Pidge and Potts were two very nice, sweet, highly likeable guys. They were both smart, well groomed, and very rich. Their manners were impeccable. Neither of them exhibited even a hint of effeminate behavior. They were both in remarkably good shape, too, especially when you consider their ages. Walter Pidgeon must have been at least fifty at the time. Potts could have been a bit older. They were totally masculine in all their mannerisms and in the way they moved, talked, and behaved. The only thing that made them a little different than straight men is the fact that they enjoyed having sex with other men as well as with women. And, quite frankly, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with that.
As a result of that encounter, Pidge and I would see each other off and on over the ensuing years, always for sex followed by a handsome tip. His preference was to suck me off while masturbating. He would reach his orgasm just as I reached mine. On the rare occasion in later years when we got together with Jacques Potts the three of us would engage in some inventive ménage à trois antics. Sometimes I would just be a voyeur while the two of them did their thing, with Jacques acting as a “bottom” to Pidge’s “top.” Do you get what I mean? I’m sure I don’t have to explain. The fact is that whatever we did and whenever we did it, we always had a lot of fun together.
2
Gas Station on Hollywood Boulevard
There was no such thing as self-service at gas stations in 1946. My job at the Hollywood Richfield gas station was to welcome each customer with a big smile and a friendly greeting, pump as much fuel as they ordered into the gas tank, wash the windscreen, empty the ash trays, check the oil and water, ensure that tire pressures were correct, and generally see to it that every car and every customer got the red carpet treatment. I enjoyed the interaction with people and I did my best to make everyone feel special. And I didn’t mind the late hours. In fact, it gave me an excuse to chase some tail and get up to a little mischief after I locked up around midnight. It seemed like the older I got the greater my sex drive became. I had to have it. Every night. Or day. And sometimes multiple times at that.
My live-in girlfriend Betty never questioned me, even when I got home after dawn. With a regular paycheck coming in we were able to move to a nice little apartment not too far from the station. Although we never took the plunge by getting married, within a couple of months Betty was pregnant. We were both thrilled about it and moved into a slightly bigger place, one that had an extra bedroom for the new baby.
One afternoon before going over to the station I decided to pay a call to a little office that had been set up in the fashionable Crossroads of the World shopping center on Sunset Boulevard. The government-funded facility, run by a woman whose name I no longer recall, had become a popular and vital contact point for ex-military personnel who were trying to obtain information about buddies, friends, and family members in the months that had elapsed since the war ended. It functioned as a kind of clearing house, a meeting place and a database where ex-servicemen could leave their names, telephone numbers, and addresses for people to find them or, conversely, where they could look up the names and whereabouts of others who had served in the military with them. It was a very important service that helped a lot of people reconnect after the war. As an ex-Marine who saw service in the Pacific I was curious to find out if they knew where any of my old fellow Marines were. I went in there, filled out a small card, left the lady my name and work address, and thought no more about it.
At the time I could never in my wildest imagination have foreseen the ramifications of filling out that little card.
ONE LATE AFTERNOON, not too long after I had first been picked up by Walter Pidgeon, I arrived at the gas station to start my five o’clock shift. As I drove up and parked my car I was delighted to see two Marine Corps buddies of mine sitting waiting on the curb for me. We hadn’t met up since we had been discharged from service in Seattle. We shook hands warmly, then hugged, and kibitzed around for a couple of minutes. It was a lot of small talk, but I was glad to see them. Once a Marine, always a Marine. It was great to make the connection again. I offered them each a soda from the refrigerator outside the office and then I asked them how they had found me. I hadn’t given my work address to anyone.
“C’mon, Scotty. ’Course you did.”
“Where? When?” I asked.
And then they reminded me about the ex-servicemen’s contact office down at the Crossroads of the World in Hollywood.
“You filled out a card, dumb head,” they chided.
Of course! It had been a couple of weeks since I’d filled out the card. Amazingly, another Marine compatriot showed up a couple of days later. And then another. And another. Within a fortnight I’d been contacted by at least a dozen of my old buddies from the Corps. Over the next few weeks one or two of them would show up at the station every day or so. And it wasn’t long before it became a daily ritual. Small groups of them began congregating just as I arrived for work at five o’clock. Many of them had found girlfriends and they would bring them along, too. The guys just wanted to shoot the breeze with one another for an hour or two, talk about ball game scores and catch up on news and events before they all went their separate ways as the evening wore on. A couple of them had bought cars—old jalopies mainly—that they brought in and filled up with gas. Others rode motorcycles. All of them bought gas and oil from me and occasionally they would bring their vehicles in for a service and an oil change. A guy by the name of Wilbur McGee—or “Mac” as he was better known—manned the service bay during the day but in the evenings I took care of all the jobs for my friends. I did lubes, changed oil, put in new spark plugs, charged batteries, rotated tires, changed brake linings, fixed radiator leaks.
As time went by my Marine pals would bring their civilian friends over and so the circle constantly widened. Soon the station took on the role that the shopping mall plays in the lives of kids today. The Richfield gas station on Hollywood Boulevard became the fashionable place for guys and gals between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to hang out. The place buzzed, business boomed, and my boss, Bill Booth, who leased the station from the Richfield Gas Company, was as happy as a pig in clover.
BECAUSE THE GAS station was in the heart of Hollywood, many of the rich and famous also stopped by to purchase gas from me. One of them was playwright Jerome Lawrence along with his writing partner Robert E. Lee. Jerry was the other half of the famous team, Lawrence and Lee. They wrote thirty-nine works together including the librettos for Dear World and Auntie Mame. They also wrote The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, First Monday in October, and the classic courtroom drama, Inherit the Wind. Jerry would stop by, fill up his tank, and then chat for a half hour or so.
Another good customer was an exceptionally talented and very handsome young and upcoming author by the name of Gore Vidal. Gore was one of the nicest, brightest men I knew. He would go on to become a towering force in the world of modern literature, screen-writing, and sociopolitical commentary. He has remained a close friend ever since we first met. Actor Glenn Ford became a regular. So did producer Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, which was just down the road. Hermes Pan the choreographer came to the station, too. He once claimed that he had choreographed every single musical starring that royal dancing duo, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, including their final partnering in The Barkleys of Broadway. Actor Lionel Barrymore often came to the station, as did Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Rock Hudson and one of his young gay lovers drove in one night in a brand-new 1947 Chevrolet Coupe, of which he was very proud. He filled up and we chatted; every second or third day after that he came back and had me pump five dollars worth of gas into his car. He was living in North Hollywood at the time and, in due course, he and I would get to know one another pretty well.
ON FEBRUARY 1, 1947, Betty gave birth to our darling baby daughter. We named her Donna, in honor of my brother Donald. Now that I had another mouth to feed I needed to earn extra money, so I took odd day jobs trimming a tree here, patching up a fence there, fixin
g a leaking roof, doing a bit of carpentry, painting gutters, cleaning pools, gardening, or doing whatever (or whoever!) came along. My family was never short of anything, and our little daughter thrived. But my life with Betty was pretty dull. Yes, we lived together at the same address, we still had great affection for one another, we still enjoyed sex now and then, but, in actual fact, we began to drift into living separate lives. For one thing my work kept me very busy and, to be quite frank, I was seeing other people, both women and men, frequently.
Betty was no fool. Even though she never brought it up in conversation she knew what I was up to. And she learned to live with it. She even took phone messages for me at home and not once did she ever ask what my relationship with the caller was. She was such a sweet, considerate woman that she never questioned my whereabouts on those many nights when I didn’t come home. That’s the unique kind of woman that Betty was.
One evening at the gas station something happened that would herald a whole new enterprise for me. While a group of my friends and other young folks, both male and female, were hanging around, a big car pulled in. I ran out, flashed my big Richfield Oil smile at the driver, and asked him what I could do for him.
“Fill her up, please,” he said.
“Sure thing, sir,” I replied.
While I was wiping down his windshield I noticed him staring at my friends huddled together in a group at the end of the driveway. When I finished I went around to the driver’s side window to collect payment for the gas. The guy must have been in his fifties. He was fiddling with a pile of bills that he had pulled from his wallet. I told him what he owed me for the gas. He didn’t respond and continued fidgeting with the wallet while staring at the group of young folk. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” I asked.
He nodded in the direction of the group. Speaking very softly and in a carefully honed American yet very British-sounding accent he asked, “That boy over there, he a friend of yours?”
“Which one?” I responded.
“The tall one, the blonde,” he replied.
I looked over at my pals.
“How old is he?” he asked.
I began to suspect where all this was going. I told him that the guy was twenty and asked him whether he would like to meet him. He nodded as he handed me the money for the gas, not taking his eyes off my friend. Then I went over to the group and pulled my buddy aside, walking him over to an area where no one could see or hear us.
“Want to earn some cash tonight, pal?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” he said. “How?”
I wandered back over to the car. The driver was clearly anxious to hear what I had to say and seemed a little nervous.
“He’ll go with you,” I said. “But it’s going to cost you twenty bucks.”
The man said nothing. He immediately pulled out his wallet again and started counting out some bills.
“Oh, no, sir,” I said. “Not for me. For him. You can pay him later.”
He looked at me and nodded. I went back to my blonde friend. I told him to get into the car with the guy, go with him, and do whatever he wanted. Although at first he was unsure of what I was asking of him, he immediately brightened when I told him that it would earn him twenty bucks. Because he was a Marine I knew that he was quite capable of defending himself if the guy turned out to be a weirdo, though it was obvious that he was a harmless queen who probably only wanted to suck my buddy’s cock.
None of our friends noticed as he slipped into the front passenger seat and closed the door. The man behind the wheel glanced momentarily at me and flashed me a grateful smile. I grinned back at him. The driver looked away, put his foot down on the accelerator, and the car pulled out onto the boulevard and into the night.
The next evening my friend showed up again. He wasn’t gay, or at least I never thought of him as being that way. Nevertheless, he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to tell some of the other guys who were hanging around what had happened the night before. I never expected him to be so open and honest about it. If I’d had my way I would have kept the whole thing under wraps, mainly to protect the reputation of the driver of the car, whoever he was. But this guy wanted to tell all.
“Easiest fuckin’ twenty bucks I ever earned,” he confided to us. “You were right, Scotty. The old geezer only wanted to give me a blow job, and I wasn’t gonna say no to that. He was good, too!”
Some of the guys were mildly amused by the story but most of them thought it hilarious and burst into raucous applause. I could detect a note of envy among one or two of them. One of the youngest ones detached himself from the group and pulled me aside, asking me if I could arrange something like that for him, too. He was desperate for some extra cash.
“So you’re up to doin’ tricks, too?” I asked, playfully slapping him on the back.
“Hell, yeah,” he said. “For money? You kidding?”
I thought for a moment.
“Okay, fellas, stick around,” I said to the entire group. “You never know. Your turn may come soon.”
More laughter followed that remark but I must have foreseen exactly what was going to happen. Having heard my buddy’s account of what transpired with the trick I arranged for him wasn’t the end of the story. It was only the beginning. Because one thing you can be sure of: if you ever ask a middle-aged queen to keep a secret you can be absolutely sure that it will spread like wildfire before you can say Jack Robinson. It turned out that the guy who drove off with my friend was a senior makeup artist at Warner Bros. The ambling studio complex was located in Burbank, just a few miles from the gas station. He had obviously told his colleagues about the cute little number he’d picked up at the Richfield gas station on Hollywood Boulevard because within two days three or four cars driven by gay men from the studio were pulling in every night for a few dollars worth of gas and a request for me to set them up with a trick. It happened so fast. Before I could take stock of the situation, I was becoming the go-to guy in Hollywood for arranging tricks.
To be honest, though, none of this was completely new to me. I hadn’t had the most sheltered of childhoods and had discovered sex at an early age. In fact, I was just a kid in Illinois when it all began.
3
Awakenings
The year was 1930.
Like a dependable, precision timepiece my body instinctively knew it was time to get up. Throwing off the heavy blanket and the frayed homemade quilt, I swung out of my warm bed and padded over to the window. Drawing the curtains aside I stared at the dark landscape that lay beyond. Even though the sun would not rise for another two hours I could make out that the world was covered in snow. A feeble light spilled into the gloom of the tiny bedroom. The thought of going outside made me tremble in anticipation of the freezing weather, but I had no choice. There was work to be done.
I shuffled over to my brother Donald’s bed and gave him a shake. He grunted and then turned over to face the wall, clutching the blankets more tightly around his shoulders. But I knew he would not remain in bed for long. I could already hear Momma banging pots and stoking the big wood-burning stove in the kitchen downstairs. She would soon be knocking on our door to make sure we were up. I yawned and went over to the porcelain jug and washbasin that sat on the dresser. I poured out some icy water, splashed it on my face, pulled on my bib overalls, slipped on a sweater, and stepped into my muddy work boots.
Giving Momma a peck on the cheek as I passed her in the kitchen, I stepped outside into the icy air. The temperature was probably around ten or fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, typical of midwinter in this part of Illinois. Through the damp haze that swirled around the yard I caught sight of my sister Phyllis going to collect eggs in the hen house. Yearning for something hot that I knew would be offered at the breakfast table a couple of hours later I slushed my way over to the big cowshed. Using all my strength I dragged one of the heavy doors slightly ajar, slipped inside, and shut it behind me.
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nbsp; A strong whiff of manure, methane, dust, hay, and mildewed timber filled my nostrils. But I was used to it. I did this every morning and had been doing it ever since I could remember. I greeted Dad and Willy, our hired hand. They were already hard at work milking the cows. There were forty of them. My brother Don and I were responsible for assisting with the task.
Walking over to a corner in the shadows I picked up an empty metal pail and went over to the first stall, where one of our oldest and most dependable Holstein milk producers watched me with her innocent, oily brown eyes. When Don and I returned from school later in the afternoon we would help with the milking again. This was a twice-a-day operation, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
As my fingers tugged on the cow’s soft teats, her warm milk squirted into the pail. It was a comforting sound, imparting a sense of continuity to life on the farm. After breakfast I would ride my pony Babe down the unpaved road to the schoolhouse half a mile away. Sometimes Don or Phyllis would hop on her back with me and we would ride together. We couldn’t afford a saddle so we always rode bareback. There would be some homework to do when I returned that afternoon, then more farmyard chores, and then, weather permitting, I would hop over the fence to the Peterson’s property down the road. I enjoyed slopping through the snow and mud to their farmhouse, which was about a ten-minute walk away. The Petersons had a boy and a girl who were close in age to me. Their company made for a pleasant contrast to my own brother and sister. In winter their mother—Ma Peterson we called her—usually managed to serve up a cup of warm cocoa at around four o’clock. And whenever he was around, old man Joe Peterson always set aside a few minutes for me, curious to hear what I’d been up to since my last visit.
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