I open the closet door. Inside are 50 Calvin Klien Y-front briefs and row upon row of white socks, all perfectly folded like I was observing a robot clothes folding machine that worked at Holt Renfrew. More like a obsessive compulsive Holtzys robot. I swear I could eat a bowl of soup off those socks and underwear and not tip it at all.

Just below is row upon row of VHS porn. More than I have ever seen in my life.

The breadmaker dings. I’m babysitting Richard’s apartment.

Its the spring of ’92 and I have just broken up with my reason for moving to Ottawa. I troll the clubs (all one of them) like some zombie homo, adrift and lonely, angry from the breakup, angry at the move. If any of you have spent more than a weekend in Ottawa you will know what I mean. There are two types of homos that reside in Ottawa: The bar trolling, angry bitter queen that wont talk to anyone they havent known over a year and the Government Employee who would not be caught dead in a gay bar. Both are extremely tight in their cliques and like all exclusive social clubs, entrance was by introduction. After I had spent a couple months of not speaking to anyone in the bar, Richard suddenly appears at my side and starts making low level jokes.

It was sort of like being Tom Hanks in Castaway. At first I didnt realize he was coming on to me, I had been so pick-up starved that his advances were alien. I was dumbfounded. Suspicious. Then I realized he wasnt going to kill/steal/make fun of me and he was actually talking to me, I warmed up to him.

Richard was from the East Coast. The kind of East Coast that was always ready with a smile, slow in speaking as if he was choosing his words carefully, correctly. And hairy. He had the hairiest back of anyone I have ever dated. He actually introduced me into the world of Bears the hard way. He always had a tuft of dark brown hair coming out of the top of his collar, even if he was wearing a turtleneck. He made me shave his neck once, which I found disturbing and erotic.

Richard had quirks. He could drink one can of Coke and be jolted awake in seconds. He was obsessive about his undergear. I think he owned only one pair of black socks and a bazillion all-white sport socks. He had a massive two bedroom condo overlooking the Ottawa river that must have cost him a bit. He created and managed databases for some boring division of the government and was good at what he did. In his spare time, he catagorized and catalogued his porn.

From my diary, Sept 8th, 94:

Richard says: 1) Dont be judgmental too soon. 2) Never give out your number unless asked and you want to. 3) have a pie on hand.

He was smarter than I ever realized at the time. When Richard and I stopped going out but yet were friends (friends that would cuddle naked but not do anything?) we would stand in Ottawa’s only gay club and make fun of people. Richard would tell me stories of people that would walk by and I would comment on their clothes. After the bitterfest, we would go to the 24hr grocery store and get a pie, go back to his and eat the whole thing with plenty of milk.

From my diary I remember that after we became friends I confessed to Richard I loved him and he confessed to going on Prozac. We continued to eat pie. I moved back to Toronto Jan ’94 and Richard would visit a couple times. He’s since moved to Maurin County, Calif. We drifted.

My last good memory of Richard, was coming out of the LeatherBall alone at 5am, suddenly find him and his new found friend running up behind me, shirts in hand, hair everywhere, wanting to share a cab. I look at them and point at their knees. They’re black. Richard is mortified as only an O/C could be.

Continuing with dredging up men from my diary:

27 Dec 97
Working at the Eagle is an eye opener. What an odd mentality the leather community is.

Rob comes into the bar and we went out onto the patio where he proceeded to do K. The bar was empty and I was working and here it was a Tuesday night and he was putting that crap into his body. I didnt know what to do or say. I did nothing and vowed not to continue our friendship. I hate the guys he’s hanging around with – pretentious circuit party queens. I am mostly upset because I always thought Rob was a stronger man.

Rob was a ex-gymnast, aerobics instructor I met when I was working as a catering/restaurant manager who’s kitchen was located in a health club. He use to sit at my bar and made me make weird smoothie concoctions and dare each other to drink them (“now put cayenne pepper in it!”). He was the strongest A-type personality I have ever known who spiraled down into this guy who would do K on a dead Tuesday night. I think he was primarily bored with life after doing so much in his youth: competed in the Olympics, bought and sold trendy 60s antiques in a prosperous Toronto market, owned a loft conversion years before they were popular, personal trained some of the hottest men at the best health clubs. I think I wandered into his life just as he started to get a bit reckless with his partying. I was very attracted to him, but who wasnt? I was the ramora fish beside the sleek sexy shark when we went out. One time, while playing pool at Pegasus, Rob was approached by a photographer to pose for a gay men’s chat line ad. I stood there feeling like crusty pate left out on the counter, the day after some disasterous summer party.

I was the small dog asking the big bulldog “What are we going to do today, Spike?” and I didnt mind a bit. It was attention by association.

Oct 4 96
Rob got shot last night. We were walking down Jarvis after leaving the gym and making jokes about shooting Cocaine Andrew (only to wound, so it could heal and we could shoot him again) when *POP* and Rob crumples to the ground. Some asshole kids with a C0² gun got Rob in the ribs. He was wearing that neoprene one piece he tools around in all the time and that stopped the pellet from entering his skin but it tore the Nike shirt he had on *under* the neoprene. We spent some time at Wellesley General and met up with one other victim of the same drive by kids and talked to some cops. Rob bottled up his emotions well until the next day when he went into a rage directed at all “kids”. All I could think of was “It could have been me!”

The last I saw of Rob was outside his half mil house in Cabbagetown that he bought with his boyfriend. He was outside doing yard work with very little on. “Disturbs the lesbians next door,” he offered. He had that way of getting under your skin.

Growing up, we had a cottage an hour outside Brockville, nestled into a nice wooded inlet on Graham Lake. Actually the structure of the cottage was built not on the land we owned, but next to it on a municipal road that went into the lake. My parents thought they were getting a deal and took the risk in purchasing the land and “the cottage” hoping that Athens Township would never build a road right into Graham Lake. They got away with it. To this day I cant fathom how someone could sell real estate like that. Truthfully, we were squatting in some house beside our land.

The almost A-frame building had three bedrooms, floor to ceiling windowed front, press-board for internal walls (which I would poke away at like a mouse, creating peek holes into the older kids rooms), a dodgy septic tank with a creative National Geographic collage created by my talented gay brother, reminding us that you should not flush for just pee. And that the 5 men should lift the lid as courtesy for the two women in the family. Your typical cottage.

The Cottage was where I had my first TV memory. When I was 4, I can remember my sister and dad yelling at me exictedly to see something on TV. Shaky and grainy, there was Buzz Aldrin jumping down off the LEM. I dont recall being overly excited until my sister actually explained what was going on. Later she would give me my first novel to read: Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Robert A Heinlien.

I had big rubber boots to “swim” with (actually I never learned to swim, I wore the boots so I could play in the water without getting leeches, which I still loathe), and a constant supply of plastic boats to play with in the sandy lagoon we created for the Lazer sailboat launch.

I had a pet frog in a jar. I couldnt be a more typical “kid” if I tried.

Life was good.

Life was even better when Randy was around. He was the next door kid who made me realize I was queer. Randy always said he was one year older than myself but I suspect it was more like 4 years older because he was full-on into puberty while I was a smooth scrawny pre-pube kid. Randy was my first glimse at what was to come, bodily, for myself. He was covered in a fine blond hair except for his crotch and nutsack. My lack of development was made painfully obvious to me when we skinny-dipped, watched racey movies on late night tv, played in the woods or crouched down to look at something, prompting hairy things to fall out of his Addidas shorts. To this day, I have a peener-out-the-shorts fetish and swoon when I see boxers. I would desperately try to get him to sunbathe or swim or look at some bug on the ground so I could get a glimpse of his hairy nuts. It went beyond sex, into the realm of obsessive fascination. When would my bag become shaggy? When would hair thickly “pahf!” out of my underwear like his did. I would drill Randy as to the exact date he got body hair, as if I could mark it on MY calendar. Like I was going to hold a party or something. “Hi Welcome to my Hairy Nutsack Cotillion! Make sure you have punch because we’re going to start soon!”

Randy would take my questions in stride. He wasnt gay and he wasnt shy about his body. But he wasnt a queermo either. He would rebuff my deceitful acts of show and tell-me-again-about-your-pubes machinations. Eventually when I hit 13, he wasnt coming up to the cottage as much during the summer. The last time I saw him was our last fall as owners of the cottage. Both our families were winterizing our cottages and as his family (mom, drunken boorish stepdad) were packing away things, Randy waved across to me and went back to stapling plastic over their windows.

Now, into the present: exerpt from my Diary, marked Sept 11, 1997:

Dad told me that Randy’s wife killed herself and their child. I wonder why she did that?

Man. I feel I owe him something.

I found my diary from 10 yrs ago in the basement today:

Nov 4th, 1996

I met Robert at my brother’s U of T Intelligencia party. 14yrs ago he and my brother goofed about for a while and ended it abruptly. Robert stumbles into this party – I’m stoned + kinda drunk and munching out at the snacks when he enters. I will never forget it – all bluster and cyclone like. I’m enchanted.

He’s a comedian, though I have never seen him on TV. Cool outlook. His attention turns on me like car headlights and his off the cuff remark to me makes me feel like a fool. I clam up. He says I seem detached. I’m actually paranoid from the pot and I am worried I’ll say something wrong. He’s beefy. I find him very attractive. His eyes crinkle when he smiles. He’s observant: he reads me like a book. He suspects I can’t be monogamous (try me!), he thinks I’m a bottom (try me!)…he thinks…I don’t really know. He offers to have me over for a sleep over because he feels comfortable around me.

Nov 25 1996

Robert and I still date. But no sex yet. Last night, as we lay beside each other, I read to him from “Kewtee, Santa’s Helper” as he groped my crotch.

It was all in fun. I think.

I will never forget him. I remember after he left with my phone number in his pocket, I couldn’t stop talking about him. He was the kind of person I wanted to be: gregarious, funny, commanding, likable. We broke up on the steps of the community centre where he taught improv acting classes.

The first night I slept over he handed me a pair of flannel pjs and I laughed. This, however, was not a joke. He expected me in them if I wanted to sleep over. I wore them. Once. After that it was t shirt and underwear. I never found out why.

Robert had the best apartment ever. Located in a 4 storey sprawling post-war lowrise, nothing in it was created before 1960. Couches, paintings, working stereo, curtains…all of it in pristine condition. The greatest thing about the apartment was the bathroom: from floor to ceiling were articles, lobby shots, pictures, figurines of Joan Crawford. Complete with JC toilet scrub and Ajax on a shelf by itself. I thought it the most decadent bathroom ever.

He use to call me by my last name. Never by Ted. I could never win an argument with him. He was a wordsmith and a master debater.

We never had sex once in the 7 weeks we went out. Yes I was monogamous.

I saw Robert on TV last year in a PSA. He played a doctor who joyously flipped his pen as The Comforting Government Voice said that health care was in good shape.

Weirdly enough I now work steps away from his old apartment and wonder if he’s still there, living in his shrine to all things 50s.