AIDS 1 - Being a Junior. Living Two Lives.

We moved to New Jersey for the beginning of my junior year of high school. I was transitioning from Cranbook, a private school with a exquisite 600 acre campus designed by Eliel Saarinen that is largely the birthplace of mid-century modernism among other things, to Morristown High School, a large public high school with 3 mish-mosh institutional buildings put together. Morristown had a very diverse student body, as opposed to Cranbrook where at the time diversity was like a few spare sprinkles on a white frosted cupcake. There were no bells at Cranbrook. Now, I had buzzers, guards, and an Attendance Czar who sent computer generated letters to your parents about your "illegal absence" if you missed a class. We had cubby holes at Cranbrook (which really needed to be changed as I had things stolen from me) but now I had a locker with random locker inspections, sometimes with the Morristown PD. ESL was something I had never heard of before, and teen pregnancy was something you saw on TV and I thought was in small hick towns in the South and ghettos in major cities. But I was in Mo-town now. It was a formidable transition.

Unfortunately,  the closing on the house my parents selected was not completed by the beginning of the school year, so I spent the first month or so of what was already a lot of change with learning to commute. For a short period, I stayed with the Edwards family in Basking Ridge. I had met them the summer prior in Delaware. They were amazingly welcoming. Their oldest son and I became rather close that summer, thus the invitation. I remember we went into Manhattan in the early fall and I had my Dad's Amex card. I called and he allowed us to buy tickets for the Tears for Fears concert later in the winter at Radio City Music Hall. My every memory of Radio City is special, as I think they are meant to be. We also had been drinking black brandy all day, something I thought was a good idea based on experiences in Quebec (keep following blog) and post the concert decided to stop at the then new(er?) Parker Meridien Hotel. I went to the restroom. This guy came in and was quite drunk. He was probably 20+ years older than me, making him still younger than me now. I was sitting on a toilet in a stall. He came into my stall with the intent of a sexual advance and ended up throwing up on me, like all over me.  I had the police called on him by the hotel. They did so reluctantly and only after I made quite a public spectacle to draw attention to my despair. The police filed a report. They gave me his information, including his home address. But, that was it. I did nothing with it. What I don't recall is whether I used my fake ID. We were probably there to drink, so this would be one issue implicating us. However, it also implicates the hotel. But, in either event, the guy accosted me, a minor, in a public restroom, never mind at what was then one of the newest, swankiest hotels in New York City. I imagine neither the NYPD nor the hotel wanted to deal with criminal charges of gay sex advances in the men's room so it was shooed out the door, as we were, with the suggestion I never return again.

After a week or so in Basking Ridge, commuting about 20-30 minutes on a 2 lane road with morning traffic for high school, I began staying in Manhattan at my Dad's corporate apartment on the Upper East Side. The idea of staying in the city was awesome, but it was anything but practical. The toll then was only $3.00, but it was $3.00 each day plus some 75 miles of driving and parking. On a good day, it took me 1 hour and 15 minutes, most often 90 minutes to even 2 hours driving; never mind time to get to the parking lot, get the car, etc. There were these two 'washed up hookers' that were homeless and at our corner of 79th and 2nd Avenue and I would bring them coffee and a doughnut each morning before leaving for Morristown. That is, until one was having a bad day and threw the coffee back at me, causing me to be burned, go back and change my clothes and be late for school (and we got one of those damn letters even though my Father called). I was very disappointed and also angry. I told our doorman what happened as he was inquiring about my coffee stained clothing and I never saw the women again. Bachelor living with my Dad, sleeping on a couch in the one bedroom apartment, lasted about 10 days or so.

I spent the remaining time, which went on well into October, with Nana in Sparta. I cut my driving distance from 75 miles a day to around 50 miles and there were no tolls, but the drive time was just as bad. In some ways, it was worse as there was one route, no options and it was all downhill towards Morristown and up towards Sparta part of the route. Nana and I were always close so staying with her wasn't all that bad other than it was somewhat boring and I was an irate teenager being forced into adulthood overnight.

It is no wonder I was diagnosed with colitis by the end of October.

4 Deborah Drive, Morris Township, NJ

My cousin Scott and I were very close friends growing up. We originally met when he came to Michigan to visit his Aunt, Uncle and other family and I still lived there. We are "distant" cousins, second cousins once removed or something like that, but he and his family became and remain some of my closest family today. Scott lived in Virginia, near DC, at the time. I went down to visit during what was likely my spring break.

During that visit, I made a run through Dupont Circle, the epicenter of the gay community of DC at that time and one of the epicenters certainly of the US, and arguably the world. While I was there, they handed out this flier about signs of AIDS. It included things like:

• Swollen glands (I often had swollen glands back east dependent on allergies and excessive heat and I did when I had mononucleosis). 
• Skin rash (I get a rash under my arms when I sweat too much; that started in high school)
• Swollen Tonsils (I didn't know. Aren't they like everything else swollen in your neck?)
• Diarrhea lasting more than a week (OK, my family was a mess and I had all sorts of gastro problems, some genetic, some anxiety. My first colonoscopy was that year. Enough said.)
• Memory loss, depression, neurological loss. (There were many reasons I wasn't always happy.  Being a teenager, my family, being bullied being the biggest, and now this colored photocopy was surmising my death at 16.)
• Pneumonia (Doctor must have had it wrong when I had the flu)
• Extreme or unexplained tiredness (Often tired. Couldn't have anything to do with sleeping less than 6 hours a night on average, had school and usually a job plus inordinate chores at home - see earlier post "Preparation 1"). 
• Rapid weight loss (well, I never weighed anything really at this point, but I had lost about 5 pounds lately, so...)

I went home convinced I was going to die. I couldn't run home to my parents. I wasn't really ready to make such a proclamation to Scott. I had nobody to tell.

One might assume why worry since I was a junior in high school? But, I was not the everyday 16 year old. My first trip to my Father's office in Manhattan, I looked up the East Side Club, a bathhouse I had seen ads for in porn magazines, and ventured off to it. It was there I met Thunder, who I think was a manager. I got to know him over time. I also came to find out he was dying of AIDS; the first of many I would meet and know about, never mind countless numbers I do not, starting as a teenager.

I do remember talking to a therapist at Morristown Memorial. She was a smart psychology student, if I recall, from Columbia University, herself from NYC, working out in Morristown. She read into me. I imagine in her head she thought "oh shit, I have a closeted young gay boy fucking around in NYC and what if/when" (that play came out decades later). She helped me, and I don't even know how I came into her path, with some doctors, without my parents, knowing I was fine without us ever really mentioning that dreaded word of the late 80's "AIDS"  nor do I ever recall acknowledging words like "gay." This was the mid 80's and Morris County was the most conservative county in New Jersey. While New Jersey conservative, especially then, was more accepting than perhaps in Mississippi, things "gay" were very slow to be gaining a place in society (albeit they seemed to leap about a decade later) and the world was paranoid of AIDS.

What my medical tests that spring did come out with was that I had mono, something I used to keep me largely out of school the latter part of my junior year and as much of my senior year as the law would allow, introducing other ailments as needed. She assembled a team that wrote notes.  She also told me about Serendipity and we convinced parents that paid for the limo to our Junior Prom (not mine) to take us into NYC and back in exchange for agreeing not to drink. I sill feel like we did somewhere, somehow, at some point though. But, we did not stash flasks, hide liquor in girls' bags in the limo (we were frisked more than TSA now post-911 at the prom) so we were half honest. Did I buy some after the prom with my fake ID? Did I get the driver? I was very convincing and persuasive back in my day. I still believe that in me, but I wish I had some of the chutzpah and gumption I had then; I wasn't a dreamer; I believed I was all that; if not in large part for survival. Then again, God forbid, did we just have a good time without it? It was rare, but did happen. 

The summer before we moved to New Jersey (1985), while at the beach in Bethany Beach, DE I had met a girl who became my girlfriend for the next 2 1/2 years. She lived "down the shore" and I was in Northern NJ so we were not together daily. That summer, I also was cruised for the first time in a sauna by a man who I messed around with a couple times until I realized he was the father of my friend. I went running with some guy and we fucked in the sand near a construction site at the Sea Colony, where our vacation rental was located. I hated running, so I am sure I knew my intentions when I went running with him. I remember he was from Philadelphia, hairy, and that I came home with a lot of sand in the crack of my ass which felt far different from when it happens from a boogie board ride. I had my first one night stand with a therapist from Baltimore as well as my first visit to a gay bar at the Renegade in Rehoboth Beach.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/08/magazine/the-cranbrook-vision.html