Okay. How do I sum up 60+ years of living and not make it a full-length book? Not sure, but I will give it a shot.
The Early Years
I’m an early Baby Boomer, born about nine months after my dad returned home from World War II. I’m guessing all those years apart must have resulted in some pretty steamy sex for my folks. Yuck, I don’t want to think about that. Anyway, I’m the second oldest of five kids and grew up on Long Island. My parents were good people but lousy parents (sorry Mom & Dad) and were it not for the love and guidance of my maternal grandparents, heaven only knows how I might have turned out. Even more screwed up than I did anyway, that’s for sure.
My childhood had its share of happy and unhappy moments. My folks argued a lot and were terribly disorganized; our house always looked like a hurricane had just hit. As a result I never wanted to have any friends over to my place, believing I would die from embarrassment. By the time I was nine, I developed a keen interest in pop music and faithfully listened to the Top 40 countdown every week. Around the same time my grandparents started taking my older sister and me with them on the American Racing Drivers Club midget race car circuit. Many years earlier my grandfather had in fact owned a midget but at this time was a mechanic. For a four-year period from late spring to early fall we traveled from eastern Massachusetts to central Virginia on many a weekend. That was one of the real highlights of my youth.
Teens and Twenties
Although I was regarded as a bright student, in junior and senior high school I was more interested in being class-clown. Being liked was infinitely more important to me than academic achievement, and I let myself coast along on my inherent aptitude. As my male hormones began to let themselves be known, I was aware that it was attractive guys and not gals that turned me on. That totally freaked me out and while I fantasied about good looking guys, I presumed and hoped that I would eventually outgrow my feelings. Probably in part to try and divert my attention from my wicked temptations, I started reading a lot and joined the Book-of-the-Month Club. In my senior year of high school I had my first venture of sex with a girl, someone whom I had known since third grade. I’ll simply say it was less than satisfying and leave it at that.
Despite my lackluster attention to my studies, my grades were decent and I decided in my senior year to attend college. Since my folks were swimming in debt and I knew I could not count on their help, I managed to fund my college years by winning a scholarship, obtaining a low-interest student loan, and working nights and weekends. Unlike my earlier years, I took college seriously, majoring in history with a minor in English, graduating cum laude in four years.
It was during this time too that I had my first man-to-man sexual experiences. I realized immediately why my earlier sexual encounter with a young woman had been so unsatisfactory. While these few experiences were very gratifying, they were also shame-filled and I avoided an ongoing relationship with any of bed mates. In my senior year I started seeing a psychiatrist hoping to cure myself of my same-sex attraction, although the shrink was quick to point out the futility of that effort. Ignoring his advice, I began dating the younger sister of someone I met at a restaurant where he and I both worked. To my surprise I actually had enjoyable sex with her even if it wasn’t quite the seeing-fireworks phenomena I had experienced with my previous male partners. She was well aware of my physical attraction to guys but being we were both young and foolish, we allowed ourselves to think we had a happy future together, much like Sally Bowles and Brian Roberts in Cabaret. We married a year later and had a beautiful, healthy boy in the first year.
While all of this was happening, so too was the Vietnam War. Fiercely opposed to the war but not wanting to flee to Canada, after graduating from college I landed myself a teaching job in a private school hoping to avoid the draft. That did not work out as planned; my draft lottery number was one of the first to be drawn. Faced with going to Vietnam and coming back in a body bag or as a quadriplegic, I opted to pull my ace-in-the-hole and contacted my shrink who provided me a letter for the draft board, stating that I was a full-fledged faggot. Ironically enough, while this was taking place, my soon-to-be bride and I were making wedding plans.
After two years of teaching, I opted to leave the profession, hoping to make more money elsewhere to provide for my family. My first stint was as an insurance agent for about a year; frankly I wasn't very good at it. I then landed a job as an outside sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, something much more to my liking. In 1973 I switched companies and moved to the Boston suburbs with my family.
Over the next few years as my career was blossoming, my personal life was beginning to crumble. My wife and I increasingly quarreled and I quickly began to realize that our marriage had been a mistake. Other than a mutual love for our son, my wife and I had little in common. I began to recognize that my desire to demonstrate my straight manliness had deluded me, much as my therapist had warned. As this part of my life began to fail, my physical attraction to other men began to resurface. I, we made the foolish mistake of thinking a second child might get us back on track. While we did succeed in conceiving another child, even before my daughter was born, my wife packed up her things after a particularly nasty argument and moved back in with her folks.
Thirties, Forties, Fifties and Beyond
I was devastated by the prospect that my son wouldn’t be in my daily life the way I’d always believed he would. I also began to face my demons and knew there was nothing to hold me back from accepting and satisfying my repressed sexuality. I soon plunged myself into the Boston gay scene, feeling I had years of catching up to do. Eventually I met someone with whom I wanted to spend more time. Foolishly we got a place together after knowing each other less than two months. Much like my marriage this proved to be a big mistake. After going our separate ways, I spent the next year being unattached, playing the field, dating people for short stretches but most of the time just enjoying the freedom to sleep with whomever I could snag for the night.
And then on August 13, 1978 I wandered into my favorite watering hole, four days before my first visit to the West Coast and met Him. There he was on a busy Sunday afternoon at the opposite end of the bar from where I stood, sitting between two friends, laughing and smiling the most incredible smile I’d ever seen. I decided to take the plunge, walked over to introduce myself, never realizing how much my life would change as a result of that decision. Hours later after way too many beers and lots of dancing, I dragged him home to my apartment where he spent the night. I saw him once more before heading to San Francisco, sent him postcards, called, and made plans to reconnect when I returned. After my return home we began seeing each other regularly; I soon began to realize this might just be The One. We took our first vacation together to Fort Lauderdale the following spring and soon after began talking about moving to San Francisco. In September we packed our stuff into his car and drove cross-country to Baghdad-by-the-Bay.
Roy soon landed a job in banking. Initially I continued a career in pharmaceutical sales but my territory required a lot of overnight travel; that soon became very unappealing. In less than a year I took a better paying job with the local telecommunications company where I worked for the next sixteen years, earning an attractive salary in the process. After leaving Pacific Bell in 1996, I freelanced for five years and then spent the last eight years of gainful employment in real estate. Roy stayed in banking and recently retired as a Senior Vice President.
Both of us are avid dog lovers; after buying our first home we adopted a fantastic Border Collie/Lab mix named Sheba who we were fortunate to have for fifteen years. After her passing we adopted a lovable, playful, affectionate eight-week-old Border Collie/Greyhound mix that we named Aries. It's hard to believe he's already eleven. In early 2014 I decided to foster a sweet eight-year-old Australian Shepherd mix named Tink and soon fell in love with her; she too is now a member of our family. Life is sweet!
We’ve traveled extensively in both the U.S. and Europe, most recently to Budapest and Vienna in early 2016. If it were totally up to me we’d be living somewhere in Europe, preferably close to Paris. Paris is easily my favorite place in the world and even though I’ve been there ten times in a twenty-six year span, I never tire of going. I realized years ago however, I could not sell Roy on the notion. As long as Roy is in my life I know living there is not going to happen. To compensate, I indulge in a week or two every few years to satisfy my Parisian appetite, most recently in September 2016.
My kids are both fully grown and married. My son, his wife and their three children live less than two hours away. While they are all an important part of my life, I do my best to not be the pesky, invasive dad/granddad. My daughter and her husband have a daughter and son and live in New York. Unfortunately she wants nothing to do with me, feeling I am the worst dad ever. While I freely admit and regret that I did not spend more time with both of my kids as they were growing up, unfortunately my embittered ex-wife never made life easy and often threw roadblocks in my path. I’ve tried repeatedly to work things out with my daughter but unfortunately she’s as unforgiving as her mom. I’ve begrudgingly resigned myself to accept this reality.
So that is my story. If you made it this far, congratulations and thanks. Like everyone else, Roy and I have had our differences and tensions during our thirty-eight year history. There have been arguments, grievances, and jealousies. At one point in the mid-eighties we felt a need to live apart for a while. Even then we typically spent at least a couple of nights together each week. Each of us even during our darkest moments has known how much we mean to one another. He is my soulmate and my decision to go to Chaps that Sunday afternoon in August 1978 was beyond a doubt the best decision I ever made in my life.
Should you care to contact me with any comments, inquiries or suggestions, Ild love to hear from you. I can be reached at Ed@EdHartnett.com.