Short Circuits

by Dorien Grey

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  GET A HORSE

  People fascinate (and too often infuriate) me for a wide range of reasons, one of which being the vehemence with which so many resist the idea of change and the total acceptance of it once it has arrived. I started this particular blog a couple days ago, then when time came (today) to post it, I realized it needed to be in two parts: material changes and societal changes. So let’s start with the material, which seem to be faster to come along and generally with less resistance than social changes.

  Humans have a general historical suspicion and distrust of technology. The knee jerk reaction to anything new is either “it’ll never work” or “well, I’d never use it.” The first automobiles were greeted with catcalls of: “Get a horse!” Orville and Wilbur’s idea of a flying machine was generally denounced with the firm general conviction that “It’ll never fly.”

  Yet we have experienced, in a just a little over a hundred years, a sea change in how technology has totally and forever changed our lives.

  I do not think my immediate family…my mom, my dad, and me…had an indoor bathroom until I was approaching puberty. I know we didn’t on the little house on Loves Court in Loves Park; I’m sure there wasn’t room for it in the 14-foot-long trailer in which we lived in Gary, Indiana, where I broke my leg and was in a body cast for a month or so during the heat of summer, and I know we did not have air conditioning. We did not have an indoor bathroom until we’d been living on Blackhawk Ave. for some time. I seem to recall a hand pump for water in the kitchen, and I definitely remember a hand-pumped kerosene stove in the trailer.

  Impossible to believe now, but few of us had even heard of television before 1945, and in 1949 people would stand outside appliance store windows to watch the bulky sets with the blurry black and white photos. Radio was our primary source of entertainment, and we usually went to the movies once a week until I was a teenager: then I’d go once a week with my family, and every Saturday afternoon on my own with, as stated before, my “allowance” of $1.25: 50 cents for the movie, a quarter for a chocolate ice cream soda, 20 cents for two tall bags of Manley Popcorn, and 30 cents for the bus to and from.

  Mail was delivered twice a day, for three cents a stamp. Electric refrigerators and washing machines were in very few homes prior to the 1940s. On ice-delivery day, you’d put a card in your front window with a little arrow pointing to the amount of ice you wanted, and it would be brought in an open truck with a heavy tarp in the back covering the ice, and all the neighbor kids would run up to it on warm summer days and take little chips of ice to suck on.

  It’s impossible to totally separate technological change from societal change, since technology is a river on which society floats.

  The past was not all nostalgia and warm snugglies. Now-eradicated or easily treated diseases cut down tens of thousands, and for improvements in medicine alone we should give thanks. But with change also comes a degree of loss. The more technology takes us out of ourselves comes a loss of innocence, of security, of a sense of physical, emotional, and geological closeness with friends and family.

  Like it or not, change is constant and we are carried along with it willingly or no. All we can do is remember what was and use it as an anchor or a guidepost to what is to come.

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  CHICAGO THEN, CHICAGO NOW

  Having moved to Chicago immediately after graduating from college, I left in 1966 for reasons which make the stuff of long, boring psychological dramas. We might get to it eventually, sometime down the road. At any rate, I moved back again in September of 2006, and it was in a way as though someone had simply removed 39 years’ worth of pages from the book of my life.

  I now live on the same street—even on the same side of the street—as when I first moved to Chicago: exactly six blocks north of my very first Chicago apartment. And therein lies a problem, because now that I am surrounded by the streets and buildings and things which were so familiar to me when I was 25—even the same sounds of elevated trains rumbling by less than a block from my window—I am still 25. And then I catch a glimpse of myself in a window, and the illusion shatters. I never cease to be shocked.

  One of the reasons I returned to Chicago was to be back among what I like to call “my own people”—the gay community (there are more gays in one block of north Halsted St. than there are within 80 miles of Pence, Wisconsin). And yet I find that while I am once more in the community, I am no longer a part of it in the same way I once was. The intervening years I have so readily chosen to ignore have aged me out of the bar and cruising scenes which were so important my first time around, and sometimes my chest aches with longing, like someone who knows he is not welcome at a party to which he so badly wants to go.

  But still, to be able to be in a place where I can see gay and lesbian couples walking casually down the street holding hands, or with their arms around each other, to go into a store where the staff and the customers are predominantly gay, to talk openly with friends in a crowded restaurant without having to avoid saying anything that might identify me as “one of those” is liberating in a way only members of a minority can feel when they are surrounded by their own kind. Straights never experience this feeling: they are always around their own kind.

  In the 1950s and 1960s, there was no “gay community” as such. The near north side of the city was something of a gay ghetto, but other than several gay bars, there were no gay shops, gays and lesbians were openly harassed by a notoriously corrupt police department. Discrimination was not only practiced but encouraged. Gays could be fired from their jobs or evicted from their apartments simply for being gay, and there was no recourse.

  So, though I was used to attending Gay Pride parades in Los Angeles and San Francisco, I was in something akin to awe when I attended my first Chicago Gay Pride parade. The City of Chicago lined the parade route and other gay areas with rainbow flags, and every local and state politician (from the governor on down) marched or rode in the parade. The Chicago Fire Department had a float, and the Chicago Police Department had not one but two parade entries, one of which was a huge float with more than 20 uniformed openly gay and lesbian police officers. The City of Chicago was a major financial contributor to the Center on Halsted, the city’s sprawling Gay and Lesbian community center.

  And to the scores of thousands of gays and lesbians (and many of the straights) under the age of 30 lining the route, all this was simply the way it is, and the way it should be. They had, for the most part, not a clue of what those of us who remember “the old days” went through or how hard we fought for all this to happen.

  But time also brings rather disturbing change. I and perhaps the majority of Chicagoans still mourn the takeover…and subsequent loss of name…of Marshall Field’s department store, which had been a landmark and symbol of Chicago for well over 100 years. I refuse to shop there now. Carson Pirie Scott, another department store anchor, has closed its gigantic Loop store, the building now filled with trendy (read “exorbitantly expensive”) little boutiques and restaurants, and probably at least 17 Starbucks. State Street, once a battleship row of grand old flagship department store chains—Wieboldt’s and Goldblatts and many others—is becoming a very upscale strip mall. The charm of “going downtown” is largely gone, at least in Chicago. Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart sounded the death-knell of innumerable small towns by driving small hardware stores, paint stores, dry-good stores, men’s and women’s clothing shops, etc. out of business; the collapse of the department store giants has sounded the death-knell of the once legendary Loop.

  Well, life goes on. Chicago goes on. I go on.

  * * *

  SHAPING CLAY

  Some primitive cultures believe that the gods shaped Man from clay before breathing life into him.

  I think there also might be something to be said for the idea that we are also, when we’re born, the equivalent of cosmic Play-Doh, and who we turn out to be is the result of how we are shaped by the ev
ents and circumstances of our lives.

  Looking back, I can remember a number of incidents from my childhood which, simply because they’re still remembered after all these years, mean they had to have contributed to who Roger and Dorien are today.

  Not surprisingly, most of them took place when I was very young, though I have difficulty now pinning down exactly how old I might have been at the time of each incident. The earliest was when I was old enough to have a tricycle. My parents had called me in for supper (we had “supper” in those days…“dinner” only came with sophistication). I left my tricycle on the sidewalk, and as we were eating, I heard the little bell on the handlebars ringing. I told my dad that someone was stealing my tricycle, but he had not heard the bell and refused to let me go outside to check on it. When I was able to go out, of course the tricycle was gone, and I resented my dad deeply for not having let me go out and save it. And I am ashamed to say that I think this single incident influenced my relationship with my dad from that moment on.

  A second incident, about the same time, occurred while I was visiting my grandmother, who lived near a city park. While no one was watching me, I decided to go to the park alone. As I was walking through an underpass beneath the street on which my grandmother lived, I was approached by a man (which at my age could have been any male 15 years old or older). To this day I remember what he said to me, and though it is admittedly rather embarrassing to repeat, it has stuck with me all these years. (A word of caution here: I’m not going to sugar-coat this, so you can skip to the next paragraph if you’re easily offended.) He said, “Let me put my weenie in your can.” It wasn’t until years later that I understood what he was saying, but I remember thinking it was a very strange thing to say. At any rate, I ran off and don’t know if I told my parents or not. But I remembered it. I still remember it, possibly because it was the first time I was aware that there were others like me: males who liked males. He was not the kind of man of whom homosexuals can be proud and, like most pedophiles, it’s unlikely that he was in fact gay.

  One incident which strongly did have an effect on the formation of my character occurred when, maybe about 7 years old, I was walking down the sidewalk, happily singing Christmas carols at the top of my voice. A passerby said: “Why are you singing Christmas Carols? It’s summer.” I don’t know why, but that comment so shamed me that I have never since sung aloud other than as part of a group.

  Probably one of the most significant of my character-developing incidents happened when I was five, and my parents and I were living in a 14-foot trailer in Gary, Indiana. The trailer park was located next to a railroad track, but separated by a sloping ditch. Whenever we kids would hear a train coming, we’d run to the embankment to wave at the engineer, who always waved back. One day I heard the train coming before the other kids did, and I ran to the ditch and plopped down on the ground just below the rim of the embankment. I had my left leg out to one side and watching for the train.

  A little girl from the park came running up and, not seeing me, jumped down the embankment, landing on my extended leg, breaking it severely just below the hip. I of course immediately began screaming and the little girl, terrified, ran off. My mother, hearing me, came running over. And seeing me all by myself maybe three feet down the side of a grassy embankment, she naturally assumed I had merely fallen and was being my own melodramatic self. She knelt down and scooped me up, one arm around shoulders and the other under my rear end. Unfortunately, in so doing, the weight of my unsupported left leg forced the broken bone out through my skin.

  The doctors at the hospital to which I was taken told my parents that the break was so severe that my left leg would probably be several inches shorter than the right. However, they said, a visiting specialist from Germany was in town. He was scheduled to return to Germany the next day, but he came in and operated, and while I have a long and very noticeable scar, there was no shortening. The doctor left for Germany the next day. This was September of 1938. The doctor was Jewish.

  I don’t think that the fact that it was a little girl who had jumped on me influenced my being gay, but it certainly did make me far more cautious of any activity or anything at all that might conceivably cause me physical pain.

  Well, there are many more character-shapers in my life, and I may do another blog or two on them in future. But this, I’m sure you’ll agree, is enough for now.

  * * *

  TRAINS

  Like most people…men more than women, I’d suspect…I’ve had a lifelong attraction to trains, from the time Uncle Buck first took me to the train station in Rockford, Illinois to watch the huge black-metal monsters come chuffing up to the platform wreathed in steam and thick black smoke, amid squeaks and hisses. From that moment, I was hooked.

  For Christmas of 1938, my dad bought me…well, us, since he played with it more than I did…a five car Lionel electric train. It had a bullet-shaped streamliner engine, a coal car, a baggage car, a diner, and a caboose. I had it until just before my 2006 move to Chicago, when I realized that much as I loved it, it was foolish just to keep it packed away in a box, so I put it up for sale on eBay, and got $1,000 for it. I was of course happy for the money, but even happier that someone who loved trains would be enjoying it. I think Dad would excuse me.

  A couple of times, after I moved from Chicago in 1966 to Los Angeles, I took a train between the two cities, splurging on a sleeper compartment with its own tiny bathroom. It was rather decadent, I thought, and a lot of fun, albeit rather expensive. I’d love to do it again, and have always wanted to take a train across Canada. Well, it’s on my wish list.

  And now that I am living once again in Chicago, I look out my window and see (and sometimes too-clearly hear) silver elevated trains rumble by half a block away every several minutes. From my vantage point, looking down on them, I convince myself that I once again have my own little electric train set. (The sound, by the way, becomes so much a part of existence that I am for the most part totally unaware of it. All part of big city life.)

  I’ve mentioned before that Chicago has one of the best transportation systems in the country, and having an el so close means that I am literally only steps away from any place in the city. If the el won’t get me there, the busses which pass every elevated stop will.

  And even though I’ve been back in Chicago for two years now (good Lord! How can that be possible?), the el fascinates me. But what fascinates me more is how everyone in Chicago simply takes this marvel for granted. To walk up a flight of stairs and look down the track to see four-six-and-eight-car silver trains moving into and out of each station. Watching the cars slide past as the train moves up the platform, seeing the doors slide silently open, watch the people getting on and off as though it were no big thing (and in truth, I guess it isn’t, except to me and my friend Gary, who recently moved here from Texas and is still as fascinated with them as I).

  Riding through the city on an el, especially as it approaches the Loop and its towers, is to me a never-ending source of awe. Hundreds of thousands of people each day board and alight from the eight separate but interlinked lines serving the city: Red, Brown, Orange, Yellow, Purple, Green, Orange, Pink. In the Loop, the major north-south Red Line, which begins and ends as an elevated line, sinks beneath the ground to become a subway, then emerges again to become an el.

  I often wonder how many of those who ride it every day ever stop to think that probably most people in the country have no ready access to such a complex public transportation system, let alone the joy of real trains running back and forth right over their heads, or of how wondrous and complex a thing it is. I know I do. Simple pleasures for a simple mind.

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  A DAY AT THE MOVIES

  Whenever I go up to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, for one of my annual follow-up checkups, I like to try to see a movie, which I seldom have the chance to do at home. This time, I saw two; one Sunday and one Monday at one of those 470-screen SuperCinePlexes.r />
  Paying my $6.00 early-bird-or-whatever rate on Sunday, I decided I’d try once again to eat a bag of popcorn. I love popcorn; I always have. But though I am always the optimist, I am never able to finish even a small bag. The kernels break up into a thousand pieces during chewing and, because my salivary glands were destroyed by radiation during the treatment of my tongue cancer, I have no natural way of simply gathering the thousands of pieces, moving them unnoticed to the back of my mouth, and swallowing, ready for the next handful. Instead, the broken up kernels adhere to every possible surface of my mouth; between my tongue and teeth, and between my teeth and my gums. Trying to wash them loose with a sip of soda is an exercise in futility.

  But I digress, as usual. What I’m getting at is that a very small bag of popcorn cost $3.25 and a small soda cost another $3.25. I was thinking of mentioning to the manager that if they were going to rob the customers, they could at least wear masks and carry guns. So a trip to the movies cost $12.50. And I know the $6.00 ticket price was a steal compared to some theaters. Needless to say, I opted to forgo the snack bar on return visit.

  In the great depression, movie theaters survived not so much on the ticket sales, but on selling popcorn...at 10 cents a bag. I am sure the modern cineplexes operate on a similar theory, though on a far, far grander scale.

  I began going to movies on my own when I was around 10, I believe. Every Saturday, my mom would give me $1.25, and with that princely sum I would take the bus (I believe 10 cents a ride) downtown, where I would go to the State or the Times, or the Palace (which frequently had vaudeville on weekends), or the Midway on the other side of town, or very rarely to the Coronado, which was and is a magnificent old Grand Dame of a movie palace.

  The Coronado and the Midway showed only first runs from major studios. The Times and Palace often showed second-runs or B-grade movies; The State showed lesser movies, but ran serials every Saturday and was therefore the favorite of most of the kids.