Tag: Same-sex marriage

Blame Edna St. Vincent Millay

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

We’ve all had one.  Just one.  The One.  Not the one that got away.  And not the one that married your best friend.  And please. . .certainly not your first one.  This One is The One.  

You know which one is The One.  The One’s the one that heard your protestations yet felt your searing stare, your eyes glued to the sight, intent as though you were watching the final inning of a no-hitter, your mind recording in high-definition inch by baring inch of torso; the molting of cotton and denim; your appetite overflows the banks of friendship as The One, the object and the consort silently affirms your theft of privacy.  That’s The One:  A compatriot in what would become your benchmark of shame and crowning expression of tortuous affection.  The One was the only one to encourage betrayal of character as bond to be free of moral constraints and fuel your burgeoning obsession. 

The One for me was Steve.

We opened  the door  to the room in  the Super 8 Motel in  Davenport,  Iowa where tomorrow Steve and I would compete for first place in the National Forensic’s Tournament.   Both of us were nervous of course, but unlike Steve who was nervous about the tournament  I was as nervous as a newlywed when I spotted the king size bed hovering in the middle of the room like the Hindenburg.

“Well, here we are,” Steve said as he put his duffel bag on the floor and flopped on the bed.  I stood there aghast and slowly placed my coveted Tod’s Weekender on the stainless steel motel valet and stiffly sat on the edge of the bed.

” … at last …” I added, slowly turning to see him stretched out like a newly caught salmon, his bright colored belly slightly exposed under his polo.

“At last?”, he asked.

Realizing my blunder I quickly stood up and attempted to turn the conversation.  “You nervous?”

“Nervous?    What’s  there  to  be  nervous  about?    We’re  the  best  in  the  state  and tomorrow we’re going to be best in the nation.”

“You’re right,” I added weakly, fighting my desire to look at him on the bed.

“Are you?” he asked.

“Am I what?” I asked retreating into the small, secure confines of the bathroom.

“Nervous,” he called from the bed.

“Why would I be nervous when I’ve got a partner like you?”  I asked.

Steve appeared in the doorway looking at me in the mirror,  “Because you’re acting nervous,” he said walking up behind me, looking at me in the mirror, both my hands white knuckled on the faux marble vanity, the inches of warm air between us igniting and scalding my flanks. He looked directly into my eyes and I prayed that he couldn’t  see either my knees that had begun to buckle or the erection that had risen in my jeans.

“So I’m a little nervous,” I snapped “and you standing this close to me doesn’t  help.” I wanted to be able to easily assault his closeness as some latent homosexual thing, some calling his hand when it came to his masculinity, some assertion that he was coming on to me.  But I had already played that trump card on some ranger look-out station on a wooded rise called Belmont Mound.  I blubbered my homosexuality between shared swallows of apple schnapps, my conviction growing with the depletin liqueur.    He too, was drinking,  but  he kept his composure, acknowledging my confessions with tart, little babbles; all the while I wished he too, would expose his wrist and in some tribal custom, bind our lives. But instead I slept in the cool comfort of the toilet.

Then I made the mistake of looking back at the bed.  “The bed bothers you, doesn’t it?” he asked, almost sounding interested.

“No, you idiot, it isn’t the bed that bothers me” I said moving quickly away from him back into the room, “It’s not the bed …” I paused, wondering if I should be the bleeding heart (and what good would it do me) again, would he tire of the whining, “but it’s me,” not that it really was me. It was more him.  I had no trouble with me. It was him.  Him and his damned morals, not even morals but tastes, not even tastes but attractions,  not even attractions but fickleness! “It’s me, Steve. Me! Me and you. Here. Tonight. The bed … the tub.”

“The tub?” he asked.

“I’ll sleep in the tub.”

“You’re fucking crazy! What do you think you’ll do?  Rape me in my sleep?  Christ, you’re a guy that’s  able to control himself, aren’t  you?   If you think you’ll have a problem, take care of it before you get into bed!”

Was I an idiot or what?   What did he know?  What did he care?  Christ, it wasn’t my lust that I was worried about.  It was my heart! What did he think?  It was then, at that moment when a little divine intervention would’ve helped; an angel to come down and tell me that my reality was not reality. That what I really thought was going on wasn’t really going on, except as a private screening for my own enjoyment.  That what WAS true was that there were two best friends vying for national recognition that needed to share a bed in a motel room. So what was the big deal?

 

After dinner we wandered through  the halls of the motel to our room.  Upon opening the door  Steve threw  his jacket on the bed and  went into the  bathroom.    I walked to my bag, opened it and pulled out my sweatshirt and gym shorts.  As I was beginning to undress I heard the toilet flush, the faucet run and finally the door open.   Steve stood in the doorway, backlit by the ceiling light, his silver buckle dangling  like a fishing lure, his shirt open, untucked, hanging off his shoulders like draperies.  I of course, should’ve already been in bed, chiffon negligee spread  out before me like a tablecloth, a dozen  pillows plumped  and puffed surrounding me in satined down.  But instead I stood before him in my white Hanes underwear and Dago T.

“Going to bed so soon?”, he asked.

“I like to read a little before I fall asleep,” I replied, as I pulled off the Dago T and pulled on my sweatshirt.

“You go there?” he asked. “Go where?”

“To Colorado,” he finished, standing across from me, tugging his heavy socked feet out of his still tied, dirty Nike sneakers.   He stood there, determined to shed his sneakers, tongue sticking out of the comer  of his mouth, body slightly contorted, peeling the tightened shoe off his foot.

“It might help if you untied them,” I said as I folded my clothes and placed them on the valet next to my Weekender.

“I’m too lazy,” he shot back over his now naked shoulder.

I looked up from my bag and saw him standing across the blue polyester comforter,  his  tanned  back  separated  by  a  deep  crevice  which opened  like  a  well-read hardcover, rising to parallel muscles which flowed into his ribs; his shoulders ascended by cords of muscle to his throat; his upper arms taut like a bow; and rising from the waistband of his jeans was a banded collar of cream followed by a blood red cotton stripe.  I stood transfixed.

“Mind if I watch a little TV?” he asked over his shoulder. “Not at all, as long as you keep the volume low,” I answered quietly.

I turned my back on him and with one swift, practiced motion pulled my Hanes off and sat down on the bed, pinning  my erection firmly between my thighs.   I reached for my gym shorts and in a moment threw my legs in the air, levitated myself, pulled the gym shorts on, yanked back the covers, thrust my legs in, and pulled the crisp cotton sheets to my waist.  After arranging myself, the pillows, and the book I was reading I heard the television snap on.

What I noticed first were his feet pointed towards my head.   They were solid, heavy feet; thick, cracked, blemished soles; wide, weathered toes.  These feet obviously walked many miles free. They were clearly the feet of the naturalist, someone that enjoyed the pain I often associated with running around barefoot. These were the feet which may have traversed hot coals. These feet had taken him somewhere.

 

The television rumbled in the background like some kind of geographical  expose as I continued the panorama of his lower body. Just above his feet were ankles which supported dense calves. If his feet were tundra when it came to hair, his calves and thighs were tropical rain forests.   Calves, now in repose, lay like sandbags.   The backs of his knees, the spring­ loaded cantilevers, the source of his power sit quietly.  His hamstring, a long, drawn, weighty mound of muscle sleeps like an eel amidst the concave back of the quadriceps.  I turned my attention to the television.

“Anything on?” I asked. “Nothing. How’s the book?”

“Can’t seem to keep my mind on it.”

“Well, I think I’m going to turn in.  It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.  Better get as much sleep as I can,” he said as he swung himself around on the bed and I stole a lingering look at him.

“Mind if I yank the blankets out from the end of the bed?  I can’t  sleep when there’s something holding my feet down.”  He tore the sheets from the end of the bed.  “Oh yeah,” he said struggling, “I toss and turn a lot.  If I end up on you, just push me back to my side.”

“Won’t you wake up,” I asked.

“Naw, nothing wakes me up.  Once I’m out, I’m out.  Once when I was a kid and one of the old silos blew up right outside my window.  Woke up the whole town.  Mom had to come in and get me when the fire department got there.  I can sleep through anything!”

When he was finished he sank back into his pillows. I attempted to concentrate on my  Anne Sexton anthology.  I was about to dive headfirst into the story when I quickly turned my head to see him laying on his side looking at me. “May I help you?” I asked.

“Nothing. Just watching you,” he quietly replied.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No,” he said defensively, “can’t someone just watch you?” he finished as he turned his back to me.

I attempted to read, then closed the book and placed it on my lap. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m a little tense, that’s all.  Don’t pay any attention to me.”  I put the book on the nightstand, reached over and turned out the light casting the room in complete darkness and sank back into the bed.  As slowly as dawn, slivers of light grew in the room where we couldn’t shut out the world.

Nothing happened  that night of any monumental  occasion.   All the ingredients were present; one bed, a hotel room, he and I, his body, my body, his sexuality, my sexuality but something was missing. I don’t know now if it was his lack of participation, or if I was waiting for him to make the first move, or if I was so certain that my attraction for him was wrong and his  distraction  of  me  was  correct.   But something,  some  idea,  some  moral  uprightness prohibited me from breaching the boundaries of our relationship.

Steve certainly gave me all the clues and  hints  that  he wanted something  to happen,  that  he wanted  me to press him farther,  beyond his words of denial, pushing  him to make a decision when  his body was screaming  for attention.  Had it been any different, had my subconscious been alerted to the remote possibility that he encouraged my affections, it would have triggered an internal alarm clock and roused me from my sleep at a most opportune  moment when  Steve was between hither and nigh; when he wasn’t certain what, if any of the stimulus and response was dream or reality, that in that deep and calm pool of slumber, his body could react one way while his mind  kept itself tucked  warmly away.   l guess all this conversation  occurred  in  my sleep between my desire and my morality, and on this particular occasion, morality (ahem) rose victorious.

What Do You Get When You Cross A Desert Box Turtle and Jack Russell Terrier?

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

I’m afraid that my spouse will leave me one day.

Not because of anything I did or said, but rather, because of the things I didn’t do.

My bipolar disorder is treated by amphetamines.  And when they begin weaken I find myself incredibly tired; painfully tired.  This fatigue is called the cliff.

My spouse has the energy of a Jack Russell Terrier and wants to play and play and play.  Problem is, I’m sullen, I’m racing on amphetamines, I crash at turn three.  And he keeps up the frenetic pace: movies, plays, parties, happy hours, garden walks.

Like now.  I’m so tired I could cry, but he’s invited me out for a movie.

How often can I say “no thanks, I’m so tired,” before he finds another Jack Russell to play fetch?

It’s not that I don’t want to see a movie or play, attend a dinner party or picnic at Ravinia, stroll through the Botanic Gardens or Morton Arboretum, I simply don’t have the energy.

I’ve tried to fake it, fallen asleep during concerts and movies; so fatigued that I don’t even stand up at intermission; mind-numbing sleepiness causing me to forget names of close friends or our destination.

How many respectful declines will he hear from me before he invites a surrogate, my body-double, my understudy, my replacement?

 

Loosing Elasticity

~ Harlan Didrickson

It seems that my mind is like a farmer’s field: memories, like field stones continue to break ground.  And like the farmer, which stones I remove and which stones remain is largely one of effort: some stones rise wholly like a new moon; others merely crack the surface, their real mass remains solidly rooted; these unearthed boulders are marked like land mines.  But unlike the farmer who can adapt to the obstacle, I am intrigued by the coincidence of its appearance.  So I am willing, on occasion, to recall an incomplete memory: as a writer of a particular age I no longer rely on the creative end of creative writing.  Instead I dip my hand into the cold creek of memory where most recollections lay scattered, scoop up what my numb fingers can manage, and attempt to detail, at best a mosaic of my memory.  For instance:

Not yet school age, one early afternoon I watched my mother organize her ironing station in front of the television in anticipation of the daily broadcasts of her favorite soap opera’s  No more than three minutes into the first program the telephone rang.  My mother, hypnotized by her program, allowed the  phone to ring six times before answering.  I vaguely recall the immediate change in my mother’s telephone voice (from pleasant to pointed) she confirmed leaving a message, and agreed to hold for that department.  Moments later she was complaining to a sales clerk in the lingerie department at Gimpel’s that the bra she’d purchased three months earlier had lost its elasticity, which without, failed to uphold its purpose.

The clerk understood my mother’s tone immediately and transferred the call to a junior manager who was, I gathered, an obstinate, pushy and unapologetic salesman who strongly suggested that my mother purchased the wrong size.  Speechless, my mother put the phone down and stormed to her bedroom.  I picked up the receiver just in time to hear the insolent salesman male suggest to one of his minions that my mother might wish to engage my father’s help in gauging her size, as he (the salesman) was quite certain your husband (my father) was absolutely certain as to the size of her breasts.  At that moment my mother yanked the phone from me: I repeated the salesman’s suggestion: pause: slam!

Ten minutes later my mother was dragging me in one hand and her bra in the other uptown to Gimpel’s.  Never before and never since have I heard my mother use so many words in such a short period of time in such a loud voice which naturally attracted female shoppers, then clerks from other departments, department managers, and finally three men in dark suits that parted the crowd like royalty, and in a vain attempt tried to interject while my mother’s consternation whirred on like the blades of a window fan.

We rode home in the back seat of a large black sedan, just my mother (who actually radiated a self-confidence and fragrance (thanks in-part to a gift from Chanel), and I.  And at our feet were bags and bags and bags of bra’s compliments of the three dark suits; Executive’s, my mother said proudly; Chief Executive’s, the chauffeur added with a little laugh.

Hey! Who’s Got the Key to my Closet?

~ Harlan Didrickson

When I was a junior in college I made the conscious decision to climb off the fence and declare, for the indeterminable future, that I was going to live my life as a gay man.  *(Included with membership was: style, wit, fashion awareness, detail, grooming, manners, art, martini, and the male girdle appreciation, secrecy, caution, abuse, scandal, misunderstandings, stereo-types, profiling, and a great number of acronyms: DINKS, A-GAY, GLB+T+Q+. . ., GUPPIES and, of course, your very own fruit fly selected for her precise complementation of my pointed wit, sarcasm, design style, performance art preference, iPod playlists, and ultimately her unconditional allegiance to all things me!)

But gay by choice not by default.

I have several friends that have absolutely no sexual or romantic interest in women.  They do not find the female body (and it’s intimate components) curious or alluring.  A few stumbled into confronting and compromising degrees of sexual exploration and determined that (while rounding second base and signaled to slide face-first into third base by Coach Conventionality) instinct was missing supplanted by determination.  How fun might determined sex feel as opposed to instinctual sex?  When I say “instinct” it includes a deep, gnawing curiosity; hunger that causes selfishness, self-concern, and manipulation; desire under pressure like a shaken can of pop.  Most of my gay friends have profound respect for and completely empathize with the daily struggles women face in our culture today.  They just lack any degree of sexual interest.

I, on the other hand, was different.  The exploration of a woman’s body was like walking through a dense green forest, lush, abundant, enchanting, and yet dangerous, secretive, thick canopies cripple directions, and customary trails challenge the most experienced — twisting and turning and vanishing into a thicket.  A man’s body isn’t explored, it’s an ascent, with carefully calculated base camps strategically dotting the vista; a man’s body like a mountain is built of craggy rock, covered by a dense base of snow, hardened like iron, ancient, as though Hannibal crossed it; age, like summit storms, blankets the snow pack with uncertainty; simply put, both man and mountain, there’s but one direction, up, and it’s the peak which they all seek to conquer.

And it was back in college that I failed horribly at coming out of the closet.  And not for any of the reasons most gay men site: fear, ridicule, retaliation, physical harm.  I failed at coming out because I fell madly in love with a wonderful woman.  My sexual attraction was clearly stronger for men, but every time I attempted the summit, I found myself lost in the enchanted forest.  While my roommates hopped from bed to bed like Goldilocks, I was stepping deeper and deeper into the gloomy and impervious forest sensing that the clearing would soon disappear and so would I, the real me, into a world which was pleasant and decent and impossible to promise fidelity.

What I determined was that I could easily marry a woman, but I couldn’t promise fidelity.  No matter the depth of my love for her, a strong chin, broad shoulders, narrow hips would always catch my eye.  And even though I never had the chance to fall madly in love with a man, I was absolutely certain that when I did fall in love with a man, I could promise fidelity because my desire for women was lower than my desire for men.

Above all I refused to live a life of avoidance, determined to be faithful, and desperately trying to deny my fundamental identity.  I wanted a life of unrestricted expression and a promise which I would never break.

(POST NOTE:  3 years later I met Nick and fell madly and deliciously in love.
28 years later; promise intact.)

Time To Grow Up (Part 1 of “Career, What Career?”)

~ Harlan Didrickson

Even though I hold an advanced degree from a prestigious university known for its performing arts alumni, when I arrived in Chicago in 1987 my one skill which could be directly applied to working was typing.  Aside from the awards, the accolades, and the New York literary agent, I was essentially unskilled labor with a penchant for writing.

So what happens when serendipity is redefined, from inevitability to dumb luck; what happens when destiny becomes balls that bounce, cookies that crumble, and no matter how long or how hard I stare, there’s nothing in those damned cards!  On top of which the two of us (that beat the odds (especially “gay odds”) and weathered the turbulent tests of fidelity and loneliness to survive a three-year, trans-atlantic, long-distance relationship) will finally step to the front of the line and impart on one small corner of our American Dream.  We’ll rent our first apartment, gladly accept hand-me-down furniture from in-laws, establish bank accounts so that the perfunctory bi-weekly paychecks will magically appear, one after another ad infinitum  all building to an orchestral crescendo heralding every couple’s ultimate goal: a future of happily-ever-afters!

After a dozen interviews I heard the same inane reasoning:  “I can’t hire someone as educated as you for a job like that!”  So I rewrote (and removed) my post-graduate degree and within two weeks I was hired by a local messenger company answering telephones for $5.29 per hour (1987).  It took four months to develop into a caged maniac; promoted to A/R to photocopy microfiche eight hours a day – it took two months before the facial tics started; traded to Customer Service (at a messenger company, Customer Service is akin to W.C. Field’s dog: we got kicked a lot) where I survived thirteen days shy of one year until a brutal and prematurely cold and sleet-slickened Friday afternoon in early November hammered bike messengers and my phone lines were blinking “Mayday!  Mayday!” when, from the other side of dispatch, some moron kept calling my name like an impatient car horn stuck in gridlock. I actually can recall hearing that last straw snap as I bellowed to the moron a string of expletives which crackled loudly like firecrackers.  Problem was, the moron happened to be Mrs. Moron Owners-Young Second Wife.  Precariously riding the subway while holding a wet box filled with desk items, a pink slip and final check was crappy enough: I was an easy target for the pick-pocket whose style was anything but subtle.

There’s got to be a better way than this, I thought as I walked home from the subway station.  There’s got to be something or somewhere I can apply my skills as a playwright.  Within four months Serendipity and her cousin Veracity knocked on our apartment door with an idea. . .