The Gay Days of Boston

After graduating from High School in 1988, I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do with myself. Actually, I take that right back. I wanted to be either Sting, or a bass player in a heavy metal band like Slayer or Metallica. I just had no idea how anyone went about obtaining such a career, especially living in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Being in a high school cover band didn't exactly lend itself to grabbing a recording contract, and when it came to writing original music, we hadn't even tried. A possible lack of ambition may have played a role in our apathy, but more than that, we were entirely ignorant in the ways of writing unique material.
For reasons that escape me now, I knew I didn't want to go to college. At least, not immediately that fall. I had just escaped the rigid structure of authority and oppression known as "public education," and didn't want to turn right around to re-enter it. Many teens look at college as an escape into partying and carefree existence; having had such a shit time from 7th - 12th grade, I thought "further education" more enforced repression. The problem was, without college, what was I going to do with my time?
Comedian Doug Stanhope has a hilarious bit in his past that translates the "Scared Straight" drug intimidation program into a "enjoy life" seminar. I cannot do the joke justice, but the gist is: instead of using addicts to scare teens away from drugs, take teens to a factory. Scare them into living life by bearing them witness to a soul who has punched a time card for thirty years of existence. A bit cruel to the blue-collar crowd, yes, but effective. Many years before I was ever a comedian or had ever heard of Mr. Stanhope, I lived the joke. My parents, though not forceful, were firm: if I didn't want to go to college, I would have to get a job. Not a "summer job," such as the ones I had been busying myself with through high school, but an actual job. My mother looked over the open positions list in the J.C. Penny warehouse; I applied for one and was hired.
Back then, Penny's held hidden ownership of a home shopping network. People would watch TV and order away to their hearts desires, not realizing they were simply getting re-labeled items from the company catalog. I became a packager for this division. Every morning I'd rise somewhere around 5am, drive 30-45 minutes to Milwaukee, punch in, and receive a list of wares. I would walk the aisles of stock, pick what I could reach wait for those on forklifts to grab the upper items. Everything would be taken to my station where I would box, protect with Styrofoam peanuts, and seal and label the every purchase. The ready-to-ship article would be placed on a cart, and when the day was done all carts were pushed to the docks to be loaded on a truck and shipped off around the country. I believe I knew five minutes in to my first shift that this was not my idea of a fun future.
With every day came the same routine. Pick an order, pack an order, go on break, repeat. The monotony seemed destructive to the soul. At least to my soul, that is. There is a reason people get blind stinking drunk every Friday night, and trying to blank out the previous five days of their lives is usually it.
There were those around me who hated every moment of their existence while at work. Others treated the job as if nothing more than a paycheck, and there did exist a magical few who had the wonderfully sunny disposition that allowed them to enjoy their jobs. They performed the daily routine happily, and lifted my spirits when I was less than enthused with my lot in life. I befriended an upbeat forklift driver named Rick; he became my lifeline to inner peace amidst the lifeless drones and angry workers. We would talk Monty Python and other such comedic gems throughout the day, and his presence gave me focus. I had chosen this path; I might as well walk it in enjoyment.
One year in the warehouse was enough. I worked fall through Christmas, was laid off after the holiday, and was re-hired a few weeks later after I filed for unemployment, something done at my father's behest. According to him, it was another "life lesson," more "real-world" experience. In my mind, I was nineteen and laid off from a job I didn't want in the first place, so filing for unemployment felt like taking advantage of the system. I thought should just move on and find something to do with my life that actually interested me, so that's exactly what I did.
In the spring of 1989, I applied to and was accepted by the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Music still interested me, while regular college did not. Plus, working for a year gave me both a good foundation for the tuition and decent insight into the importance of focus. I was aware of several former classmates who had partied hard their first year away from home, and were thus removed from the college roster due to poor grades. Unlike some of my peers, my enlightenments came while earning a paycheck, not while paying tuition.
The only thing I remember about leaving for Boston is my mother crying. It comes to mind because I thought it so odd. I had no idea what "empty nest syndrome" was, and I was just leaving for school, not dying. As our home wasn't all that happy a place to be, I thought it a good thing to be getting out. Little did I know then that staying with my father was something my mother had done strictly for my sister and I. Fifty percent of her reason for being under his roof was now out the door.
I arrived at Berklee full of excitement and hope. Delusions of rock stardom shone in my eyes, and I believed that the institution held the answers to the music world I desperately longed to know. As with much expectation in life, the letdown came fast, and hard. I discovered the school was more a technical institute than anything else, one teaching proficiencies rather than creativity.
It's entirely unfair to sum up my educational experience with one story, but I'm going to do it anyway. I took a course, Songwriting 101, where students were taught structure. The idea was to learn how to write a song for any medium, be it jazz, pop, or a thirty-second commercial. I was unhappy from the start, believing the whole point behind music was to lose structure, not enforce it; if you were creating a song, you did so with what was inside you and if that had you coloring outside the lines of conformity, so be it. I cite the Red Hot Chili Peppers as an example: in his autobiography, Anthony Kedis states that when the band first started, they had no idea how to write songs. They wrote what they felt, and that was that. Later on, they learned about verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus pop construction, and began to use it. Personally, I find more originality and interest in anything and everything the band did from Freaky Styley through Blood Sugar Sex Magic than anything they've done since 1992. I didn't know why until I read Anthony's book, but that made it crystal clear. They went from outliers to the norm, which had them lose an intangible spark to my ears.
For the songwriting class, I wrote my pop-ditty and attempted my jazz standard. When it came to the "TV jingle," I was struck with inspiration. While I in no way remember the melody behind my masterpiece (meaning "not masterpiece"), I remember the title and a bit of the lyrics. It was either an ad for condoms or a PSA for safe sex and was called, "Baby on the Way." The line retained in my mind is, "You slipped between her thighs, but didn't condomize, and now there's a baby on the way!" This is why I'm no longer a musician.
While I smiled at my little musical silliness, my professor did not. He, in fact, lectured me on inappropriate behavior in the classroom, as if I were in junior high and not an expensive specialty college. During his rant, he asked me; "What if the dean had come in at that moment? What if he stopped by to audit my class and heard that filth?"
"Fuck if I know," I laughed inside my head, but did not say. I sat and listened to the beratement with confused irritation, and let it go. Sadly, the professor did not.
Later that month, a teacher I did like pulled me aside and said the songwriting professor had been complaining about me to other staff members, and those other staff members were taking note. I couldn't believe it. I was attending an institution that purported being about expression, yet was running into someone petty and close-minded right off the bat. One song, and I was already on my way to becoming a pariah. The experience tainted my time there, yet at the same time sums up the school: a drummer named Barrett had the near exact same experience in Arranging 101. The professor lowered Barrett's grade for arranging his chosen song in a manner "too odd to be commercial." What were they teaching, expression or conformity?
As stated, it is somewhat unfair to use that single story to explain my attitude towards the school, but it does encapsulate all my experiences into one. While Berklee seems, in retrospect, to be a very decent factory for churning out technicians, I would argue it still failed on every level when attempting to nurture creativity. I still remember how good I felt when, half way through my 3rd semester, I simply realized, "I don't like this. I don't have to attend next semester. I can stop here and re-assess my life." That decision saved me thousands upon thousands of dollars and taught me there is nothing wrong with recalibrating your goals, even if it isn't the most socially acceptable decision.
The classroom aside, dorm life I did enjoy. I met a bunch of wonderful people who should have become lifelong friends, but have somehow managed to fade into the ether that is memory. Berklee had two dormitories at the time, and thanks to a curse of the Gods I was placed in the satellite location, the all-male one. While the sausage-fest aspect was irritating, the camaraderie was enjoyable indeed.
The building was a dump, but was beautiful to me in all its cramped, one-room glory. Three students were supposed to share each small space, but my West Virginian roommate Roy and I had fortune smile on us our first semester; our scheduled third never arrived. This was indeed a lucky break, as the room was barely big enough for one person, much less two or three. I never met the man, but I owe Ruben Scottomeyer a debt of gratitude for skipping out on his obligation to college. And yes, that was his name. My sister found it so absurd she named her dog "Reuben" in honor of that missing man.
My room was on the 4th floor of the Hemenway Building, named so simply for the street it resided on. Over the course of the first few weeks, a group of students from several rooms on the South side of the dorm became known as the "4th-Floor-Posse." Silly? Absolutely. But in reflection, perfect. We were a tight band of idiots who bonded like young men are supposed to bond in such situations.
There was Estephano, an African-American Republican from Malibu. To be black and Republican was one thing, but to be a musician in a jazz school and have a conservative lean? He was absolutely an oddity. His roommate Rick was known for the entire year as "condom," as he showed up as if in a 1980s teen sex comedy, with one suitcase full of clothes, and one full of prophylactics. Down the hall was a trio of cohorts, Chris, J.J. and Barrett. Next to them was a room with two students I cannot remember by name, but hilariously recall in description. By the luck of all draws, somehow two boys who were Goth before it was even called Goth, ended up in the same room. They painted their windows black, wore all black, and pushed their beds together, that they be able to snuggle at night. One we called "Batman," because of the cape he wore everywhere, and it is to the testament of a school of the arts two students could express themselves openly like that. People laughed and poked fun a bit, but overall accepted them for who they were. I doubt a college with football jocks would have been so forgiving.
I have no idea how friendships are made, but Barrett and I seemed to figure out early on we were going to get along well together. J.J. was another matter. He had two things going against him: a temper problem and a girlfriend out of his league. She was attractive, he was a goof, and while they made decent high school sweethearts, she began stretching her college legs immediately upon separation. She went to school somewhere across the state, and whenever he would call her dorm her roommate would say she was out with another boy. This drove J.J. insane. To make matters worse, her name was Muffy, and we all ran riot with that ammunition. J.J. stood vigilant over her handle the best he could; no one was supposed to mock the name or even allude to the idea it might have a double meaning, one rooted in sexuality and the female anatomy. Like a famous Howard Stern sketch, sitting around on a lazy afternoon, several of us started tossing out anything we could relating to "muff," just to get on J.J.'s nerves.
"Man, it's cold outside," someone would say. "I need ear MUFFS to even go to class."
"True that," another would respond. "Hey, you want to go to the bakery and get some MUFFins later?"
J.J. began to pout and scolded us, making me roll my eyes. I grabbed one of the many pornographic magazines laying around, opened it to a random page and pointed at the lovely upside-down triangle the woman wore--this was in the days before the ubiquitous landing strip--and said, "You know what? THIS is muff! Deal with it!" I threw the magazine at J.J. and left the room. J.J. went ballistic. He had to be restrained to prevent him from chasing me. When he realized I was probably back in my room and out of reach, he destroyed his room, upending his desk and kicking the bathroom door in half. When all was finally calm again, Barrett, in a bit of inspired brilliance, got up, walked into the bathroom, closed the remaining half of the door and took a leak as if nothing had happened. Several years after leaving Berklee and Boston, I received an update from the college. They sent out a journal listing current and previous students, and what they were up to. J.J. and the company he worked for were listed, so I decided to check it out. After business hours, I called the company office and listened to the directory menu. J.J.'s name came up, and I pressed the proper digits to get his line. After his brief outgoing message and the ensuing beep, I yelled, "MUFFY-MUFFY MUFF-MUFF!!" into the phone for twenty seconds and hung up. I may not be coffee, but I bet that got him fired up the next morning.
As a collective, the posse would do silly and stupid things, such as going to the corner pizza shop at 2am wearing our bathrobes and pajamas. While all others were drunkenly stumbling in from the bars, we would dine away in the corner, wearing slippers and attracting odd stares. Other stupidities involved several of us stealing away to other floors and making off with the florescent lighting in their hallways. Leaving our fellow students in darkness amused us, and tossing the lights out the window made for nice little popping implosions when they landed in the enclosed courtyard between the neighboring buildings. One of my favorite bits of entertainment was to leave food in the garbage can in my room, and then find mice in it after returning from class. The little buggers could get in when they smelled food, but couldn't scramble their way back out after dining. I would take the garbage can down to the first floor and tip it at the base of a door, allowing the frightened mouse to scurry under the crack and into some unwitting person's room.
Naturally, being in an all-male dorm at a school where boys outnumbered girls two to one meant very few of us were getting any of that wild college sex we'd heard so much about. Pornography was the interest of the day, and as Al Gore hadn't yet invented the Internet, free, easy access to smut didn't exist. A single television in the windowless dorm basement was available for student use, and one of my fondest memories is of a late-night porn-fest that was attempted. The absolute specifics of the evening are long gone from my mind, but the most important moment remains. The community room was separated from the stairwell by a small hallway. The television inside the community room was old school, with a knob and dials and no remote control. It was attached to an enormous and clunky 1970's era VCR. One night, someone, and I've no idea who, bought and brought a sex tape to the community room. Word spread throughout the building quickly: get downstairs now, because the show is about to start. Fifty or sixty young men crowded themselves into the space and waited in anticipation. As we knew watching such content was against dorm rules, we placed two guards as lookouts: one stood at the base of the stairs, and I stood in the doorway to the community room. Should an authority figure arrive, signals would be given that the porn should be halted.
The event began with giggles and nervous energy; the video started amidst hoots and hollers; "I'm sorry, I ordered a pizza, but don't think I can afford it... Is there any other way I can pay you?" It was every delivery boy's fantasy played out by a beautiful woman.
Naturally, when an entire dorm disappears, those in charge take notice. Soon enough, a resident assistant came inspecting, and from the base of the stairs my fellow guard signaled. I reached an arm inside the room and snapped my fingers, then gestured wildly; "Nix the tape! Nix the tape!" What happened next is something I will always remember fondly.
A fast acting yet slow thinking student leapt to his feet.
He darted to the television.
He turned the television off.
He sat back down.
The resident assistant opened the door to the community room to find fifty (or sixty) kids sitting in a pitch-black room, staring at a blank television screen.
If there were any way to represent the word "awkward" in the dictionary using the feeling in that room at that second, perfection would be indeed achieved.
There was a moment of utter silence, and then in a moment of absolute pure genius, something so rarely achieved in life, a Canadian drummer named Pat Aldus firmly intoned, "So the bartender says..."
There was another second of silence, and then everyone just busted out laughing. Yes, the cleverest of covers, fifty (or sixty) young men had been sitting in a dark, windowless basement in complete silence, facing an extinguished television, waiting for a punchline. I believe we all got off with a stern warning on public decency, and I probably shouldn't have used the phrase "got off" right there. Good times.
Money was always tight, and it was the enterprising drummer named Barrett who came across an interesting advertisement designed to alleviate our suffering: we could donate sperm. The ad said they paid $35 a shot for something many of us were already shooting down shower drains and into tissue paper for free, and eyebrows raised in interest. The posse split somewhere down the middle on the issue; 50% said, "Fuck yeah!" where the other half played prudish and lied, saying, "I don't do that." Those of us willing to announce our private dalliances rolled our eyes; at that age, everyone masturbates, even Christians. They just cry during and pray afterward.
A group field trip was organized, and sperm bank contacted. Those interested could attend at the scheduled donation time, between seven and eight in the morning Monday through Friday. We were startled and wondered if an afternoon arrangement could be worked out. It could not. The bank wanted donors in and out of the building before it opened for clients. No fraternizing with the ladies was the rule of the day, because they would either (a) discover just what miscreants were fathering their children, or (b) take an attraction to a donor and decide to get the sperm the old fashioned way. Ok, maybe not (b) so much, but the fantasies of college students are not too far off from those of pizza delivery drivers.
The group was collectively unhappy. Not only were many of us oft-times getting to bed around seven in the morning, but above and beyond that we wondered, "Who could pleasure themselves that early?" Yes, Virginia, there exists "Morning Wood," but that's generally a piss-on and it creates a different kind of release, one generally found on fetishists websites. Worry ran high that no one would be able to perform at such an odd hour.
As money is still money, however, several of us decided to give it the old college try. Even if we failed flaccidly, we'd still have a laugh and a story to tell. A day was chosen, alarms were set, and bright and early one morn we subwayed our way across town.
There are letdowns in life, and there exists disappointment. I don't exactly remember what I imagined the place would be when gearing myself up for arrival, but a stale looking office building wasn't it. I had hoped for a bit of flair, or something somewhat seedy, but all was cold, sterile, and professional. We were checked in, handed a plastic cup, and shown to an examination room.
Sadly, the best they did pornography-wise was, no lie, the Sears catalog.
Again, I'm not sure exactly what my imagination led me to believe donating sperm would entail, but sitting in a doctor's office at seven in the morning attempting to attain orgasm to bra and panty shots wasn't it. In the least, I expected the playful shame of videotapes or magazines a little more along the hard-core line. To make matters worse, they didn't even provide lubrication, something a necessity unless you're interested in chaffing. Dry-jacking can be a painful experience indeed.
I struggled, and I wasn't alone. I was actually the second person from the group to enter the waiting room after finishing, and I had taken thirty minutes. These weren't thirty minutes of "for your pleasure, ladies" blue steel. They were thirty, uncomfortable, "I believe I've made some wrong choices in life" minutes with at best a half-staff of embarrassment. To the janitor's credit, however, a side note of irony, or fun, is that when finished shooting Mark Spitz's into the cup, I washed up using Ivory Liquid Hand Soap. Cute visual, I thought.
I wasn't alone in my difficulties; Barrett took forty-five long minutes to procreate into his cup, and others finished anywhere within the thirty to forty-five minute mark. The speediest member of our group was a tiny Cuban we nicknamed "Rocco." He was in and out in under two-minutes. Only our friend Peite proudly proclaimed he enjoyed the experience, as he was having so much fun he sat in the gynecological stirrups (yippie-kai-aye, motherfucker). Peite was also the only one who admitted to having masturbated the night before, "in preparation." Only upon arrival the first morning did they tell us we weren't supposed to ejaculate for forty-eight hours beforehand, that we not deplete our reserves. Oh, and yes, Peite is how his name is spelled.
Over the course of several weeks, people rotated in and out of the donating process; I believe only Barrett and I went every time. Many were one-and-done; some gave several valiant attempts. When donating sperm, you need an extraordinarily high count of swimmers, as many die in the storage process. Sadly, we were all only average, and no one was hired on after the trial run.
Peite, by the way, was a damned interesting and intelligent person; I'd liken him to Oliver Wendell Jones from Bloom County. Somewhere in his teen years, a government body, CIA or FBI, I forget which, confiscated Peite's computer. They said he had broken into too many forbidden sites to be allowed to keep it. While at Berklee, I personally watched him break into NASA, right from his dorm room. He called the phone company, and cracked their code. Using the phone company, he routed his call through several countries to hide his location, and then ultimately phoned up Houston. Once there, he rooted around NASA until he found a way in.
At one point, Peite looked into changing our grades to all A's, a la Matthew Broderick in Wargames, but that never came about. He set his computer up to call every single number within the local region, and make a note of computer lines that answered. He was going to then figure out which one was Berklee's server, and hack into it. Maybe he ultimately decided that changing a series of grades would be too public, but I watched for a while as his computer dialed number after number in our area code.
I haven't talked to him in several years, but last I heard he was working for Richard Clarke. Peite's inquisitive nature always got the best of him, and one day after Berklee the government came calling again. He'd been frisky with his computer, again, and they had an ultimatum: work for us, or go to jail. As jail is always a shitty option, he went to work for The Man. An old professor friend of mine told me to google his name, and then to click "images." Sure as shit, I found shots of him sitting next to people like Condi Rice and at the same table as Bill Clinton. I laughed heartily upon seeing such photos. Look them up if you're bored; his last name is Zatko.
Though our grades never got changed, Peite helped me save money, that much I remember. For several dollars worth of materials, he was able to put together a hand-held tone generator. When used at a pay phone, it tricked the system into thinking a quarter had been inserted. I would dial any long distance number I wanted to, and when the recorded voice said, "Please insert five dollars," I would just press the device twenty times. This worked every single time, up until the one mishap when an actual operator jumped on and asked for the money to be inserted. I hung up on that occasion.
Donating sperm wasn't the only way to make money back then; medical science existed, too. Barrett, ever the eagle eye, discovered another advertisement, one offering cash to take part in experimental treatments. The medical world is always coming up with new pills with which to cure society's ills, and though I believe such things should be tested on prisoners for our benefit, apparently that's unconstitutional and a violation of personal rights. Such was my financial gain in college, as the only way to find willing subjects was to have those in need sign waivers and offer payment. Barrett and I thought it would be a place full of other college students, but when we arrived we found only the homeless and other such downtrodden people milling around. Barrett bowed out immediately, leaving me to my own devices.
I had to go in two weekends in a row, each time arriving on Friday evening and staying in the facility for twenty-four hours solid. Bright and early Saturday morning, I was given pills. To this day, I'm not sure exactly what I took. The institution divided everyone into two groups: control and actual drug. You got either a placebo, or the medication, and you had no idea which.
The first weekend was fine, save for the blood draws and boredom. After taking the pills, I had to give blood samples four times within the first hour, then every half-hour after that for twelve hours. No technology existed to pop in one needle and then seal off the vein, they had to poke a new hole every single time. At the end of the day, I looked like a junkie, but felt fine. I figured I got lucky and received the placebo, or the drug was actually a decent thing to put on the market.
The second weekend, however, everything went wrong. It's all a haze to me now, but I remember Roy wondering how in the hell I got released in the condition I was in. At the end of the day I was shaking, stark-white pale, had a fever and the chills all at once and was incoherent. I signed myself out of the facility, got on a bus and near passed out during the ride. When I made it back to the dorm, I startled everyone who saw me and went straight to bed. I slept most of Sunday, waking up only in time for dinner. Fortunately, by then, whatever was in my system had departed. I wisely decided I didn't need money that badly, and next time I was broke the payday wouldn't come at the expense of my health.
Though we were all broke and living in a male dominated school, alliances with females eventually started occurring. The miscreant called "condom" lived up to his name not by successes, but attempts. One cold winter day, he played the "Oops, I accidentally left my jacket at your dorm and walked home a mile in the zero degree weather" game, that he might get a second date from a girl he offended with his advances. Far as I know, it didn't work and he needed to buy a new parka.
Living in the dormitory and attempting to hook up with co-eds was interesting, to say the least. Before the advent of cell phones and texting, placing a coat hanger on the door wasn't Hollywood invention, it was necessity. When it someone got lucky, there existed no way to get quick word to a roommate: "I've got a live one, don't come home." So on rare evenings, you'd find you weren't welcome in your own room. You'd have to amuse yourself until either 3AM (at best) or all night (at worst), finding either somewhere to wander or another floor to crash upon.
One such night, I found myself on the un-fun outside side of the door. Sexual escapades where happening within, and apparently I wasn't invited to watch, coach, or film, so I decided to go for a stroll. It was late, and I wasn't in much of a social mood, so I meandered down Mass Ave. towards the St. Charles River, and realized I had never walked along it.
The path along the St. Charles River, at least in my neck of the Berklee woods, was depressed in setting from the surrounding topography. You had to find a set of stairs from the street down to the river, and once on the path while between two sets of stairs, you were "trapped." Though it was nearing 2AM, the trail seemed well lit enough to be safe, so I made my way down and walked my Eastward way.
This would be my undoing.
Approaching a set of stairs, I saw a man carrying a bike from the street to the path. A quick mental calculation told me he would reach the base of the stairs at the exact moment I would. As he carried a bike, my hope was he would hop on and ride away. My fear was he would be a chatty-Cathy and strike up a conversation. Naturally, my baser instincts proved correct. I had an inner impulse tell me to head up the same stairs he was coming down, but I labeled it "paranoia." Word to the wise, never neglect your niggling little spidey-senses.
Here's the thing with being in an anti-social mood: you generally feel guilty about being prickish. The bike wielding man was actually very amiable, and we struck up an easy conversation. I began thinking, "I'm such a horrible person, not even wanting to say 'hello' to a fellow late-night wanderer." The man was, or claimed to be, a professor at either Harvard or M.I.T.--one of the big-brain universities--and was an easy enough conversationalist. So much so, that when we hit one of those issuances of speak called a lag in conversation, though it wasn't horribly awkward or uncomfortable, I, the person who initially was against such a back and forth flow of words in the first place, felt compelled to offer up a continuance.
"So..." I intoned, pointing at his bike, "you out cruising?"
"Actually," his reply began, "I was cruising you."
While physically I continued walking, my mind hit pause.
"Cruising... me?"
My cockeyed glance was enough to elicit a laugh, and an explanation.
"Oh, I figured out a while ago you aren't gay," he stated. "You're new to Boston, aren't you?"
Indeed I was.
"Well, after midnight, walking the river is a way for men to meet and hook up. Head off into the bushes, or someplace hidden."
"Funny," I muttered, furrowing my brow, "that's not mentioned in Fodor's guide to Boston."
While I didn't mind getting hit on, especially considering it was me treading on his turf, what bothered me was the insistency with which he continued. As I was stuck walking until the next stairwell, he had ample opportunity to turn his charm on, and therefore not respect my state of being.
"So," he began. "Ever try it?"
"I'm no Mikey," I replied.
"What?"
"Cereal reference, never mind."
"Ever considered it?"
"Ever consider that every time the right-wing Christian agenda goes after your rights, your group argues 'biological orientation?'"
He hemmed and hawed, but had no real response for my question.
I escaped further badgering at the next set of stairs, but I did not escape further attractions. Boston was a bit of a gay Mecca for me; I was approached often, and began to mockingly shake my fist at the Heavens that I was so attractive to men, while my luck with women was as sporadic at best.
In the dark ages before digital downloads and mp3's being used to sell music, Tower Records was a behemoth in the record industry. All was carried within its walls, from books and magazines, to music and movies. Of course, in 1990, "movies" meant "big, clunky VHS tapes." Not nifty Blu Ray or DVD discs. Being a poor college student, I'd often away into Tower Records to peruse the periodicals I couldn't afford to buy.
On one such visit, as I read my music magazine touting why the bass guitar I owned was inferior to the one displayed within its pages, a tiny fella approached me. His height fell somewhere between 5'4" and 5'6", he was balding and had a dark, Mediterranean complexion. When he spoke, the accent was thick, distinct French.
He asked if I was a student, followed it with, "Where," and became quite animated when I responded with my, "Berklee."
"Oh," he smiled, "You are musician! I am musician! I am student! We should jam together; play our instruments and create beautiful music for the world to listen to!"
While I'm not always a fan of my suspicious nature, his enthusiasm seemed a bit disingenuous to me. He continued to talk and began peppering me with questions. I answered him, but did so while continuing to read, never giving him my full attention and usually responding monosyllabically. He eventually asked for my phone number, and as I didn't have one, I told him to call the pay phone at the Hemenway dorm. It was listed in the student directory; if he were a student, he'd have access to it. If not, no loss to me.
Student or not, soon enough, the phone began ringing. My dorm room was back to back with the wall the phone was on, so several times a day someone would thump the plaster for my attention.
"Timmel! Phone!" would come muting through the wall.
"Male or female?" I'd ask, because there was always an outside chance it could be a girl, right? (Wrong)
"Male, French!"
"Fuck him!"
"Copy!"
After two days, no one even bothered to ask me if I wanted to take the calls. The phone would ring, the answerer would hear an accent and the phone would be replaced into its cradle. After two weeks, the French phone stopped ringing my way, and I was happy because of it.
I did finally date while at Berklee, and ended going out with an oboe player for several months. While we were together, I discovered I had happenchanced myself out of an interesting homoerotic encounter. We were in her room, playing a game of kissy-face or something along those lines, when a flyer came sliding under the door and captured our attention.
I picked it up and read:

SECURITY NOTICE
It has come to the school's attention, a man is posing as a Berklee student. He is either French or assumes a French accent when speaking and is of dark complexion. This man is not a student, and anyone coming in contact with him should notify the police.

I made a "well how about that" face, and passed the paper to my female companion. She read it and gasped.
"That's him!" she shouted.
"That's who?" I asked.
He was, she explained, the man her roommate's boyfriend met, and met at Tower Records no less. Her roommate's boyfriend was also a student at Berklee, and had taken up the Frenchman's offer of creating "beautiful music for the world to hear." He went to the man's apartment, shared some wine and cheese, and woke up on the floor with his pants around his ankles. The boyfriend stumbled away quickly, too incoherent to realize where he was or how to return police to the apartment later. He tried to make it very clear that he woke up before anything happened, and that the Frenchman was in the bathroom preparing himself, but the popular rumor became the man was in the bathroom washing up after the fact. My fiancée Lydia calls me overly cautious, but I'd say my suspicions of human nature have kept me safe my whole life.
At the end of the school year, we all made promises to keep in touch with one another, but life intervened like it always does. Of everyone, Barrett is the only person I still speak with regularly. When the next school year started, he, Peite and I were the only three of the posse to return to Berklee. Regarding my love live, today I laugh nostalgically at what happened, but at the time our demise wounded me. At the end of the school year, my oboe player and I decided to stay together romantically while apart physically over the summer; she was heading home to New Jersey, and I was staying in Boston. Naturally, her very first letter to me, landing in my mailbox within a week, was a "Dear John" notice. She didn't drop her bomb when departing, but didn't want to be bound to anyone while over the summer. Very confusing at the time, absolutely expected in retrospect.
The fourth floor did have a couple people who made a small splash in the music world. Abe Laboriel Jr. was already a phenomenal drummer when he entered the school, and several years after leaving Berklee I was watching Saturday Night Live when I spotted him playing for the musical guest, Seal. I dialed up Roy and within minutes my call waiting went off as Barrett called me. We were all watching and all amazed and proud. Several years after that, I saw Abe playing for Paul McCartney in Red Square, his famous Russian concert. Again, I was happy for my former dorm-mate.
Letters To Cleo was a near-hit wonder in the 1990s with the song "Here and Now," and I went to see them when they played a small Milwaukee club. The bass player recognized me, and we chatted after the show. My memory needed some jogging, but when he saw me the first words out of his mouth were, "Fourth floor, Hemenway building." I thought the connection nifty.
As said, I wasn't returning home. I had escaped my family and wanted nothing to do with going back. My isolation from them had grown so deep that the following semester, as I was in an apartment of my own and didn't have to worry about the dorm closing for break, I skipped Thanksgiving. In a move of pure selfishness, I also declined to return for my paternal grandmother's funeral, she who had cared for me so often during my childhood. She had wasted away in a hospice, and I had visited her until she no longer recognized me. By the time I was in college, she was no longer lucid. When my grandmother died, she was no longer the woman I knew, and I didn't want to be a part of the procession if it meant having to see my mother and father fake it for public eyes. I felt I had already given my goodbyes, and felt that was more important than putting on a show.
Barrett decided to stay the summer, and he also felt loss that year. The memory evokes odd emotions in me. We lived in an exceedingly small one-bedroom apartment. It was all we could afford, and after living in the dorm, having a living room was like owning a mansion. Neither of us had a box spring or full bed, so we each threw a mattress on the floor and figured that was good enough for government work. The room was so small we were near stepping on one another constantly, which is why what happened was so strange. One night, I went to bed, and Barrett was already asleep. The next morning, I woke up and his bed was empty. I didn't think anything of it figuring he either had to work, or was off farting around somewhere. Several hours later, the phone rang; Barrett was on the other end. He was at home. Home, home. New Jersey, home. His mother had died. He got the call in the middle of the night, packed a quick bag and jumped on an emergency red-eye flight. All without me waking up. I knew not what to say. To this day, the family has no idea what felled the mother Goodwin.
To pay the bills, Barrett and I each got a job working as security guards. Barrett patrolled a parking garage downtown and had to wear a full uniform. I was lucky; I did an overnight shift at a building that was supposed to be under construction, but had run out of funds and dressed casually. The builder's insurance provider didn't want anyone entering the structure, hurting themselves and filing a lawsuit, so they hired guards. All summer I held two jobs; I loaded trucks in the early evening at UPS, then skateboarded the two miles home, ate, and then went off to the empty building. When school started, I kept this schedule as long as I could, then eventually gave up UPS and held on to the security position. Working without supervision, I figured I could do homework and practice at the building. I was right, too, until the place decided to save money by shutting off the power. The unfinished office I was in, already cold but kept bearable by the single space heater, was now freezing and dark. Other guards simply sat in their car for their rotation, but I had no vehicle. I did two shifts in the pitch-black cold night, and then decided if they weren't going to respect me, I wouldn't respect the company. For the final few months before security was pulled entirely, I would show up at my scheduled time and replace the guard before me. I'd take the ledger, fill out all my rounds for the evening, then return home and go to bed. My alarm would go off an hour before the end of my shift, and I'd hike it back to the building to sign off and be replaced by the next worker. After masturbating, it was the easiest money I ever made.
When it came time to register for a fourth semester at Berklee, I took a pass and saved myself a lot of money and debt. With my free time, I explored the city. The Combat Zone is long gone from downtown Boston; when I lived there it was already on its dying days. Once a beacon of prostitution, violence and drug dealing, only a few smut shops remained during my tenure. Peite, Barrett and I would visit it when bored, and when we learned of porn stars passing through to sign autographs, I brought my bass down to be marked up. Barbra Dare was a delightfully warm person, and enjoyed the process, taking pictures with fans for free. Tori Wells was bitter and bored. Someone ahead of us in line asked to take a picture and was scolded severely enough to have us hide our cameras in shame. Jamie Summers was just off-putting in general; she wasn't even a name star, yet was acting like a diva. I didn't like her much.
Several years later, with me living in Milwaukee and Beverly Hills 90210 a huge hit, the cute blonde with a button nose named Jeanie Garth was scheduled to sign autographs at the local auto show. Because nothing screams "teen idol" like "auto show." My roommate at the time Jim and I treated 90210 as a home cooked version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. We'd watch and shout our own dialogue at the screen, laughing at the silly teen soap opera. But when we saw Jeanie was going to be in town, we knew we wanted to attend. Naturally, I brought my bass, and when I plopped it down for her to sign, she glowed.
"You really want me to sign this?" she asked.
"Sure do," I answered.
Then she noticed it had already been marked up.
"Who's are these?" she asked innocently of the signatures.
"Porn stars," I smiled.
Little did I know Jeanie was a hard-core Christian.
She frowned, signed my bass and shoved it aside without giving me a second look. The bass was stolen several years later; the apartment was broken into and much went missing, including, and it still bothers me to this day, my Keebler Rainbow cookies. I remember arriving home and seeing the back window wide open, the screen torn. Then I noticed a blank spot where our television used to be. Frustrated, I went to assuage my anger with a cookie, and they were gone, too.
Goddamn criminals.
Anyway, Barrett, Peite and I also went to the Combat Zone's rundown, old school movie theater that had devolved into a porn theater. The idea being, it'd be damn nifty to see an adult movie like the good old days of "porno chic," when X-rated movies made it to the big screen. The theater had been built in the heyday of Hollywood and was probably forty years old by the time we entered it. Though run down, you could catch a glimpse of what the place used to be like when new. A chandelier hung from the domed, ornamented ceiling, and artwork was painted onto the outer walls. I was of mixed mind while there; on the one hand, it was nice, in a strange way, to see it still in existence and not boarded up or torn down. On the other hand, it was a dilapidated mess showing pornography. Sadly, while it might have been a theater by name, no actual film stock was present. The screen was illuminated via video projection, meaning we were witnessing grainy, poor quality porn thirty feet tall and seventy feet wide. Though that was a disheartening, it was still neat watching a pimp in one corner send his prostitutes up and down the aisles. The women would occasionally stop to sit next to a mark, then either drop their head or gyrate a shoulder, depending on what he could afford. The other corner held a drug dealer offering wares. It was the first time I'd seen both businesses practiced so brazenly.
That we visited as a trio and sat together gave many of the regulars pause. They were loners, and this was supposed to be a place you went to by yourself and minded your own business. When a man sat down behind us and a loud "ziiiiip" emanated from his seat, we made our way out of the theater. It was probably his jacket, but we weren't about to take any chances.
Also on the smut side of life, I was lucky enough to road trip it down to New York and visit Times Square and 42nd Street before Rudy Giuliani and Disney made that a family fun place. Barrett, his friend Michael and I walked among the filth and smiled at the absurdity of it all. We entered a smaller shop that contained a live peep show and made our way to several respective personal cubicles.
The set up was as follows: the staging area was a half circled room pressed against a flat back wall. Small, closet-like cubicles surrounded it, with one wall lined against the arc of the stage. Against that wall was a small, mini-window blocked by a drop visor. You put your token in, and the visor rose, allowing you to look in and talk to the two girls on display. They were bored, sitting on a couch and waiting for patrons, that they might wiggle or do worse for tips. When one made her way to you, you negotiated; so much to touch a titty, so much to rub a butt... what you offered depended on how desperate and ugly you were.
Michael, for the record, was not ugly in the slightest. He was a tall, handsome black man, and had women swooning over him with regularity. From our respective vantage points, Barrett and I watched as he wooed the women on display. Using muscles that I would say were fairly impressive, Michael put each foot high up on each wall within his cubicle, then pushed his legs with enough outward force to brace himself where he could fit his dick through the viewing slot. Though you were only supposed to negotiate enough to caress, Michael started receiving oral sex, for free, while Barrett and I laughed our asses off. I wish I could end the story with a funny account of Michael running out of tokens and the visor coming down on his cock, but I cannot. The wise man loaded the machine up with all his money before ever attempting such a move.
That was it for my time in Boston. When spring rolled around a second time, I decided to move back to the state from whence I came. The big city was exceedingly expensive, and as I wasn't in school, staying just didn't make much sense. I didn't know what I was going to do next, but Dorothy was my name, and Wisconsin was my Kansas.