1979 would be another remarkable year. I started the year out deciding that I needed a break from school. When I quit Salpointe in 1976, I did so on the condition that I would finish college, so I knew this was temporary, as I did not want to break my promise to my parents. I had already completed 54 units of courses and had a solid “B” average by the end of the year, and was nearly halfway done. While I was becoming wary of pursuing a profession in psychology, it remained my chosen major. I took the semester off, in part, to think about what I really wanted to do as I continued my education, and to earn more money.
Life went on. I continued working as a stocker/cashier at Fry’s and living in my little one-room efficiency apartment. I pulled back some from the partying and bar hopping, but didn’t stop completely. I had been “out” almost a whole year, since March, and while I met a few guys here and there who I thought I really liked, I hadn’t yet met anyone who I dated on a steady basis. That would change as the year progressed.
During the last couple of years of her life, my grandmother Josefa became ill with Alzheimer’s disease, and my aunt Mary took care of her. Her husband Fernando decided that he was moving the family to Los Angeles where he had found work after he had been laid off from his job here in Tucson, so aunt Mary put our grandmother in a nursing facility. My grandmother begged my mother not to leave her alone there, so my mom decided that she would take care of her at home. It was a huge burden on my mom and dad, but mom could not stand seeing my grandmother suffering in a cold hospital room all by herself. She took care of her for nearly a year.
My grandmother died at the house on January 13, two days before my 20th birthday. She was 75 years old. She had always been very kind and sweet to me and was the only grandparent I ever knew. (I am working on a separate blog entry about my grandmother and her family. Stay tuned). This was the second death in my family within the past six months, and this one hit particularly hard. I was grief stricken. My aunt Dora, Uncle Armando and their daughter Tish came back to town for the funeral, as did Aunt Mary and her family. It was a sad time.
A month or two later, my sister Irene’s son Anthony was baptized at St. Ambrose Church. My mom and I were his godparents. After church, we all went to mom’s house and had a little celebration. Carlos and Elaine were there, as were others. In contrast to our previous family gathering for my grandmother’s funeral, this one was a happy occasion.
Sometime in March, I decided that I was going to move back home. I don’t remember exactly why I did this. It might have been to save money. I let one of my cousins sublet my apartment, and stayed with my parents until later in the summer.
In my journal at this time, I wrote a lot about not really knowing where I was headed with my life. Even though coming out was a major milestone, I was still lonely and longed for a companion. I was tired of the bar scene and all the so called “fun” I was having, and of working all the time. I missed school, too.
I continued to listen to lots of music and to go on shopping sprees for albums and books. Several albums were released in the Spring, including discs by Rickie Lee Jones and Emmylou Harris. Dylan also released a two album set, titled “Bob Dylan at Budokan”, a live recording of concerts he gave in Japan, with the same band that Richard and I saw him perform with at the McKale Memorial Center on the UA campus a few months earlier.
At the end of May, I met a guy named John. He was an Italian-American from New York who moved here after having served in the Air Force. He was 10 years older than me, but we hit it off. We dated regularly during the first month or so of our budding relationship, then at some point in the summer I decided to move in with him. I also re-enrolled in school and took a psychology class during the first summer session, followed by a full load of courses in the Fall. My grade point average was slowly starting to improve.
At some point in the Spring, I was transferred from the store I worked at on 22nd near Alvernon to another store on the south side of town, way out on the Nogales Highway. I wasn’t the only Mexican transferred. The new manager of our store, D.W. Green, was an avowed racist (he had a confederate flag in his office), and he tried to transfer all of the Mexicans out of “his” store. My friend Richard ended up getting transferred to the far southeast side at the same time. I didn’t like the manager at my new store, and when I let him know that that I was planning to take vacation time, he declined my request. I decided then that it was time to quit, so I left Fry’s for a short while. It took just a month or so for me to go back, however. I went to my old store and asked to be re-hired. In the meantime, D.W. Green, who also had a cocaine problem, had been caught stealing money from the store’s safe, and was subsequently fired. I was quickly re-hired and stayed with Fry’s for another 7 years, long enough to be vested in the company’s pension plan.
I listened a lot to Joni Mitchell in this period of my life. She had started out as a “folkie” but then became more daring in her musicianship and by 1979, was recording jazz. I had all of her albums. The album, “Mingus”, was released at this time. My record collection only continued to grow, as did my book collection. I loved reading both novels and non-fiction.
I was also still close to my friend Sylvia, although I could tell that she didn’t approve much of my “new” lifestyle. She was still very much into wanting to be a nun at the time. My other friends, Jim and Judy moved to Missouri, and Rose and Teri had drifted away several months earlier. It was more my doing than theirs, as I was busy celebrating my new found freedom as a gay man, and I didn’t respond to their letters as consistently as I had before. Ron and Jane were still around, and I remember at one point I worked for Jane at her bookstore, Campana Books. The two of them have always been supportive and reliable friends. I’m forever grateful.
My friend Richard and I, while not as close as we once were, continued hanging out together too. We partied a lot, and listened to music together. Our friends, Ron Burch and Sandy Hernandez, decided to tie the knot, and their wedding was a lot of fun. Richard was Ron’s best man. They had been friends since grade school, and at this time Richard lived with Ron and Sandy in a house just south of Speedway near Alvernon. We had lots of parties there.
John and I lived in an apartment on Elm St just east of Tucson Blvd. for a short while, but we left because some guy walked by our front window one afternoon, glanced over, and saw us kissing on the couch, and it freaked him out. Later that night, he showed up again, sounding very drunk and very angry, yelling at us at the top of his lungs to come outside. He wanted to kill us, or so it felt. John and I were fearful for our lives. The next day the landlords asked us to leave. We could have protested, but we feared for our safety. We got out of there as fast as we could, and moved into a guest house on S. Warren, a couple of blocks south of Broadway near Campbell, that belonged to another gay man, and things felt much safer there. As I’ve said once already, being gay back then was sure a lot different from what it’s like now.
Being 10 years apart had its disadvantages, but was also beneficial in many ways. I was very happy and in love. John had a lot of friends and over time, they’d become my friends too. These guys were usually several years older than me, and I learned a lot about gay history and culture from them. We saw lots of movies together, including The Rose, La Cage Aux Folles, and the Rocky Horror Picture show.
By this time, I was also a big Aretha Franklin fan, and was starting to acquire as many albums of hers as possible. She started out recording for Columbia Records in the very early 60’s and then switched to the Atlantic label in 1967, the year she hit it big with her single, “Respect”. This recording, her last for the Atlantic label, was released in early September, and was a major flop. It would take a change in management and record labels and a few more years for Aretha to bounce back from what was considered a low point in her recording career. This album included two disco songs that didn’t go anywhere at all, lending creedence to the popular phrase, “disco sucks”.
John was a big music buff too, and he loved jazz and Frank Sinatra. He turned me on to singers like Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, and I too became a big fan, (but I drew the line at Sinatra. I couldn’t stand him). We also listened to new music like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Bat Out of Hell, by Meatloaf, and the recent album by The Cars. I still loved my Bob Dylan, however, and bought Slow Train Coming as soon as it came out. In December, one of John’s friends got us front row seats to see Dylan live at the Tucson Community Center Music Hall. It was an incredible show, with some very talented musicians. Dylan played all of the songs from Slow Train Coming, and the singers he had with him were amazing as they belted out one gospel tune after another.
By the end of the year, John and I had lived together for almost five months. We were both very busy. I was working and going to school, and John had two jobs. We clearly loved each other, but it wasn’t all perfect, however, and the relationship had its rocky moments. John was sometimes bossy and moody, and I had a hard time standing up for myself at times. Nevertheless, my dream to have a “lover” had come true, and we did have a great time together. I was happy, and did well in school and continued to work at Fry’s as the year came to a close.
My cousin Tish sent this Christmas card to me from California. When she came to town for my grandmother’s funeral at the beginning of the year, I asked her about the Harvey Milk assassination, which had just occurred the previous November. She told me she had attended the vigil for him and said there were thousands of people there, all with candles lit, and that it was a beautiful sight. She was one of the only family members who knew I was gay at the time.
Overall, 1979 ended on a high note, as things were going well with John and me. I had new friends too, that included Dennis Krenek, Leonard Brown and his partner, Virgil, and others such as Kidd, Leonor and Shirley. These were all people that John had introduced me to, and they were all very nice. My old friends Richard and his brother Albert were still around too and I’d hook up with them occasionally, but John and I didn’t hang out with them together much at all.
