Remembering the pain, and the joy

It was 2:00AM on a Sunday morning maybe; likely it was July, though it may have been August; we were at an empty apartment in Queens, or perhaps Long Island. The thing I know for certain is that it was the summer of 1971.

I was working at two Steak and Brew locations, both on the island: Hempstead and Merrick. I had dropped out of Notre Dame after Kent State – for anyone too young to know, to my generation that’s a date as much as a place. I spent the summer of 1970 working in Manhattan and the winter in Wilmington, Vermont, living the incredibly hedonistic life of a ski bum. When the snows melted I went back to the city to reclaim my job, but the only one they could offer me was in Merrick and later, Hempstead.

Between the two restaurants I found many friends and lots of good times. On this particular night a bunch of us, maybe a dozen, were sitting around smoking dope (weed in current parlance) in a truly empty apartment; someone had just moved out, or was about to move in, and so the place had no furniture, no running water and no lights. We were sitting on the floor passing a joint and when I started coughing a buddy handed me the only thing we had to drink, a bottle of Jack Daniels! Oh, the things we did for our highs back in the day.

At around two in the morning I announced I was going out for a walk; Matt, a waiter I knew a bit from Merrick, said he'd come with me. We were all killing time before a pre-dawn road trip to Boston and I needed to clear my head. Matt, as you'll see, needed the same, in spades.

Matt was gorgeous. I mean drop-dead, head-turning, Italian model gorgeous. Think John Travolta in his Saturday Night Fever days, but far prettier. He oozed sex, but also charm. He had the best hair on Long Island. His girlfriend Sally was a hot Italian babe who got huge tips from the men, nasty stares from the women.

They were a dream couple and I liked them both, if only superficially. (Left: Matt was this good looking, and then some).

So Matt and I are walking on a beautiful summer night; I was stoned enough to think the street lamps were showering us with magical light and we were talking about work, about Boston, about New York and about wanting to have sex together.

WHAT?

Yes, it’s true. In the middle of nothing in particular Matt says, “Walter, I've never told anyone this and I've never done anything about it, but I want to have sex with a guy, and I want that guy to be you.”

I was stunned. Shocked. Astounded. And delighted. The thing is, this was 1971; I wasn't out to anyone. In fact I wasn't totally sure I was gay. I had had sex with all of three men, and none of it had gone particularly well. Yes, I was well aware how good looking Matt was but I don't think I had even entertained the idea of bedding him. He was straight; he was with Sally; end of story.

But there it was. We opened up to each other, walked for at least another hour and struggled hard to not jump each other’s bones on a random neighbor’s suburban lawn.

As fate would have it – or, the queer gods, if you will – Matt and I ended up in bed that very night. We were in Boston and five of us stayed with my Notre Dame buddy Steve. He was the one who assigned the sleeping spaces and, with no idea what it would mean, he told me and Matt to take the room by itself up on the third floor (thank you, queer gods). Obviously, Sally was not on this trip.

Matt and I fell madly in love. He demanded we keep it secret and I was closeted enough that I was okay with that. Anything to be with this beautiful man. It was intense. It was emotional. It was wonderful.

And it ended within a month. Badly. Very badly.

In a shouting scene worthy of Edward Albee Matt told me he wasn't gay, that he hated me for making him think he was and that he never wanted to see me again.

He got his wish. I haven't seen him or heard from him in forty-two years. The pain no longer throbs of course, but the memories are clear as a bell, and I remember that pain. Though I don't think what he said was true, I know that whenever a couple breaks up there’s fault on both sides. For years I wanted to try to talk things out but he never responded to any attempts I made to contact him.

And that, folks, is the incredibly long preamble to the story I am really here to tell today. (Note: I told a shorter version of this preamble in April of 2010 in a post named Coming Out, Part 1).

Just three months before this painful, painful break-up Graham Nash released his first solo album, Songs for Beginners. To this day it is still easily in my Top 5 albums of all time; it may well be my number one favorite album of all time. I have quoted before in this blog a few lines that hit me very hard that summer:

When your love has moved away

You must face yourself

And you must say

I remember better days

On the drive down to Richmond, Virginia, at the end of that summer, within maybe two weeks of Matt's devastating exit, I played Graham Nash’s album over and over and over, crying for most of the 400 miles from Long Island to the Old Dominion. (I also played Cat Steven’s album, Tea for the Tillerman a lot: "Now that I've lost everything to you / You say you want to start something new / And it's breaking my heart you're leaving / Baby, I'm grieving." My heart was breaking).

In all the years since I have played both those albums hundreds of times. I have bought many other Graham Nash albums as well as Crosby and Nash albums and, of course, albums by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, with or without Neil Young. But I go back to Songs for Beginners more than any of them.

This Sunday, forty-two years later, I finally heard Graham Nash in concert for the first time. I went with my friend Kathy who, ironically, I met within weeks of arriving in Richmond after that tortuous, tear-filled drive. She lives in Nyack, NY, across the river from the concert venue, the Tarrytown Music Hall. We were dear friends and roommates in Richmond, and have maintained contact ever since.

It was a terrific concert. He started by reaching all the way back to his days with the Hollies, opening with Bus Stop. He sang songs from all sides of his career; from my adored Songs for Beginners album he sang four songs: I Used to Be a King, A Simple Man, Military Madness, and Chicago. Though he didn't sing Better Days, he sang for almost two and-a-half hours and I was thrilled. He talked between each song, not too much, just enough. Often he told us the genesis of a song. Remember Our House from the CSNY second album, Déjà Vu?

I’ll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase
That you bought today . . .

Well that’s exactly what happened when he and Joni Mitchell came home after she had bought a vase she had admired in a store window. By the time he got to the chorus, “Our house is a very, very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard / Life used to be so hard / Now everything is easy ‘cause of you” everyone in the audience was singing along – at Nash’s encouragement.

The final encore was another sing-along, the immortal (yes, I choose that word carefully) Teach Your Children. I turned to Kathy as we were walking out and said “it’s hard to choke back tears and sing at the same time.”

Was it worth the 42-year wait? Absolutely! And what have I played since Sunday night? Oh, Songs for Beginners four times, Teach Your Children as many, and lots of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tunes from this wonderfully-gifted, politically-perfect 71-year old musician whom I now love more than ever, if that’s possible.