Stories – The College Years (Part 5)

Previously on Battlestar Galactica…

The Summer of High Strangeness

While my dad had arranged for he and my mom to be out of the house for the duration of my birthday party, they did stick around long enough to meet everyone who had accepted my invitation and made the drive up from Tucson.

I remember very little of the party itself. There was food. There was cake. There was dancing. I recall someone shoving a bottle of poppers under my nose at one point. But mostly it was simply the jumping off point for my first steps into gay life in Phoenix.  Phoenix was a very different place from Tucson and I'd been reluctant to go out on my own for two reasons: I was, until that night, still underage in the eyes of the law (and I'd been warned that the Phoenix clubs—unlike Jekyll's in Tucson—carded religiously), and frankly I was still more than a little apprehensive about throwing myself into the environment unaccompanied.

I shouldn't have been worried. Our destination that evening was a newly-opened/renovated club called Moon's Truck and it was 3-F: fierce, fabulous and friendly.

The club was located in a nondescript concrete block building on the east side of 16th Street just south of Indian School Road, and despite its recent rechristening, the actual name was unimportant because I soon learned that regardless of what was on the sign over the entrance, everyone simply referred to it as Maggie's. It changed names again about a year later to HisCo Disco before finally being forced to close by the neighbors' continual complaints about noise and other goings-on in the area.

It was a cavernous, magical place, and at the time was known for playing the some of the best music in Phoenix. It had a slightly raised lighted dance floor and a sound system that would leave your ears ringing for hours. The clientele was as interesting as Jeckyll's.

While outwardly an all-inclusive club (gays, straights, men, women, and people of indeterminate gender) were always welcome at Maggie's, the one thing I remember most was Hubert, one of the DJs (who did not want women in the club) was how he'd always yell "Uterus!" when women arrived. I found it amusing at the time, even if it embarrasses the fuck out of me now.

I also have no real memories remaining of the club that night. I must've suffered sensory overload. All I know is that soon thereafter I began to call it home on Friday and Saturday nights.

At the time, Phoenix probably had a dozen or so gay bars, the vast majority of which I would never be caught dead in. The names that spring to mind beyond Maggies are The Forum (which became my second favorite hang-out, a place I would automatically head to if Maggies seemed too dull on any given night), The Ramrod, The 307, The Connection, and several more whose names completely elude me (I will amend this later if/when they pop into memory). Since I didn't drink, I only went for the dancing—and the possibility of meeting someone for the evening, the non-dance establishments barely registered on my radar.

My other concern that summer was obviously finding a job. That arrived by way of my dad, who needed architectural drafting assistance at the office where he worked. Other than income it provided, our summer working together prompted the tag line for this post.

I don't recall the exact moment Dad acknowledged that I played for the other team; whether he outright asked or I volunteered, but I do remember a conversation that followed shortly thereafter. We had obviously been discussing something regarding my lifestyle and he blurted out, "Yeah, when you and your mom and sister were back east during the summer, I'd head down to The Ramrod with Oscar from down the street…"

Oh. My. Fucking. God. The Ramrod?!? My dad had just come out to me and had outed our equally-married-to-a-woman neighbor two houses down!

Well, this certainly explained how he got the article he'd sent me the previous spring from the gay paper.

And the flood gates opened. I provided the open and appreciative listener he so desperately needed after a lifetime being forced to lead a double life; how he joined the Navy at 17 to escape an abusive relationship with his father, his long-term love affairs with several of the"friends" who'd come around the house while I was growing up, how my parents met and why he got married, and how he worried that he'd somehow failed me as a father after watching my budding gayness develop from an early age. I learned more about my dad that summer that I'd ever thought possible, and our relationship—best described as loving but distant until that summer—improved to such a degree that Dad became more than just my father; he became a trusted friend.

While Mom obviously knew a lot of his history, she didn't know all of it, nor did she know the reasons or the underlying stories behind that history. Suddenly so much of why my dad did the things he did while I was growing up became clear to me.

I respected his desire for all this to remain solely between the two of us—at least for many, many years after their divorce. Dad's closet became mine.

So I had a gay dad. I famously knew about his brother Edward thanks to my mom. This led me to wonder who else in the family tree was sprouting lavender leaves, because in some families it ran; in ours it apparently galloped.

Next time on Battlestar Galactica…