Velociworld

STILES

Stiles was the first gay person I ever knew, or at least the first gay person I knew after I knew what a gay person was. I was about twelve. Stiles had a thing for me, but I don't want to get ahead of my story (I count three grim double entendres there, and I wasn't even trying to do it - shit, make that four).

Stiles lived down the road from our modest summer cottage in Bluffton, in a picturesque area called, alternately, Brighton Beach or Alljoy. This would have been about a mile down the road from Simone Griffeth's. It had a beach, and was salt water, but it was on a river, actually.

Stiles' parents had a big plantation in Aiken, South Carolina, and as was the wont in those days paid Stiles handsomely to stay the hell away so as not to embarrass them in their smallish town with their high social standing. So he ensconced himself in a very nice house on the river, with a bit of beach in front, but close enough to the public boat ramp so he could check out the eye candy.

My old man met Stiles through a neighbor of ours, Bill, a great big bear of a man who worked for the Corps of Engineers. Now this might seem like an unlikely trio, but it worked somehow. Stiles (mid-twenties), Dad (mid-forties), and Bill (late thirties) had a mutual affinity for going out in Dad's boat and drinking liquor and fishing. I DO believe the affinity ended there, although I will not vouchsafe for Bill. I MUST vouchsafe for the old man, because to do otherwise would raise more issues than I am prepared to deal with over the next thirty years.

So you could hang out in Stiles' yard and hear them out in the river, with Stiles yelling, in his effeminate Southern drawl, "Dranking Suthin Comfit from a Dixie Cup! It don't GET anymore Suthin than thayut!" As I say, a bonding fellowship.

Stiles always had other young men hanging around, and sometimes girls. Since his "cousins" were late teens, early twenties, I didn't mind hanging around for the girls. I was fascinated by hippie girls with sweet unholstered tits. Stiles also threw parties. Big parties, and the family was often invited. Bacchanal would be too strong a description for what went on in the public parts of the house, but they were pretty damned wild for me. This would be about 1969, so my little nostrils would try to sort out the difference between weed and incense, wine and piss. I don't think my mom cared too much for these scenes, especially with two teenage daughters in tow, but she was too much the lady to offend Stiles.

I must digress here to remind you that at that age I was formulating my own Playboy Philosophy. I used to mock the kids at school who brought cheap whack books for a nickel a peek. My old man had had a subscription to Playboy since about 1964, and the mailman would deliver it in the ubiquitous brown wrapper, and dad didn't care where he stuffed them after he was finished with them. Then he'd walk around swinging his huge chrome Playboy Club key on its ballchain, and whistle like a Zoot Suiter on Shakedown Street. And as I was refining my self-abuse technique, and developing my measurements of the perfect babe (36-24-36, just like they build them now), I was also reading these things from cover to cover, and absorbing Hef's worldview. Yes, at twelve I wanted to be an attorney with a mod haircut with stylish long sideburns, like Barry Newman in The Lawyer, single with plenty of cash in my pocket to buy those neckerchief ties and $400 Italian bicycles and Maseratis, and get laid, laid, laid! So that's where I was, and Stiles had the game.

Oh, he had the game. In a closet, because he was discreet for the times, he had a statue fountain named Boy. You've seen these things. A cherubic child with the water pouring out of his stubby little pecker. I never had, though. Stiles would fill the fountain with wine or sangria for a party, and you'd open the door and fill your glass from this cherub's dinkie. Even Mom liked Boy.

So, as I said, Stiles had a thing for me. He'd walk up to me at one of his parties and hand me a drink, and say I made you a special Coke, Kim. I'd take it out by the river and drink it in the hammock. After about three parties it dawned on me they were weak rum and cokes. So I'd get mellow out by the hammock until Stiles couldn't find me, and I could hear him scream over the noise, and voices, and rock and roll, "Kayumm!!! Kayumm!!" in that Aiken drawl. And I'd go back inside for another rum and coke.

Stiles had the Playboy Philosophy down cold, except for the homosexual part. Hef never went down that path. But I just knew Stiles was into Hef, and I liked those young girls with their pert nipples poking through their halter tops.

Someone, I think my mom, finally explained to me exactly how Stiles was different. Damn. Never went back there. I think she also made dad understand he was inadvertently using his kid for queer bait.

I'll tell you what, though. Gay or straight, that fucker had life by the balls. Of course, if your rich parents pay you to stay away, you can indulge those fancies.

And I won't say Stiles was a pederast. Never laid a hand on me. Never tried to. Just took a shine to me. Not a crime. Except in 1969 South Carolina. The important thing was I was disabused of some heady notions I was formulating at the time, and gained an understanding of how the real world worked.

I go to the Heritage/MCI Classic (whatever it's called now) every year on Hilton Head, and I go via Bluffton and its speedtraps instead of Hardeeville, just because. I think about old Stiles, and wonder if he's alive, or if the AIDS got him. My dream? Before I die, I'd like to live that damned carefree, and that fucking cool. But if you're not 25 and unattached, it really doesn't matter anymore, does it?