somewhere to store our stuff

So Ulf and I are wearing out our welcome and the carpet after staying some weeks with my parents, but then I get the idea of building a little structure so we’d have somewhere to 'shack up' and store our stuff, imagining travels to and from Europe being the norm. Mom resists the idea of giving me permission to build something “homemade” where I had picked out: over at the “Old House” where my great-grandparents lived and which incidentally was also prime real estate. We locked horns a bit, I didn’t see the problem with it and said we would go to live with friends (Ken and Eli) in Texas otherwise. Part of Mom’s problem was 1) she knew i'd never built anything in my life, 2) she saw it as unfair to the others, especially my older brother, for me to have the land and 2) she had only herself had title to it for a few years, inheriting it after my grandfathers death. But I wasn’t seeing it as claiming the land as my own or anything; I just wanted somewhere to put my souvenirs mostly and be free to make noise in bed. So mom relented and Ulf and I started taking down the old house board by board. It was dirty and hard but by spring we had stacks of lumber from which I estimated what kind of structure could be built. Plus the photos of Ulf naked in the daffodils, booted and barechested with a crowbar in his hand, and smiling with various dogs and cats in his arms. He started taking classes at the community college and was 1st in his class. Then he took driver’s ed and got a driving license. We got this big old station wagon my sister sold me for $175. It was fun and practical plus I got a new motorcycle- a Honda 750.

We both went to the gym and then I decided to try steroids. The doctor gave me pills and the more of them I took the harder I was to live with. I woke up in a rage, glaring at everybody at the breakfast table, and was a bitch all day long. I couldn’t help myself, and although I put the mood and the pills together, I really wanted those muscles even if I had to end up killing everybody. Ulf put up with it mostly, but we had some really tense moments. Finally I realized it wasn’t worth it and flushed the pills down the toilet. But it was a little late, most everyone was really irritated with me by then. Later on I got the pills everybody at the gym was taking: Dianabol. They worked a lot better so I mentally excused my horrendous behavior by blaming it all on the doctor.
But Ulf had had enough of my bitchiness and North Carolina living and headed back to Europe. The floor and walls were up on my “shack” and although Mom first thought her worst nightmares were coming true, little by little it looked innocuous enough, even neat. Neat enough that it pulled my attention away from my sorry sex life. I got an invitation to come to Houston from Ken and since I was curious, I put a few things in a bag and took off on my motorcycle. For about 200 miles it seemed like a stupid thing to be doing, but then I broke through that barrier of attachment/longing and enjoyed the ride. Stayed overnight in a bath in New Orleans.
I liked Houston, thought my friends were sort of mucking about, auditioned for a show and got it (but later the show was canceled), and went to bars, baths and stuff, before heading back home. The roof beams were waiting for me and Daddy helped me get them up and then helped me wire the place. I didn’t know anything much about how to do anything, but Daddy could tell me what to do next and I just did as told. I was working at the rink a lot too: remodeling the bathrooms, putting up lights, painting, etc. Then one day I moved in. I had lots of dreams about other houses, big ones with lots of rooms, on the same spot, and grew to realize how linked I was to the land and my little place.

Summer events were family in nature but summer passed and no word from Ulf.

In August I rode my motorcycle to High Point to Cartwrights and asked for a job, any job. He gave me work out in the shipping department where I entertained the rednecks with tales of dancing with naked girls in Paris. But one morning my bike blew up on the way up there, so it seemed a good time to buy another cheap ticket on IcelandAir to Luxembourg and from there I took the train to Stockholm. It’s nice being back together for both of us, but one afternoon Ulf comes in and tells me thanks a lot for giving him syphilis. I don’t know what to say, I didn’t know it if I did but sure, I’m really sorry. The next morning I go get tested and the results are negative. Aha! So the good news is he didn’t get it from me. Of course the bad news is is that I’ve probably now got it from him. Sure enough a couple of weeks later the tests show I’ve got it too. In America the treatment was one big dose of penicillin. But the Swedes rightly accused the American doctors of thus creating a resistant strain of the disease, and developed a safer plan of daily shots of smaller doses for five weeks. Funny, but you get used to any routine, and after awhile I enjoyed the time in the hospital, knowing all the staff and all. I never got smug or lorded it over Ulf, cause it could have been the other way round. Still, inside I knew I had an advantage in any future arguments concerning sex outside the relationship. Meanwhile, I get a little cabaret work with a Swedish girl, take dance classes and hang out with Herman and do a strip number with Ulf in a small gay theater, and I got a night job working in two different saunas. But by Christmas both Ulf and I are back in North Carolina. I don’t remember being cold but I know we were wintering in the shack. Mom and Dad wouldn't put us up again. We did wear our welcome thin with them, especially when Ulf got the bedroom carpet messed up with greasy foot prints. He had really dry skin and used a heavy-duty cream of sheep fat every night on his feet to keep them from cracking. We weren’t used to worrying about carpets, but Mom cared a lot her carpets when she realized why they were getting slick. Carpet’s destined to be ripped out anyway, so I still feel people shouldn’t have stuff that’s not practical and off white carpet is high on my list of don’t wants. Then there was the night I woke up to hear him in the clothes closet. What the fuck are you doing! I asked. Pissing! was his whispered reply. And he was. Sleepwalking and pissing. I made him realize what he was doing and he crawled back in bed apologizing and if it was ever found out it was never mentioned. At our love shack there wasn’t a "real' toilet to start off with, but Ulf fixed us one. If you take a standard paper grocery bag, it fits perfectly inside a 5-gallon plastic bucket, the kind u can find anywhere. Then you buy a bag of lime and have a supply of sawdust. Then you put a little sawdust in the bag in the bucket and then you wait til you have to shit and put the bucket somewhere a little private, drop your drawers and sit on the rim. It sounds uncomfortable I know, but you’ll be as surprised as I was how comfy it actually is. Ok, do your business, but don’t pee in the bag, that makes a mess and creates ammonia. Pee before or later, but not in the bag. When you’re finished doing your business sprinkle a little lime in the bag and then a clean layer of sawdust. No odor, no flies, no problem. Empty the bucket as needed and dig it in to the flower border. You can forget having to buy Miracle Grow, the flowers will thrive. Like they say “A country boy can survive.”

Come summer and I have great recall. The Caribbean had long been in the back of my mind. In design school we had been asked where we envisioned ourselves in 10 years and I had said on a friend’s yacht in the Caribbean. So we decided to get scuba certification and go. A nice female instructor came and gave us a course in Mom’s pool. My younger sister was part of it, the choked up part. We’ve got movies of us, with her choking and crying, that really are funny. But we pass and head to the Virgin Islands. We started out on St. Thomas but soon opted for St. Croix.

The diving was fun, but just being there together was the best. We’d have nice suppers together, eating in the open air and feeling neat. My sister had as much fun as we did, maybe more, since she almost decided to stay. I’d get seasick on the boats, but once in the water I was fine, it was a good time. Leaving my sister, Ulf and I pushed our luck and went on to St Marten, intending to go on to the chic St. Barts. But we detested that hateful Dutch island so much we left the next day on a flight to NYC. It was a great change of venue. After the islands New York seemed especially pulsating with energy and adventures. We stayed with Ken and his recent boyfriend Jason, doing this and that and as usual passing judgement on everything and everybody. Ulf and I did that too much. We had a “it’s us against the world” mentality. I returned to NC, Ulf stayed on in NYC a few days more then returned to Stockholm, scuba gear and all. He got a part in a Swedish version of Fiddler on the Roof and toured Sweden.

That fall I settled down to creating my life in North Carolina. My records show paying mom back the loan for my piano. I joined the YMCA and swam and worked out. Mom paid me well to work at the rink. Life was simple and uncomplicated. Fall passed into winter. The ceiling of the shack was just one sheet of aluminum, no insulation from cold, and you could hear it drizzle, a downpour was deafening.

So it got very cold. I used my refrigerator to keep food warm: it would freeze if I left it on the kitchen table. Nights I’d sleep with my clothes on and in the mornings ride my motorcycle a mile and a half to the new YMCA where I’d spend ages under the hot water in the shower. But I kinda liked it; it seemed basic and good. I’d put up plastic sheeting to insulate and it worked remarkably well on sunny days, but couldn’t help in cloudy weather. Then I got a little wood stove and all of a sudden it felt like home. Ulf shows up for Christmas again, this time with the crystal candelabras for Mom. He really did try hard but didn’t get much appreciation really. In my notes it’s written “irritated with family’s indifference to Ulf” but now, looking back, I can see it wasn’t just him. All my friends/lovers have received this same indifference. Like it’s assumed from the onset they will just be temporary episodes in my life. Gays don’t get a lot of credit when we try to have a relationship and I’m hoping this will change, but it won’t in my family in my lifetime. One night Daddy summed it all up out loud and told me face to face that Ulf was never a part of the family and never would be. If Ulf had heard him say it I would have exploded in frustration and anger. As it was I internally flipped a switch: I no longer cared about the concept of “family” and felt forever outside the umbrella of my upbringing. That switch remained flipped. Daddy got sicker and I loved him more and we developed an enjoyment of each others company like I had never know, but inside I knew we were separate. Equals perhaps, but separate. It’s the same with Mom. I love and respect and honor, but I reserve my feelings for myself. I don’t mind telling any of them anything they want to know now, but their curiosity is bracketed. I like their company and I hope they like mine, but we’ll always be separated by perception. But isn’t everyone? Separated by perception is the same observation for Ulf and Roger and if it’s true for them, I’m betting it’s almost universally so. I’m in tune with so much of what is “out there” as expressed in song lyrics, books, movies, but when I get one on one with anyone I’ve never felt long term “union”, except for those first years with Ulf. I’ve never known anyone else who has either. I see people just needing company, some more than others. Most more than me. Ulf and I had that in common, he didn’t need company either. After 5 weeks here he headed on back and got work performing in Paris, his favorite city.

In February of 1980 an Australian mate from the show in Beirut visits and stays with me, except when he has to go to the bathroom. Somehow he just couldn’t adapt to my “facilities” and preferred the comforts of my parent’s home. I enjoyed family things and then I’d get disillusioned with them. I photographed some, practiced my music and drawing and language skills. The yard takes a lot of time. Actually it took a lot of time for 15 years before becoming the perfection it is now. I don’t know how long this parcel can continue as is into the future, but it will hurt me if I have to see it divided or developed. It is a park, a paradise, and a preserve. If you could live here but a week alone and walk around you’d agree with me as to how special it is. And then you could do the same for another 51 weeks and still be looking forward to the cycle to start again. It’s a trap as well. But a good one. As everything it will change too in time. I try not to be overly attached or concerned for it’s continuation, but it’s difficult not to care.

Ulf arrives again the last week of May. We start immediately to teach him to windsurf on the new windsurfer I just had bought weeks before. We get pretty good doing it over at Badin Lake, but at Nags Head I sit on the beach watching him struggle and drift further and further out in the ocean. We nearly lost it that day, but I swam out finally and managed to get it in. Then we packed it up and headed for Florida.
We left in a bad mood and pretty much stayed in one most of the trip. I blamed my mood on him and he his on me. Plus he had the mosquitoes too. They didn’t bother me as we’d try to sleep in the back of the station wagon. It was too hot to have the windows up which meant he was pretty miserable. Hey, I just could afford to get us there, not provide air-conditioning! I got irritated by his snobby attitude and the cigarette in his mouth, and all the guys oohing and ahhing at him while ignoring me when we walked the gay beach. Maybe we were both just wishing for more. Whatever it was, it was driving us apart. Sex wasn’t so great anymore; the spark just wasn’t there. And after a certain point there’s no use trying to talk about it, besides talk comes easy to me and was thought of as useless by him. Checkmate. In September when he goes back to Stockholm I figure it’s the end and summer having been so frustrating at times, I didn’t care.

This would have been the end of the European Love Story had it not been for my continued correspondence with Budd, the American choreographer from the Casino du Liban and Copenhagen’s After Dark. (Hope you read the letters and diaries from that period.) Anyway, Budd wrote and wanted to know if I would like to come to Italy to star in a show. WOULD I?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The contract for Italy arrived in early October 1980, and I rolled my motorcycle inside, closed the doors to my shack and flew to Milan. It was a cold gray rainy arrival, but undaunted I was ready for whatever. The theater was is Sassuolo about 20 minutes by car away from Modena, a town famous for its balsamic vinegars and proscuitto hams. The valleys nearby are rich with special clay which makes the ceramic tile industry foremost in the world. The small town had the highest per capita income of any city in Italy and a new swanky nightclub theater had been built by a consortium, counting on business entertainment expenses to make its profit. Ours was to be the inaugural show and they wanted lots of tits and ass and sex. This is what Budd did best and combined with the costume designs of Corrado Collabucci, one of Italy’s leading theatrical designers, it seemed we couldn’t miss. The usual rehearsal problems occurred, but nothing in excess. Everyone did their job well. Budd counted on me to help choreograph my own numbers and being somewhat pumped up on steroids I dazzled everyone with muscular lifts of my bony French partner. In the dance world French dancers don’t have the best rep. They tend to appear “lazy” on stage, dragging the tempo just a little and slurring steps, and they don’t always care about smiling. English, South African, Australian girls all sparkle. Scandinavian girls dazzle and Eastern European girls “sell it”. I’d rather partner almost anyone before a French girl, but you can’t fight fate. Lawrence knew I was gay but somehow determined that she would have me in bed and not just our bed scene on stage either. I tried being charming but ended up being hateful. During our numbers toward the end of the contract we were muttering profanities at each other, but strangely enough it added to the customers enjoyment, seeing the intensity they thought it passion when often it was hate. Then the steroids gave out on me mid contract and I was really struggling with some of the lifts. Lawrence thought I was just pretending like I was gonna drop her where in fact I came awfully close several times. If the contract had lasted one month more I couldn’t have made it. I was contracted at a fantastic salary and had envisioned a nice apartment, cooking my meals, maybe a local live-in lover, whatever. It wasn’t like that. The town didn’t cater to tourists at all. There was only one hotel and the room rates were outrageous. Half my salary went for rent. And food at the hotel cost a fortune, only the girls who were “sponsored” by local men could eat there. We didn’t have appliances in our rooms either, so it was pretty basic.

Nor was it “sunny Italy”: instead a continual gray heavy sky, cold rains and cold tiled bathrooms. And no local gay guys to be seen anywhere. I ended up placing an add in a gay magazine and got one call. We went to a room of a friend, because like almost all unmarried Italian men, Maurizo lived at home. One hour one afternoon was all the sex I had during the whole damn time I was in Sassuolo. But I met Denise. She had seen me in the show and when I went in her shop we just felt like old friends after only a few minutes. After that she was continually planning something for us to do. Car trips, skiing in the mountains, pizza parlors, discos, restaurants, shopping, you name it. Early on I told her I was gay and she said fine, but would I just do her one little favor and not tell any of her friends. That of course gave me the suspicion I was being used as a status symbol, but it wasn’t that base. She really liked me and knew that the locals had a real prejudice against openly gay men, so in some way she was trying to protect me. Still I wondered though, if she wasn’t showing off a little for her friends by dragging me along everywhere she went. We had a great time together. At the end of my contract I went skiing in the Alps for a couple of weeks and then planned to go back home, but she came with a cake to celebrate my birthday and her present was a three week vacation together in Mombassa, Kenya.

So after the snow we headed south to a tropical paradise. Our hotel was on the beach and the snorkeling was wonderful. We went on a safari, seeing a lot of animal shit so we knew there must be a lot of animals we just didn’t see many. Sure some elephants, zebras and a few lions and giraffes, but no more than in most zoos. Those massive herds were elsewhere, only their droppings left behind. To be truthful, I had more fun than poor Denise did. I kept telling her the sun was strong, but she lays there unmoved developing severe sunburn which keeps her in bed three days having developed an allergic reaction or something. No sooner does she over it but I come in to find her in bed with a bandage wrapped around her head. I couldn’t help but laugh when she explained to me in Italian that she was on the beach and ran into a tree. I must have misunderstood I’m thinking so she explains it again. She and a friend are walking along the shore looking down at shells and she runs straight into a palm tree blown over horizontal by a storm. She had practically knocked herself out, and still I couldn’t keep from laughing. She wasn’t amused at my sense of humor. When she asked me not to let anyone at the hotel know I was gay I thought she had gone too far. We had words, and were a little silent for awhile, but all in all it was a great trip.

I had called Ulf in Paris before we left Italy for Mombassa and told him “a friend” and I were going to Kenya. I wanted him to imagine me with a guy having fun. When afterwards I left Italy, it was on a train headed for Paris. Ulf had said he would meet me at the station, but there are five stations and he wasn’t at mine. I found his place though, and he arrived soon after. In spite of the time apart and my dark tan he was standoff-ish. The bond seemed broken beyond repair. When I went with him shopping for food I felt like we were just two tired faggots like I had seen other places other times. It wasn't a fun feeling at all. I wanted to touch him, but he didn’t want to be touched. His hair was long and his clothes sort of hippie. It was an Ulf I didn’t know very well, and he seemed intent on keeping it that way. He said he was seeing a guy whose cock was bigger than mine. Nice. So leaving Paris, city of his humongously cocked friend, I flew home, staying over (fucking) a few days in NYC. The new clothes from Italy, leather jackets, designer shirts and slacks, and latest ski equipment fit nicely in my shack.