Landscape With Traveler (5 page)

 

17

In

Boot

Camp

In boot camp I'd become friends with Billy Bowdoin, the Recruit Company Commander of our “sister” company, and we were both going on to Jacksonville, Florida, to Airmen's School. We were in the same company there. I liked Jacksonville—it was worth falling out of your bunk at five in the morning just to see the incredible sunrises. They were so beautiful they made tears come into your eyes, or sometimes so awesome that everyone was struck dumb and just stood gaping at the sky.

Billy was from Florida, a theater bug and “artistic” type in general (in the good sense, I guess), and I had some good times with him. I still played the piano pretty well then (I had studied from age six to seventeen), and we'd go off through the pine woods on the base to a quiet little chapel in the regular Naval Air Station on smoky, fragrant autumn Sunday afternoons, and I'd play Mozart sonatas for him.

He fell in love with me—his first experience with that kind of feeling—and it was unfortunate, since I felt nothing but friendship for him. So there was an undercurrent of tension between us once that began. I was not interested in sex with Billy and thought it kinder to be honest about it. He wouldn't stop trying and became very tiresome.

However, we went together to Tallahassee a couple of times, and spent the weekend with a professor and his wife who were old friends of Billy's. They were German and had known many artists and “intellectuals” in Berlin in the '
20
s and '
30
s, like Klee and Brecht and Weill—you name them and Anna and Dieter Kurtz knew them. He was a composer and professor of humanities, rather pompous but a very nice guy under it all. Their walls were full of Klees, Kandinskys, and Mackes.

Anna Kurtz bore a striking resemblance to Dietrich, and smoked long thin black cigars. Anna had a remarkable figure, though she was in her mid-fifties, and loved to parade around dressed only in a leotard. Unlike Emil Jannings's professor, Dieter appeared oblivious to Anna's obvious flaunting, and never mentioned anything or seemed to notice it. Once, at dinner, she commented, à propos of nothing I can remember, that it wasn't the length of a man's penis that mattered to a woman, but the thickness. “Yezz,” she said, “zee zignezz und zee payshenzz. Und zee payshenzz perhapz more even zen zee zignezz.” Then the conversation continued as though she hadn't spoken.

On the bus back to Jacksonville that night, Billy told me how once Anna, Dieter being absent at that moment, had asked to see his cock, so Billy had taken it out and let her look it over. She didn't touch it, he said, just nodded, and he stuffed it back into his pants, fearing Dieter would walk back into the room. I imagine had the opportunity presented itself Anna would have expressed to me a similar request—subsequent to her appraisal of his endowment Billy had learned this was a common practice of hers—but it never happened that we were alone together.

 

18

Billy

Bowdoin

and

I

Chose

Photography

School

After Jacksonville, both Billy Bowdoin and I chose photography school in Pensacola. We saw little of each other and soon were merely “shipmates.” I was working as a typist—yeoman, I should say—in the Commander's office, while waiting for the next session to begin in the school, and they liked me so much that they held me over for the class after that, just to get all the paperwork done and in order.

I was by that time the “favorite” of the second in command, a nice fellow who had a great beach house and a speedboat and even a little Piper Cub. I had extravagant privileges such as a permanent liberty card, a permit to wear civilian clothes, exemption from bed-check, etc., and was consequently despised by my barracksmates, almost to a man.

I was acting in the Little Theater in town besides all my other pleasures and indulgences, and in general was having a high old time of it. Also the instructors in the school, when I finally started classes, were leery of me. I was good at photography but in a too offhand way for them, and too “arty.” I liked to take pictures of moody landscapes and they wanted me to take technically perfect photos of nuts and bolts.

I passed anyhow, however, and when the billet sheets were passed around I had first choice—the continuing genius! I wanted to go to Japan, but there were no billets for Japan on the list. My friend the Lieutenant Commander had created a special billet for me in Pensacola, but though I noticed it on the sheet, he didn't tell me about it, and I ended up, much to his hurt and displeasure, choosing the Naval Photo Center in Washington, because Portia, an old college friend of mine, lived there and it would be fun to see her again. Besides, I liked the idea of seeing a city after all these towns.

Before I left Pensacola, however, I accidentally almost killed my “patron” and myself. We were flying out over the Gulf in his plane, which he turned over to me once we'd taken off, and he was down on the floor between my legs giving me a going-over—he was another sex maniac—and I started climbing at too steep an angle that stalled us and sent us into a spin. He managed to get untangled from my legs and the controls and cables just in time to pull us out of it at about fifty feet above the water. Oddly, I wasn't at all scared—even still had an erection! But he'd had enough and took us home to bed.

 

19

So

Off

I

Went

to

Washington

So off I went to Washington, a great, beautiful city in those days, which I loved from the start. Portia and I had wonderful times going to the theater and concerts, strolling around the city and seeing the sights, canoeing on the Potomac, listening to records, eating in extravagant restaurants. Wonderful? I wonder. It's a word I use rather indiscriminately. We were young—twenty-one or twenty-two—and were busily trying to convince the world (ourselves) not only that we were adults, but that we were Prufrock, and we more than half believed it. Only the suppleness of youth could have saved us from the brittle, cool chic we were affecting. Never had invulnerability seemed so absolutely necessary to me as it did then, and never have I wished so much (a desire of which I was only dimly aware and which I disguised as frantically as a teenager his public erections) to be conquered by what I feared. I can't speak for Portia, of course, since I believed—she did it so beautifully—that she was what she seemed.

 

20

I

Shared

a

Little

Office

I shared a little office with a Lieutenant Commander in the Research and Development section of the Photo Center. Our section did mainly underwater photography research, which consisted of putting on aqualungs and banging test-model cameras around the pool taking
pictures of each other, and then going back to develop the film.

It was a do-nothing job, as are most military jobs, and I mostly stayed in the office playing chess with my officemate. The room had a big glass wall that looked out over the wooded grounds of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, where Pound was living at that time. He was my god, and I used to go and stare through the gates at the inmates, trying to see him, but never did. I used to imagine him strewn in a chair, one leg up, cape around his shoulders, large hat flopped to one side, holding court on the lawn like Cyrano de Bergerac come to the convent to visit Roxanne, only in this case it was the others come to visit Ezra. I was too shy to write and ask if I could see him, which is certainly just as well. After all, what would I have to say to God?

In the meantime, I'd started studying ballet with Leon Fokine, who had his school there, and two months after I began male dancers were in such demand that even I was asked to join the company to perform at the Cherry Blossom Festival, where we did, of all things, a big Hungarian czardas.

The guys in the barracks were much amused at my tights hanging on my bunk to dry, and teased me endlessly once they found out what the damned things were. But they came one and all to take pictures of the Cherry Blossom Festival, where they were immensely impressed to see silly Francis Reeves cavorting about on the stage with the beautiful ballet girls. After that they looked on me with more respect, hoping as it turned out that I would introduce them to the “ballerinas,” which I did, but to no avail. Provincial dance students are even more “devoted to their art” than those in New York, who absorb a certain worldliness through simple geographic location.

Another fellow who was in Washington with me whom I'd known at photo school was also studying dance, but modern dance. We met a guy who'd gotten himself out of the Navy by telling the chaplain he was falling in love with all the boys in his barracks. They sent him to the Naval Hospital for psychiatric observation and gave him a general medical discharge after a couple of months.

My dancer friend and I decided that was a fine idea and went with our problem to the chaplain, who was very understanding—
too
understanding—telling us, in effect to do whatever we wanted but try not to get caught. He may even have invited us to tea—I forget.

 

21

By

This

Time

There

Were

Three

of

Us

By this time there were three of us who wanted out in order to go to New York and become big stars. We made a pact that if any one of us got caught in the bushes with our pants down, he'd be sure to turn in the other two, as the military investigators always asked for other names. It was unlikely that I'd be caught as I wasn't doing anything much but going out with Portia, so it was up to the other two, who were named Don and Dan. Dan it was who eventually got caught and in two weeks he was out. Two weeks later Don was out.

I noticed that I was being followed when I'd leave the base in the evening, but when the guy saw me coming out of a very posh apartment house with a beautiful girl in tow, he'd follow us to a restaurant or bar or concert hall and then go on about his business. A month passed and nothing happened, except that I was always followed.

Then the commander of the photo center sent for me and said he'd had a report about me that had to be checked out. I asked what it might be and he hemmed and hawed embarrassedly and finally came out with it in a very round-about way. I coolly told him it was true and was thereupon whisked out to an interrogation center in Embassy Row, a CIA or CID or something headquarters.

The interrogation was an amusing adventure, in itself, which I enjoyed immensely. It was pure Hollywood, and the agents and I approached our roles in dead seriousness. I was put into a room with a desk, two chairs, and a big, rather oddly placed mirror. I'd seen enough movies to realize that the mirror was not an attempt at interior decoration.

A handsome, well-suited young man entered, sat, and began to ask me stern, vulgarly stated questions like, “Did you ever suck a dick?” I told him politely (with just a hint of firmness) that I would answer no questions until his partner came out from behind the mirror, as I liked to know to whom I was speaking. We both stuck to our guns. “I've got all day,” he said with a belligerent patience. “And so,” I smiled, “have I.”

The other man eventually appeared. He was much like his colleague, but even prettier. The questions began again, but now I objected to their language, telling them that I did not speak in that fashion and supposed, since they seemed reasonably well educated and gentlemanly, that neither did they, and proposed that we use language with which we were all more comfortable (the bus dispatcher in Tucson popped into my head, and I had to suppress a smile).

They sat staring at me for a long moment, and that one little moment put control of the situation into my hands. “Now,” I said in my most businesslike manner, “I have indulged in all the more usual ‘perversions,' as you call them, except annilingus. I have enjoyed both serial and mutual, simultaneous fellatio, anal intercourse, mutual masturbation, even, at times, the ‘Princeton Rub.' These things I have done times past counting and, if I
do
say so, do them very well. Is there anything further you desire to know?” (I would have said, “my good man,” except that there were two of them and that expression loses something in the plural. “Good sirs” was a possibility, but I rejected it as too servile.)

My inquisitors looked at each other. I suddenly loved them. One said, “It's time for lunch.” Against all regulations, I would suppose, they invited me to lunch with them at a nice little restaurant in Georgetown, where we had a lovely, real conversation, about homosexuality, the law, freedom, “life,” love, me. I told them freely that I had, in a sense, “engineered” this whole thing, and why. Facts were facts and rules rules, so they were mated and had to let me have my discharge. There was even a small tender sadness and mutual sympathy acknowledging each other's predicaments—acknowledging each other, in short. Then silence and rumination. We had finished our coffee. “Well,” I said at last, gently this time, “shall we go?”

 

22

So

Finally

I

Was

Free

So finally I was free. I had spent two years in the Navy and had enjoyed it, as I enjoyed everything else in my life. Only as I was leaving
it I realize I'd not set eyes on a ship. Portia took me out for a farewell dinner, and the next day I left for the big city—New York—got office jobs, studied dance in the evenings, and had a ball. My most serious college girl friend, Maggie, came back from a year in Italy, decided to stay in New York, and we took an apartment together. Two months later we were married.

It was fun getting to know Maggie again. We both had regular nine-to-five jobs, and I had nightly ballet classes, after which I got home by
7
:
30
to find one of Maggie's great dinners waiting. We'd sit for hours drinking wine or brandy and talking—good friends and perfect roommates. It's amazing how much we had to say to each other. Finally we'd wash the dishes and go to bed—separate couches. Until, one night, we'd had more wine than usual and ended up on one couch. Hugging led to kissing and on to sex. It was my first experience, or first full experience, with a woman, and I believe it was Maggie's first with a man. We were both surprised that we'd managed it, and when repeated experiments brought equal success, we decided to get married. The reasons for our decision are even now unclear. Since we both had strong unconventional leanings, it surprised everyone that we did something as conservative as getting married. Perhaps our eccentricity was more superficial than we suspected, or perhaps the conventional is the most unconventional thing eccentric folk can do. More likely is the possibility that we wanted to buy familial approval with a wedding. If so, we succeeded. Certainly my father breathed a sigh of relief that could be heard all the way from Texas.

So we worked and played house. We had many friends, and weekend evenings rarely found us without dinner guests. It was good fun. Maggie was wonderful company. We were happy with our roles as grownups. I started getting dancing jobs (I wasn't a bad dancer, actually) in small companies like Lazlo Karpovski's Polish Dance Company, and finally stock jobs. I did two seasons at a huge summer theater in Ohio, where we did Broadway musicals with big television stars like Tony Bennett and Liberace (with the shows changed to accommodate the stars' specialties).

During this time I had a part in a show starring the famous old actress Theda Duvall. A dancer in the show had worked with her before and told me how fond she was of telling Tallulah Bankhead stories. Once, my friend said, Theda and Tallulah—who was well known for her preference for her own sex—were trapped together under a large black curtain that fell on them backstage. As they were struggling to free themselves, Tallulah was screaming and screaming. Afterward, Theda was laughing and Tallulah, who was still upset, wanted to know what was so funny. “I can't help it,” Theda said to her, with the rest of the cast gathered around them, “it reminded me of the time we had with those nuns in the taxicab.”