The Wall
I was twelve years old and I was making some real good money with my lawn mowing enterprise. After beer and cigarette expenses each week I had a lot of extra money to stash in my sock drawer.
After Dr. Scott’s unexpected sudden demise, my mom was going through her “I have a lot of gay friends” period. Dr. Scott had bought us a great house on East Lake Drive across from Lake Daniel Park. It was a large house with a finished basement apartment. Mom had insisted that they have the large upstairs attic area finished into a giant art studio. Dr. Scott almost always complied with her wishes. When it was finished it was actually a pretty cool attic, I have to admit. There was an inside staircase with a locking door and an outside entrance with a deck and steps down to the back driveway. High ceilings, a full bathroom and a lot of natural light made it perfect for an art studio. Mom would have visiting artists come in to teach and started her own business “The Attic Art Gallery”. Mom was a founding member of the “Petty Coat Painters” a group of middle aged women that liked to do artistic things in the community. They had monthly luncheons and meetings. Mom made money from art lesson commissions and art shows in her gallery. She had a lot of famous artists teach classes including John Brady and Marcus Blahov a famous portrait artist from New York City.
After Dr. Scott’s death she kicked the art thing up a couple of notches. Dr. Scott actually was a smart man after all. He left everything in a trust to mom so she couldn’t run through the inheritance in one year. She had lifetime living rights to the house and a monthly allowance for expenses. When mom died, all of Dr. Scott’s money and the house we lived in would go back to Dr. Scott’s real kids in Georgia. Dr. Scott’s children were all older than my mom. They owned and operated the bank in Georgia that controlled the trust fund that Dr. Scott had set up. Mom had to beg them for any extras she needed. I figured they were ripping her off somehow, but I wasn’t old enough or smart enough to figure it out. So I filed that information away for when I got a little older and smarter. When I did get older and smarter, I sued the bank owned by Dr Scott's relatives for violating their fiduciary responsibility and got a settlement of almost $100,000.
Mom rented the very cool basement apartment to a nice gay guy named Jim. He was a very well dressed and fastidious homosexual that looked a lot like Rock Hudson and did not act very effeminate. Mom and her lady friends swooned over him and would spend hours partying with him on weekends. It was pretty obvious to me what the situation was and I didn’t mind since it freed me up to do pretty much what I wanted to do. Jim was a nice guy and was always friendly to me, the landlady’s kid. I am sure they all thought I was clueless as to what was going on. I have always tried to keep a low profile and act like I wasn’t aware of grownup things. Mom and her girl friends, some married and some, would fawn over Jim and I am sure they thought they could make a romantic conquest. I figured that they might as well have been searching for the Holy Grail.
Jim had several gay male “friends” that came over to his apartment frequently. Most were nice guys and some of them sort of surprised me. They didn’t look or act gay. I was pretty wise to the ways of the world by then. One of Jim’s friends was a locally famous professional hockey player. Bobby, the hockey player, was really a pretty cool guy with a tooth missing in front. He used to give me hockey tickets to all the Greensboro Generals Hockey teams home games and some friends and I would go to the Greensboro Coliseum to watch all the fights on the ice. For a gay guy Bobby sure could fight...
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