Steve:
John: One of my earliest memories is of dancing around the living room to whatever pop music my mom happened to be playing. She says it was this great, free-form kind of modern dance. Of course, I didn't have any particular style in mind (what did I know from style?), but I remember waving my arms a lot, jumping and spinning. The staircase along one wall of the living room had vertical poles that went all the way to the ceiling, in lieu of the usual handrail with balusters. The pole nearest the bottom was perfect for making swinging entrances from the stairs into the living room, and I used that a lot in my impromptu dances. The dancing came to an end after the inevitable ridicule from my brothers and other neighborhood boys, but man, I could really fly.
Valerie: Creativity
Fourth grade was a good year for creativity, though looking back now, I think I was the only one who really appreciated it. A voracious reader, I read The Hobbit for a book report. One of the options for presentation was to dress up as a character and tell about the book. I got the long roll of cotton wool from my Dad's doctor kit and made Gandalf's beard from it. I felt so proud and clever, standing a on a chair to tell about this amazing book, but I still remember the blank looks from most of my classmates. I was the only one who ever chose the dress up option; they related a bit better when I made a straw hat out of typing paper colored with crayons and shredded around the edges to be Huck Finn.
Terence: Little Gay CupcakesI realize this is not a childhood story at all but one of adolescence. I include it because it's what came to mind and now that I ponder it just a bit I realize that it was my child like nature that thought to bake when little else could be done.
Would that there was in existence a photo of me with the turquoise cupcakes. Well! Oddly enough I who normally cannot fix dates so well now recall that it must have been the summer of 1971. Of course it was because I had yet to achieve a climax-- I was not quite thirteen. I was not even sure what the word orgasm meant. Not that I had not made a valiant effort mind you. I watched Street Car Named Desire on television that spring and I still was overwhelmed by my attraction to Stanley, not necessarily Marlon Brando as Stanley, but Stanley in that story in that apartment with me as Blanche toying with him insane and toying with him. I digress what did this have to do with my baking cupcakes.
Between the heights and flights of my sexual fantasy and the unflinchingly dull reality of my days there was a hot summer. Long days with little to do but think of ways to be gay. Oh not consciously of course but just under the surface, at home, relatively safe from ridicule. How could I express this queer adolescence on Long Island in the heat in 1971?
I had ransacked everyone's hiding places and tried on my sisters Vidal Sassoon wig wishing for the umpteen millionth time it was longer and not brunette. It really was a ritual-- what I did alone at home. How to negotiate that solitary freedom of having no one around.
My older brother who was still in the closet was a clothes' hound. He had a very groovy turquoise "surfers" shirt that had burgundy horizontal stripes on it and I thought it was fabulous.
He looked a bit like Montgomery Clift my older brother, chiseled, dark somewhat wounded looking. Only my brother had this high coloring that I suspect Monty did not have. My brother was fastidious his skin looked as if it had been polished. Anyway I had tried the shirt on numerous occasions and it was all wrong. It was too big it swam and it needed to be snug and the colors! I had strawberry blonde hair and somehow those burgundy stripes looked as if I'd gotten burnt or something it was just wrong it was too hot.
Being July we had bing cherries in the house and of course we had cake mix and a can of frosting. We always had a cake mix and a can of frosting just in case you know some frustrated horny little 12 year old need an outlet.
I could imagine my mother in a customer testimonial "I always have Betty Crocker on hand. I'd prefer Terence do something useful with his time instead of disappearing into the bathroom for hours fantasizing about, well...god knows what. He watches far too many movies-- his father never would have tolerated it". Yeah, that would be my mother who never so much as hinted at sex nor tolerated "sex talk". My mother who bore 12 children would usually roll her eyes knowingly and say "I wasn't born yesterday you know" if the subject of sex ever came up. Both my parents were loaded with innuendo and a fixed "I know but I won't tell you" stance on anything "risque". It all bore one label "smut".
So I set about making the two dozen cupcakes and died the frosting turquoise and ornamented them with bing cherries.
My brother in law stopped over while I was baking them and asked what I was doing. I suggested that he stop by again later when the baking was done. "Why are you making blue frosting?" He asked. Its turquoise I replied I added yellow to the blue food coloring it makes this turquoise. He left laughing to himself. He returned later being idle and curious and possessing quite a sweet tooth. He looked at the cupcakes, greedily ate one or two and asked if there was any coffee. I was looking at him and considering whether or not to call him a male chauvinist pig and he just started laughing. I said "George-- if you want something done right you've got to do it yourself." He said smiling "I think it's a fine lesson you taught yourself."
I too praised myself for making those cupcakes no one else had thought of it. They tasted like yellow cupcakes with vanilla frosting but they looked amazing like maybe you didn't want to eat them. They were not food nor were they pure folly. I guess they were just some little gay cupcakes.
Garris: For some reason, to this day unknown to me, when I was 12 my mother agreed to let me design my own bedroom. Well... it wasn't exactly MY bedroom... it was the bedroom I shared with my three brothers. I don't know why she thought that a 12 year old had the right to speak for a 17/15/and a 7 year old... but I asked if I could and she said "sure!".
The year was 1972 and what with the bicentennial coming up and all... naturally I chose a Red/White/and Blue theme. Red/White/and Blue curtains... American Flag quilts on the bed... blue and white wallpaper that had pictures of the Liberty Bell... American Flag... the flag/fife/and drum guys... and other American Revolutionary themes. I actually PAINTED the floor red (blood red) the trim blue and the ceiling white. I thought it was a pretty damn BOLD statement. Looking back... it was fairly hideous but not only did no one seem to mind... it has always struck me how great it was of my mom to go along with the entire thing. I mean... she let me PAINT THE FLOOR for God's sake. The room stayed that way pretty much all the way through high school... I think I eventually redid the walls and I know that I did hang beads in my doorway at some point. I don't believe there is, in existence, a picture of my old room. That may just be for the best.
Dan:
I still have it. My mom saved my artwork from when I was a kid. The day she died about 20 years ago, my father started throwing out stuff from her desk. I ran out to the black garbage bags in the garage and there I found my first "in perspective" drawing. It was no Albrecht Durer, it was DONDI, a cartoon character from the Sunday comics, but I'd gotten an "excellent" from Mrs. Swartze. She was the tough third grade math teacher at Christ The King Grade School and she was trying to teach the concept of %'s. So she had us create a grid on top of a picture and then create a larger grid on a blank piece of paper and draw the original to twice its size... That is the only time math made sense to me. If drawing and coloring with magic markers was math-- Bring it on. I look at that drawing and a warm wave of confidence and satisfaction washes over me. It's amazing the memories that get stirred up to the surface when you answer a question someone poses.
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