Gay Bashed, part 2 – Bashed

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I may have hitch hiked in my twenties, but my travels have taken on the comforts of an automobile and hotel rooms. Over the years I’ve crisscrossed many amazing places in this vast association of States, but the Alaskan Highway and a good dose of the Northern Lights remained. So I took off the month of March, 2002, and headed north. I was 56 years old, had a new Saturn and a trunk full of things to keep me warm.

Communities with hotels are few and far between in the far north country, especially before the summer travel season. On the 520 mile drive from Fort Nelson, British Columbia, to the Yukon boarder there was a herd of buffalo on the road. Although small, that herd far outnumbered the three vehicles I saw that day. So I was glad to pull into Watson Lake before dark. #2 Watson Lake

Barely over the Yukon border, Watson Lake is a lumber community with several hotels and an equal number of bars. Its claim to fame is the Sign Post Forest, a small roadside park crammed with sign posts supporting handwritten arrows with distances to about every habitation in the world.

Settled into a pleasant hotel and full of dinner, I walked across the large parking lot of a bar. It was early Friday evening so there were plenty of empty bar stools for bellying up. At the far end of the counter was a stud of a lumberjack, in his late 20s with strong arms and a quick smile and plenty of spunk to keep everyone laughing. I knew I’d kick myself all night if I didn’t get over there and be a jolly good fellow in return.

My hero of the timberlands, fresh from hauling logs, was drinking with his dad to get the weekend started. The beer flowed and the bullshit flew and everyone was glad to give me pointers on the roads and the attractions and their travel stories. But buying beer in a bar is pricey for an all night stint so this handsome young man and his dad went home to drink. I stayed and revved jolly up to party.

Hours later the handsome young man was back, sitting at a table with his dad since the stools were all taken. I was engaged in chat at the bar and stayed put until I needed to take a leak.

It was a tiny two-holer of a bathroom, the toilet and the urinal practically overlapping. I was just finishing up when who should stumble in?

Well, there are guys in the world who could have been cool and stuck around to check this guy out. But I’m too shy for that and I wouldn’t want to make a guy uncomfortable. So I zipped up and began heading for the door.

“Hey, hey — you’re back!” I acknowledged while rinsing my hands.

“Oh, yea. Just went home to drink some cheep beer. Had to come back and chase some women.”

“Hum. Well.” I made a decision. “I really love to suck dick.”

And that was that. I was headed out the door when I started to say it and out the door I went. The devil made me do it. I knew better.

I finished my beer and several more before deciding to check out another bar. I got up. Put on my scarf and coat and hat. Walked through the bar and out the door and half way across the parking lot. And there it happened. Some sounds behind me. Awareness I was being hit. I put up my arms to protect my head and began yelling, “Hey — Hey — Hey.” I knew I needed to stay on my feet. I kept walking. And it was over. I didn’t hear anyone behind me. I turned and the strong, young lumberjack was in the doorway of the building, “And don’t come back.”

I decided I’d probably had enough to drink and should just go to my room. The night clerk observed I was bleeding from my head. I said I didn’t know why the guy had hit me, but that wasn’t what I meant to say. What I meant to say was I didn’t know why the guy had blind sided me. I was disappointed in him for having hit a guy from behind.

But that was a lie, too. I knew he had physically blind sided me because I had verbally blind sided him.

Gay Bashed, part 1 – Cowardly Closet

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On the edge of a Western town in the ’50s, when time was not yet divided into school days, the game of Doctor captured my eager attention. The neighborhood girl and I seemed quite good doctors and our practice was always open. The neighborhood boy and I proved equally adept.

The neighbor boy’s grin and excitement remain vivid in my memory as he promised, pants around our ankles, “I’ll suck yours if you’ll suck mine.”

There is a memory of feeling and watching as he went first. And there is a stunning awareness—in high-definition and complete three-dimensional precision—of the moment I felt him in my mouth. There is the smooth texture, warmth, and light smell. There is the summer dryness and dust in the air. There is the light filtering through the blackberry bushes twisting through the logs of the shed we were in.

That night I discovered masturbation and, although years from ejaculation, I experience my first climax. Was I four? Five? Three?

We played until he started school a year ahead of me. He became the “big boy” and seemed filled with interests other than private playrooms. Little by little I convinced myself he wouldn’t want to play right now and before long the ability to ask was driven behind a wall of reasons to put it off.

The habit I started with him became my habit with all the guys. Not that I didn’t try, but at that early age interest in sex didn’t seem prevalent in the other kids and I took disinterest to be rejection.

Soon the more I wanted someone the more impossible it was for me to bring up the subject. Words like queer and ferry began entering sexual talk and they were not used in fun ways. I found myself afraid of the guys I lusted for the most. Afraid of being beat up. Of being bashed. Inside I was running frightened, a coward digging my hole, as addicted to talking myself into rejection as any heroin user watching himself cook up another pipe.

Making cowardly decisions is not something one walks away from. I carried it with me the day I graduated from high school and moved to Los Angeles to become a movie star. With a bag of clothes and a hundred dollars, I stayed at the downtown Y before moving to a seedy neighborhood and walking several miles to a job on Sunset Boulevard. Walking in my neighborhood during the mid-60s I didn’t think much about the sound of gunshots when the LA riots broke out. There were three years hitchhiking around the country, sleeping under bridges and taking rides from anyone who stopped. There were times in bars where it was so dark my only sense was feel and there were times walking the streets of lower Manhattan at four in the morning. Yet always I was a coward. Avoiding the crowd if I could. #1 hwy to Watson Lake

Why didn’t I talk with or proposition that man I was so attracted to? Always a coward. Always letting a fear of being bashed get in the way of my freedom.

My fear was to come true. Fate held my rodeo on a bar parking lot — Yukon Territory, Canada.

One Pissed Off Little Boy

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I swear I have always put the tools away when I finish a job. My sister Vicky, two years my senior, definitely remembers my not putting away a hammer. tools

We were raised in a garage. A full half of our home was dedicated to three large garage doors that served my parent’s tractor and trailer rental business. We kids could use any tool in the garage except the power tools, but there was one rule: we had to put the tools back where they belonged.

On the other end of the house from the shop we had a long patch of cement, actually covering two big septic tanks as well as some extra ground. Over this cement were clotheslines. From the end of the clotheslines, around the house and to the last of the garage doors, was more than half a city block. clotheslines

It seems I had some important project to hammer out on the far end of the clotheslines. When I was through I dropped the hammer on the ground and went about my business. By the time my dad noticed the hammer was missing and figured out where it was and why it was there it was late in the evening, an inch of show had fallen, and I was getting ready for bed. Or perhaps Dad waited, just for the dramatic effect.

Whether bad timing or timed for effect, I found myself being pulled out of a nice warm shower, dripping wet, and planted naked out the back door of the house, my feet in snow. I was told the garage door was open and I could get back in when the hammer was where it belonged.

Vicky assures me I was the most pissed off wet little naked boy, running and screaming in the snow, that you have ever seen.

along fence

Fifth Stomp

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FIFTH STOMPdance floor

Our last in this series of tributes to dance happened about 2010. I was enjoying a patio in Boise’s Hyde Park. On the grass median between the sidewalk and the street a fun trio was playing western swing.

Well. Don’t get me near a slide guitar. I couldn’t help but get on the sidewalk and start to dance.

As my fellow patio diners looked on with expressions of indulgence, jealousy, or what a jackass, there were five high school girls kitty-corner from the patio. The second they saw me dance they spontaneously shrieked with enthusiasm, ran across the road, and joined in.

They were filled with the glee to dance and it was a joy to see.

It was not until they were on the sidewalk, dancing, that any of them hesitated, aware others were watching. So I distracted them with a twirl or two and all was well.

Here’s to the celebration of being we call dancing, my friends! (Clink!) I’ll see you on the floor.

Fourth Stomp

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FOURTH STOMP

Dean Hitch hikingIn December of 1968 I set off hitchhiking around the country. First stop, New York City.

New York City was my first stop thanks to my friend Jim Housley. He had moved Back East (as we Westerners say) and offered a place to crash outside of Princeton, New Jersey. Within days we were in The City (yes, it deserves the capitals), checking out the possibilities.

By dusk we were at the top of a flight of stairs in lower Manhattan knocking on a black door. At eye level a square panel slid to the side. After Jim was recognized and I was eyeballed the black door was opened. This was the winter before the Stonewall riot and gay bars in New York were still under siege.

Under siege, perhaps, but that wasn’t stopping anyone. The place was packed, the dance floor was large, the music was loud and the beers and smokes were expensive.

I egged Jim onto the dance floor. He settled into a repetitive, quiet, still, eyes-closed throb of a dance, knees bending and arms keeping rhythm with hands in simple bobs from navel to knees. I concentrated on him, my arms in arcs, dancing in and away, circling, in and away, twirling, ever focused on his quiet throb.

During the dance it became easier to move without having to find space to move. My long arms opened up to loops, arcing up away from him and swooping down toward him, the energy brought to focus on his quiet throbs.

As the music approached its final chord I focused on our surroundings. There was space all around us. No one else was dancing. They were all watching.

Later that summer I was in The City with acquaintances and ended up in another dance dive. I met several guys and we enjoyed hitting the floor. For some reason I went on a finger rapping bender. Every song, when we were holding one another, I was thumping my fingers on their backs, like playing the piano. It seemed so cleaver.

A few days later I was reading one of the underground newspapers that were cropping up at the time. There was a fun article about what to expect from dance partners based on the partner’s name. There was Bill and Joe and Hank and a long list of others, including Dean.

And what to expect when dancing with a Dean? According to one New York City newspaper, Deans drum their fingers on you.

How did The City DO that ? ? ? ? !

Third Stomp

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THIRD STOMP

NOTE: this is the third in a series of stories. If you have not read the second of these stories I strongly recommend you do before reading this one:  Second Stomp

Also, if anyone has a photo of the Big Pine sign, I’d sure like a copy!

BigPine photo

My most fond memory of dancing happened in the mid-1970s, after I’d returned to Boise from my roaming days and when I was a student at Boise State. It happened at the Big Pine Tavern, now the Dutch Goose, near 36th and State in Boise. It is within blocks of where I grew up.

Two friends and I, Dorothy Burrows and Bev Fickle, spent many nights at dance haunts all over Boise. I was also a member of new theater troupe, Theatre in a Trunk, organized by Randy Krawl. Randy’s parents and he were a dance band with a weekly gig rocking out the Big Pine, so Dorothy, Bev and I went to check it out.

The Big Pine lived up to its name—a huge room, the front third dedicated to a bar and pool tables and one COLOR TV for when a game was on one of the four channels we had back then. The back two-thirds of the bar was mostly dance floor, with tables stuffed around the sides and a small stage at the far end. As was the custom, the place reeked of stale smoke and beer but soon the sweat from overcrowded dancers canceled that out.

The Krawl family band played the classics, leaning toward western and occasionally rocking the floor with a fast rock tune played to keep the “kids” happy.

The floor was always packed and behaved like old-fashioned dance floors did, where everyone danced in a huge circle, two steps forward, one back, creating a gyre slowly moving counter clockwise if viewed from above. Fast or slow, swinging or holding tight, everyone kept pace with everyone else as the floor rotated to the music.

And the floor was filled with every age. Eighty year olds were dancing with their sweethearts, possibly from high school. Parents danced and teenagers danced. It was not unusual for an oldster to mention, “You sure can keep up with that,” as we kids were returning from the nightly rendition of Wipe Out. Nor was it unusual for we kids to tell the oldsters how smooth and fine they looked as they returned from a song we had heard back when mom and dad were watching Lawrence Welk. But for the most part we were all dancing to all the tunes. It was a family of humans sharing our common bond.

It was, indeed, a stomp, just as I had remembered the dances from my childhood. And it happened every weekend. Dorothy and Bev and I became regulars and we began bringing friends.

One of those crowded Big Pine nights our table had grown to seven or eight and I was making sure all the ladies had their turns on the floor, including a newcomer who had been talked into joining us by friends of friends.

She was a lovely dancer, catching every dip and feeling free to let me know what her feet were in the mood for. By the third dance we were sliding through every hole between dancers, finding our own room for moves large and small. Like silk in the breeze, we responded to every tweaked hip and flipped foot and dipped shoulder. There was no leading and no following. The music filled us both and we both responded exactly the same way. I remembered the Stanley Stomp from my childhood. It was deja vu all over again.

And, yea, we talked. She was in town, studying. She was moving back to where she’d come from, back to eastern Idaho. We danced and I thought about it. And I felt it.

The next time we were on the floor I put my arm across her back, holding her beside me as we strolled forward to the beat of an easy Western twang.

I said, “You know, when I was in the sixth grade my folks took us to the Stanley Stomp.”

For the first time I felt her step faultier. I swung her into myself, left hand raised, swaying in the classic posture.

“I asked a little girl to dance and I’ve never danced with anyone like that since. She was from some place that could have been the other side of the moon for all I knew, although she did her best to tell me where Rexburg was.”

Everyone else had to dance by. She couldn’t move and I didn’t want to.

Then, simultaneously, our feet caught a beat and, once again, we danced the night away.

Second Stomp

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For the story of my first stomp (in Silver City, Idaho)  see:   FIRST STOMP

SECOND STOMP

My second stomp in Idaho’s wilderness was in Stanley.camping 1958

It must have been 1958, when I was in the sixth grade. We were camping at Redfish Lake, hiking the trails over the Sawtooth Mountains, when the good citizens of Stanley decided a community dance would be just the ticket to attract business and a chance to get together outside of the several bars in town—not that I think the second reason had much to do with it. It was the first official Stanley Stomp I had heard about and, as I remember Mom and Dad talking, it may have been the first ever.

Stanley Stomp. I still like the way the name rolls about in the mind.

It was a big community hall and filled with revelers. Mom pointed out a little girl sitting with her family across the dance floor and encouraged me to go ask her to dance. But I wanted to dance with Mom and she indulged me one or two before all but booting me over to the pretty girl looking for something to do. I’d had one experience asking a girl to dance at the Silver City stomp, so had a bit of confidence. The pretty girl said yes, she’d dance with me.both Stanleys

We started picking our way, two steps forward and one back, around the edge of all the big folks on the floor.

It was funny, dancing with her. Every time I as much as tweaked a hip or flipped a foot or dipped a shoulder the least bit of an inch, she was right there doing the same. When she’d even get her foot started on a twirl I was swinging into her movement. We experimented more and more and got bolder and bolder in our steps. Every time she was not even a second behind my moves and I responded instantly to hers.

It was heaven. The music filled us both and we both responded exactly the same way. Before the first dance was over, I was hooked.

And, yea, we talked. She was from some place named Rexberg and, try as she may to explain where that was, it sounded like the other side of the moon. Not that I cared. We danced every dance and for all I know the only reason Mom and Dad stayed so late was because I was dancing the night away.

First Stomp

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The first time I experienced big people whooping it up was at the Idaho Cattlemen’s Association convention in Silver City. It was 1956 and I was enjoying the summer between the fourth and fifth grades.

We spent Saturday checking out the relics and sharing the town with the cattlemen and every other tourist who had come to check out the big party—although I was too young to know a big party was in store. As evening approached mom cooked dinner over the campfire and after the dishes were dried we headed to the big Masonic Hall, an ancient wooden structure precariously bridging Jordan Creek.

Other than the girls assigned to me in Lowell Grade School dance classes in Boise, I had never cut a rug with anyone except my mom, so I pestered her for dances until nearly the last song. She finally convinced me to go ask a little girl sitting three tables down. Wow! I found out girls say yes, they would like to dance! She and I enjoyed a few dances, trying to keep out from under the cowboy’s flailing boots.

And man, did those cattlemen love to dance! The old building shook and bounced and trembled but somehow managed to keep from breaking right in two and falling into the creek. But then, that building has seen many a raucous time and still does today for all I know.

On the way back to camp we passed a drunken cowboy just as he pointed out a truck and confidently impressed his buddy with his spelling talents: “Jeep — J-E-P-P.” Dad moved between we and the revelers.

There was whooping it up in the trembling Masonic Hall and more whoops on the street, but they were tame compared to our arrival the night before, all thanks to Flip.

Flip was a young, frisky, beagle-lab mix of a pound rescue. He knew that once we were on dirt roads he could get out and run beside the car. By the time we were a half mile on the dirt road to Silver city he was yowling and whining and barking and bouncing all over the car, beside himself with anticipation. Soon he was out, running full tilt as dad drove just slow enough so he could stay in front of us. It was downright doggy delight. Then Flip’s first jackrabbit darted across the road. Flip cut in front of the car and was gone into the desert.

We called and honked and yelled. It was hours before Flip was back in sight, much less back in the car.

We had planned on setting up camp with plenty of sunlight but our arrival at the campground was after dark and all the good people had nestled their heads down for a good night’s sleep. There were six of us—two adults, three kids, and one excited dog—with a big wall-sided tent to put up and pots and pans to rattle around fixing some grub. It was all done in headlights, flashlights, and stumbling around in the dark.

About the time the commotion settled down Flip returned from his exploring, whimpering and rubbing his nose. Dad’s flashlight revealed a snout full of porcupine quills.

Dad got the pliers and Mom did her best to hold him still, but Flip was having nothing to do with those quills being pulled. We kids cried and yelled, then screamed, about hurting poor Flip. Mom and Dad were trying to keep their voices down but nerves were on edge. Finally Dad got a noose around Flip’s nose and Flip immediately gave up.

The pliers pulled the skin around his mouth to the ripping point. Just when his lips were ready to split from his skull the quill would let go. One by one the task went on until the last quill released. Then Dad found more quills on the inside of Flip’s lips and in his tongue and gums, and he pulled those as well.

We got to bed by three in the morning, wondering how we’d be able to feed Flip through his swollen mouth. But come morning, Flip was poking his nose in our faces, eager to have us up, chipper as a sparrow and without a sign of ever having been riddled with the effects of arguing with barbed quills.

Our fellow campers remembered our arrival much longer than it took Flip to recover. Even so, in all our subsequent outdoor adventures he never again argued with a porcupine.

My dad Merrill, sister Nyla, myself and sister Vicky
Silver City, 1956

DCP_2251 copy

Masonic Hall, Silver City, Idaho
October 9, 2006