Читать книгу Full Circle - Michael Thomas Ford - Страница 17

There used to be, at Knoebels Amusement Park in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, a ride called the Scrambler. It consisted of three arms extending out from a central hub. From each arm hung four individual cars. As the Scrambler turned, the cars spun independently in the opposite direction of the arms’ rotation, so that the feeling of speed was intensified and riders were quickly disoriented. Disembarking from the car at the end of four or five minutes, walking was difficult, and the area around the Scrambler often appeared to be populated by drunkards as people struggled to regain their balance. Our family made at least one trip to Knoebels every summer when my father had a week off from work, and Jack and I were sure to take several turns on the Scrambler, reveling in the intoxicating effects.

In the waning years of the 1960s, living in America was like riding the Scrambler on a daily basis. Just as we would regain our footing from one startling event, another would come and send us reeling in the other direction. On the same day in 1967, January 10, Edward Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts, became the first black man elected to the United States Senate by popular vote, while in Atlanta, vocal segregationist Lester Maddox, who in 1965 chose to close his popular Pickrick chicken restaurant rather than serve black customers after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, was inaugurated as the new Democratic Governor of Georgia. This peculiar dichotomy was emblematic of the social upheaval rocking the nation. As if the entire country had slipped down Alice’s rabbit hole into Wonderland (appropriately, Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic “White Rabbit” was a staple on radio in 1967), we peered, bewildered, into the funhouse mirror of American culture.

In San Francisco, the Summer of Love was about to unleash its message of peace, love, and LSD. But in suburban Philadelphia, interest and concern was focused on the arrival of the first Marine combat troops in Vietnam and President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement of plans to enact a draft lottery. Until then, the armed forces had operated under the old system of registering all men aged 19 to 26 and calling them as needed, from the oldest down. Although nearly one million men had already been drafted to fight in the conflict against the National Liberation Front, those of us approaching the age of eligibility more or less considered ourselves safe, assuming that it would take a very long time to work through all the men currently in their twenties. Under the newly-proposed system, we could be called much earlier, a proposition that thrilled no one.

Still, we believed the threat to be a distant one. We also believed that the ugliness in Southeast Asia would soon be over. Demonstrations, the burning of draft cards, and defections (or, as my father called them, “desertions”) to Canada and Europe were increasing. The conflict in Vietnam had sharply divided America, and it seemed we would either have to end our involvement in what appeared to many to be a losing battle or risk humiliation both home and abroad.

Given the current debate over gay marriage, it’s interesting to remember that it was only in June of 1967 that the Supreme Court struck down state laws banning interracial marriage. Little did I think, when that news made the front pages of every newspaper, that 35 years later Thayer and I would ourselves enter into civil union, first in neighboring Vermont and, more recently, in Canada. The idea of two men marrying seemed as remote then as that of a white woman marrying a black man must have in 1942. Yet the world had changed considerably since World War II, and now, in the midst of another war, it was changing again, moving forward one step at a time. (Is it coincidence that changes in social policy occur historically in the midst of war? And will we finally see gay marriage instituted nationwide only after the sacrifice of another million lives?)

It never occurred to me at 17 that I might one day marry Jack. Our identity as a couple was sketched only in the broadest of strokes, confined as it was to the privacy of our own bedrooms. We were not free to walk down the street holding hands. I could not wear the letterman jacket he received after his winning season or his class ring on a chain around my neck. Still we took girls to the movies and dances. I sat in the stands, holding hands with Melania Brewster, watching Jack carry a football down the field. Afterward, I kissed the sweat from his skin as we celebrated his victory. We were invisible to the world, which made it impossible to imagine a life together beyond the moment.

In 1968, the shock of John F. Kennedy’s assassination repeated itself in the twin murders of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy within two months of one another, further bringing into focus the divisions threatening to splinter America. That fall, Jack and I entered our final year of high school. For the first time, we were forced to think about what would happen when we graduated. As the country faced its own uncertain future, we looked forward and saw that we, too, could be torn apart.

It was my idea to apply to college. On the surface, this would seem like the perfect solution. There were, however, obstacles. First there was my father, who I discovered had been assuming that I would join him in the insurance industry. His plan was to get me a job at his office, where I could learn the business, and to then open our own shop, Brummel & Son. The fact that I’d never displayed the slightest interest in his profession apparently had passed him by, and my announcement that I intended to go to school was met with mute disappointment.

Jack’s father, being a scientist, was more open to the idea of further education for his son. Unfortunately, Jack’s academic success had been far eclipsed by his performance on the field of play. A fair student, he’d gotten by largely because of my assistance and his ability to win the affections of his teachers. As we investigated the possibilities for advanced study, however, it became apparent that he would need more than that to earn him acceptance at a university.

While I worried, Jack was as unconcerned as ever, telling me whenever I started to express my fears that “something would happen.” This being Jack, of course it did. It came in the form of a baseball scholarship offered by Pennsylvania State University. My academic achievements were enough to get me a full ride, thereby negating my father’s concerns over the cost and neatly settling our dilemma.

So as the final year of the decade dawned, Jack and I looked forward to our future. With the pressure off, we were free to enjoy the blissful last months of our high school lives, culminating in the spring formal, which we attended with two girls whose hearts we would break soon after when we told them that preparing for college would prevent us from dating on an ongoing basis. That night, though, we danced with them in the crepe-paper-bedecked gymnasium as the Fifth Dimension serenaded us with “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” Afterward, we took the girls to a party, where we made sure they drank enough strawberry wine that they wouldn’t notice when we dropped them off at home far earlier than they had probably planned. Then Jack and I drove in his car to a spot we’d discovered in a nearby park, where we quickly shed our polyester prom tuxes and made love in the backseat.

We thought we were almost men. At 18, we certainly looked the part. Our bodies had filled out. We had both allowed our sideburns to grow long in imitation of Jim Morrison, whose brooding sexuality aroused us and whose songs were frequently the background music to our sexual encounters. We carried packets of Lucky Strike cigarettes in our jacket pockets (although we were careful to hide them from our parents) and had once or twice tried marijuana.

Graduation was a relief. As I tossed my cap into the air along with those of my classmates, I was overcome with a sense of having made it to the end of a very long, very tedious race. It occurred to me that I would no longer have to see the same faces every day of my life, or move robotlike through the routine of class upon class. There would be no more dreary sessions of calculus, with Mr. Larson droning on about implicit differentiations while the afternoon sun made me struggle to stay awake, no more essays to write for Mrs. Peabody about Babbit or Of Mice and Men. High school and its petty obsessions with rules and schedules was finally behind me, and the open road of college awaited.

Jack and I did not go to Treasure Island that final summer, having grown too old for tents and campfire songs. Instead, we took jobs to save some money for our first year at Penn State. Jack worked for a landscaping company, putting his muscles to use, while I, in a peacemaking gesture to my father, toiled in air-conditioned boredom at the office of the Quaker State Insurance Company, filing claim forms and being flirted with by the middle-aged secretaries. At night we escaped, as our mothers before us, to the movie theater, where we saw a string of films seemingly designed to inflame our gay sensibilities. Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid all provided us with emotional kindling, and I still recall giving Jack a hand job in the balcony of the Milgram Theatre while watching Jon Voigt’s Joe ply his trade on the streets of Manhattan.

While we found Cowboy’s Joe and his seamy sexuality erotic, we saw ourselves more as Butch and Sundance. We were living in our own buddy movie, an idyllic place where two 18-year-old boys could be in love with one another and it was okay. In a short time we would be off to the beautiful town of State College and the campus of Penn State. We would be far enough away from our families that we would have our freedom. What this meant, exactly, we didn’t know. We knew only that we were about to fly.

We weren’t the only ones ready for change. In the early morning hours of June 28, the patrons of New York’s Stonewall Inn gay bar fought back after the latest in a series of raids by the city’s police department. The resulting skirmishes, taking place over several days and since given the somewhat mythological name of the Stonewall Riots, signaled a change in attitude on the part of the gay community. In Philadelphia, however, demonstrations for gay rights had been going on since 1965 in the form of the Annual Reminder, a protest held in front of Independence Hall each Fourth of July. Less theatrical but arguably much more political, the Annual Reminder following the events of Stonewall was the largest yet. (It would also be the last, as in 1970 gay pride parades took center stage and became the event of choice for proclaiming gay power.)

Jack and I, in Philadelphia to see the fireworks, witnessed the 1969 Annual Reminder in person. We watched from across the street as protesters stood in front of Independence Hall holding signs proclaiming messages such as 15 MILLION U.S. HOMOSEXUALS ASK FOR EQUALITY, OPPORTUNITY, AND DIGNITY and HOMOSEXUALS ARE AMERICAN CITIZENS TOO. We had heard about the incidents in New York, but only through newspaper articles. This was real. The neatly-dressed men and women standing not 100 feet away from us were real. When they saw us watching them, some smiled. These were not faceless people; they were like us.

We watched them for a long time, listening to the speakers who talked of equal rights and the importance of community. When the crowd began to disperse, we followed several of the men as they made their way west through the city, finally coming to The Spot, a small bar on Chancellor Street. I don’t know why we followed them, except that we were curious to know what real homosexuals did and where they went. For all we knew, they were ghosts, appearing for a moment to shock and frighten unsuspecting humans and then returning to some mystical place unknown to mortals. There they were, though, going into a very real place. Jack and I watched the door to The Spot for some time, watching men (and a few women) come and go as if it were the most natural thing in the world for homosexuals to gather in the middle of Philadelphia.

Neither of us suggested that we go in. We were still not quite gay, despite the fact that we regularly sodomized one another and thought nothing of it. To actually go into The Spot, though, to join the people inside, would have been to count ourselves among their numbers, and we were unprepared for that. Instead, we hurried back to Independence Hall to see the fireworks explode in all their patriotic glory, raining red, white, and blue stars down on our heads as we clapped and cheered.

In August, our parents threw us our annual birthday party. We toasted the end of our eighteenth years with the traditional barbeque, this time accompanied by bottles of Duke beer presented to us by our fathers like royal scepters being handed down to the next in line for the throne. We pretended they were our first ones, clinking them against our fathers’ and manfully overseeing the grilling of the hamburgers. It had long been a sore point with Jack and myself that we had been born in August and not been allowed to start kindergarten until we were six, resulting in our always seeming to be a year older than everyone else in our class. Now, though, the additional year gave us a certain cachet, and we looked forward to perhaps being mistaken for sophomores at our new school.

It’s no great revelation to say that it sometimes takes leaving a place to make you truly see it for the first time. In those last weeks of August, I felt that keenly. Not only did the people and places I’d known for nineteen years suddenly seem alien to me, but so did my life as a whole. I no longer fit, as if I’d grown too large for our house, our street, our town. Everything felt confining, designed to keep me trapped forever in that one, small place.

When the long-awaited day came, my bags and boxes were packed and ready. On Saturday, September 6, I packed it all into the 1966 Ford Fairlane station wagon Jack’s father had given him as a graduation gift. All four of our parents stood on the porch of the Graces’ house as we said our good-byes. Our mothers cried and our fathers shook our hands, telling us to drive carefully. We promised, hugging first our own mothers and then each other’s. Then we got into the Ford, gave a final honk of the horn, and started the 200-mile journey to our new life.