I started the year by continuing to work at Fry’s as a cashier/stocker and going to school full time. I was busy as ever. John was busy too, and we continued our lives together, living in our guest house on S. Warren. My classes included two sociology courses for the first time, and I ended up loving them.

 When my birthday rolled around, John threw me a party and invited both my new friends and some of my old friends to the gathering at our home. Unfortunately, that was like mixing oil and water. I was hurt and disappointed at my old friends, as they clearly didn’t want to mingle with my new friends. I suppose they felt threatened or something by the fact that one or two of my friends were just a bit too effeminate. It must have made them quite uncomfortable, as they stayed in another part of the house the entire time they were there.  Homophobia was rampant back then, and it took many years for some people to come around and accept other gay people as they were. It hurt to know that my own friends didn’t really accept my chosen path.

One of our “very gay” friends, Leonard, hailed from the upper Midwest and before moving to Tucson trained horses on a farm in Michigan. He moved to Tucson to get away from his old life and he became a hairdresser, and lived his life as an openly gay man. He and his partner Virgil, who had gone to junior high and high school with my brother Fred, were a lot of fun. Leonard gave me a “perm” at some point, but I let my hair grow out after the first one. Perms were something John liked getting. My hair was curly enough on its own, but they were a big thing at the time. Everyone was getting perms. My sister-in-law has a photo of me with my perm all grown out, but I don’t have a copy of it. She took the photo just before she cut my hair.

Sometime at this point, I got very ill with the flu. It was the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had in my whole life.  I was delirious with fever and weak as could be, and was sick for days. At one point, I even wanted John to take me home to my parent’s house, so that they could take care of me. I wanted my mommy! Somehow I managed to survive it, but the flu that winter killed a lot of people. I truly did feel like I was going to die.

As a 21 year old, I continued to identify primarily as a Chicano and as a bohemian/hippie type, but as I began to experience life as a gay man, my perspective broadened. I was becoming immersed in “gay” culture, hanging out with other gay people, either at the bars or in other social settings where my partner and I found ourselves. I continued to learn as much as possible about the history of the gay community, about “camp”, drag and gay sensibility. I also learned a lot about gay icons like Judy Garland and Joan Crawford. I learned about gay subcultures too. There were different groups of gay men for example, such as those into the leather scene, men who identified as “bears” or “clones”, and women who were separatists, and about “butch” and “femme” roles. Overall, I learned that there is a great deal of diversity within the “gay” community, but I didn’t identify with any specific group, as my radical political leanings, my ethnicity and my anti-materialistic outlook, kept me from feeling like I fit under any specific “label” or belonged to any specific group, so to speak. A lot of the other young, gay Latinos I encountered were into the disco scene and harder drugs like pills and cocaine. I found them superficial and cliquish, and didn’t relate at all to what they were into.

Critics panned this movie, but who cares. Richard Gere appears in the nude! That’s all it took for us to want to see it. It was one of the very first films to show frontal male nudity, and while that particular scene lasted just a few seconds, it was, shall we say, quite revealing! Richard Gere was gorgeous.

While I do not like violence in films, this movie was much more than that for me. It was authentic in so many ways. The New York leather scene came to life in this movie, and while the plot of the movie was creepy, the scenery, the music and the men in it made it quite fascinating. I’m glad I got to see the film, although I could understand why various gay organizations were boycotting it. There was nothing else about gay culture out there at the time in popular culture, and this movie was unveiling a segment of gay culture that was quite hardcore.

Here’s a live version of Mad Love, the title cut.

My love for Linda Ronstadt all these years has been unwavering, and I made sure to buy each new disc that came out, especially in the 70’s and 80’s. I didn’t care much for the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff or the opera material she covered later, but I loved everything else. My hip friends thought I was too “corny” and bland in my tastes at times, especially because I loved Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Rita Coolidge, James Taylor and Joan Baez, artists one could easily characterize as “middle of the road”. They just weren’t “cool” enough. I shied away from hard rock, disco, metal, funk etc. I liked what I liked, and I was beginning to develop in-depth knowledge of American soul music, jazz, and urban folk music. It would take a few years before I immersed myself in Mexican rancheras, mariachi music, and other forms of Musica Latina, but once I did, there was no turning back.

I had been listening to country music for a while when this came out. I never cared much for Loretta Lynn at all, but the movie was just great because Sissy Spacek was so incredible. I loved listening to country music, especially the local group, The Dusty Chaps, The Byrds when Gram Parsons played with them, Freddie Fender, Willie Nelson, Pure Prairie League, and of course Emmylou and Dolly. There’s a line I draw, however, in my own head, regarding this genre of music. It can get very corny and too “all-American” and too Southern and redneck-like all too easily. I’m definitely very picky when it comes to this stuff, but still, some of my friends just don’t understand how I can even tolerate it at all. For me, it goes back to when I was a child. My uncle Nato would take me with him at times to his local watering holes like the Cactus Room or the Wooden Nickel, and there on the jukebox would be a mix of Mexican music and country music. It was always there in the background and I listened intently.

You really get to know someone when you travel with them. This trip was a real challenge at times. John and I argued a lot, but we made it through without killing each other. Something wasn’t clicking after a while with us, however. Perhaps I was too immature for him. I have always been a big “baby”, and there were episodes on this trip where I whined a bit too much and got him really frustrated.

At one point while we were living on S. Warren, our little house was broken into, and the thieves took a bunch of stuff, like my lawn mower and a battery that was in the porch. They also took jewelry and other stuff from inside the house. I was completely traumatized by this when I found out, and I called in sick at work. The boss reluctantly let me stay home. Working at Fry’s was not always a piece of cake. One had to be on time at all times and if you called in sick, you needed a doctor’s excuse. It’s a good thing we had a union. It did what it could to help protect our rights.

John had a very liberal attitude towards sex, and didn’t believe in monogamy. I preferred it, however, but reluctantly went along with how he wanted things. One day after school, I noticed that he had a pile of record albums stacked against the couch, including the one above by Judy Collins, that had just been released. I asked why they were there, and he said he’d gone to our friend Kidd’s house to listen to music with him. However, I knew that he would never play any of his records on Kidd’s stereo because Kidd had a crappy record player needle, and John was a big audiophile who took good care of his albums. I told him that didn’t make any sense, and after I continued to question him, he finally revealed that he had been seeing someone else, closer to his own age and that he really liked the guy. He said he loved both of us and that he still wanted to be with me and to also see the other guy. I was shocked and heartbroken. I went outside, got on my bike, and rode it for what seemed like hours, trying to gather the strength not to cry and thinking about what I was going to do.

Our relationship was over. I could not continue with John knowing that he was falling in love with someone else. I called my sister Becky and told her what had happened. I was crying and upset, and she got mad, and told me I needed to get a grip. I was so surprised. I thought she’d be supportive, but she was not going to coddle me this time around. She made me face reality and told me that “the show must go on”, and while it was hard to hear at that point, in the end, she was right, and it helped. I spent 8 months of my life with this guy, and just like that, it all went down the drain.

I moved back to my parent’s house sometime in April. My mother, who had been trying her best to lay off the alcohol, saw that I was a mess, and likely realized that I was indeed gay. That was all it took to get her started on the alcohol again. She likely blamed herself for me having turned out gay, as she spoiled me a lot when I was a kid. My sister would even yell at her at times, saying “no le chipilees tanto. Va a salir joto!” (Don’t spoil him so much. He’s going to turn out queer!). I felt so bad, and blamed myself for the fact that she was drinking again. My poor mom loved me to the moon and back and couldn’t stand seeing me hurt, but she was happy I was home again. I stayed with my parents until the end of the year.

I spent the following months at home, working and going to school. I also started going out again, hitting the bars and meeting other guys. I was footloose and fancy free and partied a lot. I also worked out a lot, and began jogging. I was in pretty good shape overall. It’s a good thing I stayed active, because I could’ve gained a lot of weight drinking all that beer!

I bought a camera around this time and started taking pictures. The photos below are ones I took over the summer months in our back yard at home.

A few years back, my friend Rose turned me on to Joan Armatrading, a British musician who wrote her own music. I wore this album out and ended up buying most of her other material too. Me, Myself, I was released in May, 1980.

Here’s the title cut, Roses in the Snow.

I was very happy to see that Aretha Franklin had a cameo appearance in the Blues Brothers movie. For me, her performance was one of the best parts of the whole film. This was the beginning of what was to be her great “comeback”. She was done with Atlantic Records, and in 1980 signed a contract with the Arista Records label, which was run by Clive Davis. He was a legend in the music industry, and would later go on to strike it super rich by signing Whitney Houston to the label. It would take Aretha another five years and five more albums before she struck gold again with Who’s Zoomin’ Who and the smash hit, “Freeway of Love”. She was definitely on her way!

At this point, I was transitioning from a focus on psychology to one on sociology. I particularly enjoyed my jogging class and the Philosophy in Literature class. I dropped the Spanish class early on, as I didn’t care for Dr. Leo Barrow, the instructor. He would later be censured by the University for giving marijuana, in various forms, to his students. Had I stayed in his class, I would have been treated to marijuana-laced cookies. Oh boy!

I clearly remember receiving this album in the mail at my parents’ house when I was living with them after my breakup with John. It was sold by the Book-Of-The-Month Club, and I was a member at the time (1980). Holiday first recorded “A Fine Romance” back in the 1930’s but the version below is from the above album, “Music for Torching,” which was released in October, 1955.

My philosophy in literature class included discussions of Jean Paul Sartre’s works. This book contained the essay, “Existentialism is a Humanism” by Sartre. The essay itself wasn’t required reading, but it was what I was reading on my own at the time. I considered myself an “existentialist” by this point, and was far removed from my former religious beliefs. Over the years, I’ve flip flopped from being a believer to being an outright atheist to being agnostic. These days I find comfort in having faith in a higher power, and saying my prayers each night helps me sleep without getting nightmares.

I remember where I was when I first heard the news about Lennon’s death. He was a real hero to so many people. His new album was doing well, and everyone was happy to hear his voice again on the radio. What a tragic day and such a tragic loss. I loved his early solo albums, and, of course, his Beatles songs. So much for there ever being a Beatles reunion now.

I ended the semester having made a new friend. Tim M. was a student from New Jersey, and we met in one of our sociology classes. He had very long brown hair and played the guitar. He loved Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, and we’d try our hand at singing duets like Two Of Us by the Beatles. We’d hang out together a lot in the next couple of years, and I was later a member of his wedding party. After college, he became a cop and then an FBI agent. We eventually lost touch.

I stayed with my parents until the end of the year. The past 12 months had been a roller coaster ride. My relationship with John ended, and then I started going out a lot again, meeting different guys here and there, but not really connecting with anyone in particular. All that, combined with work and school kept me on my toes. While things were as crazy as ever at home, I at least felt safe there and was able to assist my parents by helping them with their bills and keeping the yard clean. I didn’t have much privacy, however, as my brother Fred was always breaking into my bedroom and taking my clothes or rifling through my personal belongings. My parents didn’t like that I’d sometimes not come home at night either, and they became very suspicious about my activities. I could never, at this point, bring myself to tell my mother or father directly that I was gay. I just figured they knew, and we never talked about it.

Stay tuned for “My Life in Pictures: 1981”.

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 20^th 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.