Full Service (3 page)

As time went by my Marine pals would bring their civilian friends over and so the circle constantly widened. Soon the station took on the role that the shopping mall plays in the lives of kids today. The Richfield gas station on Hollywood Boulevard became
the
fashionable place for guys and gals between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to hang out. The place buzzed, business boomed, and my boss, Bill Booth, who leased the station from the Richfield Gas Company, was as happy as a pig in clover.

B
ECAUSE THE GAS
station was in the heart of Hollywood, many of the rich and famous also stopped by to purchase gas from me. One of them was playwright Jerome Lawrence along with his writing partner Robert E. Lee. Jerry was the other half of the famous team, Lawrence and Lee. They wrote thirty-nine works together including the librettos for
Dear World
and
Auntie Mame.
They also wrote
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail
,
First Monday in October,
and the classic courtroom drama,
Inherit the Wind.
Jerry would stop by, fill up his tank, and then chat for a half hour or so.

Another good customer was an exceptionally talented and very handsome young and upcoming author by the name of Gore Vidal. Gore was one of the nicest, brightest men I knew. He would go on to become a towering force in the world of modern literature, screen-writing, and sociopolitical commentary. He has remained a close friend ever since we first met. Actor Glenn Ford became a regular. So did producer Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, which was just down the road. Hermes Pan the choreographer came to the station, too. He once claimed that he had choreographed every single musical starring that royal dancing duo, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, including their final partnering in
The Barkleys of Broadway.
Actor Lionel Barrymore often came to the station, as did Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Rock Hudson and one of his young gay lovers drove in one night in a brand-new 1947 Chevrolet Coupe, of which he was very proud. He filled up and we chatted; every second or third day after that he came back and had me pump five dollars worth of gas into his car. He was living in North Hollywood at the time and, in due course, he and I would get to know one another pretty well.

O
N FEBRUARY 1, 1947
, Betty gave birth to our darling baby daughter. We named her Donna, in honor of my brother Donald. Now that I had another mouth to feed I needed to earn extra money, so I took odd day jobs trimming a tree here, patching up a fence there, fixing a leaking roof, doing a bit of carpentry, painting gutters, cleaning pools, gardening, or doing whatever (or whoever!) came along. My family was never short of anything, and our little daughter thrived. But my life with Betty was pretty dull. Yes, we lived together at the same address, we still had great affection for one another, we still enjoyed sex now and then, but, in actual fact, we began to drift into living separate lives. For one thing my work kept me very busy and, to be quite frank, I was seeing other people, both women and men, frequently.

Betty was no fool. Even though she never brought it up in conversation she knew what I was up to. And she learned to live with it. She even took phone messages for me at home and not once did she ever ask what my relationship with the caller was. She was such a sweet, considerate woman that she never questioned my whereabouts on those many nights when I didn’t come home. That’s the unique kind of woman that Betty was.

One evening at the gas station something happened that would herald a whole new enterprise for me. While a group of my friends and other young folks, both male and female, were hanging around, a big car pulled in. I ran out, flashed my big Richfield Oil smile at the driver, and asked him what I could do for him.

“Fill her up, please,” he said.

“Sure thing, sir,” I replied.

While I was wiping down his windshield I noticed him staring at my friends huddled together in a group at the end of the driveway. When I finished I went around to the driver’s side window to collect payment for the gas. The guy must have been in his fifties. He was fiddling with a pile of bills that he had pulled from his wallet. I told him what he owed me for the gas. He didn’t respond and continued fidgeting with the wallet while staring at the group of young folk. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” I asked.

He nodded in the direction of the group. Speaking very softly and in a carefully honed American yet very British-sounding accent he asked, “That boy over there, he a friend of yours?”

“Which one?” I responded.

“The tall one, the blonde,” he replied.

I looked over at my pals.

“How old is he?” he asked.

I began to suspect where all this was going. I told him that the guy was twenty and asked him whether he would like to meet him. He nodded as he handed me the money for the gas, not taking his eyes off my friend. Then I went over to the group and pulled my buddy aside, walking him over to an area where no one could see or hear us.

“Want to earn some cash tonight, pal?” I asked.

“Sure thing,” he said. “How?”

I wandered back over to the car. The driver was clearly anxious to hear what I had to say and seemed a little nervous.

“He’ll go with you,” I said. “But it’s going to cost you twenty bucks.”

The man said nothing. He immediately pulled out his wallet again and started counting out some bills.

“Oh, no, sir,” I said. “Not for
me
. For him. You can pay him later.”

He looked at me and nodded. I went back to my blonde friend. I told him to get into the car with the guy, go with him, and do whatever he wanted. Although at first he was unsure of what I was asking of him, he immediately brightened when I told him that it would earn him twenty bucks. Because he was a Marine I knew that he was quite capable of defending himself if the guy turned out to be a weirdo, though it was obvious that he was a harmless queen who probably only wanted to suck my buddy’s cock.

None of our friends noticed as he slipped into the front passenger seat and closed the door. The man behind the wheel glanced momentarily at me and flashed me a grateful smile. I grinned back at him. The driver looked away, put his foot down on the accelerator, and the car pulled out onto the boulevard and into the night.

The next evening my friend showed up again. He wasn’t gay, or at least I never thought of him as being that way. Nevertheless, he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to tell some of the other guys who were hanging around what had happened the night before. I never expected him to be so open and honest about it. If I’d had my way I would have kept the whole thing under wraps, mainly to protect the reputation of the driver of the car, whoever he was. But this guy wanted to tell all.

“Easiest fuckin’ twenty bucks I ever earned,” he confided to us. “You were right, Scotty. The old geezer only wanted to give me a blow job, and I wasn’t gonna say no to
that.
He was good, too!”

Some of the guys were mildly amused by the story but most of them thought it hilarious and burst into raucous applause. I could detect a note of envy among one or two of them. One of the youngest ones detached himself from the group and pulled me aside, asking me if I could arrange something like that for him, too. He was desperate for some extra cash.

“So you’re up to doin’ tricks, too?” I asked, playfully slapping him on the back.

“Hell, yeah,” he said. “For money? You kidding?”

I thought for a moment.

“Okay, fellas, stick around,” I said to the entire group. “You never know.
Your
turn may come soon.”

More laughter followed that remark but I must have foreseen exactly what was going to happen. Having heard my buddy’s account of what transpired with the trick I arranged for him wasn’t the end of the story. It was only the beginning. Because one thing you can be sure of: if you ever ask a middle-aged queen to keep a secret you can be absolutely sure that it will spread like wildfire before you can say Jack Robinson. It turned out that the guy who drove off with my friend was a senior makeup artist at Warner Bros. The ambling studio complex was located in Burbank, just a few miles from the gas station. He had obviously told his colleagues about the cute little number he’d picked up at the Richfield gas station on Hollywood Boulevard because within two days three or four cars driven by gay men from the studio were pulling in every night for a few dollars worth of gas and a request for me to set them up with a trick. It happened so fast. Before I could take stock of the situation, I was becoming the go-to guy in Hollywood for arranging tricks.

To be honest, though, none of this was completely new to me. I hadn’t had the most sheltered of childhoods and had discovered sex at an early age. In fact, I was just a kid in Illinois when it all began.

T
he year was 1930.

Like a dependable, precision timepiece my body instinctively knew it was time to get up. Throwing off the heavy blanket and the frayed homemade quilt, I swung out of my warm bed and padded over to the window. Drawing the curtains aside I stared at the dark landscape that lay beyond. Even though the sun would not rise for another two hours I could make out that the world was covered in snow. A feeble light spilled into the gloom of the tiny bedroom. The thought of going outside made me tremble in anticipation of the freezing weather, but I had no choice. There was work to be done.

I shuffled over to my brother Donald’s bed and gave him a shake. He grunted and then turned over to face the wall, clutching the blankets more tightly around his shoulders. But I knew he would not remain in bed for long. I could already hear Momma banging pots and stoking the big wood-burning stove in the kitchen downstairs. She would soon be knocking on our door to make sure we were up. I yawned and went over to the porcelain jug and washbasin that sat on the dresser. I poured out some icy water, splashed it on my face, pulled on my bib overalls, slipped on a sweater, and stepped into my muddy work boots.

Giving Momma a peck on the cheek as I passed her in the kitchen, I stepped outside into the icy air. The temperature was probably around ten or fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, typical of midwinter in this part of Illinois. Through the damp haze that swirled around the yard I caught sight of my sister Phyllis going to collect eggs in the hen house. Yearning for something hot that I knew would be offered at the breakfast table a couple of hours later I slushed my way over to the big cowshed. Using all my strength I dragged one of the heavy doors slightly ajar, slipped inside, and shut it behind me.

A strong whiff of manure, methane, dust, hay, and mildewed timber filled my nostrils. But I was used to it. I did this every morning and had been doing it ever since I could remember. I greeted Dad and Willy, our hired hand. They were already hard at work milking the cows. There were forty of them. My brother Don and I were responsible for assisting with the task.

Walking over to a corner in the shadows I picked up an empty metal pail and went over to the first stall, where one of our oldest and most dependable Holstein milk producers watched me with her innocent, oily brown eyes. When Don and I returned from school later in the afternoon we would help with the milking again. This was a twice-a-day operation, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

As my fingers tugged on the cow’s soft teats, her warm milk squirted into the pail. It was a comforting sound, imparting a sense of continuity to life on the farm. After breakfast I would ride my pony Babe down the unpaved road to the schoolhouse half a mile away. Sometimes Don or Phyllis would hop on her back with me and we would ride together. We couldn’t afford a saddle so we always rode bareback. There would be some homework to do when I returned that afternoon, then more farmyard chores, and then, weather permitting, I would hop over the fence to the Peterson’s property down the road. I enjoyed slopping through the snow and mud to their farmhouse, which was about a ten-minute walk away. The Petersons had a boy and a girl who were close in age to me. Their company made for a pleasant contrast to my own brother and sister. In winter their mother—Ma Peterson we called her—usually managed to serve up a cup of warm cocoa at around four o’clock. And whenever he was around, old man Joe Peterson always set aside a few minutes for me, curious to hear what I’d been up to since my last visit.

It was a simple life on the farm, but a tough one. In fact, nobody had it easy those days. I was only seven years old so I never fully understood the hows and whys of it but from overhearing teachers’ and adults’ conversation I knew that a disaster had befallen the nation the year before. All of us kids were aware that in October 1929 a place called Wall Street in New York City had “crashed.” People usually referred to the event as “That dang Black Tuesday,” and then they would cuss and fume and walk away shaking their heads, mumbling, “Sure cut us up good and well.”

We were now in the grip of something folks called the Great Depression. There was a shortage of everything: work, money, customers for our produce, even hope. Some people had even packed up their meager belongings and moved away, completely abandoning their farms. Where they went heaven only knew. One thing was for sure—the Depression had ruined lives and had redefined everything on the farmlands of the Midwest. But this was where I lived. It was the only place I knew.