I had a busy 1967-8, during my first year in college. After the weekend in San Francisco and the drive to Mount Palomar in June of 1968, a few weeks later, I flew to Anchorage, Alaska, to spend a week with my Cousin Doug and his wife Sue in their apartment outside of Anchorage.
I took a United Airlines DC-8 non-stop from LAX to Seattle. It was only $8 more to fly first class each way to Seattle, so I thought I would try what it must have been like to do that, to experience all of the additional luxury airlines back then advertised. Meh. I was an 18-year-old teenager. The stewardesses, and they were all women, paid me no mind. I might as well have been an empty seat for all the attention I got. I didn't drink and still don't, and being underage anyway, they could not ply me with booze. Even the meal wasn't particularly special.
While waiting in the Seattle airport for the Northwest Airlines 707 flight to Anchorage, I was chatted up by an older businessman. I no longer remember what we talked about, though we did chat for quite some time before boarding our flight (I did, however, before we began talking, notice an Alaska Airlines 990 pull up to the terminal--that peaked my interest because my return flight from Anchorage was to be on Alaska Airlines and I was not aware that they were flying 990's; I believe I thought they still were using an 880. They, along with Northeast, were the only two airlines to have flown the Convair 880 and 990.).
Looking back, I believe that this guy had some interest in me beside idle chatter. When we boarded the flight, it was one of those 707's in which the left side of the interior of the aircraft, opposite the first class seats, was devoted to cargo. The fellow pointed to his seat and asked me to join him. Knowing that I was ticketed for coach, I told him so, not expecting that I would be allowed to just plunk myself down in first class, so I moved on to the coach section.
Perhaps I didn't want to sit next to him because there was a hint of deeper interest. I'm not sure all these years later what my entire motivation was, although adhering to my assigned class was certainly a large part.
The interesting thing was that, during my first year at East LA Junior College, I became friends with Patrick Joseph Mulaney from my German class. He was Irish, handsome, with curly hair and muscles. He rented an apartment right by the campus, and he was a Air Force Vietnam veteran, so he was a few years older than I.
I used to have a couple of pictures of him in his apartment. One evening I spent with him in his apartment chatting and listening to music--he had a professional reel-to-reel tape recorder, one of the tapes being of Johnny Mathis music. Since it was late, and the drive back to South Gate about a half-hour or more, he I offered that I should spend the night. His bed was a sofa-sleeper, so we climbed in together. I almost never slept with anyone except once with my cousin Doug back when we stayed with them in 1964, another night with my friend Dave Moore, and another with my friend Randy Bancroft. That was it. So this night I was again not able to sleep particularly well.
Several minutes after he turned out the light, he began to turn over with his arm outstretched as if to fully embrace me lying beside him. I thought he was asleep and did not realize what he was doing, so I reached out and stopped his arm. Now that I think back on the incident, he acted as if I had awakened him and, surprised, adjusted his body and turned over the other way. The next morning he brushed off the incident by recalling a time he was sleeping with an Air Force buddy, but he said, "We never made a move toward one another."
Jim was training to become a nurse. And he was dating a Japanese-American woman who was a doctor at the same hospital where he worked. However, there were times when we wrestled on his sofa, one time being interrupted by the news on his Black & White TV of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles after his victory in the California primary.
On the day that I flew to Alaska, Jim drove me to the airport in my (mom's former) white Rambler sedan. Before we left his apartment, he looked at me, smiled broadly, and then warmly hugged me. For a time. I did not know how to react because guys did not really hug guys in that era. All during our relationship, or friendship, I had been getting mixed signals. I was certainly attracted to Jim, and I believe that he was attracted to me. But at times he kept his distance. At other times he was attentive.
After I returned from Alaska, I never really saw Jim again. He phoned me once, but I was not particularly warm to him on the phone, a response that I regret because it was mean. I had seen the relationship that Doug and Sue had, and I guess I thought strongly about trying to be "normal" after that, and my relationship with Jim was confusing, at best. So I broke it off without being fully honest. But then, in those days, how many were particularly honest about being gay and being attracted to another man?
It would not be until 1970, when Mike and I drove to West Hollywood to see THE BOYS IN THE BAND at a theater there (along with A FORTUNE IN MEN'S EYES), that I would understand I was not the only mo in the world. While the former film still elicits mixed feelings in a modern gay audience, with contemporary gay sensibility, I thought it was still a revelation in that these were gay characters of several different types, with relationships of a few different types. Most may have had problems being gay, but they knew they were gay even if the character of Michael had serious issues with his being gay. Like the character of Michael, Jim Mulaney and I were both Catholics, and that certainly added to our sense of guilt.
Was Jim gay? Probably. And he was certainly lurching back and forth with his own attempts to fit in. I had even moved in with him for a couple of weeks, near finals that spring. Besides the ground breaking THE BOYS IN THE BAND being a year or two off, The Stonewall Riots were fully a year away. The made-for-TV movie THAT CERTAIN SUMMER was nearly four years off. I was 18; Jim was, perhaps, 22, maybe 23. Practically, how were we seriously going to connect in that way? I certainly did not know how, and I doubt if Jim did either. Even though I would spend the 1968-9 term at East LA Junior college, I never saw Jim again.
