At one point in our lives, Greg, Jack, Sam, John and I partied like there was no tomorrow in Vermont. But we didn’t just party anywhere. We were partying in luxury homes at Hawk Mountain. There were two sets of these homes back then, one in Pittsfield and one in Rochester. The majority of these places were owned by New York doctors and attorneys. The rent was steep back then, but we’d just pool our Friday pay checks and head up. It didn’t matter how many of us stayed in these places. They were huge. Hell, once we got up there, we didn’t care if we ever went out, particularly if it was snowing…and it often was. All we cared about was that we had enough money left over for booze and ganja. We did. There was a security deposit and we’d get that back. So, we’d just split that money and we’d have money for the following week.

I don’t know how many freakin’ trips we made up there. They kind of all run into each other in my mind, and for good reason. I’m lucky I can remember any of these trips. Forget the hooch. That was fine. Nobody ever died from that shit. The drinking, however, was crazy. I was lucky I didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.  It was always the five of us, and then there would be several other people who would come at different times. Hell, we met people at the general stores in Vermont who would end up partying with us. It was absurd. We didn’t even know these people. They could have been serial killers for all we knew.

How old were we? Well, one of us had to be at least twenty-one to rent and I was the oldest in the group by a couple of years. The homes were always rented in my name, so I was probably about twenty-three or twenty-four. I was working at Millipore at the time, but it was early in my career there (I started working there when I was twenty).

What were we drinking in those days? Name it. Rum. Jack Daniels. Tequila. Sometimes we drank all of them together. We were just whacked out back then. I remember one day we were waiting for a bunch of people to come up after work. It was a Friday, and we’d been up there from late morning. By the time the early evening arrived it was pouring outside. It was fall, because I was sick as a freakin’ dog and I was sitting outside in the pouring rain in the leaves feeling like death. Buddha only knows what I was drinking that day. I think it was probably Jack Daniels on the rocks.

It was freezing out, so the rest of the gang came out and got me to come inside. They put me in the bathroom because I told them I was sure what went down was going to come up. And that’s when the adventure began. They left, I was about to be sick and, instead of picking up the hopper, I just stuck my head in the toilet. That’s when it got stuck in there. It wasn’t really stuck. It was just that I had absolutely no motor control, and neither did any of them. So, they couldn’t get my head out once it was in. They kept flushing so that I wouldn’t drown…at least they thought I was going to drown. I probably wasn’t. Worst of all, as sick as I was, I was laughing my ass off and so were they. If there’s one advantage to all of us being gay, it was that there was no sweat when I took all my clothes off in front of them and got in the shower. Know what happened after that?

I got my second wind. The rest of the party goers arrived and I dressed in clean clothes, went upstairs and promptly resumed partying. I never even got sick. This particular party went on until about seven in the morning, when we all finally collapsed. We slept pretty much all day. We woke up sometime late in the afternoon to eat dinner and start partying all over again.

There are other unbelievably psycho scenes from this particular movie in my life. We managed somehow to pick up this guy who worked at a gas station across from the entrance to Hawk. His name, if you can believe it, was Silvertooth. Yeah, he had one, right smack in the front.  We met him at this local bar called the Roadhouse, and he was funny as hell. He fit right in. His only problem was that he just couldn’t get it into his head that lesbians didn’t sleep with guys. Don’t know what he was thinking, but he never managed to get what he was looking for. Too bad he wasn’t gay himself because every freakin’ guy there wanted to sleep with him. He was pretty good looking and  could have had an excellent time. Needless to say, Silvertooth became a fixture for a number of months, then he moved out of state. That was the end of that. Seems we had some other transient partiers that I can’t really remember.

Probably one of the most bizarre nights in Vermont happened for Greg and I at the same time. He ended up in the bedroom with a woman, and I ended up in a different bedroom with a guy. We all knew each other, but  neither of us have any idea how it happened. I can tell you that I was drunk. I can also tell you that dead drunk or dying absolutely nothing happened except I said to this guy, “Put that thing away. It isn’t happening now or ever.” Like I’ve said from day one, gay from the womb, baby, and lovin’ it. We both escaped the bedrooms at the same time and just sat on the living room floor laughing.

I’m not sure when the Vermont experience ended. I know it had to have gone on for at least a year. In that time, we probably made more than twenty trips up there. It was surely one of the most out-of-control times of our lives and, while I can’t remember much of it, I know for sure we had one hell of a ride.

In every life, there are people who do not occupy a significant part of the memory. Nevertheless, these people made some kind of indelible mark. Welcome to the “Characters” category.

About a month ago memories of this guy we’ll call Stan came back, not in any sigificant way, but with enough force to merit my laughing out loud. I’ve tried to remember more since then, but am stuck with two memories that dominate.

George met this friend in college and he quickly became part of the group. He was really funny and he would just plain embarrass you in public. The short story is that Stan, George and I used to go drinking at the airport. Yes, Logan Airport. We’d go to the swanky lounge and pretend we were waiting for a plane to fly us somewhere. We’d sit there and watch the flights take off and land. We could spend hours there. It was absurd, really. Can you imagine trying to do that now in a post 9-11 world? You’d never get that far at any airport, let alone Logan.

One night we were leaving the airport and were on the bottom floor where people where checking in for their flights. It was really busy that night. George and I were walking ahead of Stan, but didn’t really realize he had fallen behind. He did that deliberately. Pretty soon, we heard a commotion and turned around. There he was pretending to be blind. I mean, he was very convincing. He was boucing off people and yelling, “Hey, wait! I’ve lost you. Don’t leave me here! Where are you!”

I believe we were caught by surprise and we really didn’t know what to do, simply because this was a new “act” for him. George was stuck between just letting him go and running back and getting him. Actually, what we really wanted to do was pretend we didn’t know him. Eventually, we ran  back and grabbed him, but we were not saying very nice things to him. The whole airport was glaring at George and I for letting this poor blind kid fumble around and find his way.  I just remember that when we got away from the masses of people, we stopped in some corridor and just laughed like hell. And that’s the end of the memory. Bang. I’ve not been able to go any further.

One other time, I remember the three of us going to see Linda Ronstadt at the Music Hall in Boston and he pulled the blind thing again. We were really quite close to the stage. Stan waited until the clapping stopped between songs and it had become extremely quiet.  He then turned to me, grabbed my arm, and said in a very audible voice to those around us, “Tell me. How does she look?” Well, that was it. We all were just rolling in the aisle. It was unbelievable. He was the kind of guy who caught you every time. He kept doing it, but you could never anticipate when he would try it.

And those are my only memories of him. Short but extremely sweet. Maybe somewhere down the road, there’ll be more! Who knows.