Chapter 13: NEW YEAR BABY (1970 to 1973)
For my twenty-fifth birthday Lionel took me to New York City for a long weekend, promising to show me a wild and crazy time in the Big Apple. Did he ever! We went from one sleazy venue to another, and topped it all off with a twenty-four hour stay at the Continental Baths. This place was amazing. Because it was my birthday weekend, Lionel was my faithful companion and mentor, willing to forego his own pleasures to keep me company … but after about thirty minutes at the Continental I said, “This place is great, but if we’re going to get any action, don’t you think we should split up?” He happily and whole heartily agreed, and what a twenty-four hours that turned out to be; the first of my many many sojourns at the Continental.
Opened in the late 1960s by Steve Ostrow, the Continental Baths was housed in the basement and three floors of a famous New York landmark, the Ansonia Hotel (on the National Register of Historic Places), and was advertised as reminiscent of "the glory of ancient Rome." Located on the West Side, above Columbus Circle, the facilities included a restaurant, a bar, a games room, a cabaret lounge, and a disco dance floor alongside a very large “Olympic-blue” swimming pool, complete with fountains and beach chairs. Adjacent to the pool was a labyrinthine white-tiled Turkish bath, with corridors that ended in the dark, as well as saunas and a fully equipped gym. The upper three floors contained over one hundred private rooms, plus backrooms with bunks, theme rooms, and pitch-black play rooms. The Continental was truly a fantasy play land that could serve nearly 1,000 men, 24 hours a day.
The most unique thing about the Continental was the first class entertainment on weekends. With artists such as singer and actress Melba Moore, singer and songwriter Peter Allen, jazz singer and bandleader Cab Calloway (whose daughter, Chris, had been a classmate and friend of mine at Boston University), the R&B group Labelle, The Pointer Sisters, The Manhattan Transfer, singer and actor John Davidson, Metropolitan Opera diva Eleanor Steber, and puppeteer Wayland Flowers, to name a few … it quickly became the place to be and been seen on New York’s nightclub circuit.
Most memorable of all, however, was Bette Midler, accompanied by pianist Barry Manilow. It was a launching pad for both of their careers … where Bette earned the name Bathhouse Betty, and where she created her stage persona The Divine Miss M. Friday nights were an absolute gas at the Continental, no matter who was performing. The nightclub folk, in their evening finery, mingled on the dance floor with all of the ‘gay’ boys wearing nothing but white towels (sometimes that‘s all that Barry Manilow wore as well), while naked men swam and frolicked in the pool, and shagged in the steam bath and the sauna. Ah, the good old days before AIDS.
Meanwhile, back in New Britain, the reconciliation that I had orchestrated between my brother and father was floundering, and Dad decided he was going to sell the business. Jay made him an offer that was rejected, so he left and bought a dry cleaning and laundromat establishment in Meriden, Connecticut. Later my father found a buyer for Union Laundry, and let it go for a miniscule down payment, with liberal terms on a mortgage that he carried. In total, a much lesser deal than Jay had offered. Dad then winterized the rental cottage on Brecka Drive, the only property still owned in Jerusalem, and went there to live. The house he had built in Norwood was rented.
In less than a year, the buyer of the laundry had squeezed every last cent of value that he could get out of the place, and disappeared. My father went back to try and salvage what he could, but things got so bad he was buying detergent and bleach at the supermarket, rather than in fifty-five gallon drums; thanks to the unpaid debts that the missing buyer had racked up, none of the suppliers would do business with Union Laundry anymore. Dad would have been better off selling the business to Jay, but he was just too stubborn and mean-spirited. So he sold to a stranger and got burned. In the end he was forced to liquidate and take his losses.
By 1971 I was pretty much finished with the house in Norwood (“finished“ as in had enough, the house was not necessarily “completed“), finished with Rhode Island, and finished with being a hippy. I cut my hair, by then half way down my back, shaved my almost foot long beard, quit my job at the steel factory, and finally gave in to my brother’s frequent suggestions/requests that I move to Meriden, Connecticut, to work with him. He had added a Coit drapery cleaning franchise, which had him dabbling in the drapery cum decorating business.
Not long after Hal had left, Moe and Mark broke up. Moe moved out and Mark’s mother had come to live with him on a more or less temporary basis. Coincidently, she had been one of the Harrington’s foster children, as was my earlier nemesis of metal-spike-in-his-leg fame, Al LaBeau. She was just coming out of a rather tragic relationship. Her mate was an alcoholic, they both were, and when they were drunk they’d fight and he’d always say he was going to take his gun and go out and kill himself. Finally, after eleven years, she had heard it one too many times. She pulled the rifle out of the closet, handed to him and said, “Here, go ahead!” He was found the next morning in his car on a deserted dead-end road, with half of his head blown off.
In the process of planning my move to Meriden, I came up with the idea of dividing the downstairs into two units. The back unit would consist of the existing kitchen, den, back bedroom, and bath. The front would consist of my elegant double living room cum classy two room master bedroom suite, and a kitchen and bath that I would create in the foolishly enclosed and never finished front porch. It turned out to be a tiny galley kitchen and a very peculiar closet of a bathroom (I had to search high and low for a sink small enough to fit), but it worked; despite being just another on the list of atrocities that I had committed on that house. My father helped me with the renovation, that’s when I learned plumbing, and once completed Mark moved into the back unit, his mother into the front, and I rented upstairs to some gal who had answered an ad.
During this post-hippy, pre-Connecticut period I managed to visit Roger Williams Park on occasion, and one day I ran into two old acquaintances from two different periods in my past. We chatted for a bit and they couldn’t get over how much I had changed. Comparing memories, one said, “Yes, the last time I saw him, he had very short hair and was clean shaven.” “Short hair?!” the other said, “The last time I saw him he had a ponytail half way down his back and a full beard.” One remembered me from my preppy period, when I was clean shaven and had a short collegiate haircut. The other knew me as a hippy, when I did have the long ponytail, and a very long beard. At the time of this encounter my hair was medium length, suitable for business, and I had a moustache.
Meanwhile in Meriden, to facilitate the drapery and decorating direction in which my brother was heading his business, he hired a “decorator” from a home furnishings firm in New Britain, and the two of them very quickly fell into a torrid and illicit love affair. When I arrived they were both in the midst of very messy divorces, and Jay’s business was on the verge of bankruptcy. Finding myself without the opportunity I had been promised (i.e., once again screwed by my brother), I was coerced into refinancing my house in Rhode Island, and then using the equity to finance the establishment of Everything for Windows with Gailyn (the “decorator” AKA slut), a drapery and decorating shop that we opened in a shopping center a mile up the road. In the process we skimmed off the profitable aspects of my brother’s company, which at that point was nothing more than the fledging drapery business.
To accommodate my presence, they (the adulterers) had rented the second and third floor of a big Victorian on Washington Street in Meriden (ADDRESS #11), the first floor of which was a separate unit. The main floor of our unit was a spacious flat with a huge living room, and a commodious dining room situated in the round turret. My two rooms with bath were on the uppermost level, nestled in the eaves, and I had almost private egress, as the door at the foot of my stairway opened onto the main foyer, right at the top of the stairs that lead down to the entrance. On the upside, Meriden was less than two hours from New York and the Continental Baths. On the downside … not only was I working with my brother, I was living with him! What on earth had I been thinking?!?!
Nonetheless, things went well at first. Most evenings we ate together (there was only one kitchen), the slut was not a bad cook, and we were polishing off a fifth of scotch every couple of days. That alone spoke volumes … self-medicating. My nieces visited almost every weekend, one half of which was pleasant. During this period, despite not having my own place for the first time in almost ten years, I managed to create something of a social life for myself. Hartford was about forty minutes away, and by then there was more than one bar.
Jay and Gailyn were cognizant of my orientation, and knew that I would be stepping out on occasion, but they were apparently clueless as to the hours I kept. Our evening routine was to watch a couple of hours of television, after which they went off to bed, and many times I did the same … but some nights I would spruce up and go to Hartford. This went on for a while and they never knew that I had gone out, because I was always home before dawn and had yet to bring someone home. Then one night I did. That morning, a Sunday, Gailyn called up the stairs for me to come down for breakfast, but I didn’t respond or show up. She called again, nothing.
My guest was freaking out. I told him, it’s cool, have breakfast with us. But he got dressed and wanted to leave. He went down the stairs first, and immediately crossed the foyer to the exit stairway. The kitchen was right off the foyer. Gailyn saw him leaving and thought it was me. She came out scolding, “Where do you think you’re going?” then, “Oh! What?” as she encountered me coming out the door of my stairway. She made a quick recovery, “Doesn’t he want to stay for breakfast?” “No, he doesn’t.” At breakfast Jay suggested that in the future I leave a tie on the door when entertaining. Later I replaced it with a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign swiped from a hotel.
Lionel visited a couple of times and once, after much begging and pleading, Jay okayed my hiatus of a few days to go to Montréal with him. It was a wonderful trip and the first time I had ever been out of the country. Big deal, Canada, I know … but it was a big deal for me. We did all of the tourist things, and of course hit the ‘gay’ bars in the evening. Lionel spoke French (although born in North Providence, RI, he never learned English until he went to school), and I had pretty much learned to say, in French, I don’t speak French, wait a minute, my friend does. I could also say beer. I don’t know how it is spelled in French, but it sounded similar.
Our first night we went to this place that I liked, sort of a ‘leather’ vibe which I found appealing, but Lionel wanted to move on. So he left me alone in a bar in a foreign county, where French was for the most part the only language. Well, truth told, I did have my eye on someone, but it was difficult to tell if I was getting any feedback. Then another fellow walked up to me from out of nowhere, took me by the arm, and said, “My friend wants to meet you.” I was so surprised that he was speaking English, that at first I didn’t understand him. I tried to put him off because I had my eye on the cute blonde, but he insisted and pretty much dragged me across the bar, and introduced me to … the cute blond! Who spoke no English. That was not a deterrent.
He was a Ferris wheel operator at Man and His World, where the next day I got a free ride, not that there was anything wrong with the ride that I got that night. In the meantime, another cute young fellow had latched on to Lionel, and that is who Lionel was with during our stay. It was unusual for Lionel, as he was more the different one each night type (or a few different ones each night), and I was always more—find a good one and stick with him. Our roles reversed this trip though, because Lionel couldn’t get rid of his companion who always called me “Nancy“ and I was the one going for variety, a different guy each night, none of whom spoke English.
Back in Connecticut I had a boyfriend-ette for a while named Bob. He was a strange little fellow—kind of like a little old man in a twenty-six year old body—that I had met at a bar one night. We got along well, although the bedroom activity was a major snooze. He lived in the top floor servants’ quarters of a huge fully furnished and unoccupied mansion, for which he was the caretaker—the building itself was tied up in a lengthy estate battle that was going on for years.
Bob drove a 1940s Packard which someone had given to him (maybe his grandfather), and it was a delightful old classic car that he absolutely cherished. Neither a smoker nor a drinker, Bob had still managed to collect enough empty packages of Kool cigarettes to get a free twelve foot Styrofoam sailboat with a big green and white sail that said “KOOL!“ We would frequently tie it to the roof of the Packard and go to Compensating Reservoir or other water spots for a sail. By some miracle we never capsized or drowned.
Despite the fact that Bob was sort of a nothing fellow—a very nice nothing fellow but nothing nonetheless—and despite the fact that ours was pretty much a nothing relationship, it is curious that it was that association that proved to be the undoing of the happy little home that I had with the adulterers at the Meriden Victorian. One evening Bob was visiting and the four of us were watching television in “their” living room.
They were sitting close together on the sofa; we were sitting close together on the loveseat. They had an arm around each other; we had an arm around each other. They cuddled, we cuddled. One laid a head on the others shoulder, ditto. We weren’t mimicking them; it was just how the events transpired. The point being, they were comfortable and cozy, and so were we. It all seemed natural to Bob and me. The next day Jay made it perfectly clear how disgusted they were, being forced to witness such obscene behavior. It made him “sick!” Despite the fact that we were not doing anything differently than the two of them, there was a problem ….
…. and I had a solution. The next day I rented a one bedroom apartment on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford (ADDRESS #12). When I told Jay he went ballistic. “Oh, you just want to be closer to all of the queers.” Not the right thing to say; he was not quite as enlightened as he had professed. “No, I am simply not willing to live my life under your bigoted gaze. I am not willing to try and make my home, where you have the right to dictate my behavior, and throw me out at any time you choose.” Then I began to recognize a familiar look, the one that had always preceded my head getting smashed into a wall. “Look, Jay, this isn’t working. I had my own place for ten years, that‘s what I need now. There is nothing to discuss. I signed a lease. I’ll be out on Saturday.” And so I was.
By this time Jay had filed bankruptcy, and his divorce was moving along albeit slowly. The wife had been holding out for more money, but not much to hold out for when the husband has gone belly-up. Difficult to say how much of the bankruptcy was a divorce tactic. Upon closure of his business he had taken a job as regional representative for Heuga Tile, a commercial carpet tile company, and he worked out of one of the offices at Everything for Windows; the biggest one which had, when constructed, been intended for him. He might not have had any tangible connection with Everything for Windows, but he was categorically the boss! He was moving forward with all of his grandiose visions for the business, piling up the debt, as he did with all of his businesses. Big ideas that required big money … he always had plenty of the former, damn little of the latter.
My involvement with the business continued after I moved to Hartford, but everything was tainted. I was walking on egg shells, knowing that Jay was just aching for a reason to let me have it—big time. Despite the fact that it was my money that had financed the venture, I was decidedly an underling and I even had to work on Heuga Tile projects with him, also for no pay. I remember one Sunday we had an installation at a big pharmacy, and it all had to be completed that day. The night before I got so drunk at a friend’s party that I was smoking cigars! Up most of the night and not real pretty at dawn, despite being somewhere between still drunk and having a wicked hangover, I showed up on time and suffered through the day, constantly under Jay’s menacing scrutiny.
Then one day something happen, I don’t remember what. But I saw the look, and I was never more certain that I was on borrowed time. On the way home that evening I bought a newspaper to check the help wanted. I found an offering that was perfect for me, drawing on my inventory experience at the steel factory, but the following day the storm seemed to have subsided, so I let it pass. Exactly a week later the look was back, now even more threatening. I managed to get my ass out the door just barely ahead of the fists. Ostensibly I was going on a decorating appointment, but I blew that off and went home. All of the money I had in the world was tied up in the business, but I never went back. I was done. As we learned in earlier chapters, it might take a while, but once I’m done, I’m done.
On the way home I again picked up the newspaper, but that listing was not to be found. Why would it be, it had been a week. I called Bob and told him the code for calling me—let the phone ring once, then hang up and call again. The next day my phone kept ringing and ringing, but I wouldn’t answer. I wasn‘t going to speak with Jay until I had a job, because then it would be too late for him to talk me into coming back. After ringing some more the phone was silent for a while. Later it rang once, stopped, and when it rang again I answered. It was a pretty old secret code, Jay was on the line. I hung up and called Bob, told him when he called to let it ring twice, then hang up and I would call him back. Foolproof! Jay-proof! Next I went out to get a newspaper and the listing was back. It was meant to be. I called, made an appointment for the next day, aced the interview, and got the job.
Back at my apartment the intercom buzzed and buzzed, but I didn’t answer. It kept buzzing, I kept ignoring. Then there was a knock on my door. Jay had finagled his way in with another tenant … he could charm the rattle off of a rattlesnake. He had seen my car in the lot, so he knew I was there. A door was rarely a barrier to my brother, and the more he hollered for me and pounded, the more flimsy that door looked. After locking my bedroom door behind me, I huddled in a corner quaking … clutching the phone, ready to call the police.
Finally the barrage stopped, but it was a few hours before I chanced going out. It would not have been out of character for Jay to wait silently for an hour or more to try and catch me. There was no way I would discuss anything with him in person, with Jay one didn‘t discuss, one agreed or got beaten. After a few days the unanswered phone calls and futile visits stopped. In the meantime, I had started my job at Carling Electric—manufacturers of switches and indicator lights for Mr Coffee and many other well-known electronic appliances—at a wage almost twice what I had ever earned in my life.
Meanwhile, back in Rhode Island, Mark and his mother had stopped paying rent, so I had them evicted. When they left they took a few things that belonged to me, including a valuable antique lighting fixture, and a Haywood Wakefield dining table and four chairs (now worth in the thousands). I called an attorney. A fellow I knew from Jerusalem, a couple of years older than me and the subject of one of my many early adolescent crushes. He had them arrested, at their place of work no less and it turned out that he was related to them in some way.
They claimed that hiring a relative of theirs was intentional on my part (I never had a clue), just another example of my evil persona. They defaulted on the rent and stole my stuff, and I was evil. Don’t recall what ultimately transpired, but I never got the items back, and in solidarity the tenant cum bitch upstairs moved out as well. I put the house on the market. After a couple of months with no nibbles, the realtor, knowing how badly I wanted to get out of the place, presented a real low offer from an interested party (who I later found out was his partner’s wife), and I let it go for a song. After the Everything for Windows debacle, I needed whatever cash I could get.
At the end of 1972 I went to Rhode Island to ring in the New Year with Lionel. We spent a night or two in Boston, and then went to a New Year’s Eve bash at a new bar in Providence. That is where I met Billy Lowney, a new year’s baby who turned twenty-one at three minutes past the stroke of midnight 1973. I was twenty-seven. Billy would become the sum and substance of my life for the better part of the next seven years. I had never been so head-over-heels in love, so completely out of control, so obsessed. While Billy, the fourth child in a family of fifteen children, was a skilled manipulator. He played me like a violin … something that it would take me many years to recognize.
Billy lived with his family in Fall River, Massachusetts, about twenty-two miles east of Providence. At first he would take the bus every weekend, but when he couldn’t make the bus for whatever reason (true or fabricated), I would drive the two hours to pick him up and bring him back to Hartford. Once he realized that I would do just about anything to facilitate our spending the weekend together, he passed on the bus and I became his chauffeur. So I was doing the four hour round trip every Friday night, and again Sunday night, except for the weekends that I gave myself a break and stayed in Providence.
When the apartment at the end of my building became available, a larger one bedroom with a fantastic view overlooking the highway, the airport, the Connecticut River and beyond, I couldn‘t resist. It was quite an improvement over my view of a windowless brick wall six feet away. So once again I moved (ADDRESS #13), and dragged just about everything down the long hallway by myself, except for some help with the bigger items from the ‘gay’ couple next-door.
One night in that new apartment while I was in my bedroom talking with Billy on the phone, and enjoying a doobie, the intercom buzzed. I didn’t answer it immediately, but when it kept buzzing I hung up and went to the door. My apartment was at the very end of that long building, and looking though the peephole I had a view of the full length of the hallway. When I looked then, my view included a man in a suit and a uniform cop walking towards my door. Straightaway I stepped out and closed the door behind me. After confirming my identity, they asked if they could come inside to talk, not wanting to do so in the hall … where by then just about every neighbor was hanging out of their door watching.
Whatever the problem was, I knew that the aroma in my apartment would not improve the situation. Therefore, once I confirmed that I had the right not to let them in, they read me the charges in the hallway, in front of the audience, and arrested me (thankfully, I was not cuffed) for “passing a bad check“ … in the amount of sixty-nine dollars! A check that had not cleared for want of two dollars! Admittedly my error (those bloody “7s” and “9s“), but the business had never made any effort to contact me, they just filed charges.
The suit was a detective from Wethersfield, where the complaint had been filed. The uniform was from Hartford, through whose station I had to be cleared for outstanding warrants—where, of course, there were none—before being released to the detective. On the way to Wethersfield he got a call on his radio, about some parents showing up at the station with what they thought was pot found in their son’s room. This proved to be one of my cooler moments. Despite still being fairly stoned, not to mention totally freaked out about being arrested, I still had the chutzpah to chat with the detective about “these kids, the pot problem” and so on.
At the station I was processed and then released on P.R. (“personal recognizance” … as a hardened criminal, I know the lingo), and once the detective was finished with the hysterical pot parents, he drove me home. On the way he told me that I should go to the tire shop, make good on the check, get a receipt, and then explain to the judge what had happened; sounded simple … until my day in court. The place was a madhouse, to say the least, and in the midst of all the people scurrying about, I spotted two signs with arrows—one for misdemeanors, one for felonies. Being new to a life of crime, I asked a passing clerk where to go. Much to my dismay, when I said it was a bad check charge, she pointed me in the direction of the court for felonies! Gulp!
Never in my life had I ever been to court for anything, not even a traffic ticket, so this experience was, at the very least, totally daunting. Once in the courtroom it wasn’t long before my name was called, and when I stood up the judge asked me how I pled, guilty or not guilty. “Your Honor, I don’t want to plead anything, I need to tell you something.” “You can’t tell me anything except guilty or not guilty.” he said, scowling. Well, I was not pleading anything until I had my say, so it was a standoff. Fortunately, before a contempt charge was added, the prosecutor came to my rescue, and suggested to the judge that perhaps I wanted to speak with him. That worked for me, and the Judge approved. Afterward I pled not guilty, and the charge was dropped.
Life back out on the street went well for this former felon, and I managed to keep my nose clean. Well … more or less. It was not actually a crime; it was more of a peccadillo. (Now that I think of it, thanks to ancient draconian laws, at the time it probably was still a crime. If so, it was one that I shamelessly committed countless times.) Back to the crime, I mean peccadillo. Despite being so desperately in love with Billy, early one evening I ran into an old flame at a shopping mall … an old flame that apparently had a little flicker or two left in it. And, I suppose I kind of sort of invited him to stop by my place later.
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