Robert StGenis Voice empowered

In my post  Being a Junior , I discuss two "washed-up hookers" to whom I would bring doughnuts and coffee daily when I briefly stayed with my Father at an apartment on 79th and 2nd Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. New York had a homeless crisis with mass numbers of unsheltered people and the city was at the early stages of gaining any control over the crisis, one which they were forced into addressing after the settling of a lawsuit  Callahan v. Care y in 1981. In that consent decree, the City and State agreed to provide shelter and board to all homeless men who met the need standard for welfare or who were homeless “by reason of physical, mental, or social dysfunction.” Thus the decree established a right to shelter for all homeless men in New York City, and also detailed the minimum standards which the City and State must maintain in shelters, including basic health and safety standards. In addition, Coalition for the Homeless was appointed monitor of shelters ...

These photos are all tied to multiple entries telling my story through my high school years. Please takes a few minutes and first read and view:  Being a Junior ,   Summer 1986. Part One ,   Summer 1986. Part Two , Senior Year Part Two   and you may also wish to read and view: Senior Year. Part One ,  It Gets Better and  Brett Kavanaugh to get a more complete "picture" of my journey through this period of mine in the 80s. I promise you'll find it at least somewhat entertaining, sometimes perhaps a bit surprising or even shocking and even possibly insightful. Our vacation rental, though we used terms like "beach house" or "summer home" was in the tennis community, which was across from the high-rises on the ocean at the Sea Colony. This picture wasn't ours, but almost identical and on the same street. Like any development, there were only a few varying styles. These are typically 2 bedroom, 2 bath units with a deck. They are one floor units...

This will not mean much unless you first read: Summer 1986. Part Two. In Liberty & Reality The lower right photo shows 2 bad decisions on my part. A horrible perm and smoking. I first started smoking as a freshman in Cross Country when my friend and I would sneak into the woods and smoke during a run. A few of us also tried chewing tobacco while cycling in the same period. Difference then, at my private school, they simply had designated smoking areas for students. We were told it was bad, not that we couldn't under any circumstance. Meanwhile, the video below was being shown during the school year in NYC public schools. It most definitely was not in the Morris School District.

Please also read: Summer 1986. Piers & The Cure. Being a Junior Along with any and all other the rest of my posts. I greatly welcome your feedback. Post anonymously, that is more than fine. I would love to hear from you!  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Statue of Liberty was given to the United States as a gift from France in 1886.  Liberty Weekend , the 100th anniversary, was to be a spectacular weekend and I must say, while I was incredibly fortunate in my circumstances throughout that weekend, I have never had any other experience yet that left quite such an indelible impression. New York and New Jersey were in a turf war starting before I moved to the East Coast in 1985 with New Jersey claiming that Liberty Island was actually in New Jersey waters. They ultimately lost this war and as huge an advocate as I am for New Jersey, this one was bullshit. New York made ...

The Hudson River waterfront in the 80's was nothing like it is today. There were piers that were collapsing into the river, others in varying states of decay. The Intrepid was a new attraction and I believe became part of the Smithsonian while I was in high school. I recall a handful of years later attending a huge Gay Pride event that included I believe my first foam party. This doesn't sound like a big deal now but it was hugely symbolic at the time we were fighting for the right to serve in the US military. Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan was mostly still hellish with gentrification in its early stages. I lived there for a brief period in 1990 and will write about it in a future entry. Crime in New York City was also on another planet. There were 1,907 murders in New York City in 1986 vs. 562 murders in 2018. The homeless population was out of control and the smell of defecation and urine in subway stations sometimes made it nearly impossible to not vomit before...

Please be sure to read  AIDS 1. Junior year  and  AIDS 1-Senior Year. Part One  prior to this entry. It brings my story all together. You may also want to watch my short  It Gets better  video which is also a blog post on here as well. Then, you will have my years as a teenager, the fun, the sad, the good and bad. The collection of these posts bring together a formative part of who I am, as it is an important period of growth for all of us. You will likely find some of my story shocking, some entertaining, interesting, doubtfully boring. I didn't overall spend time writing about time on swim or soccer teams, or even much about going to school except a bit more in this last one. I wrote mostly about what you aren't expecting to hear from a teenager. My girlfriend Laura and I will also spend a great deal of time in New York City. Because Laura lived down the shore in Toms River, she was about 90 miles away. Getting together was never running up or down t...

If you have not yet read, please go back to  AIDS 1-Being a Junior  and read prior to this entry. Since I had moved to Morristown, New Jersey I was living two lives, in two ways. There was Robert the suburban high school student with a girlfriend down the shore and simultaneously Robert the closeted gay man and in many ways a recent arrival to New York City. Most people around my neighborhood at that time lived and worked in New Jersey and went into the city at best a few times a year for a play, for a concert or game. They might once or twice go in the course of a decade to a museum. I was there almost every weekend and any other time I could find a chance. My Father was initially commuting into the city everyday. I had to use bridges and tunnels, I was a not a bridge and tunnel boy. I was sneaking off into Manhattan on a fairly frequent basis and going to happy hours at Uncle Charlie's and popping into Julius in Greenwich Village; sometimes, well, often, that leading t...

Tony arrived with a bag from Target and the backpack we had given him. He had been staying somewhere on the Westside of Los Angeles (a favorable area) for roughly 10 days with some guy who had taken some romantic interest in him and then offered him some work, manual labor of sorts, like painting. But that story alters later, as he commuted from Silverlake (closer to Downtown Los Angeles or DTLA) to this guy's place in stories he tells me in days to follow. Perhaps it changed along the way. I am not doing a police investigation, so every detail isn't my primary objective. Once again, he had been robbed of his things, but not all of them. Among things that he seemed most disappointed about was that he has food there and couldn't get back in to retrieve it. Evidently the guy threatened to call the police if he didn't leave the property. My impulse would likely have been to let him call the police if he had my things. But, I am not him. I must remember drugs are involv...

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 ...