Story 9: Shopping with Larry

Shopping at Rich’s with Larry – “Do you have this in a 9?” (1970)

Typical of many gay guys, Larry and I loved to go shopping.

Not so typically, we loved to go shopping for electronics. And Rich’s in downtown Atlanta had a great electronics department, with stereos, radios, records, cassettes and all sorts of gizmos that usually appeal to the straight male.

There was only one problem in shopping the electronics department at Rich’s. To get to its second-floor location, you had to enter from the parking garage somewhere on the first floor. There were many entrances, but every one of them brought you through a women’s clothing section. Rich’s sold men’s and boys’ clothing, but you wouldn’t know it from the entranceways. One entrance opened into the Juniors, another into sportswear, and yet another into, “intimate apparel.” It wasn’t my idea of intimate apparel and Larry didn’t wear underwear anyhow, and neither of us did drag (if you don’t count Larry’s one unfortunate night that he spent in the drunk tank – in a dress.) Yet no matter where we entered the store, we two red-blooded American gay boys had to brave aisle after aisle of women’s wear just to get to the elevator to take us to our second floor destination.

Actually, there was a second problem shopping at Rich’s – an overzealous sales staff. For a store that did so much business, you wouldn’t think that rabid sales clerks would pounce upon each customer entering, but you couldn’t walk more than a few feet before being accosted. A few feet more, and there was another. And another.

“No, thank you, just looking,” didn’t seem appropriate since we weren’t looking, at least not at what was on the racks by the entrances. So we’d usually try to act as if they weren’t there, while trying not to be too rude. We had a destination. We had a mission and nothing could deter us.
But that didn’t stop them. One time I counted four assaults by sales clerks between the entrance and the elevator, a distance of maybe fifty feet. What were these people thinking? We were two young guys in jeans and sweaters or polo shirts and tennis shoes. Did we really look like dress shoppers? Did all the clerks on that floor have gaydar? Did most young men entering Rich’s come to buy women’s clothing?

Thankfully, the aisles leading from the entrances to the hub of elevators were wide and traffic moved along smoothly, so we escaped relatively unscathed. Until one day when Rich’s was having a very big sale.

We parked the car, headed for the nearest entrance, braced ourselves for what was to come and boldly walked in. Sure enough, we were attacked. We moved along. Again, we were attacked. We moved along. The next time we weren’t so lucky. We got caught in an aisle bottleneck, unable to move forward, unable to go back. We were stuck. In the juniors dress department.

Larry appeared calm and lit a cigarette. (This was before the no-smoking days.) He offered me one, although I rarely smoked. He lit his and handed me the pack of matches. I was just about to strike a match when a sales clerk struck.

“May I help you find something?” she cooed to Larry, who was stuck next to a rack of dresses. I pretended to hear nothing and lit a match.

Before lighting the cigarette, I glanced at Larry who, to my horror, was reaching for a one of the dresses.

“Do you have this number in a size nine?” he cooed back to her.

I gasped and the match blew out.

At that moment, thank God, there was an opening in the aisle and I pushed Larry through it. All the way to the elevators. Where we met another crowd. Perhaps they had shopping to do on other floors. Perhaps they were all escaping from overzealous sales clerks. Nonetheless, we were trapped again. And Larry had a captive audience.

“What’s the problem,” he grinned mischievously, “don’t you think I’d look good in that?”
He knew I was ticked, and he was waiting for an angry reaction. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I wanted to pound him right there, but beating up on a short, hare-lipped hairdresser – albeit a cute one – didn’t seem appropriate, at least not in Rich’s. Besides, I had an audience to play to as well.

“Oh come on,” I chided him, in a voice that could be heard down the aisle, “you know that dress wasn’t your color.”

“And besides,” I added for effect, “a nine would be much too large for you.”

The crowd waiting for the elevators appeared to get rather quiet. But I said nothing more. That’ll teach him, I thought.

I was still holding the unlit cigarette and the match pack. I struck a match, and was just about to light up when the elevator doors opened and we were pushed forward by the crowd. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the cigarette lit.

Then, just before the doors closed behind us, with a crowd still outside, Larry saw my predicament and said, “Just suck on it, honey, just suck on it.” Then the doors closed.

That was the last time I went shopping at Rich’s with Larry.

Story 8: Larry

Larry was into Drag – Racing, that is (1970, 1976)

Of all the people I met in my first weeks in Atlanta, Larry was my first friend. He was a friend, not a trick, not a bar acquaintance, not a “sister,” as so many gay guys referred to those they hung out with but didn’t sleep with. He was a friend. They say a friend is someone who knows all about you and likes you anyway. That was Larry.

I met Larry my first night out in Atlanta, at the Joy Lounge, the night I used my first pickup line to take Danny home with me. I believe he was the first person who spoke to me that night and I remember that because he spoke to me not as someone seeking “fresh meat,” but as someone wanting to make a new face feel at ease. Besides, Larry didn’t need to find a trick that night; he was with his boyfriend. Over the next several years, until I lost track of him completely, Larry and I would carry our friendship through a variety of relationships. We’d help each other through the times of being single, being in relationship or just being confused.

Larry was unique in several ways. He was a small fellow and maybe we bonded at one level over that characteristic; we little guys seem to have an unspoken level of relationship that way. Larry also had a cleft palate, but it really only made him a bit more cute, a bit more boyish and vulnerable. And sweet.

Larry also fit at least one gay stereotype. He was a hairdresser. Actually, he managed one of a chain of salons owned by some fellow I never knew but heard a great deal about. Larry knew hairstyling and he knew makeup and he loved to critique the performers in drag shows.
But Larry never did drag. Oh, he did once, but not on stage. As for why he did it only once, we’ll get to in a moment.

What Larry – and his straight brother – did do was drag racing, not a stereotypically gay activity. Larry owned a Mustang and he knew every inch of it, inside and out. He lived just a block from my apartment and the first Saturday morning I decided to visit him, I found him under his car. What he was doing I don’t know, but it involved mechanical knowledge of the sort I pay fellows at garages to deal with. Actually, it was his brother who did most of the racing, but Larry shared his love of working on cars.

I rode with Larry often and he was a good driver as well as mechanic. Yet it was one night that he wasn't such a good driver that led him to never do drag again.

One thing I learned about Larry – and I have no idea how the subject arose – was that he seldom if ever wore underwear. No, I don’t know why he did this and I doubt that it matters.
One day at his house, I watched as he sorted and folded his laundry. As he was opening bureau drawers, I spotted a pair of black panties and I just had to ask how they came to be in the bureau of a guy who didn’t wear underwear of any kind.

Larry explained that he wore them one night, the one and only night that he got in drag. It was Halloween and he was talked into doing it, much against his will. Yet, Halloween being sort of a national gay holiday, he acquiesced. He fixed up a wig he borrowed, did his makeup and wore a short dress he got from somewhere. Apparently he looked quite good and headed out for a night of Halloween club life.

All went well until the drive home. Larry wasn’t much of a drinker, but that night he’d had more than his usual. On the way home he got caught in a police sobriety check. He failed and had to spend the night in the drunk tank. In full drag. His first time – and his last time – either in the drunk tank or in drag.

Larry and I remained the closest of friends during my stay in Atlanta and, when I moved back to Tennessee, he was always a willing host when I came to visit. If he was single, I shared his bed (but not him.) If he was living with someone, I had the couch or the spare bedroom if there was one. Many a Friday evening, while I was living in Knoxville, Tennessee, I would arrive home from work to receive a call from Larry that a new club had opened and I should come down and see it. Tonight. So I’d clean up, pick out an outfit and zip two hundred miles down the interstate to Atlanta, arriving just as the Friday night crowd appeared at the new venue.

This went on long after I had left Atlanta and moved on, from Knoxville to Rockwood to Kingston and back to Knoxville.

Then came a weekend in June of 1976. My week of vacation from the radio station I’d spent at home, mainly at (and in) the apartment complex pool. Steve, my former lover, now roommate/best friend whom I still loved, was busy with work now that he had finished his degree in commercial art. (He worked as a manager of an Arby’s Roast Beef Restaurant, but at least he had the degree.) I hadn’t been to Atlanta in almost two years and got it into my head to finish the week with a Saturday night in Atlanta. I’d be tired the next day and have to go to back to work on Monday, but I didn’t care. I didn’t call Larry before leaving, but had his new address with me.

He was glad to see me, although he was disappointed I’d let my bleached surfer-blond hair grow out to its natural dirty blond. He was also disappointed to tell me he and his current boyfriend would be out very late, so I couldn’t spend the night. He’d be glad to see me in the morning though.

For some reason I was unfazed by this. I guess I figured I’d hit the clubs, have some fun and find someone to spend the night with. I’d done that enough before. I wasn’t as fresh a face as I’d been that first night at the Joy Lounge over six years earlier, but I was still fresh enough, especially since I hadn’t been seen in Atlanta for two years.

That evening, though, I discovered that freshness isn’t everything. Maybe I looked too desperate, maybe the crowd wasn’t right, but nothing clicked. Who knows? Maybe, like the young girl, Cher, in the movie, “Clueless,” I was standing in bad light. Whatever the reason, my bar search came to naught. It was almost two a.m., Larry wouldn’t be home for some time and I needed a place to sleep, even sleep alone.

So, for the one and only time in my life, I checked into the baths. The Locker Room was located in a suburban strip mall, giving all outward appearance of a health club. I paid my ten dollars for a locker and a room and off I went. I’ll explore the rest of that night in detail at another time, but suffice to say the sun came up, I checked out, and headed for Larry’s house.

Larry and his boyfriend were home and happy to see me, although Larry feigned shock when I told him where I’d spent the night.

We gathered in the living room and Larry brought in breakfast, a real southern style, Sunday morning breakfast: scrambled eggs, grits, sausage, coffee, orange juice. And a couple of joints.
Well maybe it wasn’t such a typical southern breakfast.

We enjoyed it all, though, while watching “Gold Diggers of 1932,” or some such Busby Berkeley film on TBS. It’s the one that end with the huge production number, “Lullaby of Broadway.” It was fun, campy and a perfect accompaniment to our meal.

I mellowed out for a while, then said my goodbyes to Larry and his boyfriend and headed up I-75 to Knoxville. I arrived home to an anxious Steve. He needed a ride to the airport where a charter flight would take him home to see his dying father.

My vacation over, I returned to work. But I wouldn’t return to Atlanta for another fifteen years. Larry never called again to tell me to come down to see a new club. Anyhow, he couldn’t have found me a year later since I moved to a new job out of town. Then, a year later, I moved out of state to begin a life in academia. There was academic life there, all right, but no gay life and my gay life pretty much became dormant, only to be reawakened years later when I finally returned to Atlanta. I tried to find Larry then, but to no avail. It seems we’d said our last goodbyes that Sunday morning in 1976.