Ramblings of An Aging Gay Guy

While I was in college, I became friends with a girl who lived in my dorm, Rathanak San. Her family was of Cambodian origin; her family fled to the United States to escape persecution in Cambodia. Rathanak was in one of Jose’s classes and she and I became close fast. Some of my best memories of living in the dorms are when Rathanak and I would just hang out my dorm room, eating popcorn and drinking soda. Jose and Rathanak were both very much into physical fitness, Jose because of his wrestling background and Rathanak because her major was Fitness and Sports Management. I even dated her roommate for a time, back when I was still confused with my sexuality. It was coming up on the end of the fall semester which meant it was time for Christmas break. On that particular Christmas I had plans to go to Dad and Wanda’s for Christmas. I was living in Greentree Village at the time, because I remember Rathanak staying with me there so that she could study for finals in peace. Her fam...

One night while out at Trumps with Jose and Janet, we met this really cute guy named Daniel D--. Daniel was noticeable for several reasons. One, he was extremely cute. He also had a soul patch, and this was decades before they were common. He also sounded different from all the other gays in that he didn’t have a southern accent. We couldn’t tell where he was from but we knew he was not local. I believe it was Jose who had met him first. Jose was usually always the first to talk to people. Jose didn’t have a single shy bone in his whole body. His friendly demeanor and open arms made him many friends. After the bar, we ended up talking to Daniel some more. We met up at McDonalds on the strip. The idea was to go eat somewhere – Krystals or IHOP, but we ended up just standing in that parking lot talking until the wee hours. I was immediately fascinated by Daniel. He was so different than so many other guys. He seemed genuinely interested in getting to know the 3 of us. He...

I began school at the University of Tennessee @ Knoxville in the fall of 1993. I lived at home my first semester of college because it didn’t make sense to pay for a dorm when I lived 30 minutes from campus. It just didn’t make sense at the time to live on campus when I could save money by commuting. I took the regular assortment of freshman required classes that first semester, though my mind was so not on college. I was just sort of following in the footsteps of expectations and didn’t have a real desire to be there. I don’t think I then got the seriousness of being in college and the doors it could open. College was just the next step in a ladder that had already been planned for me. No other options even came into my mind. Unfortunately, I failed every class that first semester except English; my total GPA was a .09. The second semester I moved to Hess Hall on campus. Total immersion in the college experience was the solution to my previous semester’s screw ups. I wa...

I got my first job when I was 14 years old. Laws were different back then. Oddly enough, each year at that time the state legislature would increase the minimum working age by one year, but of course I always just turned that next year older, so I was able to keep my job at Dollywood. We didn’t necessarily need the money for the family per say, but my brother and I both got jobs there. For me, the novelty of getting a job was its own reward, but when I get a paycheck and I had my very own spending money, money became its own reward as well. And this began the lifelong prison of understanding what money means in this world. The interviews were held at Dixie Stampede, on the Pigeon Forge strip. Pigeon Forge was like a redneck Las Vegas, gaudy and bright, with buffets and touristy things everywhere. I remember being so excited when I told I was hired at $3.75 an hour! I got a job at a burger restaurant, called Mtn. Dans. I mostly cleared and cleaned off the tables, bringing tra...

My time in high school was no more or less eventful than anyone else’s experience in high school. I was excited to be moving from Walland Middle School to Heritage High School. It would almost be like starting over, for there would be several middle schools going to Heritage, so the chances were high that I would find a new pool of people with which to make friends and identify with. Thankfully, my older brother paved the way for me. He had joined junior ROTC and had already established several friends. I too joined ROTC, mostly to get out of gym class (you had to take one year of gym or ROTC). I quickly became involved in everything ROTC. I latched on and immediately felt welcome. My ROTC instructors, especially Chief Eades, brought structure and discipline to my life that I desperately needed. It became important to me that when I wore my uniform on Tuesdays that I passed inspection. Sometime I didn’t but most of the time I did. Preparing for inspection the week and night...

(The pic above if of my mom, age 7. I could not find a digital pic of my grandmother.) The upside to moving to Tennessee was that we would be living with my grandmother, Hazel Hail (Waters). She brought stability and love that more than made up for the loss of our father and the loss of our Georgia life. She had already moved to Maryville a couple of years before; I have fond memories post-divorce but pre-moving to TN of staying with my memaw at her house in Eagleton Village. I remember overhearing mom and memaw talk and plan of moving up here, though at the time I don’t think I really picked up on the significance of what they were talking about. Mostly what I remember at this time was how fresh and new TN felt! It was so…green and the air was simply better. It is a hard feeling to describe but one that is recognizable if you have ever lived in an urban environment. Over the years we had made many trips to TN, sometimes staying at our cousin Debbie Jefferies or with her m...

The day we moved from Rex, GA to Maryville, TN, our neighbor Debbie Gentle, made us sausage biscuits and vacuumed our house. I remember vividly the look of the carpet after it was vacuumed, the neat wedge-like shapes showing the direction in which the carpet was vacuumed. The house was empty, nothing of us was left in the house; it went from being our home to simply being an empty house. In the car, I remember thinking “Bird is going to be scared this entire trip!” Bird was Mom’s parakeet; the poor thing never got a proper name. She was a temperamental creature, only allowing Mom anywhere near her. I know intellectually we moved to TN to start over and to get away from the crime-prone city, to move to a gentler place. I know intellectually this was the right thing for our family to do. Emotionally though, it was an event that caused me sadness for a great many years. Dreams of our life in Georgia came almost nightly. The dreams were so intense and full of yearning that w...