legs as you lay looking up at the stars and clouds and the movement of the trees along the fence line that shadow a part of your memory.

what i did on my summer vacation

Obviously it’s not summer, but that shouldn’t matter to you (as it does not matter to me.)

perhaps you recall sitting in your 5th grade classroom in late may in 196_.  it’s warm already & the windows are open (pre-air-conditioning) & the room smells of 1o & 11 year olds just back in from recess (it’s all gravel, sweat, bologna, mayonnaise  & that funny smell of metal from the swings & monkey bars.)

time is standing still.  that is another wonderful thing about childhood; how slowly time moves, it takes f o r e v e r.   everything takes forever & now that the end of the school year is just days away, waiting for that to happen is taking an entire geological era to occur (which you may have learned about this year, so now it has a name.)

you may be only paying half-attention to what the teacher (wah, wah, wah) is saying because your real focus is what the summer will bring.   forts to build, books to read, adventures, bike riding, late nights & fireflies, a trip back east (which to be fair is still the midwest) to grandma’s & part of the summer spent there with cousins (the sissies!)

your first plane ride (by yourself, which, of course, has your mother in a state, an emergency siren still wailing in the background,) but you, you are in heaven.  it means freedom.  it means you’ve grown up.  it means so much that the mere thought of it cannot be held (still,) it’s a wriggling puppy, it’s a can of worms, it’s a like having to go pee during the sermon on sunday–a leg jiggling.

while you were reading the above paragraphs, something may have grabbed your attention or stuck out (a first pubic hair); i looked forward to reading a few books during the summer.  past summers had included mark twain & robert louis stevenson, the hardy boys (& nancy drew–possibly your favorite.)  who it was this summer i do not remember, but i know that i will be curled up (as curled up as someone my age can get) in a chair in the corner of the living room or out-of-doors on the porch late in the afternoon or stretched out on my twin bed with the smell of honeysuckle just seconds from wrapping me in its embrace.  it was transportation.  not that i wanted to get away (not at least consciously desiring escape, i was always relatively happy — a few years from now, when the teen years were upon me life was more mercurial.  but i never thought “i need to get out of here,” here being where i lived.)

what else is going through my mind, this day in may, sitting in the classroom?  a bike ride with the neighbor children down to the public pool on roosevelt; the awkwardness of exposing myself in front of all those boys in the chlorine-scented dressing room (those slick concrete floors) the older boys looking for victims, either to throw in the pool or humiliate in some way, especially when you’re at the stage of life when you start to be more aware of who you are as a person, the beginnings of your you.  a you you know is different from all of the other boys, but have a hard time putting it in words, it’s more of a feeling, a sense of differentness.  & it is that sense you have of you, a scent that the older boys identify as easy prey.

but today, in the classroom, you probably did not get that far ahead of yourself (retrospection hardly the purview of an 11 year old, but soon, soon.)

there may have been some thoughts, fleeting, of horse back riding, the fried chicken of mrs. russell (mother’s 2nd mother-in-law who lived in spearfish & who we saw on our way back from gillette when we visited my mother’s mother & step-father,) roller-skating & bike-riding & candy bought from the little local grocery a couple of blocks from your house (licorice whips & candy cigarettes to be shared with the neighborhood kids.)

this may have been the year (soon after i was naturalized) that i hauled back & knocked out with a right hook — that surprised even me — debbie, the next-door neighbor girl, a year older than me & their family jehovah witnesses who did not believe in the pledge of allegiance — it was idolatry — & you can only imagine the kind of trouble i got into for that (it wasn’t spanking & i don’t think i was grounded, in fact there may have only been yelling & debbie & i were soon to be found ‘chauffering’ the beatles around in the back seat of my mother’s old plymouth.)  imagination trumps real life any day.

i don’t think my mother took a vacation that year (although it may have been a vacation for her while i was at grandma’s.)  it wasn’t too long after this that summer vacations became work vacations (baby-sitting, yard work, pet care, & as i got older; restaurant work–salad station, busboy, go-fer.)

i don’t mind not going anywhere for vacation, & as much as i like going to different places, sometimes the best vacations are the ones you spend with yourself.

romeo & juliet (the one act version)

just a slip of paper separated us from blood relation, but as happens we were more alike than blood would have it.  he, a few years older than i, left my life before we could have compared notes (& now, with the lens of memory bringing our times together in sharper focus, it is a wonder to me that our lives crossed in childhood & never again–just the distant communiqué from this relative or that one–& always cryptic, never filled with any substance, never the essence only the facade of truth, “oh he’s moved to _________” or “he died.”

my cousin bobby (my grandmother’s sister’s daughter’s son, what does that make him? two-, three-, four-times removed & even that may be incorrect; it was explained to me so long ago & mattered so little & that part of the family mythology is long-lost now, there is no one left that speaks the language,) but back to bobby, with his brenda vaccaro voice (all whiskey & cigarettes, even as a child, it might have been the brenda v. voice before there was a brenda v. voice to imitate.  & of course, we all wanted to sound just like him, his voice sophistication incarnate or so it seemed at the time.)

my first cousin, s., & i were his marionettes:  he would direct & we would act out his ‘plays.’  he seemed to have a knack for theatrical display (clue!) & his bedroom was a stage trunk of props & costumes which we would don & oftentimes with metal roller skates attached to our shoes (if you’re a certain age you’ll remember & with the ever present ‘brand new key’ strung on a shoelace around our neck) we would roll along the paved driveway of their home (the only paved driveway on the block) & play the parts he had written for us, most notably (meaning the one i remember) “romeo & juliet.”

for more elaborate productions, we would decamp to my grandmother’s back garden; a mammoth apricot tree with its sweet rotting fruit (more than could ever be jammed & jellied & preserved, so it returned to itself) the backstage wall from which we would make our grand entrances — the trunk large enough to hide one or two of us while we waited for our cue — & the rose arbor, scented as it was with its lighter-than-air blossoms, pink/white/red, a stage set for scene two; the picnic table a mountain/a balcony to scale & declaim our studied lines (most made up on the fly based on a script loosely defined by bobby’s story-telling abilities, “& then they would _____, followed by a sword fight, which leads to _____.”)

these memories are just the compilation of two summers (maybe 3) when i would visit my grandmother & next i knew he had moved away to a larger city to live out his life, but which city i do not know & whether he found love & friendship there i have to believe true.   he was generous & gregarious & didn’t seem beset by devils, although now & in retrospect, i have to imagine he hid a part of himself (much as i did) from his family & this close church-going community.   (a side note:  he alone of the local family did not attend church — which set him apart & outside what was accepted, but i don’t recall any adult ever admonishing him for his lack of faith, & i don’t recall a father, only his mother, a church member-in-good-standing.  what did he know that we didn’t?)

he was felled by that scourge that claimed so many in the 1980s & it is knowing this that makes me wish we had known each other when we were young adults, i believe it would have been a true friendship.  (there is another male cousin, also claimed by a.i.d.s., my grandfather’s sister’s son, a lifelong broadway chorus boy & minor choreographer.  our story is less pleasant & more complicated & not a subject i want to discuss, yet.)

how to end this then?  our time together so short & long ago, our adult lives so separate & yet there is still a connection & shared experiences (not only as children, but one must imagine as adults, too) that seem to stitch us together (perhaps a little play-worn, a dangling thread here, a minor tear there, a missing button, a frayed sleeve) but well-loved & when you look at the two of us standing there in front of the apricot tree, we are comrades.