LIFE ON THE FARM
(well, sort of)
Surely we had lost our collective minds. Only crazy people would give up a rent-stabilized apartment in Manhattan. But we weren’t deranged, a little zany perhaps, but not deranged.
For nearly three years, my two roommates and I had been living in a one-bedroom apartment with the smell of rancid grease seeping up from the diner below, a numbing lack of heat in the winter, and legions of cockroaches marching daily across our kitchen counter like a North Korean military parade. We couldn’t take it any longer. We had to either get out or surrender to the roaches.
The choice was clear. We had to find better digs, ones that included more space, reliable heat, and ruthless pest control. So we put our young noses to the old grindstone and began our search for a large, cheap apartment in a nice neighborhood. Still in our twenties, anything seemed possible.
It was the late 1970s, and finding an apartment then was not as daunting a task as it is today in gentrified New York City. A real estate broker was not absolutely necessary, and rentals were often available in many neighborhoods because the city was losing population at the time. Scores of Manhattanites were fleeing to the suburbs, desperate to escape the city’s descent into financial and moral decrepitude. The general feeling was that the city had passed its heyday and was, like Rome and Philadelphia before it, about to fall. War, plague and a scourge of porno shops would soon consume the land.
Such dire predictions, however, didn’t stop hordes of young career aspirants, like myself, from swarming into the city every day, our suitcases packed with little experience and outsized ambitions. I, along with my roommates and many friends, had moved to New York City from Ohio, where we had gone to college together and majored in the lucrative field of Theater Arts. We had come to tackle the big time and make our mark in the entertainment world. I was apprehensive about chasing a dream with such impossible odds, but I knew I had to at least try. I didn’t want to regret many years later (when writing my memoirs) that I hadn’t given it a fair shot. So I moved into a small one-bedroom apartment with two college friends on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and set out to launch my career in show business, or “no business” as some liked to call it.
You could pay a modest rent in that neighborhood then, even if the apartments wouldn’t be considered fit for human habitation in other parts of the country. You could live even cheaper in the East Village or Chelsea if you were either brave or desperate enough and could tolerate regular burglaries and drugs-to-go business on every other corner. We wanted to stay on the Upper West Side. Almost everyone we knew was there. Plus, two large parks were nearby, and a bodega-style pick-n-pay was open 24 hours with an unending supply of Haagen-Dazs for late-night stoners. All of life’s essentials, just within a few blocks.
We looked in the newspapers for available rentals, but to get an inside scoop before an apartment was advertised, we also went building-to-building to inquire about vacancies. Trudging up and down city blocks, we rang a lot of bells, buzzed a lot of buzzers, and heard a lot of “Sorry, nothing,” and “Stop ringing that bell! What’s the maddah with you?!” After weeks of pounding the pavement and stopping frequently for coffee and donuts, we happened upon a building on a corner of Broadway in the West 90s. The super informed us he had an available apartment on the second floor right above the lobby. He took us up to see it and right there before our needy, greedy eyes, the real-estate heavens opened and shone on us in all their generously spacious glory. Agog, we wandered through three bedrooms, two and a half baths, an eat-in kitchen, a living room—and a library, of all things. The floors had just been finished and were gleaming with a warm mahogany shine that beckoned, “Enter. Come spread out on me. I am yours.” The entire place sparkled like a Mr. Clean commercial and the rent was only $450 a month—in our budget! Trying not to jump up and down with unbridled glee, we told the super we wanted the apartment. He said it could be ours; all we needed to do was get him the required “key money” (bribe) as soon as possible. Within a few hours his palms were greased, and a month later we were moving in.
Once unpacked and our meager furnishings arranged, our new place looked remarkably like the interior of an eccentric farmhouse. With its rambling rooms, old-fashioned kitchen sink with fabric skirting, and a stove that could have been my great-grandmother’s, it had a down-home charm straight from the Ohio Valley where we had gone to college. We christened it “the farm,” even though it was located on a bustling street corner smack in the middle of the country’s biggest city.
We added our own stylish flair to the place with whatever we could find or was given to us. A pink cat clock studded in rhinestones hung on a kitchen wall, its pendulum tail and cartoon eyes relentlessly ticking back and forth. Red and blue paisley curtains, obviously designed by someone on acid, lent a heady splash of color to my bedroom windows. The library was populated with a collection of old musical instruments and renamed “the conservatory.” We decorated an old table lamp with a vintage fox stole and a faux pearl necklace and dubbed it “the grandmother lamp.” One of our toilet tanks was dressed with a striped tank-top shirt in a bathroom lit with a soft blue light. You couldn’t see yourself in the mirror, but it did cast a soothing aquatic hue.
The roommates with whom I shared this unique abode were two of my best friends from college, Larry and MichaelJohn. Both of them were (and still are) sublimely talented and divinely wacky. Larry had been both an actor and a writer but had recently decided to focus entirely on writing. Disciplined and industrious, he could frequently be heard typing madly away in his bedroom, emerging from time to time to check on his signature dish of lentil soup simmering away on the kitchen stove (whether winter or summer). MichaelJohn was a devoted actor and had landed a gig in a prestigious theater company in Brooklyn. On days when he was home, he would clean his room with fervor while listening to a recording of Dick Cavett interviewing Katherine Hepburn. He claimed it helped motivate him. Perhaps my roommates were just a tad on the unconventional side, but they were also caring and considerate and made me laugh most every day, possibly every hour.
Our gigantic funhouse did come with a price of course. One hundred and fifty dollars per month each was the most rent any of us had ever paid. With such a new, sobering financial responsibility, we felt we had finally entered legitimate adulthood. Unfortunately for me, my monthly obligation was compounded by the burden of college debts. It was a painful decision to make, but in order to stay solvent and cease vibrating with worry, I took a full-time position in the Personnel Office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the day before I began my new job, I gulped back a wrenching ache of loss and disappointment as I packed up my tap shoes and makeup case and stowed them away in the back of my closet. “Hi-diddle-de-de,” the actor’s life was not to be.
Working a regular day job afforded me a much-needed sense of security and structure, but after several months it became so tedious, I thought I might join King Tut in his coffin. Even if I did find myself surrounded by ancient Greek and Roman sculptures or often passing by the newly installed Temple of Dendur (where visitors kept falling into the moat), hiring security guards was not an activity that fed my creative muses. It became quite clear that working 9-5 in an administrative position was not the right path for me, but a career as a performing artist hadn’t worked out either. Oy. I had become a cliched twenty-something who needed to find himself and his place in the world, and the last thing I ever wanted to be was a cliché.
Desperate to feel like I was on a road to just about anywhere, I became frantic about discovering my next steps in life. I obsessively researched new career directions, poring over books about various careers and graduate schools, including a popular book at the time called What Color is Your Parachute, wherein I gleaned that I was not at all suited for a career in the military or auto mechanics—big news. I also scoured the world for places where I might move and reinvent myself. Sweden seemed ideal as a land of progressive politics and attractive blonde people, but its appeal was offset by long bitter winters and a penchant for pickled herring.
More than figuring out a career or a place to live, I desperately needed to come to terms with my sexuality. It had been ten years since the Stonewall Rebellion, but most of the gay guys I knew (including myself) were half-in, half-out of our respective closets. Many of us were out to close friends, but not yet out to family members and colleagues. And most significantly, many of us were not fully out to ourselves. We were the first generation to wrestle with this daring new concept of coming out, and it was a frightening, heretofore unthinkable notion to announce our gayness to the world. Afterall, in many parts of the world, homosexuals were still shunned, institutionalized, castrated or stoned to death. None of which were attractive options. But I also felt very strongly about living an authentic life and not buying into the lies propagated by my oppressors. I hemmed and hawed and turned every which way. Undoubtedly, people around me wondered Why does he keep twirling in place like that? Should I call someone?
All that agonizing and spinning required frequent escapes from reality. Yes, I was broke, confused, and going nowhere fast, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get together with friends, get stoned and laugh about it. Fortunately, our apartment, because of its size and renown among our crowd for theatrical hijinks had become a bustling social center.
Friends and guests were always coming through. As young people who were drawn to the social and collaborative art form of the theater, we reveled in the company of others. Almost every night was an occasion for getting together, smoking dope and indulging in ice cream treats like homemade mocha milkshakes. I had some of my best culinary experiences while under the influence of Maryjane’s flavor-enhancing charms, frequently exclaiming, “This is the best thing I have ever eaten—in my entire life!”
The denizens of our fair city were smoking pot just about everywhere: on the streets, in cabs, and outside corporate offices at lunchtime. Its alluring, pungent odor was everywhere except on the Upper East Side, which, living up to its antiseptic reputation, had no smell at all. The children of the 60s had brought marijuana into the mainstream, and now many of us used it frequently to buoy our spirits, calm our nerves, and find the humor in anything and everything. There were some who truly believed the world would be a much better place if everyone got high at least once a day. It certainly couldn’t have made things worse. It was the time of the Iran Hostage Crisis, the Three Mile Island meltdown and the nuclear arms race with the USSR. The world seemed to be unraveling with little precious time left to enjoy ourselves. As a then-popular T-shirt proclaimed: “Fuck it. Let’s dance.”
And dance people did. The 60s counterculture movement gave way to the disco era, and people hustled both on the dance floor and in the marketplace. Folk music, marijuana, peace signs, long hair and communal idealism were out. Cocaine, Donna Summer, public sex, careerism and vodka were in. What the hell; the Soviets were going to blow us up anyway. May as well have some fun and acquire all the junk we can before the big mushroom swallows us all.
But I simply could not make the transition from 60s child to disco queen. The era of glittering nights and sex with abandon seemed too self-indulgent and superficial to me. I still valued the mellow lifestyle, living in balance with mother nature, and, crazily enough, working toward social justice and economic equality. Many of my fellow 60s boomers had abandoned social activism and were now attending networking parties at Studio 54, but thankfully, there were still plenty of people out there marching for urgent causes. They took to the streets for women’s lib, black power, anti-nukes, and now of great interest to me—gay liberation.
Gay freedom was in full swing in the city. Newsstands displayed multiple gay male nudie magazines, gay bars popped up in nearly every neighborhood, lesbian and gay political posters were on walls throughout town, gay bathhouses were bustling; it was gay, gay, gay, everywhere you turned. The horror of HIV was still a few years off, so this was a time of unbridled freedom, of letting go of decades of repression and indulging our every passion. I couldn’t resist the urge to join in.
And what better way to test my personal freedom, than joining in on a gay pride parade? Unlike any parade I had ever seen back home in Cleveland, it was an extravaganza that could only have emerged from a gay imagination—dykes on bikes, boys in thongs, glamorous drag queens, Rollerina gliding around on her skates, and the rest of us dancing down the street in an anonymous throng, rejoicing in a day of long-awaited freedom. Who would have ever dreamed such a parade could be possible? We grew up assuming that we were freaks of nature, with very few like us anywhere on the planet. But now here we were, basking in a huge jubilant crowd of our own kind. Onlookers seemed taken aback at how many of us there were. Where did all these homos come from?
It was a time of liberation as well as a time of desperation, both politically and personally. I was living more openly as a gay man and all my friends were accepting of me doing so, but it was still in the early years of the movement and we had miles to go before the nation would begin to consider us first-class citizens deserving of equal rights. Plus the city was broke, we were fearful of war with Russia or Iran, and it was harder to build a career and afford to live in New York City than many of us had planned on. As my father warned me about my career choice—you’ve got a bumpy road ahead of ya. He was a bus driver in Cleveland. He obviously knew his roads because I was bumping all over the place.
Missing the creative life, I left my coma-inducing job at the museum to try my hand at writing and directing my own theater pieces. To support this endeavor, I worked as a freelance “reader” of scripts for a film production company and did a number of various odd jobs, including cater-waiter, moving man, office temp worker, and (for two nights) a telephone salesman for the New York Times, which I quit to keep myself from screaming, pulling my hair out, and jumping out a window.
My romantic life wasn’t any better. Sure I was dating more, but no one wanted to stick around. Typical of the time, many gay guys did not want to be tied down when they just had their first taste of sexual freedom. And many of us were also discovering the unexamined, internalized homophobia that lurked within us, preventing us from emotional intimacy with members of the same sex. So I was spending a lot of time “in between” relationships, sitting in my room and staring at my psychedelic curtains.
With so much anxiety and distress everywhere, my roommates and I decided something had to be done to lift our spirits. We came up with the only sensible solution—a party! And one with a French flair to celebrate the arrival of Spring. We called it “La Fête du Printemps” and sent out homemade invitations to all of our friends and acquaintances. To our delight, most everyone replied in the affirmative. The night of the party our apartment was fully packed with giddy revelers. The bathtub in the blue bathroom was laden with ice and beverages, snack food was everywhere, and the music played on even though no one could hear it for all the exuberant chitter chatter. Since we were on the second floor, it was easy to notice there was a party going on, so some people who were just passing by decided to pop up and join in—until they were politely shown the back door. (Yes, we had two doors.)
It turned out to be the party of the season, perhaps of the decade, among our crowd. I’m not sure what made it so special, but a big dressy party in a huge apartment on the Upper West Side was about as glamorous as our lives got. And it was a collection of hilarious and endearing people, gushingly happiest when in each other’s company. What a welcome reprieve from the daily grind of life as a cash-poor wannabe.
For days after, we were uplifted by a constant stream of congratulations from friends (and each other) for throwing such a grand party. But soon it was back to mundane reality and the constant hustle for money. I certainly couldn’t afford luxuries like health insurance, travel, restaurants, clothes, or theater tickets. A treat at the time was the $8.95 macro-biotic dinner at Souen restaurant on the next block over. This was not how I had envisioned my future. I was supposed to be sipping champagne at pre-theater cocktail parties on Central Park West, not scraping together coins for the subway and a slice of pizza.
Of course, I had chosen a preposterous career endeavor and willingly gave up financial security for the creative life, so I couldn’t complain too much. However, my own difficulties and insecurities at the time engendered in me a deep empathy for everyone else who was treading water in this great land of plenty. I had grown up in the working class in a family of five children and little money, so the plight of the poor was not unknown to me. However, as an adult now trying to make his own way, I found it more and more unconscionable that so many had so little in the richest civilization in all of human history. Of course there was enough to go around for everyone, so why wasn’t that happening? What were the forces prohibiting social and economic equality? My secular humanist liberal heart believed that surely there was a philosophy or political system that would ensure none of us fell through the cracks and ended up talking to ourselves as we pushed a shopping cart down Broadway. I had to figure out what that might be.
Socialism was not new to me. Many people involved in the countercultural movement of the 60s and 70s advocated for some form of socialism, but I hadn’t investigated it in much depth at the time. Now as an adult, our political system held much more relevance for me, so I delved deeper. I found myself reading Marx and Engels and other socialist thinkers and started going to various party meetings as well. Soon I was enthusiastically on board the socialist train, charging full steam ahead to a classless society and economic justice. Friends and I even created a “Class Conscious Cabaret,” an evening of songs calling for people to rise up, end the horrors of class division and overthrow the capitalist pigs keeping us down. (Although the performers were extraordinary, it was a tad heavy on the party propaganda side, and not exactly a fun sing-along.)
After a year or so of exploring the isms on the far-left, I realized I felt even more oppressed than when I first began my foray into politics. The divisiveness of the myriad socialist parties and their relentless view of life as class struggle made me feel like I was trapped in a 1950s communist apartment building where all the doors led back inside. And like some of the socialist revolutionaries I met, I had become bitter and angry, seeing revolution as the only answer to society’s ills. My sense of humor had vanished; there was nothing funny (at the time) about the possibility of me running through the streets with a gun screaming “The revolution is here!” I lost hope in a political solution to remedy our country’s woes and slipped into an existential quagmire. There was obviously no hope for humanity, including me.
I retreated to our farm on the Upper West Side. I let my fields lie fallow. I smoked a lot of dope and listened to David Bowie albums over and over, looking for some kind of clue, some kind of inspiration on how to regain my cherished zaniness and muster up even a morsel of optimism. What is a freaked-out young artist in the big city to do? Move back to the Midwest? Go back to college and become an accountant for Price Waterhouse and hope to tabulate the Oscar ballots? But alas I couldn’t see a way forward through the haze of bafflement and pot smoke.
After weeks of hibernation, I grew weary of the fog and confusion and decided to look for professional help. I saw an ad in the Village Voice for “Gay Counseling,” with the fee based on what you could afford. I set up an appointment and went to a church in Grammercy Park where I met Bruce, the extraordinary man who would become my therapist. He claimed to have an affinity for me because he too grew up with a critical and unaccepting father and in a time when homosexuality was seen as both a mortal sin and a repugnant crime. Once a week on folding chairs in a small, plain room in the church, he helped me untangle neurotic knots and exhume years of buried pain. After a few years of working with him, I realized that a heavy weight I had felt pressing down upon me throughout most of my life had all but vanished. Bruce had eased my burden, and did so out of the generosity of his heart and care for the gay community. Talk about your good karma.
I would never have imagined getting into psychotherapy or delving into gay liberation and socialism prior to my years on the farm. I also never would have dreamed that Ronald Reagan would become President of these United States, and then set off a flurry of deregulation across the country causing real-estate prices to skyrocket in the city. We were all flabbergasted by this sudden craze, when it seemed only a short time ago that the city was crumbling. I gasped in disbelief when I heard that the rent of an apartment nearby had increased dramatically. “No one, but no one, will ever pay $325 for a one-bedroom apartment,” I proclaimed. Ah, such charming naiveté.
Now that a killing could be made in Manhattan real estate, our landlord decided to go for the big bucks too, and turn our building into a co-op. We were offered shares at a tantalizing insiders’ price and learned we could flip the apartment by buying it and then selling it for a profit to an outside buyer.
But we were conflicted. The amount of money we would make on this deal would allow us to move forward with our lives full throttle, but did we really want to leave our huge funhouse on the Upper West Side? Even if it didn’t always have heat and was located in a pretty dicey neighborhood, it had been our home for three eventful years. We had lived there through the blackout of 1977 and the subway strike of 1980, when neighbors across the city generously came together to see each other through the turmoil and disruption. We had become a part of the fabric of our neighborhood and didn’t want to tear ourselves away.
On the other hand, we were feeling the itch to be on our own or with a significant other, and yes, we really could use that money. After a few weeks of deep contemplation and stoned deliberation, we decided to take the offer. (Thank goodness I no longer felt beholden to the non-profit model of politics and government.) We bought the place at the insider’s price then flipped it for a profit, making more money than any of us had ever seen before. I have an old photograph of myself fanning my face with a large amount of bills that this sale bestowed upon me. We felt rich but we had paid a dear price. The farm was no longer ours.
The three of us moved into our own apartments elsewhere in the city. Mine was in the East Village, and I was thrilled to be moving into my very own place for the very first time in a very bohemian part of the city. With a nice wad of cash from the sale, a new neighborhood to discover, and a new creative project I was developing, things were finally looking up. And somehow, I just knew that love was not far behind (and it wouldn’t be).
My new apartment had a window looking out onto East 7th Street. Sometimes I would gaze out of it and wistfully recall my days on the farm. Then my super would start playing his bongos on the sidewalk below, an unending parade of punks, freaks, and hipsters would stream by, and I couldn’t imagine anyplace I would rather be.