Tango (8 page)

The first dollar I ever earned was when I was five years old with family in St. Petersburg, Florida, visiting my father's aunt and her companion, a man by the name of Mr. Wick. I was very chatty
and precocious, full of questions and a running commentary on everything. Mr Wick offered me a quarter to be quiet for one minute. As this was something I did not want to do, and wasn't even sure I could do, I demanded a dollar, which I got.

The dollar from Bobby Higgerman, a.k.a. Friedrich, was one I looked forward to earning. Carrie and I, although we weren't really boyfriend and girlfriend, remained close for many years. In high school both of us decided we wanted to be good at sex so we practiced with each other. Having seen Patti LuPone in
Evita
, Carrie wanted to be able to manipulate men with the power of her fierce pussy just as Eva Peron had done. So we helped each other develop our sexual techniques.

I never knew how Michael Hunter really felt about me but sometimes he did silly things that could have been considered wildly romantic. When he discovered I had this girlfriend, his first move was to try to get her to be
his
girlfriend. Clearly he was more of a man than I was, but that didn't work because Carrie, like most of the other girls, found him to be repulsive. Then he managed to dislodge a stop sign from the street
corner and plant it smack dab in the middle of her front yard, a not so subtle hint to STOP. Several years later after I broke up with him and had been ignoring him for some time, we were having a family picnic in my parents' backyard and all the relatives were over. He decided that this was the day he was going to set off the fireworks he'd been saving up for a long time. The next morning, after the picnic, we woke up to discover that he had spray-painted
Z
's on all the trunks of the trees in our backyard. I never asked him why, but I assumed it was to assert himself and leave his mark—the mark of Zorro. My parents just couldn't understand, but it was all very clear to me. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

 

WHEN I WAS IN EIGHTH GRADE THE GUIDANCE counselor at our middle school called me in because my teachers were worried. My grades were slipping and I was causing a lot of trouble. I think I was angry, and I released my anger through humor, sarcasm, my constant need to laugh and make other people laugh. The guidance
counselor suggested to my parents that we see a child psychologist. My father worked at the health department so he was able to arrange, through one of his colleagues, for us to see a county psychologist for three dollars a session. I think my parents were embarrassed. At that time, no one in my family had ever been to a mental health specialist.

The health department was very close to our school. In one of the sessions I explained to my parents and the psychologist that part of the reason why I was so angry was that I was constantly being harassed and being called a fag and that I didn't feel safe in the school. Sometimes people in the hallway would slap me on the back of the head. I never knew when or what was going to trigger an outburst, and that was why I hated school. I thought that no one was going to protect me, and I couldn't protect myself.

The next week the psychologist told my parents and me that she had secretly trailed me through the hallways and I seemed to be very happy, well adjusted, and popular. She didn't know where this story of harassment was coming
from but she had not seen proof of it, although she had only been in my school for a short time. My parents were relieved to be able to think that, in fact, I was fine, and for some reason I was making all of this up. Now I was not only paranoid about who knew what about me, but I was also perceived as a liar, which I wasn't. My experiences and the stresses that I was facing had been completely invalidated.

My gym teacher knew it was true because I cut gym class every day and went to the cafeteria to read instead. Although we never mentioned it, there was a tacit understanding between us that he wouldn't say anything if I wouldn't because he knew that my presence on the field or in the locker room caused quite a sensation, distracted the other boys, and put me in danger. It was easier to sweep me under the rug and I was grateful to be there.

 

 

IN MIDDLE SCHOOL WE TRAVELED TO DIFFERENT classrooms for different periods of time but our classmates remained the same. Gym class took
place right before lunch. After lunch we had math class with Ms. Maletzky. Toni Mosner, one of the girls in my class, lived nearby and always went home for lunch. One day in the early fall, she got back to school late. She apologized and told Ms. Maletzky, who also lived in the neighborhood, that her mother had to call the police and an ambulance because there was a homeless man in the street across from her house and they thought he was dead.

Ms. Maletzky was shocked, as was I. It was strange that there would be a homeless man in our neighborhood which, although not an upscale one, was a nice area with wide streets and beautiful old trees. When I got home from school I found out that it was not a homeless man; it was actually my Pop-Pop. He had been out for an afternoon walk and had fallen. We rushed quickly to the hospital. He seemed to be okay but was complaining of a terrible headache. Later that night he died of a cerebral hematoma. When I got back to school two days later I explained to Toni that the man was not homeless, but had in fact been my grandfather. I asked her to thank her mother
for calling the hospital. Toni was very sad that my grandfather had died, as was I. Pop-Pop was the first person I'd ever been close to who died. My grandmother had died when I was so young I never really knew her. The only things I knew about her were how beautiful her clothes were because I had dressed up in them when I was younger, and I remember seeing the pink suit she was buried in when I kissed her goodbye as she lay in her casket at the viewing. After Pop-Pop's death, my parents and his son Tom went through all of his and my grandmother's possessions, taking what they wanted. In the attic was an old antique bed frame that hadn't been used in years, which had been in the family since the eighteen hundreds. I asked if I could have the bed frame and it was given to me. We had a huge yard sale and got rid of the rest.

When Pop-Pop died, I was sad but I didn't really feel much. It wasn't until one night six months later when I was lying in that bed that I realized I would never see him again and I burst into tears, sobbing so loudly both of my parents came running into my room to see what was
wrong. All I could manage to get out was, “I miss him,” through heaving sobs. I'd never cried so hard in my life. I also spent a lot of time thinking about what my Christian cousins told me after his funeral: “Your Pop-Pop did not accept Jesus as his personal savior before he died so no matter how kind and how good of a person you think he was, he is not going to heaven.” I refused to accept that Pop-Pop's fate was to burn in hell for eternity. Suddenly, all of these so-called good people around me started to look very shabby.

 

 

I KNEW THAT IF I MENTIONED ANYTHING ABOUT religion to the lady psychologist or if it became in any way evident to my parents that she had even the slightest anti-Christian views we would never see her again. For my parents it was enough of a challenge that we were going in the first place, but if seeing a psychologist led me to challenge our basic beliefs, it would be over.

I wanted to continue to see the lady psychologist for a while longer. I liked her. She was
young and cool and allowed me to talk about my feelings. Sometimes I would see her alone and sometimes with my parents. During one of our private sessions, I mentioned the fact that I was afraid I might be gay. I told her a little about my relationship with Michael and that I didn't want to continue with it. She said that lots of young people experiment and it didn't necessarily make them gay. I was relieved to hear this although I was also afraid that it wasn't true.

The following week I told her that I had thought about what she had been saying. I agreed that it was a phase, and I was not going to see Michael anymore. We never talked about him again but she did say one thing to me that was helpful, something that made every cent of the three dollars an hour she got worth it. She told me that because my parents were willing to put me through college, if I studied hard and was able to graduate from high school with decent grades, I would be able to choose a school anywhere I wanted and get out of town. I would discover that there were other people like me out
in the world, and I would find a place where I belonged. Being stuck in Hagerstown would be a great tragedy.

I knew she was right, so I resolved that I would somehow get through high school and as soon as I did I would get the hell out of there.

 

 

THE SUMMER BETWEEN EIGHTH AND NINTH grade, while Lesley was away, my father and I began to work on refinishing the bed that I had gotten from Pop-Pop's attic. The old cherrywood had been blackened over the years from many coats of varnish, which had cracked and made the whole thing look like it had been in a fire. Together, we used chemicals to strip it. The varnish remover turned the finish into a stinky, syrupy molasses-like texture which we then scraped off with metal spatulas to reveal the beautiful wood underneath. There was a lovely carved filigree on the headboard, which we delicately cleaned off and polished.

My mother had discouraged me from bringing the headboard home, thinking it would sit
in the garage forever just as it sat in my grandfather's attic. But my father and I proved her wrong, ordering a special mattress for the bed which was clearly made for people in the eighteen hundreds who were smaller than we were.

Once we saw how lovely the bed was, my parents finally allowed me to redecorate my room. I started by buying a marble top dresser with a nineteenth-century mirror at an estate sale. My room became full of antiques, a new bookshelf, and finally, I was able to put artwork of my own choosing on my walls. Lesley's stuffed animals went back to her house, and I made my own version of an Elton John wall. Instead of hanging pictures of a bisexual British pop star, I covered my wall with movie posters from the '30s and'40s, and clippings from a cache of movie magazines that I had bought at a yard sale. I replaced the cowboys and Indians with images of Joan Crawford, Vivien Leigh, Greta Garbo, and all my other favorite stars in a carefully curated collage that sent my imagination soaring.

Every night I fell asleep imagining that I would wake up the next morning with a closet
full of 1940s evening gowns. I dreamt that the headgear I wore with my braces would fly from my head, my hair would grow into a long chestnut mane, and I would wake up looking like a glamorous goddess of the silver screen. I would walk out the door in my high-heeled shoes, get in the car, and go spring Lesley out of the loony bin so we could begin the lives we had planned for ourselves, somewhere no one could find us.

 

 

WHEN I ENTERED HIGH SCHOOL I DISCOVERED that things worked very differently than I had hoped. Instead of becoming the glamorous goddess that I had dreamt about, I worked very hard to become as invisible as I could. I channeled my fantasies into the paintings and drawings I did in art class. I spent hours trying to recreate the faces of my favorite movie stars and models from fashion magazines. I entered my pictures in competitions in the county fair and won several blue ribbons and cash prizes, which I then invested in eight-by-ten-inch glossies of my favorite stars. I
had heard of a store in New York City called Cinemabilia. One day I called and very awkwardly asked them to mail me pictures of Greer Garson, Ann Sheridan, and Veronica Lake. Years later I found out that Tom Verlaine of the seminal punk band Television, who frequently performed with the Patti Smith Group, worked at Cinemabilia in the '70s. I sometimes wonder if it was him that I talked to, and I imagine an invisible thread of magic leading me to my future life in New York City.

Unfortunately, Michael Hunter and I had French and English together. Whenever we had a class together, there was constant bickering and tension between us. His name-calling and aggressive verbal abuse were never ending. I responded with what I like to characterize as pithy put-downs. He felt, I guess, that by calling me a fag, he was asserting his masculinity, which was evidently in question for him. He also alienated the girls by making lewd sexual remarks, which unleashed my feminist tirades. He ultimately made himself look like a complete
asshole, which I don't think was what he intended. Needless to say, our constant tension was disruptive.

In the spring of 1979 when we were in tenth grade, one of our teachers, Mrs. Swisher, also known as “Swish the Dish,” got the bright idea to seat us next to each other. I guess she figured that if we were seated next to each other directly in front of her desk, we would be much less likely to hurl insults across the room, disturbing her English class. I found it completely unnerving sitting next to him because, never one for subtlety, Michael started passing me notes in class trying to arrange dates or assignations, and I did not want to think about that while I was at school. I certainly did not want a paper trail.

Unsure what to do, I decided the best thing would be to write a note to Mrs. Swisher, who was young and seemed relatively cool, and explain my situation and why I shouldn't be forced to sit next to Michael. I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but I do know that she returned the note to me the next day and told me that while
reading it she had come across the word “homosexual” and stopped there. Homosexuality was nothing she understood or wanted to know anything about, and if I had any problems in that area I should talk about it with someone else. I was mortified. I think the reason I trusted her was simply because I thought she was beautiful. I was too young and stupid to realize that being pretty did not make you anything more than pretty. A good life lesson.