voyeur327's Blogs

This blog contains no steamy sex, no political intrigue or earth shattering revelations, just an old guys musings about a friend who passed through my life a long time ago. True events, no fantasy, just some snippets of memories.

Read the obits in the local weekly from the town I spent the first 40 years of my life in, and there it was: "Mikkell "Tony" ******, born in Jackson in 1964 passed away November second in Tennessee at the age of 57".  I met Tony when he was about 16, shoulder length blond hair, about 6' tall, slim but solidly built. He was one of the teen customers of the bowling center/arcade I was a partner in, but alas only 16. The loud one, at that age where someone would say "Stony, do something stupid to prove your a man" and he would.  I was "suspected to be gay" (in small town 1964 you didn't wear rainbow shirts or underwear), and that didn't get much attention from the arcade customers--maybe a whispered "is that the fag", which was usually shut down by our regulars, who I had a decent rapor with.  At some point Tony started a little flirt game, a comment here or there with a big smile, and my answer was always "come back when you're 18 jail bait" , which gave us both a good chuckle.

Life went on for a thirty-something short, not Robert Redford me, a date here or there, no long term  relationships, being gay in a 1960's small town. One evening there was a knock on my door, and who stood there but Tony, his birth certificate (yes, his effing birth certificate) in hand, and he said "Well, I'm 18 and I want to know what it feels like to get a blow job". The weird relationship (sort of a rent boy/client, but not really that) lasted for several years, he stayed that night and a month or so after. Maybe dinner and a movie or arcade visit about once a week (I was shocked to find out that our first visit to a family dining restaurant was the first "sit down" restaurant he had ever been in--seems when his parents went out to eat and couldn't find a sitter for him and his brother, they would stop at a McD's or BK and get take out for the kids and leave them in the car while they dined inside). It wasn't sexual every day, I was reliving my eighteenth year, and I think an adult had never paid any attention to him. He never asked for money, he might mention he needed new clothes or shoes, or his buddies were going to a concert, but never demanding or greedy.  I bought him a used car for his 19th birthday and he cried--then was so embarrassed he hibernated in his room for the day, coming out for supper proclaiming "I wasn't crying, I was laughing that an old fart like you would buy a punk kid like me a car"!

After that first month or so, he told me one morning he had met a girl (found out later, the first one) and had to leave.  We parted friends, lots of good lucks and stop in any times--I didn't see him for about three months until a phone call at 3 am, asking if I could pick him up in a nearby town. Went and got him--he had a black eye and bloodied nose--sort of got the impression the girlfriend wasn't a one man sort of girl and mayhem had ensued. Stayed about 3 months that time, even got to the point he voluntarily did dishes occasionally. Left again as friends, the wanderlust had grabbed him, saw him around town occasionally, reminisced about "remember when we.......? About a year later the knock on the door, Tony looking a bit ragged around the edges, said he just came to visit, he and his current girlfriend had produced a baby girl a few months back, said he was going to see his folks (who had pretty much disowned him at 17 when he quit school) because the were low on formula and he had lost his job. We went grocery shopping, and when I dropped him off at their trailer, he said " I can't come over tonight, but I can come over tomorrow if you want"--apparently willing to "pay" for the groceries. I told him everybody knew good Dads should be home with their kids, not hanging out with gay old farts, so forget it. Heard later that year that he had "moved south", didn't hear where.  Didn't really think of him until last year, when I found a Christmas gift from him stuffed way in the back of a desk drawer A jewelry box with a gold plated toothpick with a minuscule diamond chip (I had always wondered if he had actually paid the $75 on the price tag, or filched it from a jewelry counter). 

So there, reminisced a bit, and I'm sure some memory bits of "there was that one time..." will surface for  a week or so, but that's fine, because they will all be good memories, and I can enjoy each and every one. I can also remember the grainy newspaper obit photo of this guy with really long reddish blond hair and a bushy beard sitting on a dog eared old Harley Davidson, both the guy and the Harley obviously having a lot of miles on them, smiling from ear to ear--who I could clearly see was that gangly 18 year old blond standing at my door with his fuckin' birth certificate in his hand and that smile on his face.