When I was 10 years old my dad was again transferred, this time to Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, South Dakota, near Mount Rushmore. Because it meant that we would be traveling near the Christmas holidays, mom and dad decided to explain to Jay and I that there was no such thing as Santa Claus. They gave us our Christmas presents early that year. We never put up a Christmas tree after that, ever again. They also, jokingly, told us that during a hunting trip, dad shot the Easter bunny.

Before leaving Arkansas, I remember a few highlights from our time there:

My dad tried, for a moment once, to be human. One day just after Christmas, he found an un-inflated balloon on the bookcase ledge. Jay and I would blow up balloons and let them go, laughing as they jetted around the trailer, until they ran out of air. I think he was going to blow it up for me. As soon as he started to inflate it, it popped. He tossed it aside, picked back up his beer, and the moment passed.

I needed corrective shoes because of problems with the arches of my feet. I had to practice standing off the edge of the stairs hanging on by my toes, and raising and lowering my heels to strengthen the arch. I also had to pick up nickels and quarters using my toes. Oh yeah, and I now had huge ugly black corrective shoes to go with my huge ugly unbreakable black plastic glasses. My self esteem was at an all time low.

Dad brought Jay and me each a guitar from the Far East while he was away on duty there. I really liked my guitar and taught myself to play by using the "Hank Williams Guitar Book". My first song was a spiritual called "I Saw the Light". My dad had me play it all the time for his drinking buddies. I think, maybe, he was proud of me.

Though I was too young to know anything about sex, at the age of 9, I realized that while soaking in the bathtub, I could bend over and touch my tongue to the head of my penis. I have no idea why I tried this.

We sold the trailer, the boat, the push button automatic Mercury station wagon, bought a camper top for the truck and drove the truck to Rapid City.

I don't recall ever having any friends before we moved to South Dakota. I was beginning to get used to being uprooted and moved around a lot. Living near Rapid City was an enlightening experience for me. It was my first glimpse of prejudice. Everyone seems to need someone to hate. In South Dakota, those objects of derision were the Native Americans. It wasn't bad enough that we'd taken their indigenous lands, but we'd also carved the faces of our presidents into their sacred mountain.

We lived in South Dakota for 2 years, living in base housing with rented furniture. We finally had a real house, and Jay and I each had our own separate rooms. I remember pulling the drawers out of my chest of drawers one day to find a folded paper there; it was a book report that must have belonged to the person who last rented the furniture. They got an "F" on the report. I wonder if they were hiding it from their parents.

I made two friends while I was in school there. A girl named Robin, and a boy whose name I don't remember anymore. He was an outsider like me, they called us military brats. He said his uncle was the movie star, Burt Lancaster. I liked him. He was talented in writing and art. He kept a notebook in which he draw a series of cartoon panels like you'd read in the newspaper. I remember it being quite good.

On rainy days we would all wait in the Gym before school. They had a record player set up, and students were allowed to bring records from home to play. One of the students brought an album by Country Joe and the Fish Call. One song on the album was shyly called the "Fish Cheer":

"gimme an F!
gimme an U!
gimme an C!
gimme an K!
what's that spell?
FUCK!
say it again?
FUCK! "

Needless to say the entire gymnasium chimed in to sing the song at the top of our lungs. I think we were able to play the song through twice before a teacher arrived to confiscate the record. I realized then that music could move people. It could take a gymnasium full of obedient young military brats and have them screaming curse words at the top of their lungs. I was truly moved.

I began my first love affair then. Yes I know I was young, but this affair filled so many of my needs. The need to be understood, the need to know that someone else has gone through the same troubles you have, the need to be there at any hour of the day or night. In my room with the door closed, my lover and I met, sharing quietly enough for only me to understand, not too loud to alert my parents in the other room. My first lover was music. In class one day my teacher played Creedence Clear Water Revival's song, Who'll Stop the Rain. She then took each line of the song and deconstructed it for us, explaining what it meant. She told us about FDR's New Deal and for the first time I understood that songs could be about more than just cute lyrics and a pretty tune. They could be used to tell a story, or to comment on society. CCR became my one of my favorite groups. On a slightly different side to music appreciation, I had another favorite group of mine at the time, the Rolling Stones. They had a popular song out then, called Sympathy for the Devil. Every day, when I arrived home from school, I would call the radio station to request it. I did this so often that the DJ started to recognize my voice. I'm not sure what it was about this song that intrigued me. It was probably the taboo nature of the subject, and my Catholic upbringing. Another very controversial song popular at that time was by a group called Bloodrock 2. The song was titled D.O.A. and was about a car crash and its aftermath. It's interesting that I liked this song. It's also interesting how art, foreshadows life. In seven years time I would again remember this song in a situation that would change the very core of my world. It played for only a few days, and then was pulled by most radio stations because they felt the ambulance siren in the song might confuse people listening to it in their cars and cause an accident. I started using music as my escape. When I wanted to be alone, or was mad at my parents, I'd go to my bedroom, close the door, and escape into music.

Though we never went sightseeing, my dad took us camping and fishing a lot. I would get bored easily and end up just dragging the tip of my rod in the water watching the ripples it made. Dad would get mad and tell me I wasn't being serious about fishing and I guess I wasn't. I found it was too much waiting, for too little catching. Then one time while I was "playing" instead of fishing, a fish bit my line! I began reeling as hard as I could. It took close to 10 minutes to reel the fish in, with Dad giving me verbal instructions and encouragement. He even suggested that I hand the rod to him to take over, but I refused. This was MY fish. When we finally got it into the boat, we realized it was the largest fish anyone had ever caught in our family. It was a twenty-two pound Northern Pike.

We were very sheltered children. Growing up in a military environment and being uprooted every couple of years caused a certain lack of worldliness. This deficiency was most evident in matters pertaining to sex. One evening as I was sleeping I awoke with this strange sensation in my underwear. Up until this time I had never placed much consideration on why it was that my penis was hard some of the time. Tonight it felt different. There was this sticky clear fluid accumulating at the opening and when I touched it I had this intense whole body PAIN that coursed through me in waves. The pain was so intense I felt that something terrible must be happening to me. At the same time much more of this sticky stuff began to pour out onto my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom down the hall to clean it up. While I was cleaning up I realized that the cleaning and wiping actually felt good. I was having more of these full body sensations, but now they no longer felt like pain. It was the most intense feeling I had ever felt (next to fear.) I had just discovered, all by myself, masturbation, and I proceeded to practice it about 3 times a day for scores of years.

I asked my brother about it and he seemed to understand the process too. We realized it was related to sex, but neither of us had any experience with it. Like most kids we experimented together, and alone, for about 2 years. I tried a few things then, that I would now say fell into the realm of gay sex. To Jay it was just experimenting, to me it was the beginning of an awakening.

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