this one's for kuzi, whose brown skin i can still see shining in the sun (continued)

.
reading part 1 of this story, you might get the impression that i was some sorta frail, timid, dewy-eyed chicken who needed protection from the big bad wolves, instead of the strapping 28-year-old i actually was when these events took place.

and it wasn't that i'd lived a sheltered life, either--my first boss outta high school, a raging horndog with excellent gaydar who'd tried unsuccessfully to get me into bed on any number of occasions, had regaled me with endless tales of gay life in houston. and what he hadn't covered, five years of UT architecture school--a place where even the faculty restroom had glory holes--had pretty much filled in most of the remaining gaps.

so what was it with me--why had i so long delayed the inevitable? simple: i was a shut-down loner who really, really didn't wanna be gay, and it took a force of nature like steve kuzi to break through my shell.

* * * * *

as i've said, kuzi and i always got a fair amount of attention when we went out--he because he was hot, me because i was new, both of us because we never hooked up [which i now understand is the gay equivalent of waving the red flag of challenge at an angry bull].

over the course of that spring i would meet many guys and have many phone numbers tucked into my pockets, all of which got dumped into a nightstand drawer when i got home and never looked at again.

see, i was just an observer in this strange new land (or at least that's what i told myself)--just passing through, kicking the tires, seeing what's up. i was there with kuzi--no way you woulda caught me dead on colorado street without him.

and he was endlessly patient--never ridiculed me because i was dorky and dressed straight and couldn't dance for shit, or because i didn't know who madonna was.

fuckin' madonna--brings up the other thing that was happening in my life thanks to kuzi: people were starting to get wise to me at work.

* * * * *

it happens shortly after i come out to him--he's still trying to inculcate me into gay life, and the subject of madonna comes up.

to which--because i swear to god i really didn't know--i make the fatal mistake of asking, "who the fuck is this madonna you keep talking about?"

he gives me a long look, puts down his pencil, picks up his keys, leaves the room without a word. i watch out the window as he exits the building, strides across the parking lot below to his little yellow fiat, retrieves something from it and returns. the "something" turns out to be a cassette, which he puts into his boombox, cues to the following song, and hits "play."




it has me from note one. he sees it in my eyes, grabs my hand, pulls me outta my chair--next thing i know, god help me, i'm dancing with a man.

lost in the music, i dunno how long it is before we look up and realize our door is open and half the office is standing crowded into the doorway, watching us with open mouths--guess it was louder than we thought.

i freeze, red-faced and abashed, my straight facade in shreds. kuzi, on the other hand, amps it up, twirls and beckons to the uptights in the doorway to join us--difference between him and me.

[thing that still kills me is, had he picked anything else--holiday, like a virgin, material girl, lucky star--none of this woulda happened, because any of those woulda left me in my chair, unmoved.

no, he had to go with borderline.]

* * * * *

as the weeks go by and kuzi drags me into the life, i become more comfortable with the fact that i'm now seen as the other fag in the office--to the point that when our boss announces he's taking everybody and their families down to padre island for memorial-day weekend, i'm not in the least annoyed when it's assumed that kuzi and i will be happy to share a room.

we make excuses as to why we can't go down with 'em on friday [leaving out the real reason--that we're not about to miss a friday night at halls], promising we'll drive down the next morning instead.

we take my car, arrive a little after noon, check into our room--everybody's out on the beach already.

kuzi heads into the bathroom to change while i unpack. a minute or two later, the door opens, he emerges silhouetted in the bathroom light, my jaw hits the floor and i realize i only thought i knew everything i needed to know about him.

we walk down and join our party, and they all gasp at the sight of this magnificent, muscled creature in his black speedo [and trust me, we ain't talkin' about me].

turns out he's as easily in his element on the beach as he was in the office, and as indifferent to his co-workers' new awe as he was to their wary distance--kuzi is who he is and would forever be, god love him.

i'll never forget him that day--laughing, the sun glinting off that oiled, flawless body, plunging into the surf and doing handstands in the sand, frolicking with all the little kids who flocked to him, having more fun than all the rest of us mere mortals put together.

as the afternoon wanes, we head back to our room to shower and change for what turns out to be a long, enjoyable dinner with our co-workers--all of us relaxed and easy and having a good time with each other for a change.

afterwards, a bunch of us fill a cooler, sit out on the beach and talk into the night.

finally, exhausted, kuzi and i head back to our room and collapse into bed at the end of what was a far more perfect day than either of us expected.

middle of the night--something's wrong, i awaken and flip on the bedside lamp, turn to see my still-sleeping friend lying face-up and paralyzed beside me, face contorted, teeth bared and chattering, muscles clenched, shivering violently and drenched in sweat.

the bigger part of me is clueless as to what's happening; it's my small, knowing, inner voice that understands and says

oh, fuck.


[conclusion to follow--this being 1985 and all, you can probably see where this is going just like i did.]

funny, it seems like yesterday

.

or two lifetimes ago, depending on what day you ask me.



[and yeah, the above "happy graduation" face would pretty much carry me through the next five years.]

this one's for kuzi, whose brown skin i can still see shining in the sun

.
[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.