The andy lam

By Billy Allen

Jarrod McCallister finds himself at an impasse in his life as he and his friends begin watching the people in their lives die one by one. In order to find some sort of a joy and connect with his past, Jarrod makes a trip to the only place he ever felt that he and his family were truly happy and were something resembling what a family should be. His pilgrimage to Carolina Beach, North Carolina and more specifically to the remnants of Playland, where he and his brother Christopher had roamed its boardwalk summer vacation upon summer vacation, is where the journey begins.

Quite by accident he has an encounter with the bartender of a local watering hole and finds that he has stumbled upon the last thing he came to Carolina Beach to find - and that was a souvenir boyfriend.

Hunter Long is a former marine who, like Jarrod, had a family life that hadn't exactly nurtured his soul. The two find a commonality in that regard and in matters of the heart but otherwise the pair are complete opposites. Hunter is a strapping outdoors kinda guy and Jarrod is an urban dweller with a fear of water and a host of others. Yet somehow they are both inexplicably drawn to one another.

On the second to the last day of his retreat, Jarrod has to abruptly leave North Carolina and doesn't have a chance to have any sort of last meaningful moment with Hunter. He assumes they'll likely never see one another once he returns to his life but Hunter proves himself to be much more than Jarrod could ever have imagined. After seeing Jarrod through a tough situation the two decide to try to make a go of it as a couple - which involves Hunter relocating to the West Village and joining Jarrod in his cozy fourth floor walk-up.

Jarrod's somewhat estranged brother, Chris - who is all the family Jarrod can lay claim to - resurfaces at the same time. Circumstances force the two brothers to face the chasm that lies between them. Jarrod had needed his brother at a crucial time in his young life and Chris wasn't there for him. Once they reconnected, Jarrod learns that it's now his big brother who needs him.

During the healing of hearts and mending of wounds, lives are intertwined with other lives. Jarrod's circle of friends widens just enough to allow Hunter in and Jarrod's world reaches heights he never could have dreamed he'd know. Until one day. One fateful day when his world comes crashing down around him and he flees. He packs up his life in a van and leaves. If he were to remain he knew he would lose himself entirely so he returns, once more, to the haven of his boyhood joy. Carolina Beach.

Jarrod slowly rebuilds his life and, save for Chris and his family, he tucks everyone else neatly away in his past. But his past finds its way back to him - as it had before - and he's forced to face truths he wasn't prepared to deal with and make a decision, yet again, that involves his heart. A heart he was certain he'd locked safely away for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350914474

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The beach was a little grungier than I had remembered it being. It was littered with beer bottles and broken shells and tangles of old seaweed. I nimbly tried to avoid stepping on anything calamitous in my clapped out sneakers. Back when I was a kid it was pristine – the beach, that is. They’d come along with rakes and police the area for broken glass and cans. I don’t know… maybe my memories were skewed… but I’d always thought of our summers at Carolina Beach as being so magical. Bright and unblemished. Now, walking along the deserted shore in the early evening hours on my first day of vacation twenty-some-odd years later, it was a sobering reminder that things do tarnish and lose their glow. Places… people… relationships.

I’d returned to Carolina Beach to try to recapture something from my past. To revisit something simpler in my life before it all came tumbling down around my head, threatening to bury me. I was thirty-seven and felt much, much older. I wasn’t sure what thirty-seven should have felt like but I was guessing it ought to have been a good deal more like thirty-six than the fifty it seemed. I was worn out and sapped of the nominal optimism or general love for life I thought, at one time, I possessed. I needed to recharge the old battery and where better than the haven of my boyhood joy?

The hours I spent at Playland going from ride to ride with my brother, Christopher, were some of the happiest I ever had. It was North Carolina’s answer to The Steel Pier or Coney Island. Parents could drop their kids off for the afternoon and go play a round of golf and expect to find their kids safe, sound and slightly sun-baked afterwards.

Christopher and I lived for those summer getaways and for the hours we’d spend at Playland each and every day. He was in charge of the tickets and I was in charge of which rides or games we’d use them for. Well, I liked to believe I was. He had his favorite ride and I had mine and those were always the ones we’d hit first. Then maybe we’d play Skee-Ball or try our hand at Whac-a-Mole. But every night we’d end it by riding the Ferris Wheel. We had made friends with the operator, Chuck, and he’d make good and sure we got stranded at the very top for longer than he would do for other kids. From up there we could look out over the starlit ocean and feel the cool salty breeze bathe our bare legs and never give a thought beyond that moment. From up there the world seemed possible. It was as if we were able to see it for all it was from that lone spot and it didn’t look anywhere near as daunting as I’d eventually discover it to be – viewed from the ground.

Mom’s favorite thing to do was make a big picnic lunch for the four of us – usually on the first day of our holiday and definitely always on the last – and she would indulge our every desire. I was a freak for Moon Pies. You couldn’t feed me too many Moon Pies. To this day, one bite and I’m hurled back to ten. To the tasty simplicity of being a boy.

Christopher was keen on Underwood Deviled Ham. I know! What kid would willingly eat that stuff? But he adored it and Mom’d have Ritz crackers for him to spread it on – and his own individual can of the goo. No one else would touch it. And he’d be in actual hog heaven. Where he was more savory, I was definitely more sweet. Ah, ’twas ever thus.

Mom and Dad were sated by cold fried chicken and Miller High Life longnecks. Ice-cold. Seemingly unending quantities of Miller High Life. ‘Nothing better on a hot July day,’ Dad would mull. Mom wouldn’t comment. She’d just imbibe with a bemused sort of silence, keeping up pretty much longneck for longneck with Dad.

Our job on days like those – and there were plenty of those days – would be to tote their empty bottles along with others we had collected to a local fixture in town, Mr. Neeley, who would buy them from us for pennies a piece. We got to keep that money, though, and we’d use it toward tickets for Playland. He didn’t actually have a shop and we were never really sure what he did with those bottles. Guess it didn’t matter enough to us to ask him. God knows we were his steadiest clients during the three weeks we’d stay every year.

We always went back to the same motel. The Coral Sands. It was owned by a really nice older couple who had taken a shining to our family after our first stay there when I was barely four and Christopher was six. After that they’d let us stay the third week absolutely free as their guests. They insisted on it. And sometimes they’d invite us into their little apartment behind the office for a cramped but toothsome sit-down dinner – particularly when Millie made this chunky seafood gumbo that she was famous for. And there would almost always be corn fritters, something I liked nearly as much as I did my Moon Pies. And for dessert there’d be a fruit cobbler, served hot, with fresh churned vanilla ice cream that her husband Charlie would let us boys help make.

Those three weeks flew by at Carolina Beach. They always did. It seemed like we had just pulled into the lot of The Coral Sands and then we’d be headed for home. The rest of the year would crawl by like a funeral procession. No days were as bright in my memory as those we spent on the toasty sands of that beach. No Coca-Colas were ever quite so refreshing as the ones that came from Millie and Charlie’s vending machine. And never were my parents so enjoyable to be around as they were when Dad wasn’t working his shit job and Mom wasn’t pretending that she enjoyed being a mother and a housewife back in our bleak little town of French Lick, Indiana. Those three weeks gave us a chance to see how it would have been if family life were as easy back home as it came for us on the shores of North Carolina.

So that’s why I came, I suppose. To find an easiness, if I could. It had gotten too fucking complicated for me and I needed a chance to shake away some layers of gloom and filth. But judging from the state of things it didn’t appear I’d be finding much of anything resembling the gleaming oasis I was so sure had beckoned me back to that seaside town.

It was off-season. From where I stood I could tell that only a handful of the rides that still existed at the amusement park were running. It was starting to get chilly, even on a late August night, so I headed back across the dunes to the boardwalk.

We stopped coming to North Carolina when my mom started getting sick. I was fourteen the last summer we went as a family. Even then, Mom had lost a lot of weight and wasn’t really drinking… much. Dad didn’t let up any though. She found reasons to stay put at the motel more often than not. ‘I’m going to watch my stories,’ she’d tell us or, ‘Millie and I are going to go shopping.’ It didn’t put much of a damper on things for my brother and me. We were never really sure what Dad did with himself during the day but Christopher and I were still pretty game on being at the beach every morning by ten and often didn’t return until midnight. Although we’d sometimes go our separate ways during the afternoon, we’d always meet up at the Ferris Wheel at night and then head back together. Once Chuck had retired, riding it was no longer all that special. It was the same ride but we realized that we weren’t special anymore. After that it was just a rendezvous point – and the tallest landmark at Playland.

Christopher… Chris… had begun to take an interest in girls the last couple of summers. He’d latch onto one the first week and say he was in love by the second week and by the third week he’d have met another and then he’d pine away for her for months afterwards, cocksure she was ‘the one’ , until he all but forgot her name. He’d ignore a post card or dodge a phone call from a girl – any girl – if she got too clingy. I always thought that’s how all girls were anyhow was clingy.

Chris was on the track team in high school and the ladies nearly fought their way to get to him. He loved the attention. He was swept into the riptide of the popular circle at Springs Valley High and no longer had time for me – well, no longer made time for me – except for those three weeks during the summer when I was his wingman as we worked the boardwalk from one end to the other, scoping out potential chicks for him. We had that much. At least until 1964, when Mom took to her bed and our vacations came to an end.

In my memories my brother would still be the curly-haired, towhead in cut-offs who my mother insisted on everyone calling Christopher. He’s cemented in my mind’s eye as forever adolescent but when he hit his teens his curls gave way to a crew cut and he went strictly by Chris. Eventually he would only allow one person to use his full name and that was Mom. He was the apple of her eye and she made no effort to camouflage it right up until she finally wasted away and died of cirrhosis of the liver. Christopher was the favorite. Chris. Chris was the favorite not only for Mom but for Dad too. It never really bothered me, though, because he was my favorite in the family as well. I much preferred him over my parents and certainly over myself. I’d have gladly basked in his attention or lagged in the shadow he cast rather than be held captive by the desolate confines of my own company.

I hadn’t many interests growing up. Nor friends. I had come to believe that I was a moon circling my brother, the planet. Or later, when he was in his true glory, he was the sun and I was Pluto – still privy to his light and still very much a part of his pull but among the least important in his periphery. So unimportant, as it turned out, that many years later when Pluto was ousted as a true planet and relegated to some lesser status it came as no real revelation to me. It seemed fitting. Scientists said that Pluto’s orbital pattern was erratic and not consistent with what would be that of a true celestial body. Add to that the fact that St. Christopher, similarly, was eventually demoted as a saint by the Catholic Church when they stripped him of his feast day – the horror! – causing him to be looked upon as just a wee bit less significant.

Well, let’s just say that the irony of those two events and how they mirrored my early life was not lost on me down the pike.

I needed a drink. There were few times I didn’t feel I needed a drink. What separated me from my mother and father, however, was that I didn’t always succumb to that desire. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have indulged or that I thought I was fighting the valiant fight of moderation – believing the more pious road would bestow upon me a virtue I knew full well that I lacked. No, it was more along the lines of I didn’t feel I was worth the indulgence. Lame, huh? As if denying myself what I believed I craved would keep me from being too much of a pal to myself. Delayed gratification mixed with a big dose of self-loathing. That’s what kept me sober in my life, believe it or not. But I was on vacation, dammit, and I was going to have that drink. Not the hard stuff with an unforgiving sting – like a double shot of whiskey or a vodka on the rocks. I wasn’t good with the hard stuff. I was craving something refreshing but potent. I knew just what I was going to order for myself. All that remained was my finding a bar.

It didn’t take too long. I figured it had to still be there.

There was this dive that my dad used to go to when we’d all be heading back from the beach but he didn’t feel quite ready to return to the motel and watch TV and eat a pizza with his sons and their inebriated mother. So he’d duck in there, making no apologies or promises.

It was called The Sandy Clam and it was probably ancient back when we were still spending our summers in North Carolina. The neon sign was lit but no longer sported all its letters. The cute little open clam shell, which revealed a tiny glowing pearl, was blinking on and off above but below it now read The _andy _lam. I wondered, needlessly, which one had flickered and died first – the S or the C? Or did they, like star-crossed lovers, bite it in tandem? It didn’t really matter, I suppose, but it ought to have mattered to someone.

The place smelled like rotten apples and wet, musty bamboo which overpowered me the minute I pushed through the red leather door, crackled with age. The theme was, or at least had been at one point, an urban Tiki Lounge. There had been an attempt to do a seascape on one of the walls but an amateur hand and some unfortunate use of some equally unfortunate colors made it appear more like a Roald Dahl illustration.

I saw a big man, probably in his mid-sixties, teetering precariously on a bar stool and lightly snoring but pretty much not another living being other than a molting parrot. It was perched, wheezing, on a wooden dowel in a giant rusty iron cage which hung from one of the overhead beams. I wondered how the decrepit creature kept from falling off. And I never knew a parrot could wheeze. Perhaps he was only mimicking the sounds coming from the comatose guy at the far end of the deserted bar.

I took a seat on the opposite end so as not to disturb the man’s slumber. Just then the jagged curtain behind the bar, made from strands of beads and seashells, parted. It hung over a gap between the rows of shelves which displayed decidedly dusty bottles. The back of what I assumed was the bartender maneuvered through the narrow opening. He was struggling to wriggle his way out with a case of something that looked to be Johnny Walker Black. Once he had cleared the door he planted the case of bottles firmly on the floor which startled the dozing patron, but only momentarily.

My first thought was, ‘Nice butt!’. That’s almost always my first thought when I see a guy bend over. Unless he doesn’t have a nice butt. But this guy did.

He stood up and it was clear he was easily six-foot-four if he was an inch. He wore an ugly, faded Hawaiian shirt that was a bit too wrinkled to have been freshly laundered and it fit his rather broad shoulders quite snugly as I recall. I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen me so I felt free to size him up from where I sat and waited, benignly, for him to turn around. Which he did. And when he did I thought I was going to fall off of my perch!

He was one of those square-jawed beauts that you encounter every now and then who look just a little too much like a G. I. Joe action figure to be taken seriously. But he wasn’t working at the jarhead look. He simply owned it. He was, without question, former military. My guess? Marines. He had dark brown eyes which at that point still hadn’t found their way to me. They were looking thoughtfully upon the guy in the dirty seersucker jacket who nearly had his mug in his mug.

This fella’s arms were sizable. They would have, without a doubt, qualified as guns – but I hate when guys refer to their biceps as guns. Yet his were nothing if not that and fully loaded. But what was most striking about this young man – who I was guessing to be in his late twenties – was that, were he not a pumped-up poster boy for Testosterone Monthly, he would have been what I’d consider pretty. I know, odd right? But it’s true. Most brutish meatheads – for that was surely what he was – were seldom symmetrical and often had jug ears or a slightly crooked nose which only lent to the overall mystique of a Ferrigno wannabe. You know… appealing in an early Cro-Magnon sort of way.

He scanned the empty room until his eyes eventually landed on me at the darkest end of his domain. He didn’t react. Didn’t smile. And he didn’t seem at all surprised by my presence. ‘Okay,’ I thought, ‘he’s cool’. Bartenders are usually one way or another. Either they are very friendly – often to the point of being prying and obnoxious, trying far too hard to impress for a tip – or they are stand-offish and disinterested in anything but a pour for your buck. I took him to be the latter. I wasn’t too far off.

Didn’t see you there, he said, coming over to where he could make me out better in the dusky recess. It appeared that the C and the S weren’t the only lights that went out and then were never replaced in this watering hole. I felt more like a mushroom cowering in the dark than I did a potential inebriate.

What’ll you have? he asked, casually wiping the splotchy bar in front of me with a dirty towel.

If we had been at Uncle Charlie’s I might have hazarded a clever, ‘I’ll have a bartender straight up – no chaser – I’m the chaser. And I’ll take care of the rocks.’ But instead I focused on the task at hand. Ordering my beverage of choice.

This was either going to be a successful request or make me just another one of those pain-in-the-ass morons who ask for something ridiculous instead of just manning up and drinking a libation more direct and simple – one that would get the job done with far less fuss. Like a Johnny Walker Black. Neat.

Long Island Iced Tea? I asked, not meaning to. Fully meaning to inform and then asking instead. That surely lost me dude points right off the bat.

His face didn’t register whether it was going to be okay between us or not. I don’t think it pissed him off but I got the feeling he wasn’t someone who was comfortable admitting he didn’t know from Long Island Iced Teas. He arched one eyebrow and that was enough.

It’s okay, I don’t—

No. Just tell me.

Okay, I cautioned, nothing is really mandatory if you don’t have all the ingredients but it’s pretty much equal parts vodka, gin, light rum – if you have it – um… tequila and Triple Sec. Or Cointreau. He arched the other brow. Or neither. I shook my head, flustered, and continued, Add a little lime or lemon juice and some simple syrup – or not – and a splash of Coke and that’s… pretty… much… it.

I felt ashamed.

He nodded and turned his back to me and got out a huge shaker and began to put together the concoction, ingredient by ingredient – in the order I recited them, no less – and then splashed some Coke in at the end from his gun (but not his gun) and then proceeded pouring out two very large tumblers full of the brew over cracked ice.

With a glass in each hand he came back over to where I sat awestruck by his simple prowess of recollection and execution on a not-so-simple task. He put a bev nap down and then my drink upon it. He held up his glass to me in a mock clink and sipped at the same time I did.

That was the first time I saw a light start to glimmer in those captivating, chocolate drop eyes of his.

That’s really good!

I know! It’s weird that it all comes together like that and just sorta works.

Yeah, I mean it tastes like sweet tea, he observed, with the slightest trace of a southern accent. That’s what it tastes like.

Then he smiled and it was then I knew I was a goner. Thwacked like one of those little creatures in Whac-a-Mole. There was no way I was going to escape that evening with my dignity intact… meaning I was either going to make some huge gaffe and probably lose a couple of teeth, or worse… lose the last smidgen of self-esteem I might have actually had festering in the hollow core of my being. I’d do so by getting sloppy drunk and being too forward. I was a shoe-in for one or the other. My modus operandi. Straight guys were the bane of my existence and also the source of my every fantasy.

If I’m going to be blatantly truthful I might as well confess that I am a pretty pathetic homosexual in the eyes of most other homosexuals. If there was a course entitled Homo 101 I’d have failed it with flying colors. But unlike the written portion of the drivers test that you can go back and keep doing over and over until you pass, I’d never pass. No matter how many tries.

I’ll explain.

I was doomed from the very beginning of my career as a homophile when I nonchalantly confessed, to the very first random gay man I’d ever actually approached, that I wasn’t all that much a fan of Judy Garland – whose voice was being piped in from above where we sat. In fact, I really couldn’t stand her and told him so. And, no, I didn’t use that as my lead-in line. It just sorta came out as we made small talk. I figured, at most, I would get a glare or a gasp but the sonofabitch actually slapped me – hard – across the cheek, threw his gin and tonic in my face and then stormed away from where I stood mopping my face in bewilderment. That was also my very first time in a New York queer bar. I beat a hasty retreat before he possibly chose to share my sentiment with the rest of the crowd and, with a shrill, Let’s get him girls!, we’d have had another Stonewall on our hands.

Relationships? Not really. I mean, not to speak of. I mean I’d had a couple of ’em but would never speak of them. So not to speak of. They were both with guys who said they were bi. One actually was. He had a girlfriend. And he was Catholic. And he got to feeling pretty crappy about things – you know, the obligatory guilt and all – and he became convinced that I had seduced him and he told his girlfriend all about evil li’l ol’ me and so she, being from a certain Brooklyn Italian family (in the sanitation business I should mention) nearly put a hit out on me. I had to pay some ridiculous sort of extortion money in the way of a tithing to their church in Bensonhurst and, in exchange, they wouldn’t have me killed. Then they had a mass said for me in hopes that my soul would be spared from the fiery depths of hell. True story.

Only in New York.

And the other guy? Vincent? Not Vinnie. Vincent. Also bi. Also delusional. He was as bi as I am Korean. He was so not bi that, once he got comfortable with me and trusted me with some of his secrets, he confessed that he was contemplating doing hormone therapy and was edging his way to becoming a she – but was still bi – although he never dated women. And, like me, had never even dated A woman. He wasn’t even remotely attracted to them, again – like me, yet wanted to become one.

So I told him that once he got snipped and all, he’d be heterosexual because he was already into dudes and would eventually be, for all intents and purposes, a biologically straight woman. But, I concluded, until you do give up your junk, you’re technically a gay man and not, in actuality, bi.

This was more than he could handle and I never saw Vincent again. Or my Nintendo. Or my CD collection. Or my gold cuff links.

And yet, in spite of the whole petty theft bit, I still wished him well – if and when I ever thought of him. Which I almost never did.

So… nothing to speak of.

And a failure in the dating department.

Cruising 101 ~ F.

Schmoozing 101 ~ F.

Tricking 101 ~ F-.

Is there such a thing as an F-?

Like I said. I had no interest in girls either. Never had. But guys I met had no interest in me. Wait, let me take that back. The guys I met who I was interested in almost never had an interest in me. That’s really how it was. Straight guys, however…. well, straight guys were so uncomplicated. Really. I mean, their needs and their thoughts are simple. They hate drama. They like sex. They want a minimum of chat and a maximum of doing. Whatever the doing is never seems to matter much. Flag football, beer pong, betting on the ponies or fucking. With a straight guy, the doing is the thing. And since I’m no good at all with the details that lead up to courting and trying to romance someone, the only real challenge presented by trying to bed a straight guy is he (nearly always) has no curiosity whatsoever in someone with his exact same equipment.

One guy I had approached told me matter-of-factly, That’d be like a meat sandwich. Instead of ‘where’s the beef?’ it’d be where’s the bread?’ I cleverly countered with something about buns and a gluten allergy and he just walked away from me, disgusted.

So there I was sitting face to ruggedly handsome face with this fine-looking specimen of a man and feeling like an idiot because I couldn’t come up with anything to say. To be honest, he didn’t look too interested in whatever it was I might have had on my mind anyhow. He was there to do his job, stock the shelves and make sure sad old men – like our buddy at the far end of the Tiki Bar – were given what they sought in the way of liquid absolution and then sent on their way.

How long are you in town for?

I didn’t expect that.

I don’t know yet. I just got in this afternoon.

First time to Carolina Beach?

No, but first time in a long time.

He waited a moment and took another sip of his drink. It seemed kind of odd that a bartender was allowed to openly drink on the job like that but I figured there couldn’t be too much objection from the clientele. And it didn’t appear there was a pesky owner anywhere on the premises breathing down his neck. I was kinda glad he liked the concoction. Truth is, I’d had better but it was his first attempt. It was still good, just not what it could have been. But what is?

The big guy down the way snorted himself awake and pointed at his mug. The bartender hopped to it to give him a refill – which he would, no doubt, nod off into again momentarily. Well, whatever got him through another lonely night, right?

God, I understood that thinking. I walked in there hoping that having a social cocktail might make my night feel a bit lighter… friendlier maybe… than my nights had been of late. To be among strangers self-medicating themselves under the guise of societal mingling. But I’d picked a pretty desolate establishment it seemed.

I had always had a hard time sleeping but in recent months the very act of falling asleep was so much work that, when I eventually did drop off, I’d wake up just as exhausted as I had been mere hours before. I hadn’t turned to drinking as a sleep-inducing agent but I did recall my mom never had a problem weaving her way to the land of nod every night.

Something had to change in my life and I knew it wasn’t going to be me so I changed the setting. Temporarily anyhow. I wasn’t about to give up my rent-controlled apartment in the West Village just because I wasn’t myself. I was enough myself to know you don’t give up a one-bedroom in Manhattan when you’re only paying $450 a month for it. I’d eventually find my mojo and then hit the ground running again. I had to. Or I knew I’d have only one other option to explore. It had been on the table for a long time, I just hadn’t given it much credence until my life started to unceremoniously unravel.

It was 1987. It wasn’t a great time to be a gay man in New York City. Or anywhere. People were dying. A lot of people were dying. Gay people mostly. Men nearly exclusively. And none of us knew exactly why or how. I was losing people in my very close-knit circle of friends an average of one every two months and had been for two years.

We’d frequently check on one another to see how the other was doing. ‘How are you feeling?’ Just that. It could cover a lot of bases, that question.

‘How are you feeling after having lost your lover of fifteen years?’

‘How are you feeling since you started that new medication?’

‘How are you feeling about the way ACT UP basically outed you at your work?’

It could mean a lot of things. And did.

Now and then I’d have a paranoid moment where I thought I saw a spot on my back in the mirror but I couldn’t be sure so I’d call my friend and neighbor Perry and ask him to come upstairs and check it out for me under the light. Or I’d have diarrhea or the flu for more than a day or two and I’d convince myself that I was infected and about to start my own losing battle with the gay plague.

And that bit about ACT UP. Yeah, that was a real thing. Sure, they were a voice for the gay community but they were so radical that it made a lot of the slightly less enthusiastically gay professionals in the city – myself included – more than a bit uncomfortable. I had become friends with and sorta kinda dated one of the higher-ups in the movement – who I thought was pretty darned cute – but it got a little hairy and he got a little too aggressive when he told me I needed to be visible in the corporate world – for the sake of all our dying brothers, no less. I wasn’t convinced my place in the community was all that relevant and told him so.

One day he and a bevy of other ambitious anarchists took it upon themselves to demonstrate in front of my workplace. I was leaving for my lunch break that afternoon and hadn’t seen the protesters in time and as soon as I stepped out of the front door of our headquarters on Madison Avenue they began chanting, ‘Jarrod! Jarrod! Jarrod!’ and… well… with that the proverbial kitty cat was out of the handbag.

I was merely a worker bee, at the time, in a corporate machine that handled takeovers and buy-outs – often done in rather unscrupulous ways. It turned out that the Mills Agency, where I had been gainfully employed since my arrival in New York ten years prior, was involved in the acquisition of a property that was supposed to have been a designated center for the GMHC (the Gay Men’s Health Crisis). It was, however, sold to an investment firm instead and… well… the long and short of it is I was the gay chink in the armor of the Mills Agency. My betters got it in their heads that I had leaked that information to the militants and the powers that be at ACT UP didn’t do anything to dissuade them in their thinking. Instead of being denied a seat on the bus, I had been thrown under it. I hadn’t leaked any information, of course, but I might as well have. The only thing I think I had done was confirm what had pretty much been common knowledge – after the acquisition, mind you – and this Trey character (who I ultimately decided wasn’t that cute after all) used it as a wedge. Two birds with one stone. Out Jarrod and shame the Mills Agency in one fell protest.

I wasn’t fired. No, they weren’t so foolish as to do that. But I was relegated to the crapola jobs from then on. I became even more obscure among the ranks. My office was moved to the basement cubicles which were inhabited mostly by the lowly researchers and fact finders – who preferred the dank, windowless bowels of the building for carrying out their colorless tasks. I was more miserable than I had been before but I had been miserable all along so it was only a variation in increments anymore. It was, to me, as it had always been. Just a job.

See, I went with a sure thing instead of my heart’s desire. A business degree in 1970’s Middle America was a sure thing. I hadn’t been confident enough to believe, even when I was young and supposed to be more carefree, that I had the talent to become the musician I knew I was born to be.

I was and always had been a natural when it came to the piano. I was self-taught early on. We had this big ol’ upright at the house which I think had been my great-grandparent’s piano. It was a Briggs from about 1898. Massive mahogany thing dripping with carving and sporting these big ol’ claw feet. It barely held its tune in our clammy basement but that’s where I first found I had a connection to music – and I was able to give it a voice. My fingers almost instinctively understood how to coax certain sounds from those yellowed ivory keys and I would practice and experiment for hours on my own. I didn’t play full out. Not really. I made it as intimate as I could so I could feed my soul – undetected – yet not disturb my mother when she was having her personal happy hour upstairs in the kitchen. Or, later, when she had taken to her bed and was resting pretty much ’round the clock, I’d still go down to my sanctuary and work on my skills. But quietly.

By the age of ten I had begged hard and long enough for piano lessons so that my father eventually sighed a big my-son-is-such-a-loser sigh and acquiesced. Mrs. Bingham, from two blocks over, would give me lessons every Thursday after school for ten bucks a pop. She said I had a lot of bad habits which she, one by one, corrected but she also told me I might have been the most gifted young musician with whom she had ever worked. That meant a lot to a ten year old boy. In hindsight it probably didn’t mean much outside the enclave of our scrubby little neighborhood. Still, she encouraged me to learn the masters and also sat, very lovingly and patiently, when I’d play for her one of my ambitious original compositions.

Mrs. Bingham said that what surprised her the most about me was that as well as I played and as dexterous as my hands were they weren’t the hands of a pianist. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I took it as an inference that, because my fingers weren’t long and graceful and I wasn’t terribly elegant in my execution, I was an anomaly. But I was okay with that. I figured