I was a non-conformist. A fish out of water. I'd previously been in Catholic schools in Brooklyn, and high school was middle class, cliquish, with fraternities and sororities, located in Long Island.
We were also being racially integrated for the first time. We had riot cops outside our doors for four years.
The girls bathroom was unsafe. No doors were allowed because kids would get jumped and beat up in the bathroom.
My closest friends were a mixed race girl, (Native American and African American), a Jewish girl from the Bronx, a Czechoslovakian twin brother and sister, and a girl with a hair lip.
Both anti-war and civil rights movements were going on. My friends and I often cut school and went into NYC for demonstrations, and to the Arts Students Union for art classes. We sometimes hung out in Grenwich Village.
I lived with my dad and his partner, (they were both in the closet), and my Grandmother in an apartment behind their beauty shop. My dad and his partner often had men living with them. Greek immigrants. My dad's partner's son was always getting me stoned on pot or giving me acid.
I used to stay up real late, and write poetry and listen to Allison Steele, the Nightbird, on radio programs.
I talked to another friend from Catholic school days, every day for nearly an hour, upside down in a chair in the apartment while my dad was working.
I got a part time job in a bakery.
My dad's partner was a much better father. He knew me better than my dad did, and he did most of the discipline, which consisted of verbally haranguing me for my selfishness and rudeness toward my father.
My Grandmother was alternately loving and repetitive in her stories. She would sometimes get drunk and one time I had to call the Fire Department because she was drunk and had fallen and could open the door.
High School was a lonely time in a lot of ways, and a creative time too. I couldn't find enough outlets, writing poetry, composing songs, painting, sculpting. I was deeply moved by the Vietnam War and the Civil Right's movements.
The only gay consciousness I had at all, was reading Jill Johnston, an out lesbian who wrote for the Village Voice. Jill writing was hard to understand.
I had one lesbian affair when I was 15 in summer camp.
I sometimes get carried away. I am my favorite topic of conversation, you know. My apologies.
They should be able to see those someday, see the young man you were.
