Orr Stories

Happy Halloween World! NYC 2008

2008-10-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

Nowhere Girl as Lip synced by St.Orr; music by B-Movie

The Dream (begun 9-24-08)

2008-09-24T06:35:00.001-07:00

The Dream (begun 9-24-08)

How can I describe to you what death is like? It's the sweet light of looking into your beloved's eyes without fear, without pain, without hope; but with all the longing in the world that you are seeing him (or her) truly for the first and the last time. All the certainty that you will recognize each other in one brilliant flash of love and magic. You remember love? That feeling like in high school that you are terribly high when you're in the presence of your beloved? So nervous that when you're with them the rest of the world melts away...that feeling that your going to burst out in song; that your heart is going 10000 m.p.h.--as fast as the car you're driving down South Lake Drive following his tail lights because he is the only reason you are driving out tonight--yes he is the only reason you are alive tonight; blasting that song on the radio, the windows down, the breeze beating through the car, your hair blowing so completely and utterly free (remember when you had hair?) and then you see his car and you smile thinking "You're the one!" "You're the whole bloody reason I'm out tonight, driving around like a maniac with that single purpose of just to getting one glimpse of you and I’m hoping that you will hear my song for you--that you will see it in my eyes”...Then I press on the gas and pass you and do my movie star smile (that I've rehearsed so many times) and you're eyes' light sparkle back at me and I know I've won--just in that moment--I know I've won you and I can't fail because I'm going 1000 m.p.h. and I don't care if I crash--I've showed you I can break all the rules--I've showed you how brave being in love with you can make me feel. Totally shameless and totally superman---

And there it was--all the most beautiful moments of your life, strung together like perfect peals around the neck of the most beautiful whore you've ever been with. And he says "It's all about you--I'm here for you, You're perfect, you're enough..."

Dear Jamile:
So, how did the temp agency interview go? I was watching channel 13 last night in which several pundits of Wall Street were discussing how the new crash is going to effect the city. One woman forecasted that the disparity between the super rich and the poor is going to be less. A real estate person said that property values in the city will begin to approach what they are REALLY worth. I made some great music on my Project studio--part Progressive House and part Gospel. Before that I taught a class at CRUNCH--had a great work out and met a really hot guy named Juan Carlos in the sauna. I think he wanted to jerk off but there's no way I'm going to do that in a public place! How embarrassing it would be to be caught and fired from the work place--even though it's only CRUNCH and not Equinox!

Before that I went out to La Guardia Community college to see about teaching English as a Second Language --or rather volunteering my time to teach; I'm not sure if I will like this but as I'm getting old and my health insurance will soon end--I must find some other way to make money to supplement my massage work.

I know how nervous you get before interviews; did you have to take a typing test? I remember when we first met in college and you wanted to become a sports caster....how you loved baseball! Then you had that awful experience working at ESPN with that Gay stalker and the awful fat Latin woman who made up all that gossip about you. Boy--I'm not the suing type but I really would have sued their asses--not just signed a piece of paper and left peacefully with a measly "pay off" the way you did and then spending months recovering from the sheer viciousness of people. Yes, people in corporations can be vicious; yes people on the street can be vicious. Was there a time I can remember when I still thought people were kind? That life was pretty cool and fair? If I could only remember that! I know it's hard to when the final bomb falls and you really get a taste of “No Justice for all”. The fall from innocence is hard but picking yourself up is the only way not to be a victim.

I had this incredibly vivid dream about being dead. I dreamed that I could see people who had died fade away--and while they were fading away--they were dancing or running as they became invisible. And they were calling out "Goodbye" to the ones who were left, who weren't dead yet. "Goodbye, goodbye--so sorry I couldn't help you the way I wanted to...I REALLY DID mean to help you more--guide you, keep you, protect you like all the good angels but the script ended here and I guess you're on your own...No I don't really have any secrets to tell you other than find the beautiful moments and cling to them--no--don't cling--rather try to recreate them in photographs, in poetry and music because that's your escape. That's better than sex and heaven. That's what art is--it makes life bearable. It doesn't matter if you're famous or if millions of people know your name. What really matters is that you've made a beautiful death yourself--a lovely lost scene that you can play over again and again--and it's night and everyone's magical and lovely and fading and you can see the magic and the love in evey one's eyes and everyone is looking for that one special one and they are so self-assured that the other is there and will soon appear. It's kind of like seeing people as a beautiful sunrise over the cape. Kaleidoscopic colors like acid. Ships appearing to float in space, come together like lovers or strangers, then disappear.

What else do we have? I had a friend, I wrote music--it was all I needed to do to be happy--before the gravity got to me and gorgeous cape light turned into a grey shade of dish water...the body decays...never enough time, energy, retirement--what's that? I've played my life away--I'm a player. I should get a motorcycle and live on the open road. Perhaps traveling through every small town in America seeking out Lesbian families, Tranny prostitutes--anything underground, the hurt, the dreamers, the true outcasts that have the balls to stand up in the small towns and walk down the streets....with their head high--not the sell-out, the deal makers, the whoremongers with their techniques of using people and throwing them away; their techniques of developing real estate and killing the earth-- the number-crunchers---"GOD BLESS AMERICA---LAND THAT I LOVE---" I hate that song, now the one I wrote last night really rocked me!

It's time to leave and take the train up to the cancer hospital and be around the dying. My hands get so tired--it's never enough money...we are here and then we go--we make films of how we want life to be; we score the soundtrack. Then we dress and get on the train to reality which basically sucks...I had a dream that I died and there was magic in everyone; and I saw it--the magic and love in everyone fading away...

THE MEN IN MY LIFE

2007-12-12T10:22:00.000-08:00

“The Men In My Life”-final 7-01-05
Amsterdam
c.2007

When I was 18 my Father died of a heart attack. My Mother claims that my Father-(“Fat Dad” who was obese and smoked cigarettes)-had just finished making love to her and while still on top of her, he came, made a “gagging sound”—promptly rolled over and died. It’s a bit unusual because back in 2000, some 28 years later when my stepfather (“Cheap Dad”) died of a heart attack—he too had just finished making love to her, came, made a “gagging sound”—rolled over and died.

I can almost picture my Mother, martyr-like, dour and all-addicted to sadness as some Black Widow circumventing the globe and doing her part in the population control program focused on getting rid of old stingy white men OR middle aged fat rage-aholic white men who had outlived their usefulness on the planet.

I think my Mother’s clearest moments are when she’s talking about exercise or being outside. Even at a very young age, 7 or 8, I remember coming home from school and seeing her doing her leg raises (which I could never do). It seems like she had a sexy six pack (like Venus de Milo) before anybody coined the phrase.

Fat Dad was overweight, smoked two packs of Parliaments a day, was hyper tense and died (in Mom’s arms) of a heart attack at the ripe old age of 44. Cheap Dad was a real tight-wad and loved to nag but had the redeeming qualities of not being abusive physically AND was both super organized and able to build or fix anything from shed latches to car engines to swamp coolers. I was never handy like that. Fat Dad could fix things—if he didn’t break them first. Cheap Dad had an estate worth more than four million when he died. My Mother’s death benefits consisted of a grand total of twenty thousand, half of which she divided between me—which I promptly used to go out and buy a top of the line PC; and my Brother (“Jailbird Bro”). Bro, (a.k.a. “Gregg”) was a former drug dealer, substance abuser and alcoholic. Gregg promptly spent his inheritance on gambling during the time between his first and second stays in the state pen.

Who were these males that made up the so-called male role models in my life? Fat Dad, Cheap Dad and Jail Bird Bro. Ahh my testosterone legacy. My imprint.

Fat Dad fancied himself the happy fat guy, the perfect host when he wasn’t in a rage about something. He could be a charming lady’s man with a yen for mixing mouth-watering Manhattans, playing Guy Lombardo or “The Ink Sports” on his big Magnavox stereo and casting easy, off-color racist, sexist or just plain old dirty jokes. He pictured himself a “company man” too, capable of walking both sides of the fence when it came to playing both the friend of the working man and confidant of corporate managers or the Big Guys upstairs in the suits and ties.

Cheap Dad was former metal worker, all around fix-up man and, well, did I say cheap? He had a sense of humor so dry, airless and stagnate it rivaled the Mojave Desert (or an empty peanut shell) that was basically non-existent. He would criticize the way you ate, buttered your toast, applied mayonnaise or any activity. Once when I went back to Crivitz, Wisconsin for a visit he made some comment about AIDS and I replied that I was busy spreading the virus around his house. One of the earliest conversations I had with him he went on at length about “bending over to pick up a bar of soap in a public shower with other men” and what exactly the word “Greek” meant. He was a stingy homophobic S.O.B. but I am grateful to him for leaving my Mother the dear little trailer out in Arizona, where, after he died I proceeded to go out and visit from about 2000 on. It was safe when he was gone. Just like I felt safe in my house when my real Dad was gone.

Jailbird Bro’s first and foremost line to me after his first incarceration was that “we are brothers so we will always have a blood connection that no one else will ever rival.” He also had a proclivity for telling funny and ironic stories often tinged with racism (prison stories) or red-neckism (good old boys he worked with at the corn syrup factory after the drug-dealing days)—though he often had forgotten the first telling and would go on to repeat the story a second and third time. Bro. also that that self-centered element of “I am the King and you are all my slaves” quality that Fat Dad had but unlike Fat Dad, Bro. had a con man’s innate ability to always be on the lookout for a fast buck, an easy ride or to take “the path of least resistance” as they say in the dumbed-down New Age circles. He had a talent for attaching himself to situations which first seemed to bring him security but which later blew up in his face. Like the 3rd or 4th wife he married for the health benefits. He finally had the double knee replacement he wanted but ended not being covered by that wife’s insurance so he filed for divorce and bankruptcy in prison and the wife got all his worldly possessions EXCEPT his trumpet which my Mother managed to get back for him.

Jailbird Bro pictured himself a great Romeo too--last month’s smoking and boozing girlfriend would be trying to set the house on fire this month. And who could blame them? He wanted the security of a home, to be taken care of but seldom offered anything in return besides his prowess in the sack (which, in the heavy cocaine using years wasn’t there). Like the worst of the heterosexual male characteristics, JailBird’s emotional life always seemed somehow muted when it came to personal matters of intimacy. His latest instruction to the current girlfriend is “After we have sex do me a favor and just don’t talk to me for like two hours—okay?” When she suggested he get therapy, his reply was—if she didn’t like the way he was—he could always leave. Also, like Fat Dad, Jailbird is still prone to what I call “getting his period”. That’s when, for no apparent reason, not even to himself—he cops a “bad attitude”, the perennial chip on his shoulder appears. When this happens you better steer clear.

My male role models. The quintessence of Americana. Thank You God---oh MY blessed ROOTS! ; )

"Surviving Dad and Cudahy, Wisconsin" c. 2005 by St.Orr

2007-11-27T01:54:00.000-08:00

"Surviving Dad
and Cudahy, Wisconsin"

c. 2005 by St.Orr

Today—Aug. 4, 2005 in Amsterdam it is cloudy, overcast and muggy. I’m fighting the urge to go the “Day Spa” (the queer Baths) just down the block—I decide to write instead. Cloudy, overcast and muggy—then a molten sun bleeds through heating the skin on my face like a small Dutch oven heats and toasts the sweet cinnamon toast I treat myself to every morning from “Health Wanker” the organic food store down the street called “Tweede Looiersdwarsstraat” (which is really an alley) and across the Elandsgracht. I am in apartment number 40 for the summer. The sun feels so so good, the silvery North Sea sun. A ladybug wonders up the brick wall off the tiny terrace (“room for one”) in the rear and jettisons off.

This overcast sky looks like the sky over Lake Michigan in a south suburb of Milwaukee—“Cudahy”. The name so ugly spoken on the lips it makes you feel sick to your stomach. “Cud”—as in cow chewing a cud; “a” as in long A and hy as in “Hay”—“cow chewing cud of hay.” A name for a town that never existed. A name for a town I survived…the place of my High school and Junior High school years; the place where I came of age.

Chapter 1
It’s 1972 in Cudahy, on Lakeshore Drive. I can see my fat Dad sitting on the front cement porch. He’s sitting in his white silk “muscle tee shirt” with his stomach hanging over his favorite baggy blue pants, sloppy brown sandals, eternal cigarette in hand, legs sprawled open, dreamy angry lost look in his eyes as he stares away at something in the distance. There is maybe a glimmer of sadness in his eyes. Does the thought pass through his mind that soon he will die? This is to be his last summer on earth. Maybe he just feels it, just a feeling in his soul.

Hector (my Mom shortened it to this from his middle name “Heckman”) has lots of fat—especially in his tits. They are like a fat farm woman’s, large droopy things sloping down his chest like mountains. He wheezes slightly when he breathes. The first heart attack has come and gone more than four years before when we lived on Edgerton Ave. (another ugly name). Then, he sat in his easy chair all day long with a hot water bottle on the left side of his shoulder swearing that it was just “bad digestion”. Afterward, in the hospital the doctor told him he had to stop smoking, it was a major coronary. The third day a nurse bought him a new pack of Parliaments. Was that Nineteen sixty eight or nine? I recall both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King being shot--Milwaukee under martial law for a few days. The country was this close to a revolution but no one knew it back then. I remember marching for Angela Davis—it was the cool thing to do and it felt good, it gave one a purpose and it was another way to connect to others to flee the silly suburban safe world of green lawns, cars and white people.

I was desperate for him to live. I wanted him to be healthy. I wanted a friend for a father—not some fat fearful thing. After “the First One” (heart attack No. 1) I would take the new packs of fags he bought when he got out of the hospital and stick holes in them and try to bury then in the small garden that lined our sidewalk. He made me go out and collect them. He needed to smoke. He was always smoking. Life was an endless chain of cigarettes.

Smoke, fire. I recall when about 3 or 5 and he set himself on fire while cleaning a hot water heater--with a gasoline soaked rag WHILE the pilot light was on--in the basement of our little white house on North Fourth Street—screaming like an animal at the base of the stairs engulfed in flames. Mother drove him to the hospital in the big black marshmallow of a Buick. She put me in the car between herself and Dad. I sat in the middle crying and watching one flame lick his forearm while he murmured and whimpered like a deranged thing, nude, next to me, wrapped only in a white stippled bedspread.

Later I asked God to “please let him live” on neighbor Hattie’s screen porch—I knew she was watching me as a prayed. He survived. Weeks later when he was back home again—healing--I couldn’t stand the sight of his bloody-skinned-monster-body. The burned boils and skin sloughing off, transplanted skin and still festering, regrowing, oozing and glistening like some living crimson filth thing. My brother and I were allowed to watch TV while we ate—otherwise we couldn’t eat and Dad couldn’t wear a shirt while he was healing from the burns.

Looking back at Dad’s burning accident I’m in awe at the strength that he had—that our family had--to survive that experience and live together for another x amount of years.

Dad is a perfect model for a fat laughing Chinese Buddha when he’s in a good mood-- from rage hell on the phone screaming and screaming about this train on that track and that track on this train--when he’s in a bad. My Brother has recently become a drug dealer, selling marijuana by the pound. He’s big into it. His wife Joan (a dead ringer for an Ivory Girl who later marries a preacher) has left him and is living with my parents on Lakeshore Drive in Cu-da-hy. At one point they even try to match me up with Joan but I’m too busy either playing “nice” or “dumb” in public and masturbating to pictures of male bodybuilders in private. All this adds to the stress and pain my Father is going through. Bad for the heart muscle…

Life’s going to hell in the 70’s. Our family is imploding—all the dysfunctions are melting the veneer down like Christopher Plummer burning and melting at the end of a “B” Dracula movie when the sunlight hits him. First Benji, our neurotic dachshund dies. His back just goes out after he has sat vertically sitting up on that long “weener dog” back begging for food at every meal for the past twelve years. My Mother taught him that. He’s put to sleep.

I’m away at my first week of college when “the Big One” (heart attack No. 2) comes. I am awakened by a phone call in the early frosty cold fall morning in a dorm. in Stevens Point, WI and a tearful Mother informs me Dad has died. I remember in our last conversation we talked about pillows. “Come home son” says Mom. I sit in the car studying the crystallized paisley design of frost on the windshield as an older student with a handlebar moustache drives me to the bus station. I am numb. It’s finally happened. I’m supposed to cry but tears aren’t coming. This isn’t right I think—I am supposed to be crying. I pretend to cry—I force myself and finally a few tears come on the bus back to Milwaukee—to (hate the sound) “Cudahy”. Why aren’t there tears--that this overweight man of 44 years has died--this man called “Dad”? My feelings seem unnatural—almost as unnatural as living with this raging, self-centered, bullying, never wanting to get deep, pseudo-redneck thing for some 19 years. This fat complex, dreamy, angry-swinger-wanna-be.“Hector”. My blood.

As I watch him smoke—I could be a passing stranger on South Lake Drive in an anonymous car. Does he know he’ll soon be gone-a mere ghost of another American male sent to Heaven by a heart attack? What if someone informed him of the future? Warned him of impending doom and he took up jogging? Had psychotherapy? Tried to actually CONNECT to his family in a real way? Fantasies. Too much tension, cholesterol, rage. Too much trying to keep a family together that’s blown-up now and sent shrapnel flying everywhere as if hit by a bomb—the bomb called “the seventies”. Too much for one man.

Cut to a typical weekend at home entertaining. The “Ink Spots” are playing. Dad’s lighting up again and mixing fresh Manhattan’s for all the dollys, for company is coming. The dollys are the wives of the men he works with—he loves to schmooze them and make them laugh with his stories, his sarcastic wit, his humor and his meanness and they—suburban white Milwaukee folks—love him. They love his charm, his power, his overbearingness, his brash sarcasm. This fat, sexy man with balls, with power. They don’t see him raging on the phone and if they did they’d say—“There’s a man who loves his job—who works hard, who demands.” Hector’s “The American Dream”.

They say things happen in threes. First was neurotic Benji; Second was my Father. His heart explodes early one morning after a big night on the town to try to forget with food, booze and cigarettes that his world is coming apart—that he has no control, no power—this powerful man is finally and at last powerless. At night in bed after he makes love to my Mother one last time, his world stops as his heart explodes. The ambulance comes—they try to revive him…too many cigarettes, too many Manhattans and phone calls screaming with rage and fighting with my brother because he’s dealing. A drug dealer! In the Orr Family! Unheard of!

Here is Number Three. For the next two weeks Nina, my Mother’s older protective sister joins her, helps her arrange the funeral and get things in order. After a week I’m back at Stevens Point. Another week passes and one morning my Mother calls again in tears. Nina’s dead. She returned to New Mexico and a few days later was broadsided in a car wreck in the mountains outside of Las Cruces. She had to be cut out of the camper she and Harry, her husband were driving. After “the jaws of death” pry her out like a mangled sardine from the metal vehicular coffin--she lasts for a few hours and dies before they reached the hospital in an agony of pain.

Harry Hartman—Nina’s husband of some 30 years and a bit of a scalawag and a bully himself (like my Dad) later proposed to Mother within a few short days of Nina’s funeral. He had survived the mountain crash without a scratch. My Mom said no as it wouldn’t feel right as he and Nina had raised her for a time after her own parents died of alcoholism, incest, or mysterious nervous breakdowns. She couldn’t see sleeping with Harry as he had been like a Father to her. Within a year he is dead of a heart attack. Harry, Duane, and another Harry (to come—see “The Men In My Life” available for reading in “Archives”).

Within a few days after The Big One, the dreamy eyed angry sad fat man is a little shriveled thing in a coffin. When we had to shop for it, it was lined up in the basement along with hundreds of others like shining spaceships ready for their rocket launch into the cold moist Illinois earth. The chosen one was blue and metallic like a car—and as expensive as a used one. At the initial viewing, he’s laid out wearing his Masonic apron. An American flag is folded alongside him (for he was a veteran of two wars).

“His hands” my Mother says—“Please change his hands”. They are like dried claws of birds curling into and just up from his groin. The undertaker asks us to leave the room for a moment. I imagine him breaking, stretching, moving, manipulating the claw-like things into a more natural pose—maybe one over the other—as if he was resting on a lawn chair in the sun. No—then they’d be behind his back. One over the other is NOT Dad’s body language but it will do. I’ve never seen my Father look so peaceful. He was never peaceful, never smiling like that in his sleep. He slept with his mouth open, snoring loudly like a big old fat bear. And there’s his nose. It isn’t right. It looks stuffed with something. How can a dead man smile? It’s a fake smile, scarily fake. As phony as the wet-lidded tears of Cy Law the undertaker who addresses us in the hushed tones of a quivering jellyfish.

But before, before that Big One--I’m coming home from school and have to walk past him-which I hate. He embarrasses me and I fear him. It’s hard to breathe in the house when he’s there. His anger is free-floating, everywhere like some dark cloud just about to burst and shower in every room. He is fear and cold. The epitome of every negative of every straight man I have ever known. The “Grand Cunt” of my life.

“How’s school?” he asks-like every day and every day I answer the same. “Fine” as if dismissing his invasion of my private life; a sarcastic—but not too obviously so “fine” for he attacks “smart mouth” fast, in the blink of an eyelash. Now I reflect what if—like all the “what if’s” of the parts of a life that could have, would have been but never did—never were. The unlived life—mine.

“Oh really fucking good” I see myself attacking him one day after he asks that same sickening boring question like every other stupid-ass day he ever asked it. Like he wanted a REAL ANSWER!

“Fucking swell” I start to scream, to come alive—to wake up and stand up to him and all his fat and all the fear he ever made me feel. “I’M A BIG QUEER you fat fucking REDNECK old LADY you! YOU HEAR ME—I’’M FUCKING QUEER! THERE! NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING DO ABOUT THAT???” Throw me out on the street??!!! I can always SELL MY BODY! I’D welcome that! Anything would be better than this constipated angry HELL of a coffin you call a house we live in—a family—WHAT FAMILY? We don’t talk. We EXCUSE ourselves—WE ATTACK—and when not attacking we creep!”

Oh the joy I feel—like an exorcism just imagining that it could have happened…but no. It was just “Fine” and I pass him, afraid of his invasions, his eyes that stare into nothing, his fat and his rage. He can hurt me, he can hurt me bad. Years later I realize that I’ve assimilated him into me. Where there should be self-confidence, there’s a self-bullying, self-loathing voice. It’s him—in me! The bad voice, his legacy to me. And it’s busy looping. Beating up me. “I’m sorry” is my favorite phrase when I really want to push someone down the stairs. “Excuse me” a cue for the imaginary power drill I use to put people’s eyes out. The rage flies up at any time—and oh how professional I am at concealing all feelings!

I can flash for just a millisecond of a moment on the vision of a handsome, svelte, friendly man who is my Father. Having heart to heart talks with him every day about everything from God to penises to boys to girls and animals and being and doing and wow I think that would have been so so nice. A man to love, to be my friend. My Dad—beyond the real world. But that Dad’s a fantasy.

My Father was an only child and I heard that he was beaten by Edna Heckman—a very strict domineering, smart and charming woman—when he was small. That’s what Lucy Miller says. That she saw him get beat up a lot in that house where he was raised on the Hospital Hill. And Lucy should know. She lived right across the street.

Grandmother “Nan”, fat Dad’s Mom, made THE BEST cinnamon rolls in the world and even her toast made of homemade bread was to die for—literally. Her secret? BUTTER! The men in my family all died of butter. It marked the end of a genetic line…first my Grandfather—a dead-ringer for Robert Taylor until he gets fat in his forties. At 54 he is dead of his big one. His bladder let’s go in his easy chair as his heart explodes one morning as Nan calls him to breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast with cinnamon rolls and lots and lots of butter. My Dad goes next at 44.

I am queer at 51 as I write this in Amsterdam. I have no lover and no intention of seeing my genes carried on into the future. I was not meant to breed. Love and sex for me is to be enjoyed as a kind of heaven on earth (as an antidote to pain perhaps?). No—let’s call it what it is. “Lust” is the antidote to the Black Hole of sin which is my Father’s legacy to me. The sin of loving someone who can’t possibly love you back. So you’re left wanting—for years—and you begin early. Begin to fill the wanting with lust.

Sometimes I go for the butter but I spent a lot of time dancing and biking and at the gym. Intense physical activity and working out is a great antidote for constant heartache! A way of healing…

My Father—“the charmer”—the swinger! I always pictured him as being bisexual for some reason. I remember once he sent my Mother a picture from Korea—he’d reenlisted after World War II. He loved the army—couldn’t get enough tough guy shit. It taught him to be a manly man, swear and piss in the street, drink and be machismo like the rest of the guys. In this picture he’s in a hot tub of corrugated metal. Steam is rising from the water, soap in one hand. And that look at he stares at the camera—that sexy “Come hither look” he’s got on his face. I always imagine him about to fuck the photographer—or be fucked.

The constant pressure to maintain a veneer. To squelch all the feelings of sadness and pain and joy that simply and naturally are a part of life. To maintain a mask while underneath, the body’s building up the cholesterol into hardening arteries squeezing to the breaking point and finally rupturing, exploding. The final release at last; intense pain and then exquisite nothingness.

Dad—what were you so afraid of? Life? Your inability to control anything?—That being number one, your family--one son odd, maybe a queer--and the other a drug dealer. “--Not in the script—not supposed to be how--now-I’m--dying—the pain—“.

He is dead at 44. The heart-attack was massive…from the food and feasting, the wining and dinning, the laughing too loud, the need to entertain. Oh you sad sad happy-angry clown! The cigarettes, the Manhattans, the Ink Spots or Guy Lombardo playing on the stereo. When company’s sufficiently drunk he puts on the Rusty Warren “Knockers UP” album for that “touch of Blue” to get down, to get risqué (but he would never use THAT word). The cool, swinging, sexy fat man—making all the dolly’s laugh at his off-color jokes. The charming bully.

Queer Me Is Born Anew in Make-Up

Fire, breathing, bisexuality. Breathing. Before the first heart attack one Saturday night, 8th Grade—circa ’69, Dad and Mom go out. I’m very into Mother’s make up in their bedroom. I have just learned how to masturbate and putting on her lipstick and eyeliner give me an erection. I am discovering something other than fear and pets in my life. It’s very powerful and fun. I wanted to look like her—beautiful perfumed Barbie Doll—eternal June Cleaver everything is perfect-Mom-of the 50’s and 60’s. Even when it’s not—it’s the 70’s and the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Imploding before our eyes…let’s NOT talk about it!

So, I’m all made up and with a hard-on and suddenly they are coming home way too early. I smear cold cream on my fact and dive onto the couch feigning boredom in front of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” as they enter. ”What the HELL have you got on YOUR FACE?” my Father accuses, as if I’m wearing dogshit—as if I’ve been eating it.

“I WANNA BE A GODDAMED GIRL!” I scream! “I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THIS FUCKING CHARADE (I’m kicking and screaming on the floor)—I AM A GIRL INSIDE you FAT FUCK. I’M REALLY A GIRL! The girl on the inside IS SHOWING ON THE OUTSIDE—THAT’S WHAT I’VE GOT ON MY FACE! AND I’VE GOT A FUCKING HARD-ON TOO BITCH!”

Ohhh delicious fantasy. Almost as good as sex! For the next 20 minutes or so my Mom goes on and on about how weird it is that I “need to play in her make-up like a girl”, (“Steve’s not a fighter.” All the queer signs. “He’s not a fighter—he’s the artistic one”). Christ how many times was THAT drilled into me until it’s no wonder I was a walking BULLSEYE for other kids to attack—I was incapable of raising my hand to ward off any blow. I was paralyzed by their programming. I believe at a very young age my Mother in fact planted the idea into my head that I was a girl, or no—maybe, just maybe that idea was just there from the moment of my creation.

I lie and make up some lame-o excuse about wanting to practice making up a Monster face for Halloween…yeah, right. A Monster with big red lips and lots of rouge and eye shadow! Clown drag is more like it. The beginning of the lies…they were all there. Mixed up and in with the feelings. You learn how be lie and practice deceit as a way to not awake the constantly slumbering beast of rage that dwells with you day by day. Moment by moment, you learn not to walk, but to mince around as if on egg-shells. Pretending pretending pretending. Entertaining becomes a way of survival, a means of distracting the despot on the throne—you become the court jester—at times you fantasize assassination plots. In public you can show “the Entertainer face”—it’s acceptable (though insincere, it’s fun to make people laugh!)

Junior High

At home was fear of fat Dad fear. At school was a different kind of nightmare. Since moving to CU-DA-HY for my entrance into seventh grade—the first year of Junior High School--I was constantly getting beat up, spit at, verbally attacked by boys and girls. They hated me in CU-DA-HY and oh how I hated them.

We had moved there from St. Paul Park in Minnesota where I had so many friends it was insane. I was “popular” in the 6th grade in Minnesota where kids seemed friendly and fun. It was light there—Cudahy was dark, the seventh brutal. Kids torturing me and me coming of age. It was a Polish-Slovakian neighborhood where I truly discovered the meaning of the words hood, greaser, ignorance, the ignorance of the old country--my first introduction. Later, after moving to New York, I would spend another 25 years in the midst of the Polish Ukranian East Village—“NAZI-like” in their tribalism, arrogance, small mindedness and bigotry on one side of me and white-hating Latins down on Avenues A through D. They’d see you and spit. You could see the hate in their eyes—even the old ladies spitting pearls of flem, thinking “White man—You got it made”. What an ugly discovery for a nice, innocent kid from the Midwest!

But back there in Cudahy, the hoods, the young tough greasers would spit on me from passing bus windows while I was innocently riding my bike. They’d beat me up in homeroom when the teacher wasn’t looking, kicking my chair, my legs, punching me in the head and laughing always laughing at me.

Now the armor’s in me through and through. I meditate, do Self-hypnosis and get lots and lots of massage (when I can afford it) and have lots of sex (when I’m lucky) in order to somehow feel my heart again--find the joy buried beneath the years of pain and fear—rediscover my soul. Sometimes it works. And sometimes I just wake up and the heartache’s still there—the Black Hole of pain and missing Daddy and missing man love and lusting for anything that will remind you that you’re alive—(singing) “Good Morning Heartache—“ the phrase is looping, over and over again in my mind.

One day of whole gang of nasty kids are following me home from school, calling me names, throwing things at me. I’m too afraid to even turn around. Then, just as one is within running steps of jumping me—I turn into my back yard and am safe. Safe at home—with my Father??

My few friends were the other losers, rejects, geeks (this was before computer time), misfits and insecure kids. Joey Majewski’s Mother and mine made an attempt to introduce us knowing we were both real loners or losers. Joey had three chins and soft fuzzy short brown hair. I can still recall his voice quivering when he talked to me, painfully shy. Clifford Cook and I hooked up in the 8th grade, he lived one block away. Clifford was pudgy, had black horn-rimmed glasses, and a big flip of Dondi-like light brown hair that kept falling down onto the right side of his face and glasses which he kept constantly pushing back and adjusting his glasses (all in the same stroke with his right hand). Clifford also had the most sibilant s’s I’d ever heard out of anyone’s mouth—his voice like a baritone Truman Capote. He made a supreme effort to constantly appear heterosexual. Later on I’d heard he’d even married a woman—perhaps he was straight after all—and in spite of the s’s. He was always inferring that he had these secret crushes on various girls (and they on him).

Once he shocked me by saying that “Jeff Koslewski was bragging about jerking off the other day…”

“What’s jerking off?” I said—feigning innocence by keeping my face as neutral and wide-eyed as possible—arranging and setting my expression with the proper combination of both shock and disgust. For just recently I myself had discovered the joys of jerking off.

“Its when you go like this”, he made a fist and moved it up and down real fast with an owwy-gooy disgusted face “on your thing until this stuff comes out.”

“Eeeww” I intoned making a face.

I had begun last year. It started one night in the bathtub. I was rubbing myself and it felt curiously interesting so I kept doing it and doing it—until something weird happened. I suddenly felt very ill as if I was sick and dying and then the “stuff” came out of my dick and it smelled like pepper and then the more I did it--I started really liking it, especially doing it to pictures of naked or muscular men’s bodies.

I also had various toys to assist me in my orgasms ranging from pictures of nude boys and men from the underground Hippie newspapers to tanned surfers on bottles of Coppertone Tanning Oil. Some of my favorite visuals were my brother’s bodybuilding magazines. On one particular photo of an Italian bodybuilder I actually burned a small hole in the man’s skinny black pre-Speedo bathing suit using a magnifying glass and the sun—thinking that somehow I could reveal the luscious forbidden mystery his bathing suit kept hidden. Another jerk off prop was a small discarded plastic tube which fit perfectly around my dick and was great to twist slowly to imitate a kind of slow screwing motion. I would cum immediately and the tube kept the jism contained. No muss no fuss. I kept it in the eaves spout outside my bedroom window on Edgerton Avenue. Funny how autumn leaves rain and dirt used to collect in it along with my semen. The passing seasons and the sperm of a horny teenager.

Along with my masturbatory activities I had been keeping many small animals from late childhood on. I always had a strange proclivity for small furred things like mice or baby chicks emerging from eggs. I had pet Guinea Pigs, hamsters and gerbils. Once in fifth grade in a different town (we were constantly moving and changing cities) neurotic Benji the dachshund came charging out of the back door of our then aqua colored house in the suburbs of St. Paul and fast as lightning, snapped up the small hamster I had let outside in his powerful yapping killing jaws and broke it’s spine.

Shortly after I began to jerk off, I noticed that my attitudes toward my pets started to change. Instead of cuddling and loving them, I began to resent them. After more than a year of being tortured by the bullies in Cudahy—I started to torture my little furred friends myself. I think it was out of frustration and a way of wanting to put pain out into the world as a reaction to the pain I was being forced to experience from the world.

Sometimes I would tape Sam the hapless little furry red short-haired female Guinea Pig I bought at the store for six bucks in seventh grade (Sam then gave birth to two little Sams) to a record turntable and force her to ride from 33 r.p.m. to 78 revolving around and around until I removed her, tore the masking tape off and watched her with glee as she struggled to walk—crawl mostly on her side—her feet struggling in the air so dizzy from the ride. Other times I would practice partial suffocation on her, closing my hand tight over her little Guinea Pig nose and mouth until she passed out then watch her come to again—she always came to. Other times I threw darts at her as she ran across the floor. I still regret this actions now.

Then there were the gerbils—I got a pair which quickly turned into a family and in a few months there 2 or 3 generations. The Mother kept giving birth so often that once I slammed her little gerbil body into a rat-running wheel while it was going forcing her to miscarry the umpteenth litter. No problem in the gerbil world as the aborted litter of “pups” made for nice naked little fetus snacks to nibble on for the whole overpopulated family for days to come. Kind of like being poor and living like rats in a ghetto in a big city—except there the feeding and the killing is done by guns mostly by gangs over turf and drugs or simple hatred.

One block up from the lake drive in Cudahy on Edgerton Avenue in the bushes lining the alley in the back yard of 3909 is a miniature gerbil and guinea pig cemetery.

There were a few high spots in Junior High. Once, Mr. Young—the geography teacher who was tall, fat, wore bottle-thick glasses and had very fat lips which he used to constantly be pursing together; either out of anger or in a vain attempt to show his troublesome students how they couldn’t “get over” on him—went to pull up a map of the world covering the middle of the blackboard. He fumbled with it, pulling on the string and it FLEW out of his hand and snapped up rolling round and round to reveal in large chalk letters, perfectly printed ‘CONGA IS MIGHTY” (that was his nickname). The class went hysterical with laughter and Conga--er—Mr. Young’s face was beet beet red as if it was going to explode.

Mrs. Silk was my 7th Grade English teacher and she discovered that I had a terrific flair for drama. In one class presentation project I invented a cereal breakfast food called “Diet Crunchies” and did a commercial for it—holding the box doing a spiel with an English Accent. She went bonkers over me and had me coming in and performing it for all her other classes. I also used to do imitations of Bobby Kennedy too until he was assassinated. The bullies watched in awe one as a neighboring homeroom teacher invited me to come over and perform my “Bobby imitation”.

One of the darkest and most painful memories I have was when I was punched in the ear and side of the head by mean old Mr. McLymans, the shop teacher from hell. Shop class was a queer student’s nightmare—right up there with gym class. It was force-fed-cultural programming for boys on the how-to’s of building and operating your own workshop. We were taught things like how to cut wood, cut wood and cut wood—oh—there was also some emphasis cutting wood. It’s easy to let my anus go limp when I dwell on this memory—even now. The way it came about was one day goony Mark Spies (a pre-computer “Geek” kid if there ever was one) asked me to do a staring contest with him—which we were engaged in for about 3 or 4 minutes when McLymans caught a glimpse of us and started screaming bloody murder. He must have thought something like “staring into each other eyes” was happening between two boys. Screaming his head off like a maniac he demanded we march into an adjoining room where he proceeded to belt us with (taking very large swings) with his tightened fist in the side of the head—one at a time. I got mine right over my right ear on the side of my head. The old fuck was strong—my ear was ringing and in pain for days after the incident. In the moment after clipping us both he grabbed a nearby cloth towel hanging from a wall dispenser and rage-screamed “THERE! YOU WANNA CRY NOW? GIRLIES WANNA CRY??? HUH? HERE’S A CRYING TOWEL—HERE’S A CRYING TOWEL—NOW YOU CAN CRY!”

To this day I can only reflect that it must have been the old bastard’s innate homophobia that made him want to attack and punish us so viciously for something which on the surface seemed so innocuous—yet to him implied something much MUCH larger and extremely taboo. Boys staring into each other’s eyes—Heaven Forbid as the solid iron walls of cultural patriarchy start to crumble and melt. Kids razzed me for days about the incident “You want a cryin’ towel Orr?” I confessed what happened to Mother that night but we both agree not to tell Father. I think this was before heart attack No. 1.

But back to social torture. I got it from the girls too. Once Karen Kovac in 8th grade put a sticker on my back that said “I am a Homo.” The kids all during THIS English class (not Mrs. Silk—she wouldn’t have stood for it—it was some pregnant cow with a huge belly and a face a cross between a clown and a orangutan) kept asking me “Is it TRUE Steve?—Is it true?” “Maybe” I intoned mysteriously not knowing what they were talking about but wanting to put an end to it--and then they snickered. Another day Lynn Bernier just went off on me in the hall in between classes going “Oh God, Steve Orr--You’re such a fem—FEM. You FEM!” I didn’t even KNOW what “fem” meant until Clifford with his sibilant “s’s” explained to me that “fem” was short for “feminine” as in girlish.

The roots of hate (“Sins of the Father”), beginning in childhood are passed on from generation to generation. I had a bigoted father, but his bigotry was all implied—never spoken outright. Learned hate, external, internal, self-hate… It still floors me when I think back on these experiences…the cruelty of kids—of people. Of me for and towards other living things and people.

But there has always been cruelty and there seems to be some general glee of giving pain to other members of the tribe—especially those who are different.

Like torturing my pets, sometimes my rage still gets the better of me and I have the urge to act out; usually it only goes as far as verbal violence and usually it’s when some accident or act of ignorance scares the hell out of me or inspires me to “road rage”.

I recall at our 20th High School reunion in 1992 with Pat Delaney--who always seemed rather “butch” to me herself--going off on me as being the poster child for “You QUEERS spreading AIDS all over the place.” My friend (and former girlfriend Robin) just looked at me after both Pat and her tirade were gone, held my hand and said simply “Don’t”. That was a real bonding moment in our friendship. Later, after the dancing, dinner and drinks we were taking a walk by the dark lakeshore and Robin confessed to me that she thought there was something demonic about men fucking each other in the same hole where they went to the bathroom. This wasn’t new to me—my Mother when I was 20 or so came up with that too. It’s a take off on the old “Is sodomy a sin?” debate. Cultural programming against the different one.

“It’s just one aspect of gay sex—gay to me means un-straight—or being able to create whoever and however you want to love somebody” was my response.

High School was slightly better as I finally found a kind of tribe to hang out with—it was either the Hippies or the Drama kids, sometimes the band members. In Junior High I began to experiment with speed but just in a small way. In mid and late High School there was a lot of drinking (usually on the sly and usually I’d end up getting caught and punished). There was a lot of taking acid and getting stoned and a mountain of lies and excuses to dodge my Dad’s ever present rage and propensity for misunderstanding, judging and jumping to conclusions. For years afterward I had reoccurring nightmares that some “problem” had been discovered in my High School records, that I was really NOT graduated and had to return to make up the missed classes and get the diploma.

Masturbation can be a wonderful release for me and also a kind of substitute for actual living. When it goes with Internet porn—I have to keep an eye on it—it’s such a time waster and a life-energy sucker. But God those orgasms feel so good!

Better to write—even if only for myself. At least I’m focusing on something, creating something—trying to find some meaning in it all from within instead of always seeking the answers (or some temporary masking for the pain) from without (the external world).

Now the cloudy sky’s turning to rain in Amsterdam and I still want to cum or meditate and imagine a sun burning out all my frustration and feelings of loneliness—away. Again I reflect on going to the baths…I think I will meditate and imagine I’ve moved out of the East Village into the woods, maybe to the North Shore (ha—too expensive) of Long Island. More likely Austin or ALB., New Mexico. I don’t know if I have enough money for the seashore. I really have to go suburban or country. It’s long past overdue. I fear how I will make money. Will this just “take care of itself” or am I doomed to failure? To living off the proceeds of my East Village cave and ending up on Skid Row? That’s my greatest fear. I think my fear of homophobia is passing. That’s a good thing.

The lack of sex and friends and that haunted feeling of always being different, and being terribly isolated has come out here in Amsterdam in full force. In New York, I’m isolated too, but tend not to notice it so much with all the details and STRESS of daily living. It’s also easy to get “quick fixes” by visits with neighbors on the street or connecting with neighborhood shopkeeper (I know some neighborhood Muslims and love them)—I’ve been trying to counter it by imagining self-happiness and a sense of peace through meditation and self-hypnosis or suggestion. I don’t know if it works but it allows me to function better in the world and have better boundaries. I have made just a few really good friends here. My original idea to treat the whole summer as a sort of “writers colony” or retreat keeps reoccurring and gets me through. I’m probably not a very good writer but it really doesn’t matter as I believe in the general scheme of things you get better the more you do it whether you’re published in The New Yorker or not.

I imagine the sun; I imagine moving out of the East Village; I imagined I never had to wait for the phone to ring again—if it does—fine. If it doesn’t—that’s alright too. I can practice my Pilates, meditate, be happy on my own. Write—write out memoirs and wonder over all the living I’ve done; and try to put some perspective on the whole thing.

Fucking Noah’s Ark out there…hmm. Maybe I should move to Portugal? Amsterdam—was it so good? Well…kind like the living like a homeless man in a cave experience—it toughened me up. And unlike that—it softened up my armor a bit. Forced me to use my mind more—that’s a very good thing!

Maybe there is no “goal” but to spread my soul around the world by traveling…

Conclusion “Surviving Dad and Amsterdam”

Today it is a new day, a different day. Weeks have passed--I am lying in my bed not knowing what to do today. I’m thinking I can meditate and create happiness thereby making this constant heartache go away. Further I realize that this constant ache is partly a result from an incompletion in myself. This incompletion or “hole-feeling” in my heart mainly comes from my Father being “the love of my life” who gave me no love. Years later now, still, part of my identity contains a vacuum where my Father’s love should have been. I can finally give up blaming him—and simply grieve. He was incapable of giving me what I needed to be whole! That’s a lot to forgive someone for! I’m forgiving him as I write this. On a cerebral level anyway; on an artistic-writing level—that’s the action, the “do”. Perhaps with whole process will even inspire GREATER changes in my thinking? Baby steps…

A very self-healing way to deal with heartache is by exercising and reading self-help books…I will go to the bookstore and make notes from “Conversations with God”…then I will go biking (or to gym)…maybe go ship-sight seeing here—the Dutch are so big on water-culture, canals, etc.

This whole memoir has led me the black hole of missing my Dad’s love; therefore not having a love of myself. Or maybe—just maybe it dawns that through this shitting out of the missing Father pain—I can truly love myself. The phallus is empty but lust leading to release has it’s own reward.

Now, having reached 51 I hunger tremendously for friendship and quality time just hanging out and having good conversation. Wow…

I do believe that the healing effect of being in this Amsterdam apartment’s LIGHT has enabled me to see through many of my own neurotic layers of personality. A mirror held up to my face if you will…ayyyeeeee (screaming sounds—LOL!)…

I also—very important—must remember to not be so hard on myself. I am, after all in Amsterdam where it’s “Easy to be Hard” (in both the sense of being unfriendly—the Dutch—and in exploring lust (zzzzzzzzz) as a means to it’s own end. Oh yes—then there’s the 30 years of armor from living in N.Y. (a very minor detail when it comes to making friends!)…