Look Away Silence

Look Away Silence

Edward C. Patterson

Dancaster Creative Writing

www.dancaster.com

[email protected]

Smashwords Edition, July 2009

Copyright 2009 by Edward C. Patterson

All rights reserved. This book may
not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond that
copying permitted by U.S. Copyright Law, Section 107, “fair use” in
teaching or research. Section 108, certain library copying, or in
published media by reviewers in limited excerpt), without written
permission from the publisher.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Part One: Over-the-Counter-Encounter

Chapter One:
Folding

Chapter Two
: Ties

Chapter Three:
Old World Coffee

Chapter Four:
Christmas in the
Cavern

Chapter Five:
Quiet Moments

Chapter Six:
First Impressions

Chapter Seven:
Gifts

Chapter Eight:
Meeting the Kielers

Chapter Nine:
Resolutions

Chapter Ten:
A Matter of Space

Chapter Eleven:
Bed &
Breakfast

Chapter Twelve:
The Pope’s Nose

Part Two: The Great Divide

Chapter One:
Westward Ho!

Chapter Two
: A Proposition

Chapter Three:
Remembrance

Chapter Four:
Estes Park

Chapter Five:
Pinnacle

Chapter Six:
Not So Divine
Retribution

Chapter Seven:
When the Rockets Red
Glare

Chapter Eight:
Dawning Dusk

Part Three: The Unbrave

Chapter One:
Learning the Ropes

Chapter Two
: Perfect Stranger

Chapter Three:
In Concert

Chapter Four:
Blessings and Curses

Chapter Five:
Christmas Again

Chapter Six:
Episode Two

Chapter Seven:
In the Land of Nod

Chapter Eight:
Bringing in the
Sheaves

Chapter Nine:
The Best of
Intentions

Chapter Ten:
Holding On

Chapter Eleven:
Letting Go

Part Four: The Mingling

Chapter One:
Folding Again

Chapter Two
: Finding the Thread

Chapter Three:
Ties and Rings

Epilog
:
The Vigil I Keep

Acknowledgements

The challenges of authoring this novel were many,
because it encapsulates a period of my life and a subset of my
experience that might be best tucked away and forgotten as all
traumas should be. However, when I volunteered as a middle-aged gay
man to lend a hand in my community with AIDS patients, I thought it
was the noble thing to do. As I learned, it was not, unless
debilitating disease and emotional upheaval can be considered
noble. The history told here belongs to others, however. It may be
cobbled from the many partners who lived with AIDS and those who
helped ease the suffering, but it is a shared experience, and thus
needs to be shared with you. Every American knows about AIDS now,
and might even recall the period when it ravaged the gay community,
stirring up new phobias and hysteria that might have been settled.
However, the lessons should not be forgotten. With a new upsurge in
cases within the gay community as a new wave of young men feel
invincible as they dance with life, perhaps it’s best to recall
what can happen when the back is turned on the obvious

I want to thank all those over the years who
mentored me in community service, in the GALA Chorus organization,
including the New Jersey Gay Men’s Chorus, the Hyacinth AIDS
Foundation, AmFAR, the NAMES Project and many local churches, food
banks, financial sources throughout the State of New Jersey and
especially the volunteers who consistently participate in AIDS
Walks throughout the country. A special thank you is given to my
editor Margaret Stevens for the yeomen effort in getting this work
into its sterling, publication condition. Also a thanks to
Kindleboard.com and Michael R. Hick’s author support group for
being there nightly to encourage me to complete this work — a
difficult oar to pull over mostly emotional waters. As for my
angels, I leave that thank you to Louise Kieler on the steps of the
Washington Monument.

Edward C. Patterson

I am a child of Christmas. Some people are
Easter-kids. Others get fired up over the Fourth of July or wax
poetic for Arbor Day. Not me. Christmas has always been the focus
of my year, because everything that has been good in my life has
come down from the sparkling Yule Fairy and wrapped up in bows and
striped paper. As little children, we wish for many things at
Christmas — trains, bikes, Legos, baseball gloves and some, like
me, asked Santa for an ironing board. Now that would bode well and
never shock, except my name is Martin and not Martina, and . . . it
quite put my Grandpa off his Monday Night Football. My mother was
cool with it, otherwise she would have bought me a GI Joe and
insisted I dig trenches and drop fake bombs over the chenille.
However, I wouldn’t have minded a GI Joe either, a fact my mother
also sensed. So it was an ironing board for me. Vivian Powers’
sissy boy was devoted to Christmas from that day forward. I knew
there was a Santa Claus and his linen closet was impeccably
arranged.

Across the folds of time and through the
tumble-downs of Christmases over the years, I found all my requests
fulfilled. When I was old enough to find true love (or so I thought
it true love . . . I mean, every time it was true love), it was at
Christmas. That was the year I had drunk too much eggnog and awoke
in a stranger’s bed — a stranger who unwrapped me like a party
favor and gave me the most wonderful Christmas gift of all. In
hindsight, the ironing board was better.

Despite the exciting sensation of joining with
another soul, I learned fast that such passion was like the sea at
ebb tide. I know about the sea. I live by the sea, here in Long
Branch where the tide comes in and then sucks out a bit of the
Jersey shore, a bit like my first passionate experience. Metaphors
are not my forte. I should stick to laundry. I saw then true love
for what it was — as false as Ru Paul’s D-cup. It didn’t last past
New Years Day. And yes, my heart was broken. I cried and cried like
a bride left at the altar. However, I was a lucky boy — still am. I
have a mother like no other. She sat me down, dried my tears and
said, “Marty,” (I hate being called Marty, but mothers can’t be
corrected — at least not mine). “Marty, he was a stranger. Didn’t
know ya and didn’t want to know ya.”

Still, I loved
what’s his name
(funny how I
forgot his name . . . Frank. Frank . . . that’s it. I remember his
face, his hands and his hot breath in the night, but I still need
to squeeze the corners of my mind for his name). My heart was
shattered. No amount of Vivian Powers’ insightful advice could
bring me around. However, my mother is a straightjacket case at
times. Nothing controls her. The few words of advice that she has
given throughout my life have stayed with me. So I remember exactly
what she said, because it echoes every time I fall in and out of
love, whenever Christmas turns into Easter.

“Marty, he was a stranger. Didn’t know ya and didn’t
want to know ya. Just like ya father. None of them are worth the
spit they splatter. But always get at least one thing from each of
them, and you’ll have enough carfare for the Path line to the city,
where you can find a better one. In your father’s case, I got you,
Shithead.” (She’s so endearing that way, but I’d rather be called
Shithead
than
Marty
).

Of course, Viv (I never called her Mom or Mama or
Mother dearest — her choice) was never a proper homemaker. She knew
to buy me an ironing board, but only so I could do her ironing. My
dad, the mysterious Mr. Powers, gave me my name, which I thought to
change from Powers to Jones, because Jones fitted me better. He
hadn’t stayed around to top the tree with the fairy angel, but I
never cared. In fact, Viv told me she wasn’t sure who my father was
as there were three candidates for the month. All the men in my
life were defective, except one. They were all either druggies, old
men, flaming queens, drunks, or just lumps on my pillow, except
that one; and he . . . well, perhaps he was the most defective of
all, because I’ve never really found my way out of Christmas with
him, even though Good Friday has come and gone.

Perhaps I’m the defective one. Perhaps Viv was wrong
and I’m the one not worth the splatter. I can’t help it. I have
standards. Men have taken a gander at me (not bad looking . . . me,
that is. Not an ounce of fat, and that without a gym bunny
schedule), and picture me in some interlude — some Act One in their
own play. Unfortunately, Act One is always followed by . . . well,
you get the drift. Sometimes they hear me sing (and I’m a veritable
Lorelei — first tenor and soloist with the Jersey Gay Sparrow
Chorus). Whatever it is, they end by worshipping at my shrine — the
well-pressed sheets from my sacred iron capped by perfectly fluffed
pillows. Morning always brings a different light. At night, they
are Tom Cruise. At dawn, they transform into the bell ringers of
Notre Dame. The grand consolation is that every year brings another
Christmas and another handy appliance —
Vive la Viv
, my
manicurist mother, who brought home lovelier men than I have ever
nabbed — and those without an iron board to entice them.

Despite my gifted voice and inclination for
housework, I couldn’t live my life under my mother’s wing. She
scarcely noticed me, her little
shithead
, who, as I got
older, got under foot. I had to close my eyes more than once to her
tumbling over the threshold with one or, dare I say, two male
companions, who had
likkered
her up and thought they had her
at a disadvantage. Little did they know. They may have had their
frolic,
but always get at least one thing from each of them, and
you’ll have enough carfare for the Path line to the city, where you
can find a better one.
I supposed some day that I would have a
little brother or sister and learn to change diapers, scrub
bassinets, and all the other happy chores that motherhood brings.
But no. Viv just managed a collection of diamonds, pearls and
emeralds. They were gaudy things, not to my tastes or I’d have
pinched a few. However, as time went on, and I graduated from Red
Bank High School, there were more than a few hints from the
maternal maw that I should get to college, or a job and, by all
means, into my own hermitage, such as it is. The suggestions were
subtle in the mornings over coffee and English Muffins. “How’s the
job hunt coming, dear?” In the evenings — those hazy evenings
a
la Viv
, the point was sharper. “You’re still here, Shithead?”
In any case, college was out. Couldn’t afford it and no one that I
ever knew got a degree in laundry. I could have pursued my vocal
training, but that would preclude that I had vocal training to
begin with, which I hadn’t. I was the youngest member of the Jersey
Gay Sparrows, and while the Chicken Hawks often were on my tail,
they were also jealous queens seeking to push me aside and away
from the prime solos. So I did what any respectful young man that
had more than a foot out of the closet would do. I went into
retail.

Christmas and retail are friends, as close as Marley
and Scrooge. In the sprawl of Eatontown Mall stood paradise — a
Christmas chaos called Abraham & Straus. I bought me a suit and
got me an interview to swim in the rarified air of departmental
retail duties. I saw myself as the perfect go-to person in the
linen department. I could live my life in thread count and percale
— heaven on earth. There’s nothing like the aroma of fresh linen —
clean and mountainy, with a promise to bless the chest, to caress
the shoulders and snuggle the toes with its gentle static-free
cling — an adoration well beyond that of the Magi. However, to my
disappointment, the management of the store saw me more as a
behind-the-counter
type in the men’s department amidst a sea
of ties and pants and shirts and sweaters. So instead of my Elysian
Fields of Canon and Burlington Mills, I was lost to the Forest of
Arden — Men’s wear.