PART VI - Goodbye Dad

     During my senior year, my mother called me every Sunday night and “bent my ear” to tell me how terrible my father was and how she wished I could keep doing nice things for her.  Then, my sister ran away from home.  She essentially ran away with her latest boyfriend: a “high school drop-out”.  They went to his aunt’s home in Florida.  She stole $3,000 that Dad literally kept hidden under his mattress, and maxed out Mom’s 2 credit cards… as a means of funding her joyride from NY to FL and starting a new life for herself.  That was a crime of Grand Larceny, punishable by a seven-year prison term.  Inexplicably, my mother never filed criminal charges against her (that comes into play later) and instead absorbed the damaged credit, which hurt her credit score for years afterward.  
     So, I came home from college just in time to encounter chaos.  My sister was 18-years-old; she and I were legal adults.  So, before Thanksgiving, my father served my mother with divorce papers.  Evidently, my father had bided his time to avoid paying alimony on our behalf.  He started sleeping in my sister’s former bedroom, across from mine (further limiting my privacy), while their separation dragged on.  For two years, Dad stalled for time, while living among us and silently ignoring me, as he orchestrated things with Mom and prepared his new life.

      At that time, his brother took a “golden parachute” of retirement, from being head of Editorial Operations at TIME magazine.  He and my father built a log cabin in upstate NY.

     They also built a garage for my father's Chevy Blazer and his 1964 baby-blue convertible.  

     However, my uncle was imprisoned after trying to have his steadfast girlfriend murdered.  (Yes, quite a family!)  My father lived there alone, on 100+ acres, without a computer or cellphone.  He took the money that he stashed away during the several years preceding the divorce (the years he claimed he was losing money and thus required my mother and I to work extra to make the household run [My mother never saw the household checkbook!!  Finally, I figured things out, looked at credit card purchases from their statements, and presented my data to them via a spreadsheet]).  In Dad’s new life, when he needed more money, he simply sold off outer parcels of the property.

     This brief video summarizes my thoughts during that time.

     However, he didn't move out of our family-home for two years.  I hoped to get out first.  But I faced mountains of debt.

     Thanks to America's pathetic system, college graduates are immediately billed/invoiced for their immense college loans. That often forces them to accept jobs that they don't want, just to pay the bills.  American graduates with Bachelors Degrees often start life with $100,000 of debt.  If they pursue a Masters Degree or higher, they owe more.  America's oversaturated job market doesn't help... often funneling graduates into substandard occupations that wastes their expensive educations.  Nowadays, I agree that people who study a technical trade (instead of college) have lower debt, shorter school terms, and higher income/job stability.

     I utilized my university's Office of Alumni Relations to find contacts to help me get a job, and I called/wrote to them.  I got interviews with the CFO of J. Walter Thompson Advertising, with a VP at American Express (while the Twin Towers were still standing), and with a VP at News America Marketing.  They all told me to get experience elsewhere and then re-apply.  No, they didn't help me get a first job.  Sadly, AU's alumni network was unhelpful to me (and others).  The job market in NYC is uncaring and brutal.  Happy for an overpopulated surplus of applicants in the ever-growing city, employers treat job candidates badly while they expect a supply of new employees to be never-ending.  When none of the alumni helped me get started in my career, the president of my university personally wrote to one.  "I think you should give Ken a call and talk with him about his career plans.  I think you might have a good match with Ken."  The recipient of the letter was the CEO of Noonan-Russo Communications on Fifth Avenue.  He never responded to the letter... or my follow-up.  (Nowadays, when I can help someone on their career path, I do it gladly).

     After months, I got a job as a Financial Analyst focused on Accounts Receivables, with a good salary, 401k, and a cubicle.

     My mother worked at the same company: she was the receptionist and alerted me to the job opening.  (For the first six months, I actually drove us to and from work—until her lateness meant that I had to leave without her or get in trouble with my boss).  
     Unfortunately, my commute took me along the congested Seaford Oyster Bay Expressway—itself an abandoned municipal project.  Every week (no exaggeration), I witnessed "road rage" by angry drivers.  It was a terrible way to start and end my suburban days.

     It was another reason that I did not drive out for lunch.  By the time I got to my car, exited the parking lot, got through the traffic along the main roads & the traffic lights, found a parking space outside an eatery, got seated and placed an order—then ate and simultaneously asked to pay the bill—then retraced my slow drive back to the parking lot... the lunch hour was over!  I spent only 15 minutes eating.  To have a better lunchtime, I made and brought my own lunches—which tasted better and were cheaper—and I networked with coworkers in the company's lunchroom.  It was a LIFE LESSON.
     During lunchtimes, I befriended the Director of Customer Service.  She introduced me to amazing adventure novels by Clive Cussler.  I recommend his series involving a character named Dirk Pitt.  (No, she never had job openings for me).

     I continued working at the catering hall as mâitre d’.  6:00 on Fridays was “Happy Hour” for suburbanites, who drove in bunches to a nearby TGIF for crappy defrosted food.  As for me, I left my desk on Friday, changed into my tuxedo uniform in the men's room, shaved with my electric razor, and then drove through Friday rush-hour traffic to work at the catering hall from 7pm until 2am.  Additionally, I still did double-shifts on weekends.  I did that type of heavy nonstop workload for two years!  Whew!

     My intention?  I was determined to work hard to pay off my huge college loans, save money, and get my own life started.  With that uninterrupted work ethic, I achieved a Platinum American Express card within five years, paid for all my own expenses, and put money aside for my own apartment.  While I didn’t pay rent (our un-mortgaged family home was paid for), I felt obliged to give money to “improving” our home... and my redundantly dismal social life.
     If, in all my travels (in any catered party, group of coworkers, alumni event, grocery store aisle, wine shop, mall, or sidewalk during a jog), I had encountered a special young man (or had been asked out or even flirted to by a young gay man), I would’ve focused my attention and energies on him.  It might’ve saved me.  But I was doing everything alone as a gay man in pre-internet suburbia.  Mobile phones of that era lacked internet access, didn't have apps, and merely looked like this...

     No gay bars existed within 75 miles of me, and none were listed in the telephone book.  

     It's unfortunate that I didn't know about the gay parts of Fire Island, Asbury Park, Provincetown, Sag Harbor, or the Hamptons.  Nobody in my life talked about them, just like nobody spoke of Peru or Latvia.  I would've loved an invitation to see things like below!

     I did my tedious work without complaint and always put my “shoulder to the wheel”.  While people my age had “coming of age” experiences, Spring Break vacations, Mardis Gras, and trips to the Dominican Republic, Turks & Caicos, and Cancun...

… I spent my time making profits for others.  Without any gay culture around me and without any “significant person” in my life, I kept “my nose to the grindstone" and worked.

      I leapt at an opportunity to get an apartment with a coworker named Sal.  He came from a semi-affluent family and wanted to share an apartment with me in Garden City.  After weeks of him coming over to my house to discuss it, looking over Classified ads, planning the finances, deciding what furniture we'd each bring, we found a place in our price range.  My mother observed everything.  I viewed the apartment with the realtor that Sal chose, and I reported back how great it was.  I was excited to begin life as an adult—with my own place!  But, Sal stopped answering my calls.  It was as if he got spooked.  He avoided me at work.  Disappointed, I figured that he got "cold feet" or couldn't raise the money.  Little did I know (as I discovered later from another young man) that my mother sabotaged my "rapport" with him.  Unaware of this, I returned to my work, chores, and home improvements.

     Meanwhile, my mother loved the new $800 carpet I installed in her bedroom.  (When I was still a catering waiter, it required NINE long nights of running-on-my-feet for 8-hours each to earn $800).  I also bought her a Motorola cellphone (and 3 after that) that she never learned how to use.  I invested in the newest cordless phones, digital answering machine, best coffeemaker, sleekest microwave, and new andirons for the fireplace… so we could finally use it.  

     I loved being the good son, for no other reward than that.  Older aunts and uncles thanked me, too.  That year, they announced their intentions to retire far away from New York.  So, I splurged on our final Christmas soirée.  Nobody mentioned my incarcerated uncle, but they praised me for a cheery holiday.

     I had visions of a grateful mother eventually welcoming a boyfriend of mine, and that young man sharing moments in all the comfortable places that I created at home.  I read books about “what you put out comes back to you”.  My handmade "treasure map" had positive thoughts for gay romance/intimacy.  I read that you must improve your feng shui and create a "romantic place for two", to welcome that person into your life.  So, I bought 2 pillows for my bed, 2 sleek martini glasses, kept an extra toothbrush handy, and always kept champagne in the fridge (be prepared!)  I “built into my future”, following those ancient teachings that you must “create the proper environment before life grants you the results”.  Silly me.  There must’ve been a spiritual cork in my bubbling-up bottle.

     LIFE LESSON: Working seven days a week to pay for all that left me no time to meet boys!  At that time, there weren't any online gay dating sites or phone apps like Grindr.  Back then, all the gay bars were in ONE part of NYC—not even in Hell’s Kitchen yet.  Homophobic suburbia was marginally better than the hills of Idaho to find a gay hangout.  I could’ve seduced the drunk waiters, "cruised" roadside restrooms, or scanned the malls for a “trick”… but those tactics didn't come easily to me.
     The only "sure place" I knew to find gay men was in the city.  However, the 1.5 hour/$20 round-trip train ride to NYC was a deterrent.  City boys wouldn't come all the way home with me.  Most city dwellers don't have cars and aren’t interested in dating anyone living and working on Long Island (especially who lives at home with his parents).  Aside from that, gay men identified themselves with earrings, scantily clad outfits, and “man bags”.  I had none... just blazing class and charm!  So, I wistfully imagined meeting a handsome young man who would be charmed by my humor, cooking, respect, enthusiastic sexual side, and my stylish oasis of a home (to shield us from moments of "gay bashing" in public).

Instead, heterosexual people enjoyed my talents and my backyard.  They encouraged me to buy more junk and waste money on feeble-brained habits.  I regret that.

     There's an impregnating influence from a person's environment (especially on an island) and from "seeing the examples set by others".  I withstood it.  It's a miracle that I escaped such brainwashing and turned out so well.