About This Blog ~ This blog is about a series of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) super-hero, sci-fi, fantasy adventure novels called Rainbow Arc of Fire. The main characters are imbued with extraordinary abilities. Their exploits are both varied and exciting, from a GLBT and a human perspective. You can follow Greg, Paul, Marina, Joan, William, and Joseph, as well as several others along the way, as they battle extraordinary foes or take on environmental threats all around the globe and even in outer space. You can access synopses of the ten books using the individual links on the upper, left-hand column.





The more recent posts are about events or issues that either are mentioned in one or more books in the series or at least influenced the writing of the series.










Thursday, May 31, 2012

HeyDenver flyer for RAoF book giveaway


 RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE   is a team of Denver gay superheroes.  They were created back in 1994, when the author, Gregory Earl Sanchez, who volunteers here at HeyDenver, became angered by the passage of Amendment Two in the 1992 election.  This team of heroes has evolved over the years to include more than the original team of six, formed by the fourth volume in the series:  Greg, Paul, Marina, Joan, William and Joseph.

For those of you who visit HeyDenver to get tested on a regular basis, every three months or so, you'll have a chance to collect each of the eight paperback books in the series, beginning with AUTUMN SAGA, the second volume, from mid May until mid August this year.  From that point on, every three months, when you visit HeyDenver at 1720 Pearl Street in Denver, you can pick up the next volumes in the series, also for free: 


RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  AUTUMN SAGA (mid-May to mid-August 2012)

RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  SOULS WITHIN STONE (mid-August to mid November 2012)

RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  WORLDS BENEATH US (mid-August to mid-November 2012)

RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  SLIGHT OF MIND (mid-Nov. 2012 to mid-Feb. 2013)

RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  HARMONY OF SPHERES (mid-Nov. 2012 to mid-Feb. 2013)

RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  WHO HAS DOMINION? (mid-Feb. to mid-May 2013)

RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  A HOUSE DIVIDED  (mid-Feb. to mid-May 2013)


For those who have collected volumes 2-8, you will get a free copy of the first volume in the series:  RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  A MILE-HIGH SAGA, now a collector's item, as long as supplies last.  (Volumes Ten, SHATTERED DAWN, and Eleven, OLIVE BRANCH, are only available as amazon Kindle editions.)

To learn more about the author and the series, visit:  rainbowarcoffire.blogspot.com



Photos of the cemetery VI

We were having problems with my camera.  Ann fixed the problem by removing the memory card.  She took this picture of me in the front seat of Aunt Jean's car to see if it worked again.




Photos of the cemetery V

From the front gate to well beyond the Visitor's Center, offices, and restrooms, they installed more flags than before.  Here are just a few.



Photos of the cemetery IV


A woman sitting at the overlook with her mother offered to take our picture, but she hit the video instead.  When she finally figured out what to hit, this is the picture we got.




Photos of the cemetary III

Ann and Aunt Jean from the overlook.




Photos of the cemetery II

The main offices and restrooms and parking spaces are directly below.  The large white canvas cover was for spectators.  The smaller one, just a bit farther, was to protect participants from the hot sun.  The day was not nearly as warm as usual.




Photos of the cemetery

The cemetery has a high overlook with a large American flag at the top, where my Aunt Jean stands in her floppy hat. 

My Uncle Lloyd is buried below in the upper grassy area at the top of the photograph, near the funeral shed where services are held.  My Cousin Doug is buried in the large section, near the point of the triangle, just this side of the rock drive and the large rock parking space at the upper portion of the photograph.



Memorial Day 2012 program

For the past five years, my sister and I have driven my Aunt Jean to the veteran's cemetery in the San Joaquin Valley where her husband and son are buried and where she will be buried when she passes.  This year they were honoring the USAF during the ceremonies with the above program and the appearance of an Air Force honor guard and the Air Force Golden West Brass Quintet that played musical numbers throughout the ceremonies.  

We leave her house by 8:00 AM and arrive at the cemetery usually well before the ceremonies begin, typically at 11:00 AM, though they were delayed again this year because of traffic.  We stop at the same rest stop along the way, and after we have placed flowers and flags at the various graves, we usually have a late lunch at Andersen's Split Pea restaurant by the freeway exit and entrance. 



  

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Enlarged photo of 737-200 wing at sunset

This is an enlarged photograph of the 737-200 wing at sunset.  It looks clearer than the earlier one I used.




Original photograph of Pat

They obviously reversed the image and cropped it before utilizing it in the campus magazine.  We only published one edition.  It didn't sell particularly well, but I was happy to have a few of my poems in print.  The guys I worked with on the magazine were very different than I.  A couple of them had been in the service.  All of them wore their hair long while mine was definitely short.  In our first meeting on campus in one of the empty classrooms in the old campus building that had been built as an apartment complex and would be used that way when the main buildings on the main campus across the street were completed, the others closed the door, took out a joint, lit it, and began to smoke.  I was offered a puff but politely refused.




Two more poems with Point Loma cemetery in the background

All of those photographs I took at Point Loma came in handy when we used this one as a backdrop to two of my poems, inspired by that military cemetery.  Below are the two poems since at least a couple of lines are obscured either by the shadows of one of the headstones or the trees.



Post of the Corps, point loma Marines

If I had known you before,
I would have shared my shield with you.
Only now my aura thins
(weakening from within).
And now strange plants decorate your cover.
White, cold, hardened crops camoflage your positions.
No probes would dare disrupt your base,
or halt the growing green.



Point Loma, on the slopes

No one seems to tremble.
No fear for what once was
when all ceased to be soldiers.
I am terrified,
yet even the graves assure me--
we are veterans,
we survived.


Pat Byrne behind sandbags in Vietnam

This was an example of the end product.  My poem in the foreground; Pat's photograph backing it.  Note that he has a bayonet in his teeth and a grenade in his extended hand.




Pat Byrne skinny dipping in Vietnam

Did I mention he was also one of the cutest guys I have ever met?  Great body, wonderful personality. 




Pat Byrne in the Marines

Pat Byrne was one of the nicest guys I have ever met.  He was also in the Marines, like Daylin.  But I believe he was infantry rather than support.  I met Pat through Sue, a classmate at California State College (now University) at Dominguez Hills.  He was dating a girl, April, who lived across the street from Sue.  Pat and I must have met sometime in the Spring of 1970, after I had transferred from East LA JC in the fall of 1969.

Unfortunately, like Daylin, Pat was not gay.  But that did not stop us from becoming friends.  I even told him once, after getting up sufficient courage, that I was attracted to him.  That didn't bother him, so he was certainly helpful toward my becoming comfortable with being gay.

I got a few photographs from him when I was one of the editors of the creative publication at Cal State Dominguez Hills.  I was putting in some of my poems and needed photographs to emphasize those pages.  He supplied several from his time in the Marines in Vietnam.



DADT Final Repeal September 20, 2011

Sixty more days left.

My 62nd birthday takes place on September 23rd. DADT's final repeal is on September 20th.

On my 30th birthday, in 1979, I was informed by my Air Force attorney that my (forced) resignation had been approved. I had taught the first female-inclusive class at the Air Force Academy the previous academic year, but I had to resign simply because I was gay. In two months, no longer will someone be forced to resign as I was simply because he is gay.

How many men and women have been forced to resign over the years that not just DADT was in effect but all of the other excluding policies were in official policy? How many of those men and women are no longer with us, to experience the quiet satisfaction that I am feeling now with this impending repeal?

Whenever I began to doubt that this despicable policy would never be overturned in my lifetime, I thought of the lyrics by the late Sam Cooke: "It's been a long, long time coming; but a change gonna come. Oh yes, it will."



Daylin, Ann and Darryl, Thanksgiving 1969

Since I took all the pictures, there are none of me.  However, this is the only picture of which I am aware that I have of my 1966 Ford Mustang GT convertible.  (Not counting the color slide that Dave Moore once had of my Mustang where you could see the fog lamps and bumper.)

We are in front of Aunt Jean and Uncle Lloyd's house in San Leandro before our return drive back to South Gate.  While we arrived taking I-5 through the San Joaquin valley and through San Jose, we decided to drive back along the coast highway (the one Ann and I kept getting sick on when we were infants in the early 1950's). 

We dropped Ann off at the University of Santa Barbara where she met up with a guy she was briefly dating, in addition to Daylin.

Daylin eventually met a girl at USC and they moved in together in an apartment near the campus.  I continued to work out in their garage, having become friends with Darryl for the next several years when he attended the University of California at Riverside.  I don't have any pictures of those years when I would head out there to spend some time with him, or when he would be back at their parents' house in South Gate. 

Daylin would eventually marry his girlfriend from school, but it didn't last for too many years.  I did find him on the Internet a few years ago, and we exchanged one email reply from him to two from me to him.  I guess he's been single for all the decades since his divorce. 

For the years that we were friends, he'd had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that he used to tape most of the records in my growing collection.  In the divorce, he gave his wife the reel-to-reel but he kept all the spools of tapes.  He did tell me in his email reply that he was still single and had no children.  Darryl, on the other hand, had four kids.  Both were professors at colleges.




Daylin Butler in San Francisco, Thanksgiving 1969

Explains my attraction to blonds and guys wearing glasses.  I even got Daylin a temporary job at A.U. Morse and Company, but only briefly. 

Note the aircraft carrier sailing into San Francisco bay in the background.  Probably returning from a tour of Vietnam.




Hiking around SF, Thanksgiving 1969

While we drove over to SF in my Mustang, we spent time hiking up and down the hills, too.  I believe it was Ann who drove us down Lombard Avenue. 




Darryl, Daylin and Ann in San Francisco, Thanksgiving weekend 1969

Daylin Butler was in one of my English classes at East LA JC.  We also had the same philosophy course at the same time, though we were not in the same class.  Mike mentioned that he might be the brother of one of our classmates at South Gate High, Darryl Butler, which he was.

I became friends with him.  And, yes, I was very attracted to him.  Too much so, actually.  Because he wasn't even possibly gay like Jim Mulaney.  This would be one of my stupid personal mistakes, one that gay men make over the years.  ("Terminally straight" was the phrase Harvey Fierstein used in TORCH SONG TRILOGY.)  Which is to say that my "gaydar" was not very good for years.

What was even more pathetic was that Daylin and my sister dated briefly, hence the trip we all took in the fall of 1969 to San Francisco.  As with Dave Moore and his sister and Ann and I, we four stayed at Aunt Jean and Uncle Lloyd's house in San Leandro during our stay.

Daylin was later able to get a scholarship to USC and he eventually would earn a PHd in History, but that was long after we kept in touch.  I would transfer to Cal State Dominguez Hills because I could never earn a scholarship nor afford to attend USC, even then. 

I did, however, begin to work out in their garage in South Gate with his set of free weights.  Daylin had moved back home to renew his college career after bombing out just after high school and then getting drafted, by the Marines.  He was actually in the first group who did get drafted by the Marine Corps  when, prior to that, only the army drafted troops for Vietnam.  And he spent his tour of duty in Vietnam, though he was not in combat.  Like Jim, Daylin was older than I by three years.  He was also cute and muscular, having built himself up by using free weights.

I did become a big sports fan based upon hanging out with Daylin.  I eventually would buy a pair of tickets to all the Rams home games in the LA Coliseum when the former UCLA coach Tommy Prothro took over for two seasons before giving way to Chuck Knox, who really made waves with the team in the 1970's.  My fall Sunday afternoons were spent in my seat in the western end of the Coliseum (I only had one season ticket.)  My first tickets were $5.50 a piece.  My season tickets the next year were $6.00 a piece.  Eventually, when the team would leave the Coliseum for Anaheim, the price rose to $10.00 per tickets and so I allowed my season ticket to expire.  I did get tickets to three Super Bowls, being a season ticket holder for LA. 

But that was all before the Super Bowl became this insane and horrendously expensive extravaganza that it has now become.  Well beyond the means of ordinary people like myself with regular incomes.



 

Friday, May 18, 2012

Rows of stretch DC-8's, August, 1969

This photograph was also dated August 1969.  However, I simply do not recall where this was taken.  Rows of stretch DC-8's like this might have been at the Long Beach Airport, but there would not have been foothills that close behind--or that much open space to park the planes.  I can only speculate that this is Ontario Airport, and these Douglas aircraft are lined up for final test flights before delivery to the various airlines, mostly United.  I might have taken this photograph from the window of our Air California 737-200 flight after we landed from OC.




737-200. August 1969

This might have been taken when we flew back to OC from San Francisco on Sunday evening.  It is dated the same as the two previous photographs.  But I cannot be certain.  With the sun setting in the West, off to the right, we must be flying south.




Air California 737-200, Orange County Airport, August 1969

The same time that I took the picture of the Air West F-27A (just to the right and out of the picture above), I took this picture of a new Air California 737-200.  The airline replaced the Lockheed Electras with these.  They also expanded their routes to now include Oakland, SFO, and San Jose in Northern California, as well as Burbank, Orange County, and Ontario in Southern California.

It might have been in 1969, but it surely would have been in 1970 otherwise, Air California offered a weekend bonanza promotional airfare.  For $25, you could fly throughout their entire route system for the whole weekend.  Of course, Mike and I took full advantage.  We were joined by our friend at the time, Richard Wright.  We drove to OC in my Mustang, I believe, and boarded the first flight out on Saturday morning, determined to get in as many flights that day as we could. 

The first flight took us to San Francisco.  We got off the plane and promptly got back aboard for the return flight to OC.  (The stewardesses did not notice that we were repeat customers.)  We flew back to OC and then boarded a short flight to Ontario that continued on to San Jose.  From San Jose, we flew to Burbank and next boarded the same aircraft out to Oakland and then finally back to OC.  On the Ontario to San Jose flight, we were finally recognized by one of the stewardesses who engaged us in conversation, briefly. 

She was unaware of the weekend promo.  Unfortunately, Richard made a remark, intended as a joke but very badly conceived, that thoroughly embarrassed both Mike and me and caused the stewardess to give us a highly wary look and then left us alone--we were lucky she didn't report us to the pilot.  When she asked what we were doing on so many flights that day, Richard boldly explained, "We're in a plot to destroy this airline."  In later years, such a thoughtless comment might have gotten at least Richard tossed off the plane at the next stop.  Mike and I definitely let him know that he should never have said anything like that.

The following morning, we again took the first flight out of OC for San Francisco.  However, instead of spending the entire day in the air and at airports, we took the bus into San Francisco to the downtown airline terminal and then caught a tour bus that took us again to Muir Woods.  At the end of the day, we flew back to OC, having felt that we'd gotten our money's worth that weekend.

I learned at some point in the 1960's, that the original Frontier Airlines offered a similar promotional fare, though I no longer recall for how long it lasted or how much it cost.  However, I couldn't take advantage because Frontier did not fly to California in those days, and I would have had to pay for a ticket on a different airline just to reach one of the cities Frontier served.  But it was mighty tempting nonetheless.



 

Air West F-27A, Orange County Airport, August 1969

While the livery is Pacific Air Lines, that is actually an Air West F-27A at Orange County Airport.  This was after the merger of regional carriers West Coast Airlines, flying primarily in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and southern Canada; Pacific Air Lines, serving California from LAX north to Oregon and Nevada; and Bonanza Airlines, primarily flying in Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada.

Air West would not be flying for long before it would be bought and become Hughes Airwest.  In 1979, North Central Airlines and Southern Airways would merge to form Republic Airlines.  The next year, they would buy out Hughes Airwest.  In 1986, Northwest Orient would buy Republic.  In 2010, Delta Airlines bought Northwest. 



Pacific Airlines 727, LAX, 1968

Since they seem to be so relatively rare on the Internet, here's a picture I found, slightly water damaged at the top, of a Pacific Airlines 727 at LAX.




Wednesday, May 16, 2012

More photos of Point Loma military cemetery, 1968-9

I've been back to San Diego several times since the early 1970's, but I have never made it back to the cemetery.  I realize that many of the parents of those young men buried there have also passed on.  I wonder if anyone still visits those graves anymore.  Over four decades later, with most of the parents gone, do the brothers and sisters and sons and daughters still visit?  The little boy that drew the stick figures holding hands in that little note, does he still leave flowers and flags on the grave of his older brother whom he loved so much?

I used this line, referring to the headstones, in one of my poems from that time, "...the old stone tabs we keep on our dead." 

In just a few years, the long war would finally be over.  The U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam fell.  The United States entirely pulled out of Vietnam after that.  And all of these four decades later, I am still alive, wondering why I and others were spared and why these young men were not.

I used to read A.E. Housman in those troubling days, and he also wrote about war dead from the Boer War and WWI:  "Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;/But young men think it is, and we were young."



More pictures of Point Loma military cemetery, 1968-9

I'm not sure now how I acquired the fatigue jacket that I wore quite often when the weather was cold.  Visiting the cemetery became almost an obsession.  And sometime in 1969, I believe the summer of that year, I fell into a terrible depression.  Whether it was because of the war, or because of my being gay, or because I seemed to find myself attracted to conflicted guys like James, or straight guys like Daylin or Pat, or a combination of all of those problems, I did not believe I was going to find happiness.  And while I was safe in college, young men my age were dying in Vietnam and being shipped home in boxes, to be buried in cemeteries such as Point Loma.  The guilt was tremendously oppressive.  Just as the guilt would be oppressive more than a decade later when men my age were dying from something just a terrible, just as isolating.

Because of the draft in that era, even if I kept up my college deferment until I graduated in 1971, I was still going to have to make a decision about the war and military service simply because the war seemed to have no end in sight.  I never imagined myself actually explaining that I was gay when I did go for my mandatory physical.  Besides, I might get a punitive deferment that could prevent me from getting a job.  Besides his other problems, Dave Moore even drove up to Canada in early 1969, thinking about leaving the United States so that he would not have to serve in Vietnam.

That summer of 1969, between East LA and Cal State Dominguez Hills, I didn't have much motivation to do much of anything.  The world seemed so hopeless, the future bleak.  I finally pulled myself out of the morass sometime that fall, but it was a long, hard climb out of it.  Mike tried to help.  So, too, did Dave Moore when he returned from Canada.




Point Loma military cemetery, San Diego, CA, 1968-9

Once Mike got his cream-colored Dodge two-door, and I got my dark green 1966 Mustang GT convertible, we had less money to fly to San Diego, so we began to drive there on a Saturday or Sunday, probably from late 1968 through 1971.  One time we stopped at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in San Juan Capistrano on the way down.  Another time we bought lunch at a Chicken Delight outlet in San Diego.

After Miss King, my English teacher at East L.A.J.C., encouraged me to write poetry and keep a journal, beginning with my trip to Alaska, I wrote constantly.  My first poem "Tourist Trap" (an earlier post on this blog) had gotten honorable mention in the English Department creative writing contest, I felt further encouraged to express myself through writing.

The Vietnam War had been going on for several years now, and no end seemed in sight.  I was meeting young men like James Mulaney in the Air Force and, later Daylin Butler, in the fall of 1968, and Pat Byrne at Cal State Dominguez Hills, who had been to Vietnam, both of whom having been in the Marines there. 

One of the places we went to every time was the Point Loma military cemetery that overlooked San Diego beyond and the harbor below.  At the Naval Air Station on Coronado Island beyond the entrance channel to the harbor, we could see the many chartered civilian airliners lined up to take more sailors, airmen and Marines to Vietnam.

Yet many might end up in the cemetery.  On Memorial Day weekend, flowers and flags would appear on the many graves in the cemetery.  One grave had some flowers and a small, hand written note from a very young boy to his brother who was buried there.  It said, "We love you." 

How could someone not be touched by the tragedy of that war and those times?



   

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Mt. Rainier from a United Airlines DC-8, Summer 1968

The morning flight from Seattle to LAX wasn't too eventful either.  Again, I was pretty much ignored by the stewardesses.  First class breakfast was a poached egg in a hollowed out tomato half skin.  Eating it made me queasy.  But I took this nice shot from the window, likely before we were served breakfast.

Dave Moore and his girlfriend were supposed to pick me up at the airport, but they weren't there when I deplaned (in those days you could meet your party right at the gate).  Finally figuring that he had forgotten and they weren't coming, I boarded a bus from LAX to South Gate (this was midday, so I was unlikely to get held up).

Just as we were nearing the edge of the parking area off to the right side of the bus--I was sitting in the very back--I was shocked to see Dave and his girlfriend, top down on the Rambler convertible, pulling into the parking lot by the United terminal several yards behind the bus.  I quickly got up and pulled the rope to alert the driver to stop the bus.  Fortunately, he let me out even though it was not a regular stop.  I quickly ran back, my suitcase in one hand, flight bag in the other, and flagged them down just as they parked.  (This was the era of one level of parking lots at LAX.  Today, I probably would not have found them as easily.)

After I got home, I collapsed on the couch in the living room in exhaustion.  A friend of Ann's buzzed the door.  I got up and let her in, then lay back down on the couch to sleep.  Standing there, she soon asked if Ann was home.  I mumbled that she wasn't.  I think Ann's friend was puzzled that I let her in and left her standing there when Ann wasn't even around.  She let herself back out, and I fell asleep again, pretty much out of it.



Alaska Airlines 990A, Summer 1968

I swiped this photo from a great site, Historic Jetliners Group:  http://hjg.awardspace.com/main.html

I again took a cheaper night flight back to Seattle.  The site above says that Alaska Airlines operated the 990A until March of 1968.  I am not sure where they got that information, but Alaska Airlines was still operating the 990A through the summer of that year because that was the aircraft I flew back on.

While the Northwest flight was memorable for the peaches and the older businessman or the male flight attendant, this flight wasn't memorable at all.  All I remember before boarding was that when Doug and Sue's friends learned that my last name was Sanchez, and they had been discussing the possibility of airliners being hijacked, the husband thought I might be a prime candidate to hijack the plane.  That's it.  I must have slept most of the way back to Seattle.



Mount McKinley from the Alaska Airlines 727-200, Summer 1968

Fortunately, the flight was not too full so that I could change sides and take this picture.




Alaska Airlines 727-200 at Fairbanks International Airport, Summer 1968

I flew back to Anchorage on this 727--Golden Nugget Jet.  Over the intercom, they played Robert Service poems.  "Here we go down to Anchorage Town/Where the city meets the sea."  Very sing song and, as my English teacher at East L.A. J.C. would have said, "rhyme lead".  The several flights were numbered years from the later 1800's, likely around the Alaskan Gold Rush period.



Fairbanks International Airport tower building, 1968

After leaving the Convair, I took this picture of the tower building.   From the airport, I caught a bus to a hotel in Fairbanks.  There I sifted through the travel brochures and signed up for a tour of Fairbanks that took us to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, a malamute breeding kennel, and a musk ox ranch.  I was, as I have said, 18 years old.  Everyone else on the tour, not counting the driver, was well over 60.



Anchorage from the air, Summer 1968

In the midst of my visit, I scheduled a day in Fairbanks, Alaska.  The two shots above are shortly after takeoff in the morning on an Alaska Airlines Convair 240 prop plane, the first time I ever actually flew on a piston engine aircraft.  In fact, I cannot recall any other time that I have flown on a piston engine aircraft--all of the Electras or YS-11s or Convair 580s were turboprops.  We did fly near Mt. McKinley en route but I don't appear to have taken any pictures going.  I would on the return trip on a more modern aircraft.



 

Monday, May 14, 2012

Doug and Sue's Neighbors, Summer 1968

The guy in front of me and Doug is the husband.  The woman with her hand to her face, holding onto the Mustang's car door is his wife.  He was also in the Air Force.




More car pics in Alaska, Summer 1968

What can I say?  We spent a lot of time in and around their cars.




Washing cars in Alaska, Summer 1968

We seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time during my visit, washing cars.  Sue's Mustang, and Doug's Triumph TR-6.  Even when it was starting to rain, Doug was out there waxing his car.  I have a picture of me and their neighbor holding up a blanket over Doug as he waxed.




Doug in their apartment, 1968

Doug on the couch, watching TV.  Doug in his uniform, getting ready for work. 




Doug and Sue playing badminton, Alaska

We had a picnic at the lake near the base.  Doug and Sue played badminton.  We later learned that someone drown in that lake while we were there; however, we heard nothing about anyone struggling in the water or calling for help.




Portage Glacier, Summer 1968

A color slide of Portage Glacier.




Greg, Portage Glacier, Summer 1968

I took photographs and color slides on the trip.  Here I am in front of a few bergs in the water at Portage Glacier.




Doug, Sue, and Greg, Portage Glacier, Summer 1968

Not far from Anchorage, is Portage Glacier.  With global warming, I wonder how much of the glacier still exists?




Doug and Greg, Summer 1968

Sue unexpectedly snapped this picture. 

I later learned that their landlord for the apartment building they lived in was Nick Begich.  Just over four years later, as a Democratic congressman from Alaska, he was on a fundraising flight with Congressman Hale Boggs, an aid, and their pilot.  They were on their way to Juneau, Alaska, when their plane disappeared over what is called the Alaskan Bermuda Triangle.  Neither the aircraft nor any of the passengers has ever been found. 

Dairy milk was so expensive in Alaska, that for the first time I drank soy milk when I visited them. 



 

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Doug and Sue, in their Alaska apartment, 1968

The plane wasn't particularly full on that night flight to Anchorage--perhaps they would have let me sit beside the young businessman in first class.  Each way was only $75, on Northwest Airlines going and Alaska Airlines returning, because I took the late night flights that were much cheaper.  Frankly, there wasn't much to see out into the blackness of the Alaska coastline or the endless ocean at night.  If there was a moon, it wasn't close to being substantial.

Sometimes I could see the glaciers and snow pack, even in the darkness, reflecting what little light there was.  Once in a while, I would see an isolated light on, far below.  But that was it.

This being Northwest Orient, an international carrier to the Far East, we actually had a male flight attendant aboard, unlike on any domestic carrier or any other international U.S. carrier such as Pan Am.  When I returned from Marine OCS in 1972, U.S. carriers began hiring men as flight attendants.  But that was still four years away.

I believe we were served sandwiches on the flight and chips.  But that was not what was memorable.  The friendly male flight attendant served us fresh peaches after our snack.  And not just any peaches.  I have never, ever had a peach so delicious, so juicy and ripe and tender, before or since, in my entire life.  I believe that when he came around offering seconds, I nodded greedily.  Obviously, if I recall how remarkable the peaches were aboard that flight forty-four years ago, they were indeed memorable.

I should have had my camera out.  Our flight broke through a cloud layer high above Anchorage after midnight, local time.  The cloud formation encased a deep purple canopy, illuminating the entire city and body of water.  It was the richest color I had ever seen at night, probably because of the midnight sun and the clouds.

Doug and Sue met me at the airport, we headed back to their apartment, and I slept soundly the night through.         



Cousin Doug, wife Sue, Alaska, Summer 1968

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.