Much Ado About Easy-Bake Ovens

EXTRA! EXTRA! Stupid Children get fingers caught in Easy-Bake Ovens! "Roasted Child-Digits" only 185 calories each!

So read the papers and blared the radio a couple months ago ... Dumb kids, dumb parents, dumb recall, dumb world... However, this silliness did bring up multiple memories and tales-to-tell of my own adventures with MY Easy-Bake Oven. And being a good little queer boy I didn't burn MY fingers. I made tasty things to eat!

If I recall correctly I got my Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas when I was about six or seven. I really liked it - mainly because it worked! You could actually "bake" cakes and stuff in it. The oven used two light bulbs, one in the top and one in the bottom, surrounded by a highly-reflective aluminum shell. You mixed the cake mixes in little bowls, greased up the little pan, and slid it into the oven where it baked for a time. When it was ready you pushed the cooked cake out the other side of the oven, and a baker you were!

The packaging shown above looks much as I remember MY oven - the late 1960s "Flower Power" decals included. I also recall thinking that the little girl featured on the box wasn't too bright. Look at her little cakes. You are SUPPOSED to bake TWO layers of cake and frost them together with a layer of icing in the middle! It's boring to simply frost a single layer!

My two big memories about my Easy-Bake Oven involved my Dad. He was all for it - indeed he was the baker in the family. When I made my first cake I was distressed that when I pushed it out the far side of the oven a sharp blade (inside the oven) hacked off the top of the cake and made a very flat shaved-off cake layer. This didn't seem right and wasted some very edible cake. My Dad agreed, so out came the tools, he opened up the oven and removed the "cake-shaver." Voila! Unshaved cakes.

The Easy-Bake Oven also gave my Dad an opportunity to give me a lecture on the evils of Capitalism. The oven was a really good toy, well-made, and fairly priced. But the company really gouged you on the cake mixes and frosting packets. And I was baking a LOT of little cakes!

So Dad explained all this stuff about monopolies, and evil-marketing strategies designed to take advantage of little boys, and he took me to the grocery store where we purchased inexpensive JIFFY cake mixes, frosting mix, corn-bread mix, and such. We found a little clear plastic container and carefully measured a "real" Easy-Bake mix, and using tape and a marker, made an Easy-Bake measuring cup so I could easily use the "real" cake mixes in my oven. These real mixes were even better than the expensive "Easy-Bake" ones. There were more flavors! I could make things like corn-bread! And this made the oven seem more "legit."

We chose the JIFFY mixes because they were the only mixes that already had the eggs and stuff in them. Thus they were ADD WATER ONLY just like the Easy-Bake mixes.

Toys wear out and I have no idea what became of my Easy-Bake Oven. But when I was nine, we traveled to Bridgeport, Texas because my grandfather was very ill. My Dad took care of me and my sister in the motel room while Mom was at the hospital all day. One afternoon, while walking the main street of Bridgeport, we wandered into a "five-and-dime" store and I spotted a treasure I had to have!

A SUZY HOMEMAKER OVEN!!!

Suzy's oven also worked via light-bulb, but it was bigger and looked and functioned more like a "real" oven. You placed your food in the oven through the hinged oven-door on the front of the oven.

Well, Dad sensibly saw this as a way to keep me occupied and amused during those long days in the motel room and he got it for me. This oven came with an assortment of "cake mixes," too, but it was suggested somewhere that one could also make pie! So when we went to the grocery store for the old reliable JIFFY mixes we got some JIFFY pie-crust and a jar of jam and I became the "Boy Baker of Bridgeport" for a time.

So here I sit thirty-five years later, I love to cook and I bake pies from scratch.

But the world has changed. Think of the fun to be recalled in 2043 when some forty-something brat will be writing mini-essays on how when he/she was ten, he/she stuck their fingers in their toy-oven, burnt them to shreds, sued Easy-Bake for Billions, and they are forever doomed to a life of store-bought baked goods.

Bon appetit, David

Christmas Memories

Photo from Christmas 1964 - Arlington, Texas - Two years old

I've been thinking a lot about my childhood Christmas memories. Fearing they will one day fade I started writing down details I remember or have knowledge of, from my first when I was six days old, on up to last year's Holiday. I have some memories of Christmas 1965 when I had just turned three. And quite good memories of Christmas 1966 when I was four. The earlier Christmases are reconstructed from notes in my baby book, our home movies, and family anecdotes. Happy Holidays!

1962 - Six days old

This was probably an odd Christmas. Of course I don't remember any of it. I'm not even sure whether I was at home or in the hospital on this first Christmas. My mom had had a C-Section but I suspect we were home by Christmas. I'm sure she would have wanted out of the hospital as quickly as possible. At this time my parents lived with my grandmother in Arlington, Texas. My grandmother had a heart attack the day I was born. No doubt it was a combination of stress, subconscious jealousy, and needing attention from my mom. Sigh...

1963 - One year old

The next year I had just turned one. We were still living in Arlington with my grandmother and great grandmother. For Christmas that year I got a red wagon, a marvelous pull-toy called the Happy Hippo, a set of blocks, and a corduroy suit. I remember all these toys well. I had them for several years afterward.

1964 - Two years old

Now we are two. Same living situation as before. This year I got a Santa's Work Bench, a toy train, a toy mail box, and a little table and chairs. It is this Christmas morning featured in the photo at the top of this blog-post. We also have some great color home movies of this Christmas but alas they aren't digitized yet.

1965 - Three years old

Three years old and all is much the same. But it would be our last year in this house. My mom was about to graduate with her BA from University of Texas at Arlington and she was looking for Grad schools.

This year I got a bright red toy car that I could ride in. It had a push stick. So my Dad would push me down the sidewalk or street with something that looked like a pool cue. This little red car was made by Marx Toy Company. My parents noted with glee that I had a little RED car made by MARX. Perhaps to balance my early introduction to leftist politics I was also given a toy gas pump, and a cash register. My parents also surprised me with a Christmas puppy. When asked what I wanted to call the puppy I said, "Nuffin ..." So Nuffin became the puppy's name.

1966 - Four years old

This is the first Christmas I remember in vivid detail. In the Summer of 1966 we had moved from Arlington, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico so my mom could get her Masters degree at the University of New Mexico.

A couple months before we moved Nuffin disappeared. My mom accused my Dad of "getting rid of Nuffin" to make it easier to move. Years later he admitted he had. I knew nothing of this at the time of course. Just before the move my great-grandmother passed away at the age of 92. My grandmother stayed in Texas, taking an apartment in Fort Worth. And we traveled back to Texas to spend the holidays with my grandmother.

We drove back to Texas in our white Corvair van: Mom, Dad, me, and our new pet basset hound, Zeb. I remember we drove straight through - which is a long drive. We put my mattress from home in the back of the van for me to play on and for me to sleep on once we got to Texas. In the middle of the night driving Zeb the Basset had a very smelly accident in the back of the van. We stopped, my dad cussed, and the van got cleaned out. We stayed at my grandmother's new apartment. I think she slept on the couch in the front room and my parents took her bed, and I slept on my little mattress we had brought with us.

I remember being very happy we were going to see my grandmother; and remember, too, that it seemed strange to see her in a new apartment. The apartment was a fairly big one-bedroom. My Grandmother was a pianist and she still taught at this time so she needed room for two pianos. She had downsized to one baby grand and one console.

There was also a neighbor lady who had a boston-terrier named Inky which I absolutely adored! I was also fascinated with my grandmother's red finger nail polish. I was thrilled when she painted mine red, too! Such a nice and obliging grandmother!

I don't remember much about the tree that year, but I'm sure we had one. I do remember my presents!

Model Tramway Car

This was a toy tramway car that I suspect my parents fot at the Sandia Mountain Tramway just out side of Albuquerque. We had gone to the Crest of the Mountain right after we moved and I had wanted to ride the Tram but it was too expensive. So I think this is why I got the toy one. I wanted to play with it and my Dad cleverly rigged it to run between two of the legs on the grand piano.

Creepy Crawlers

This was a very popular toy, probably considered too dangerous for today's kids. It came with a little heating plate and metal molds of various insects. You filled the moulds with liquid rubber which you then "baked"on the little hotplate. When the rubber became cooked and opaque you plunged the metal into cold water and peeled out the rubber insects. I really did like Creepy Crawlers a lot!

Cheerful Tearful

I had also asked for a baby doll. Well, my grandmother gave me one named Cheerful Tearful. I don't remember getting any flack from neighbor kids either. I've wondered what my grandmother thought of giving me a baby doll and of painting my little fingernails red. Maybe grandmothers always "know what's up" on some level. But this WAS 1966 and she was a straight-laced methodist lady, so who knows, but she was very supportive of my off-beat interests!

I also got $9 in pennies from my grandfather (who stored up pennies all year long in a big glass jar). I got a Remco Mouse House; and perhaps the most lasting of all the presents, my Dad built me a playhouse in the backyard of our house in Albuquerque. I was there when it was being built so I know it wasn't a surprise. But I don't remember if it was built before Christmas or right after we got home. David's Playhouse needs a blog post of it's own!

More Christmas to come ...

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.
Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine.

La Planète des Singes

Monkey See, Monkey Do

As you may have gathered from some of my other postings I have been studying French for the last year or so.

The BF and I had a private tutor for the first year. But since then we've been working on our own. We have two weekly self-taught classes. We quiz each other, try to do homework, etc. And we've gone to France twice this year.

Still, one thing we don't get enough of is listening to fluently spoken French. So I've started watching movies and TV shows we have on DVD with the French soundtrack on. One of my favorites is of all things the 1970s Planet of the Apes TV series.

Why on earth, you might ask, does Planet of the Apes adapt so well to French study? Hmm, why indeed...

Reason No. One: the scripts aren't that good. But the simple, flat writing means that the characters speak in a simple, flat and straightforward manner. And luckily apes use little colloquial slang.

Reason No. Two: Since half the cast is wearing ape makeup the dubbing isn't very evident. General Urko moves his muzzle and whether what comes out is French, English, or Swahili you really can't tell. It's also a good dubbing job. The voices fit the characters very well!

Reason No. Three: The TV series and the five films are after all based on a 1963 French novel La planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. So, with a little twisted logic, these apes are SUPPOSED to be speaking French, no? I have also recently obtained a copy of the French edition of the novel and plan to work my way through it. I'm sure the French is a little beyond my current comprehension. We'll see.

A+ David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.
Blog copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine

Dancing Naked with PUFNSTUF

In 1971, when I was eight years old, I was taken to see the then new PUFNSTUF movie. I already loved the psychedelic television show of the same name. But the movie appealed to me for many reasons. I wanted to escape, I thought Jack Wild was cute, it was a movie musical that resonated of many things I loved including a similarity to the plot of THE WIZARD OF OZ. I adored Jack Wild's peculiar British accent, and now as an adult, I can see other reasons that the film spoke to me.

For those of you too young, too old, or too foreign to know the film, the story goes thusly:

A boy named Jimmy is picked on by his classmates and teachers. Jimmy plays the flute and one day his flute comes to life and starts to talk. A nasty old witch named Witchiepoo wants Jimmy's talking flute for herself and she tricks Jimmy into boarding a beautiful boat which traps him and brings him to Living Island. Jimmy escapes the witch's clutches and befriends a yellow dragon named Pufnstuf who wore little white cowboy boots and a Stetson. Jimmy wants to get back home, protect his flute from Witchiepoo, and in the end finds peace and love with his friends on Living Island.

There's an interesting Freudian interpretation of the film that I've heard about. Our boy hero Jimmy is about to enter puberty and his "flute" which had been inanimate suddenly comes to life. Witchiepoo (the mother figure) wants to take away Jimmy's "magic flute." For protection, Jimmy seeks out an even bigger phallic symbol, Pufnstuf himself. I wonder what PUFNSTUF creators Sid and Marty Krofft think of this interpretation. Pufnstuf himself does look pretty phallic. Look at his "head" in the photo at the top of this blog.

Okay, back to being eight years old... Well, I loved the movie and I loved my copy of the soundtrack album. I played it to pieces, played it for my friends, and being a little gay boy I had as big a fascination with Witchiepoo as I did with Jimmy.


Soundtrack album cover for PUFNSTUF (1970)

In the movie Witchiepoo hosts the Annual Witch's Convention in her castle. Witches are quite "political" it seems; and there is a power struggle to obtain the title of "Boss Witch." The current Boss Witch was played by Martha Raye; and other contenders for the title included Witchiepoo, and another witch named Witch Hazel who was played by Mama Cass Elliot. Witch Hazel sang a song called "Different."

"When I was smaller and people were taller
I realized that I was different.

It's kind of an ode to being gay (from a little gay kid's point of view anyway). It's not unlike Cass Elliot's big hit "Make your own kind of music." On the soundtrack album, this song is followed by a spectacular production number called "Zap the World!" which is what the witches want to do. I lapped it all up!

My best friend at the time lived next door. One summer afternoon while we were playing my PUFNSTUF album we decided to make "magic wands." In the movie the magic wands look kind of like striped pencils. And indeed that's what we made. We took some unsharpened pencils and carefully wound them with colored tape making spirals about the pencils. We also made them "magic" by putting spells on them and saying magic words and stuff. At some point my best friend said, "You know if we want to make them really magic, we're supposed to be naked."

"What are we supposed to do then?" I asked in my best naïvely coy eight-year-old manner.

My friend said, "We have to dance with them."

It sounded like a good idea to me! So we locked my bedroom door. We put on the PUFNSTUF album, and played "Different" as an invocation while we got undressed. When we were both naked we stood on my twin bed and waited for "Zap the World!" to begin. At which point the eight-year-old, wand-waving, naked, wannabe-witches began dancing excitedly, jumping up and down on the bed!

So what do you do when the music stops?

Well, you put on your clothes, you put the magic away, and you grow-up. You try to make friends with other people, hoping for a friendship like Jimmy's and Pufntuf's. And you long to find a Living Island where you attempt to avoid the witches, where you can play your magic-flute, and when the planet gets too obnoxious, you can …
Zap! Zap the World!

David

Blog copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine.

Below, you can enjoy "Zap the World!" from PUFNSTUF the movie!

Daddy Dearest

I do not know how it happens that we learn to protect our selves from pain, and loss, and doubt. We freeze at a certain age and never really grow beyond it. We freeze at the moment of pain, unable to move, for fear of dislodging the knife in our soul, the thorn in our spirit.

I have mixed feelings about my dad. I remember him as a great dad, who worshipped me as a little boy. He was incredibly smart. He could explain anything to me. He could make the most wonderful things. He painted, sculpted, wrote, built his own stereo system. He built a black-and-white television! He knitted me booties! But he didn't know how to be a father to an adolescent boy.

Why do we feel such an intense desire to grow up when we are children and such an intense desire to return to childhood when we are grown? My life froze in the spring of 1976 when I was thirteen and my father was fifty-seven.

In 1975 and 1976 my dad was trying to get a veteran's disability pension. He had been in a M.A.S.H. unit in World War II and was involved in most of the big battles of Europe. He had been drafted and was over there for almost four years. He was traumatized by those years. He also had some nerve damage in one hand from a bad cut he got during the war. So now, thirty years later, he went out to the Veteran's Hospital and was supposed to check in to the Neurology Ward for tests. Yet for some reason never explained to me he was admitted to the Psych Ward. He proceeded to have a mid-life crisis and a nervous breakdown.

Dad was hospitalized in the Psych Ward for many weeks in the spring of 1976. He talked to his therapists, took tests, made little things out of clay. My mom, sister, and I went out to visit him daily. But he seemed to be able to take very little of us. He came home in early May for about a week. But on one Sunday, Mother's Day as it turned out, he ate a piece of my mom's Mother's Day candy, grabbed his side and passed out. He was taken back to the VA where we were told he had to have his gall bladder removed.

About two weeks after the surgery he was still in the hospital. We went out to visit him He seemed like a stranger. It was like he saw me, little David, as a thing to be conquered. Was my dawning adolescence a reminder to him of his getting older? Had his time in the Psych Ward aroused memories of his own abuse as a child? As we were getting in the car to go home I said or did something, I don't recall what. But Dad got a look in his eye and yelled, "You God-damn little ass-hole! You're not gonna do that to me! You're a little boy and you're not gonna forget it." He then jumped into the car and started slapping me across the face, his knees in my chest. I screamed and fought back, mostly just trying to push him out of the car. Mom was yelling, "Watch out for Dad's stitches!" fearing Dad would spill his guts in more ways than one. Mom got the now hyperventilating Dad off of me, out of the car, and into the hospital. I was in panicked hysteria in the back seat wanting an explanation for why I'd been hit for the first time in my then thirteen years of life.

When Dad came home about a week later nothing was the same and nothing ever would be again. It seemed like everything I did resulted in another beating. He said I was incorrigible. He said I was not going to make myself the man of the family. He acted like he was jealous of my relationship with my Mom. And as she would try to protect me from his violence, it seemed to irritate him even more.

A typical scenario would run thus: David doesn't finish his dinner. Dad says, "Eat your damn food!" David replies, "I don't have to eat it!" Dad, bellows: "Why you ungrateful little bastard, quit trying to one-up-me! You are NOT going to drive me out of this house! I'll put you in a boy's home before I let you ruin my marriage!" By this point I'd try to get up and run away; he'd chase me around the house, and he'd eventually tackle me. He'd straddle my chest, pinning my arms at my sides and he'd slap my face back and forth asking if I was ready to behave. Finally I'd give in. But as soon as I was loose I was filled with such anger that I'd yell something horrid like, "I wish you were dead you crazy old man!" And the chase would begin again.

I only wanted to grow up and run away. Or did I only want to be six years old again.

Once he broke my wrist. I was told to lie at the Emergency Room and say I'd stumbled on the driveway. Being a good son, I did. As I remember it the chasings, beatings, and captures occurred almost daily for about a year.

There is so much more to this story! How Dad fell in love with his therapist from the VA (who was also a practicing sex therapist on the side.) How I was threatened with being "committed" when I was the only sane person in the crazy family. How Dad introduced his therapist-darling to the family. My sister and I could tell she was the "other woman" Mom didn't catch-on. The therapist-darling wormed her way into the family, bringing her two little girls over to swim in our pool, play in our yard. Dad loved those little girls. He beat me up. My dad finally decided he wanted a divorce; which Mom reluctantly gave him. Before my parents divorced they tried a few months of couple's therapy. Their "marriage-counselor" was none other than the "other woman" herself, therapist-darling!

All right, dear readers, you can close your mouths now.

The divorce occurred fourteen months after I was first "punished." After we moved out Dad never struck me again. The year of terror passed, the beatings ceased, and the scars grew deep. Dad came over for dinner many nights a week; and we talked every day. Dad introduced us to his new friends as his "Ex-Family" an unusual appellation to say the least. But Dad was pretty-much back.

There is always balance, a love and a hate. I remember as a boy climbing into my father's lap, smelling his T-shirt, rubbing my face into the man-smelling cotton. His hands rough, his whiskers a torture of pinpricks. His breath smelling of cherry Kool-Aid and cigarettes. I knew I was loved. But the same smells and textures and memories are also tied to my Dad sitting on me, straddling my chest, my arms pinned to my sides. He slaps may face, my head is banged against the hard linoleum of the family room floor.

If we turn off our lives to dull the pain of tragedy, we sacrifice the present, the now, the living. And it is only with time that we begin to heal, to learn to feel again, to accept, and to love the past with all its delights, with all its blemishes, and all its horrors.

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2007 D. H. Maxine.

That Seventies School

I hated sixth grade. And I hated my teacher, Mr. Reinecke, at Aztec Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He was a crappy teacher but sixth grade was expecially bad becasue I was tormented to two bullies in my class. No one but me seemed to object. The dreaded twosome of Shane and Mike did all of the usual things bullies do: they punched me in the arm, gave me noogies, gave me "Indian burns." They called me the usual epithets like pussy, and freak, and fag; the latter altered into a nickname riffing on my last name: "Fagzine." Now this was all in the first half of the year; it got much worse.

The terror twins eventually started bringing pen-knives to school. These knives were little more than toys. But it hurt if you got jabbed and they were kind of threatening to twelve-year-old me. The last couple months of school were abysmal. Shane and Mike thought up a new game. Lots of kids were wearing "waffle-stomper" boots, which had thick rubber souls. Well, Shane and Mike (their initials are S & M; I never thought of that before!) started sticking broken razor blades in the tips of their boots and kicking me, which tore up both my jeans and my legs.

The teachers and principal were no help at all. They suggested boxing lessons! Or maybe a "playdate" so we'd all become friends (otherwise know as drown David in the pool day!) I was getting a little psychologically messed up. I was scared to go to school. I started getting a little obsessive/compulsive, too. I suspect I was trying to gain control of a world I felt was totally out of control.

Oh, you may have wondered where my parents were through all of the above. My Dad was a pacifist who felt victimized all his life and I think he just kind of withdrew from it all. Mom would yell at the teacher and Principal; the teachers would go look for the knives or blades; S&M would look innocent and show their empty pockets. Major dysfunction.

What to do! If Elementary School was this bad; I could just imagine Junior High! Well, Mom started looking for a new school. My Mom at this time had recently completed her doctorate and had accepted a political appointment as the "Executive Director of the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women" for the state of New Mexico. But she remembered that while she had been a TA one of her students was helping to start an "Alternative Education" school. Mom looked them up.

That next fall I was enrolled for seventh grade at The Twelve Gates Free School. What was this private academy for alternative youth like, you ask? Have you even seen AUNTIE MAME? It truly was the spitting image of the school that Mame enrolled little Patrick Dennis in. It was GREAT!

Twelve Gates was modeled on A. S. Neill's Summerhill School in England, and Orson Bean's Fifteenth Street School in New York City. The guiding principle of the school was "freedom and equality" between teachers and students. The school was run democratically by both students and faculty (two Lesbians and a straight woman.) You could take classes or not. You could sign out and go on a self-field trip. It may sound like anarchy; but to me it was heaven! I was even on the school's Board of Directors! After a year of stifling abuse in sixth grade - I was at last in heaven!

I took a year of Japanese. We had extra-curricular tea ceremonies, and cooked Japanese dinners at a teacher's home. Instead of a boring "civics" course we older students got together and assembled a petition to stop this thing called "Senate Bill One" and another to try and stop production of the B-1 Bomber. We then went out to Malls and the University campus and collected signatures and mailed in the petitions. I learned to use a camera and darkroom. We took a field trip to meet singer Alberta Hunter.

We sat around and read what we liked. There were tens of thousands of books at the school. One of our teachers read us certain parts of RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE aloud. Now THAT'S an education.

I learned to play the guitar (sort of). One kid who was about my age was a bit of a capitalist and he decided to start a school store. He bought food at the supermarket and sold it to hungry students with a big mark-up in price. I felt ripped off. So I formed the Twelve Gates Student Food Co-op. And brought back my own supply of groceries which students could buy at approximate cost after paying a nominal "membership" fee. This twelve-year-old's trade war only lasted for a few weeks --but what a way to learn economics, improve one's math skills, and deal with internal school politics!

In the spring we went on a school trip to Mexico. We drove several hundred miles into Mexico to a place called Bahia de Kino (Kino Bay). The bay was gorgeous. Out in the water a Bali-Hai-like island called Tiburon, rose from the blue horizon. But lack of organization on a school trip can be a big and dangerous mess (see my previously posted story Stingray.)

Sadly, the school and my life would soon implode. The adults in the school began to squabble; and so did my parents. That Mother's Day my Dad had a nervous breakdown--and this would lead to my parents divorce later that year.

Why do we feel such an intense desire to grow up when we are children and such an intense desire to return to childhood when we are grown? Life froze in the late spring of 1976 when I was thirteen and my father was fifty-seven. Just as I was reaching out to become a man my father decided he wanted to be a boy. And THAT will be another chapter entirely.

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.

Dr. Zaius in Oz or; Leggo my MEGO!

I've been thinking a lot about play - or more specifically, how I played as a kid. I am trying to remember how it worked, how I did it, what it felt like.

All of my favorite toys were puppets, stuffed animals, and the like. I also loved movies and had a strong passion for PLANET OF THE APES. I devoured the movies, watched the prime-time TV series, and the animated Saturday morning cartoon. I even tracked down the Pierre Boulle novel - which I also loved. I found it especially sexy somehow that Boulle's astronaut was completely naked as Zira took him for walks around the city.

I also loved L. Frank Baum's Oz books. My Second Grade teacher, Mrs. Strong, at Monte Vista Elementary School, in Albuquerque, read them to us a chapter to two a day after lunch. I also discovered the MGM movie, which I came to love as well. So one can hardly overestimate my childhood joy at discovering MEGO (a toy company) was producing 8-inch action-figures of PLANET OF THE APES characters, followed a bit later by WIZARD OF OZ characters, among many others including another childhood obsession, STAR TREK.

But back to play. I would ask my sister something like, "Do you wanna play Oz? or Apes?" And she pretty much always did. We would then go to my room and prepare the universe. We had a couple dark furniture throws and these would be tossed over carefully arranged pillows, cushions, piles of clothes to create mountain ranges and valleys as wide as the bedroom - a terrain for the play to occur within. We would then set up the Emerald City or Ape City in our room-scape and the play would begin.

But I dont remember how we did it! We devised such elaborate plots and story lines! They often continued from day to day, too. But there was no discussion that I recall about how to do it, no set rules for who "operated" which characters. It was a seamless flow of interaction between the two of us: handing off characters, improvising dialogue, manipulating plot, creating back-story with no effort whatsoever. But I don't remember how we did it! We were just so in synch - everything worked. And we both fell into a hypnotic state where the room would fall away, our hands hopping the characters across the bedspread would vanish, and we did little more than channel Zira, Cornelius, and Dorothy Gale! Yes we mixed the worlds up quite often.

It worked REALLY well, too! Sometime apes would go to Oz; and sometimes Oz characters would go to the Planet of the Apes. If you think Dr. Zaius (the ornery orangutan) freaked out when he saw a talking human you should have seen how apoplectic he got over talking lions, Tin Men, and little girls with dogs!

Sometimes Zaius went to Oz! At least once the Wicked Witch captured him and thought he was her runaway flying monkey. She could NOT understand what happened to his wings. "Curses! It's that Dorothy Gale's doing!" But then again sometimes Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock would beam in at just the right moment and then all hell would break loose! The Wicked Witch would over hear Kirk talk about dancing Orion slave girls (who are green!) and the Witch would decide she could trap Kirk and Spock by stripping and dancing for them! You may recall that the Wicked Witch is green, too.

I do not know if other MEGO-loving kids did this cross-pollination thing. Sometimes I would buy duplicate characters to make them into additional characters. I "aged" a Cornelius with white paint and miniature glasses to make someone I names Dr. Barlow. We turned an extra Glinda the Good into Laverne DeFazio to play with my sisters Fonzie figure. A few characters I just made from scratch - a Patchwork Girl and a Sawhorse come to mind. Some ideas we never quite pulled off probably due to lack of money. Grandma and Grampa Walton would have made a wonderful Aunt Em and Uncle Henry but I guess i just didn't feel like spending $15 to get two sort of boring characters.

But is was so magical, so addicting! This hypnotic-state of play occurred whenever my sister and I played with our anthropomorphic toys: puppets, stuffed animals, etc. Once on a car trip I told her that there was a miniature universe in my pants-pocket. I pulled out bits of lint and stuff from my pocket and introduced them as animals, live stock, etc. I made a tiny little woman out of a scrap of Kleenex, too. But I swear we could see "pocket-world!"

And that's what I miss! I miss my imagination being that powerful. I think I still have a strong ability for fantasy and imagination and daydreaming - but I can't quite make the real world disappear anymore - at least not with pocket lint!

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.

Stingray

I've been digging through my life lately, and I found this story (or fragment) that I wrote when I was twenty-two. It is based on an incident that happened on a school trip to Mexico when I was twelve. It was an unusual school, with unusual teachers, in an unusual time, the mid 70s.

---

Stingray

"What is it? It's too late for this. . ."

"No, get up! Chris passed out; we can't wake him up!

Ellen pulled on a pair of shorts and a shirt, and zipped herself out of her tent. Ellen is my seventh-grade teacher and we're in Mexico. We all call her Ellen. She's a lesbian.

It has not been a fun school trip so far. There's sand in all the food, and the water is undrinkable! Lots of us are kind of sick from it. We've been purifying it, (the teachers put Clorox in it, yuck!) but it tastes terrible! This is our fifth day here and we have three more days to go. There are nineteen of us: five adults, and fourteen kids, ranging in age from a strange little girl named Monkey who's six, to Adam who's fifteen. Chris is eleven; and I'm twelve.

Back to the trip being so bad--the adults really aren't taking very good care of us. Whoever cooked dinner tonight tried to avoid the wind and sand, and they took the campstove INSIDE the tent! I GUESS they spilled gasoline on Chris's sleeping bag. 'Cause right after we went to bed (we were talking and playing with our flashlights) Chris was sitting there giggling in his underwear and he said "I feel weird," and then he was just lying there against the side of the tent, kind of caving it in. After we decided he wasn't fucking around, we dragged him outside, and I went to get Ellen.

"We pulled him out, but he won't wake up," I said sitting down in the sand next to him.

"Adam get a flashlight," said Ellen rubbing the back of Chris's neck and peeking into his eyes.

"What? What? No I'm not . . ." (Chris was coming around) "Why 'm I out here?"

"Somebody spilled gas on your sleeping bag," I volunteered, "and you, uhm, fainted."

Chris was crying now.

"You're not supposed to be cooking in the tent! I could be dead! Did you-- use my-- sleeping ba ...bag ... to ... heh ... heh ...

Ellen told Chris to stop talking and to breathe slow and deep. She said he was hyperventilating. Chris began to breath normally after a couple minutes. Ellen got up, walked over to the tent, stuck her head inside, and said: "You guys can't sleep in there tonight, it 'll have to air out. Monk, you and Jennifer go over to my tent. David, Chris and Adam can sleep outside.

"What does Chris sleep in," I asked. "His bag is ruined!"

"You and Adam open up your sleeping bags and make a pallet. Chris can sleep between you. Sit up with him for a while. He can use the night air. I'm going to go get the girls set up." Ellen glanced around, decided she was finished, and went to bed leaving me and Adam (big deal) to care for Chris.

I tossed the two sleeping bags out of the tent and Adam started to make up our beach bed.

"Chris," I said "I've got a Seven-Up I've been hiding if you're thirsty?"

"Sure, Thanks," he said, wiping the last of the tears out of his eyes. I padded through the sand to the ice chest, and Chris went and sat in the middle of the sleeping bag bed.

"Here." I handed him the opened can and sat down next to him. He took a sip and he started to breathe funny again; he swallowed quickly and stopped himself with the Seven-Up.

I'm starting to feel a little guilty. Right after Chris passed out, my first thought wasn't saving him, but feeling him up before he was revived. In all the confusion I think I could have gotten away with it --and that almost makes me feel worse.

"You can take my pillow," I said "yours is kinda' gassy." We both giggled.
Chris sprawled out on the beach-bed.

* * *

I'm lying on my back listening to the ocean. I really like this sound but also sort of hate it, too. I can't think of a single nice image to go with it anymore. Everytime I close my eyes, I see dead stingrays washing up on the beach. There are shark-heads washing up on the beach, too.

The men in the village fish for sharks. I guess they throw the heads back in the water. The sharks are only about three feet long, but I'm still too scared to go into the water more than a couple feet. Besides the waves are too high to swim.

"We could share the pillow if you like," said Chris opening his eyes.

"I thought you were asleep."

"I think I was."

"You really think you're Ok," I asked putting my head on my half of our pillow?

"Uh Huh--but in the morning I'm gonna kill whoever cooked dinner last night!"

I can smell Chris's breath. I keep looking at his mouth and his teeth.

"Are you having fun on the trip?"

"I was until somebody tried to kill me!"

"You're Ok. We saved you!"

"Thanks! Night."

"'Night."

* * *

Yesterday I was sitting outside the tent and I started to feel so awful I started to cry. I didn't want anyone to see me, so I walked down to the water and splashed myself so no one could tell I was crying and would just think it was the ocean on my face. And I just cried. I don't even know why! Monkey was down at tide level making a sandcastle of some kind, and Ellen was sketching the island, the dolphins were playing a couple hundred yards off shore, and Adam and Chris had gone into the village. And I wasn't doing anything! Just sitting in the tide and crying!

Everybody else was having fun, and I was sitting in a big pile of sand and crying. And I DON'T KNOW WHY! Nobody even knew I was crying. The dolphins were just diving in and out of the water, Monkey was into her stupid sandy world, and Adam and Chris had left me at camp while they went into the dumb old village. I don't know why I should care, there isn't anything to do in the village but order "Naranja Soda". (That's the only thing we've figured out how to buy.)

After a while Ellen put down her sketch pad and I helped her straighten up the tents. Chris and Adam finally came back, Adam with a huge stingray by the tail. No doubt he planned to throw it at me later on, when no one, (or EVERYONE!) was looking. The dolphins left, and Monkey's castle washed out to sea.

* * *

Chris is asleep. His hair looks like it's glowing he's been out in the sun so much! I'm trying to decide whether to put my arm around him. People are so stupid --I don't know --I just don't understand why he helped Adam throw dead stingrays at me, when he's nice to me when we're alone--it's like he's two people. I know I want to do it and everything, but if I put my arm around him, I'm afraid I'd still feel all alone--and it's dumb-- 'cause we should be friends.

---

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.
All rights reserved.

Who's the Little Gay Boy?

Who's the little Gay Boy!

I recently answered a mySpace-group questionnaire that asked if I had ever dressed up in Drag. Initially I thought the answer was "no," but thinking back further in time, I realized the answer was "yes." That is, if it counts as Drag when you're eight or ten.

As a child I was a big Lucille Ball fan. I watched I LOVE LUCY, and LUCY SHOW reruns, and watched HERE'S LUCY, which was still running in prime-time. My mom helped me send her a fan letter and I was out-of-my-mind-crazy when I got a signed photo of Lucy in the mail a couple weeks later. It was in black and white - and signed rather generically "Love, Lucy."

A few weeks later I got my third-grade school pictures back. I raced home, cut one free from the sheet of small photos, and boldly signed it, "Love, David," and sent it to Lucy. A couple weeks later I got a full-color photo of Lucy back in the mail! Show-and-Tell here I come!

I eventually wanted to be Lucy and asked my Mom and Grandmother if I could get a red wig. They bought me a fright-wig ala Ronald McDonald!

"No, no, no," I say. "Not like that, like real hair, like Lucy!"

For some reason my Mom and Grandmother didn't bat an eyelash. And when my Grandmother was at the beauty salon next she let me pick out an inexpensive red-head wig. I think it cost $2.00, which was several times my allowance. It was a start. Next I wanted false eyelashes! And at the local Skaggs Drugstore I'd spotted a pair of Deep Blue lashes that were to be my next purchase.

I don't know how many times I dressed-up as Lucy. It was more than once, though! My grandmother had a pretty silk blouse, that on me, worked splendidly as a mid-thigh length dress. And I loved my grandmother's heels! My grandmother was a nice, southern, Methodist lady. But my Mom was a feminist, women's rights activist (who didn't really wear dresses!) and my Mom had a number of lesbian friends. I remember one coming over to our house and lecturing me on female stereotypes; and saying that I didn't have to do my hair and wear false-eyelashes to pretend I was a woman. "Oh, please," I thought. "I'm not dressing up as a woman, I'm Lucy!"

The last time I remember donning "drag" was when I was ten, when I wrote a play for me and my best friend, Gail, a black girl who lived down the street. It was called Millicent Martin takes Manhattan and featured me as Millicent Martin. She was a penthouse-living, New York Socialite, based loosely on Eva Gabor in GREEN ACRES and, of course, Lucy. My friend Gail played Leroy, an African-American homeless bum. In the play we fell in love and I introduced Leroy to New York society! I invited my family and assorted kids from the neighborhood to attend the play. A couple of my male friends seemed fascinated by my costume, too.

I didn't figure out I was Gay until I was 22 - kinda' hard to believe!

--David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 by D. Maxine.
All rights reserved.