Coming out: Part one

Almost everything in my life has come to me late.  It's as if my brain perceived a lengthy stretch of time and plotted events (secretly of itself) at the edge of tipping points, like Meryl Streep's heels on the stairs in Death Becomes Her, just before Bruce Willis pushes his finger at her.  They are poised, those heels, and scrape the stairs at an impossible angle.

My driver's license, the loss of my virginity, my coming out - all late.  Death, heartache, and fear arrived early, unwanted guests at a party I didn't arrange.  Like one's birth or given name, these three spectres were beyond my control, but my coming out was a slow ride down a path I had seemingly chosen.  I had put it into words while in primary school, but whether that was some kind of genetic imperative urging me to voice a preference in my own head - I can say with perfect confidence - I'll never know.

I think I mentioned in another post years ago that I stood like an arrogant little Fauntleroy and told myself that I would be different from the rabble I viewed playing hopscotch, skipping, and tossing balls.  "I will like boys instead of girls," I told myself.  Of course at that age it's simple.  One does not consider the ramifications of choices until push-back rears its head.  Push-back came, of course .. years and years and years later.

I didn't really come out in my own city, but drove to the biggest one in the country for the sake, I supposed at the time, of anonimity.  One must be discreet.  I recall staying at the Selby Hotel on Sherbourne Street, shabby chic in its day, cockroaches and all.  On the other side of the Selby was Boots, in the basement.  Above its entrance the proprietors had hoisted a motorcycle.  My kind of spot, I thought.  On one of these summer ocassions I arrived quite late and, at check in, got my first taste of the pastiche of gay drama.  As I settled with the clerk there was a ruckus in the hall sounding like a body being tossed.  Loud voices. Out from the doorframe sprang a big handsome fellow with a sneering smile on his face.  Following him, something of a twink.  The big fellow stomped out.  "Don't go, don't go, the twink mournfully wailed, "I .. love you!"  The poor skinny fellow was sobbing as he gripped the frame like Blanche DuBois.  He slid down it and then slunked away with continued tears.  The clerk and I looked at each other with blank expressions, the poor clerk with a face of someone who had seen it all.  Then we concluded our transaction.

Somehow or other I never went into Boots until much later.  I steeled myself and walked to a bar the name of which I can't recall, on a side street in the downtown.  I paced across the street, slinking back and forth like a ready-to-pounce cat.  All of a sudden, as I crossed, the double doors were flung open and out popped a man in full leather, looking like Glenn Hughes.  Daintily applied around his peaked cap was a white bridal veil.  It was too much for me.  I high-tailed it back to the hotel, alone.  I had reacted as I did, a few months later, to anal sex.  I thought to myself, "This is what men do!?"  Daunting.

I finally made it into a bar with the help of a somewhat greasy boss at the theatre where I worked.  I was helping him with a script and had driven down to the city and stayed the weekend.  Little did I know that Larry actually wanted to get his hands down my pants and this foray of his was part of a plan.  Of course the little voice in my head warned me, but I went ahead.  Larry never got the chance to touch my dick, but he did break the spell for me - of passing through a set of doors to see what was inside.

We went to Chaps, at the corner of Yonge and Isabella.  After a few beer, and Larry cataloguing the apparent secrets of gay life to me, I spotted Bob on the dance floor.  Poor Larry.  He really wanted to fuck me, or at least get his hands and his mouth on me.  After dancing the seven veils with Bob, Larry stomped off in a huff.  More comedy ensued.  Leaving with Bob, I had forgotten where I had parked my car.  Not knowing the city, and every block now looking like any other, it took us about 15 minutes to finally find it.  Seasoned gay that Bob was, after about 5 minutes he was ready to bolt and was growing impatient with my country boy incompetence.  We found the car.  It was a VERY short-lived romance, but a very long friendship.  The next day I made my way back to Larry's place.  He was quite annoyed that I had not followed after him in his dramatic exit (he was an actor, after all).  Men are cruel to each other, and I admit it wasn't my most graceful moment, abandoning someone who was kind enough to put me up for a weekend.  But then again, I was twenty-five and Larry was well into his 40s at that time.  There was zero attraction, at least for me.

But I knew I was a young and comely thing.  I'd known that since I was a little kid.

Under the brown fog of a winter noon

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants

C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

Asked me in demotic French

To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland