eastside living LA

Talking in Tongues: A Sentiental Education, Pt. 7

 

By David Anthony Tattu

(knocking back a couple hard knocks)

Needless to say, there was a considerable amount of re-grouping after the McBuddles debacle.

I had been bouncing around between sleeping in yards, my mom’s old V.W. bus, Bud’s pectoral harem, grotty garages and Mike’s sorrowful family apartment:

Mike’s mom was a worn-down woman with a warm heart. His father was a red-necked bastard with no compunction about throwing his fists or weight around. 

I despised the man; perhaps more than anyone on this, the clawing of my way into sentient being.

So, to confess my own complexity, I do – and did – have compassion for their sparkling son; for both their sons. A single sidelong glance at their “home life” was enough to engender that.

Mike was just a boy, trying to climb out of his own personal hell. 

(with me as doormat/stepping stone)

But most twilights found me clambering in Richard’s window, snuggled in his bed. 

Richard with his heart of gold.

And Hoppo, bless her tattered panties, at this point officially offered me a “temporary haven.” Mostly, as her hands were tied, as I was by then a de facto inhabitant of the Rauschenberger menagerie.

Hoppo’s offer wasn’t one of love, but something closer to expediency and resignation. For, as much as I loved Hoppo, my feelings were a one-way route. I saw, but did not want to see, that Hoppo merely tolerated me; that, while intrigued by me as interlocutor, in reality she derided and despised me. 

And I pretended for years that it didn’t break my heart.

It took me decades to come to terms with this. That, and that the single compliment, the solitary morsel Hoppo ever deigned my way – plopped on me while she was drunk, naturally, as Hoppo was always drunk – happened years later, after her son had hung himself and she had been humbled; her own body fast approaching a grave dug by cancer. 

This single piece of praise that would give me strength for decades, I now see was completely unintended. And I would sear it from my soul if that would rend me from its clutches, and somehow reclaim the young man who perceived her unintended slippage as an antidote to a childhood of poison. The poison of a small town’s prejudices.

“The thing about you, David, is that you dared to be different. And you looked people straight in the eye.”

Hoppo, whom I loved, will always love, and have long resolved my conflicted feelings for, was however vocal in her disdain for me – in her suspicions that I was “double-gated” and “light in the loafers.”

And Hoppo was funny: eccentric, witty, enormously droll and outrageously amusing, a full-fledged farting lark. 

One night we were all in the “den” (a disaster that disgraced the name of dens everywhere) watching a t.v. show about “coming out” and this lispy, wispy, clearly homosexual fifteen year old was whinging on about his decision to come out when Hoppo roared, “Come Out??!! I’m surprised they didn’t hose you down!!!“

And it was hilarious. I roared with the rest of them, Richard, his sister and Hop, clearly aware of the conflicting contradictions. But, well, Hoppo was just so damn funny. Her humor, like her language, was precise. And she always hit her mark.

But, alas, the fact of the matter is Hoppo was a font of unadulterated homophobia.

This fluid gay men are supposed to suckle on; their milk of subliminal self-loathing. 

Anyway, by some twisted logic I had been anointed Guilty for my mother’s threats of suicide, which had promptly prompted my fleeing the family manse of sickness, to take refuge in Richard’s bed and Hoppo’s beloved bosom.

And, at length, Hoppo felt the sensible thing would be to call Tattu père (aka the Inseminator) as a means of gaining recompense, or at the very least the unloading of his son.

My Father’s reply to her request, which I heard quite distinctly as I was sitting next to Hop on her dilapidated spray-painted couch, as she dangled her pink princess phone for both of us to hear, was: 

“He’s made his choice.”

What a relief for a man who had never lifted a finger for his sons.

And what a joy for me. For all of us whose sentiential education never ends.

Anyway, I had made my choice. Or choices. And I stuck by them, although my choices weren’t always the best ones. But the best I could manage within the scope of my understanding of the world. 

But this is filler. Exposition, in Hollyweird: the unfurling of a story that doesn’t have a place (or does it?) in the central tale at hand. Namely, the tracing of a “personal awakening” into a broader, decidedly gayer, welcoming of a young boy into the discreetly poisoned place of being a homosexual in contemporary Western society.

Just mind your Ps and Qs and you will be allowed a (tightly circumscribed) existence – particularly if you’re effeminate, sexless, or have a penchant for playing the buffoon.

Even the A-Gays with their house boys and their Fire Island swimming pools, and the Sweater Set, in their khakis and their Volvos with their 2.2 children, understand what I’m talking about. 

And if they don’t, they’re just plain lying. 

Most likely to themselves. 

It’s something we’ve trained ourselves to do.

At any rate, one of my crash pads at this point belonged to Stan Rogers, another sun-bleached, built-like-a-shit-brick-house surfer with a monumental penis snaking down his pants. (This was back in the days when penises were a public presence, unlike today, when pricks are shriveled and hidden by edict of the middle class. Banished from the public landscape. But that’s another essay).

Anyway, in actuality, it wasn’t Stan’s place, but, rather, Stan’s uncle’s apartment, where Stan was staying, sharing a room with him. 

Stan was incessantly complaining about hearing his uncle jerk-off at night, and about how he suspected his uncle was queer. So I was placed safely on the other side of the perverted uncle, only to discover pretty quickly that the sticky sounds were definitely coming from Stan and his enormous pole and not from said suspected uncle. 

And this might have been good. (Hell, it could’ve been great!) I could’ve had a sort of starter-relationship with Stan, who was basically, I thought, a good guy; merely trapped as I was, as all homosexuals were, in Hermosa’s ferocious undertow of homophobia.

And, while Stan clearly gazed at me with longing in his sad-dog clear-blue eyes, he was deeply self-hating and homophobic. He was also four or five years older than me and had had time, without the skills to reflect upon it, to internalize the toxic niceties of Hermosa’s twisted little diorama. 

And Stan clung hard and fast to a one-size-fits-all paranoia should I dare to sidle-up to the issue, no matter how silently or oblique. 

So, we’d jerk-off at night, making sure the other heard and that his uncle did not. With no acknowledgment the morning after, aside from what I took to be our mutual growing affection.

An affection which was yet another misconception on my part. 

In any case, during this period I’d made a hard-scrabble jab and grabbed a job at Greeko’s Sandals, a local clothing store and headshop. Greekos was a non-stop roller-coaster of outrageous mendacity, hilarious paranoia and merciless greed, but, like so many good things, a reminiscence for another homily.

Anyway, I’d been working in overdrive, saving my nickels and scraping my dimes, with the hope of landing a pad of my own. And when I had finally saved up $750 and found a fellow who would take me on as a roommate (not an easy feat when you’re underage, no matter how fast a talker; and believe me, by then, I was talkin’ fast), Stan looked at me with those bottomless eyes and suggested that, instead of handing over what was to both of us a fortune, I ought to invest in some pot with him. We’d buy the stash, turn it around in a week and double our money. Within a week I’d end up being able to pay my new landlord and have $750 left over!

Too good to be true!

Uhuh.

So, naturally, I handed my money over to him. And after three days of waiting for the deal to come through, Stan, who was stoned out of his gourd, smoking a lot of weed he hadn’t had before, told me that the deal had fallen through and that we’d been ripped-off. 

Correction: I’d been ripped off.

And Stan casually mentioned that his uncle was tired of having me around the house and, “you know, man, you really can’t stay here any longer cos’ I don’t wanna risk getting thrown out myself, even if my uncle is a fuckin’ faggot.”

And so:

It was back to climbing in Richard’s window, with Hoppo less and less impressed by her ‘invisible’ boarder eating her food and, in all probability corrupting her son, even though I always cleaned the dishes and the yard and whatever else needed taking care of in that three-ringed circus slop-pit of a house I was so happy to call home.

So. I kept my head down and my ass to the Greeko grindstone. Now not only on the lam from the law and divorced parents, all of us living in the same one mile square town, but also from the surf crowd in general, as my old friend Bud McBuddles had lost no time in spreading slurs about me from high-in-the-saddle of his newly purchased silver Porsche, his hair having miraculously gone from mousey brown to sun-bleached blonde as he roared through town with the top down and the stereo blasting Led Zeppelin.

Money talks, baby.

And sixteen year old runaways dodge from alley to alley and hope not to get caught in any damning drafts.

Occasionally, though, I’d hang out with Mark Sessions – one of the surfers who was too dim-witted to comprehend the rumors – especially if I happened to have a joint on me. 

One afternoon, as I smoked my joint with Mark (a friend of my older brother’s and an ‘insider’ at McBuddle’s purgadise), Mark told me that Mike was in Hawaii, and that he also wanted to go but didn’t have the dough. He also let slide that his parents had a condo on Waikiki that was empty, and, if I could manage to come up with airfare for both of us (just a loan, mind you, as far as his ticket was concerned), we could stay at his folks’ place for free, indefinitely. Right on the beach. And scoring jobs at the condo’s pool house wouldn’t be a problem. Mark knew all the crew at the condo complex.

And I lit up as I lit another joint, as had I longed for a long, long time now to flee the sand pit I’d been spawned in.

In truth, my entire life up to this point had been spent in endless fantasies of glamorous worlds where I would finally find my rightful place. I was hopelessly entrenched in ‘delle belle pretesi’. That is, high-flown fancies of myself as an International Type, stoked not just by Irwin Shaw – but, by now, by Colette, Henry James and the tantalizingly evil and terminally irresistible Ayn Rand. In fact, for years I’d been incessantly cornering foreigners who had somehow landed in our little inbred town to tell me what it was like Out There. In the real world.

And, all told, it was this hunger that got me through.

So, rallying my slightly shopworn sixteen year old élan, I reckoned this just might be my ticket out. 

The Indelible Tattu’s leap into a wider, wilder world. 

A world of civilized people, grand deeds and grander vistas. 

‘Lo! ma cherie! La Tour Eiffel!’

So, in between tokes I said, “sounds fuckin’ great, man!” and drilled him on the details, sagely gauging the viability of his proposal, which should be said, was in no way laced with the by now thoroughly threadbare surfer come-on. Not because Mark was above such strategies (no one could accuse Mark of being high-minded!). The hapless lunk was simply asexual. And not the brightest crayon in the box. 

Too thick-headed to pick up on any sexual nuance whatsoever. 

And homely on top of that.

What a blessed relief. 

(or so I thought.)

So, we struck a deal. An odd couple if there ever was one.

Off we’d to fly to the wonderful world of Hawaii, where we’d have a free pad, guaranteed jobs, and a chance to hook into the contacts Mike was making all over the island.  

Good old Mike.

Who knows. Anything could happen!

So, after a few more months shilling bongs and roach clips, I had the clams for our trip.

And, finalement!, ticket blazing in my hand, I was fast hurtling towards what would surely be my greatest adventures, ecstatically unaware that I was crashing down into an all-new, dark, stark and stirring lexicon of a fast-maturing homophile. Golden retriever in tow.

next installment: Talking in tongues: A Sentiential Education, Part 8