In retrospect, it seems a little odd to have invited a couple of teenage boys to visit me when I was in the prime of life. But there was an underlying agenda: I wanted to mold their attitudes about what a gay man could be, just like
Pedro Zamora had done on MTV's
The Real World: San Francisco.
Barb, my stepsister, agreed to inform her
adopted son that I was gay before they flew in from Phoenix. "Tell BJ he can bring a friend, if that will make him more comfortable," I added. Imagine my surprise when he showed up at LaGuardia with Nick, a kid who easily could have modeled for Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger. We headed right for the
Muller Cottage. I figured the week before Pride would be relatively quiet. It was . . . in the Pines where Nick may have gotten the shock of his life after asking BJ why I didn't have a girlfriend. But fortunately, while we were playing paddle ball on the beach, a topless woman strolled past, heading west and sending the boys into a testosterone frenzy. After lunch, Nick grabbed his videocamera and they went for a walk, returning breathlessly with guilty looks an hour later. It took some prying, but they eventually confessed to angering a group of topless women playing touch football on the beach in
Cherry Grove, one of whom charged them before demanding they delete the footage. She taught them their first LGBT lesson: never cross a bull dyke. A gay uncle role model couldn't even come close!
A day later, after a gorgeous sunset, we caught an early train back to Manhattan. To say they were stoked is an understatement.
The boys saw the
Twin Towers a little more than five years before they fell, en route to the
Statue of Liberty. Don't let Nick's choir-boy looks behind those
Oakley sunglasses fool you. He played highly competitive
Scrabble, winning the best two out of three games. "Whiff" on a triple word score, opened by BJ, helped.
We even ascended to the crown of Lady Liberty. Several teenage girls standing in line welcomed BJ and Nick a lot more enthusiastically than the wimmin of
Cherry Grove. One gave Nick her room number at the
Howard Johnson's hotel. "In case you get bored."
As if their something-to-prove tour guide would ever let that happen. BJ wanted to visit a music store so we stopped at
Sam Ash near Times Square where he sat down at a drum kit and blew me away with the solo from
In-A-Gadda Da-Vida. Barb told me he was just as talented with computers.
 |
| New York City Subway |
 |
| Empire State Building Observatory |
BJ and I totally bonded over our love of music, although his taste was less poppy than mine. Streaming has stolen the IRL joy of visiting a megastore like
Virgin. You'd have to go to a distant continent to find one now.
I gave them the afternoon off before we went to see
Miss Saigon. They may have scored some weed. BJ definitely bought some fuchsia hair dye.
No
Supertalls spoiled the Central Park South skyline then.
A rainy last morning of their visit made the Metropolitan Museum of Art more tempting than it otherwise might have been for a couple of horny teens. Each of them had been spending a lot more time than strictly necessary in my tiny bathroom with the water running and tissues spilling out of the garbage can.
I would have to wait 25 more years to catch another
Winslow Homer retrospective at the Met because BJ & Nick were more interested in artifacts from ancient civilizations and the Middle Ages.
Nick now works for the
Border Patrol, after several post-9/11 deployments overseas. I never saw him again. BJ, now Brett, is a family man in Prescott, AZ where he develops actuarial tables.
We finally caught up over coffee in 2019 after nearly three decades of silence. I have no idea what either thinks of gay men, but I do know they had a faaaaabulous time!
More Barb & BJ:
