I was startled awake from a dead sleep, induced by too many Bloody Mary’s and the only cure for a spinning room. I was flat on my back in a stranger’s bedroom and woke to find him sitting on top of me, kissing me on the lips. The tragedy surrounding Kevin Spacey’s proclivities got me thinking about that victim moment over fifty years ago and how it has impacted my life.
During the summer of ’64, I was working for Greyhound at the World’s Fair, driving a four passenger, modified kind of golf cart, called an Escorter. I sat behind and slightly above the couch in front. I was a nineteen year old, Queens College sophomore. It has to rank as one of the best jobs I’ve ever had and I’ve had plenty. The World’s Fairs were kind of a corporatized Disneyland, a showcase for commerce under the guise of entertainment. It was a great job for a college kid. I’d leave school and go to work in a make believe playland.
I think Greyhound was taking a financial beating and lay offs hit toward the end of that summer. My friend, Neil, was also laid off and we immediately thought about transporting a car to the West Coast. We had plenty of time before the next school year. All the way back then, people would contract with a service to have their car driven to their new home thousands of miles away. We immediately discovered we were too young to sign these kind of deals. Undaunted, we placed an ad in the paper for someone, who would sign and partner with us.
Stanley lived all the way up near Columbia University in a shitty neighborhood. He was the only person to answer our ad and we were desperate to take this trip. The instant we knocked on the door of his five story walk up and heard him speak, I knew we were bound for some kind of shocking introduction. He was around 6’5” and carried himself like an effeminate ostrich with swiveling hips. Back then, it was safe to be completely out of the closet and over the top in certain places in the US. The monster of AIDS had not begun eating one life after another. The Sixties were percolating, an unstoppable force all about freedom of expression. We made a deal with Stanley and ended up getting some lug of a Mercury station wagon to drive to Los Angeles.
I can’t tell the full Stanley story right now because it was so rich and I don’t want to gloss over it, while I am off in a different direction. I loved the entire experience of traveling cross the country in the mid-Sixties with my very own version of La Cage Aux Folles.
He was looking for a cheap way to get to Los Angeles, where he had a bunch of friends living in the Hollywood Hills. We ultimately dropped Stanley off at his destination and Neil and I drove to the Y, where we had a room. After a nap, we took the Merc for its last spin, driving up to a party in the Hills and that is where this story began.
I can’t say that I had much contact with gay people up to that point in my life, nor was I the most introspective guy. When the door opened, it revealed a house filled with gay men of all shapes and sizes. I don’t recall seeing a single woman. I felt a little like a young astronaut visiting Planet Gay. Stanley’s friend was the host of the party and definitely had an interest in me. I don’t think it took long for me to over consume, a habit it took years to give up, especially when feeling so uncomfortable. I needed to lie down and our host, the lurking shark, offered his bedroom.
The straight hero in this story is supposed to wake up and then kick the shit out of the gay intruder taking advantage of him. In my story, I remember immediately propping myself up and starting to cry, which is not the knee jerk, Tarzan reaction guys are supposed to have. i was terribly confused and upset, but I didn’t feel angry. It just seemed wrong to me and it had nothing to do with any larger issue, certainly not morality. Up until then, I was never in a place to question my sexuality, but this experience dropped me right in the middle. In its own way, it was a text book experience and made me much more sensitive to the delicate balance we all carry regarding our sexuality, whether we ever think about it or not.
I wish I could remember the guy’s name, but I can’t. No, he did not continue to force himself on me and he turned out to be pleasure to spend time with. I told him I wasn’t gay and he said that if I decided otherwise, we would get together and he would hire me to work in a bar he was opening on Oahu. I shit you not.
I ended up hanging out with him and we got along extremely well. He never crossed during the remaining time we were together and I began to feel comfortable. I didn’t feel traumatized by the experience and I am actually grateful it happened. I began to appreciate the confusion between masculine and feminine at a fairly early age and I was happy with my choice, but lost any idea of judgement, thanks to Stanley and his friends.
Guys like Spacey, Weinstein and a growing list of powerful men are predators, who only care about themselves. These are scandals because they involve celebrity. The truth is that everyday, every minute, some not so famous guy is saying lewd things to every woman, taking advantage of his power. Then, you have the fucken, twisted souls, grabbing breasts, jerking off under their desks, not giving a thought about stealing a child’s innocence.
Men, we have been taking advantage of women and have resisted treating them as equals for freakin’ millennia. Shame on all of us and the millions and millions who have come before. Then, there are the innocent children, who sometimes become pawns in the games the powerful and not so powerful play. I was lucky and just old enough to use the experience and not have it use me.
It makes me sad.