I’m a big fan of Mark Twain, and my favorite quotation from Mr. Twain also happens to be on my Facebook page right now. It reads:

“Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”

I happen to feel that way about religion. Now, before all my Christian brethren get freaked on this statement, I’m not talking about spirituality here. I’m talking about religion. This is entirely different. To me, ‘religion’ is what man does with spirituality once he/she gets hold of it. It’s the part that mortal men (or women) play in delivering spirituality to the masses. I’ve always felt that way about religion, even when I was a kid. That is why it’s so weird that I spent nearly 14 years in Catholic school. I say “nearly 14 years” because I spent the first half of the first grade in public school. That’s because Immaculate Conception in Revere didn’t have space at the beginning of the year. So, in a nutshell, I’ve always had issues with authority and nuns and priests (mostly nuns) represented “authority.”

My sister Jo-Anne felt the brunt of my dislike of Catholic school, simply because she was already a student at Immaculate Conception once I arrived. Every time I did something wrong, she would get the call. I can’t remember every single incident, but I do remember one time when I absolutely refused to stay at the school for lunch. My house was just down the street, dammit, and I wanted to go home for lunch. It was, of course, a Friday and the absurd Catholic rule of “no meat on Fridays” was in force. See, that’s what I mean about mankind delivering religion. WTF does what you eat on what freakin’ day have to do with believing in God?

Anyway, things really began to go downhill when the homeroom nun (okay, I can’t remember specific nun names back that far). It could have been Sister Honorius. She was one of the nuns I had at Immaculate, but I can’t really remember what grade I had her in. She said, “Come on, Deborah, tell me a fish story.” I know I began my response saying, “I’ll tell you a fish story alright…”  But everything that came after that is a blank. However, since my sister was called down to the room, it could not have been very nice.

I know my sister (not ‘the’ sister) pulled me outside in the hall to talk to me and I know she was pissed. But I also know that I went home for lunch. My mother fed me (of course, it was Friday so I had a tuna fish sandwich), and then promptly delivered me back to school…with a warning. Needless to say, I ate lunch at school for the rest of the year. But I didn’t like it.

I didn’t have the opportunity to stay at Immaculate until the bitter end. My dad died and I stayed at Immaculate until we settled somewhere else. I remember that I’d get a ride from my evil Aunt Buddy back and forth to school until we settled in. As it turns out, we ended up living with my evil Aunt Buddy in Medford. That’s when I enrolled at Saint James Grammar School. (This is where I met my partner in crime, George.) I cannot remember in-classroom specifics here at all. I’m not sure what that means. I do remember one incident. I used to sing in the choir, and one Sunday my friend and I were tossed out because we were leaning over the railing and spitting on people’s heads as they walked in below us. The only other thing I remember is getting everyone to skip church and go to the park for an hour instead. See. Great disdain for authority of any type. And religion in general.

Fast times at Arlington Catholic High

I continued on in my catholic education by choosing Arlington Catholic High. My mother was thrilled. I chose that school simply because all of my friends were going there. George was behind me by a grade or two, but he also ended up going there. So did Linda. Remember her? She was my first lesbian relationship experience that I wrote about several posts ago. So, it was great. Getting there was another story. Winters were brutal because we had to take three buses to get there, one from home to Medford Square. Then, a bus to West Medford, followed by a third bus that would drop us off in Arlington Center. By the time we got there, we were freezing.

Then there was the catholic school uniforms. These were dead ugly. They always consisted of a pleated, plaid skirt. In the case of good old AC high, it was a gray, red and white combination with a white shirt and gray vest — all wool. We’d die in the summer. It was absurd. It wasn’t that I was into fashion. I hated fashion. Didn’t care much for it and still don’t. But I hated that they were trying to make us all the same. That’s what the uniform felt like.

The assumption is that Catholic school kids are good kids. They don’t do anything wrong. They don’t get in trouble. Forget that shit. We were no different than anyone else at this age. Kids were fooling around in the back seats of cars. Some were drinking and smoking. Hell, the Mayor of Medford went to Arlington Catholic and he was a party animal! At the end of every school year, we’d have to clean out the homeroom we were in for next year’s incoming class. One day we sent the mayor out the window with a rope to go get us pizza.

I remember little tidbits from Arlington Catholic, but nothing in great detail. I remember that I was put into room 101 my freshman year. Any room ending in “01″ meant it was the academically advanced class. Now, we considered the kids in that class dweebs who didn’t know how to have real fun. It also meant that everything was harder. Hard work was not on my agenda at that time. I was sure of one thing: I was determined to keep myself out of room 201 next year, and I succeeded by not doing so well in a couple of subjects…like Latin. Latin. WTF kind of life skill comes from taking Latin? None. Absolutely none. We were forced to take Latin because it was a Catholic school and the Sunday Mass was still being conducted in Latin.

Sister Ruth taught Latin. She was brutal. She had bucked teeth and the spit would really fly when she was in the process of reprimanding you. All I can remember from her (at least once a week) was, “Miss Della Piana, you’re getting under my skin and making a dent.” Yeah. I’m sure I was.

And then there was Sister Georgiana. She was big, loud and quite imposing, and she wasn’t going to take any shit from any of us. I believe she taught Physical Science??? Not really sure.  All I know is that I sat in between probably the only two black kids in the entire school — Donna Bell and Paula Mont. I can remember to  this day exactly what they looked like. They were absolutely hysterical and they would just get me going. It never failed that we got caught every time we had the class. One time our laughing really got to her, and Sister Georgiana slammed her fist down on the chalk board ledge and took the damned thing right off the wall.

Out of control at Aquinas

I ended up moving on to a two-year Catholic college. There were reasons for this that had nothing to do with the fact that it was Catholic. It also had it’s share of stupid rules that I thought were oppressive, and I was determined to change them (although I complied at the beginning). Here’s a stupid rule: We had to wear skirts or dresses as though we were secretaries already employed in jobs. Absurd. After putting up with the uniforms at AC, there was no way I was going to wear dresses and skirts.

I simply started wearing jeans and cords to school. I was suspended once for that. Then again. Finally, I remember approaching the student council and urging them to start a petition to get rid of that foolish rule. Listen, we were paying to go to this school, so why should they tell us how to dress? The fact is that we weren’t working. We were students. We eventually won that battle. I was determined to have a good time in spite of where I was, and it turned into a great two-year party.

First, it was an all-girls school and it was truly my coming of age in that respect. A group of us hung around together all the time, and I was involved at various times with three of them. Of course, none of them ever knew that about each other because they were too afraid to openly talk about it. It was not easy to be gay at that time and, frankly, it was also scary to come to terms with the fact that you might be gay. My partying went well beyond that, however.

The sleepover was one thing I remember. They had this Aquinas tradition where the students spent one night sleeping over at the school. The seniors generally got to abuse us at this little event. You know, like making us roll uncooked eggs the length of the entire main corridor with our noses. Or blindfolding us and making us brush each other’s teeth. By the time we got to this, it was really late at night and a couple of us climbed out the bathroom window and headed for my car. We had stopped at Blanchards, our favorite local liquor store (and our favorite lunch spot, by the way) and bought some rum and coke. It was the perfect time to take a break. While we were out there, someone also suggested we might want to smoke a fatty since were at the far end of the parking lot and hidden under trees. We weren’t sure how we were going to get back in, but we really didn’t care at the time.

Luckily, we did get back in without much trouble. Someone had left the bathroom window partially open, so we forced it open the rest of the way and climbed back in. Everyone was pretty much settled down in the lounge in sleeping bags. Some had already fallen asleep. But we had the munchies, so we decided to see if we could find something to eat. All we could scrape up in the kitchen was a jar of jam. Somehow, and I really do not know how we found our way up there, we ended up in the chapel where the only thing we found to eat was a bag of communion hosts. We decided that they were probably still unblessed, so it would be a minor sin. We sat down and ate damned near half a bag with the jam. They were disgusting, but we were desperate for food. The funny thing is that nobody caught on that it ever happened. We simply sealed up the bag and put it back when we were done.

We knew that some of these nuns were fully capable of having a good time. We could tell. (And I was absolutely sure that Sister Carroll was gay, even though we never confirmed it.) So, one night we had Karen’s house to ourselves because her parents were at their summer house in Kingston. We decided to invite a few of the nuns over to a spaghetti dinner. I’m not sure if we ever got to the food because we got them drunk on Cape Codders. I mean, drunk. We got them so drunk that they couldn’t even drive themselves home. We had to take them home later that night (not that we were in much better shape). One of my friends drove their car back and I drove them in my car. We literally had to open the door and take them to their rooms. Then, we were so drunk we had a hard time finding our way out. It was like some kind of ancient catacomb. We continued to be friendly with this pack of nuns, but nobody ever mentioned a word about that night. We just kind of let it slide.

Sleeping with women. Eating hosts because I had the munches from smoking dope. Getting the nuns drunk. You know, if there is a Supreme Being up there somewhere keeping notes, I could be in big trouble.

I might have been young during the sixties, but that was definitely my time. I paid attention to politics, and I was aware of what was going on. I remember The Pentagon Papers, Watergate and Richard Nixon. I remember the Viet Nam war and the upheaval it caused here in America. But there was one event that prompted me to do more than just read newspaper articles and do library research so that I could sit around and talk politics with my friends (who were indeed just like me).

The Kent State massacre was the single most horrifying event in American history. I call it a massacre because that’s just exactly what it was. Any time somebody puts National Guard troops on a college campus with live ammo, it’s dicey. But when you do it during a hot and heavy re-election campaign, it’s a recipe for disaster. That’s exactly what was going on in Ohio on May 4, 1970. Governor Rhodes was running for re-election on a “law and order” ticket. This was tailor made for his campaign.

Of course, Tricky chimed in by making the observation that when protests become violent they invite disaster (I’m paraphrasing here). Somebody even spread the rumor that it was a student sniper that caused the Ohio National Guard to open fire. That was completely untrue. Did some students throw rocks? Yes, most from a great distance. And rocks are no match for guns. Did they throw tear gas canisters? Yes, they threw the canisters that the soldiers launched at them back at the soldiers.

But at the end of the day, the National Guard wheeled around without warning and opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others. Years later, we were still waiting for someone to be held accountable. Instead, a judge dropped the charges against the guardsmen in 1974 — four years after — for lack of evidence.

This spurred me to do something other than write letters to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or to the editors of the local paper. I was about 18 years old when I put together a presentation and took the whole issue of Kent State on the road. I spoke at several campuses in the area, including Bridgewater State, the University of Massachusetts, and Plymouth State.  I tried to get Op Ed articles published, and I’m not really sure that I was successful at that.

I kept on the Kent State massacre until it was eventually eclipsed by the Watergate break-in and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Years later, my friends and I were sitting around talking and making jokes about Tricky’s “hit” list, and about having an FBI file. For the hell of it, I filled out a Freedom of Information Act request to see if I’d had one. To my utter surprise, I did! It was based entirely my activities surrounding the Kent State massacre. They even had photos of me talking at a podium at one of the colleges, and getting people to sign the petition. It was absurd.

Still active twenty years later

In the early 90s, I wanted very much to get involved in the fight for GLBT rights. The main reason I wanted to take action was because Beth and I had discussed having children from the beginning. We were hoping for a better situation and a more open world for them to be born into. The civil rights group that had it all together, in my mind, was the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). I still think that today. I decided to join them as the Sixth Congressional District Coordinator for Massachusetts.

In that capacity, my job was to lobby our congressional representative, Peter Torkildsen. When I took on the district he had been rated at 53% by the HRC. That means that Torkildsen supported GLBT legislation only 53% of the time, and the legislation he supported was of the less critical nature. We wanted him to improve his support of the GLBT community and we really wanted him to sign on to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA — which would protect the GLBT community while on the job . (Yes, it’s the same ENDA that was just recently re-introduced in the House.)

Basically, any employer can fire you for being gay (even if he/she suspects you are gay).  An employer can also fire an employee who supports gay people. Now, you may laugh thinking this would never happen here. But it does. In fact, in the early 90s, Crackerbarrel Corporation fired 39 employees it either suspected of being gay or employees who supported their gay co-workers. That’s why nobody I know would dare bring a hunk of Crackerbarrel cheese into my house. Ever.

In addition to lobbying Torkildsen on ENDA, we also wanted to get businesses to sign on to ENDA. I was out at Millipore, so I approached the VP of Human Resources about ENDA. Not only did I get the Corporation to sign on, but the HR group amended the company’s non-discrimination statement to include “sexual orientation.” (Funny, years later I’d work with one of the biggest homophobes on the planet and would actually lose my job — in large part because of this. That story is coming.)

I finally did get Torkildsen to commit to ENDA and, by the time I left the lobbying job, Torkildsen was up to an 83% approval rating. The only reason I stopped working for the HRC was that Beth became pregnant and she was in the midst of a difficult pregnancy. Peter Torkildsen eventually lost his seat to Democrat John Tierney, a strong supporter of the GLBT community.

Soon, my family responsibilities would take priority.  I would not be able to physically make that kind of commitment to HRC for several years, but I did stay active by supporting HRC online.  Lately I’ve been thinking about take on an active role with the HRC again, particularly since Barack Obama seems content to drag his feet on several campaign promises he made to the GLBT community. Stay tuned for chapters yet to be written!

There are nine and eleven years respectively between my sisters and I. When I was growing up, I really got into music. All I really had to listen to, however, was what my family members were listening to. Elvis Presley was big with both of my sisters, but especially my sister Mamie. Frank Sinatra was a family favorite. My sister Jo-Anne was listening to Brenda Lee and the Shirelles. My dad loved Nat King Cole and Mario Lanza. I’m probably missing a ton of stuff here, but you get the point.

The Beatles landed in America on February 7, 1964 and changed everything for me. I also got “Meet the Beatles” from my mother for my tenth birthday.  The Beatles really gave me my own music, and I was instantly hooked. I’m of the opinion that they remain the most innovative band in the world. It’s popular now for rock bands to play with symphony orchestras. The Beatles were doing that back in the sixties, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra on several albums. They used the French Horn, sitars and synthesizers in their songs. They had a very distinctive sound, but no two songs sounded the same. They deservedly remain a force to this day. They changed the rules of the game.

They had so many unbelievably cohesive albums, like Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, The White Album and Abbey Road. Each one represented a new evolution of the band’s music. It was simply amazing and you found yourself just waiting for the next album to be released. I remember that Greg and I were just the biggest Beatle fans. We followed everything they did, from visiting India to meditate with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to the “Paul is Dead” crisis. We spent hours looking for clues on album covers and listened for hints by playing the records backwards.

Back in the day, it wasn’t about FM radio. Everything was happening on AM radio, to be specific 1510 WMEX with disc jockey ‘Cousin’ Duffy. He had come out here from California, where he was infamous and was actually mentioned in the song “Creeque Alley” by The Mamas & The Papas. We all saved our money to buy and mount Eight-Track Players under our dashboards. Yes, you heard it right. Eight-Track Players.

I’ve seen many concerts in my day with various people. But there was a period in our (Greg, Jack and I) lives there — probably the mid-to-late 70s — where we went to concert after concert after concert. I don’t remember how many years it spanned, but it was just a blast. And I don’t necessarily mean just in the state of Massachusetts, either.

It’s really hard to remember all of these concerts, but there are some extremely vivid memories that live on in my mind, like:

Chicago at the Boston Garden. I took my two sisters and my mother. It was a crazy fucking night. People all around us were getting stoned and my sister turns around to me and says, “Ew, what is that smell.” I just shook my head. “Shut up.”

One night it was blowing snow and absolutely freezing outside and Greg, Jack and I were walking around Harvard Square. We wanted somewhere to get warm, so we took a walk down the alley where Passim’s coffee shop was. (Passim’s is a storied place in Cambridge history. There were stories of how Linda Ronstadt sang there when she was very young and used to go to Elsie’s for roast beef sandwiches.) There was a live show that night, but there was no cover charge. We went in to get out of the cold and sat up the front near the stage. What followed was simply one of the most amazing things we’ve ever seen to this day.

Someone named Guy Clark walked out on stage to perform. He was huge, over six feet tall and he played the fiddle. I remember to this day what he opened up with. It’s a song called “Virginia’s Reel,” and he played that fiddle like I’ve never seen before. We had the best time that night. The guy played for probably two hours and it stands out today as one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen. That was the one and only time I ever saw him live, but I have a lot of his music.

We saw the J. Geils Band at the Boston Garden on November 15, 1975 in a performance that would become part of the Blow Your Face Out album, considered one of the greatest live albums ever.

We saw another pretty hot country band called Asleep at the Wheel at the Paradise and people were dancing on the tables by the time they got to the song “Route 66.”  Or how about Jonathan Edwards at the Paradise? When he sang the song “Shanty,” you swore that everybody in the place lit a  joint (we certainly did). I remember that the security staff there had no fucking idea what to do. Throw us all out? I know that didn’t happen and it was a hell of a concert.

We were there at the Who concert the night that Keith Moon collapsed on top of his drum kit within the first twenty minutes of the show. They rescheduled and we saw a great performance several weeks later. Just months after that, Keith Moon died from an overdose of a prescription drug he was taking to help him detox. Keith Moon had an affinity for trashing hotel rooms. I had no idea he used to blow up toilets until I took a look at Wikipedia.

It’s hard to pick the single best Linda Ronstadt concert when you’ve seen her more than thirty times in your lifetime. I’d have to say that her performance at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center was one of the very best. At the time we went to that show, I was driving a white Buick Skylark. It was mint. I had a vanity plate that read BLU BYU (obviously for the song Blue Bayou). You drive through the Saratoga Spa State Park to get into the performing arts center. Basically, you drive down a long two-lane blacktop surrounded by these huge trees on either side. Well, we were sitting in traffic on that road when somebody saw my license plate and became convinced that my car was carrying Linda Ronstadt to the show.

Now, that’s not even logical. Why would she ever come to the venue via this route and why would she be arriving so close to show time? But those logical thought processes had left these people. We’re stuck in about two miles of traffic when people suddenly start banging on the windows and doors, asking where Linda is. I’m like, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Who are these people?” We opened the car windows and all this smoke went streaming out. We assured these idiots that Linda Ronstadt was not in the car. We even let them look in to convince themselves. That was truly an unbelievable experience.

People used to assume that my fascination with Ronstadt was because I had a gay crush on her. They couldn’t be more wrong. The fact is that Linda Ronstadt is like a female version of the The Beatles. She’s done it all — country rock, rock n’roll, cajun, big band and mariachi — and she does all of it so well. Her voice at 62 is actually stronger than it was in her thirties because she took on a voice coach prior to the Nelson Riddle phase. She made a lot of money for the record companies and that kind of contribution gets a performer the latitude to do whatever he or she wants. She made great choices.

There were other great shows at the SPAC, like the Emmylou Harris tour the year she released Luxury Liner, and the Bonnie Raitt tour the year she released Sweet Forgiveness. I feel the same way about Emmylou as I do about Linda Ronstadt. She really defied the traditional definition of a country and western singer. The concerts were always in summer, so we’d spend a few days and camp out. One year we were lucky enough to be there during the month of August — the only month of the year when the Saratoga Race Track was open. I remember that we spent one Sunday there. We had breakfast at The Paddock where we drank Bloody Marys. Then we went and played the ponies, where we promptly got trashed on martinis. I have absolutely no memory to this day of actually walking up to a window and placing a bet. But I’m sure we must have done that at least a few times?

I also flew out to see Linda Ronstadt at the Los Angeles Forum on Christmas eve 1978  for the start of her Living in the USA tour. This came about because I had a pen pal living in Westminster, California, who was a huge Linda Ronstadt fan. She suggested I come out for the show and stay with her family, so I took her up on her offer. I got there a couple of days early. The night of the show, we checked into a hotel near the Forum because that’s where we were going to stay after the show. It was near the airport and I was flying home early Christmas morning. The final song was “Living in the USA,” and when the song began, they released 10,000 red, white and blue balloons from the ceiling.

There were so many Linda Ronstadt shows it was crazy. In the 70s, we were like Linda Ronstadt “deadheads” because we traveled to New York routinely to see her at SPAC. We also drove to Connecticut and Maine several times to see her. I can’t remember who I was with, but I also saw her “Canciones di me Padres” tour at Great Woods during the 80s. I remember almost belting the guy sitting behind me because he was screaming at her to sing in English throughout the whole show. I finally told him to STFU and, surprisingly, he did. Had I known that was all it would take, I’d have done it sooner.  I also saw her at Radio City Music Hall in NYC when she went on the road with Nelson Riddle. The last time I saw Linda Ronstadt was 2005 on the revolving stage of the South Shore Music Circus. Beth and I had tickets to see her with Emmylou Harris at the Orpheum after they released Western Wall, but Beth became ill so we gave those tickets to my sister and her husband.

We saw Elton John’s bicentennial concert at what was then called Schaefer Stadium. It was July 4, 1976. Greg had a station wagon, and we tied a huge American flag to the top of it and drove to Foxboro. I couldn’t venture to tell you how much we smoked on the way down and during the huge tailgating party that went on for hours before the show. Elton was notorious for his wild outfits, and the one he had for the Bicentennial Tour was no exception. It was the one in this photo and I believe he wore it at all the concerts that year. We blasted the song Philadelphia Freedom from his 8-track (yes, you heard it right, eight track), even though it had absolutely nothing to do with the bicentennial. (It was a tribute to Billie Jean King.) Fleetwood Mac opened the show. When it was over, we were stuck in traffic for what seemed to be hours. Finally, Greg got so sick of waiting, he drove through a chicken wire fence and onto some back road in Foxboro to get out of the parking lot. It took us a while to find the highway, but we did.

Beth and I saw a ridiculous concert at what was then called Great Woods with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Shawn Colvin, Bruce Hornsby and David Lindley. Beth was pregnant with Thalia at the time, so it had to be the summer of 1996. They each performed individually and then all together as a band. They were so good together we just wanted them to keep playing. And just before I met Beth in 1992, I saw two concerts at Great Woods (or was it the Tweeter Center by then?) with my marketing services department. One was Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and the other was Steve Winwood. (Just wait until we get to the “team building” parties I used to have with this crew.)

For all the people I have seen, there are so many I haven’t seen. I never had the opportunity to see the Beatles, but I doubt very much that I would have enjoyed the concerts anyway. I didn’t want to hear a bunch of people incessantly screaming. I wanted to hear the music. That’s why they stopped touring so early in their career. I’ve also never had the opportunity to see Paul McCartney. The closest I’ve come to seeing him live was when I saw the Rock Show movie. (I loved Wings, by the way.)  McCartney is coming to Fenway Park in August, but the tickets will be unaffordable for me right now. I am a real Deadhead, but I never saw The Grateful Dead perform live. I know The Dead still tours today, and then there’s Bob Weir’s Ratdog,  but it’s not the same without Jerry Garcia. On the bright side, Beth and I have just about everything The Grateful Dead has ever done, including all of Dick’s Picks (live recordings of their shows). I’ve also never seen several of my other favorites, like Janis Joplin, The Doors or Bob Dylan. Regrettably, I never made it to Woodstock, billed as three days of peace and music.

Anyway, I’m sorry if this musical trip down memory lane was a bit long in the tooth, but it’s been banging around in my head for several days now. I’ve thrown in a lot of links to make it interesting. Music was — and still is — a big part of my life. I have over 9 gigs of music on my ITunes. If you enjoyed it, I’m glad. Thanks for reading.

Have I mentioned my dog yet? Well, I’ve had two in my adult life. The first was Sundance.  She was a shepherd/husky mix and she was great. But my second adult life dog was something else. Her name was Simone. She was a miniature schnauzer with a great personality. I had bought her for Miss Headcase. When we picked her up, you could hold her in the palm of your hand. The photo here is not actually Simone. I wish I could find photos of her, but I can’t seem to locate them. However, this photo is pretty damned close to what she looked like. When Miss Headcase and I split, the one thing I made sure of was that she didn’t take Simone.

When Beth and I first met, Simone was jealous. The morning after Beth’s first night staying over in Melrose, Simone jumped up on my bed and unceremoniously took a dump. Just to let me know what she thought of this intruder into our lives. I had a hard time getting angry. She was pretty funny. Ah, but that isn’t the most vivid memory I have of little Simone. The one from Gloucester is even better.

Beth and I got home from work one night. We knew something was amiss when we opened the door because Simone was usually right there waiting for one of us to pat her and then take her out for a walk. Not this night. She barely picked her head up off the floor. She didn’t look very well, but we couldn’t figure out why. We looked at all the logical stuff. It had to be something she ate while we were gone. She wasn’t a trash dog. That wasn’t it. She did have a past history of eating cat shit. That was pretty disgusting, but it only took one time and she learned her lesson. She was, as they say, sick as a dog for two days. Besides, we ended up closing the door to the bathroom where the cat box was kept, and we had put a hole in the door that only the cats could get through. That wasn’t it. We knew for sure she couldn’t open the refrigerator door, and we kept cleaning stuff in a locked cabinet. That wasn’t it.

We were watching the dog trying to walk. It would have been funny if we weren’t worried. (Okay, we laughed anyway.) She literally was swaying back and forth when she tried to stand up. And forget the three stairs leading down to the kitchen. Couldn’t handle those. Now, I’m not going to lie. I think they should just legalize pot. There are many reasons for this  that we won’t go into here. That’s a different post for a different day. But let’s just say that I’m a supporter (and a party animal). I thought about this as a possibility, and immediately went for the ashtray that we hid under the living room chair when we left for work.

Seems that Simone got to to that ashtray before we did and partied on her own. Oh, yes. Ate every freakin’ roach in the ashtray. To put it bluntly, our little Simone was stoned. (And hungry, I might add. She couldn’t stop chowing on that dog food. Can’t imagine why.) The cats must have been getting a laugh out of this because they were down from the bedroom shaking their little heads at her undignified behavior. I can imagine what they were saying to each other, “Only a dog would do this.”

Okay, this is when Beth says, “Honey, you’ve got to call the vet!”

I looked at her for a few minutes wondering WTF she was thinking, then replied, “Oh, really? And tell him what? The dog ate all the roaches? Somehow, my dear, I think that might be a bad idea.”

“Yeah, you might be right.”

“Oh, I am definitely right. Let’s just go turn ourselves in instead.”

Needless to say, I did not call the vet. In fact, Simone was back to normal within a few hours. While we were waiting for that to happen, she did provide some comic moments, and we did find another hiding place for the ashtray.

I was never much a fan of business travel. I always thought it was overrated. The only good thing about it was that you kind of got to preview a place before you ended up spending your own money traveling there. My absolute favorite business travel destination? Well, it was neither Paris, nor the French countryside. It was not London. It was not Germany. It wasn’t San Francisco or D.C., although I absolutely love both places and they are probably both the only places outside of Massachusetts that I’d ever live. It was New Orleans, a place I’d probably never live.

Yes, I have a good friend who will tell you what a swill-bucket existence it is in New Orleans, and I am sure this is particularly true post-Katrina. In fact, one of the most vivid images I have in my head happens to be a huge poster in the French Quarter that displayed the differences in pay, crime, poverty rate, etc., between New Orleans and Boston. The numbers told the ugly story. However, if you are an outsider visiting New Orleans, you have an entirely different perspective because you don’t have to live there.

I may not want to live there, but partying there was a trip. You could work all damned day at a trade show, have to go to dinner with the ’suits’ at night, and you could still get some decent partying hours in. That is particularly true of the French Quarter which simply never shuts down. Leave a drink behind because you’re late for dinner? Unheard of. The bartenders in the hotels simply poured them into a plastic cup so you could finish your drink in the cab on the way to the restaurant.

There were always things going on at night. Some of the publishers would have parties on river boats with gambling; others would have buffet dinners with an open bar in their hotel meeting rooms. I preferred to hang out with my favorite sales people one-on-one because you’d actually get out and see the town. My absolute favorite sales guy was a guy named Ed from a publication called Analytical Chemistry. Ed and I couldn’t have been more different. He was a conservative from “the great state of Georgia,” and I was (and still am) a liberal from Massachusetts. We simply didn’t let it get in the way of our friendship. We never talked about politics.

Every time we’d go to New Orleans for the Pittsburgh Conference, Ed and I end up at  Commander’s Palace in the Garden District.  At the time, the head chef there was a guy named Emeril LeGasse — now one of my all-time favorite chefs. A couple of times we went to Brennan’s for breakfast and, if we did lunch instead of dinner, we loved the food at the Hard Rock Cafe. It was definitely New Orleans style food and the memorabilia in the place was regionalized as well — like Fats Domino’s piano top hanging on the wall, one of Doctor John’s outfits in a glass case above the entrance, or videos of Professor Longhair playing away in the background.

No bad food in New Orleans

Regardless of the size of the place, there is no bad food in New Orleans. If you love food, this is the place to be. I had my first alligator dish there; it was alligator sausages at breakfast one day in the French Quarter. It was a really small place and I cannot remember the name of  it. I liked it so much that I ended up having it stir fried at a Szechuan restaurant in Jackson Square and had the famous “alligator on a stick” at the French Market.

The Sheraton I stayed at on one trip celebrated Happy Hour by putting a row boat in the middle of the lobby bar filled with boiled crawfish and handing out free bottles of Blackened Voodoo Beer for the first hour. It was just awesome. In fact, Beth and I went on one trip together by train (this trip is one that deserves its own post, and it will get one down the road) and we made sure to stay at the same Sheraton.

On one trip, about fifteen of us were determined to eat at K-Paul’s. Paul Prudhomme is the grandaddy of cajun cooking. The lines outside his restaurant were legendary. They could extend the full length of the street, and you would wait for hours. As soon as we saw the line forming in the early afternoon, we pulled someone off booth duty and told them to stand in line so that we could get in when the place opened at 5:30 p.m. It worked perfectly. We ran over there after the show and were seated by about 6:30 p.m. There’s no flash in K-Paul’s. It’s rustic with family-style seating. We all got to sit together at one table, so we ordered a bucket of Cajun Martinis. I had the most amazing blackened yellowfin tuna I’ve ever had, and Paul Prudhomme was there that night. I still have the menu he signed and gave me. I also bought his first cookbook there on that trip. It’s one of my favorites.

The real fun started later

I never worried much about being gay at Millipore. (Well, let’s put it this way: I wasn’t worried at this time. I found that I had to worry later, once the Europeans took over.) I was pretty much out and headed for the bars after hours. Some of the Millipore revelers even came once in a while. If you’re gay, it’s not hard to find a place to party in New Orleans. A must see is Cafe Lafitte in Exile on Bourbon Street, which just happens to be the oldest gay bar in America. But things could get much more interesting than that late at night in New Orleans.

If you wanted to blow somebody’s mind, you took them to The Dungeon on Toulouse Street. The Dungeon was not necessarily a gay bar in the true sense of the word, but plenty of gay people frequented The Dungeon. This place was just amazing. Hell, it didn’t open until 10:30 p.m. Trust me when I tell you that your first trip there would amount to you walking around with your mouth open for what seemed to be hours. According to legend, the dungeon was where Prince Suleman of Turkey lured young women and prepared them for the harems of Istanbul by “psychological indoctrination, opium-induced submission and torture.”  I could spend hours describing it, so instead I’ll just rely on the link to tell the story. Besides, you get pictures.

For some stupid reason I’ll never understand, they decided to change the venue of the Pittsburgh Conference so that it rotated between Chicago and New Orleans, so the trips to New Orleans slowed down. However, on one of the final trips I made, I took Beth with me and we wrapped some vacation time around the business trip. That allowed us to take the train all the way to New Orleans. It was a blast. That story is coming up soon.

(Oh, yeah, I had a freakin’ ass kicking experience in Chicago once at this show as well. I’ll have to tell you about it some time.)

The winter dragged on. Our fifth and final cord of wood was delivered. The house was freezing and, perhaps spurred by guilt, Mr. Flashback suddenly took it upon himself to come into our house during the day when we were not there and start the stoves. Nice touch, but we were very uncomfortable with that. We felt violated, like we had no privacy with this guy working here. What really pissed us off was that his portion of the house — the workshop — was heated by propane, and we were paying pretty steep rent and freezing our butts off.

When February rolled around, it got even colder. The deep freeze made it impossible for us to have any kind of intimate relationship in the house, and we were still like little lovebunnies. We took to the Camry. I had a great 1992 Toyota Camry that became our lovenest away from our original lovenest. We’d sneak out to the car late at night, turn on the heat, crack the windows, turn on the stereo and lay the seat back. The car was parked in the driveway way back from the road, and Beth’s Honda Accord was always parked behind it. Plenty of privacy. We actually had a lot of laughs and made it a pretty good time. That car went 341,000 miles and lasted until 2003 before it died. We’ve never had another car like it.

Then, mercifully, the weather started to moderate. March and April passed with Mr. Flashback still coming in to start the wood stoves. I finally had to ask him to stop. I told him that it was a real invasion of privacy and it needed to stop immediately. He did. The warm weather brought a new set of problems. We had spiders you could saddle and ride. I mean, these things were huge. Here was Beth’s technique for killing them: She’d stand on a chair, drop a piece of cardboard on top of it, and then jump on it. Then, she’d leave it there for me to pick up when I got home. These things were so big that the cats and dog were afraid of them. They were all over the basement.  It was like visiting Aragog and his clan. I can’t believe that this guy allowed his son to sleep down there among the arachnids.

Then, Muffy (I didn’t name her) developed an odd habit. She’d jump up on the kitchen table and sit there, looking up at the ceiling for long periods of time. I used to laugh at her, and tease Beth about the cat losing her mind. Then, one day I opened the pantry door and saw that the cereal boxes had been eaten through. That was a bit unnerving. It was then that I realized that Muffy wasn’t crazy at all. She could hear the squirrels in the walls. We also had something that looked like a prairie dog running around the back yard. Regardless of whatever it was — to us it was part of the rat family. For all we knew, they could be in the house too. We began to see that the house had holes in it and that nothing really fit together structurally. That’s because Mr. Flashback must have had several flashbacks while he was building this place. No wonder these things were getting in the house.

One day, I got a frantic call at work from Beth. She was taking Simone and getting out of the house and going to the beach because Mr. Flashback was out in the backyard picking off squirrels with a handgun. She wasn’t worried about the cats because they were laying low. I called the Gloucester Police Department, told them who I was, and reported what Mr. Flashback was doing. The policeman I spoke to said that he couldn’t do that even if he had a permit. They said they were heading over and would take care of it. By the time I got home from work, Beth was back and things had settled down. And Mr. Flashback had gone home, probably pissed at us for turning him in.

Things continue to deteriorate

I have to say the summer in that house was wonderful. There were no temperature issues like there had been during the winter. We were dreading the summer because none of the windows, except for the attic room, could take an air conditioner. But we really didn’t need one that summer. We had other issues, however.  For example, Mr. Flashback was told to fix the wood stoves. He had no intention of doing that. There was still no permit hanging by the front door either. Our downstairs bathroom was a problem as well. It was made of plywood, including inside the bath tub. It was nasty and unhealthy. When we brought our first-last-security payment by, he promised he’d have the bathroom done before we moved in. It was now June or July and it was growing nastier by the day. We were at the point where we stopped using it and closed it off.

In spite of the multiple issues, we were never late with the rent. We paid as expected on August 1. Throughout the month of August, we called him about several things. He wasn’t even returning calls, and he certainly wasn’t showing up at his workshop where we could catch him face to face. I finally decided to give it up and called an attorney. He came out and met with us and we told him what had been going on. He told us not to pay the September rent, and to tell Mr. Flashback that we were not paying any more rent. In addition, the attorney was filing against the landlord so that a portion of our rent would have to be repaid.

In the meantime, the lease was up in October anyway. We had been looking around for a while. We really wanted to stay in Gloucester, but we were having a difficult time finding anything that we really liked.  The only place we found that we liked was in Beverly. We really wanted out of there badly, so we ended up taking it for October 1. The case against the landlord was still moving through the courts, and living there was not easy. One day we were putting some stuff in the car to bring to Beverly, and Beth was really aggravated at Mr. Flashback for refusing to talk to us. She began to walk towards his workshop as it was the first time he’d shown up in a couple of weeks. I yelled at her to leave it alone, but she insisted. Then it was us who got into a huge fight. What happened next was like something you see in a movie.

Somehow, the woman across the street decided to become involved in our fight. If there’s one thing you never do, it’s come in between two fighting (Italian) lesbians. She made some kind of comment about our fighting as she came up the driveway, and Beth and I turned toward her at the same time and yelled, “Shut the fuck up.” The woman immediately turned tail and left, while Beth and I burst out laughing. That was the best thing that could ever have happened because it took Beth’s mind off Mr. Flashback and re-focused her on moving.

The final day

We had help from my niece and her husband on the final day. By then, we had some kind of weird jumping fleas in the living room. We’re sure they came in with the wildlife because none of our pets were outdoor pets. The cats never went outside and the only time Simone went out was when she was walked. We never took her into the woods because we were worried about ticks. Because of the fleas, we had to leave all the carpets we bought behind because we didn’t want to bring them to Beverly with us.

We had been enjoying some party material in the back of the U-Haul truck when I remembered there was one more box of books upstairs. We ran in to get it. We ran up the first landing and turned the corner. There on the landing was a squirrel. He didn’t look any too friendly. In fact, he looked as though he was standing guard. You know, he wasn’t going to let us go upstairs. My niece’s husband turned to me and started laughing. “Screw the books. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” We laughed all the way back down the stairs. We blew out of there and never looked back.

Beth and I still talk about going back to Gloucester someday, but it probably won’t ever happen. Unless it has changed drastically, the school system sucks. Beth was living in a second-floor duplex that looked right out over Gloucester harbor. It was an  unbelievable view every morning. We should have just stayed there. But things like that usually happen for a reason. I guess.

About a month or so after we moved into the condo in Beverly, Mr. Flashback settled out of court. We got about $6,000 back.

Love makes you do stupid things. It’s as simple as that. I met Beth not long after my mom passed away. She was living in Gloucester and I was living in Melrose when we met.  Every self-respecting lesbian has heard this joke (written in the 80s by Lea DeLaria):

Q: What does a lesbian bring on a second date?

A: A U-Haul

There’s a reason for this joke. It’s pretty much true, at least that’s been my experience. Lesbians couple up quickly. I knew right away after I met Beth that we were going to move in together. However, after my experience with Miss Headcase, I was bound and determined to fight this urge for as long as I could. So, for a while we split our time between locations, four days a week in Melrose and three in Gloucester. We met in mid-July and I held out until October 1.

Because we both loved the ocean and because we wanted to try to rent a house, we decided that Gloucester was where we wanted to live. It was going to be a long commute for both of us: At the time, Beth was working in Quincy, Massachusetts and I was working in Bedford, Massachusetts. Beth’s commute was much more grueling because she actually had to go through Boston and further south. It was a great area, though, and we felt it was worth it. We found what we thought was the perfect place right near the Wingaersheek Beach salt marshes, on Concord Street. It was a contemporary, with lots of glass and heated with solar and house-burning — oops, I mean wood-burning — stoves.

Our bedroom was awesome. It was big and had a balcony that overlooked the back yard, which had a clearing where we used to play frisbee. Behind that were some beautiful bushes and trees, and directly behind the bushes was an impressive rock wall. It was just beautiful when it snowed.

Our landlord was a unique kind of guy, definitely lost in the 60s. We’re going to call him Mr. Flashback. He and his family had been living here, but now he was moving them above his retail shop, which was in Essex. So, he was renting this place. The only rub was that his actual workshop was attached to the house we were renting. He seemed like a nice enough guy, so we decided to take the place anyway. This was the beginning of the Nightmare on Concord Street.

An idyllic beginning turns sour

It was still relatively warm when we moved in. The first couple of months were a blast, really. The upstairs level became our little lovenest. We’d buy champagne on Friday nights and hang out up there — like all day on Saturday and Sunday. We had no children, just two cats and a dog,  and no other commitments. We were both working 9-5 jobs. We had the whole weekend to ourselves every weekend.

The Flashback family displayed some odd behavior. First, they hadn’t been able to catch their cat to take it with them. It was hanging around the house and was nasty. They actually set a trap for it on the back patio with a can of tuna fish and, when they finally caught it, the thing nearly ripped one of the kids’ arms to shreds. Lovely animal. I was glad to see it go since we had two peace-loving kitties (Muffy and Leni) and one very mellow Miniature Schnauzer (Simone) and didn’t want the thing accidentally getting into the house.

That wasn’t all. One morning we opened the shades covering the sliders in the kitchen. The sliders looked out on the back yard. We were eating breakfast one morning and had our backs to the sliders. We were talking, but then I stopped dead with a feeling that someone was looking at us. When I turned around, his children (the ones that were mobile) were plastered against the sliders looking in at us. I turned back to Beth and simply asked, “What would happen if I suddenly decided to throw you on the table and make love to you right now?” She burst out laughing. I made a mental note to talk to Mr. Flashback about this little oddity.

Then, the winter set in and it was freakin’ cold. Mr. Flashback said it would only take one cord of wood to heat the entire place for the winter. Mr. Flashback was either hallucinating or full of shit. We blew through that first cord in no time, and we ordered another and blew through that. In the meantime, we couldn’t seem to get the wood stoves to much affect the temperature in the house — we couldn’t seem to get the thermostat out of the fifties. And seriously, on the nights we’d meet in town and go out to Club Cafe, we’d get home late and we couldn’t get the house up out of the forties.

We bought -20 degree sleeping bags and space heaters, and camped out in the living room for the winter in front of Beth’s huge projection television. This room was largely glass and it was freezing in the winter. The bags and space heaters made it tolerable. On the other end of the spectrum we had the room where our stereo was. There was another wood stove in there, but the room was completely closed in except for the entry way. The room got so fucking hot that nobody could sit in there. In fact, the furniture got so dried out from the heat that we had to get rid of it because it splintered. In between we had the kitchen. If Mr. Flashback had thought to put a window in between the kitchen and the stereo room, the problem of extreme hot and extreme cold would have been solved.

We also had our third cord of wood delivered and this time the idiot who delivered it forgot to pull the tarp on top of it, and it got soaked in an ice storm while we were at work. One day Beth came home to find me atop the wood pile chipping away at it with her ice climbing pick and muttering more swears per minute than she could count. I had been at it for days and drying it out. The thing is, it never burns right after that no matter how much you allow it to dry, and this fact brought about the night I lost it.

“We’re having a chimney fire at 274 Concord Street”

One night we got home from work late after a day-long snow storm. The house was freezing. I went to the basement and got the stove going down there. It took forever because the wood was still damp, but I finally got it going. I left the basement door open in the hopes that some of the heat would rise. Then, I headed for the teeny room. There was no amount of paper or kindling I could burn that was going to get this wood going. It was just smoking and smoldering, generating no heat whatsoever. It was at this point that I lost it.

I immediately stood up and took the photos off the wall. I took out the photos and began burning the wooden frames. Beth came in and saw me and really tried hard not to laugh, but that was impossible. She decided that the best bet would be for her to get the hell away from the area, get under the sleeping bag and watch some Monty Python. I continued to burn decorative wooden items. Then, it happened. I remember Mr. Flashback’s words exactly:

“You’ll know you’re having a chimney fire because it will suddenly sound like a freight train is running through chimney.”

That’s exactly what I heard, but I was hoping that wasn’t what was actually going on. I turned to look out the window and the entire back yard was lit up orange. Beth came running in wondering just what the hell was going on. “Oh, I said, it was a chimney fire, but it looks like it’s stopped already.” Then the back yard lit up again and the sound resumed. I grabbed the phone and dialed the fire department. I simply told them there was a chimney fire at 274 Concord Street. They told me they were on the way.

Then I called Mr. Flashback, who had a unique response. When I told him what was going on he said, “Oh, well, we’re going to dinner. If anything bad really happens call us at this number.” Then, he proceeded to give us a telephone number to call in case we needed him. After he hung up, I looked at the phone in total disbelief. No real concern. No worry. It wouldn’t be the way I’d react if it were my house. The arrival of the fire trucks snapped me out of my stupor. Some of the firemen went up on the roof. About five or six filed into the house, tracking mud and snow everywhere. Two headed for the wood stoves. Bringing up the rear was the Fire Marshall.

He walked around the house for a while looking things over, then he walked up to Beth who, of course, rerouted him to me. He asked who I was and I gave him my name and told him we moved in October first. It was now January. Then he said, “I take it you’re not the owner.” I explained that we were renting and I gave him the owner’s name. He began to write it down and as he was writing a light apparently came on inside his head. He repeated Mr. Flashback’s real last name again. “Oh, yeah, I know this guy.” He shook his head. Then, he proceed to tell me that the wood stoves were installed improperly and that he’d have to fix them. They should be 36″ from the wall, not 12″ from the wall. He also told me that there was supposed to be a rental permit posted on the front of the house. Then he proceeded to ask me about the back-up heating system. I told him there wasn’t one. His response? “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I wasn’t. He told me that he was going to be contacting Mr. Flashback. After a three-hour visit, the firemen went on their way and I proceeded to clean the house. We both called in sick the next day, and I had a cord of dry wood delivered.

Things were getting curiouser and curiouser, and the situation would soon come to a head.

Gay people have this affliction called Disco-itis. I know I’ve had it in the past myself, but I’ve been cured. This affliction is brought on by a combination of alcohol, banned substances and gay bars. The more you take part in those three things, the worse the Disco-itis becomes. I came out at the height of the disco scene. (I will confess to you that I think it’s barely a musical form, yet in a gay bar it was intoxicating — probably because I was intoxicated. I have absolutely no disco in my vast music collection to this day.)

Of all the ‘ladies’ on the disco scene those days, Donna Summer was by far the Queen when it came to music in the bars. Donna Summer. One of the biggest bitch homophobes on the planet. The woman who states to this day that AIDS is God’s punishment for being gay. And those aren’t her only homophobic words. I wonder who the fuck she thought was buying all her records? Did we collectively ignore that fact about Donna Bummer, or was that not the case back then? Either way, I don’t do Donna Summer. Anything that broad (and I mean this in the most derogatory way) has made doesn’t get through my front door, doesn’t play in my CD player and doesn’t grace my ITunes library. In fact, my being gay trumps any kind of music. No homophobes need apply…even those of the rock n’ roll variety (and we know they exist as well). Nobody I know would dare bring a Coors beer or Crackerbarrel cheese into my house either. And, by the way, don’t ever ask me to step inside a J.C. Penny. But that’s a post for another day. For this post, consider it a lesbian rant.

The thing about the gay bars and disco is that there are songs that become anthems and their makers become gay icons. Everybody has a different viewpoint — the songs that they see as anthems may be different than yours. One that stands out for me is Shame by Evelyn “Champagne” King. I don’t think that’s a universal song, though. I think most people will say something like, “Oh yeah, man, I remember her now!” But I do think that a song like I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor is a universal anthem. Two others that fit here are We Are Family by Sister Sledge and Lady Marmalade by Labelle (yes, that would be Patti LaBelle; pictured here in this post btw).

Then, there are those songs that you wish you could eliminate from the replay loop in your brain. Every time I see National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, that little ditty called Born To Be Alive stays in my head for days and not in a pleasant way either. That’s the song that’s playing as they enter Vegas.  The artist was Patrick Hernandez. Patrick Hernandez? Who the fuck is Patrick Hernandez? Here’s another that fits here: Ring My Bell by Anita Ward. Anybody else remember these two songs and do you find them as annoying as I do?

Outside I wouldn’t put this stuff on my radio, but once I was inside a gay bar and after a few drinks (and does anyone remember Poppers?) my eyes would glaze over and it’d be the best freakin’ music in the world. That lasted for about eight hours. When you woke up in the morning, you felt about as guilty for enjoying that music as you did waking up to the person next to you. (You wondered what you were thinking on both counts.) At the risk of sounding like the Republicans currently in office, I pose this question: What if disco music was a secret government program designed to keep the gays under control?

Well, here I am again. Back in Turners Falls. Before I begin, I have a dateline update. In the first installment of this particular story, I said that my relationship with Miss Headcase probably ended in 1988. I’m now changing that to 1989 because a very specific weather event happened while I was still with Miss Headcase. You’ll see further on.

One night not long after Miss Headcase returned to Turners Falls, I received a phone call from her. She said that the car was not riding right and she wanted to trade it in…for a little sporty Honda CRX. I actually don’t think they even make this baby anymore. It somewhat resembled the 280Z. I was suspicious of this because the Sentra was in great shape. According to Miss Headcase, all we had to do was trade in the Sentra and give the guy an extra thousand. I told her I’d have to come out and make the deal myself. There was no way I was sending her more money. As it was, I was paying the rent and giving her plenty of spending money every week. She wasn’t working. Besides, I now believed that something was rotten in Turners Falls…and it wasn’t the car.

Nevertheless, I did my duty. The next day, I had too many meetings to attend to go out. I took the following day off and drove out to Barbara’s to pick her up. We went to the car dealership together and I took a look at what she wanted to buy. I immediately had the feeling that she was sleeping around with someone, and this new car was a manifestation of that. Honestly, I had no idea if it was male or female. With her new-found homophobia, it could very well have been a guy. To tell the truth, it was something I didn’t really want to deal with just then.

I was growing weary from this whole scene and wanted the path of least resistance. I gave the guy the thousand bucks and she got her car, but she got it with a warning. I told her that I knew the Sentra was in great shape when I bought it because I had a car mechanic look it over completely. She was buying a car that nobody had checked out and she was taking the word of a small-town car salesman. If it had problems after the fact, she could either borrow the money from her mother (who wasn’t about to give her jack), or get a job and get it fixed herself. I told her that if we still wanted to take the trip to Hilton Head, I needed to put some money aside.

She was busy making up the work she had missed while sick and was almost done with that. She also managed to pick up a job from our landlord up in Charlemont, Massachusetts — not far from Turner’s Falls. She was, however, concerned about completing her portfolio in time for graduation. She had all the photos chosen, she just didn’t have the time to mount and frame them for presentation. I told her not to worry about that part; just send me the negatives and I’d take care of it. I used my advertising agency to get it done, and the final tab was about $2,000. What mattered was that it got done on time and it looked great.

Miss Headcase graduates

The situation remained the same right up until graduation. I didn’t really understand why Miss Headcase wasn’t coming home on the weekends now that her portfolio had been completed and turned in. When I asked her, she said she had some stuff to finish up in lovely, charming and picturesque TF — including photographing a couple of families. Honestly, I knew the real answer to that question but I wasn’t really able to deal with it yet.

Miss Headcase’s mom flew to Boston (from California) for her graduation. I had become very friendly with her over the last three years of our relationship. We had a lot of laughs together.  I picked her up at Logan and she came to stay with me in Melrose. Two days later, we headed up to Turners Falls for Miss Headcase’s graduation. I had planned a huge graduation party for her at a friend’s house in Marblehead that would take place the day after graduation. We lived in a really nice condo at the time, but there was no yard. It was summer and I wanted to be able to cook out. My friend Linda’s place was perfect.

I anticipated that Miss Headcase would be packed and ready to come back to Melrose with her mother and I, but I was definitely wrong about that. Instead, she told me she would meet us at Linda’s the next day for her party. I was really pissed off at this, but I didn’t let that show. I didn’t want her mother’s visit to be ruined by an argument at this point. I let it go and told her what time to be there.

Miss Headcase’s mom and I sat together for a couple of hours and watched a movie. Then, she went to bed. Around midnight,  I got a call from Sam and Dave. They had just gotten back from Sam’s cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and wanted to know how the graduation had gone. I told Dave that the ceremony was great and the weather was beautiful up there. Then he asked, “Is she home now?” I told him that Miss Headcase would be staying in TF overnight, but that she was going to go directly to her party at Linda’s tomorrow. I’ll never forget what he said next, “You have got to be fucking kidding me. Come up here right now. We have to talk to you.”

When I walked in the door, they immediately handed me a vodka on the rocks and told me to sit down. Apparently, when Miss Headcase went out to do the photo shoot in Charlemont, she confessed to the two of them that she was sleeping with Barbara and had been for quite some time. Dave told me that they didn’t immediately come back here and tell me — even though they wanted to — because she promised she was ending it and would be coming home.

You know, we had been having our problems, but I was really heartbroken. Maybe I didn’t show it as much as people thought I would, but I had my suspicions about her and Barbara for a long time. I guess the truth was that I just didn’t want to know for the longest time. Now that it had been confirmed, I actually felt relieved. Sam and Dave were really pissed off at her. To begin with, I had been living in Melrose well before I had met Miss Headcase, so these guys were my friends first. They were really upset that she hadn’t done what she said she was going to do.

By the time I made it downstairs at two in the morning, my depression had turned to full-blown anger. I wanted to get on the phone and confront her right at that moment, but I thought better of it with the party coming up tomorrow and her mother here. I let it slide and went to bed. I did not sleep very well.

I called her the next morning and I could not hold back. I told her that I knew what was going on. I told her she was to show up at the party — without Barbara in tow. I made it clear that she had no option. There were about fifty people invited and I had no intention of uninviting them. I also told her that her mother had flown out from California and she needed to do the right fucking thing. She promised she’d be there. On time.

The Mad Hatters party

I’ll hand it to her, Miss Headcase showed up on time and without Barbara. Lots of people were there, many from Millipore (where I worked), some of my friends, my family, and her mom. We were all dressed in shorts and/or jeans, T-shirts, sandals and sneakers. She walked in with nylons and a suit on, and I knew her transformation into a looney toon was complete. No question about it. I remember her mother’s face. She couldn’t believe it. She said to her, “Yeah, you look like a million bucks, but who the hell are you?”

I had been with Miss Headcase for more than eight years by then, and I knew this was about as far removed as you could get from who she really was. It was absurd. She was also acting quite snobby, and that really bugged me. By the time she arrived, I had already had a few drinks. I’m sure I made some kind of comment about how she was acting and how she looked. I will never forget what she said in reply, “I’m more of a woman than you’ll ever be.”

We were down in the basement of Linda’s place where people went out to the pool and we were alone at that point. I remember wheeling around and saying to her, “Really? You think putting on a skirt, shirt and jacket makes you a woman? You’re pathetic.” We got into a minor fight there, but I put an end to it. This wasn’t the venue for that. I wasn’t ready to have everyone know. To begin with, many people never liked the fact that we were together. They thought she took advantage of me.

We made it through the party. Later in the evening, the few people still hanging around and were inside with Linda having coffee, including Miss Headcase’s mother. We were outside and it was time to talk. According to Miss Headcase, the whole thing was her fault. She had come on to Barbara. I wasn’t sure about that. The more I had been exposed to Barbara, the less I liked her. I was sure it was mutual. Then, Miss Headcase asked me for a favor: She asked if I could wait until she made a decision about who she wanted to be with. It took real balls to ask that question. It took a great amount of stupidity for me to accept that situation. We decided to make the trip to Hilton Head anyway. The plans had been made. The place had been reserved.

Besides, when it comes to relationships, I’m not a quitter. Whether a lover or a friend, I’ll give it my all so that I can at least walk away knowing I did my best to save it. That’s very much a Della Piana characteristic.

The bitter end

Miss Headcase headed back to Turners Falls after the party, and her mom and I returned to Melrose. On the way, she asked me why Miss Headcase was not coming home. I decided this was as good a time as any to tell her what was going on. She was really mad. She also felt really bad for what I had been going through. I confessed to her that I had a feeling this was going on for some time, but there was no way I could prove it.  She and I had two more days together and I was already on vacation, so we ended up having a good time together. I took her into Boston. We went to some museums, saw a movie and generally hung out together. I drove her to the airport. Two days later, I picked up Miss Headcase and we headed (by car) to Hilton Head.

I have to say that Hilton Head didn’t thrill me. There are three things you absolutely have to like for Hilton Head to be fun:  (1) Tennis; (2) Shopping; and (3) The Beach. I’m not big on any of those, but Miss Headcase wanted to go there. I still can’t figure out why. She really didn’t like any of those things either. Perhaps it should have been a sign that she was drifting off into insanity. Frankly, the best part of the trip was stopping in Charleston, South Carolina. It was really beautiful there — the way you’d expect a charming southern town to be. However, it is not the place to be openly gay. To say that its inhabitants are a bit backwards on social issues would be an understatement.

The condo we were staying in was right on the beach. You could simply get up in the morning, pull back the curtain and be staring at the ocean. It was beautiful, but I knew instantly that the trip had been a mistake and there would be no saving this relationship. I could have stayed home. Instead, I was facing this crap thousands of miles away from my comfort zone.

According to Miss Headcase, she was still confused about her decision and that meant we were not sleeping together. Not that I wanted to at this stage of the game. Every night it was the same. She’d go into the other bedroom so she could call Barbara. I absolutely hated being there, and I was totally relieved when we were forced to evacuate because of Hurricane Hugo. Three days under these conditions were enough for me.

It was a long ride back. There was nothing more that I wanted than to drive all the way back up to Turners Falls and dump Miss Headcase off. That would be the best part of the vacation. However, I was just too tired to make the round trip, and there was no fucking way I was staying in Turners Falls for the night. Instead, we stopped in Melrose for the night. She immediately headed for the phone to let Barbara know that she would be returning the next day.

That marked the bitter end. I drove her to Turners Falls early in the morning. Barbara was positively animated, asking me about the trip and about Hurricane Hugo. She was happy to have Miss Headcase back and, at that point, I was happy to get rid of her. I knew going back to work would be difficult, but at least I had four days to get my act together.

Aftermath

My contact with Miss Headcase after that was simply to ensure that she got her stuff out of the apartment. I know at one point that my anger finally came to the surface, and I told her I wanted the car back. We fought about it for a couple of days, but I finally chalked that demand up to finally having had enough and let it go.

Eventually, Miss Headcase and Barbara moved to Florida. This happened largely because Barbara’s children (they were grown and married) were completely against her relationship with Miss Headcase, particularly because it was so close to their father’s untimely death.  We eventually stopped talking altogether, but after Thalia was born, I did get a call from her at the office one day. Seems she had been talking to a mutual friend who worked in one of the labs who told her I was in a relationship with Beth and that we just had a child together. By then, whatever I had once felt for her was completely gone and I was more annoyed than anything. I told her that I was happy and I really didn’t want to try to be friends. That’ s just not my style. When it’s over, it’s over. Miss Headcase accepted that.

Several months later, I decided to take a trip out to California to see her mother and her sister. I was there for a week and we had a really good time, but her mother confessed that she’d lost weight and hadn’t been feeling well. A few weeks after I got home, she called and told me that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer and was going to have surgery and chemo. Unfortunately, she was gone within six months. That was a really sad time in my life. At the beginning of my relationship with Miss Headcase, I had a contentious relationship with her mother but that changed and we got to be pretty good friends.

Where Miss Headcase is now, I do not know. As of 2002, the web tells me she is still in Florida. Is she still with Barbara? I do not know, nor do I care.  I was happy to end that chapter in my life and my intention was to avoid commitment for a while.

After the “child molester” comment, Miss Headcase headed back to Turners Falls and went right back into the closet. She began to come home less and less, and began to spend more and more time with Barbara. Now, since last night’s post, I’ve had several people write comments on Facebook telling me that Turners Falls is a gem. It’s beautiful. It’s an oasis. It is beautiful, I will give it that. It is a wonderful place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there — even for a limited period of time. There was an undercurrent of homophobia there that extended even to the Hallmark Institute of Photography. If that wasn’t enough, Barbara was a staunch Catholic and started bring Miss Headcase to church on Sundays. Had Miss Headcase not been Miss Headcase, had she had her convictions in place, if she were more comfortable in her own skin — what transpired next may never have happened.

Not only were the Christians (frankly, I can’t tell the difference between Christians and Catholics; the differences are subtle) working on Miss Headcase’s psyche, so was the school. They were convincing her that being outwardly gay was bad; and for God’s sake — do not bring me around. She should be wearing dresses. It was like going back in time to the fifties, and I confess that I was totally freaked out by it. Miss Headcase, on the other hand was buying it “lock, stock and barrel,” as my mother would say. It wasn’t enough that she wasn’t coming home, she now was restricting my visits to TF. There was always something she had to do with Barbara, like take weekly trips to Enfield, Connecticut.

When I finally found out what was going on in Enfield, I have to confess that I laughed like hell. I was almost embarrassed to admit it to people, but I finally did tell a few people. I mentioned in the last post that I was friendly with my landlords (since I’m an R & B fan, we’ll call them Sam & Dave). There was a good reason for this. They were gay, and it was an absolute blast living in their building. We got to be very friendly. While Miss Headcase was away, I’d go up to their apartment on Sunday mornings and we’d have ‘Grapefruit Flips’ for breakfast. (Essentially, these consist of very cold grapefruit juice with a ladle of vodka — preferably a high end vodka — on top; no mixing. Then, you just chug them.) After a few of these, it was easy to tell them what was going on in Enfield.

Barbara was taking Miss Headcase to weekly church-run square dances. Square dances. Apparently, they didn’t have any square dance specialists in TF? Either way, I knew real trouble was on the horizon. While I found this all very disturbing — apparently Miss Headcase was taking the place of Barbara’s husband at these events — I confess that I just had to laugh at the vision of Miss Headcase square dancing that was in my head.

In comes the WTF phone call

Early one evening, I received a phone call from Barbara telling me that Miss Headcase was very sick. I can’t remember exactly what the situation was, but I think it was sold to me as some kind of rabid ‘flu’ or something. She thought that she should come home and be seen by a doctor. Now, of course, I was in a panic. I called my niece and her boyfriend (now her husband) and asked them to take a ride out to Turners Falls with me to pick her up just in case I needed help. They came right over. It was practically the middle of the fucking night when we got up there, and Miss Headcase was virtually unconscious.

For the life of me, I didn’t understand why Barbara hadn’t just put her in the hospital out there. She looked like she belonged in a hospital, and it didn’t look like the flu to me. She was in and out of consciousness. The fact of the matter was that I was not convinced that a hospital out there was wise, given the goings on. We loaded her into the back seat of the car and brought her to Melrose. By the next morning, she was in the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital, where she would stay for at least two weeks.

To this day, I really don’t know what it was — if you can believe that — but I had my theories. Remember that this was either 1987 or 1988. Miss Headcase wasn’t divulging any information about what may have transpired in lovely, picturesque Turners Falls. And believe me when I tell you that gay partners had no rights back then. In fact, the doctors wouldn’t even talk to me because I was not ‘immediate family.’ I told nobody in my family anything about this except my niece and her mother, my sister Mamie.

What did I think it was? Well, let’s start with alcohol poisoning. That could have been it. I knew they were working on Miss Headcase out there — and I mean emotionally, which is something she couldn’t handle. She was in therapy when I met her, but quit immediately after we got together. I told her that this was a mistake. I wasn’t a therapist and I didn’t want to be her therapist. I also told her that our relationship wasn’t going to solve her emotional problems. She had at least confessed to me a couple of months before this incident that she had been drinking too much. Drugs? Who knows? I thought alcohol was a more likely candidate.

All I do know is that they would not release her until she visited with the hospital psychiatrist. She did that, and was released. We went home. I asked her point blank why she had to see the psychiatrist. Miss Headcase told me that it was because she had “lost time” and they wanted to be sure she didn’t have any lingering emotional issues with that. While her explanation made all the sense in the world, I had to wonder if it was the real reason. I still do not know all these years later.

Miss Headcase stayed home with me for about a week. Then, it was time to return to Turners Falls, the Hallmark Institute and Barbara. If you think this is as weird as the situation could get, just stay tuned.