I Had to Say Something (10 page)

This had a huge impact on me. Whereas my family was not affectionate, my Nanny saw the benefit of massage and wanted me to see it, too. I'd lie on her lap as she massaged me all over with one of her hand lotions. It was great.

One time, an adult in my life asked me who my best friend was. They probably expected me to name another kid in the neighborhood or my brother, but for me no one was a better friend than my Nanny, not even my mother.

Those afternoons with Nanny came to an abrupt end when I started school. Every child dreads the first day of school, and I was no different. When my mother dropped me off, I couldn't stop crying. I knew she wasn't abandoning me, but I just didn't want to spend the day without her, Nanny, Grandma, or someone I could trust. Those women were my guardians and protectors. I feared what I might have to endure in a world that did not care for me as much as they did.

By age six, it was pretty obvious I wasn't like other boys. I was introverted, afraid, insecure. I know many gay men who grew up feeling very alone and afraid of the world. I was one of those boys. I probably felt that way just because I knew I was different.

Gender roles are present from the day we are born, and by the time I was old enough to figure out that I was supposed to be like my father and my older brother, I panicked. I knew I was more like my mother. She laughed more. She enjoyed life more. She genuinely cared about everyone. Ever since I can remember, I gravitated toward my mother.

Somehow I knew that I was a mama's boy and that that was not good, but I wondered why it was bad. Why should I
have to go out and make friends when I have my mother? She was a real adult who cared about me. Somewhere around age seven, I decided that my new best friend was my mother and not my Nanny.

I had dolls when I was a child. Surprise. My favorite was a talking Casper the Friendly Ghost doll. It was made out of terry cloth and had a plastic face. When you pulled the string, it would say things like, “Hi, I'm Casper,” “Will you play with me?” or “Don't be afraid.”

I'm not sure what my mom thought of my attachment to that doll, but she never tried to take it from me. Instead, she let me play with it and take it with me on the ride to school, though I had to leave it in the car when I got out. “Boys don't play with dolls,” she told me once as I started crying for my doll. She apologized, and I could see the concern in her face. I was supposed to make friends at school, but instead I was becoming more attached to her and Casper.

There was this local children's television show in Denver called
Fred 'n' Fae
. It was just like
Romper Room
or
Captain Kangaroo
, and it aired every weekday afternoon, just in time for children to watch it when they got home from school. During the show, they always showed cartoons of Casper or Popeye or something else that was popular. When I heard that kids could be guests, I told my mother that I wanted to go on the show.

I had to hound her several times before she finally sent a letter to the television station. Sure enough, in a few weeks time, I got a response, and I was sure my television career was about to take off. I thanked my mom and told her she was the best mother and the best friend in the whole world.

During one of my two appearances on the show, I was chosen by Fae to pick one of six special squares that they had on
a wall. Behind each square was the name of the cartoon that was to be shown next. I pressed the button underneath a square, and down dropped a slide to reveal Casper the Friendly Ghost, and then the cartoon started. My mother sat off camera as I basked in my newfound television celebrity. She was clearly excited by all the magic that television could produce in the early 1960s. During commercial breaks, I'd wave to her, and she'd wave back.

I didn't hate school, but after school I preferred to run home to Mom rather than go play at someone's house. I would tell people that my mother was my new best friend. I got to know my grandmother Allene, who was a bookkeeper for a linen supply company that serviced restaurants throughout Colorado. Occasionally, my grandmother had to work in Glenwood Springs, a small mountain town about a three-hour drive west of Denver, where her company's other plant was. She couldn't just drive there in the morning and come back in the afternoon like you can today, so she would stay at a hotel at one of the natural hot springs in the Rocky Mountains. Once in awhile, my parents would allow me to take the train up to Glenwood Springs to see her, and she would let me play all day at the hot springs while she worked. When her work was done, she would drive me back to Denver.

My grandfather Vernon worked in a typewriter repair shop, and sometimes he would take me to his shop and let me hang out with him. He was a master at fixing broken keyboards and rollers, and when he could, he would let me play with typewriters that were so broken, it didn't matter if I messed them up. But I wasn't much for play. I wanted instead to learn how to type, and when I did play, I pretended that I was a secretary at his office. My grandfather didn't seem to mind. I remember the smell of all those inks and cleaning
chemicals where he worked. All those fumes probably contributed to his death, but to me, they smelled wonderful.

All my relatives were hardworking, proud people. Other than my mother, none of them talked much. They didn't seem to be hiding anything, but there was just a sense that personal lives should be kept private and that loud talk was improper. For example, they all knew about my Nanny's past life, but they never condemned it or commented on it. They probably all knew that I was gay, but they didn't wish to say anything about that either. My cue was not to say anything unless I had to, and I never had to.

 

My mother was always involved in civic activities. She appreciated having me help her. One night we'd be making centerpieces for an upcoming bowling banquet, the next, it might be bags for a Halloween party. I was a good worker, and the fact that I was doing it for her made it even more important to me.

Back in the 1960s, people ironed everything, including underwear. My mother, like a lot of women, had a laundry and ironing day, and you can imagine all the clothes that came from three boys and a police-officer husband. Rather than try to do it all herself, she turned laundry day and ironing night, which was usually Friday, into a business opportunity for me. While I was at school, she washed, but then at night, she'd pay me three cents for every handkerchief I ironed, five cents for every shirt, and ten cents per bed sheet. I could easily make a couple of dollars every Friday, and for a kid back then that was a lot of money.

We would watch TV while we ironed. My favorite show on Friday nights was
The Man from U.N.C.L.E
. While we worked, my mother and I would talk about everything you
can imagine. She'd tell me about her girlfriends or what was going on in the bowling leagues. I didn't have much I wanted to share, so normally I'd just listen or make up some small talk. These moments with my mother were priceless.

Dad used to work evenings. Because the bowling league met on Saturday mornings, Mom and I would sometimes work into the night on league stuff. There were always score sheets to tabulate, matches to determine, or some other paperwork that needed to be done. Then we'd take a break and drive down to the A&W to get a root beer float.

Over time, our close relationship grew, even though we rarely talked about anything serious. On Saturday mornings my mother worked at the bowling alley, and I was right there beside her. We'd leave the house around eight o'clock, and she would buy me breakfast at the snack bar. There were dozens of youth bowling leagues, and she kept track of them all, with a little help from some other mothers and me. It was a lot of work, but she seemed to enjoy it. I admired her dedication, her willingness to see things through. Being together made the work fun for both of us. Her friends would say things like, “I wish I had a son like Mike,” which made us both happy.

Come Saturday afternoon, she'd be back home doing her chores while I sat at the kitchen table and played cards or worked on updating the bowling books. While she worked, she'd talk on the phone. She'd spend hours talking to her girlfriends or to her mother. Mostly they gossiped but not in a mean way. She'd lock the front screen door, and caught up in a call, she'd forget that she had locked people out. My father would have to bang like hell to get her attention. The telephone was her way to stay connected with the world. I never once took offense that she was talking with her friends and not with me.

My mother liked to look good, and my job as her friend and pseudodaughter was to help her. Sometimes that was a challenge because her weight fluctuated. When she would get down to a slender dress size, she'd want to get all dolled up and go somewhere to show off her new figure. But even when she was heavy, she didn't hide herself. If I couldn't put her into a slinky gown, I'd dress her in a blouse with a silky collarless shirt underneath and a nice pair of slacks. Since she was heavy more often than skinny, she usually wore pants, in black or in other dark colors, with an elastic waistband.

I also learned how to do her hair, as well as my grandmother Allene's and my Nanny's. It required rollers, Dippity-Do, aerosol hairspray, and plenty of time under our portable, hooded hair dryer, so I didn't do it often, but when I did, boy, did they love it. My mother liked to wear her hair big, so when she had an updo with a hairpiece on top of that, the total effect could be awesome.

 

In the basement, we had a great space with a bar that was perfect for parties. My parents would hold parties for the bowling people, the city government people, and everyone and anyone in the neighborhood. They liked to make sure everyone had a good time. I would help out by picking up dirty dishes or serving cocktails and snacks. Sometimes I would play bartender, and I loved that job. It allowed me to be with the adults. Even as I turned thirteen, I still had no desire to be with other kids my age.

When I couldn't be with my parents, I had no one else I could spend time with, so I spent many a Saturday and Sunday holed up in my bedroom. I had a television set in my room, which was not common back then. I could watch black-and-white TV all day, and I loved watching westerns.
Audie Murphy was my favorite cowboy. I would fantasize about being him. I liked the action.

I would also fantasize about being kidnapped. I would lie on my bed and imagine myself walking down Colfax Avenue, strolling among all the people I was told to avoid. There I am, acting coy, when suddenly a good-looking older man opens a car door and shoves me inside. I scream for help, but it's no use. Cars were big back then, so inside the car on this huge backseat, the man pulls down his pants, then he pulls down my pants, and as I see the street lights pass above me, we connect. It wasn't a terror fantasy—it was a sexual fantasy. A couple of times, I did go walking on Colfax without my parent's knowledge, but no one approached me and nothing happened.

My mom used to tell her friends how clean my room was. It was because her vacuum cleaner, a Filter Queen, was always in my room. I used it for cleaning, sure, but I also used the long hose for, well, entertainment.

My mother never opened my door and barged in. She would knock and would come in only if I said it was okay. She was very respectful that way. When she came in, she would ask, “Is everything okay?” and I would say yes, and that would be the end of it. Despite all the time I spent with her, I just couldn't tell her how different I felt from other kids. I knew her limitations.

Then one day the thing we never talked about came up anyway. I was fourteen at the time. At the end of a school day I came home to find a letter I had written laying on the dining room table and my mom sitting there beside it, looking at me. I had written this very homoerotic letter to a teacher and then felt too shy to send it to him. But the things I said in it were so real to me that I didn't want to throw the letter away either. I
thought maybe I'd find the courage to send it one day, so I hid it behind one of the pennants pinned to my wall. As my mom was straightening up that day, a pin fell out of the wall, and the pennant and letter fell right into my mother's hands.

“That's not a very nice letter,” my mom said, looking at me. I was getting ready for a big lecture about the evils of homosexuality, but to my surprise, she said nothing more. She didn't even confiscate the letter. I was so embarrassed, I ran to my room and stayed in it until the next day.

That was the one and only time my mother and I even came close to discussing my homosexuality.

 

Christmas was the most wonderful time of the year at our house. Long before there were lavish contests for home decorating, my parents spent months building and preparing their outdoor Christmas display. My father would start building figurines in October. He had an amazing talent for figuring out a scene and then constructing the parts to make it come alive.

One time my father was making a wooden elf in the garage, where he kept all his tools. He tried to teach me some basics about woodworking and other manly things, and I was happy to assist him. I would stand there and hold the board while he drew an outline and measured it. Once we were done, I couldn't wait to run inside and help Mom cook or bake or whatever she was doing.

As Christmas approached, my mother and I spent hours wrapping Christmas presents, not just for our family, but for local toy drives and other projects she was involved in. We'd also do a lot of holiday baking, and I can tell you, there is nothing like making cookies and desserts with your mother during the holidays.

By the age of fifteen, I had completely taken to the art of outdoor holiday displays, and I had two of the best teachers in the state. One year, I even won the Edgewater city contest. When the local paper interviewed me, I made sure to thank my mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, great-grandmother, and everyone else I could name.