Travels with Penny: True Tales of a Gay Guy and His Mother
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Authors: David Alan Morrison
True Travel Tales of a Gay Guy and His Mom
David Alan Morrison
Booktrope Editions
Seattle WA 2015
Copyright 2013, 2015 David Alan Morrison
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Cover Design by Rachel Mizer
Edited by Cecile Jagodzinski
Previously self-published as
Travels with Penny: True Travel Tales Of A Gay Guy And His Mom,
2013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
Print ISBN 978-1-62015-653-7
EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-678-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015901477
Related Tangent #1: Journal entry from Friday, August 3, 2007
Related Tangent #2: Free writing exercise from August 1, 2007
Related Tangent #3: Journal entry from Friday, June 5, 2009
Catching the Wild Wave: June 2009
Related Tangent #5: August 2007
There’s a special place in my heart for those people in my life who have never wavered in their support and encouragement. I thank them all. But this project deserves some special thanks: the Iowa Writer’s Workshop memoir class during the summer of 2008 for prodding me to write this memoir; Brian “London” Ellis for his computer genius; Holly for her laughs; Keith A. Gehrig for his honesty, and, of course, Mom.
New York
1998
TWO THINGS
FLASHED THROUGH MY MIND
when I opened the door to the sex shop to find my mother standing in front of the display case talking to a tall salesman wearing a leather harness, jock strap and a dog collar. The first was, “Oh, crap!” The second was, “I hate it when Dad’s right.”
Watching my mother investigate the testicle torture devices, cock rings and nipple clamps was not even close to being on the weekend’s itinerary. It was so far removed from my itinerary, it was in a separate zip code. This New York trip was supposed to be a celebration of my thirty-fifth birthday; it was supposed to be an opportunity for me to have one last grand hurrah before the fall semester kicked in and buried me under the pressure of literature reviews, critical analysis papers and thesis research. I envisioned this weekend to be a fun-filled romp around the Big Apple, not a safari through Leather Wonderland with my mother.
Life: it’s what happens while you’re busy making other plans. Or, as my mom would say, “Tough toenails, Tony!” which she usually follows up with, “Life sucks! Then you die!” Is there any wonder why therapists drool when I walk into a room?
The previous February, I had excavated my apartment looking for those things I considered precious so I could lovingly gather them up and take them on my journey to that esteemed promised land: graduate school. I should have realized my life was in for some form of cosmic shake up when all my worldly possessions from a two-bedroom apartment dwindled down into a couple of boxes and a shopping bag. I threw the stuff and my annoying loud cat into my Daihatsu Rocky and turned my back on Seattle. I faced my tomorrows with all the bushy-eyed naïvety of a five-year-old at Christmas, eager to begin my Master’s program at the University of Kentucky. The idealistic awe of my future toppled off the pedestal upon entering the Bluegrass State and crossing over into the twilight zone.
I exited the expressway when I saw a sign for Versailles, although I couldn’t decipher my handwriting well enough to read which exit I was to take. Since I had no idea if this was the correct exit or not, I crossed my fingers and kept driving. After a few miles of nothing, scenes from
Children of the Corn
began playing through my mind. I began to fear I’d be found dead in my car with a couple of boxes of useless crap and a starving cat, so I betrayed my gender and pulled into a gas station to ask directions. I admit it: I panicked. Sue me.
“Is this the way to Versailles?” I asked the pimply-faced young woman with greasy hair and stained smock. I pronounced the town VER-SIGH, after the town in France of the same name, which—let’s face it—seemed logical.
She looked at me blankly. “Wha’?” she asked. The people in Kentucky tend to delete the final consonants on words, making them sound like they carry pebbles in their mouths.
“Ver-sigh,” I said. “I’m lost. Is it this way?”
“I ain’t never hear o’ that place.”
“It’s supposed to be around here somewhere,” I said, showing her the address of the bed and breakfast.
She took the paper, read it and her eyes lit up. “Oh! You mean Ver Sales!” she exclaimed. “Go on dow’ that road a piece. It right there,” she said, pointing.
Welcome to Kentucky, where they honor famous cities by naming towns after them, then purposely butchering the pronunciation. A week or so later, the UK Wildcats won the Final Four basketball championships and practically destroyed Lexington in celebratory glee. I didn’t even know what “Final Four” meant—I don’t follow sports, and I’d assumed the radio announcer butchered “Fab Five” and the rowdiness was about a reinvention of the Fab Four.
I mention this because when Mom came face-to-face with our dog-collared friend, we happened to be in Greenwich Village, the birthplace of Gay Liberation where I was currently touring along with my fifty-four-year-old mother and two friends, Troy and Gary, who are (you guessed it) from Ver Sales. How Troy and Gary got involved in this birthday trip is easy to explain: they were travel agents with a taste for chaos. Their birthday gift to me was to arrange this short holiday in New York as a tribute to making it to thirty-five while clinging to more than a handful of hair. How my mother came to join us is not so easy to explain, as it just happened. It’s
modus operandi
when Mom and I are together; things just … happen.
However, this trip was our maiden voyage traveling together. Previously, traveling with either of my parents had happened vicariously. Namely, they did the traveling and I listened to their stories with envy in my heart that they had the money to seek adventure while I squandered every buck I had ever made. After they returned from a month-long visit to see my sister, Mom and I sat at the kitchen table, armed with a pot of coffee and pastries, and looked over her Italian acquisitions. I was eager to hear about their first trip out of the United States, as Dad liked to frequent places where he felt comfortable—namely, any land mass flying the American flag and sheltering a good plate of biscuits and gravy. He enjoyed cruising the open roads of rural America because it meant he could stay in hotels that advertised for Super Bowl Sunday or RV parks large enough to accommodate their 40-foot-long rolling Taj Mahal. He liked exotic food, as long as it came with a chocolate milkshake with a tiny, paper American Flag sticking out of the whipped cream. Mom, on the other hand, wanted to take the road less traveled or, in this case, a road frequently traveled by everyone else except her. She handed me several picture postcards and I flipped through them.
“You’re giving them to me?” I asked. “Why didn’t you mail them?”
“Hell! We’d be back before you got them! This way, I save the cost of postage.”
That’s my mom. Never pass up an opportunity to pinch a penny. “Why did you come home early?”
“Your dad was freaking out.”
“Freaking out?” I asked. “Freaking out” is one of those expressions you hope never to hear come out of your parents’ mouths. There’s a youthfulness about that term that makes it seem like anyone over the age of fifty should be allergic to it.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, David, he just became so … anxious.” I waited for her to continue. It was a long pause but not one of those where you wonder if she knew the answer. It was the pause of someone who didn’t want to confess the answer she absolutely knew.
“He got so frustrated at not being able to speak the language, confused over the currency exchange … ”
“Why didn’t you just charge it?” I suggested. “The credit card company does all the rate exchange for you.”
She shrugged. “We did. But it was more than that … he didn’t know his way around … it bothered him that he couldn’t read the street signs … he felt like he had no control over anything. He just flipped out. He came to me in Italy and told he wanted to go home.”
“You agreed?” I asked, obsessing about where the hell she picked up the expression, “flipped out.”
She nodded. “I was having a great time too. I loved Europe. All the churches, the history … I find it fascinating.”
“I want to go to Europe sometime,” I said. “I like going to a place and just … wandering. No plans. No schedules. Just … being in a different place.”
“Me, too.”
I watched her look at the photos. What would it be like for her not to go back to Europe again? Knowing she’d only scratched the surface of the centuries-old continent, but would never return to explore it further? We sat for a moment, she fidgeting over something on the table, and I wondering what it must be like to have an explorer’s heart and be married to someone with the heart of a farmer. Before I knew what I was saying—and surprising myself—I blurted out, “You know, we should travel together sometime.”
“That would be great!” She smiled. “I think we would travel well together.” Her eyes lit up. I could travel with my mom. Seriously—how hard could it be?
Fast forward to a short decade later when Troy and Gary pulled some strings to get the New York hotels and round-trip airfare at a hell of a discount. They told me the rates were based upon double-occupancy and suggested I bring someone with me. I suspect they assumed I would invite one of their eligible single friends in the hopes I was desperate enough to grab the first single guy that came along and stop mourning the evaporation of my latest relationship. I have no idea what went through their minds when I said I’d invite my mother along, although I think Gary choked on a granola bar.
The plan was simple: Troy and Gary and I would meet Mom at JFK and the four of us would take a cab to Manhattan. Troy and Gary would share one of the rooms of the rented apartment while Mom and I took the second. Each couple would operate independently, relax and enjoy the long weekend. Mom agreed to the ground rules, as did Troy and Gary. It was Dad who balked.
“You’re going to get her killed in some gang war or drive-by shooting,” he snapped at me from his La-Z-Boy when I visited Tennessee to propose the trip to Mom.
“Are we going to go to the theatre?” Mom yelled from the bedroom, obviously eavesdropping. She had been mentally packing weeks before we left. Mom’s nothing if not thorough.
“Dad, nobody is going to die in a drive-by shooting,” I assured him.
Dad glared at me and muttered under his breath, “I think it’s great you two go someplace together. But if you’re going to spend money, go someplace I won’t take her, like Europe.”
“Maybe next time.”
He shook his head and yelled at the defensive linebacker on TV. “I’m worried.”
“We’ll call you every day. How does that sound?”
“I’m worried about New York. No telling what trouble you two will get into there.”
“I do not get into trouble,” I protested. Then, as an afterthought, “Not anymore.”
He grumbled and cracked open another peanut. “This is a bad idea.”
“I want to do something special for my birthday, Dad. Go somewhere I’ve never been.”
“Branson, Missouri, has some great concerts. I’ll go with you to Branson.”
“I don’t want to travel to some tourist trap, Dad,” I pleaded. “I want to do something memorable … fun … interesting.”
“Dollywood’s interesting.”
“Dad, why don’t you come with us?”
He shook his head and flipped through the channels. He hated commercials. “I ain’t going to New York! Dirty, big, noisy, crazy people … they can keep it for all I care.” He looked at me and popped another peanut into his mouth. “Don’t take her to any of those shady, New York, low-life places, like gay bars.”
“Relax, Dad,” I laughed. “A gay bar is probably the safest place for her to be.”
He looked me dead in the eye and said, “She’s your responsibility. If anything happens to her, I’m blaming you.”
“What’s the worst that could happen, Pop?” I asked as he turned back to the game.
Note to self: Stop tempting fate.