This morning I drove Ande’s father’s car from Brookline to Route 3 onto 128 past the snowfields of the Blue Hills and then headed south to the great metropolis of New York City. Big Blue has a radio station atop its granite bald summit. The view from the tower encompassed Boston from Cape Ann to Nantasket.
As a teen I had skied the short trails, but always revel in the dark blue of the Atlantic stretching east into the Atlantic. Boston had once been my hometown. My mother had called this morning and told me to take care of myself.
My one goal was to make enough money to pay off their mortgage and then send them to Hawaii. Getting a regular job was the only way to achieve that wish, but 9 to 5s bored me shitless and I stepped on the Cutlass’ gas.
Visiting my parents had been comforting as had seeing my brothers, sisters, and aunts and uncles and our next door neighbors, the Menconis for Christmas dinner. I loved my parents. My older brother was with Pattie, who was working for the CIA My sisters Pam and Regina seemed happy, and Regina’s beau was a good man from Hartford, if there is such a thing. My younger brother Patrick played guitar in the basement, while Michael, obviously wanted to tell everyone his secret. I had warned him that confessing you’re gay was one sure way to ruin Christmas and he said, “Maybe this summer.”
I felt bad about not having any gifts and even worse getting some. Andy was my only friend at the gathering. Every other friend from grammar and high school and college have vanished into the amnesia of the past. My old girlfriends are ghosts; Linda Imhoff, Hilde Hartnett, Janet Stetson, and Jackie Collins. I’m not sure if I abandoned them or they deserted me.
The Cutlass sped on I-95 through the marshlands of the Neponset River. The highway rose at Sharon onto a plateau all the way to Providence. The Interstate had destroyed miles of neighborhoods, but at least the engineers had banked the pavement and I hit 80 past the empty harbor.
Farther along the State Prison rises atop a high berm. Hundreds of convicts locked to serve sentence for their crimes or someone else’s wrong. Snow topped the field of the pine barrens, until I reached New London and the nuclear sub bases of Groton. Within a half hour I crossed the Connecticut River, which I considered the southern boundary of New England.
At Christmas dinner my family asked, “Will you ever return to Boston?”
“I don’t think so.”
I love New England; Maine and the White Mountains, but I had taught English at South Boston High during the bussing riots. The city of my birth was filled with racists. My old friends called me a ‘race traitor. I could fight them all. The day before Christmas I rode the trolley into Park Street. None of the women appealed to me.
I left the city in 1976. I adopted the slums of the East Village as home, even though my first friends had yet to come to New York. My good friend, Andy, was remained in Boston playing funk in an all-black band. Neil had left Staten Island to study Medicine in Dagupan City in the Philippines, Libby had flown to Paris to seek fame and fortune as a fashion model. I had new friends now, but I felt I would desert them at one point.
LATER
I’m trapped in Brooklyn. Covid has surged out of control, yet plenty of unmasked people wander the streets of Clinton Hill, as if they are immune to the virus, but many of my friends have been struck up by this variant despite having been vacced twice.
A road trip would be perfect except there’s nowhere I can go, as I will have a series of tests at NYU Hospital to assess the health of my liver.
I’ve been invited to ski in Tahoe, sun in florida, and fly over to London to reside at Goodenough University. Mostly I want to see my families in Thailand, however Nu says that everything in shut down in Pattaya and Mem is concerned about leaving the house.
Oh, for the world to be free again.
