still exists<\/a>), around six-ish to do “Naval Gaming”; groups of guys (and occasional gals) would recreate historical naval battles, or do hypothetical ones, on the shop floor with little lead minatures simulating ships from the sail era, World Wars I and II, and occasionally modern-day battles.<\/p>\nAfter the evening’s activities, after the shop closed – usually around midnight – some of us would adjourn to the Embers on 26th and Hennepin for a late-night snack.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
A quick aside that might seem utterly irrelevant, but whose relevance will become clear later.<\/p>\n
Back in high school, I acted in a lot of school plays. I enjoyed trying to be someone else; it was more interesting than being me.<\/p>\n
But I digress. There was a small group of guys who were “best pals” with all the girls – James, Charlie and Brad [*]; they’d sit with them before and after play practice and belt out show tunes and talk about clothes and…<\/p>\n
…and I didn’t really think twice about it. Charlie was a talented artist; Brad was a great musician; James was on the Speech team with me. I thought they had terrible taste in music, a fair flair for clothing, and were perfectly fine guys. No big whoop.<\/p>\n
I was probably well into college before I put two and two together. And then yawned. In the couple of years intervening between high school and college, gay guys had gone from being a fairly threatening mystery – not unusual in small towns at the time – to pretty much a non-issue.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t stand show tunes, but otherwise, their <\/em>sexuality – and that of any other gay people – was a whole lot less important than trying to do something with my own<\/em>.<\/p>\nWhich, I occasionally mused in frustration, was probably a good reason to quit hanging around at Phoenix on Friday nights.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
It was about 2AM, and time to pay the tab. I walked to the front of the restaurant and grabbed a fiver to pay for my Coke and slice of pie…<\/p>\n
…and ran into Charlie , the would-be comic book artist.\u00a0 I noticed him, first, before I noticed the clothing; He was wearing black leather chaps, a vest, a harness-y thing that looked like lederhosen, some sort of black leather speedo thing, topped off with a black leather Greek fisherman’s cap.<\/p>\n
Charlie noticed me pretty much simultaneously.\u00a0 And I was gratified in the split second before I spoke that he looked just about as awkward as I must have.<\/p>\n
“Hey, Charlie!”<\/p>\n
“Hey, Mitch”.<\/p>\n
How to follow up, when you’re talking to an old high school pal who’s standing there in S&M gear?<\/em><\/p>\n“So how ya doing?”<\/p>\n
“Great”<\/p>\n
“Still working at…” the restaurant where he’d been waiting tables the previous year, according to a mutual friend.<\/p>\n
“Yeah!\u00a0 And are you still in radio?”<\/p>\n
“Nah, I’m freelancing”.<\/p>\n
I smiled and nodded.\u00a0 So did he.<\/p>\n
“Hey, great seeing you!”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, nice running into you!”, he responded, pointing sotto voce <\/em>to the three other leather clad guys who were walking away to sit at a table.<\/p>\n“A friend of yours?”, one of the other gamers asked, looking distinctly uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
There’d been a time when I’d probably have smacked the guy for suggesting it.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, ol’ high school bud”, I responded, turning to talk with the hostess.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[*] Note to all Jamestown people reading this blog: Of course <\/em>I’ve changed the names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was October 23, 1987. A Friday night. My big diversion from the grind of job-hunting came on Friday nights. I’d go to “Phoenix Games”, a store on Lake between Bryant and Colfax (which, astoundingly, still exists), around six-ish to do “Naval Gaming”; groups of guys (and occasional gals) would recreate historical naval battles, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}