The plan was for me to meet up with Walter in Vichy, in central France, where he was teaching jazz for a week or so. There were some young children around while their parents took the course and I’d hang out with them. I had a little French in school, enough to get me started, and these kids helped me learn a lot more, and fast. In the classes the students moved in a stilted way that I later understood was typically French. I hate making generalizations or using stereotypes, but almost uniformly they seemed to hear the music and move a totally different way than Americans, much less black Americans. Yet France has a history of accepting blacks much better than our own. So it was more to do with the classical and gymnastic training they grew up with. But all of a sudden I felt like I had more rhythm than most, and what a nice reversal that was.
The food was wonderful, and I was thrilled by everything all the time. From Vichy we took the train back into Paris. Walter knew his way around, and all I had to do was follow. After a week or so there the two of us began making good use of the unlimited train travel on our EurRail passes. We went south to Spain and then into Portugal to the seashore near Lisbon: the Algarve. We met up with some friends of his there and took a boat from Gibraltar over into Morocco. The Arabic culture was exotic and everything I saw and did delighted me. His friends were fun, joking about finding Arab boys and relating their experiences. One night in a restaurant a Moroccan stud was bargaining for his price. It was so cool to me, I never knew about this stuff being for real. He was macho too and a stunner. He ended up getting his agreed upon amount doubled with a little intimidation. I didn’t blame him at all. It was all there, the boys, the snake charmers, the leather goods and embroidered shirts, and the arches and domes and candlelight. And to top it off, during those years, they still liked Americans! From there we went up the Costa del Sol of Spain, stopping to visit the guy who wrote the Broadway play Man of LaMancha. We sunned on the beach, ate great stuff, and did our usual last minute getaway- running and jumping on the train after it had already started. Walter had a knack for this last minute connection sort of thing. The minute we were safely on he’d slip down in his seat, pull his leather cowboy hat over his eyes and fall soundly to sleep. He was a true gypsy that way - he was at home on the move. Back to Paris for a few days more and then on to Stockholm Sweden. Walter had an apartment there, as he taught several months a year at the state dance school. We were there at the best time of the year, the days never ended. The language was a mystery, but again I just followed Walter. But I was getting anxious about my “role” since other than tagging along I had made no contribution so far, and time was running out. The rest of the company was to arrive in a few short weeks, and we had not discussed costumes once, much less work out a budget and schedule. I met a nice enough Swede one night in a dance bar and was telling him my story and he said it sounded like I might need a place to stay if things fell through and that I could stay with him if they did. I thanked him and kept his phone number. When we got back to Paris I got even more nervous, complaining that I would need time to get costumes made, and when were we going to discuss designs and look at material and find the tools, etc. Not to worry, Walter said, but I was worried. It seemed going nowhere as far as a job was concerned. What made up my mind to move on was when I found out that another white boy was coming to perform with the company. He was beefy, with a beautiful stage face and body, but he wasn’t all that talented movement wise, at least not from what I remembered. Frankly I was jealous. Figuring the costumes weren’t ever going to be important and that I wasn’t really needed there, I called up Stig in Stockholm and hearing the offer was still open, packed up and left in the middle of the night. I later got a note from Walter wishing me well and saying he thought I would succeed in my own time and way. At the time I thought it was just a lot of bull, that in some weird way he was enjoying us showing up everywhere together; but over the years my ego has mellowed, and now I like to think he never really needed me along at all, but just enjoyed seeing my wide open eyes as he showed me his world. When anyone thinks of us being together all that time you’d just assume we were either having sex or trying to. But there was no attempt on either of our parts. No awkward moments or lingering looks. Nothing sexual. Just I enjoyed his company and I like to think he enjoyed mine. Amazingly platonic. I left and lost track of him for years. I heard he was still teaching in Europe every now and then. But just this year he was honored for his lifetime achievement at the American Dance Festival, now in Durham, NC. I went over and it was great seeing each other again. We went out to lunch, talked a lot, I told him about my dream of him in Brazil, and he told me about the recent death of his white lover of 40 years. From the audience he very nearly looked and moved his former self, but up close the years were obvious, but his spirit shined. He is among the most important people in my life, and certainly one of the ones most respected and loved and fondly remembered.

So now starts another phase: me on my own. Stig had a modern “normal” apartment in the south part of Stockholm, close enough to walk to the center if I wanted. But there were a lot of nice things going for an American tourist. You could buy month passes to the subways and to the public swimming pools/saunas and if you enrolled in a Swedish language course telling them you intended to stay they even gave you money to live on. I cashed in. Stig and I slept together and had sex, but I don’t remember anything about it. I enjoyed more being left alone in the apartment and looking through his pornography, it was my first time around someone with lots and lots of magazines, and it being all in Swedish made it seem especially exotic.
During the days I often shared the apartment with Gunnar. She rented Stig’s second bedroom and received a seies of, um, guests. They’d disappear behind closed doors for awhile, usually not for long and remarkably little noise was made. Then Gunnar would come out and have coffee or smoke a cigarette with me and we’d try to talk. The language barrier limited the conversations, but she was nice to try. I guess my overall impression of her was just that she seemed worn out. I never saw drugs or anything. Stig got a share of what she made, officially making him a pimp. But it was all so businesslike that to me it just seemed that: business. Stig showed me all around, we ate in nice restaurants, went to the bars, etc. I liked him well enough, but nothing special. What I enjoyed most was going to the public swimming pool nearby & relax in the strong showers and the hot sauna after a long swim. It was a cruisy place, and although I didn’t do a lot, I was learning how the system worked. I was having a real good time when one day out of the blue Stig accused me of all sorts of things I had not done. Then he got to the point and pulled out a list. Every cent he had spent on me was recorded, beginning from the first step I took off the train. It was amazing. It was all totaled, and it was nearly a thousand dollars. Then he told me he had my Nikon camera and passport, which he would keep until I paid him his money. Looking back I realize I maybe could have threatened him, but at the time I felt powerless. I wrote home asking for money, and was pretty down. So much for adventuring out on my own. But then I got lucky. My Swedish instructor, a pseudo-macho type, full of self-importance and hot blustery air, on hearing my sanitized version of my predicament said he’d try to work something out. That’s how I moved into the studio of a photographer, Sven-Erik. The agreement was for me to help in the studio (he was remodeling it) in return for being able to sleep there at night. It was great. I cruised the city feeling like I belonged. The summer was ending and the nights were getting long. I knew the spots where gays gathered and I was a regular, now knowing the tourists from the locals. I had anonymous sex whenever and wherever I could and was really into it. One night I took a hot Spanish guy back to the studio and we spent some nights together. He was special. I got the feeling that Swedes and Latinos were different inside as well as out. I would have wanted to hook up with the guy, but it wasn’t to be. Sven-Erik got less friendly and griped about little things. One weekend he invited me to his summer home. That weekend was uncomfortable, he and his attractive wife were friendly in a fake sort of way, and I got the feeling they were expecting me to sleep with them both. This could be wild conjecture on my part, but there were jokes and awkward moments and looks that pointed in that direction: a direction I wasn’t about to take, Christ! Soon after that they asked me to help them move furniture. I worked hard all day and on the drive back into the city Sven-Eric said it wasn’t “convenient” for me being in his studio and he’d like me to move out immediately. The bastard! I was beside myself with anger. I called up Sigsten, a socialite and designer friend I had made. He said he was going out of town for some weeks and that if I’d feed his Great Dane I could stay in the apartment while he was gone. I was shaking I was so angry when I left the studio, and it was really hard not to wreck it in some way, except I knew I’d be in even bigger trouble by doing so. I’m sure this anger made me ill. I got really sick the first night at Sigsten’s. The second day it got worse, and on the third I called the hospital and found out where it was and how to admit myself. I stayed in two weeks with a bad case of viral pneumonia. As soon as I got home, still weak, the phone rang and it was Mom. She had news that my grandfather was really ill but soon she was complaining about how I sounded and my “bad attitude” and the conversation went to hell fast. They were getting disgusted with me, and thought it was time for me to come home, they’d send the money for the ticket. It wasn’t very fun, it was a low time for me, and this brought me down even more. Then I got lucky again. This time my language instructor arranged for me to stay with his half-sister in the countryside near Drottningholm. It was wonderful: a stable of horses, right on the archipelago, she an artist, the boyfriend an easy-going friendly guy, and the children rambunctious irrepressible fun. The money came; I got my camera and passport back and had a new home. Kerstin’s specialty was wax batik, and she really was quite good. I helped out around the house and barn, played with the kids, learned to batik, and most everyday took the bus and subway into the city for my Swedish lessons. The money came for the ticket home; I got the ticket, made the reservation, and prepared for the long bus ride out to the Arlanda airport. But I didn’t get on the plane. What stopped me was a growing sense that it was the wrong move and the arrival of a letter from my friend Ken that made me realize I was valid, if only as a scout. I called home and said I wasn’t coming. . As luck would also have it Stockholm’s Ballet Academy was right across the street from my language school. And to top it all off there were courses in black American jazz taught by Herman Howell. Herman was about the funniest guy I have ever known. He was a little overweight for a dancer and yet constantly came up with great lines and great moves. We became friends instantly. I still wasn’t really good as a dancer, but I was good enough. A lot of professional dancers took Herman’s classes, and they were better dancers than me, but Herman liking me made me feel free to take up all the space I wanted. Life was good again. I was learning on many levels and making it on my own.

My 26th birthday marked a turn of sorts. My identity since childhood was claiming less and less of my awareness. Instead I developed a feeling of distance, a perspective, a pause in the progression, an appreciation of the moment unplanned. Less patriotic, less filial, and more grateful than ever I was, as good stuff just kept coming my way. My dance training was about to pay off big time, taking me further than I ever dreamed. And then to ice the cake, I was soon to fall in love as if for the first and last time. It was unavoidable and irrevocable. At least I thought it was for twenty some years. But as it finally played out, my memories are bittersweet.

But here I can stop the narration: I’ve got diaries from the time.