Barnegat Bay - 28. Chapter 28

This is kind of a missing chapter. Or little parts of the story all along. Feelings I’ve always kept to myself.

Maybe they should have been in there all along. Or maybe some things I think and know now weren’t even formed. I may only believe they were because they’ve become so ordinary.

And I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, especially Mary’s. I expect any family members – or friends – would have said, “You could’ve told me that years ago. It wouldn’t have changed a thing.” But they might say that now, not sixty years back, when it might have changed everything I love.

I don’t think hiding these thoughts was selfish. But there’s so much I don’t and didn’t know. And as smart as I was – as educated – there weren’t a lot of guides.

As I said at the start, I never expected to be married. Or when I did marry – because it was anticipated – it would be a comfortable, if somewhat formal, arrangement. Instead, I fell in love. Was completely taken by surprise. Which was amazing, considering how guardedly I’d lived. But so much has changed in the last twenty years – first, the wild 70s, then the sad 80s – and so much is still changing, that I felt I needed to add this.

I started writing again around my ninetieth birthday, but I’d been thinking about it for years. I never expected to live this long, despite my genes and my mother’s prediction. And I didn’t do it as a present to myself or a self-indulgence. It’s certainly too late to be the kind of advice I wanted when I was thirteen.

I couldn’t have been that young. But I was. And maybe even younger, when I began to notice men. There’s no sense trying to remember my earliest thoughts. So much of them were filled with examples – or wrong examples. “Do this.” “Be that.” “Don’t look there because you’re liable to get a fist in your face.” And maybe it would have been harder if I’d stayed that short, cute guy. Fortunately, there was that late growth spurt, and I was suddenly almost close to being tall.

My twenties were great fun – at least, privately – and I learned to hide that part of my life well. It wasn’t by accident that I went away to college. And I didn’t pick a small, sheltering college town where I’d have to keep pretending. Rochester. Baltimore. Cleveland. Like New York, they were places I could be invisible.

“You’re sure you want to go that far?” my mother asked. Odd, since she was usually so adventurous.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“He will,” Dad repeated, as if almost intuiting something. As usual, I was grateful for his support. Because if it hadn’t been for his calm and my mother’s independence, I might not have looked for other men like me.

I always knew there were more – besides the obvious ones who never held my interest. They were often intelligent, funny, and attractive guys. But I needed men who were more discreet. “And if there’s one, there’s two,” my grandmother on Barnegat used to say, when she was rooting in her button jar, looking for a match for one that was missing. And I found more than two.

Certain work seemed to dictate discretion, and men in those fields attracted me. Other doctors. Lawyers. Engineers. Businessmen. Architects. Politicians. And – from when I was still in college – boys who were going to turn into those kinds of men.

My relationships never started innocently or by chance. There were ways to get a sense of a man. Questions. Signs. No secret codes or hidden places to meet. The man I won the “Oh, Me” from was one of those guys.

“Wanna go out on my boat?” he asked, at an early summer party when we were both back in the city.

“You have a boat? You’ve never mentioned it.”

“It’s kind of a wreck. But it’s good for weekend fishing.”

“I’d like that. We’ve always fished on Barnegat.”

“Down Barnegat way,” he nearly sang, as if it were a popular tune. “I’ve never pushed the heap that far, but maybe it’s time.”

It wasn’t a heap – more a nice little boat that need painting and care. I gently pointed that out, but he shrugged and said, “Gotta pay for med school first.” And we did fish that weekend, and through the summer, until we headed back to classes. We not only went down the coast from where he was docked, in Newark, but also around Long Island and into the Sound. It went along with discretion. If you never visited to the same places twice, no one got to know you.

But med school wasn’t the first time I was with a man. And it didn’t happen even in my eager freshman year. I was still watching then – and learning.

My first time was a teacher, and my mother would have said, “Of course.” But like Dad, if she ever knew, she didn’t mention it.

The man was my sophomore math prof. Short. Blondish. Less than ten years older – still an instructor – and with the bad haircut I’d grown to expect.

“It’s not that I don’t know better,” he told me, when I’d carefully asked. “But it’s easier to not stand out.”

He didn’t blend in naked, and he taught me how to share my body. And he generously shared his.

“It’s not one-sided,” he counseled. “There’s nothing less fun than a man who simply lies there, expecting you to do all the work.”

“Work?” I joked. And he grinned.

“You know what I mean. I want to be kissed back when I kiss. It’s like shaking hands. No one wants a dead fish.”

And he wanted to be touched – gently and smoothly but firmly. And tickled. And teased. And I wanted it all back. And in another way my mother would appreciate, after that, I became something of a teacher myself – even with men supposedly more experienced.

“Don’t do that,” I’d find myself thinking – then saying aloud. “It hurts. How would you feel?”

“I’m not that kind of guy,” one might crack. Or “Other men’ve liked it.”

“Well, I’m not one of them.” And I’d start to dress.

“Hey. Get back here. Please. I like you. I’ll learn.”

That was my twenties. I met a lot of men – one at a time. Some I saw for a couple of weeks, some for a handful of evenings. Or only once – though I didn’t like that much. There was so much to learn, and I couldn’t do it overnight. And I’d always be cautious. There had long been hard to explain diseases, even before they could so readily kill you.

But as I neared the end of my twenties, I realized something had to change. I needed to marry one of the women I was so comfortable with socially. That wouldn’t be hard. There were always plenty of them around. Interesting. Intelligent. Well educated and brought up. Though few my age.

“The older ones have already married,” Dad advised. “You were busy with school. So you’ll need to look at their younger sisters. But use the older ones for guidance – not their mothers. They’re often still in the Victorian Age.”

“Still?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Gloves. Hats. Longer dresses. Polite introductions and thank you notes. And no wearing white till Memorial Day.”

I had to laugh. I wouldn’t even like a woman’s brother like that.

But instead of marrying one of the women I took to city parties, I met Claire. Or re-met her – met her all grown up. To tell the truth, she took the pressure off being a guy, and I liked that. Another truth: maybe I liked Claire because it meant delaying for another three or four years. She was so busy establishing herself in business, and proving she could take charge – all things I recognized as important from my mom – that I thought I could coast for a while longer. I’d never been a man to play around – seeing one guy while thinking of another – and I wasn’t about to do that with Claire.

“No,” I’d tell a woman in the city – a cousin or friend. “I can’t take you to that party.” Or play. Or opera. Or whatever. “I’m engaged.”

But I wasn’t going to tell that to guys. More stupidly, I didn’t think that was even being dishonest. I genuinely believed I was “finishing things up.” Once married, I knew I’d stop completely, and I had proof – the one night Claire and I spent together was as much fun as any I’d had with man.

“You’ve done this before,” she joked.

“No,” I honestly wanted to say. “I’ve never been with a woman.” But that was another lie. I’d explored some with the kinds of women you don’t take to dinner in return. Instead, I kidded Claire back, “Well, I needed to keep up with those Amherst boys.”

“Williams – or Brown,” she corrected. “Amherst was too close.”

“And not Harvard or Yale?”

“Pretty snooty.”

“Sounds like you know.”

She simply laughed. “I learned enough not to embarrass myself on my wedding night.”

We both knew we shared enough to make a very good marriage – once she lured me to Toms River, or I coaxed her to the city. Or worked out something in between. But we never could have imagined anything as complicated as we got.

Because in falling in love with Mary, I also got Claire. She was the one I had my most challenging discussions with. The one who read as much. Was as introspective. But Mary had such great common sense. She’d go straight to the center while Claire and I were still working the edges. And then there was Spence.

Spence.

One of my smallest pleasures in life was watching him stretch out every year on my examining table for his insurance check-ups. He never had the patience for anything as fussy as a hospital gown. “You need to reach around it anyway, Doc. So why bother?”

Over the years, his hair went grey and his body filled out. A bit. Because he always took care of himself – swimming in the ocean, summers, on Barnegat, and doing laps many mornings in the city YMCA pool. And like almost everyone else in New York, he walked.

And he was such a pleasure to be around. Relaxed. Informed. Grateful. “My family taught me to share,” he told Mary and me, early on. “When you’re raised just above poor on a dirt farm, everything gets passed around.”

“It’s that way in the city, too,” I offered.

“And in a large family,” Mary said.

But in all those years, I never touched Spence in any way other than as his doctor. And in my office, I never thought of him as more than another patient. But I was glad he was there.

Still, loving Mary and trying to be as good a father as my own never made me stop thinking about men. I’d pass one on the street. I’d get good service from a waiter. I’d see an actor in a movie or on stage. They didn’t even have to be good-looking, whatever that means. There was something about nearly every man that interested me – that I wanted to know more about.

Though giving what seemed to be endless Army physicals during the war wore some of that down. “Ready for another day, Doc?” one my colleagues might ask. “I swear, if I see one more prick after all this is over, I’m going to throw up.”

I didn’t feel quite that way, because it was too easy to imagine so many of these young men dead. They’d never have the life I’d been lucky to or any of my experience. And even with those who might not want women – who could pass their physicals but who I really wanted to tell, “You know, you don’t have to go into the service. Just tell someone what you really are.” Even if I could have privately said that, so many of them might not have had the courage.

Because it took a little of that. Labels were fastened so easily, and they stuck hard. And we worried that they’d follow us through life.

I never did sleep with a man after I married Mary. It’s not something I can even think to be proud of. I’d simply made a promise, even if it was initially fake and in front of a minister we didn’t know. And once we were living together, there wasn’t time – I didn’t realize how completely my days would be tracked.

“What time do you think you’ll be back?” Mary would casually ask. “So I’ll be ready to go to your parents for dinner.” This was before Ann was born, and I realized I was in love. Or, “Do I have time to run down to Altman’s this afternoon? Before we meet your sister and Mac?”

“Sure,” I’d say, knowing I had appointments through to evening so couldn’t get away even if I wanted. And I’d have to leave the Upper West Side. Which meant traveling.

And did I want to touch a man? Not really – because I was touching them all the time. And women – often, later, with Mary standing by, because it made them feel more comfortable. Or they brought friends or relatives. One reason I’d specialized in children was I thought I’d mainly be around babies and their mothers. But I was always at least half a family doctor. So I couldn’t avoid guys.

Then came Stonewall and the ‘70s. That party. Those celebrations and the incredible freedoms. But I was seventy, and no one thinks they’ll be thinking about sex at that age – until they get there. Mary and I always slept in a double bed – at first, the old kind, because there wasn’t anything else. But we rolled against each other and learned to feel most comfortable that way. When one of us had a cold and had to sleep down the hall or in my parents’ guest room – when our kids had absorbed ours – it would always seem wrong.

And you can’t imagine how often we told Ann and Oats and Clark how lucky they were to have their own rooms – especially since I’d spent most of my childhood sleeping on a fold-out couch, and Mary was in a bunk bed.

“Why didn’t you share a room with Uncle Ben and make Aunt Lily sleep on the couch?” one of our kids would ask. “That would be more logical.”

They must have just learned the word.

“Because Aunt Lily needed her privacy,” my mother would explain. “And Ben was five years younger. And their beds were divided by a screen.”

“I would’ve peeked,” Oats insisted.

“And I would’ve spanked you,” Ann advised.

She must have gotten that from a movie because Mary and I never spanked a child. Nor did our parents or friends.

When beds got larger, Mary and I chose one that was slightly wider – sixty inches rather than fifty-four. “A little more room, but not so much I’ll feel far away.”

“Too bad we didn’t have this when Oats was growing up.”

Of all our kids, he was the one who most often crawled between us at night – when a car backfired or fire engine rushed by. His bedroom faced the street.

“I liked having him against me,” Mary disagreed. “As much as I like you.”

“Thanks. You know I hate sleeping alone.”

I never understood how my grandparents on Barnegat could do that. Once they reached fifty, they slept in the same room but six feet apart. Grampa stayed in what they still called their “marriage bed,” but Grandma slept on a daybed that had been my mom’s.

“I can still hear him snoring,” Grandma assured us.

“Lightly,” Grampa insisted.

“Most of the time. But that was never the problem.”

“I get up too early. To go and bake the bread.”

“And cookies! And cupcakes! And cakes!” we’d scream.

“And then I can’t get back to sleep,” Grandma went on. “And it’s no good trying to bring up children when you’re mostly thinking about your next nap.”

Mary and I didn’t snore – and we rarely took naps. And we were always fine in one bed. So I wouldn’t have traded that for other opportunities – once they were open in the ‘70s, even for guys my age. And I didn’t watch jealously. But I watched.

I still had some gay friends – guys I’d known since our twenties – and we’d talk about the changes.

“They really are wonderful.”

“I’m glad I lived to see them.”

“I keep asking myself, ‘What happens next?’”

We’d meet for lunch, or private dinners. Or, with some of them – especially the ones who’d also married – they’d become family friends.

“Are Aunt Lucy and Uncle Jim coming tonight?” Clark would ask. “They better – ‘cause they always bring pistachios.”

“That’s ‘cause they’re often coming from the track.”

“What’s that?”

“A place where they train horses.”

Then came the health crisis and that war. I was retired, but we’d never entirely closed my office. By that time, my parents had died, and Mary and I had moved down a floor – the accounting office had long since relocated – and that gave Claire and Spence more space. We’d all really shared the brownstone over the years, but having a floor of bedrooms between us made it easier when kids, grandkids, and friends slept over.

When the crisis started, some men were relieved to have the privacy of an old doctor’s office, rather than face their family doctors or emergency rooms. And even when I wasn’t seeing patients there, I volunteered.

In the hospitals and clinics, so many people were afraid – even the doctors. They didn’t know what was happening or what to do. But science told us the disease wasn’t passed that way, and the men needed treatment, or care, or simply friendship, more than I was afraid of dying.

“I’m eighty-two,” I told Mary. “How much longer can I last?”

“Mom promised us ninety,” Lily reminded me. She, Mac, Ben, and Judy were over for dinner.

“She promised you over ninety,” Ben corrected. “But said the ‘boys’ might not last as long.”

Okay,” I admitted., “in many ways, Mom was ahead of her time. But she wasn’t clairvoyant. Besides, at any moment – especially in New York – I could get hit by a bus.”

“Don’t,” Mary said gently.

“I promise,” I said, grinning back. “But even if that happened, I’ve had a very good life.”

During the early years, I did as much for the sick men as I could. And now, it looks like there might finally be a treatment, if not a cure. But it’s not going to happen while I’m here.

And, as my friend asked, “Who knows what will come next?” I hope the party resumes – only better. Maybe with a bit more restraint. The guys deserve that.

And the women. We’ve long thought Ben’s youngest daughter is gay. She didn’t go through any obvious tomboy or rebel stage. But she’s almost forty – Ben and Judy didn’t marry till after the war, when he was thirty-four – and she’s never made any progress toward getting married.

“Why would she?” Claire asked. “She has a terrific, independent life. She’s an advertising VP. Why give that up?”

“Besides, we’ve seen her with men,” Mary pointed out. “Interesting ones, too. Maybe they’re all not ready for kids.”

“As long as they don’t want them,” I cautioned. “It’s getting late.”

“I don’t know,” Spence offered. “They can always adopt. I hear that works out.”

The four of us found that pretty funny.

My watching Spence has also worked out – along with my quietly watching other men. That includes Larry, Al, and Mike. And I never needed to wonder what it would be like to be in love with a man because I knew. I lived with one almost every day. Still, my interest in guys is always there. It didn’t stop at seventy or eighty or now. And that makes me very happy.