Short Circuits Read online

  Immediately upon return to Los Angeles, I began looking for another job.

  Oh, and for those of you who have read my Dick Hardesty mystery, The Butcher’s Son, should you see any similarity whatever between my boss Laurence Laurie and Dick’s boss, Carlton Carson, I can assure you it is purely coincidental. Purely. Yes.

  * * *

  JOBS FROM HELL, PART III

  Well, as long as we’re on the subject of jobs from hell, I might add one more snapshot from my rather full album. I find it interesting, now, as I look them over, that three of the worst jobs I ever had were all during my 18 years in Los Angeles.

  Immediately after leaving my glory days with the P.R. firm, related earlier, a friend got me a job with Peterson Publications, a magazine publishing conglomerate that cranked out countless well-known, mainly male-oriented periodicals such as Car and Driver. My tenure there was blessedly short, for reasons soon to be made clear.

  I have always held to the philosophy that one should work to live, and one should never, as so very many people seem to, live to work. Combining that philosophy with my ability to exist in the world without really being a part of it has largely enabled me to pretty much sail through life like the Flying Dutchman. Still….

  Some jobs are furnaces, some are ice boxes, and some, like my stint at Peterson Publishing are London fogs. My job with Peterson was definitely fog: fog so thick that I never did understand exactly what my job was supposed to be, other than do whatever I was told to do at the moment. I think I was in the Promotions department, the primary purpose of which I gather was to come up with little gimmicks to attract new readers. I do recall making up a fake airline baggage claim ticket to be attached to the front cover of one of their travel magazines. I assume it had something to do with an offer of a free trip, though its purpose was never explained to me and I never saw the finished magazine to which it was attached.

  There was a similar cover attachment for a diving magazine, featuring a ferocious-looking shark, which I was assigned to draw. This, to me, was proof positive that the inmates were running the asylum, since I have never, ever been able to draw anything that ended up looking even remotely like whatever it was I had set out to draw. I think I found a photo of a shark in some other publisher’s magazine and just traced it. It was atrocious, but they used it. And again, I never knew its purpose.

  It was not a bad place to work, I don’t think. It was just reminded me of what Limbo must be like. There were people there, but other than the friend who had gotten me the job, they all existed in this thick, grey fog. I do not remember the face…let alone the name…of a single person there. I do not remember the layout of the workplace or what went on there. I would imagine I did have a fairly good idea at the time where the restrooms were, but other than that….

  But what I do remember distinctly was that the entire organization seemed to be focused on Office Politics, particularly among the management, whom I do not think I ever saw.

  From what I could gather from my friend, the company operated like some strange, gigantic game of chess. While I know nothing at all about chess, I gathered that in this game, the employees were pawns, the lower-level supervisors rooks, the supervisor’s supervisors the queens, etc. So when one queen bested another queen, not only would the overturned queen be fired, but all the rooks and pawns under him/her as well. Entire departments would be let go at one time. I couldn’t quite figure out how an organization could survive like that, but what did I know?

  I did not understand the rules of the game and I really didn’t care.

  Suffice it to say that after perhaps three months in Limbo, my supervisor’s supervisor lost to his faceless opponent and my entire department was let go.

  I did not weep.

  * * *

  MY DAYS IN PORN

  I’m not out to offend the pure of heart. Really, I’m not. But it is the not-ordinary that tends to make life most interesting, and I’ve had quite a few not-ordinaries in mine. Here’s a look at one of them.

  When my mom died in September of 1971, I quit my job, bought a Winnebago motor home and just took off on an open-ended attempt to run away from life…which of course never works, but is indicative of my mental state at the time. I’ll be talking more about the trip in future entries, and it is mentioned here merely as a brief lead-in to how I ended up working several years for probably the largest porn mill on the West Coast.

  When I finally returned home I was forced to face the reality of getting another job. I saw an ad in the paper for an editor for a “men’s magazine” and sent in my resume. Shortly thereafter I got a call from the company for an interview.

  The company was located in Chatsworth, one of L.A.’s innumerable suburbs, and probably about half an hour’s drive from my home, and I arrived, as always, early. The building was truly impressive…a huge, sprawling, modern concrete-slab structure that bespoke success.

  My appointment was with the chief editor of one of the company’s several divisions. Keith was in his late 40s, stocky, glasses, a crew-cut, and friendly, and took me into his office where he explained the job. When the ad said “men’s magazine” it meant it, literally. The job involved editing several “sex education” magazines with explicit photographs—which, of course, are what sold the publications.

  This was at the time when the phrase “redeeming social value” was vital to the success of what a few years earlier had come to be known as “the sexual revolution.” Every magazine put out by the company was comprised of very carefully-researched-and-written articles which did, indeed, serve the purpose of providing basic information on human sexuality—strictly, totally, and exclusively heterosexual, of course. Each article, as I say, was carefully researched and had to be footnoted with references to no fewer than five, I believe, published works by noted authorities and published works in the field of human sexuality.

  Popular idioms for sex acts and body parts were forbidden. Clinical terms only. Every explicit photograph…and here there were no holds barred…had to have a caption specifically relating it to the subject of the article and using exact physical terminology. Not easy to do, I can tell you.

  Anyway, after we’d talked quite a while, Keith called in his wife, Iris, who was also an editor there. Iris, too, was in her late 40s; she wore no makeup, and her long blond hair was pulled back in a pony tail. I liked her right away. After a few more minutes, Keith offered me the job...and here comes the part of the story I love best. I had never before told a prospective employer that I was gay, but in this case, I saw no way around it. So I said: “Well, there is only one problem: since I’m gay, I don’t have the foggiest idea what men and women do in bed together.”

  Without batting an eye, Keith said: “Well, then you’ll have a different outlook on things.” It was a truly liberating moment, and I decided in that instant that if they could have that kind of attitude, I wanted to work for them.

  I was with the company for four or five years, through many turbulent free-speech confrontations including the local police locking the building to keep workers out (we shifted operations to several smaller locations), one over-a-weekend (so no judge could be contacted to free them) arrest of Keith and Iris, and various forms of legal harassment. (The police would arrive with a search warrant and a judge sitting in a squad car. If, during their search, they found something of interest not covered in the warrant, they would simply go out to the squad car and have the warrant amended.)

  But we all survived, and I’m delighted to say that I count Keith and Iris among my best friends, after some 38 years.

  There are several more stories from my porn days, which may well fuel future entries.

  But for now…

  * * *

  OK, MORE PORN-DAYS STORIES

  I hadn’t really intended to do another porn-days entry right away, but as I posted the last one several stories occurred to me which I thought I might as well pass along while I’m thinking of them.
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  As I mentioned, the company for which I worked was 99.99% heterosexual, though their “Lesbian” magazines were always popular. The fact is, of course, that the women featured in them were not lesbians, and they were not directed to lesbians, but were strictly for the intellectual musings of straight men, who inexplicably seem to be fascinated by the thought of women having sex together. Very rarely…very, very rarely…there would be a picture in one of the other magazines of two men together. The company, naturally, offered nothing specifically aimed at the gay market. I’m quite sure it had never occurred to them that there was such a thing.

  The company was owned by a husband and wife team in their 60s, who had been in the business for many years and who had made a very large fortune at it. The husband ran the publishing end, his wife the business end. The husband had his own strong, definite ideas of what was sexy, and they seemed to boil down to three irrefutable facts: 1) mesh stockings drive men into a frenzy of desire; 2) A woman’s sexual appeal is in direct ratio to how many rings she can cram onto her fingers; 3) A 30-year-old woman in pigtails, an elementary-school uniform, oversize dark-rimmed glasses and coyly licking a lollipop is the epitome of sexual appeal.

  I was fascinated to realize, in a short time, how astonishingly little heterosexual men know about the workings of the female body, especially as it relates to sexuality.

  Anyway, after I’d been with the company for a while, I suggested that perhaps they might consider putting out a few magazines aimed at gay men. The initial universal revulsion (except from my immediate boss Keith and his wife Iris) was somewhat lessened when I provided some facts and figures on the buying power of gay men. They were still revolted, but the prospect of making even more money than they already had overcame it, and I became editor of two new magazines devoted to gay sexuality, which although I was never privy to the degree of success of any of the magazines I edited, straight or gay, obviously sold well enough to keep them going.

  I subsequently suggested a line of gay-oriented erotic fiction and, surprisingly, they went for that, too.

  Finding suitable manuscripts at first was something of a problem.

  The top lieutenant to the owners was an outstandingly dour man not only totally devoid of a sense of humor but of any signs whatever of a personality. He had a college-student nephew…totally straight, of course…who wanted to be a writer, and I was informed that this young man would be supplying me with the manuscript for a male gay novel, for which he was to be paid the then-princely sum of $1,000.

  I insisted on seeing a rough draft and when I did…well, let’s just say I was somewhat less than ecstatic. This kid couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag, and judging from his writing “style” I had no idea how he’d gotten out of third grade. If I had come to the company with no knowledge of what men and women do in bed together, this kid was several planets past Pluto in having a clue about gay men.

  I will quote you here one line from his manuscript which is engraved forever in my mind. He was writing what I’m sure he assumed was the penultimate gay sex scene, and the line was (feel free to write this down): “They pressed their lips together and enjoyed it very much.”

  I immediately wrote the young man thanking him for his time, assuring him that he could keep his prepaid $1,000, and wrote the book myself.

  Life ain’t always easy, but sure can be a lot of fun.

  * * *

  PEBBLES

  I live within a mile of Lake Michigan now, and it is a very pleasant lake. But it always strikes me, somehow, as being…well, almost subdued compared to the majesty of Lake Superior, only 17 miles from my former home in northern Wisconsin. I used to love spending hours walking along its deserted beaches, where you can sometimes go for literally hours without seeing another human being.

  The first impression I always got, when standing on the shore within a few feet of the water on a bright summer day, was of blue: the incredibly intense blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds. Beneath the blue of the sky, the darker blue of the water, flecked with whitecaps and the white wings of wave-skimming seagulls and an occasional white triangle of a passing sailboat. And every now and then, where the sky met the water, I would see the small dark smudge of smoke from a cargo ship far off over the horizon.

  But the shore held its own, more immediate fascination. Superior is not a sandy-shored lake, for the most part. It is more pebbles and small rocks of every shape, size, and color, almost all rounded or smoothed from countless years/centuries/aeons of shifting against and around one another. I wondered, if they could think and speak, what they would talk of.

  Of course I was never able to walk along the shore without returning home with pockets laden with pebble-treasure picked up along my walk. Agates, conglomerates, striped, marbled, some with fascinating holes drilled into and sometimes through them. Had a large wave come along and swept me out into the depths of the lake I would surely have drowned, weighted down as I was. I still have a few jars of Lake Superior stones kept in water-filled jars because water brings out their color.

  And each pebble, each stone, I passed, seen or unseen, was different from the millions upon millions around it. Even those with nothing to immediately draw the eye were unique…much like people. Like pebbles, most people are ordinary, indistinguishable, at first glance, from the millions around them. And like the pebbles, many are attractive, a few are beautiful, and some are nearly breathtaking. It is, of course, the most beautiful that get picked up and taken home.

  There are more pebbles along a quarter-mile of Lake Superior beach than there are all the people who have ever lived since the dawn of time.

  And for every pebble on all the beaches of the world, there are a million grains of sand.

  And yet there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts on the earth.

  I think about that as I, one man, unique among all others, wander along the beach under the vast blue sky and bend down to pick up one more shiny pebble.

  * * *

  ICE CREAM SOCIAL

  My apartment building is holding an ice cream social today. Oh, dear Lord! Did my parents, Mom then 24 and Dad 22, realize on that long-ago November day, that their beloved and newly born son would one day be living in a subsidized senior apartment complex which holds ice cream socials for its residents? Is that the extent of the dreams they had for me? Is that the extent of the dreams I had for myself?

  And please don’t fret: this isn’t going to be a long, lugubrious trek through the dark, impenetrable jungles of self pity. You’ll not hear the plaintive call of the exotic Poor-Poor-Me, or the haunting, far-off cry of the Oh,Woe echoing through the thick foliage.

  In truth, I’m rather bemused by the whole situation, and the only real negative in it all is the realization of just what a snob I am. I do not attend building ice cream socials, or the occasional bingo game, or join in the bus excursions to various gambling casinos in nearby northern Indiana. I pass among the little old men and little old women in the lobby and in the halls, and I have absolutely nothing at all in common with them. I surely am not as old as they, or as infirm. I hold my head up high (figuratively, of course, since I can’t actually lift it high enough to see the floor indicator above the elevators). I am better than they, somehow (please do not ask for a detailed list of “how”…just take my word for it).

  But I do have one great advantage over most of my aging peers, in that I, in a very real (to me) sense, am able to and do live in two worlds: the world in which my body is trapped and suffers the indignities of aging…over which I have relatively little control…and the world of my books, which provide me with a great deal of comfort and pleasure. And I can and do move freely between them. When one proves troublesome, I can quickly step into the other.

  This arrangement is particularly valuable as the years pile up, since the world of writing is not subject to the same immutable rules as the world of the body. But, as with mos
t things, there is a danger…one I increasingly realize…of retreating too far into my inner world.

  A group of friends meets every day at a coffee shop a mile or so away, which provides good exercise in the walk, and I go more often than I normally would because my friend Gary, who lives in my building, enjoys it so. But my problem is that, aside from the fact that I really drink coffee more out of habit than true desire, I find that I have little or nothing at all to contribute to the conversation…which generally revolves around opera, in which I have an astonishing lack of interest. Still, I feel mildly uncomfortable with the fact that I do not have much to say in groups of any kind. I prefer to come home and write, which I realize only accelerates the withdrawal process a lot of people tend to go through as the years progress.

  So, between paragraphs, I returned from coffee with the gang, and actually did say a bit more than usual, possibly because the conversation was not limited to opera. So perhaps all is not lost.

  But I did not go to the ice cream social.

  * * *

  PRIDE

  There are two basic types of pride: the pride of being a part of something much larger than one’s self, and the stuff that we are cautioned “goeth before a fall,” which is largely of our own making.

  Yesterday, June 29, 2008, was a perfect example of the former. It was Gay Pride day in Chicago and many other cities across the nation. Attendance in Chicago was estimated at over 450,000, and it was not only promoted by all the local TV stations and other media, but most—including the major networks—had floats. Before leaving for the parade, I stood at my window and looked down at the Diversey el station half a block from my apartment, watching train after train disgorging platform-filling crowds of people, which then poured out onto the street and flowed eastward, like a river, toward the parade route.

  Participation or at least representation in the parade has become all but mandatory for any elected official in the state (especially in election years). Great gleaming red-and-white trucks of the Chicago Fire Department, horns blaring, lights flashing, move down the street as part of the parade, and the Chicago Police Department sponsors a float with dozens of uniformed gay and lesbian police riding on it, led by a convertible carrying the Police Commissioner. This was the 39th Chicago Gay Pride parade and it, for the gay community, truly epitomizes the word “Pride.”