[Critique Group 2] April Submission

Tue Apr 18 12:11:19 EDT 2023

Hey Folks,

Please find pasted below and attached as a word document, my submission for
April. It’s another page from my memory book. Anxious to hear your feedback
next week.

Dawn

Sunday, April 16, 2023

New York 2:38 PM

When I was a kid, growing-up in Watchung, New Jersey, my best friend, Sharon
Smith, lived in a big old Victorian farmhouse. It had three floors, with
multiple bedrooms of varying sizes, including some that were clearly
designated “servants’ quarters”. These rooms were small and easily accessed
by means of a back staircase, off the large kitchen. 

By contrast, the main staircase was a grand affair. Wide, with an ornate
wooden banister, it began in the big, front room of the house, turned to a
landing, and proceeded to the second floor. 

Most of the bedrooms were on the second floor, as was the only bathroom in
the house. Sharon and her three brothers inhabited the second-floor
bedrooms, while her parents had the third floor to themselves. 

There was also a basement, a side porch that was accessed by means of French
doors off the first-floor parlor, and an  enormous dining room. The large
kitchen gave onto a small breakfast nook where the family took many of its
meals. I imagine that the original occupants did not dine in this small room
but that the servants would have eaten there. There was a set of swinging
doors that opened onto the dining room. 

The house sat far back from the road, thanks to a tremendously long front
yard. No one ever entered through the front door. Folks always came up the
long gravel driveway, whether by car,  bike or on foot. Everyone entered
this formidable structure by means of the meager back porch. Rarely did we
kids play in the front yard, despite its impressive size. We spent a lot of
time in the basement, exploring the mysterious third floor or mucking around
in the barn.

I loved that old house. And, I loved being friends with Sharon. We met in
Mrs. Harrison’s second grade classroom, and we remained best friends through
seventh grade, when my family moved to North Plainfield. Even then, I would
often ride my bike up the mountain to Sharon’s house. At that point, though,
I had become closer to her brother Scott, who was a year or two younger than
us.

Scott was really funny and fun. He liked to play pranks, which I dislike
generally, but his pranks were innocent and fairly harmless most of the
time. There was  one not-so-harmless prank I remember vividly these 50 years
later, and that is the one that backfired on him.

The three of us were hanging out in Sharon’s room, smoking cigarettes,
watching Star Trek reruns on a little portable black and white TV. It was a
winter evening and that old house was drafty. Scott offered to go downstairs
and make us hot chocolate.

At the first commercial break, he slipped down the back staircase to the
kitchen. He returned, with three mugs of hot chocolate  and a plate of
butter cookies on a tray. I think there were mini-marshmallows melting in
the chocolate. I don’t quite remember, largely because of what happened
next. 

The chocolate tasted wrong from the first sip. I still don’t know what the
hell Scott put in my cup, but I leapt-up immediately and started heading for
the door, feeling an overwhelming need to vomit.

Ever the prankster, Scott stood barring the doorway. I still remember what
he was wearing: grey corduroy slacks and  a light-colored  fisherman’s knit
sweater, along with a big, goofy grin. 

I tried to hold back, but it was no use. I threw-up all over his sweater!
Good-natured as he was, Scott just stepped back and laughed, amused by his
own misfortune. I ran to the bathroom, and he went to change his shirt.

Scott and I remained good friends into our teenage years, even as Sharon and
I grew apart. It turned out Scott, like me,  was gay, though we knew it only
unconsciously when we were kids. I lost touch with him after I went away to
college.

Once when I was home from school for a weekend visit, my mom suggested we
have lunch at a trendy little café  that had recently opened downtown,
knowing full-well what a happy surprise lay ahead. Lo and behold but our
waiter was none other than my old friend, Scott! 

By then, we were both out, but geography prevented us from pursuing our once
strong friendship. I miss him, though, and his quirky sense of humor. How
sweet it would be now to have a friend from those long-ago days growing up
gay in suburban New Jersey, when no one talked openly about homosexuality
except to poke fun at someone’s being a sissy or a “queer”, then an
extremely derogatory term. 

I’ve often wondered with a heavy heart as to whether Scott survived the AIDS
crisis that ravaged the gay male population in the early nineteen-eighties.
So many friends contracted the illness and died before we ever even knew
what it was.  

-- 
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