Gregg - The Tall Boy: A Memoir

The Tall Boy

A Memoir

Jess Gregg

New York

For Marijane Meaker

and the bunch at Ashawagh Hall

PART ONE

FEBRUARY, 1943

Hollywood Boulevard was crowded, but nobody seemed to be going anywhere. The tourists drifted aimlessly, and so did I, until I noticed that one of them was cruising me. To make certain, I slowed my pace, finally pausing to glance in a shop window. He stopped too, and I could see the reflection of his smile in the plate glass. He was a few years older than I, in his late twenties perhaps, and more solidly built. With his fresh complexion and new sports shirt, he looked like a recently demobilized sailor getting his first gape at Glitter Gulch.

Whats doin? he asked.

Nothing much, I told him. Just heading home.

There was something lazy in his smile. Live around here?

I shook my head. Live with my folks.

Lazy, even intimate: If you got wheels, we could always drive out to the beach

The suggestion was not irresistible. At twenty-two, I was choosy, and he wasnt really my type. However, I was a little tight, he was ready, and, anyway, why not? We strolled down a dark side street to where I was parked, and got into my car. As I turned the key in the ignition, he sprawled back slightly in the seat.

Oh, man, Im bustin my jeans, he laughed. The knee he pressed against mine invited me to find out.

I did, and the fact was, he had considerably overstated his condition. Still, I let out the brake, and we pulled away from the curb. At the first boulevard stop, he said curtly, Turn left! Surprised at his tone, I glanced at him. He was holding his wallet open to a glint of brass. Whatever else he said was drowned out by the booming realization that I was under arrest.

Stunned, suddenly sober, I followed his directions and drove several blocks deeper into the night. Thoroughly business-like now, he told me to stop in front of a squat, modestly-lit municipal building. Here, we were joined by an unmarked car, which apparently had been following usdecoy cops, like nuns, travel in twos. They went through my pockets, patted their hands under my arms and down my thighs, then searched my car with the same close attention. Nothing incriminating was found, although the glove compartment produced a snapshot of a girl I had dated in college. Is this a guy in drag? the second officer asked.

After my car had been impounded and the keys taken, the detective marched me into the station house. A policeman at the front desk greeted him cheerfully. You pull in another fag?

Yep, said my detective, grinning modestly.

Guess it takes one to know one, the desk man teased.

I was left alone in an empty back room. The bleak glare of the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling drained the color from everything but the black fur on the ventilator grill. I paced back and forth, trying to jump-start my brain. What I would say or how I would explain, I had no idea. I had never been arrested before. Nor had I spent much time weighing the cause or consequence of my sexualityhad simply accepted what had been dealt to me, same as I did with being tall, or having no gift for algebra. Since my actions werent motivated by malice or greed, they didnt seem any more criminal to me than the instinct that Sally and Joe celebrate in some lovers lane.

This view, however, was not shared by the dumpy plainclothesman who shortly came in. He sat down opposite me and laconically put his questions, while the husky young decoy copied down my replies. I answered straightforwardly, probably following the rule of behavior set since childhood: if you were truthful and cooperative, you would be forgiven.

But childhood was far away now. I was driven downtown to the seedy commercial district, where the white finger of City Hall marked the police headquarters. As I was taken inside, the decoy cop suddenly became chatty, especially about his wife. It was as if he had to make scrupulously clear to me, or even to himself, that he had only been playing a part on Hollywood Boulevard. No hard feelings, he added, marching me along a corridor. Its just my job.

Still trying to understand, I asked, Then who have I harmed?

Evidently he had been asked this question before, because he didnt pause to think before answering. Just that we cant allow this kind of thing to go on, he said.

It was all the answer I was to get. In mid-twentieth century America, all questions about this matter had been satisfactorily taken care of by pulling down poor old Oscar Wilde some fifty years earlier. Although a smirk was permissible, nice people didnt mention homosexuality. Both law and religion regarded it as a kind of willfulness that only tar and feathers could cure. Movies forbad any hint of it, and if novels highlighted the subject, they were likely not to be reviewed or advertised by decent newspapers Regarded as criminal or sick, and with imprisonment always a threat, the gay world was necessarily a secret society, with its own private vocabulary, but no political voice. If one survived in this mine field, it was thanks to guts, intuition, and humor. And luck.

But luck seemed to have run out on me when I was shortly booked on a lewd vagrancy charge, and hurriedly fingerprinted. Too hurriedly, it seems, and by an apparent rookie, for a few minutes later the whole agonizing process had to be done over correctly, each finger pressed in ink and individually rolled from side to side on the printed form. A junkie, waiting in line behind me, asked if this was my first time in the slam? Someone told him to shut up, and he dodged involuntarily as if to avoid a fist. A moment later, he was whispering again, advising me not to let them see that I cared. The phrase he used should have made me smile, considering my already conspicuous height. Walk tall, he said.

Neither pride nor poise was equal to the storm inside me, however, and in an effort to quiet it, I began blocking out each impression as it happeneda kind of self-hypnosis I had experimented with before in the dentists chair. As a result, I have no clear picture of what happened next. I dont think I was locked in the tank with the drunks and vagrants, nor was I taken into night court; yet my dread of both possibilities left an impression so vivid, it passes today as memory. All I can be sure of is that, some time between midnight and forever, I was handed a yellow phone book and told to choose someone to stand my bail.

There were pages and pages devoted to this serviceopen all night, most of them read, and some, next door to the jail. Soon I was filling out a bond agreement with a sullen middle-aged man in a too-sharp suit. When I was released, he consented to taxi me to my fathers house for an additional seventy-five dollars. His silent contempt as we sped through the deserted streets, however, was gratis.

When we reached home, I ran inside and scraped together whatever money I could find, some of it in nickels and dimes, and brought this back to the car. The bond man counted it carefully, and then as I turned to go, said, Wait! I glanced back. His eyes were still contemptuous, but furtively he ran his hand down the inside of his leg. How about it? he asked. I did not reply, but crossed the lawn and let myself back into the house.

No one was awake. Tiptoeing up to my room, I stripped quickly and got into the shower, compulsively scrubbing myself as if the disinfectant smell of jail were still clinging to me. What little perspective remained had to battle an impulse to destroy the clothes I had worn that night. Shirt, slacks, and shorts finally went into the laundry hamper, and my tweed jacket to the back of my closet. As far as I know, I never wore it again.