Some of the my acquaintances at the Harvard Gardens Bar I met through a neighbor of mine on Joy Street. Joe was a house painter and window washer who had grown up just outside of Boston. He lived one floor below my apartment, and we met one evening when we were both sitting on the fire escape shared by our buildings. His girlfriend, Pam, worked in an office and was well educated—she loved Gilbert and Sullivan, and for Christmas gave me a coffee-table volume on the Book of Kells. The three of us hit it off, though I found it disconcerting sometimes to hear Pam’s loud cries and moans when she and Joe were making love. Their bed, I surmised, must have stood right below an open window by the fire escape.
Joe introduced me to the O’Leary brothers. Sean, the oldest brother, handsome and tall with a winning smile, had nearly made the Olympic rowing team. He and his brothers all liked drinking in the Harvard Gardens, and often I would find them there on my late night visits. I was sitting with them one cold February night when Mike, the youngest of the brothers, announced he was going home. He staggered away from our table only to return fifteen minutes later wearing a dusting of snow on his coat. “I’ve lost my scarf,” he said. Sean reached out and tugged the scarf, which was hanging around Mike’s neck, and Mike said, “Oh, there it is,” and staggered out again with half the bar laughing at him.
All of the O’Leary brothers were friendly and had a great sense of humor, but from Joe I heard that the O’Learys and some others had once chased a suspected rapist across the rooftops of Beacon Hill. When the man ran out of rooftops, he turned, looked at the gang of Irish bruisers charging at him with the ball bats, turned again, and jumped to his death. Or so the rumor ran.
When I moved off Joy Street into a nicer rooming house, two lesbians in their twenties, Marcia and Lorraine, were the landlords. They were very sweet to me. Marcia was dark, serious, and claimed to be a witch, while Lorraine was a lanky blonde whose beautiful face always wore a slightly puzzled look, as if someone had just asked her a question. We got along fine, though listening to them showering together in the bath down the hall sometimes tickled the imagination in uncomfortable ways.
Then something happened to Marcia and Lorraine, some falling out with the owner of the building, and two young gay men, Tom and Randy, replaced them. Tom looked like a natural to play the part of Bill Sykes in “Oliver Twist”, while Randy was willowy and feminine. “It was love at first sight,” Randy once told me. “Tom and I were both working the same club. Tom was the bouncer and I was a dancer. Love at first sight.” Every Sunday afternoon Randy’s mother would bring pastries and various beverages to their room. I saw them once as I passed their room, the door being open because of the summer heat, all of them sitting formally at a card table covered with a white tablecloth, drinking tea and munching some sort of cookie.
One evening—this was after I had begun dating the woman I would marry—she and I were sitting on the stoop waiting for one of her friends to come up the Hill from the hospital when Randy came out and sat beside us. In the apartment across the street, three or four men were dancing to disco music as they combed their hair and buttoned their shirts. “What a bunch of faggots!” Randy said, and then looked at us. “I mean, it’s good to be gay, but not like that.”
With the exception of the employees in the bookstore where I worked, who were middle class and resembled the people known to me in my earlier life, these were the sort of people I knew that year I lived in Boston. I had never before met anyone like them. They were as strange to me as beings from a distant planet, and I am sure I was equally strange to them. As the Boston cop had said to me, “You don’t look like you should be living here.” Well, I did live there, and I worked and wrote and watched, and never forgot what I saw or learned. I have always felt grateful for my Boston education, but I never fit in. I was an alien and very much alone.
And then I met Kris.
To be continued. And Yes, Raggedy Ann will make an appearance.
All of the O’Leary brothers were friendly and had a great sense of humor, but from Joe I heard that the O’Learys and some others had once chased a suspected rapist across the rooftops of Beacon Hill. When the man ran out of rooftops, he turned, looked at the gang of Irish bruisers charging at him with the ball bats, turned again, and jumped to his death. Or so the rumor ran.
When I moved off Joy Street into a nicer rooming house, two lesbians in their twenties, Marcia and Lorraine, were the landlords. They were very sweet to me. Marcia was dark, serious, and claimed to be a witch, while Lorraine was a lanky blonde whose beautiful face always wore a slightly puzzled look, as if someone had just asked her a question. We got along fine, though listening to them showering together in the bath down the hall sometimes tickled the imagination in uncomfortable ways.
Then something happened to Marcia and Lorraine, some falling out with the owner of the building, and two young gay men, Tom and Randy, replaced them. Tom looked like a natural to play the part of Bill Sykes in “Oliver Twist”, while Randy was willowy and feminine. “It was love at first sight,” Randy once told me. “Tom and I were both working the same club. Tom was the bouncer and I was a dancer. Love at first sight.” Every Sunday afternoon Randy’s mother would bring pastries and various beverages to their room. I saw them once as I passed their room, the door being open because of the summer heat, all of them sitting formally at a card table covered with a white tablecloth, drinking tea and munching some sort of cookie.
One evening—this was after I had begun dating the woman I would marry—she and I were sitting on the stoop waiting for one of her friends to come up the Hill from the hospital when Randy came out and sat beside us. In the apartment across the street, three or four men were dancing to disco music as they combed their hair and buttoned their shirts. “What a bunch of faggots!” Randy said, and then looked at us. “I mean, it’s good to be gay, but not like that.”
With the exception of the employees in the bookstore where I worked, who were middle class and resembled the people known to me in my earlier life, these were the sort of people I knew that year I lived in Boston. I had never before met anyone like them. They were as strange to me as beings from a distant planet, and I am sure I was equally strange to them. As the Boston cop had said to me, “You don’t look like you should be living here.” Well, I did live there, and I worked and wrote and watched, and never forgot what I saw or learned. I have always felt grateful for my Boston education, but I never fit in. I was an alien and very much alone.
And then I met Kris.
To be continued. And Yes, Raggedy Ann will make an appearance.