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I always wondered if Joey knew about me and Bobby.

Bobby & I used to hook up in Joey’s garage.  Joey lived next door to me, the house between mine and Bobby’s.  After a few of the you-suck-me-I’ll-suck-you episodes, both of us were ready to move on, and fast, and big time.  I decided it would happen in Joey’s garage, which was usually open a crack all night.  Bobby came to my window, I brought out a blanket, and we crawled under the opening in Joey’s garage door.  I threw the blanket on the floor, and before I looked up from the blanket he had his shirt off.  Game on.

Joey had to have known about me and Bobby before the night Joey and I hooked up.  Teenaged boys up to something tend to divulge each other’s up-to-somethingness.  One night, when Bobby wasn’t around, I tossed a rock at Joey’s window instead… it seemed that this gay or bi thing or whatever was actually pretty cool.  And quite normal. 

Normal.

But what about all that….ummm….stuff?  That stuff about sin, about….what is it about again?   That thing…you know….that thing about….what everyone else will think?    One day, in the life of all of us, there comes a realization, that the authority figures of our childhood are just completely full of shit.  That thought wouldn’t occur to me for a long time. 

What occurred to me instead?  What do people know.   Who knew what about me.  It had become a non-negotiable consumer, governor, and tormentor of my life.  Joey, me, Bobby…who else?  Where is it safe? 

Many years later, after the arrest, it obsessed me.  Who was watching the local news that night of the arrest?  Who talked to who?  What did they say?  When?  Who was around when they discussed it?  What was the conclusion?  Like a new closet, I had a new obsession.

I decided that I would tell my best friends about the arrest, and the whole sordid tale, in person, myself, whether they knew or not.  Some conversations went well.

Some didn’t.

I remember one girl in particular, Wendy Weinberg, who I decided to meet at a coffee house to talk.  We had met through our friends among young Jewish professionals.  Not being Jewish, but having managed several political campaigns of Jewish candidates, I was in the Jew Crew, an honorary member of the house of Abraham.  I can Hava Nagila with the best of them.  Wendy and I met via the Jew Crew, and my cred established, I thought we were friends.  We even tried to date once. 

I met Wendy about a month after the arrest, at Talkies in Ohio City, across from Great Lakes Brewery.  My guard was down.  I thought I was talking to a friend.

“So….” she said, after I’d completely unloaded the intimate details of my life, the arrest, and the entirety of one’s worst nightmares, “…some people are sayin…”

I don’t even remember what she said after “…some people are sayin…”  I do know it was along the lines that I might, in fact, be a monster.  That somehow I was showing the tip of my iceberg, that I must be one of “those”.  And this and that. 

After a stunned silence, I finally managed, “Some…people?”

“Yeah.” Wendy said.

“What people?”

“I don’t feel comfortable telling you.”

“What are they saying?”

“Tim, I don’t feel comfortable sharing that.”

“You don’t feel comfortable sharing.”

“No, I don’t.”

More silence.  “You’re not comfortable…you think I’m comfortable?”

“Tim, I’m not telling you.”

“Why not?”

“Tim, I’m not getting into this.”

“We’re way into it already,” I went off.  “I just told you the deepest darkest secrets of my life, and you’re gonna sit there and tell me that people are spreading rumors, and that whoever is telling you I’m a monster is privileged information?”

“What are you gonna do if I tell you?”

“I can’t do anything, I just want to know who I can trust.”

“Well, you’re not getting that information from me.” 

I looked at Wendy in utter shock.  I felt like I got sucker punched.  

Coffee at Talkies went downhill from there, to the point I think I was literally yelling at her.  I felt betrayed, totally and completely betrayed. Here’s my big secret, I need to know where you stand, and you tell me about rumors you won’t discuss, from sources you won’t disclose.  You mother fucking bitch.  Who the fuck do you think you are?   Guess I know who I can trust now.

“Get the fuck away from me,” I finished.

“Tim…don’t do this…”

“Do what?  Sit here and let you call me a fucking pedophile child molester?”  Other people started to turn and look when they heard that. 

We were getting stared at. 

I felt oddly…empowered. 

It made Wendy really uncomfortable.

“Tim, this is just so wrong.”

“You’d better fucking believe it’s wrong.  How DARE you?” I said.

A few more loud exchanges, and that was that.  Wendy got up in a huff, grabbed her purse, and walked away as I shouted at her to not let the door hit her in the ass.

Wendy remains the one “friend” I completely lost over the entire episode.  At least the only one I know of.  But she played a bittersweet, and useful role.  She put me on notice that no one could be trusted to react in the way I hoped.  It was a familiar lesson.  She also helped lock my new closet door shut.  That’s the bitter part.

The other half of the lesson, the sweet part, the one that left me feeling empowered, I’m only now learning.

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