Captains Log: Stardate 001892-6 or in another more relatable description, early 2011. I won’t go into specific dates as I don’t think it’s all that relevant – not that I’m hiding anything, but a little mystery never hurt anyone. But, if hiding the days date is my idea of mystery we’re in for a lot of disappointment and trouble folks.
The Muirfield files. Why so aptly named? Cuz it sounded cool. I just used “cuz” on a document that will be published to potentially tens…if not dozens of people, ha! I am the ultimate rebel. Muirfield was the name of the street I grew up on, and since both my sexuality and addictions I feel began early on, I chose that name, as it is a good description of the physical genesis of my neurosis. To protect the anonymity of the street I grew up on, I left out the descriptor (lane, blvd, ave, st, etc) to protect the innocent, not that anyone I knew back then lives on that isle of domesticity any longer, or have anything whatsoever to do with my story, but again, back to the mystery aspect (I see a pattern of sub-par anticipation developing).
7th grade, late 80’s, acid wash jeans, lots of hair spray, extra wide shoe laces, Nintendo, and the first time someone ever called me a faggot. Walking down the hall, trying to blend in while wearing a sweater that my Mom had gotten me which made me look like a bumblebee trying to impersonate Charlie Brown, Derek Smith called me a faggot. I don’t know why, maybe just a typical 7th grade bullying comment, maybe the sweater, maybe both. I was shocked! I wasn’t gay! At least not that I’d known about. I’d spent the entire year before pining over Jasmine and crying when she moved away, trying desperately to get the courage up to tell her I liked her when I thought chances were good that she might feel the same way. Even her friends tried to hook us up on a date, but as would turn out so many times in my life; fear took over and made the decision that it is indeed NOT better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, it’s safer not to try. So what the fuck was Derek talking about I didn’t have a clue.
Westborough Junior High was an entirely different beast. Sixth grade had been pretty good as far as elementary school was concerned. Now here I was in the lions den with all these new kids who apparently had taken a summer class on what’s cool, what’s not, how to BE cool, and what to avoid to not be cool. No one offered the class to me and as a result here I was being called a faggot, and I was totally lost trying to figure out the purpose of a “homeroom” class and remembering my locker combination while simultaneously not getting shoved into it and locked inside.
So, it came to my surprise not so soon after this incident when I discovered I’d have to be showering with other boys in P.E. class. My P.E. teacher schooling us on what’s normal and what’s not while taking showers with 30 other boys for the first time in your life. As it turned out, staring at all the other boys and seeing that they had “peckers” as he referred to them as, was “normal”. Well, if that was the case – I was (and am to this day) exceedingly normal. Extremely, engrossingly, exceptionally normal. Now, mind you that this is also about the time frame when young boys realize that they have absolutely no control over what these “peckers” as Mr. S (I’ll refer to him as Mr. S) called them, actually do. This is the time in a young mans life when simply walking down the hallway with your pecker shifted to the right, or left, or up, or down can cause his sail to fly so right that it takes a crowbar and an act of GOD to bring it under control. Boners people, I’m talking about Boners! Got it? Keep up.
I discovered Edward in this class, and no, not Edward Cullen. Edward held hostage the body of a 22yr old man in a 12yr old’s possession. He had a 6 pack, fully developed – and HUGE pecs, biceps, triceps and a pecker that looked like he was going to trip over it! He was beautiful. I couldn’t stare for too long because my stupid pecker would jump to attention and I’d have to go scurrying out of the shower. You’ve never experienced fear until you’ve been 12yrs old and gotten a woody by looking at another boy in the shower after P.E. You’d be lucky to make it back to your locker alive, literally. Fear ruled my existence. Then there was Joseph, voted best looking of the class of 1988. He sure was. Then there was Victor…who I think was really my first crush. Turns out that thanks to the modern science known as Facebook he sent me a friend request, and he looks kind of shitty and is as dumb as ever. There is a little justice in the Universe, if only a little. Faggot. This was the foray into finding out who I was and the battles it would contain, all the while doing it behind a smile without a glimmer of letting anyone else know what was going on in my head. The ultimate act of omission.
I am now in my late 30’s. How the hell that happened I still haven’t figured out, but oh well. I’m grateful. I am a recovering alcoholic with coming up on two years sober (and clean, although Vodka was primarily my drug of choice, but coke and several other ingestible's found their way into my system quite a bit). I look at it this way, to quote someone I once heard in “the rooms” (for any non-recovery people who may happen to stumble upon this rambling that means the room of an AA or other twelve step meeting) “Alcoholic or Addict: Dog or Poodle - you decide”. Meaning that basically there is addiction and within that there are usually particular drugs of choice be they alcohol, chemical drugs, or food, sex, gambling, etc, you get it right? Right. Moving on.
My Dad was the drunk and I knew I’d never let that happen to me! I hated his drinking. I hated how he acted and having to be scared when he’d come home at night not knowing what kind of mood he’d be in, or if he’d crashed the car or was going to embarrass me in front of my friends (not that I had many who came over much anyway). Never, that would never happen to me. Ha! Never say never kids. As it turned out, both my parents were alcoholics, it’s just that my Mom was so high functioning and so completely type-A that her few cocktails after work when compared to my Dad looked like nothing, nothing at all. I never knew she was an alcoholic. She told me she was an alcoholic when I was 20, the day she confronted me and asked me about my sexuality after finding the very first love letter I’d ever written, to my first boyfriend Tony. As I stood backed up against the hallway wall trying to push myself into it as to become part of the drywall and paint in order to get out of this unexpected confrontation, she told me she was in AA and was an alcoholic. I didn’t believe her. When I told her she seemed bored and should get a hobby I meant join a book club or something – not AA! LoL. What I didn’t know was that apparently she drank herself into stupors most nights after she put me to bed, and it took me years to really come to accept that she wasn’t making this all up. So, two alcoholic parents, two alcoholic grandparents: I would surely never drink. Surely.
Rewind two years to my 18th year and my first real job, which my Mom had helped me get in the financial district of San Francisco. The year 1992, August, to be exact. I was hired as a filing clerk for a mortgage-banking firm. I was so inexperienced I didn’t even file correctly; I guess I should have taken that office administration class in high school, oh well. Anywho…rewinding a little further again during those years from Jr. High onward I looked forward to getting the Sunday paper every weekend. Why? Not because I was a fan of the comic section, but there was a section in “The Pink Section” (how appropriate for a would be gay man, the pink section!) of the S.F. Examiner that I looked forward to gazing at every weekend. The movie section. No, not the movies that were playing down at the local Cineoplex movie theatres…more like adult movies. On the last page of the pink section they had listed the weeks upcoming “performers” at “The World Famous” Nob Hill Theatre. The local establishment for performance artists, aka, strippers. Every week they would list the Hunk du Jour who was headlining that week’s run of performances and a brief description about his rock hard abs, perfect pecs, etc along with a picture of his highly photogenic portfolio. I loved that friggin’ section! I’d been lusting over it for years when I realized that The Nob Hill Theatre was located not too far from my new work establishment. GASP!! OMG!! Dare I consider going? Consider I did, for quite a while until I got the guts, and dare I also did.
I still remember how fiercely my heart was racing as I walked up Bush Street on my lunch hour towards the theatre. I don’t remember how many times I tried and failed to walk through the door, but I do remember getting through the door and not bursting into spontaneous combustion – much to my surprise. The clerk’s register was elevated so that they looked down on you as you approach the counter and I remember this older man looking down at me, and kind of smirking and asking me how old I was? 18 I replied. “Got some ID?” he asks me from his throne on high as I hand him my driver’s license. Handing it back to me he tells me it’s $20 to get in and I had him a $20 without even flinching. I’m so nervous at this point that if I’d been hit by a feather I’d probably have jumped three feet in the air and ran screaming from the place the general population outside would have thought I just escaped a hold-up robbery! “There’s a show going on right now,” he casually mentions as he reads the nervous tension on my face like a book. I look at him with confused excitement. He tells me that if I don’t want the performer to approach me then to sit in the last two rows of the theatre. I walk through the door and the red walls, red seas, red carpet, red flashing lights and only broken by the white spot light that is following a beautifully chiseled man on stage as he is sensually undressing and caressing his magnificent chest, abs…I won’t go on…you get the picture. I sat in the last seat, flush against the wall, of the last row as far as I could get to stay away from the stud on stage, while still able to see him. The smell in this theatre was a mix of old English leather, cigarette smoke, and pure unadulterated man musk. I think it was bottled and pumped in the vents to act like some kind of pheromones! Lol. I think it was supposed to smell like sex…gee, ya think it was?
This Apollo who was seductively making his way over to each gentleman in the theatre and smiling down at them and making them believe he thought they were sexy, and that he was having a good time with each of them began getting closer and closer to where I was. He had a way of making eye contact with each guy and me at the same time somehow! It’s like he was a bloodhound tracking my scent of fear and excitement. I’d never seen a naked man, not a full grown one anyway and he was definitely full-grown! He got two rows in front of me and he could make direct eye contact with me now, and pierce me through the darkness with his smoldering hazel eyes. He seemed to somehow enjoy watching me squirm in my seat, it gave him power. That was it, there was no where left to hide he was done with the last guy in the theatre and I was the only one sitting in the back two rows trying to “stay away” from the mean evil stripper-god that I’d paid $20 to see in the first place! He must have seen me start to freak out as he began to cautiously approach me because he skillfully turned away un-offended and made his way back to the stage to finish his performance. I glanced down at my watch: 12:54pm. I had six minutes to run as fast as I could back to the office so I wouldn’t be late coming back from lunch at my new job, my first job ever. Off I ran down Bush St. and into a new chapter of my life.
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