My best friend Michael called early in the evening. He said he and his friend Jerry wanted to go out to the "Fife and Drum", a gay bar in Providence tonight and was asking if I wanted to join them.
Of course, I said yes. I was 18 and since New Year's Eve just 6 months before, I had been regularly going out with Michael to several gay bars in the area.I had been earlier confused about my sexuality but after "coming out" to Michael, my friend and co-worker from the Howard Johnson's restaurant we both worked at, I felt I had finally "come out" to myself as well.
I knew instinctively within 5 minutes of meeting Michael in October of 1980 that he was gay. Michael was a waiter and at the time I had just been hired as a 16-year old dishwasher at the HoJo's just 2 miles from my home. At the time, I had very little exposure to gay life.
Michael was somewhat overweight and very fey. The waitresses loved him. He always had the right thing to say yet could have a biting wit when it came to bringing someone "down to earth". Michael whirled through the dining area, lounge, fountain and kitchen of the restaurant with the air of a strange combination of superiority, aloofness, glee and drama. He was the sterotypical and quintessential...FAG.
Michael always reeked of either Ralph Lauren "Polo" or Halston "Z-14", was constantly primping in a mirror and re-combed his fair blonde locks, softened and styled with Tenex, repeatedly, to achieve his "mind's-eye" of the early eighties version of a perfectionist meterosexual. Michael wasn't "out" at work as gay, but like the Beverly Leslie character on "Will & Grace"...it was, well, pretty freakin' obvious!
Michael's friend Jerry was even, believe it or not, more faggy than Michael. But Jerry had more of a "bitter queen" attitude. Much more adherent to the exclusive segregationist policies of the Preppy guidelines, Jerry wore his upturned Izod Lacoste shirt collar more stiffly, his pinky signet ring shined more brightly and his condescending sneer was more "sneery".
So....we went out to the club that night and I was again being harrassed (kinda) by an older queen with whom I had been nice to a few weeks past. This troll was not "totally" repellent but was not getting any of my polite hints that I was not interested. Suddenly, a drag queen started a performance not far from the dance floor. She was singing some old tried and true torch song. This was my first exposure to a drag queen. After she was finished I was fascinated to know more about her. I went to her and told her she looked like a member of the Factory entourage, Andy Warhol's groupies and contemporaries from the late 1960's (well, she had a beehive hairdo!). The drag queen looked at me and said, "Andy who??? Honey, I never heard of him but if he's cute, send him my way!". This was when I learned that drag queens were not the "Queens of Gay Avant Culture" I had imagined them to be. They were just regular fags wanting to get some cheap applause by dressing up like a campy chick...and, maybe fool a dumb straight guy into getting a BJ from her.
As I dejectedly headed back to the lounge area, I was approached by a cute younger guy with dark hair. He looked around my age. He said his name was Roger. Within 10 minutes we were making out on the overstuffed sofa in the "pit', a hot pink and purple cushioned lounging area of the bar. We very much wanted to "get it on". But, I was with Michael and Jerry, who, according to custom, had gone off to other areas of the bar to cruise for their own "tender morsals". We made a promise to meet at the Loft, another gay bar closer to our home town of Woonsocket in North Smithfield. We pledged to meet tomorrow.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was trying to tell myself I had another commitment that night, but I wouldn't acknowledge it. I wanted to get together with Roger and let nature take it's course. It was my first "pick up" in a gay bar. It would be only my second time with a guy. I very much needed this to happen!
When I got home later, it hit home the consequence of that encounter. It was the end of my "fake straight" life. It was the beginning of my true gay life.
The prior commitment....was none other than my senior prom. I was to go with my "girlfriend" of 9 months, Kathleen.
I wrote about Kathleen in a previous FLASHBACK surrounding my memory of our sailing adventure on Mt. Hope Bay.
That afternoon I avoided the thought of the prom. I had already arranged to rent my tux, pick up the flowers a week before but neglected to pick up either order. I just pretended I had never ordered anything.Kathleen called around 6:00. She was just checking on our itinerary for the night. She excitedly told me she had had her hair and makeup done at a salon and was getting her gown ready. She was so excited!
All I could think of was it's now or never. I wanted to tell Kathleen the truth. That I was gay and wanted to meet a guy at a gay bar instead of take her to the prom, but somehow I couldn't.I told her that I didn't want to go to the prom, maybe we could go to a movie instead. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was trying to compromise....declare my freedom and breakaway from the shackles of fake heterosexual mimicry and also, not hurt Kathleen's feelings.
I mostly thought Kathleen would hang up on me and I would be free from having to further explain my behavior, but instead she seemed shocked about the reversal of plans but agreed to go to the movies with me. I abruptly told her I would call her later.
This reaction of her's made me feel ever so much worse. She was willing to for-go the prom and just go out to the movies. I couldn't believe it. I was mortified.
I had never really felt much for Kathleen. Our dates were nearly totally pluetonic. Light non-French kissing and hugs, very innocent. To me she was no more than a "beard" but also a fairly pleasant friend but not a really good one. She was too...passive. Part of me was disgusted by her.
I called her back after an hour or 2 and told her that I couldn't go out to the movies, either. She sweetly and so innocently asked...why? I told her I found another girl and was dumping her. I told her I was sorry and she cried and hung up. I never spoke with her again. In the end...I couldn't even tell her the whole truth.
That night I went to "The Loft" and met up with Roger. We danced, laughed and embrassed each other. We shared drinks together and talked about our interests and desires. We hugged, kissed and groped each other. As our hard cocks beckoned to be set free of our tight designer jeans we hurried out to my 1972 Chevy Astra wagon, got in the back and fucked like horny bunnies. Roger topped me and it was the first time I had been fucked. We fogged-up the windows of my car, attracting the attention of a few other leaving patrons going to their cars in the parking lot...some of them, probably, to do the same thing themselves.
David and I went out a few more times but we had difficulty at that age in getting together for sex. We both lived at our respective parents homes. He too was only 18.
By the fall of that year he had moved off to some college far from Rhode Island and I never saw him again.
Of all the FLASHBACK memories of my life, this one, in which I so dramatically and perhaps cruelly "came out", tends to be the most remembered.
Of course, I said yes. I was 18 and since New Year's Eve just 6 months before, I had been regularly going out with Michael to several gay bars in the area.I had been earlier confused about my sexuality but after "coming out" to Michael, my friend and co-worker from the Howard Johnson's restaurant we both worked at, I felt I had finally "come out" to myself as well.
I knew instinctively within 5 minutes of meeting Michael in October of 1980 that he was gay. Michael was a waiter and at the time I had just been hired as a 16-year old dishwasher at the HoJo's just 2 miles from my home. At the time, I had very little exposure to gay life.
Michael was somewhat overweight and very fey. The waitresses loved him. He always had the right thing to say yet could have a biting wit when it came to bringing someone "down to earth". Michael whirled through the dining area, lounge, fountain and kitchen of the restaurant with the air of a strange combination of superiority, aloofness, glee and drama. He was the sterotypical and quintessential...FAG.
Michael always reeked of either Ralph Lauren "Polo" or Halston "Z-14", was constantly primping in a mirror and re-combed his fair blonde locks, softened and styled with Tenex, repeatedly, to achieve his "mind's-eye" of the early eighties version of a perfectionist meterosexual. Michael wasn't "out" at work as gay, but like the Beverly Leslie character on "Will & Grace"...it was, well, pretty freakin' obvious!
Michael's friend Jerry was even, believe it or not, more faggy than Michael. But Jerry had more of a "bitter queen" attitude. Much more adherent to the exclusive segregationist policies of the Preppy guidelines, Jerry wore his upturned Izod Lacoste shirt collar more stiffly, his pinky signet ring shined more brightly and his condescending sneer was more "sneery".
So....we went out to the club that night and I was again being harrassed (kinda) by an older queen with whom I had been nice to a few weeks past. This troll was not "totally" repellent but was not getting any of my polite hints that I was not interested. Suddenly, a drag queen started a performance not far from the dance floor. She was singing some old tried and true torch song. This was my first exposure to a drag queen. After she was finished I was fascinated to know more about her. I went to her and told her she looked like a member of the Factory entourage, Andy Warhol's groupies and contemporaries from the late 1960's (well, she had a beehive hairdo!). The drag queen looked at me and said, "Andy who??? Honey, I never heard of him but if he's cute, send him my way!". This was when I learned that drag queens were not the "Queens of Gay Avant Culture" I had imagined them to be. They were just regular fags wanting to get some cheap applause by dressing up like a campy chick...and, maybe fool a dumb straight guy into getting a BJ from her.
As I dejectedly headed back to the lounge area, I was approached by a cute younger guy with dark hair. He looked around my age. He said his name was Roger. Within 10 minutes we were making out on the overstuffed sofa in the "pit', a hot pink and purple cushioned lounging area of the bar. We very much wanted to "get it on". But, I was with Michael and Jerry, who, according to custom, had gone off to other areas of the bar to cruise for their own "tender morsals". We made a promise to meet at the Loft, another gay bar closer to our home town of Woonsocket in North Smithfield. We pledged to meet tomorrow.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was trying to tell myself I had another commitment that night, but I wouldn't acknowledge it. I wanted to get together with Roger and let nature take it's course. It was my first "pick up" in a gay bar. It would be only my second time with a guy. I very much needed this to happen!
When I got home later, it hit home the consequence of that encounter. It was the end of my "fake straight" life. It was the beginning of my true gay life.
The prior commitment....was none other than my senior prom. I was to go with my "girlfriend" of 9 months, Kathleen.
I wrote about Kathleen in a previous FLASHBACK surrounding my memory of our sailing adventure on Mt. Hope Bay.
That afternoon I avoided the thought of the prom. I had already arranged to rent my tux, pick up the flowers a week before but neglected to pick up either order. I just pretended I had never ordered anything.Kathleen called around 6:00. She was just checking on our itinerary for the night. She excitedly told me she had had her hair and makeup done at a salon and was getting her gown ready. She was so excited!
All I could think of was it's now or never. I wanted to tell Kathleen the truth. That I was gay and wanted to meet a guy at a gay bar instead of take her to the prom, but somehow I couldn't.I told her that I didn't want to go to the prom, maybe we could go to a movie instead. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was trying to compromise....declare my freedom and breakaway from the shackles of fake heterosexual mimicry and also, not hurt Kathleen's feelings.
I mostly thought Kathleen would hang up on me and I would be free from having to further explain my behavior, but instead she seemed shocked about the reversal of plans but agreed to go to the movies with me. I abruptly told her I would call her later.
This reaction of her's made me feel ever so much worse. She was willing to for-go the prom and just go out to the movies. I couldn't believe it. I was mortified.
I had never really felt much for Kathleen. Our dates were nearly totally pluetonic. Light non-French kissing and hugs, very innocent. To me she was no more than a "beard" but also a fairly pleasant friend but not a really good one. She was too...passive. Part of me was disgusted by her.
I called her back after an hour or 2 and told her that I couldn't go out to the movies, either. She sweetly and so innocently asked...why? I told her I found another girl and was dumping her. I told her I was sorry and she cried and hung up. I never spoke with her again. In the end...I couldn't even tell her the whole truth.
That night I went to "The Loft" and met up with Roger. We danced, laughed and embrassed each other. We shared drinks together and talked about our interests and desires. We hugged, kissed and groped each other. As our hard cocks beckoned to be set free of our tight designer jeans we hurried out to my 1972 Chevy Astra wagon, got in the back and fucked like horny bunnies. Roger topped me and it was the first time I had been fucked. We fogged-up the windows of my car, attracting the attention of a few other leaving patrons going to their cars in the parking lot...some of them, probably, to do the same thing themselves.
David and I went out a few more times but we had difficulty at that age in getting together for sex. We both lived at our respective parents homes. He too was only 18.
By the fall of that year he had moved off to some college far from Rhode Island and I never saw him again.
Of all the FLASHBACK memories of my life, this one, in which I so dramatically and perhaps cruelly "came out", tends to be the most remembered.