blog
An Unspectacular Life, Part 7
04/01/09
I found a room for rent through the newspaper. It was in an apartment in the
back of a wicker store. My new landlady was a sixty something widow who drank
far too much white wine, or Chablis as she called it and swore that vegetable
oil was a better skin conditioner than anything that could be purchased at
the drug store. Her name was Lily. When the wicker store's sales started to
sag, she moved her forty year old son out of his bedroom and into the living
room where he had to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. The couch was
shrink wrapped in plastic and was not to be used. I didn't see him very
often. He used the store entrance and a washroom in the basement. I used the
back door. We would run into each other occasionally in the kitchen. He was a
long haired, bearded rocker that had long ago used up his glory days. He
shared his mother's love of alcohol though his preference was Canadian
whiskey. If I had known all of this when I agreed to rent the room, I would
still have moved in. Nothing could have been worse than living with Laurie
and Mel.
I would have preferred to never speak to Laurie again but we worked together.
I never saw Mel again after I moved. Laurie invited me over a couple of times
but I found excuses to avoid visiting. I had grown attached to Mel's kids
while I lived there. I was their distraction a lot of the time while Mel was
going off and genuinely felt for them but what could I do? The situation was
too intense for me. If I wanted drama, I would have visited my family.
Kevin and I started to hang out. We really didn't have very much in common
but my friends had moved away and Kevin had just left his family. We were
bound by our shared gayness. Kevin was raised on a farm and liked country
music. He actually thought that country was cool. I had never had a friend
like Kevin and he certainly had never known anyone like me. He lost his
convenience store due to pilfering the safe while I was still living with
Laurie and Mel but had found a job at another store working the midnight
shift. A lot of nights, after I finished at the restaurant, I would walk over
to his store and hang around reading magazines and drinking coffee. Kevin was
having a tough time adjusting to his new gay life. It wasn't just that he no
longer lived with his wife and baby daughter, he didn't know how to be gay. I
became his lifestyle coach by default. It really was a case of the blind
leading the blind but I did have a six month head start on him and had spent
a lot of time in Whispers and had been tutored by the old queens which had
given me, I thought, some expertise on all things gay. He would have been
better served by someone who also liked to sing along to the Oak Ridge Boys
instead of me who used a bottle of Final Net a week but I was all he had and
other than Ken, the accountant, who only ever wanted to diddle me, Kevin was
my only local friend.
The first thing to do was get Kevin a new look. He didn't have a lot of money
left after child support payments so we went the second hand route. Second
hand clothing is cheap or even better, free when you steal it. Kevin had a
car and we would drive around town in the middle of the night and raid
donation drop off boxes. These boxes were more like little sheds with a
window to deposit used clothing that would be taken back to the store and
sold for charity. Kevin and I would pull up in front of one of the many boxes
located usually in shopping mall parking lots. When we were sure that no one
was around, he would boost me up and into the window. I would drop inside the
box and begin to throw all of the tied up garbage bags of clothes out. He
would put the bags into his car as quickly as them came out of the window.
When the box was empty or his car was full, we would go back to the little
apartment that he rented and sort through the take. Most of the clothing was
not usable but there were always some gems. We returned everything that we
couldn't use. It really only took a handful of drop box raids to get Kevin
the basics of a new wardrobe. He was starting to look like a bigger, clumsier
version of me but without the costume jewellery. He refused to accessorize.
I thought that it was time that Kevin went to Whispers. He had never been to
a gay bar and was insanely nervous. I think he felt that if he stepped into
the larger gay world, his safe play gay world would never be the same. We
both booked the following Saturday night off. As his debut approached, he
became more excited. Going to Whispers was all that he could talk about. I
told him everything that I possibly could about the club; the decor, the
price of beer, the music, the self-segregation but he wanted to know more. He
was looking for the experience without having the actual experience. There
really isn't anyway to prepare for your first time landing on planet gay. In
the early eighties, the inside of a gay club was a safe zone for a lot of
people who spent their lives on the outside living as straight people. Some
were married with children and some claimed to be too busy with their careers
for a relationship. Even those who were out to their families were still
closeted at work unless they were a hairdresser or, like me, just too out
there to be interpreted any other way. But when these closet cases were
within the four protective walls of Whispers, they were one hundred percent
queer and would release all of the pent up stress from the previous week.
This collective sigh, mixed with cocktails, poppers and hours of base at 120
beats per minutes created an atmosphere that was part high energy circus and
part sleazy bath house. There was really no way to prepare for this
phenomenon, especially if your current favourite song was, "Islands in the
Stream".
We started to prepare Kevin's wardrobe a couple of days before his big night.
Despite my pleas, he insisted on wearing his favourite pair of faded Levis
because he thought that they made his ass look hot so I had to rethink my
fashion approach. With denim, he couldn't go the new wave or new romantic
route, the two styles that I excelled at expressing, so we did punk cowboy.
His jeans were matched with a pair of black steel toed work boots and a white
thermal long sleeved undershirt under a fitted green plaid suit vest. I tied
a very wide gold and blue striped tie around his neck which was worn on the
outside of the vest with a big safety pin as a tie clip. The look was
finished with about thirty more safety pins running down one of his outside
pant seams and a black Stetson that he owned for years but had never worn.
The cowboy hat was a bit over the top but Kevin had seriously thinning hair
and I couldn't do anything with it. I thought that he looked fantastic and
had to repeatedly tell him so in the car for the hour drive to Whispers. He
thought that he was too fat for the vest but I convinced him that he looked
thinner because of it and that the tie and hat were visual distractions.
When we got to Whispers, I had to wait in the car with Kevin as he downed
five airplane mini bottles of Baileys and listened to Barbara Mandrell. I was
dying to go in. It had been almost two months since I had been out due to
moving twice and work and I really needed to dance but I waited and coaxed.
After twenty minutes, Kevin, now sufficiently drunk, took a deep breath,
grabbed his Stetson off the back seat and slurringly said, "Shall we dance?"
He got out of the car and without waiting for me, went into Whispers.
04/01/09
I found a room for rent through the newspaper. It was in an apartment in the
back of a wicker store. My new landlady was a sixty something widow who drank
far too much white wine, or Chablis as she called it and swore that vegetable
oil was a better skin conditioner than anything that could be purchased at
the drug store. Her name was Lily. When the wicker store's sales started to
sag, she moved her forty year old son out of his bedroom and into the living
room where he had to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. The couch was
shrink wrapped in plastic and was not to be used. I didn't see him very
often. He used the store entrance and a washroom in the basement. I used the
back door. We would run into each other occasionally in the kitchen. He was a
long haired, bearded rocker that had long ago used up his glory days. He
shared his mother's love of alcohol though his preference was Canadian
whiskey. If I had known all of this when I agreed to rent the room, I would
still have moved in. Nothing could have been worse than living with Laurie
and Mel.
I would have preferred to never speak to Laurie again but we worked together.
I never saw Mel again after I moved. Laurie invited me over a couple of times
but I found excuses to avoid visiting. I had grown attached to Mel's kids
while I lived there. I was their distraction a lot of the time while Mel was
going off and genuinely felt for them but what could I do? The situation was
too intense for me. If I wanted drama, I would have visited my family.
Kevin and I started to hang out. We really didn't have very much in common
but my friends had moved away and Kevin had just left his family. We were
bound by our shared gayness. Kevin was raised on a farm and liked country
music. He actually thought that country was cool. I had never had a friend
like Kevin and he certainly had never known anyone like me. He lost his
convenience store due to pilfering the safe while I was still living with
Laurie and Mel but had found a job at another store working the midnight
shift. A lot of nights, after I finished at the restaurant, I would walk over
to his store and hang around reading magazines and drinking coffee. Kevin was
having a tough time adjusting to his new gay life. It wasn't just that he no
longer lived with his wife and baby daughter, he didn't know how to be gay. I
became his lifestyle coach by default. It really was a case of the blind
leading the blind but I did have a six month head start on him and had spent
a lot of time in Whispers and had been tutored by the old queens which had
given me, I thought, some expertise on all things gay. He would have been
better served by someone who also liked to sing along to the Oak Ridge Boys
instead of me who used a bottle of Final Net a week but I was all he had and
other than Ken, the accountant, who only ever wanted to diddle me, Kevin was
my only local friend.
The first thing to do was get Kevin a new look. He didn't have a lot of money
left after child support payments so we went the second hand route. Second
hand clothing is cheap or even better, free when you steal it. Kevin had a
car and we would drive around town in the middle of the night and raid
donation drop off boxes. These boxes were more like little sheds with a
window to deposit used clothing that would be taken back to the store and
sold for charity. Kevin and I would pull up in front of one of the many boxes
located usually in shopping mall parking lots. When we were sure that no one
was around, he would boost me up and into the window. I would drop inside the
box and begin to throw all of the tied up garbage bags of clothes out. He
would put the bags into his car as quickly as them came out of the window.
When the box was empty or his car was full, we would go back to the little
apartment that he rented and sort through the take. Most of the clothing was
not usable but there were always some gems. We returned everything that we
couldn't use. It really only took a handful of drop box raids to get Kevin
the basics of a new wardrobe. He was starting to look like a bigger, clumsier
version of me but without the costume jewellery. He refused to accessorize.
I thought that it was time that Kevin went to Whispers. He had never been to
a gay bar and was insanely nervous. I think he felt that if he stepped into
the larger gay world, his safe play gay world would never be the same. We
both booked the following Saturday night off. As his debut approached, he
became more excited. Going to Whispers was all that he could talk about. I
told him everything that I possibly could about the club; the decor, the
price of beer, the music, the self-segregation but he wanted to know more. He
was looking for the experience without having the actual experience. There
really isn't anyway to prepare for your first time landing on planet gay. In
the early eighties, the inside of a gay club was a safe zone for a lot of
people who spent their lives on the outside living as straight people. Some
were married with children and some claimed to be too busy with their careers
for a relationship. Even those who were out to their families were still
closeted at work unless they were a hairdresser or, like me, just too out
there to be interpreted any other way. But when these closet cases were
within the four protective walls of Whispers, they were one hundred percent
queer and would release all of the pent up stress from the previous week.
This collective sigh, mixed with cocktails, poppers and hours of base at 120
beats per minutes created an atmosphere that was part high energy circus and
part sleazy bath house. There was really no way to prepare for this
phenomenon, especially if your current favourite song was, "Islands in the
Stream".
We started to prepare Kevin's wardrobe a couple of days before his big night.
Despite my pleas, he insisted on wearing his favourite pair of faded Levis
because he thought that they made his ass look hot so I had to rethink my
fashion approach. With denim, he couldn't go the new wave or new romantic
route, the two styles that I excelled at expressing, so we did punk cowboy.
His jeans were matched with a pair of black steel toed work boots and a white
thermal long sleeved undershirt under a fitted green plaid suit vest. I tied
a very wide gold and blue striped tie around his neck which was worn on the
outside of the vest with a big safety pin as a tie clip. The look was
finished with about thirty more safety pins running down one of his outside
pant seams and a black Stetson that he owned for years but had never worn.
The cowboy hat was a bit over the top but Kevin had seriously thinning hair
and I couldn't do anything with it. I thought that he looked fantastic and
had to repeatedly tell him so in the car for the hour drive to Whispers. He
thought that he was too fat for the vest but I convinced him that he looked
thinner because of it and that the tie and hat were visual distractions.
When we got to Whispers, I had to wait in the car with Kevin as he downed
five airplane mini bottles of Baileys and listened to Barbara Mandrell. I was
dying to go in. It had been almost two months since I had been out due to
moving twice and work and I really needed to dance but I waited and coaxed.
After twenty minutes, Kevin, now sufficiently drunk, took a deep breath,
grabbed his Stetson off the back seat and slurringly said, "Shall we dance?"
He got out of the car and without waiting for me, went into Whispers.
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