First Trip to New York City

Dad would soon move into New York City. I am not sure how long it was before we had our first trip in to see him, but my mother came with my two brothers and me. From New Jersey we drove into the city in our Pontiac station wagon, the kind with the fake wooden panels and the fold down seats in the back where children could pretend to be door gunners. Driving in the city with that locomotive for a 5'3" southern mother with three young boys was an experience. Parking it took an eternity.

It must have been winter time because when I look at pictures I wore a bright red wool hat and a puffy winter coat that covered the lower part of my chin. 1976-77 was a cold winter on the east coast. That picture was taken on the top of the Empire State Building. What does this say about my father? He must have wanted to show me something exciting about his new home, something that would make me want to come back to see him. How nervous he must have been. Leaving a family, three small children, and venturing into a new life - he must have been terrified that the father-son link was very thin and could snap quickly.

When a man becomes a father, an instinct within him is born. He must protect the child. He does not realize why he feels this way, but the survival of his species depends on this human behavior. Yet when he brings his child into an environment that might frighten and make his son feel vulnerable, he has an innate desire to calm this fear. He wants to make the child feel safe, protected, and most of all, not to run.

Dad's first apartment was no more than a kitchen, a bed and a fold out couch. All red bricks on the inside, it was somewhere near 86th street. I do not recall the cross-street, but it was on the east side of Manhattan. The fold out bed is where my brothers and I slept. Soon Dad would begin to move from apartment to apartment each one bigger than the one before. By any standard, these were humble quarters.

Dad had begun his second life. After ejecting from white, straight suburbia where he never felt like he belonged, my father now found himself in a place where he was anonymous, where nobody could replay his history of the past 34 years. He might as well have been an expatriate in a country where nobody knew his name. He could now remake himself in his own image. It was during this time that Dad began to take a new form. It was the father I fondly remember, one that seemed confident, content, and even blissful at times. He would meet Bert here, someone with whom Dad would spend his best days. He would also join the Gay Fathers group where he would gain acceptance and learn to endure the guilt which came with leaving a family and being gay. This group of men had all left families behind, something that no human ever wants to face, but all for the same reason. They were gay, and they could not continue to live a lie. For the first time Dad had met not just one but many men who had experienced what he thought only afflicted him. Dad felt like for the first time that he belonged and was accepted.

Most people can identify with the initial glee of acceptance. A child feels this when he holds up his mitt and unknowingly catches the final out of a game. As his team surrounds him with frantic congratulations, he realizes that he has made a life-sustaining connection with individuals that before his game saving catch were ambivalent, perhaps even adversarial, to the child. He is now accepted into a tribe that provides protection and meaning for his life. Man thrives with companionship and dies without it. Dad was learning to prosper.