In my prior post I featured the late photographer Stephen Cysewski and the influence his images of Alaska in the 1970s had on my writing. His photo of the Open Door Klinic at the top of this post became the memory trigger for this excerpt from Hardship Alaska.
Here I’m recalling the second of two incidents when someone had tried to show me affection at a time when I was trying to keep my sexual orientation a secret. His gesture, I’d like to believe, had my best interest at heart. It was as if James Baldwin was whispering in my ear about the folly in trying to conceal a major part of myself from others by living a supposedly secret life. There was no secret being kept that others couldn’t already see through. The people around me had already figured it out or didn’t care. They had already accepted me just as I was.
The second incident lasted only a few seconds but seemed to carry a deeper level of caring than going to a bar for drinks. Jamie Love, a great guy who reminded me of Arlo Guthrie, established a place called the Open Door Klinic in a house in downtown Anchorage. It targeted young people who flocked to Anchorage in the summer from the Lower 48 or outside as he called it, in need of housing. The Klinic also provided narcotic addiction counseling for those who needed it, and it was a safe place where some of my group home kids would hang out after school. It was also a place that I’d visit from time to time. I liked the atmosphere, upbeat and positive with a great group of people who lived there, communally sharing the house. I also liked how everyone pitched in to manage the day-to-day tasks of cleaning, cooking and supporting each other. Sometimes when I visited, I’d bring over a few of my albums to share—Jesus Christ Superstar, Missa Luba, Hair! and the Beatles’ White Album. On this occasion, however, I had probably stopped by the collective to follow up on one of the kids at the boys group home. Sometimes kids would end up at the commune seeking safe harbor with Jamie while trying to sort out their lives. Jamie seemed to know when someone who stumbled into his operation was not quite ready for this kind of freestyle communal living; someone who might need to be somewhere else, someplace safer and with more structure. When Jamie referred someone to us at Alaska Children’s Services, we’d follow up with him to let him know how his referral was coping in a new setting. If it was a boy he referred and I was involved, the kid would most likely have ended up with Alice Aiken and her charges at the boys group home where I also worked as a relief counselor. Most kids made smooth transitions, in some cases from being nearly homeless after a family crisis to finding a caring and stable place to call home. After following up with Jamie, I stopped by the kitchen to discover a guy about my age, in his early twenties, boiling water for tea. He introduced himself to me, another name I’ve misplaced, and asked if I wanted a cup of tea, which I happily accepted. Sitting at the kitchen table, we engaged in small talk, nothing too personal, probably just about the weather, until he asked about where I was from and what I was doing in Anchorage. I filled him in on all of that and in a stalling moment in the conversation, he reached over and gently touched my cheek. It was such a warm and caring gesture that I let his soft touch linger until I heard the silence in the room and jolted back from his caress to reclaim the conversation. I thought that maybe he saw something in my eyes that provoked him to reach out at that moment. Maybe, I thought, he saw a part of me I wasn’t ready to reveal just then. Or he saw a part of me he was comfortable with. The moment may have passed in seconds, but that touch, an overwhelming tenderness, has somehow stayed with me forever. There was nothing sexual about it, just the touch from another human. I could have leaned over the table for a hug but didn’t, leaving the encounter like an unfinished sentence.