|
Memories of the
previous plague:
Charlie |
By Denny Meyer |
My friend Charlie and I met in
the early 1960s when we were about 14 or 15.
We were a part of a bunch of goofy suburban kids
on Long Island who hung out, talked dirty,
laughed our asses off, and were boringly well
behaved most of the time. One of the
things the gang did regularly was to go to the
stock car races on Saturday afternoons in
Freeport (called Free-Pawt in the local 'Lawn
Guylind' dialect). The dirt track races
were really 'demolition derbys' and that's what
the crowds were there to see: old cars smashing
into each other as spectacularly as possible.
No one cared who won the races. We drank
Coke, ate hot dogs and popcorn and enjoyed the
hell out it, all for less than two dollars at
most.
In the summer of 1964 the gang
discovered a hole in the fence of the New York
World's Fair and we began going there for free
several times per week, having nothing better to
do. We rode in on the Long Island Rail
Road from outer suburbia for free by sitting in
the first car where the regular conductor got to
know us and just winked and walked right past
us, clicking his ticket-punch and mumbling,
"tickets, tickets." We spent the days
wandering the exhibits that we knew by heart,
knowing when and which exhibit gave out free hot
dogs and Sprite for lunch, how to get past the
lines for the most fun exhibits, and just
goofing around good naturedly.
Being good suburban boys the one
sacred thing we never missed was being home on
time for our mother's home cooked dinners of
meat loaf and mashed potatoes bathed in gravy.
So, every day at the fair at 4 PM it was time to
leave to go home. But one fine
afternoon Charlie and I announced that we were
going to stay at the fair until after 9 PM to
see the fireworks. The rest of the gang,
aghast, told us we were nuts to miss our
dinnertime and left.
Charlie and I walked the fair
through the evening breeze off Jamaica Bay much
as
Camille Saint-Saëns and John Philip Sousa had at
the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San
Francisco. Charlie began a long monologue
about his life. Halfway through I realized
to my horror that he was coming out to me;
something I had barely begun to accept about
myself. He went on and on and as dusk
fell, he concluded, "So, I'm gay, do you want a
blow job or are you going to punch me in the
nose?" (He wasn't really offering to do
that, he was just being outrageously funny as he
always was). After a long pause, as the
fireworks finally went off overhead, I said,
"Charlie, you're not the only one." It was
the first time I'd ever come out to anyone,
including myself.
Charlie and I remained friends
till the day he died of AIDS decades later.
In the late 60s Charlie was living with his
impoverished lover, at the time, in New York
City where we both lived. He phoned me and
said he hadn't eaten in three days and wanted to
borrow ten dollars from me. In those days
you could get a refrigerator full of groceries
for ten bucks. I met him in a subway
station and handed him the money over the
turnstyle to avoid leaving the system and having
to pay another 20 cents for the return trip
home. "My check is in the mail," he told
me.
Years passed, I traveled the
world serving in the US Navy; Charlie met a
musician who got a job playing with a state
philharmonic orchestra in Copenhagen and Charlie
went with him and became their public relations
representative. Life went on, we exchanged
funny letters. In his 40s he achieved his
life long dream of becoming a New York City
Subway motorman, proudly wearing his uniform
replete with union badges. In 1990 I
visited him in New York as he lay dying of AIDS
in a hospital. I jokingly told him, "You
still owe me ten dollars." "Oh my Gosh!"
He exclaimed and got out his wallet to pay me
back nearly 30 years late. I refused, of
course, telling him I wanted to tell this story
and say that he never did pay me back.
©2020 GayMilitarySignal
