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Summer of 69

Posted by HIM on Wednesday May 6th, 2009

Stonewall, it’s been 35 years. Judy Garland, do ordinary twenty-year old gay guys know who she is? Have they seen the Wizard of Oz? I’m sure most do not know how to Google Judy: within seconds find accounts of her funeral on June 27th 1969. What was in the air: outside the funeral parlour that day, a huge congregation of gay men, the power of numbers. Men who had grown up identifying themselves, not as gay, but as “friends of Dorothy.” Men who would adopt her “Over the Rainbow” as a gay national anthem. As the story goes, later that night at the Stonewall Inn, a routine police raid; grief became rage, gay men fought back and the gay rights movement was born.

“Back in the summer of ‘69” I was sixteen, living in the middle of the Kawartha Lakes, cottage country northeast of Toronto. I don’t recall any mention of Stonewall; however, I do remember other things that happened that summer: the moon landing, Chappaquiddick, Woodstock, the Manson murders in Hollywood. I had a small transistor radio and I’ll never forget the music: Aquarius; Easy To Be Hard; Lay Lady Lay; A boy Named Sue; Wichita Lineman; Sweet Caroline; My Way (Frank Sinatra); Come Together; Crystal Blue Persuasion; In the Ghetto; You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’; Abraham, Martin and John; In the Year 2525….

The summer of ’69, but not, as Bryan Adams would sing years later, “The best days of my life.” I began the summer oh-so-stoned, nothing hippy, rather the product of daily pills in a paper cup – I spent three weeks in the psych ward of the local hospital suffering from depression. Not so stoned, not so depressed, however, to not want to touch the dark skin of one of the male orderlies. Three years since I’d heard the new word homosexual on TV, had grabbed the dictionary and said, yes, that’s me. And four years since my first “experience” with another twelve-year old boy.

After the hospital I went for a stay with Toronto relatives. There were a lot of these visits – both my parents were dead – days spent roaming the new Yorkdale shopping mall (the pioneer of Canadian covered malls, and air-conditioned); but not surprising, I was still depressed. The relevant adults tried something else and I was sent to camp Timberwolf in Algonquin Park. A beautiful camp counselor taught me to water-ski. I had late night rides on the back of his motorcycle, arms around his waist. I spied on him – he slept naked – and I was no longer depressed.

Back home – except there was no home really – I moved to a boarding house. The owner had a sixteen-year old son: his long dark hair, love at first sight for me.

Over the next year we became very close, though I would end up moving to another boarding house. We shared pizza, Pepsi, men’s magazines, Old Sailor wine; often on weekends we shared his bed. Nothing physical, beyond a sort-of-cuddling. But my friend’s harpy of a mother had strong instincts. She had suspicions, something to do with a part time job her son found, nude modeling for a local sculptor up the Ottonobee River – Margaret Laurence’s famous river, it so happens, the one that “flows two ways” – but I never discovered the truth about the sculptor business. My friend’s mother decided to call the police to put a scare into us. She allowed two burly brutes into her house, directed them to her son’s room. They were surely disappointed, I remember we were just eating potato chips. After failing to extract sordid admissions, they separated us, and one of the officers drove me home. He shared his profound wisdom: “If you behave like that — that queer stuff — you will be in prison for the rest of your lives.” My silence was my wall of stone.

My friend and I met much later that night, outside the town on the railway tracks. We swore, we laughed hysterically. We would soon follow the direction of those tracks to the big city; and the next summer, each in our own way, we would discover Yonge Street.

— Craig W. Barron
Originally written for Gaze published by Gayway