They Say This Is The Golden Age

I am trying to make this blog an "every Tuesday" thing. The problem is that I am completely uninspired when it comes to writing a blog; the ideas I do come up feel...negative.

Instead, I am going to share something that has been inspiring me. The past few months I've been on a "memoirs kick," writing hundreds of pages about my life from ages 12 to 32. Currently I am working on a book currently titled David about my high school years and all the crazy stuff that happened. This is a sample chapter---keep in mind this is a rough draft and needs loads of work,

NAUGHTY PRINCIPAL

Somedays I really didn’t want to make the three mile walk up the hill. Often, Norman was tied up doing some Norman related activity but from time to time he agreed to pick me up in Lagunitas. The bus would drop me off in front of the store. Was the library open? If it was, I’d walk up the cement stairs and enter Bea’s kingdom until she waved her scepter and locked me out. Sometimes I got lucky and N would show up before the library closed, many times I’d have no choice but to walk back down the cement stairs and sit in front of the (also closed) store. It was not uncommon for darkness to settle as I sat on the picnic table, looking down Sir Francis Drake for a familiar car.

Where is that asshole?

Across the road was the only restaurant in the village, a French place. The name changed over the years but it always served French food—

Ah, here comes the Studebaker. About time…asshole.

Norman had a 1962 Studebaker Hawk, a low slung silver thing. His favorite car. I climbed in and expected him to do a U-turn on West Cintura and take us up the hill. No, he drove across the road to the French restaurant. I never liked French food but you know what I liked less? Walking up the hill in the dark. N explained that a friend of his parents was meeting us for dinner.

“There he is!” Norman said, waving to a man on the side of the room who waved back.

The family friend was a man in his sixties with tidy, white hair and a matching mustache. A grammar school principal. He gave me the creeps from the get go; it was his eyes and the little smile that seemed made of secrets. As nights out tended to go, Norman drank a shit ton of wine and got louder and louder. The principal sipped from his glass, watching N carefully, like—

Wait.

I was an inexperienced kid but I was familiar with adults flirting with each other. Was—

No, that has to be wrong—

My instincts told me that the principal was looking at Norman like a man looks at a woman he fancies but…

In the mid 1980s homosexuality was a secret, people just didn’t talk about it. There was no internet where you could research it. Gay people were these mythical creatures like unicorns or griffins; you surely never saw a griffin in real life. The principal was creeping me out with his goo goo eyes directed at my mother’s boyfriend. I focused on food I just picked at, bored out of my head.

At the end of the meal, Norman paid and began throwing bills on the table---ones, fives, tens—for the tip. When it seemed the pile was sufficent, I started grabbing the excess. Some I put on N’s dresser, some went to my cassette fund. Norman staggered out to the Studebaker, dropping his keys after fumbling with them, struggling to pick them up; it was just another night of him driving us home drunk. It was the 80s, people could get away with that shit then. Mostly. One time they threw Norman in jail overnight. That secretly pleased me: Asshole tax. 

Norman drove us up to the gates, the principal following in his car. I let both cars through before closing the gate back. Each time, the principal offered to give me a ride and each time I declined. After closing the second gate, I jogged up and dropped back into the Studebaker.

“Hey,” Norman slurred. “You want to drive?”

What the actual fuck?

Yeah, I wanted to drive the Studebaker but had no idea how to drive a stick. I had tried—when no one else was home—but kept stalling Norman’s Valiant. When him and my Mom were gone I’d been driving for a couple of years, usually in Mom’s enormous Buick. That was some scary shit; the brakes went soft on me once and I nearly crashed into a shed.

“I don’t have my glasses,” I replied. If I went into my inexperience with a clutch, N would have tried to teach me and, honestly, I was scared of damaging his favorite car.

“Alright,” he sighed.

 That made me aware of just how drunk Norman was; he had never suggested I drive before, especially the precious Studebaker.

He must be fucked up, really fucked up….

Yep, he was weaving a bit and struggling to engage the gears. I hadn’t noticed that until he asked me to drive—

And N was still driving to the edge of the drop offs to kill the thistles. I had my hand on the door handle, ready to bail if I felt the car going over—

Asshole.

Just another night on the hill. As with every other drunken evening, N’s plastered ass got us home. This is why I believe in guardian angels.

I went to my bedroom and locked the door. The principal was a creepy dude; it seemed most of his goo goo eyes were for my mother’s boyfriend but he had spooned some my way as well. As I crawled into bed and fell asleep, a two man play titled Lets Have a (Meat) Swordfight was taking place in the living room. Not blasted enough, Norman opened another bottle of wine and took two glasses into the living room. The principal was all giggles and fun, saying he needed to use the restroom. Upstairs was the spare bedroom. N sat in the living room and sipped from his glass. Waited for the principal to come back downstairs. Eventually he did, fully dressed and recounting how much he had enjoyed the French meal. They drank two glasses of wine and then retired to their respective beds—

No, that was what my mother’s boyfriend wished would have happened.

The spiral stairs were at Norman’s back. He just heard footsteps. Bare feet, but that was cool, we often took off our shoes in the house. Years later, N shared more details of what transpired.

“He was naked,” Norman said, surprised and disturbed at the memory. “He was—“

This was ten years after the fact but my mother’s boyfriend was still deeply uncomfortable. It’s like driving past the place where you had a bad accident; the incident may be in the past but you still have scars.

“He had an erection,” N’s voice had become robotic. “He had an erection and was wearing a cock ring.”

Norman was drunk but not that drunk. He staggered past the naughty principal and down the stairs to his bedroom. Needing to talk about the horror he had experienced, N called my mother at work. He was slurring badly, scrambling details, and then my mother heard:

“Oh, My God; he’s coming down the stairs!”

The next morning I woke up and Norman was asleep in the other twin bed. Seeing as I had locked the door it confused me but I got up to make coffee anyway. The three of us sat in the kitchen, the grown ups drinking coffee and acting as if nothing had happened. Norman and I walked the naughty principal out to his non-descript sedan. When he had driven away, N slumped and shook his head.

“Thank God he’s gone.”

He gave me a brief summation of what had happened, leaving out the detail about the cock ring. It was just words to me. I knew there was such a thing as gay people, but having a gay man aggressively crusing another man—

You may as well have tried to explain string theory to me, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

We never saw the naughty principal again. I doubt Norman told his parents what had happened, the story would have just confused Jim and Elizabeth. It became a story only Norman, my mother, and I were familiar with—

Until now.