That's What I Call A Birthday

Growing up in Mt. Vernon, a suburb of New York City, I was always very excited when my birthday came around. My father, was really into gadgets. I am talking about the 1950'sand early 60's . Among some of the gadgets that I remember, there was a 3D camera. It took pictures out of two lenses simultaneously and and the pictures were developed as two slides mounted together to be viewed through a viewer with two eye pieces so that the pictures really were in 3D. He owned a tape recorder that recorded sound on a thin piece of wire. He bought one of the first portable radios and one of the first portable TVs. The radio weighed a lot, but the TV was definitely hernia material. It was about 5" by 5" and was about 18" high. You viewed it by lifting a lid on the side and looking into a mirror that was projecting the picture from within. It weighed a ton. The picture screen was probably 2"square. However the thing weighed a ton because back then there was no such thing as small batteries. It probably weighed more than 20 lbs. I also remember that we had a table console tv that had a 7" screen that he had bought in the late 1940's. It was stored in our basement once it was replaced by larger screen tvs. My parents told me that it was one of the first tvs in their neighborhood and at night their neighbors used to come to their apartment to watch this great new invention. We had one of the first color tvs in the neighborhood. My father also had a color camera which he used to film not only my birthday parties, but those of my brother and sister as well. My brother has those films today, and has transferred them to video tape. You can tell that birthdays were always important.
Big day, big celebration. As I got older I still made a point of celebrating my birthday as best I could, with varying degrees of success. In the late 70's I was in my first business, The Other Way, a novelty knit company for Juniors. I had a designer by the name of Robert Hansen. Robert was the best jr. designer around. To this day he is still one of the best. Robert is gay. I had recently had the girl I was living with to move out and hadn't started to date anyone. I had no plans for my birthday and when Robert asked what I was doing that night I told him that I wasn't doing anything. He invited me to go out to dinner with a bunch of his friends, which was really nice of him. I wound up spending the night with Robert and a bunch of his friends.
When I started to write this I had no remembrance of who was there other than Robert. Amazingly, to me, as I am writing, I am remembering more and more. In addition to Robert, who has been my friend for more than 30 years, there was Mel, a tall screaming queen type, Kenny, one of the most promiscuous gay man of all time. Kenny loved to regale his friends with stories about his escapades at the gay movies. He used to go to the men's room to hang out. He was a big fan of the "Glory Hole", a hole cut into the partition separating the stalls in the men's room. One person would stick his member through it, without knowing who (or what) was on the other side, and that other person would in some way service the visitor. I don't remember which part Kenny played. I am not sure of the rest of the people there.
Bulletin, Bulletin......I just called Robert to verify who else was there. He wasn't sure either but we came up with some other names. Among the other potential people that we came up with were; Charlie who was some sort of priest or something. We all called him Father Corn Hole. His boyfriend was Joe. I don't remember much about Joe, other than that he was small, dirty, and depressing. Robert to this day has never stopped laughing. Even when I was just talking to him. Miraculously, I remembered his home number and was merely calling to leave a message asking him to email me with his work number. He answered and when I asked how come he was home, he laughingly told me that he broke his leg yesterday.
Listening to these men or maybe, we were still boys then, complain about their lives was really depressing. What is so gay about being gay? Certainly anyone listening in on the conversation would have contemplated suicide. I decided while sitting there that I would never spend a birthday like that again. And I haven't. I usually start to remind people in December or January of the upcoming event and am unrelenting until the day has passed. I call people and leave messages like, "Hi, it's Joel. My birthday is Saturday, February 7, and I like to be remembered." Without going into all the details, I had a great birthday. The casino bought me a birthday cake, and I was toasted as a Poker legend (I am for sure, if only in my own mind). Massiel took great care of me, we went out for an awesome dinner, and the day was filled with phone calls and e-cards from many others. Altogether a great day.