[two things:
(1) this post represents the second of my (hopefully many) participations in kelly stern's annual pride challenge; and
(2) it's also a coming-out story of sorts--actually, a prequel to the one i wrote this time last year.]
i still remember the october day i first met steve kuzi--spare, ugly office, oversized drafting tables filling the cramped space we were to share, cold reality hitting home.
he was a little chilly, too, and it remained that way between us for awhile. later, i'd realize he was merely reacting to my vibe--new hire, haughty and fresh outta architecture school, bitter about my choice of employment, having just kissed my last summer of freedom goodbye and bitter about that, too.
[cue music]
Don Henley - The Boys Of Summer by rvdgu2006
while i can't say it brings back warm, nostalgic memories, this was the song of the moment back then, and the one that perfectly captured my whole bleak, end-of-endless-summer angst over the course of that ugly fall.
see, i shoulda been on top of the world--not only was i a freshly-minted university of texas alumnus, i'd also been handed a big, fat check as a graduation present from the uncle who'd just put me through five years of school--hell, i coulda gone anywhere, done anything.
what did i do instead? full of pride and fear, i put it all down on a new BMW, stayed where the fuck i was and took the only job i could find in recession-era austin, texas circa 1984.
word to the young and wise who might stumble across this post: don't do that, ok?
so the boys of summer are gone, i've got my new bimmer and my new shit-for-pay sweatshop job, and kuzi and i are cellmates, for better or worse.
initially, i don't get the guy.
see, at first appearance, he's intimidating as hell--blond, chiseled, muscular and forbidding--until somebody makes him laugh and he transforms into something completely, shriekingly, limp-wristedly different, and what the fuck is up with that?
mkf, meet your first muscle mary.
it doesn't take long, though--it happens when he glances out the window one day a week or so after i start, snorts, says, "get a load of the two queens getting outta the audi," and i look down and realize he's talking about a couple of my friends from school, collars flipped up on their pastel izods, who have just shown up to take me out to lunch.
at the restaurant i can't stop giggling and they finally ask me what the fuck and i tell them and they then wanna then go back and kick that smartass faggot's ass and i inform 'em that the smartass faggot in question is built like a brick shithouse and would tear 'em both in half at which point they drop the whole thing and mutter darkly to themselves for the rest of the meal.
i come back from lunch still giggling [funny, never saw much of those guys after that], tell kuzi about the whole thing, he throws his head back and howls with laughter. and with that, the ice is broken between us.
and a new pattern emerges--we spend the next several months drawing big, dumb mcmansions for the austin nouveau riche in easy, companionable conversation.
in little dribs and drabs, he reveals himself to me. scion of czech immigrants who had settled along with scores of their countrymen in the nearby hill-country village of schulenburg, he's the local superstar--whip-smart, the first of his clan to graduate from college (much less a school of architecture), and they--not only his family, but the whole fuckin' town--are all inordinately proud of him.
he talks about the burdens he carries on his broad, muscular shoulders--not only to do well in his chosen profession, but to marry, reproduce, vindicate his community's pride.
later, once he's assured of my straight (because at this point he still thinks i am) acceptance, he shows me pictures of the love of his life--a tall, gorgeous fashion-mart print/runway model from dallas he's been long-distance dating for the past three years, and to whom he promises to introduce me one day.
and yeah i'd end up meeting the guy, but it wouldn't to be quite the way either kuzi or i thought it would happen.
and throughout all the weeks and months these revelations play themselves out, i smile, nod sympathetically and take in every dollar of emotion and detail kuzi feeds me, without giving him even an honest nickel back--until one day in (i think) early february, i put down my pencil, turn to him and say, for the first time ever in my life--"you know, i've been wondering for awhile if i might not be gay myself."
to which, and to his eternal credit, he evinces a fair amount of astonishment (he was easily as good an actor as was i), and our relationship enters its next phase.
once the dam has been breached, i tell him everything--at first haltingly, and then in big, fat, swaths of truth; when i'm all done, he says, "there's only one way to know for sure, mike--you gotta come out with me."
we go back and forth on this issue for several more weeks until i finally agree, and he drags me out for the very first time.
in that early spring of 1985, there are only two gay bars of consequence in austin: the boathouse, and halls. they face each other across a dark stretch of colorado street.
the boathouse is small, close and intimate, a vestige of an era recently past.
and halls? well, halls is a big, new, two-storied, hard-edged, cold gray shape of gay things to come.
the great thing that i didn't appreciate at the time: when you got tired of one era, you could just put your drink down, cross colorado street and enter the other--shame you can't do that anymore, right?
turns out steve knew both sides of the street--and god, did they know him back.
i'll spare you my initial reminiscences of the boathouse, a sweet little bar whose dominant feature was a full-scale rowing scull mounted overhead, complete with oars sprouting therefrom, with a soundtrack of beloved disco favorites from the seventies--suffice it to say i now know kuzi took me there first to soften me up.
at some point we finish our drinks, finish saying hello to the innumerable hordes of people who seem to know him there, and he drags my still-quaking ass across the street to halls.
yeah, halls.
how do i describe halls? unlike the boathouse, halls isn't even in the least warm or inviting.
on the contrary, it's all strobe-lights and artful darkness and polished concrete and glass block and steel stairways and catwalks and gorgeous boys and video screens and pounding, forbidding music--in fact, the first thing that hits me when we walk in the door, like a ton of bricks, is the following:
its raw power blew me away, and i was instantly captivated by this new world.
no matter how many times we went back there in the following months--and no matter how many guys tried to grab his (or my) attention--kuzi never let me outta his sight.
seriously, we stuck together through thick and thin--my most enduring memory of our many nights at halls is dancing with him for the first time to simple minds' don't you (forget about me), all the while pushing away anybody who tried to invade our little envelope.
because, see, here's the thing i discovered about kuzi on our nights out in fagland: as flamboyant as he was, as much as he flirted with everybody and as much as he got hit on, kuzi never, ever left with anybody--except me, and we always chastely kissed and went our separate ways.
his love was pure, and his aim was true.
which would make what happened next so inexplicable to me, and would send me back into the closet for the next four years--tune in next time if you're interested, because this one's getting way too long.
