I got a job at the Barn Dinner Theater

I got a job at the Barn Dinner Theater: a building shaped like a barn with dining tables banked in 3 tiers around a central square. A delicious buffet was served in the square area; we waiters just served coffee and drinks, cleared tables, no taking orders or anything like that. Once everyone had time to finish his or her meal, the buffet was cleared, the show announced and a stage descended into the square from above. Tips were fabulous, especially if the people liked the show, as we were the recipients of their thanks. I’d come back to the dorm my pockets stuffed with bills, my stomach full of good food, and totally entertained as well. Talk about the perfect job? That was it. Different casts came through, all kinds of actors and actresses and singers. Types who settled for this kind of touring existence having been beaten up pretty bad trying to survive in New York City. We had time to get to know each other, and so I met people unlike any I had ever met. One winter Sunday night one of the guys invited me to fly back to New York with some of them just for a brief visit. I called home from Radio City Music Hall and asked Mom to guess where I was. It was great. The city had garbage piled high everywhere as a result of a strike and the wind was icy, but it didn’t matter. I was insecure and a little lost feeling, but it didn’t matter. My friends lived in really cheap places and seemed pretty stupid. None of it mattered. I was in New York City! Later on during my college years there were a lot of trips there, and it always got better. The more you learned the more fun you had. Never had a problem there, nothing but fun. Still, on that first trip I hadn’t had sex.

The closest I got was being propositioned by a marginally attractive older man who gave me a lift when I was thumbing back to school at Carolina one weekend. He had a magazine in the glove compartment of straight couples fucking, but pictures of that kind did nothing for me, and he certainly didn’t and I remember thinking as most virgins do- I want my first time to be ‘special’. Looking back the weirdest aspect of all is that that was about the only time in my life when someone tried to sneak in to having sex with me. All the stories of dirty old men and sexual predators have no relation to my reality. It somehow just never happened to me. And if you knew how much I thumbed, and the sleazy places I checked out, and how I dressed, you would be as disbelieving of it as I am.

Then another event added more water to the river of my deliverance. The Canadian Ballet performed Carmina Burana in the campus auditorium. I had first night seats having no idea what to expect, as I’d never been to a dance performance before. I was blown away. Not only did I watch every performance while they were there, but I showed up early the next day and got into the auditorium while they were rehearsing. One of the soloists Erica Jong saw me there and welcomed me in. We went places together; she took me to a health food store, the only one in Raleigh at that time, and then selected my first classical music records. It was great. I even went to their hotel one night after the show. Ok, let’s backtrack again a bit. Growing up I had little natural rhythm as far as dancing goes. Dancing was something I’d try in my room with the door shut and if the door knob turned I’d jolt so severely you’d think I’d been caught jacking off (which by the way, I never was). I went to dances in high school and felt clumsy and awkward, and one time took Becky to a Beachboys concert in Greensboro. She could clap in perfect time to the music, even that impressed me. (So much for two years of piano with Mrs. Campbell.) On roller skates I did fine, so maybe with dance it was a matter of not knowing the steps, at least partly. The other part was growing up Southern white. Wait till you hear how I conquered all that! Well, back to the story line…. When the Canadian group left town I started taking ballet lessons at The Raleigh School of Dance Arts. Walter, the owner and teacher was about as nice as anybody could be. He was sort of interested in me, but never pushed it. He lived in the back of the studio and there was a little dressing room where I’d change. I was often the only guy in the class, sometimes one or two others, but I was definitely the only one of legal age! So nights and weekends I spent plieing and ronde jambing with 30 or so little girls. To be quite honest, I loved it. I got pretty good fast. It was another world.

Until this time I had been coming home every weekend. The excuse was to help with the rink, but it was just cause I liked being at home. But now my weekends got spent rehearsing or something. Mom and Dad weren’t thrilled with my dance lessons and Grandma said “It might be fun, but it will never get you anywhere” But dancing was to take me everywhere.

So now I’m 21 and that summer I stay in Raleigh in a little rented house I shared with a cool foreign design student, Fritz. He had the accent and everything, and was a great roomie. Out at the dinner theater the show featured a young cast doing a spoof on a melodrama. Dan was the likeable, very cute and friendly Hero. I got to enjoy talking to him, and he always seemed ready to talk to me. Out of the blue I invited him to spend a day at the lake never dreaming he would. He said yes immediately. So we’re sitting on the pier and the sun’s going down and all of a sudden I’m hearing myself tell him how happy I was that he had come with me and that I didn’t understand why I enjoyed him so much. He looked at me sort of funny and then asked what did I mean I didn’t understand. When I just sat there looking confused he said My God! You mean you’ve never been with a guy! The rest of the family had gone back home and we had the house to ourselves. That night in grandma’s bed he introduced me to myself. I never imagined it feeling so right and so good and so strong. Looking at myself in the mirror the next morning I had imagined seeing shame, but all I saw was a supremely happy guy. For his next performance Dan had to use extra makeup, as I had left big “hickeys” all over his neck. The cast loved it. They were so nice to me after that. Another thing I left was a lot of pubic hair in grandma’s bed. She freaked out. But since mom never paid her any mind it was left unexplored as to why. (Either the freaking or the hair.) All summer long we had oral sex every chance we got. One night in a motel he tried fucking me and I ended up crying. It hurt like I thought it would and I couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal to him. But for the first time in my life I felt attractive, well, even beautiful as he kept saying. It was a perfect introduction to being gay and I am lucky to have met him. He was 27 at the time, just old enough to be in charge, and still young enough to be sincere and open. In the back of my mind I knew the show would move on and fall semester would start. He cried when the time came, but I was ready a little for it to be over. He finally fucked me a few times, but I never really liked it, especially how the veins in his neck would pop out and his face turn red. At those awkward moments the Hero seemed more like the Villain.

I went on to have little affairs. A beautiful little blond guy and me would get together when his older “friend” wasn’t around. I stalked an older guy who did windows at Belk’s till he threatened to call the police. There was Chip, a greasy upper classman who I found attractive in some odd way, Hal, a year younger than me, and Eli my best friend’s friend. But the best sex was when I could get back to NYC.
Then another great show came to the barn dinner theater and it was Another Opening of Another Show: Broadway Tonight! Nick was in charge, a sexy little bull Italian guy that kept his troupe together mostly on his sexual allure. He slept with the other male performer, and all of the girls wanted him badly, except the slim little lesbian who did a number in a sailor suit. I wanted him too. One night they went out after the show and I hid under his bed until they came back. He was furious!! I was shocked that he didn’t want me! He got me out of there and fast before I upset his applecart. Well he used me like everybody else. I drove them and a U-haul full of costumes back to NYC and then onto Toronto Canada for a show up there. I stayed at his apartment for a week or so, and don’t remember us having sex, we might have, but by then I was not infatuated. Nick went on to organize the legendary Chippendales, a male strip show, and married Jill St. John for a brief period. I’m sure whatever he did he got more out of it than the other person(s). I got plenty in return. I learned the Village in New York during its best years, I learned how to get around, and I found the baths.

The baths were a dark world unto themselves during those early years. The Continental was on the upper West Side and my heart was beating when I finally found the nerve to go down the stairs and enter. It was a huge place, 4 or 5 floors, a big steam area, a pool, snack bar and hundreds of little cubicles painted black and lit by a small bare bulb. We navigated the hallways silently, hearing the sex sounds behind the doors, looking in on others, grouping up or pairing off. I loved being there. It was so different from anything I had ever imagined at home. It never felt dirty or sleazy; I was bringing to it my best. And usually I felt my partners were giving their best in return. It was a microcosm unto itself. Soon I was so comfortable there I stayed as if at a hotel. It was cheaper than a hotel. You could leave your bag at the front desk. You checked your money and valuables. For me it was perfect. I’d come home from a few days ready to go weeks without a thought of sex. I would be saturated with it, and the furtive encounters with paranoid locals didn’t interest me at all. There was a gay bar in Chapel Hill that we’d sometimes visit. Small, but with dancing. That was the era of dancing holding each other. Throughout my life so far the bar scene has seemed to me to go slowly down hill. It’s just not that I have aged and I’m not just referring to myself. I can see that guys just aren’t enjoying it as much. Back then it was new and still had the feeling of being taboo, which added to its sexual allure. No commercialization, just a small group of guys desperate to be with their own kind for a few hours. We made the most of it. BetteMiddler was performing at the Continental at that time. She remembers it as fondly as I do.

My summer romance and these trips to NYC began a creative transformation. My schoolwork improved and my teachers paid me more attention. The next summer my favorite teacher who I told I was gay and who advised me to think twice about coming out, Don Masterton, encouraged me to take a fashion illustration course at the then number one fashion school in the country: Parsons. It was in NYC! Mom and Dad let me.