(Another personal story from Oberon’s Grove: the story of Kenny and me.)
My best friend Richard and I were living in a walk-up near Trinity College in Hartford in 1985, and we did our grocery shopping at Stop & Shop. Working there as a cashier was a very handsome and unusual-looking boy with red hair and Spanish eyes. Both Richard and I were quite taken with him but he was totally aloof: never made eye contact when he was ringing up our groceries, and if we asked him a question he would give a one-word, dismissive answer. However, that didn’t deter us from always choosing his check-out lane. Then one day he disappeared. I assumed he had found a better job.
I was right. He suddenly appeared in the cafeteria of the building where I worked. I managed to find out that he was working in a medical billing office which was renting space from my company. My one-sided infatuation suddenly took on a new aspect when – to my amazement – he began making eyes at me during lunch hour. My co-workers were instantly aware of what was going on, and they would always arrange for me to have a seat at the table with a clear prospect for flirting with the mystery boy. This went on for a couple of weeks; Franky, the Hispanic boy from the mail room who I was fooling around with, referred to the interloper as Peppermint Patty. Everyone seemed to be watching and waiting for something to happen.
Then one afternoon Pam, the adorably mischievous little Black girl who did our filing, whispered in my ear: “You know that boy you like? He’s upstairs at the soda machine!” I never moved faster in my life. I raced up the stairwell and found him coming down. “Hi! I’m Philip.” “I’m Ken.” Then I shoved him up against the wall and started kissing him. He liked it. “How old are you?” “19,” he lied. I was thinking more like ‘barely legal’. Turns out he was 18.
He came over that night and in between doing what boys like to do we found out about the complications that we would be dealing with in the weeks ahead: his girlfriend, my boyfriend, his mother. Extricating ourselves from these situations was a long and frequently agonizing process. Many nights we had no place to go and spent hours driving around in his car, Miss Malibu, listening to Madonna singing La Isla Bonita. Like all young people at that time, he adored Madonna. I got used to her, for his sake. We went to see DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, blatantly making out in the darkened cinema.
Sparing you the novel-length description of our travails, it’s enough to say we ended up finally freeing ourselves from our involvements with Carmen and Felix, and that his mom eventually came to accept me as a second son.
We set up house together in a very nice apartment in Downtown Hartford; for the first few weeks we holed up there, delighting in being alone together in our own place. The only thing I could cook was spaghetti with sauce from a jar. We ate that on so many nights and went out to our favorite haunt, Shenanigans, two or three times a week. Mostly we just talked and talked and talked. Kenny told me his story, which I found extremely moving. Abandoned in a hospital lobby in Columbia, South America as a baby (he has a white scar on his ankle where the I.V. was inserted that kept him alive) he was adopted via a Catholic orphan-placement organization by parents in Maine of Canadian descent. His adoptive father was a slacker, but Little Mama – as I came to call her – worked tirelessly at a manufacturing job to make a life for herself and her son. That he turned out so well is a credit to her energy and devotion.
In my vanity, I loved introducing him to my friends; having a twenty-years-younger lover was a novelty for me and I was feeling rejuvenated. In truth though, neither one of us was ready for a committed, monogamous relationship. I still had a vast supply of wild oats to sow and he, newly exposed to the gay world, was a bit like a kid who had never been inside a particularly yummy candy store before. Knowing that young people need to be amused, I started taking him out to Backsteet. Hartford had a limited dance-club scene: Backstreet was pretty much it. There were flirtations, jealousies, three-ways. For a brief period we lived in a stormy menage a trois with a Portuguese boy. The one person who had the potential to be a major part of our life, Freddy, contacted viral pneumonia soon after we’d met him and died within three days.
For all the turmoil in our socio-sexual lives, we stuck together. We basically liked each other and got on well despite the 20-year age difference.
We spent lots of time in Provincetown where the beaches, bars, jacuzzis and rooftop sundecks seethed with erotic possibilities all day and night. Following an afternoon on the dance floor at The Boatslip we would settle in for a long dinner at our favorite place, Gallerani’s. One of the many memorable evenings we spent in P’town was attending the local premiere of Madonna’s TRUTH OR DARE.
We took in his cat, Boo, from his mom’s menagerie and moved to a lovely townhouse in the West End. Madonna’s poster was up, her music playing frequently. On one trip to P’town he played the DICK TRACY soundtrack about 1,000 times; I really didn’t mind. I’d gotten used to living with Madonna.
We sunbathed in the park, trekked to Jacob’s Pillow, adored Emmylou Harris, shopped at Macy’s in New Haven, and danced on weekends. He spent more and more time with his best friend Danny. I’d go down to New York City for opera and ballet knowing he was home getting into mischief. We sort of had an understanding…but, like most understandings, this one started to wear thin.
When the owner of the townhouse wanted it back, we moved for the last time together to a nice but ordinary place. I nursed him thru a bout of illness, and we still sometimes referred to ourselves as lovers, but after six years of togetherness (with a couple breaks) we each had our own life and we were becoming something of a hindrance to each other. We couldn’t form relationships with other people when we were still tied to each other domestically. I had met and fallen in love with a Chinese callboy in NYC and was obsessed with all things Asian. Having enhanced his body at the gym, Kenny was quite the object of desire. Things had reached a turning point.
After quarrels and edginess started to overwhelm the good times of our life together, we decided to live separately. He had expanded his social circle and after a while he moved to Philadelphia (leaving me bereft, though I never told him that) and eventually to Fort Lauderdale. I took a beautiful, huge old top-floor apartment in the West End, biding my time and knowing that by my 50th birthday I really needed to escape to Gotham. I did, and Kenny was among the guests at my 50th birthday lunch in the Village.
One of my favorite pictures of Kenny & me, on the roofdeck of the Normandy House in P’town. I can imagine him saying: “Oh, my god…my hair!” It was very stylish at the time, however.
We have remained good friends and though we haven’t seen each other for years, we keep in touch and we understand one another in ways than only former lovers truly can. Whenever I hear Madonna’s voice, I remember our times together. In true romantic fashion, I have forgotten all the bad things between Kenny and me, and can best remember us driving around on those first unforgettable nights, when he would play ‘La Isla Bonita‘, singing along and changing the words: “…I fell in love with San Felipe…”
Oberon's Glade 