Growing up, we had a cottage an hour outside Brockville, nestled into a nice wooded inlet on Graham Lake. Actually the structure of the cottage was built not on the land we owned, but next to it on a municipal road that went into the lake. My parents thought they were getting a deal and took the risk in purchasing the land and “the cottage” hoping that Athens Township would never build a road right into Graham Lake. They got away with it. To this day I cant fathom how someone could sell real estate like that. Truthfully, we were squatting in some house beside our land.

The almost A-frame building had three bedrooms, floor to ceiling windowed front, press-board for internal walls (which I would poke away at like a mouse, creating peek holes into the older kids rooms), a dodgy septic tank with a creative National Geographic collage created by my talented gay brother, reminding us that you should not flush for just pee. And that the 5 men should lift the lid as courtesy for the two women in the family. Your typical cottage.

The Cottage was where I had my first TV memory. When I was 4, I can remember my sister and dad yelling at me exictedly to see something on TV. Shaky and grainy, there was Buzz Aldrin jumping down off the LEM. I dont recall being overly excited until my sister actually explained what was going on. Later she would give me my first novel to read: Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Robert A Heinlien.

I had big rubber boots to “swim” with (actually I never learned to swim, I wore the boots so I could play in the water without getting leeches, which I still loathe), and a constant supply of plastic boats to play with in the sandy lagoon we created for the Lazer sailboat launch.

I had a pet frog in a jar. I couldnt be a more typical “kid” if I tried.

Life was good.

Life was even better when Randy was around. He was the next door kid who made me realize I was queer. Randy always said he was one year older than myself but I suspect it was more like 4 years older because he was full-on into puberty while I was a smooth scrawny pre-pube kid. Randy was my first glimse at what was to come, bodily, for myself. He was covered in a fine blond hair except for his crotch and nutsack. My lack of development was made painfully obvious to me when we skinny-dipped, watched racey movies on late night tv, played in the woods or crouched down to look at something, prompting hairy things to fall out of his Addidas shorts. To this day, I have a peener-out-the-shorts fetish and swoon when I see boxers. I would desperately try to get him to sunbathe or swim or look at some bug on the ground so I could get a glimpse of his hairy nuts. It went beyond sex, into the realm of obsessive fascination. When would my bag become shaggy? When would hair thickly “pahf!” out of my underwear like his did. I would drill Randy as to the exact date he got body hair, as if I could mark it on MY calendar. Like I was going to hold a party or something. “Hi Welcome to my Hairy Nutsack Cotillion! Make sure you have punch because we’re going to start soon!”

Randy would take my questions in stride. He wasnt gay and he wasnt shy about his body. But he wasnt a queermo either. He would rebuff my deceitful acts of show and tell-me-again-about-your-pubes machinations. Eventually when I hit 13, he wasnt coming up to the cottage as much during the summer. The last time I saw him was our last fall as owners of the cottage. Both our families were winterizing our cottages and as his family (mom, drunken boorish stepdad) were packing away things, Randy waved across to me and went back to stapling plastic over their windows.

Now, into the present: exerpt from my Diary, marked Sept 11, 1997:

Dad told me that Randy’s wife killed herself and their child. I wonder why she did that?

Man. I feel I owe him something.