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An Unspectacular Life, Part 3
03/02/09

It was January and I was seventeen. Although we hadn't planned on it. The
summer before this winter was the last that John, Drew and I participated
with the Bluewater Buccaneers. We had moved on to more adult past times.
Being a member of the drum corps was a really big deal for me but I didn't
give it a second thought after I left. There was no time for regrets. There
was far too much to experience. I started making different friends.

A new mall opened downtown. It was far too sophisticated for this town and
would close a few years later but the timing couldn't have been better for
me. I wasn't in school and I was unemployable due to my new fashion forward
look. I got a little money from social services but John was basically
supporting me. I didn't like being in that cramped dark apartment alone with
John's mother after he left for work so I spent a lot of time at the mall.
Getting ready for the mall was no small task. Clothing combinations had to be
tried on, accessories had to be considered, hair had to be sculpted and
sprayed and make up had to be applied. I got to know a lot of the sales
people and would kill hours by going from one store to another talking mall
gossip. I'd spend an hour drinking a Coke in the food court, all the while
deflecting the stares and finger pointing of the legitimate shoppers. I took
a lot of flack for fashion.

It was at the mall that Drew and John met Dusty. I don't think that Dusty was
his real name but we never knew him by anything else. Dusty was close to
thirty years old and a clone. A clone refers to a gay man of a certain era,
namely the seventies and early eighties who sported a moustache, wore tight
Levis with ow without a bandanna hanging out of the back pocket and a flannel
shirt. Think Freddy Mercury toward the end. It was a very different statement
than we were making. We were fresh, the next generation of gay. Clones and
New Wavers really didn't socialize but because we were all in the same small
town we did. Dusty introduced us to the locals.

The area gay population was organized like a secret society. There was no one
meeting place. Instead, there were parties. I only ever went to a few because
weekends were still spent away visiting Ben and going to the club. The first
local party I went to was at Ken's apartment. Ken was a forty year old
certified public accountant who liked to jog. Drew had met Ken a couple of
weeks previously through Dusty and had claimed Ken for his boyfriend which,
for Ken, was an empty proclamation. Ken was not loyal. He had a secret out of
town boyfriend who we found out about a few months later.

There were only nine people, including me, at my first local gay house party.
Of course, John and Drew were there. Besides the host, there were Dusty and
his boyfriend Bruce, who could have almost been Dusty's twin brother, Jason
and Roger, a super vanilla couple that I only ever saw that night and
Dutchie, a rough trade daddy rounded out the guest list. This was the first
time that I had ever been around significantly older gay men in an intimate
scenario. I had seen old queens, as we referred to them, at the club but we
never associated with them. They spoke a different language. My first gay
house party was an education in a new English. First new rule: everyone is a
she or her. Initially, I found this rule to be very confusing. Bruce referred
to Ken in the third person as she. He said to Drew about Ken's decor, "Ken
only buys antiques because she likes to be the youngest relic in the
apartment." I wasn't sure if I had heard Bruce correctly or if the Grand
Marnier on the rocks was affecting my auditory capabilities so I asked Bruce
who likes to be the youngest relic. He said that she does and pointed a
finger at Ken. I laughed like I knew what he was talking about. It wasn't
until after a dozen she/her references that I fully understood it's use.
Second new rule: Mary. Everyone was Mary. Mary was usually used in the second
person. Example; Get your purse Mary. We're leaving. Third new rule: When
speaking of a boyfriend or other sexual encounter in public, you changed his
name into a feminine version to avoid being gay bashed, a real fear. Ben
became Bendra.

The old queens also introduced me to a secret religion. The high priestess
was Judy Garland. To the right was Barbra Striesand and to the left, Bette
Midler. These three ladies formed a holy trinity that was maybe not as
revered as the other popular trinity but was far more entertaining. Of course
I was already familiar with Barbra and by now, after a month of listening to
her five mornings a week, knew all the words to the soundtrack of, "Funny
Girl". I knew of Judy Garland from the Andy Hardy movies that I watched on
Sunday mornings as a kid. One of my earliest memories was telling my mother
that I loved Judy Garland and crying after she told me that she was dead. The
only thing I knew about Bette Midler was that she sang that really slow Rose
song that I didn't like. John understood this reverence more than I. Try as I
could, I could not sit through Ken's VCR recording of Judy live from the
London Palladium. To be a good representative, I felt that I should at least
appreciate this trilogy but I was much more interested in a new goddess
rising over New York City that would one day overshadow, not in talent but in
gay pop culture status, the three ladies of the trinity. It was, after all, a
new exciting decade and I was focused on the present and future in that way
that only the young can be. Only with age comes the respect for history and
the understanding that the future is built on the shoulders of the past and
that the here and now is fickle.

Ben and I broke up. It fizzled after I let him fuck me. He openly regarded my
virginity as a challenge and after he broke me in he moved on. I suppose that
I would have been crushed if I hadn't given the prize up to a certain forty
year old certified public accountant a couple of weeks earlier. Not unlike my
coming out night, the night that I surrendered my chastity to Ken was
anti-climatic and unmemorable. I was again quite drunk. Were all gay
milestones accompanied by cocktails?