1960 - Chaney Noyes Gone To the Forever - Video

My best friends as a child were my older brother and Chaney

We lived in Falmouth Foresides, Maine.

We did everything together.

School, hockey, eating stolen strawberries from the nearby farm, hang at the docks at the end of our street, and swim at Sebago Lake.

My family moved to the South Shore of Boston in June of 1960.

This excerpt from GAYBOY relates the last time we saw each other. --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chaney stood on edge of the lawn. My father had mowed it this morning.

“I guess I’m going.”

“Have a good summer.” Chaney kicked a clump of cut grass with his sneaker. His jeans were torn at the knee. This summer was supposed to have belonged to us. A snorkel and diving mask hung in his hand. They were a gift from his Czech grandmother.

“My father says we’ll return in July for vacation.” The week on Watchic Pond couldn’t come soon enough.

“Don’t go swimming without me.” Chaney lowered his head. Boys weren't supposed to cry in public.

“I won’t.”

I eyed his mask, wishing I had one.

I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out my Pete Runnel’s baseball card. The infielder was our favorite Red Sox player. I offered it to him.

“Here.”

“No, you keep it, but if you go to a game at Fenway Park, have him autograph it for me.” Chaney smiled with the prospective of having the .300 hitter’s signature as well as not having to hand over his mask in trade.

“Everyone in the car,” shouted my father.

“See you.” I slipped the playing card back into my shirt pocket.

“Not if I see you first.”

I never saw him again

AUGUST 13, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night while we lay naked in bed, Alice requested to bind her hands behind her back. I went to the kitchen and found a ten-foot cord under the tub. Light seeped through the curtain over the airshaft winow. Not much. She lay on her back like a starfish. I forced her onto her belly. She stretched her arms back and I looped the rope around her wrists. I entered her with a steely hardness and we fucked for thirty minutes. Neither of us came and she asked, if she could masturbate.

"Yes, slave."

"But you can't watch."

"You want me to take off the rope?"

"No, I can reach me." Alice had been a gymnast in high school. She could tied her body in knots and always said that if she failed as an actress that she could make it in the carnival as a contortionist.

I believed her and went into the living room, listening as her whimpers became moans.

I sat on the sofa feeling like a Wehrmacht soldier trapped in Stalingrad; no more bullets and nowhere to run, but to death.

This morning I did a wash-dry of the sheets at the local laudromat on 1st Avenue.

I can't believe I'm writing something so banal, but most of life is banal and in most cases that is a good thing. Mark Amitin's theater venture fell apart on the road. I have no money, no job, and no future. Rent is due in less than two weeks. TS Eliot wrote that 'April is the cruelest month of all'. The poet had never spent an August in New York. Everyone is going on vacation. Only the dead, dying, and desperate remain in the city

Highways carry metal semi-trailers, 1967 Buicks and 1970s GTOs
Hector hitches Indiana-bound
The army private is AWOL from Fort Dix
The conscript buzz-cut betrays his rank
The grunt's ironed khakis are government issue
His tee-shirt pressed creaseless
"Damn, it's so strange in boot camp,
But it's only another two hundred miles to home
Everyone stops for a soldier in uniform
On the run from the MPs__

In the 1960s and early 1970s army deserters dotted the interstate's shoulders either heading to Canada or into hiding at a hippie commune.

"Ain't no way I'm going back to Vietnam. Let the general fight with the blacks."

Afro-Americans constituted a high percentage of combat troops and casualties through the Long War. My draft number was 91. I avoided service by attending college thanks to a $10,000 grant to avoid shooting at strangers and Viet Cong shooting at me in villages foreign to teenagers on the South Shore. I started as a Math major, failed two subjects, but remained at BC. I saw no jungles or rie paddies. I heard no bullets whizzing past me or thudding into fellow soldiers. I studied THE MYSTERIES OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST. A Boy Scout uniform was the only one I have worn other than an altar boy's cassock and surplice forever faithful to atheism.

Alice lies on the futon, complaining about being nothing. She is in a rush to be an actress and their clock ticks fast. Still being nothing is better than being a bullet-riddled corpses in Vietnam, although the only fighting in Indochina is between the Khmer Rouge and the PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam). I have guilt about not fighting for my country. Not much, but some.

Alice looks out the window of the back bedroom.

"It's raining."

"What else is new?" After a heat wave the city has been deluged by rain for the past eight days. My kitchen faucet also drips endlessly.

Rain - the life-giver of water The Johnstown Flood 1889 The Little Conemaugh River The South Branch dam failure The flood washed away the helpless Like the mighty Mississippi through a valley. Forty days and forty night. No, just one torrential night And the next day Johnstown was gone.

AUGUST 13, 2021 - JOURNAL ENTRY - CLINTON HILL

About fifteen years ago in Pattaya, Thailand I learned that I had somehow transitioned to 'Vanilla' status by a visit to an S&M parlor. Nik, an English friend wanted to pay me back for a favor and suggested we go the THE CASTLE. MY wife was curious about how the club's goings-on and gave me permission for bad boys night out. 'The Castle' sas right across the street from our regular THE BUFFALO BAR. We told the girls there about our intended destination and they joked how we were going to be whipped like 'Kwaii.' or a stupid buffalo. The bouncers yelled we were 'sadique' and Nik asked me at the door, "Are you top or bottom?"

I don't know. I guess top."

"Me too, but I might try some bottom as a test." I wouldn't have expected any else from an Englishman. "Remember this is all on me."

The black-clad mama-san gave us a list. Top and bottom fantasies.

"Yeah, I'll do that and that. What about you?"

"Nothing really strikes my fancy."

Nik and the old lady read through the menu.

"No, no, definitely no."

The dominatrix and slaves enacted rough sex routines. I shook my head in disappointment. "Mai mee faaen-dah-see."

"Good enough for me," said Nik and two slender sadistic witches dragged him into a back room. The lash of a whip. Scream. "More."

After an hour Nik emerged chastened by the experience and said, "Damn, that was something, but I don't think I'll go bottom again. Are you sure you want nothing?"

"Nope, I'm vanilla."

When I was in the hospital I didn't look at any porno online or have a asexual fantasy. My libido had to be damaged along with my body by my years of excessive drinking, but I thankfully don't have any DTs. My roommate at NYU was a black lineman. I had overheard him tell the doctor that he had fallen in the street. Both of us so strong and now invalid. The doctor says I'll get better, but it will be a fight.

And I didn't forty-two years ago.

PS THE CASTLE is still open 24/7. Muang Pattaya, Thailand Hours: Opens at 6PM - Closes at 3AM Phone: +66 91 052 2671

Hand Bondage Foto by Joana Kruse

No Tattoos in Heaven - 2026

After my best friend drowned in Sebago Lake in 1960, I became a non-believer. Chaney was a good boy and no God would have let him die. My atheism was kept a secret. I remained an altar boy at Sunday Mass. My mother prayed that I might take the cloth as a priest or at the least a brother. The nuns mother at Our Lady Of The Foothills also had high hopes for my avocation, however the Baltimore Catechism failed to teach me religion to resurrect my faith in the Holy Trinity and I bore my godlessness in silence.

My secret was sussed out by 6th grade teacher.

"I know faith when I see it. I know lack of faith too." Sister Mary Goretti was more tolerant of my puerile apostasy than her whip-bearing compatriots. "But you really shouldn't be an altar boy."

"My mother wants me to be one."

"And she wants more."

"I know."

"So if you can't quit, just lower your head during Mass and say whatever you want, but I don't want to see you taking the Holy Communion. That would be sacrilege."

'Yes, sister."

I might not have believed in God, but I did believe in Sister Mary Goretti.

She Mary Goretti was as ancient as dust. The old nun had taught school in Egypt. Her tales of children running over stalks of harvested crops without their souls touching the jagged tips was a magic miracle. Her students loved her and she loved educating us.

No question was undeserving of an answer and one day my friend Chuckie asked, "Do atheists go to heaven?"

"I don't know, but I think they would be surprised to wake from death in the after-life." Sister Mary Goretti looked in my direction and I shrugged, since going to heaven meant worshiping the man in a dress and hell was a burning oven. I was more interested in purgatory. Nothing bad ever happened in Limbo.

"My mother said if you get a tattoo, then you don't do to heaven."

"Leviticus 19:28 says, "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you." She knew her Old Testament. "That's against the 5th Commandment."

"I thought that meant 'Thou shalt not kill." I got As in religion, despite my godlessness.

"St. Paul admonishes us: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” She was no slouch with the New Testament either. "But my father was a sailor and had tattoos. He was a good man and I can't see him going to hell for an anchor tattoo, but who am I to question the dictates of the Church?"

None of us dared answer this question and we returned to our Baltimore Catechism lesson.

At year's end my report card was straight As for the year and Sister Mary Goretti rewarded me with a mother of pearl rosary.

"I know you don't believe, but that doesn't make you a bad boy. God loves us all."

"Thank you, sister."

She was playing a game, but I was lucky to have her as my teacher and while I don't believe in either heaven or hell, I have refrained ever getting a tattoo.

Out of respect for an old nun.

And only a little bit the fear of hell.

AUGUST 12, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

ON WHITE VERSUS BLACK:

Walking down 8th Avenue under a light rain I ignore the passers-by other than to step aside for old women and children. The rest of the people on the sidewalks have had their humanity stolen by the TV, ads, schools, churches, and work.

A pocketbook smashes into me, as I enter a Chelsea bookstore to escape the afternoon drizzle. The glass door shuts and then opens with a man shouting, "Hey, white boy, don't you know when to say you're sorry."

A small black man stands before a taller white woman, obviously embarrassed by her beau's outburst. He can't leave the imagined slight alone and gives me the finger. I shrug and all five-foot of him strides aggressively down the aisle three inches taller in his red platform shoes. The top of his Panama hat reached my eyes and I wonder if I'm going to have to duke it out with a midget. His lady shadows him, a lime green valise-sized pocketbook over her shoulder. He points his left hand in my face.

"Who you think you are white boy to not have to say you're sorry?

"I didn't bump into your friend. She swung her purse into me. I didn't think nothing of it."

I know you didn't. You said nothing and went your way." His right hand slowly slid toward his back. He could have a knife or a gun. The first was bad. The second option was worst.

I wasn't taking any chances and pushed away his wagging finger.

"Get your finger out of my face and your hand back from behind your back."

"Come outside." The short man spun on his heels, but his girlfriend grabbed his arm.

"I'm not fighting anyone right now, especially in the rain."

"So what you gonna do, call 911. I'll beat your ass and be gone before they come."

"Why you so uptight? Someone steal your Barbie Doll?" I say this knowing the Barbie remark will light a fuse an that a fight will ruin both out days.

"Barbie Doll?

"Or is it Ken?" I have never fought a black man. Scores of whites yes. Never a brother."

I don't want to fight this man, but I'm not scare of him. I not scared of anything other than lawnmovers.

"You sayin' I love white people?"

"You're with a white girl."

"Donna's different from white people like you. She grew up with us. You never did." "You got that right. There were no black people in my part of Maine and my next hometown is the Selma of the North."

"Boston."

"You got that right. I played inner-city street ball. I taught at South Boston High School. I went to see Sly Stone at Franklin Park. One of the three white boys in the crowd, but that don't make me black."

"Not at all. Fuck you. You lucky today, cracker. C'mon Donna, let's go." The small black man hustled from the bookstore. Donna in tow.

True, I have never fought a black, but damn I have fought whites. From Childhood to now.

"I ain't black, but there's sometimes I don't want to be white." Frank Zappa.

There are over 25 million people of African descent in America. Black are outnumbered by white ten to one, except in the urban communities such as Harlem or Roxbury. Chocolate City. Any attempt to rebel against the repression has been met with armed force by federal government. Bullets flying will bring any insurrection to ground. Movies like THE SPOOK WHO WAITS BY THE DOOR and SIEGE OF HARLEM are fiction, because the White Race has drugged, drunkenized, impoverished, and exploited an entire race much as the English have done to the Irish for centuries.

The Black Panthers tried to raise consciousness through the cities and country, but the FBI and local police cold-bloodedly assassinated the revolutionaries to the relief of the Silent Majority. There is no standing up against the Pigs and some Black Panthers have fled to Cuba or Algeria. Eldridge Cleaver has sent missives from Algiers, proclaiming BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL, but support of the cause has cost blacks economically and physically. Now is the time for a fight, but it is a fight Newark, Harlem, or Watts can win against the KKK and Nazis of White America, who have resurrected themselves under the guise of 'new ideals and intelligence' and David Duke, Grand Klan Dragon, has admitted, "We have all made mistakes."

White Supremacy was written into the Constitution with the inclusion of the Electoral College and no mention of voting rights other than the rich. My main philosophy comes from the Declaration.

Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

All men are created equal sounds good as long as it applies only to wealthy landowners.

Murder, prison, and addiction decimate the black male population of America.

I hate the upper classes for their attempted genocide and the apathetic masses accepting the death penalty for African-Americans. The Civil War was fought to free the slaves.

Not for every Union soldiers, but more than enough to burn Dixie down.

I avoided a war in Vietnam.

Like Muhammad Ali proclaimed, “I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”

I didn't either. The only reason I wanted to be a Marine was to get out of my town.

LATER

The rain has stopped on 6th Avenue. I drank two glasses a vino blanco at McBells. I searched all morning for a job. Mark Amitin is producing ALBEE DIRECTS ALBEE. Mark is crazy and only after sex from me. I have lots of faggot friends; Taylor, Albee, James Spicer, Holt, Lynde, and Reed along with the boys from Serendipity Three and CBGBs. We know who we are and we are safe in the West Village, Chelsea, and East 53rd Street. I fight any gay-bashers. My friends call me 'rough trade'. I wish I had a leather jacket. Andy Reese says I'd be so hot in one.

LATER

If the world ends there are groups of saveables.

Actually only one.

Children, especially the three Latino kids across the street. Dez, Marika, and Yvonne.

LATER

Grant comes over and admits, "You were right about Joe Breeze."

"He's an asshole's asshole."

Ugly as a acne-scarred bulldog too.

I left the suburbs in 1975 to live in Boston, the northernmost of the East Coast's racist hotbeds. My black friends belonged to JUMP STREET, in which Andy Kornstein played, so the Roxbury band could get white gigs. On July 7, 1974 AK and I drove from Brookline to Franklin Park to see the Hues corporation, Donald Byrd and the Blackbirds, and Richard Pryor, who introduced Sly and the Family Stone by saying, "Sly will be here as soon as he robs all the drug dealers on Blue Hills Ave. like Lil Joe and Jamaal Hookah."

Several groups in the audience laughed loyally at the comedian's shout-out to their dealers. Pryor was no angel. Nobody said nothing about my skin. We had a good time.

Now live in Clinton Hill.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard dominated the East River from 1801 to 1966. Its closing stranded 10,000 industrial workers without jobs and coupled with the construction of housing project created the perfect atmosphere for getting a ghetto. In the 70s I lived on the Lower East Side; junkies, burned-out buildings, and thieves abounded in that wrecked 'hood, but we never came over to Brooklyn. It was too dangerous.

Coming from Boston I had fought more than often against gangs from Southie, Fields, Corner, Quincy, Savin Hill, and my own hometown. Anyone with Irish blood likes a fight. I liked them fine. I never fought a black man. This short guy was protecting his girl. I might have been able to knock him out, then again he might have been a boxer or a gunman. I could eat a little crow to be safe.

Last year young people marched in the streets after the murder of George Floyd. I haven't been to a protest in months almost all the youth evolved to another cerebral stage without telling the Old Man.

Prior to my hospital stay I had been proclaiming that I was going to outlive my great-grand-aunt, who passed in 1961 at the age of 103.

Bertha Hamblin Boyce wrote this in her 96th Year.

“Maria, it is almost time for my ship to sail. Are you going with me this time?”

That was my father, Capt. John C. Hamblin, speaking to my mother. She had been with him on two voyages, and he hoped she was going with him this time. My sister Alice was born in Australia, and my brother Harry was born in Norfolk Island, in the South Seas.

"Like her and my grand-aunt Marion I have circumnavigated the globe.

About ten times from East to West and West-to-East. I rarely get in trouble with the townies from Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Hamburg, Paris, Nairobi, or Moscow.

Nothing serious, because I see trouble I obey my mother's precautionary adage, "If you see trouble, go the other way."

Sadly I have not walked away enough and no one wins all his fights.

Up in Hudson, New York I attended a boxing session by the river. My lungs were good for 69 and my fist impact had some bite, but my back foot wandered out of balance robbing my stance. Not that I'm looking for fights and my violent behavior hails back to repressed memories of being a juvenile bully victim. 69 and still haunted by Joe Scanlon and Mark Tully. My younger sister wants me to see a shrink. ""Since I can't drink or do drugs anymore, these ghosts are the only high I have and I get rid of them I'll have no soul."

Since when did you start believing in a soul."

"I believe in a soul. Just not God." I have sworn an oath to never plead for his help. Not when faced by ten street thugs. Not when I've been sick. Not even when my daughter stopped breathing. Maybe a little about money, but they are vague request for financial help without putting a number of what I might receive, but nothing has come in years, so there isn't any God for me, although I do believe in Frosty the Snowman, which isn't easy when the North Pole is melting into the Arctic Ocean.

AUGUST 11, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE II

This morning I woke with twenty-one cents in my jean pocket. My head hurt from too much alcohol. I thought I had a couple of dollars more. There was nothing. Te fidge luckily has eggs, bread, and butter in the refrigerator. Alice cries about our poverty.

"I don't know what I am doing here."

You're working and going to acting classes. I don't work enough and have no ambition." "You have your poetry." Alice pointed to my journal. She never reads it. She is weak some times and I am dedicated to holding her up. She is a thousand times more talented than me and only a bud of a flower.

"Yes, there is always that." My poetry sucks and no one makes money from poetry, unless they teach it to college kids seeking truth in words. I want magic.

Now that Alice and I are living together I have decided to be monogamous. I tell her, "I love you."

It's true, but the words sounds so bland, because faithfulness is a challenge doomed to failure. A month ago I had rooftop sex with soft skinned Nan, a photographer from Boston. She was into drag queens. I was still straight that way and had also given up on sex with men. I couldn't find anyone without a lisp in New York.

Like in my poem most of the people around me are faggots, chronic maniacs, sexually political women, strippers, junkies, college girls, drug dealers, musicians, and rich slummers. We are all broke. No one has an income, except for the rich. A phone call home will rescue us. I don't have enough change to make the call, so I will endure the poverty. It is freedom, a freedom I share with Alice. She is a great fuck. I never have to fake it.

THE NEWS

The Red Sox are in 1st place and the Yankee catcher Thurman Munson has died in a Cessna crash nine days ago. Pope Pius XII is sanctified for burial. Before his death he predicted the date of Armaggedon as that declared at Fatima. Newspaper strike in New York City.

Last night I drank till CBGBs' closing.Alice had stayed home and women came up offering sex in the bathroom, blowjobs in the alley, standing fucks between cars, cocaine, and qualludes. I accepted all, but the sex, thinking I have to save my energy to apply for a real job with a bank or government and saying fuck the punk life.

Foto by David Godlis

August 11, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village Content Alert

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Late Fame and Radio Man

A bearded older man lay on the sidewalk. Heap of humanity. The screening crowd ignored him deceived by their blather. I had no idea who he was. A human in distress. His attempts to stand feeble. I bent over to help him. He begged off my aid. I lifted him to his feet and he stood a crooked man. I recognized him. He had been inside the theater. Soiled, Willem worked the autograph line. He had been here thousands of times in hundreds of places. A car was waiting for him. We were. Going to his apartment thereafter for tea. "Stay close. When I go. I go." I nodded and asked the old man, if he was alright. "Fine." I went to the big black SUV. The black driver asked if I wanted inside. I waved off the offer. This was Willem's ride. The risen fallen man was speaking with Willem. He listened with intent. Willem despite his fame has retained his humanity, as have I from time to time. "Let's go." "First a photo with the old man." Willem stood close. The two seemed to know each other. One shot was enough. Willem jumped in the car. I got in. The doors shut. The SUV was supersized for comfort. Willem was relieved to be out of the limelight. Our friendship went back into the last century. Both of us lucky to be us now. "Do you know Radio Man?" "Who?" "The old man. He's famous. Radio Man comes to all the first screenings. He's been in lots of movies. Here take a look." Willem found Radio Man on Google and handed me his iPhone. The bearded old man had been in many films. Even a documentary. He had been discoveredvshouting at celebrities fro A newsstand. He never had to pretend to be real. He was real. He had no other choice. Still I had never heard him. Radio Man had confided to Willem that Late Fame will be the one to earn him an Oscar. I think so too. Once more he was playing real and nobody was better than that than himself___