Charles Troob

by Charles Troob

On my twenty-third birthday, with a great deal of trepidation, I attended a meeting advertised on a Yale bulletin board as a “Homosexuality Discussion Group.”

I had been slowly cracking open the closet door. I was now “out” to my housemates and to one friend in New York. This would be another baby step.  

I walked in and looked around. Everyone there looked pretty much like me—nerdy grad student—but I had no feeling of fellowship or relief. These men, I supposed, had accepted their assignment to the category “gay”—but I hadn’t. Though haunted by my attraction to the male body, I wasn’t prepared to exile myself from the world I’d grown up in. I still hoped that I was really a latent heterosexual: I wanted a future with a wife and family, my gay urges either suppressed or somehow dealt with on the side.  

Why then was I here? To get over the secrecy that was poisoning my life. I was terrified to be known publicly as gay—or gay-ish: to have the world see me as I really was. 

I’d been with a dozen men, but those sexual encounters had taken place in a shadow world, as though a second person inhabiting my body was indulging in them—think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I wasn’t mentally disordered: I knew that the carnally curious Mr. Hyde was the real me. If anything, he felt more authentic than the pleasant bland young man I presented to family, friends, and fellow students. To move ahead in life I would have to end this strange double identity—but that required me to find the courage to reveal to others the truth about myself.       

So it was a milestone to say my full name loudly and clearly to this group. I then sat silently, my head swimming, barely hearing the discussion. Though grateful for the presence of these men, I told them little and gave them nothing. Just to be here was effort enough.

The habit of hiding in fear and shame would prove to be hard to break. It took many years and birthdays before I was as comfortable in my skin as I am today. 

It has been challenging and valuable to write about myself in study groups at IRP/LP2—and to hear the stories of others as well.   

by Charles Troob

I remember that I went to the Flushing Progressive School  until I was in second grade and was driven there in a station wagon with half a dozen other kids by Mrs. Conway, whose husband was a fireman. I remember that we visited his firehouse on Horace Harding Boulevard (before it became the Long Island Expressway) and I remember the pole that went up to the second floor so that the firemen could come down in a hurry— but I don’t remember Mr. Conway or the other firemen. I remember that one winter in the station wagon we all sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and at the end of the song—“You’ll go down in history” –I asked, “What is history?” and someone answered, “I think it’s some kind of a book” and I was puzzled because I didn’t know what it meant to go down in a book.

I remember that the Flushing Progressive School was in a house on Franklin Avenue and the littlest kids were on the ground floor while the first and second graders were on the second floor. Every day at lunchtime they came down the stairs to get their trays—colorful plastic ones, with beaded edges—and then go back upstairs to eat their lunch. I remember watching them and wondering how they managed to carry their trays upstairs without spilling stuff and being afraid that I’d never be able to do that and how grown up first graders must be. I remember that we had the same lunch each Monday, Tuesday, etc. and my mother was annoyed that on Mondays we usually had baked potato and creamed corn and why were there two starches and I remember wondering why she cared and thinking that Monday lunch was OK with me, though not as tasty as creamed chicken and noodles on Tuesday or macaroni with ground beef on Wednesday.

I remember that when I moved upstairs the first graders were on one side of the room and the second graders on the other side and we all faced front and Mrs. Caven, who was very sweet, would give lessons either to one group or to all of us. I remember that I didn’t want to interrupt her to ask to be excused and I messed my pants a few times and had to be taken to the toilet and cleaned up. I remember that I was unable to insist on what I really needed for myself until I was an adult.

I remember that we were given a reading primer and I didn’t know what “primer” meant but I read through it right away and on the back page was a numbered list called “Vocabulary.” I didn’t know that word either. After each number on the list there were a few words. I looked at this list again and again and finally figured out (eureka!) that the numbers referred to pages in the primer and each word was listed according to the page on which it first appeared. I was very pleased to make this discovery, but I still didn’t know what “vocabulary” meant or why the list was there.

I remember that I was upset when my mother wouldn’t let me go to school on Rosh Hashanah and we had an argument about it at the lunch counter at the Girard Pharmacy on Queens Boulevard. I didn’t want to miss anything at school and I knew that at home on Rosh Hashanah I would sit around and be bored.

I remember that in second grade I was excused from reading lessons and sat in another room with a girl named Barbara who also could read. I remember that we had second and third grade readers—Friends and Neighbors and Streets and Roads—to read on our own.

I remember that there was a piano and during the lunch break we sang “Santa Lucia” and “Funiculi, Funicula” and afterwards one of the teachers read Mary Poppins to us, a chapter at a time.

I remember that the second graders were once given a special privilege. We went to the third floor where Mrs. Tucker the principal lived and there was a small television and we watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. I remember wondering what this ceremony was about—if her name was Queen Elizabeth, didn’t she already have a crown like every other king and queen?

I remember that the Flushing Progressive School was planning to offer a third grade, but my parents told me that I was going to attend PS 196,  a beautiful new school about to open in Forest Hills. I would be very sorry not to see what happened to the scarlet runner beans I’d planted in June in the school garden, but I was glad that I would finally be going to school with children from my neighborhood. I remember thinking that PS 196 was huge and impressive, particularly the auditorium and gym, and that I liked it very much, except that the teachers were always yelling at us to get in line and keep quiet. At our age! Even kindergartners could—and did—get in line quietly. These ladies were a little nutty and mean compared to the pleasant teachers at my old school, but they taught us a lot and they were nice enough to me, so I really didn’t mind.

I remember that in my freshman year at Harvard, a Cliffie in my English class asked me if I’d gone to the Flushing Progressive School. It would be an understatement to say that I was stunned by the question. Mr. Blyth called her Miss Hutter, but I knew that her first name was Barbara—and so she had to be the Barbara I used to read with. “How on earth did you recognize me?” I asked. “Oh,” she replied, “over Thanksgiving at home I was looking at pictures of my second grade birthday party and there you were.” I remember being quite abashed that I had changed so little since second grade, and also that I had no memory of the birthday party or of ever being at Barbara’s house. I remember that despite this amazing link between us, Barbara Hutter and I had no further conversations about our childhood or anything else. I remember that Harvard was not a friendly place.

 

This was written for David Grogan’s Guided Autobiography study group.  David’s writing prompt was based on the work of Joe Brainard, an artist and writer associated with the New York School.  Brainard’s I Remember, a book-length collection of sentences and short paragraphs all beginning with these two words, is considered a contemporary classic. 

by Charles Troob
 

Ancient Greece 

In 1966 I was in a master’s program at the London School of Economics. Over the long winter break I traveled to Greece, Cyprus and Israel. The day before my departure, London friends gave me a Blue Guide to Athens. An hour into the flight from Heathrow I put down Thucydides and picked up the guide. One entry caught my eye. “There is a wonderful view over the city from the top of Mount Lycabettus. It’s recommended that one should go at sunset or sunrise.”

I was on a red-eye, arriving in Athens at 4 am. When the lane landed, I took a bus to a terminal downtown, where I checked my suitcase. Blue Guide in hand, I explored Syntagma Square, then followed the map to the foot of Lycabettus. On the steep road up I passed nondescript apartment houses–this quiet city was disappointingly dull. But the air was fresh and stars twinkled in the cloudless sky.

At the top of the hill was a lookout. Greece was hidden in the dark. I impulsively took off my clothes, and stood naked in the cool breeze. As light began to surround me, the shoreline of the Aegean came into view; then, to my amazement, the Acropolis lay right below. Piraeus, Corinth, Argos–here I was, not quite twenty-one, communing with the ancients.

The exaltation lasted an hour or two. Then I descended into modern Athens, where hardly anyone spoke English, and I felt stranded, alone, exhausted after a night without sleep.

 

Army Life 

I dropped out of grad school in 1970, and thereby relinquished my student deferment. I had a fairly high number in the draft lottery, so I thought I might be safe—but in December I received an induction notice. Along with hundreds of others I reported for my physical to Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. When I got to final clearance—it looked like the checkout area of a supermarket—nearly everyone else had been loaded onto buses and sent off to Fort Dix and a dangerous future.

I handed my papers to the clerk—along with a letter from a psychiatrist in New Haven. When his eyes got halfway down the page he trembled slightly and called me over. In a very low voice, he said, “This letter says that you are a homosexual. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I was appreciative of his tact, amused by his discomfort.

“Have you committed homosexual acts?” He paused, gulped, continued. “Oral? Anal?”

“Yes, yes,” I said airily. To my surprise—I was very much a closet case at this time—I was enjoying myself. I hoped he’d ask for additional graphic detail—that would make the experience really perfect. But he just nervously wrote a few things on my papers, then stamped them and waved me away.

I wondered idly if this official documentation of my infamy would stay buried in Army files, or might come back to haunt me at some later time….

When I went to get my coat there was one other man in the locker area. “You’re not going?” he said.

“No. I told them I’m a homosexual.”

He laughed. “I said that too! I just thought of it when I got here. What an easy way to get out!”

“I was telling the truth,” I said. “I had a note from a shrink.”

He gave me a funny look, turned, and walked away.

 

Teleport

In 1976 I got a job in Washington DC. I returned to my New York apartment on weekends. Friday evenings I’d queue up at Union Station, waiting for Amtrak to teleport me from a world of offices, malls, and soccer moms to a hothouse of culture—and sex. A few hours later I’d emerge from Penn Station onto Eighth Avenue, assaulted by the energy of the city. I could hit the bars and sample the sleaze. I could climb a dingy warehouse stairway and applaud some crazies who were reinventing theater. New York was dangerous at that time, but hey, it was a danger to flirt with and dance around, not one to avoid. My weekends were filled with adventure and exploration—and then on Sunday night I went back through the wormhole to Dullsville-on-the-Potomac.

But somehow I was happy on Monday morning. In DC I felt myself growing and stretching.  Working for DHEW—the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—was like grad school on steroids.   I was quickly promoted, with a choice of jobs. So I was never sure which phase of this cycle was the main narrative, and which the parenthesis.

Still, in time the ping-ponging back and forth wore me down. The double life felt like a refusal to commit to an identity. Put that way, the choice was easy—I was a New Yorker. After three years I cut the DC knot. Without a tinge of regret, I slipped away from the dream career and came home to rejoin the carnival full-time.

Or so I thought. Soon AIDS hit New York—and Reagan hit Washington. The 70s were history.

 

These three pieces were written for the IRP Writing Workshop.  Charles Troob joined this workshop when he entered the IRP in 2010.  After a few enthusiastic semesters he was invited to become one of its coordinators.