Blast From The Past

The Ex returned from a weekend back home in Buffalo. Truth to tell, on Saturday when I left for work and didn't see him I just figured he was sleeping unusually long. God forbid he ever ups and dies in that bedroom. I won't know until the stink starts to seep under the door. Anyhow, he toured various gay haunts of our precious gay youth. Yes, even little dingy Buffalo has a gay ghetto of sorts. In fact, the gay bar count seems to remain at around five at any one time. It seems that a sixth bar causes some kind of saturation chain reaction to take place. Either the new bar closes pretty quickly or one of the older bars that was just hangin' on finally gasps it's last. "Welcome to Buffalo, 5 gay bars is our maximum capacity".

It was on his nostalgia tour he snapped this picture. This was the second apartment I ever lived in. The first place I ever lived alone. It was on Mariner street. A little side street just off the gay ghetto of the time. My apartment was a tiny little one bedroom in the back. You didn't even use the front door. My entrance was through a two foot wide walkway on the building's left side. That led to a back doorway and staircase to other apartments. I remember moving in on a winter night. If I had to guess the year I'd say 1984 or '85. I don't remember the circumstances of why I left my first apartment, it seems to me it had something to do with one of my roommate's relatives taking the place back. I was 21 and gay, drinking vodka and ice teas and experimenting with sex and drugs. Shit happened.

So that's how I found myself one cold winter night moving my clothes and whatever borrowed plates, cookware, furniture and linens I could scrounge from my Mom. A feat made more difficult as my alley walkway was covered in ice. It was my Mom and my younger sister who helped me move. At this point in a sometimes contentious relationship, I wasn't speaking to my Dad. My relationship to my Mom was severely curtailed as well, but we all seemed to recognize that we needed to create some sort of an information conduit. So bi-weekly and terse conversations with Mom were the only connection to my family then. The place was drafty, dark and potentially depressing. But it was all I could afford, and I was secretly thrilled and a little bit scared to be totally on my own.

One night, I was startled by a knock on the door. Nobody visited me here, unless it was an inebriated boy I managed to drag home to have equally inebriated sex with. Much to my surprise, it was one of the neighbors from one of the upstairs apartments. They were Indian. By my guess, there was five or six of them sharing an apartment of an undetermined size, but it would be fair to guess no bigger than a two bedroom. I didn't know them at all except by sight. And how they would noisily clomp up and down the stairs at all hours. I've never been the "hi neighbor" type. If anything I was more standoff-ish then than I am now. What can I say, The Duchess has mellowed. In any case, I hadn't met very many Indian people at the time. I have a facility for language and accents. Given enough time, I can understand virtually anyone's English no matter what their native language. That skill has served me well over the years here in New York. But I was raised in the whitest of white suburbs of Buffalo. At the time, I had enormous difficulty with the New Delhi to English translation. I got there was a problem. I got there was a baby. I got an ambulance was called. It wasn't until an obviously in distress, in labor Indian woman came waddling through my doorway did I realize the problem with the baby was it was coming! I immediately thought about the fact that I barely had enough extra linen to change the bed once. Will placenta come out of a twin sheet set?

Apparently, the problem was that the 911 operator had similar difficulty with her Universal Translator, and had no idea where to send the ambulance. I know this because once I realized they wanted me to call 911 and I explained the problem, I either got the operator or this operator knew what was going on. It seems an ambulance was dispatched, to an address, but not the address. I was able to give them the correct street and address. All the while, I'm nervously eyeing the Indian woman sitting uncomfortably at my (borrowed) kitchen table. I'm positively willing her not to have a contraction. A few minutes later, an ambulance pulled up to the building and off she waddled. I guess in India, if you can walk to the vehicle a gurney isn't necessary. I never did find out if it was a boy or girl.