253 South Oak Street, Orange, CA, June - December 1959

Backdrop

Ann and I sat amidst some of our family's possessions on the covered front porch of the house at 13222 Foxley Drive, waiting for the old moving van to arrive and haul those possessions away.  On a sunny summer's day, with school newly over, our friends were out of doors and playing in the neighborhood.  Not only did I recall feeling sad at our permanent departure, I felt totally separated from the home and that neighborhood we had lived in from June of 1954.  Dad had gotten custody of the two of us during a legal process we were not a part of in any way, and now he was spiriting us toward a new future we were not consulted about.

After the moving van got loaded and was on the road behind us, dad pulled over before we headed onto a freeway (probably the Santa Ana) because the slow-moving van was not keeping up.  Dad expressed his disappointment that he believed the driver was deliberately driving slowly so as to demand more money for the move, charging him by the hour. 

I have no memory of our arrival at the apartment complex on Oak St that day, nor taking my cat, Tiger, with us.  (I had tried to bring him along on one of our weekly visits to Willene and her kids, but a couple of miles from the house, terrified, he peed on me.   We took him back home, and I changed trousers.)  But we all moved into the two-bedroom unit, with Grandma Sanchez soon joining us there.  Dad and I shared one bedroom while Ann and Grandma shared the other. 

Tiger was allowed to roam a new neighborhood.  The only three memories I have of him there is of dad allowing Tiger into the apartment as I was awakened to my buddy padding his way over my bed toward me.  Another was that I entered the kitchen one afternoon after Grandma had left a package of hamburger out on the countertop to thaw but Tiger had clawed through the clear wrapper and was devouring some of the contents raw.  Another morning I noticed that Grandma Sanchez had left cooked oatmeal in a bowl outside for Tiger to eat, though--not surprisingly--it remained untouched.  However, some time that fall, dad gave me the ultimatum of what day he would take Tiger away and dump him in some field. 

Drowning the kitten in the coffee can the year before, disposing of the two white kittens a year or so before that, and now this ultimatum were clearly the results of either peer pressure or my Grandma's refusal to let me have another kitten.  I am convinced that it was Willene, dad's fiancee, who issued the demand to him this time that I could not move into the triplex being built for the combined family with Tiger.  Neither of her two kids had pets.  In the years ahead, she would exhibit a consistent meanness that confirmed her role as the wicked stepmother who treated Ann and me badly.  (Only decades later would we learn from our stepsister, Pam, that Willene treated her poorly, especially after we were gone.)

In retrospect, had her demand been made before we moved from Whittier, it would have been better to have just abandoned Tiger in our backyard there.  He knew the neighborhood and the neighbors.  Someone might have adopted him after we left and fed him.  But since we took him with us, I suspect Willene waited to make this demand after we had moved to South Oak St and not long before their impending marriage after the first of the year, 1960, right after dad's divorce from mom was finalized.       

Mom
 

The above is the only photo I have of any of us at 253 South Oak St.  With the divorce to be finalized by year's end, mom seemed to have been allowed to visit us several times that summer and fall.  I remember once waiting for her on the sidewalk out front of the apartment complex.  As soon as I saw her blue, fast-back Buick turning the corner, I ran to meet her.  She opened the driver's door and scootched over to let me sit next to her.  She would often take us to breakfast, frequently paying by check, something that few merchants or restaurants ever take as compensation in recent decades.  We would also visit a married friend of hers and that woman's family in Tustin on our infrequent days with her.   

Dad

Besides his dumping Tiger who knows where, I mostly remember that dad began to collect original cast recordings from a record club.  I would listen especially to THE MUSIC MAN.  For years to come, I would enjoy musicals, likely based upon dad's collection.  

At some point, he took us to the home of a family that we used to know in Santa Ana.  I played with them in the mudpuddle they'd created in their back yard.  Unfortunately, there were nails hidden in the ground, likely from when their house was built.  I got stabbed on the bottoms of both feet which dad bandaged in the bathroom on S. Oak St after we got back.     

Bad Day at S. Oak St.

The following is context, not excuses, for my reckless behavior that infamous day:  

I had no friends in this new neighborhood during the long summer of 1959, before attending Palmyra Elementary School.  Of course, dad worked during the week and was not around.  Mom did not live with us, and they were getting divorced, of which we were told very little.  While Grandma Sanchez, my sister and I would play card games some days, I don't recall watching much television or reading that summer during the day.  I had become occasional buddies with a much older woman who lived in the end apartment on our side of the complex, but she was my only other regular contact outside my family.  No other kids our age range lived in the complex or nearby whom we knew.  I was likely frequently bored.  Most significantly, I was 8 years old with too much time on my hands and not much to do.

It was a bright, sunny day when I began a distracted walk across the parking spaces in front of the garages that fronted the complex between the sidewalk and the single-car garage doors.  Some renters parked in these spaces instead of always parking within their assigned garages or their guests could park there while visiting since parking spaces on the street were limited.  (One renter owned a red and white 1957 Ford Fairlane hardtop convertible which he parked in his outdoor space.)  No cars were parked in those spaces that day, so it was likely a weekday morning.  I don't believe I deliberately walked through a thick oil puddle in one of the spaces but did leave a few oily footprints on the concrete before I realized what I was doing and wiped my tennis shoes on the patch of grass next to the parking spaces.

At some point, I also walked through a muddy patch near the swimming pool within the complex and left muddy footprints on the sidewalk beside the older woman's apartment.  Seeing the mud on my shoes, I sat down beside the pool and stuck my shoes into the deep end, to get rid of the muddy residue.  (Google maps now shows that the swimming pool no longer exists in that complex.)

Eventually, I headed back into our apartment, oblivious to the ruckus that was about to explode throughout the complex as a result of my irresponsible morning stroll through oil and mud, the crime of the summer if one was to believe what was about to result.   

I was lying on my bed in dad's and my bedroom when Grandma Sanchez and Ann entered.  Grandma asked that I surrender my tennis shoes so that they could confirm if the telltale oily and muddy footprints discovered in those two places of the complex were mine or not.  Shocked that my actions were now being thoroughly investigated, I realized the jig would be up, and I was going to get nailed for this vandalism if my shoes were compared to the telltale prints.  I began loudly crying that I was being accused unfairly.  Grandma calmly explained that they only needed to borrow my shoes to prove I had not done these despicable deeds and to prove my innocence.  However, I refused to surrender them, still crying loudly that I was guiltless, though I knew that to give them up would convict me.  (I suspect that I also could not believe that my oily or muddy footprints had generated such a kerfuffle, but I was now definitely feeling hugely guilty.) 

By the late afternoon, I also learned that a few residents also realized that someone had left muddy residue at the bottom of the pool, so my entire number of capital crimes had been fully revealed.  My older woman friend glared at me as I found her methodically hosing off the now-dried prints from the sidewalk by her apartment.  She clearly knew they were mine and was none too happy with me, and she may have been the one who told me about the speckles of mud discovered at the bottom of the otherwise pristine pool.                        

Palmyra Elementary School

Ann and I began school at Palmyra in the fall of 1959.  I was in the 5th grade; she in the 4th.  Unfortunately, we would only attend that single semester before moving on.  For the first time I had a male teacher.  (I don't even recall that there were any male instructors at Laural Elementary School in Whittier.)

The school was only a couple of blocks away from our apartment, so we walked back and forth each day, crossing the busy S. Tustin St at the stoplight.  I never made any close friends, the kind one would invite home or one who would invite you to his or her home.  But the others were generally friendly toward me.  I recall during one recess that I got laughs for singing, "We three kings of Orient are, tried to smoke a rubber cigar/It was loaded/It exploded...."  The boys certainly laughed.

Unlike Laural, Palmyra had a broadcasting speaker at the front of the class, just below the ceiling and above the ubiquitous letters of the alphabet.  Once a week, the school tapped into a broadcast that verbally described a national park such as Mount Lassen or California natural attraction such as Mount Whitney.  We were then required to create a visual representation using crayons of what we had heard described.  We had to use our minds because we got no photographs or videos of these sites.  I always got a "B" or a "B+" but never an "A".  I finally asked the teacher why I never got a higher grade.  He pretty much explained that I often produced the same picture of a mountain with pine trees partway up the slopes, no matter if it were Lassen or Whitney or any other similar peak.  He had a point.  

We went to lunch out of doors as a class on wooden tables.  Two of us were required to guide the wooden cart with wheels out to the lunch tables--this was where our lunchboxes or bags were stored after we got to school each morning.  One noon time I was to guide the cart out with one of the girls in the class.  She, like a few of the other girls, was taller than most of us boys at this age.  Unfortunately, rather than staying in line (I was at the front of cart), she swung her end parallel with me, to disastrous results when we hit a crease in the concrete.  I tried to warn her but too late.  The narrow cart pitched over and some of the lunchboxes were spilled upon the sidewalk.  One girl's lunchbox broke open and the Thermos of milk inside shattered.  I was adamant that I was not going to pay for a replacement since it was her fault.

Some Like It Hot

I remember pouring through a newspaper one day and came across an ad for the Billy Wilder, Roaring 20's film, starring Marilyn Monroe.  Dad apparently was at work.  And I don't remember Ann going with us.  But Grandpa and Grandma Sanchez and I drove to a huge, old-fashioned theater in Long Beach to see it.  Grandpa parked his Studebaker on the street with a meter, realizing that he would have to leave the theater a couple of times during the movie to feed the meter.  I was enthralled the whole time and likely laughed frequently.  Even at the time I wondered if either Grandparent thought the film a bit too racy for their conservative tastes, but neither said anything.  I am not certain that it made the Catholic Legion of Decency list of films good Catholics ought not to see, or especially take their impressionable Grandchild to see.        

Christmas Vacation 1959

At some point after the school term ended for Christmas Vacation 1959, we moved from 253 S Oak St to the front half of a duplex on East Lomita, across the street and slightly down the block from the almost-complete triplex that we would occupy for the next 3 1/2 tumultuous years with Dad, Willene, Freddie, and Pam (and the 1961 arrival of half-sister Lorri).  Two of the principle players, Willene and Fred, would show their true colors now that dad was about to be hogtied in marriage to Willene and her brood.

The following is a picture of a present I received that Christmas, a Remco Movieland Drive-In Theater that showed short B&W film strips from the projection booth:

In addition to the theater, I had received a car carrier with three cars on the trailer (see the box next to the Movieland box in the photo above).  However, since it was cheaply made, the three cars only remained on the trailer by three rubber bands that came with the set.  Freddie had gotten some rubber/plastic soldiers.  Just a day or two in, and the three rubber bands went missing.  Mysteriously, Freddie had three rubber bands that he was now using to keep his soldiers together.  It did not take me long to realize that Freddie had swiped the rubber bands I needed and that he really did not need.  I started to complain, possibly loudly, at this obvious theft.  Suddenly Willene, who had been listening to my rant from the kitchen, walked out to the living room and smacked me on the side of the head, hard.  She then lied and said that the rubber bands Freddie had were ones she had given him.  (The fact that no additional rubber bands existed in the entire house further indicated that she was lying.)

Not only was I shocked at her sudden physical attack upon me--and I did start to cry aloud--dad was perhaps even more startled that his once-docile fiancee had just assaulted his son over three stolen rubber bands and then lied about it to defend her thieving son.  This would not be the last of her outrageous defenses of Freddy over the years.  

A couple of days later, I also came down with some bug that made me deathly sick to my stomach, requiring a mad dash to the bathroom down the hall to throw up.  At one point while in the living room, my stomach rapidly began turning, I took off in my socks, desperately trying to reach the bathroom in time.  I immediately slipped on the wooden floor and crashed against the wall, landing in a heap and, adding actual insult to injury, I puked on myself.  As I lay there, embarrassed, I started slowly sobbing.  This was only the start of the agony and pain that both Ann and I would soon endure at 1745 E. Lomita Avenue after Willene got her hooks into dad permanently.     

Death

 My best friend of 57 years mentioned a week ago on the phone that he increasingly thinks about death and dying.  We are both now 73 years old.  More and more in the news we read about our cultural icons dead or dying, some of whom are either around our age or younger. 

With the death of Jerry Lee Lewis, nearly all of the most famous music icons from the 1950's are gone (Tony Bennett is one of the lone survivors).  Nearly all of the well-known bands from the 1960's, groups we knew and loved whose singles and albums we regularly bought, have lost more than one member (the Beatles, the Stones, Jefferson Airplane), sometimes only one member survives (Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & Papas).  The TV shows we watched then seem to have been even more devastated of cast members as the years roll by. 

In the 1970's, I read Raymond Moody's LIFE AFTER LIFE and a few books by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the death and dying guru.  Regardless of cultural or national background, the experiences of those who have clinically "died" but came back seem strikingly similar.  Their consciousness (or soul, if you prefer) leaves their bodies.  If hospitalized, they are often able to see and hear, and later accurately describe what they experienced, from those who are not even in their hospital rooms.  In varying combinations, they are thrust through a tunnel and appear on the other side where friends and relatives who have gone before are there to greet them.  They quickly meet a "being of light" who reviews with them the course of their lives, though without judgment.  They are often made to realize that acquiring knowledge is a significant aspect to life on Earth.  (The ancient Greeks believed that sin was a lack of knowledge.)  After they return, they never fear death again because the experience was altogether quite pleasant.

The actor from HAROLD & MAUDE, Bud Cort, told a story about a painful car accident he endured.  He was told by a voice on the other side that he could return but it would be painful.  He did come back, and his injuries were exceedingly painful. 

My own mother, during her second open heart surgery, experienced an extreme reaction to the anesthesia and could have died had the anesthesiologist not recognized her reactions and countered the crisis.  She later told me that she felt she had died but there was nothing but blackness on the other side.  Nobody was there to greet her.

I have been put under anesthesia three times in my life:  when I had my tonsils out at 40, when I had double hernia surgery, and a couple of weeks ago when I had prostate surgery.  I only remember slowly coming to after the anesthesia wore off.  Never was I ever aware of being conscious of what I was enduring.  I was totally out.  Had I died during any of these three surgeries, would I have even been aware of the transition, or would I have simply ceased to think or come out of the surgery?

Does the electrical activity in our brains simply cease and that is all there is of us?  Is death, as A.E. Housman describes in one of his poems, "Night and no moon and no star upon the night"?  I do not know for sure.

I have thought of the W.S. Merwin poem, FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY DEATH, when he ruminates, "Every year without knowing it I have passed the day/when the last fires will wave to me".  Each of us will, someday, die upon a single day of the year.  Most of us know the anniversary of our birth; but we have no idea, generally, what day will represent the day we die.  Whether we silently slip away or make a huge splash as we depart, that day will come and go.       

I have always thought that death was like high school dodgeball in gym class.  If the day in Southern California at South Gate High School was persistently rainy, the P.E. classes during each hour would gather in the gymnasium instead of going out of doors.  The ball would be tossed to one side or the other, to be forcefully hurled at members of the opposing team, picking them off one by one.  Our good friend Richard Meyers would always just stand there and allow himself to be taken out of the game as quickly as possible.  He could then contemptuously sit on the sidelines and watch the rest of us scurry from side to side as a disorganized mob, to avoid being taken out for as long as possible.  Everyone but the one winner on one side would eventually be eliminated, and the ball usually stung when it struck any part of your body because our most aggressive classmates were strong and did not hesitate to hurl the ball forcefully.

As this point in the history of our nation, all of the survivors of the Civil War are gone.  The Spanish-American War likewise.  So, too, those of the Titanic disaster.  And then WWI.  Soon enough, no survivor of WWII will exist on this plane.  So many of us Baby Boomers are making our way toward the exits.  By 2040 or 2050, we, too, will likely have departed.  Those who opposed integration or burned their Beatles albums when told to by right-wing media or fled to Canada to escape military service. 

So, Mike has a right to think about death these days. 

Once when we were on the phone back in the very early 1970's, just before Nixon's draft lottery came into being and he was far higher than I (he was 315 and I was 119), he contemplated avoiding military service.  Discussing our impending college graduation when we would finally be vulnerable to the draft, he coolly explained, "A lot can happen in a few months.  I could lose a limb.  I could die in a car wreck.  I'm optimistic."  I have never laughed so hard or for so long at such an unexpected observation.
          

13222 Foxley Drive, Whittier, CA, 1954 to 1959

San Diego Comic Con July 2022

We got back late Sunday afternoon from Comic Con.  Sold a few books over our five days there and gave away many more at the Prism Comics booth.  Here are some photos of our days there, courtesy of Kevin Alpert:

Looking forward to being there next July, as well.  

Rainbow Arc of Fire at PRISM Comics booth for San Diego Comic Con 2022 July 20-24.

 

Here is the booth schedule:

 

BOOTH PARTNER SCHEDULE as of July 5, 2022

 

 

THURSDAY, JULY 21

Exhibit Hall Hours - ‪9:00 am – 7:00 pm

Booth Partner Schedule:

9 am - 12:30 pm - Greg Sanchez (Rainbow Arc of Fire)

12:30 - 3:30 pm - Josh Trujillo

3:30 - 7 pm - Jake O’Kelly

 

FRIDAY, JULY 22

Exhibit Hall Hours - ‪9:00 am – 7:00 pm

Booth Partner Schedule:

9 am - 11:30 am - Surge of Power

11:30 am - 2 pm - Greg Sanchez (Rainbow Arc of Fire)

2 - 4:30 pm - Josh Trujillo

4:30 - 7 pm - Jake O’Kelly

 

SATURDAY, JULY 23

Exhibit Hall Hours - ‪9:00 am – 7:00 pm

Booth Partner Schedule:

9 am - 11:30 am - Josh Trujillo

11:30 am - 2 pm - Jake O’Kelly

2 - 4:30 pm - Greg Sanchez (Rainbow Arc of Fire)

4:30 - 7 pm - Surge of Power

 

SUNDAY, JULY 24

Exhibit Hours - ‪9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Booth Partner Schedule:

9 – 11 am - Jake O’Kelly

11 am - 1 pm - Greg Sanchez (Rainbow Arc of Fire)

1 - 3 pm - Surge of Power

3 - 5 pm - Josh Trujillo

Q CON West Hollywood, June 18, 2022

 Mark and I spent a wonderful day at Q CON, giving away and selling Rainbow Arc of Fire novels.  We met any number of friendly, sweet people.  

We also appeared in the Cosplay contest, as seen in the top photo.  If any of you do finish any of the novels in the series and liked them, a review on amazon always helps!  Thanks again, everyone!

Worst birthday ever, Part II

I was assigned a military lawyer from Peterson Air Force Base, but he was out of town.  I talked to another lawyer at the Academy who would cover for him while he was away.  I was advised by Dick Tuttle, the civilian lover of Cadet Dan Stratford, to hire a civilian lawyer, just to keep the Air Force honest.  

Soon, I was summoned to my Academy lawyer's office to be given the very thick packet of charges against me.  It included copies of each of the letters, as well.  When I was able to read what Cadet Keith Bostic had told them about our "relationship," I was shocked and dismayed.  About one-third of his accusations or statements of events were correct, but about one-third were distortions of the truth, and one-third of his statements to the OSI were total lies.


“A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.”


This would eventually come back to haunt Cadet Bostic.

Nothing I said in my response to the lies and half-truths meant anything to the OSI.  They already had a preconceived notion of who I was--a predatory officer out to seduce an innocent--and straight--cadet.  But, eventually, when Cadet Vivet Mirage came forward and told me she, and others, had been told some of the same things I had been told about Bostic's past, the OSI, and the Academy staff, realized they were in over their heads.  Their notions of what was going on were tainted.

My two military lawyers were able to get Cadet Bostic in a room, to ask him all the questions I knew would trip him up.  And their extended interview with him got him to trip over himself and deny too many things he had said not just to me but to others.  (Not that what he told me meant anything.)  They also recorded their explosive interview with him.  At one point he claimed to be this innocent "babe in the woods".  His goose, as they say, was cooked once several other cadets were interviewed and signed sworn statements.

Bostic had also discussed his past with a couple of Cadets who were quite religious and who had gotten him to be in some of their prayer sessions.  They might have been prosecuted for what they had not told the Academy authorities.  Eventually, as the OSI told my Academy lawyer, "Everyone's got a lawyer." 

A tall, blond, giant of an Academy lawyer who taught law classes at the Academy and who had gone through the introduction process to the Academy with me the year before and become acquainted was assigned to be Bostic's lawyer.  It was odd because I went by his office one day to chat with him and his door was closed.  I actually had the distinct impression that he was there with Bostic, advising him.  My instincts were correct.

The upper class cadets usually handle honor code violations themselves.  But when the extent of Bostic's questionable past came out from these other sources, they were aghast.   They knew this could not be handled the usual way.

The OSI had to protect Bostic until I accepted my own plea deal.  I was given my $10K severance pay because I had a regular commission.  I was given a somewhat honorable discharge but with a questionable remark added that tainted my discharge form.  Once my situation was settled, they went after Bostic for lying to my lawyers during their interview with him.  (I paid to have the taped interview transcribed.)

He departed the Academy a week before I did. 

On the day I was to leave, the main elevator in the academic building got stuck between floors with me as the only occupant.  (I always felt the building itself did not want me to go.)   I boxed up my stuff and left.  Oddly, too, an electric clock I had purchased at the Base Exchange, on my first assignment in Minot AFB the week I arrived in January 1974, started sputtering loudly a couple of days after I left the Academy.  It was in the middle of the night, so I got out of bed and unplugged it.  The next morning, I tried plugging it back in but nothing happened.  It had stopped working.  I always thought it knew its own service to me was no longer required and so it quit, too.

I never saw Bostic again from just before he departed for leave before that fateful summer.  I had called him at his parents' house, briefly, that summer while he was on leave, but that was the last time we ever spoke.  And, of course, I had no hint about what he was up to.  I never really was to learn why he did what he did.  I did find out until later that he had gone to see a Chaplin about what he intended to do before he went to the OSI.  The Chaplin, I also later learned, told him not to do what he was going to do.  It would just wreck my career to no purpose.  As it turned out, his actions destroyed his own career as well as mine.  (I used to imagine that while I initially thought he knocked my life off course, I actually was able to knock him off course.  He had not only implicated me in his web of lies, he'd named names of the gay cadets I knew, as well as thrown suspicion on a few gay officers I knew in the English Department.  He was souless.)

I left the Academy on Friday, October 15th.  My birthday was Sept. 23rd.  So how was it the worst birthday ever? 

My Academy lawyer had gotten the paperwork that my resignation had been approved on the Friday (Sept. 21st) before my birthday that Sunday.  But rather than call me that Friday, or that Saturday, the day before my birthday, he called me on Sunday, Sept. 23rd.  I was home alone.  No birthday cake.  No friends. No presents.  A totally uncertain future ahead of me, with not one single job prospect on the horizon.  He called me with the only "present" I got that day:  My unwanted discharge from the Air Force had been approved.  He could have called before Sunday.

Worst birthday ever. 

Worst birthday ever, Part I

Somewhere on the Internet, people were asked to describe their worst birthday ever.  Mine was my 30th birthday.  It was not because I was no longer in my 20's and getting older.  Nothing like that.  But some background is necessary.

I was an Air Force instructor of English at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs since 1978.  In early 1979, rumors were circulating that one or more cadets were being investigated on suspicion of being gay.  This was long before "Don't ask; don't tell" and today when one can serve without fear of discharge.

The late Randy Shilts wrote in his book CONDUCT UNBECOMING a chapter about Cadet Dan Stratford, who eventually took a deal that he would be allowed to graduate that Spring with his class but waive his commission in the Air Force.  I became friends with Dan and his friends, George Gordy and Bill Ryder, who were also investigated; but no evidence existed that they were gay and none of the three admitted anything about the other two.    

Around this time, or not long before, another officer in the English Department, whose name I have now forgotten, was going to be leaving the Academy.  He was an academic adviser to a cadet whom he said asked for me "personally" to be his replacement academic advisor.  I did not know junior Cadet Keith Bostic.  I had never even heard of Cadet Keith Bostic.  Curious, I agreed to be his advisor that Spring.  (How might my life have been different if I had said, "No.  I really have too much going on right now."?)

Over the next few weeks Cadet Bostic and I became acquainted.  He'd submitted a poem to the Cadet creative writing publication, ICARUS, that I assisted the publication of.  I was also Officer-In-Charge of the Cadet Film Club.  Cadet Bostic would come by the projection booth where I was helping Cadet Keener set up the film for a weekly showing.  (This was long before prerecorded videocassettes and videotapes were widely available--I owned a Sony Betamax videotape recorder, but most people did not, and not too many professional tapes were yet available.)  If a movie was not broadcast on television, you had to rent a copy of the actual film to watch a movie in an auditorium.

Cadet Bostic seemed more than usually interested in me I began to soon realize.   I was flattered, obviously.  He was 19; I was 29.  He was blond and realistically attractive.

Once, when we were in the booth alone together, he said, "I need to go to the little boy's room."  I believe I laughed aloud at the old-fashioned remark and, likely inappropriately responded, "Do you need help?"  He replied, "You can hold my hand."  His gaze remained fixed on me for a few additional moments, likely attempting to judge my reaction, before he turned and left with a smile on his face.

Another time, when the projection booth was active with cadets entering and exiting, I put my hand on his shoulder to explain a letter I and other advisors had been sent, regarding projects involving the cadets we were advising, "This is kind of like a big brother/little brother thing," I explained.  Inexplicably, with my hand on his shoulder, he reached around my body and closed his arm around my waist.  I was surprised that he would be so obviously physical in front of so many other cadets.

In the next couple of days, I determined that I needed to have a talk with him.  I felt I needed to warn him that his actions might lead to accusations about the two of us, given the recent environment, and we both needed to be careful.  (Even a Cadet women's sports team was being investigated for lesbianism.)

I called his squadron on a Saturday morning, told him that I needed to see him, and drove to the Academy to pick him up.  I decided that the Overlooks was the best place to talk since it was early enough in the day before most tourists arrived and far enough away from the cadet facilities that we would not be interrupted by other cadets.

Once there, we walked along the sidewalk to the far end, and I explained my concerns.  He seemed to understand what I was worried about.  After our brief exchange, I asked him whether he would like me to drive him back to the dorm or somewhere else.  He told me directly that he wanted to go to my house.  (A brief aside here:  As Academy officers, we were often encouraged to invite cadets over to our houses.  Most were far from home and likely missed being in an environment that was more like where they grew up.  Now, I suspect the staff mainly thought that most officers were married and these innocent visits would be entirely appropriate and nothing untoward was going to happen.  With us single officers, it might be a bit more dicey.) 

We spent a couple of hours just talking.  I do believe I did mention that I had become acquainted with the three cadets under investigation, and that I had learned that Cadet Stratford had accepted the plea deal the Air Force and his lawyer had worked out.  During the entire time we chatted, it was obvious to me that Cadet Bostic was gay, or at least bisexual and exploring, and that he was genuinely attracted to me. 
 

What I did not know was that after I took him back to the Academy later that day, during the next day or two, he went to the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and told them that I was gay and was after him when it had actually been more the other way around. 

He came over to my house a couple more times in the next few weeks.  We never had sex.  We never kissed.  We may have hugged once.  We did sit next to one another on a couch in the media room and watched a movie.  One time, it was clear to me that our sitting that close to one another had caused him to experience an obvious erection.  I did not take advantage.

But at the end of the academic year, he was supposed to take summer school, to make up a course he was deficient in.  However, he explained to me in my office one afternoon that he really needed to go back home to Maryland because his parents needed him for financial reasons that summer.  Clearly, he was asking me if I could get him out of summer school.

Another aside is warranted:  In the course of our conversations at my house and on the drives to and from the Academy, he eventually confessed that he was actually an orphan.  That the parents he had were his adoptive parents.  They had had a son who had died, and when they adopted him, they had him assume the identity of their dead son.  He needed to make money that summer to help pay off the man who had fixed the paperwork that gave him the biological son's identity 

Yes, it sounds surreal.  Yes, it sounds crazy even.  But he seemed sincere and I was always way too naive.  But I did wonder how it was he was able to get an appointment to the Academy.  This was the later 1970's, when military service did not hold the cachet it had before or later.  Applications to the service Academies were down in relationship to previous and later years.  But he did not offer how he had gotten in, and I did not ask.

Again, as a reminder, he was visiting the OSI after each of our meetings and telling them everything about what had happened.  But a number of things he was telling them were not true or were true but not exactly accurate in his telling.  So the OSI agents were forming this wrongful opinion of me and him, as well as of our "relationship".

I did get the summer school instructor to let him out of the class he would have been required to take so he could go back home.  But I then asked the head of the Cadet Advisor program to get him another Academic Advisor.  I had gotten much too involved with him and his personal life to be objective going forward.  On being told of the change of advisor, he told me, "Sir, I did not ask for that."  I know he did not, but I certainly knew it was appropriate.

On the day he was to depart for Maryland, I found an envelope on my desk with a hand-written note inside from him.  Or so I thought.  Since the OSI was not getting anything concrete from him that would lead to my being forced to resign for being gay, they concocted this scheme to have him write a note, providing me with his home address and offering that I could write to him while he was home on leave.  They put the note in the envelope and slipped into my office while I was at lunch, leaving it for me to find and somehow incriminate myself.

I do have to confess that I was becoming attracted to Bostic all during this time.  He'd come to my office with the plea to be excused from summer school, and then cried genuine tears, unable to look at me, when I said I would do all I could.  I echoed the phrase that Katharine Hepburn had used to a student of hers when she attempted to get him into Oxford University in THE CORN IS GREEN.  That we were friends and I would help him.  His tales of being an orphan, growing up in difficult circumstances, made me more than sympathetic toward him.  I have always been sympathetic to a victim. 

I would eventually realize that those tears were because he was wrecking my career all the while I was trying to help him and maybe he felt guilty about it--but he did not stop.  And I would eventually discover that I was not the only one to whom he had told the tales of being an orphan.  I had former students in my classes who were in his squadron.  They liked me and they came forward to tell the OSI what he told them. 

Unfortunately, being the object of someone's affection (or so I thought) was heady for me.  This was the very first time I had felt that someone was interested in me that way.  So when Bostic was away, I did write those fateful letters to him.  Six in all.  I poured out my feelings for another man on paper.  Not with the cryptic phrases I had used in my journals for so many years, disguising the gender of the unrequited objects of my affection over those many years.  I never imagined that someone else would soon be reading those heart-felt letters (Bostic opened just the first and the last letters, not the middle four).  Cold, calculating and almost inhuman OSI agents would eventually read all of them, as well as photocopy each page for their records.  (They would eventually be returned to me, though I am not sure I still have them.) 

When Cadet Bostic returned later that summer, he handed the six letters to the OSI agents and took off for advanced Academy training at Camp Red Devil, appropriately named, at Fort Carson, south of Colorado Springs, likely assuming he was done with the whole mess he'd created and done with me.  It was only just beginning.

When he returned from leave and had not contacted me, as I had asked him to in the final letter, I took the letter the OSI had left on my desk and symbolically burned it in my fireplace in the media room.  I was done with him for good.  Or so I thought.  It was only just beginning.





        

     

Soul mates?

A guy I chat with on the Internet and I were discussing relationships.  The following was my personal contribution:

Who knows? Sometimes I think we just fall into stuff. Once in a while we luck out; more times than not we end up in trouble or just skate by major disaster. But then my meeting my husband when and how I did seems rather fated. Over 60. When I figured I would never meet Mr. Right.

 

I started looking a long, long time ago. My husband was under 10 years old. When I was forced to resign from the Air Force, he had only recently turned 10. So I was going to kiss a lot of frogs before he and I met on DN. And only because I was a paying member and knew who had checked out my profile. I engaged him in messages, and we finally went out about 3 weeks later. He had long before figured he'd never meet his guy and had mostly given up.

 

He took my having a Continental Viscount mahogany model on the mantle of the fireplace as a sign. (His late father worked for Continental years before, and he himself had always loved airlines and airliners) So we just started dating. At one point I broke up with him and immediately regretted it. We got back together a week later and have been together ever since.

 

Our house is filled with airliner models and pictures and memorabilia, and ship memorabilia (we both like ships) and vintage car models (we both like mid-century modern stuff). Even at 51, he has always loved old Hollywood movies and gossip and all that goes with it. We never fight or yell at one another. I make him laugh, a lot.

 

Maybe I have always been looking for that special buddy. I remember a guy I once knew who introduced me to his latest BF, only to tell me six months later that while they were great in bed together, when they finally got out of bed, they found they had nothing in common and broke up. [My husband and I] hug and kiss all the time and tell one another "I love you" every day, and usually more than once each day. And we mean it. We watched the soul mate episode of Friends yesterday afternoon and we both do believe we are one another's soul mate. We have always believed it. We travel very well together and love going to Comic Con.

 

I have never been happier with anyone, and if anyone believes this is a cosmic union, I would not doubt them.

Wonder Con 2022

We have a table, SP-81 (Small Press area), at Wonder Con this year, April 1-3, at the Anaheim Convention Cneter.  We will also cover the Prism Booth elsewhere on the main floor of the hall.  We will again be giving away free books and tot bags such as the following (as well as selling more RAoF T-shirts).  Hope to see you there.

 

 

WonderCon 2022

We intend to be at WonderCon this year.  I have not heard whether or not we have been granted a small press table or will have a presence at the Prism Comics booth only.  Hope to see everyone there, regardless.