There may have been gay kids in the group. Hell, there must have been, but no one I knew thought about it, and whomever they were kept it pretty quiet. No one came out in High School in the mid 70’s.
I graduated High School a year early, pretty disenchanted with that whole education thing, and started working immediately. Back then a teenager could take his pick of crappy jobs. I had a few. McDonalds was the first. Got fired. Then I got a job pumping gas, which seemed like it would be lucrative, but I didn’t really like getting my hands dirty, and the Oil Embargo came along and I got tossed. Shortly thereafter I found a job selling shoes and after a couple of years of 70 hour weeks, leavened with aimless consumption of alcohol and not insignificant quantities of illicit pharmaceuticals, I was able to wangle a passage to New York. I have been a desk jockey of one sort or another ever since.
In New York, everything changed. I literally wore a straw
hat off the plane, but lost that quickly as I learned how critical it was to
try to avoid drawing attention to yourself as you traversed the streets of the
city. My first stop in New York was the majestic Woolworth building, where I worked
in a pretty large office with several hundred staff. There everyone knew where
they were on the ladder, but the people I knew, or rather the people I met and
hung around with, were mostly in the same spot- entry level office workers. It
was not that integrated, certainly not by todays’ standards, but pretty much
all the races were in representation at some level, and there were people from
all over the place with accents foreign to anything I had heard. Joe,
the stout, big hearted Rangers fan from Brooklyn, was exotic to my eyes. It was hard to
stand out though, because everyone stood out or was different in some way.
Somehow Eddie found a way though. Eddie stood out. He was proudly out in 1978, barely a
decade after Stonewall. He was fit as hell, and in his none too subtle way he made
fun of almost everyone who wasn’t. At office parties he often spun the records,
or influenced heavily whoever did. Nightlife music in New York was disco back then.
It was the common music of gays, blacks, Latinos, and every white kid
everywhere—especially in cities, and especially in New York City-- who followed
street life and street fashion. Hip Hop was just being born in the Bronx, and
was not widely followed or known. When Eddie was around, one did not hear Sweet
Home Alabama, but he could wind it up for I Will Survive. I can still see him shakin’.
The girls loved him and the guys, well, they responded to him in many different
ways. He made fun of me. I remember once in the bank, he motioned at me flamboyantly
from across the line. It seemed like sort of a come on, but it was really just
a ribbing. Eddie knew I wasn’t there, but I think that made embarrassing me
even more fun for him. He took his license to torture me, and that he did. Eddie,
who had boundless spirit, could be relentless once he knew you. For out and
proud people in the gay community in those days, New York was a mecca for the endless
party. But then Eddie got sick. No one knew what it was called. It just seemed like
sort of a flu or pneumonia. He withered away before our eyes, and then he was gone.
I remember you, Eddie. Somewhere I hope
you’re still dancing.
The years went by quickly. I loved the urban milieu and dove
in again and again. I felt often like I had missed a lot growing up in Illinois
and was determined to catch up. I moved to Hoboken, where my brother joined me.
It was a lot more boho then (and affordable). My brother and I hung out, a lot,
in a bar named Maxwell’s. They had bands every weekend, and the good times rolled.
We met Sean there, a professor at Farleigh Dickinson, who was Irish, smart, progressive,
funny, and gay. I think he tried to turn both my brother and I. At least I know
he encouraged me to consider alternatives. He was a blast. Through Sean and
others we met I began to attain a comfort level that would have better prepared
me for Eddie.
We lived on Washington Street there in Hoboken. Our landlord
Joey, rented us his beautiful duplex. The rent was manageable
and the place was way too nice for my brother, our roommate and I. It was painted
bright yellow with high ceilings and white shutters and a tar beach out back.
We played the music loud annoyed our downstairs neighbors and I think mostly
amused the lady directly below us who owned the beauty parlor. Joey was an
interior decorator, and left some of his personal choices (the place was his
abode before he rented it to us). What I remember most is the elegant slender
lladro piece, a boy or young man reading a book, totally appropriate for Joey’s
home, but a bit incongruous for the three of us. By the time Joey passed, we knew what it was
called. Joey died of AIDS, a few years after we moved to Washington Street. Later I moved to Atlanta, though I would eventually come back to Hoboken. My best friend met and married a real Greenwich Village girl, who seemed to know someone on every narrow street down there. She worked at the famous Whitehorse Tavern and knew or seemed to know the best place to get pizza (Arturo’s) , the best deli, best bars, butchers and dry cleaners. And of course she knew where to send you to get your hair cut with style. So I often went to see Joey during my many trips back to the city from Atlanta, where I was dutifully given the MacGiver. It wasn’t his fault I swear. I wanted it, sort of the fashion in the mid-80’s. He often suggested something else, but I was so insecure of myself even into my 30's, I still went with what I knew. That Joey too dies of AIDS, though I did not see the demise and only heard later of it. He was a gentle soul with a small nurturing space in the Village. You did not go there for the shampoo and cut. You went for the ambience and to be around his sweetness. I miss you, Joey.
As I said I did move back to Hoboken. I moved with my first wife before we were married into a bigger building on 11th Street with dozens of apartments . We had a dog then, Dexter, though we really ought not to have. The dog was hyper as hell and miserable. My brother would eventually rescue us and the dog. Dexter relocated to the more suburban Bayonne. Before Dexter moved he helped us meet the gay couple at the end of the hall. They also had a dog. I do not recall both names, but I know that of the two one died, and his name was Joey. I remember it because of my personal history of young Joeys lost to AIDS. Honestly the other fellow was much nicer though I am not particularly friendly and so not one to talk. But Joey was sweet to our Dexter, clearly a dog lover himself. When you have a dog, particularly a hyper one, live in close quarters, and then see that the dog is met with kindness and patience you tend to hold a little warmth for whoever smiles or pets the beast. That was Joey. His exit was excruciating and painful for both of the men down the hall and anyone who saw him deteriorating. By the time he had passed, ignorance was no longer an excuse for political inaction.
But as we know the president at the time went almost his entire
presidency without ever uttering HIV or AIDS. Larry Kramer and others in ACTUP
and other organizations forced the issue onto the national agenda through a
series of inconvenient, confrontational and wholly necessary actions. Kramer was
one of the founders of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, to which I have made an annual
donation for almost two decades. Sometimes
I write the name Joey in the remarks.
So long, friends. I miss you all, especially you Eddie. I
wish that I knew what I know now when I met you, but then you wouldn’t have had
so much fun. 
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