Sundays were a horror, as our families made it a ritual to attend church together. There were so many of us that we usually took two cars, but Mary Kay and I, whom our well-meaning mothers regarded as “the two chums,” were often paired. That meant riding with her to church in the same car, sliding into the same pew next to her, and joining her in the fun and games between services and Sunday school. The only time we spoke was on the playground, where Mary Kay liked to ride the swings. Before the incident under the bridge, she didn’t mind where I’d put my hands to shove her back and forth. I like pushing on her soft bottom rather than her trim, little waist, and so did she. Then it was harmless; now it was dirty. “Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried, setting the rules for months to come.
“I won’t, don’t worry,” I replied. From then on I was careful to make contact only with the swing board.
Sunday was the day the smothering black cloud was at its worst, and it wasn’t all due to Mary Kay’s presence. Listening to the minister had a devastating effect on me. For some reason, his sermons always focused on sex, or some aspect of it. He preached about lust, and condemned people who “go’ a whoring” and commit ‘whoredom.’” He talked endlessly (or so it seemed) about wickedness and nakedness and immorality. I heard about incest and adultery, of men who “waste their seeds,” and of wicked, sinful places like Sodom and Gomorrah. Every time he opened his mouth I squirmed in my seat. When he gestured with his hands, as he often did, his finger seemed to point directly at me. It didn’t, really, but it took me many years to figure that out. His sermons were pure vaudeville, and he was playing to his audience. Where else could the people of this little of this little farming community hear sex discussed openly (it was the only x-rated show in town), and with the blessing of the church? Topics conserved forbidden not only kept the parishioners awake, but also had then returning every Sunday and filling the collection plate to overflowing.
The passing months did little to ease my conscience, or dim my memories of that steamy afternoon with Mary Kay. Winters in the Ohio Valley can be fierce, raw and blustery. But no matter how numbing the cold was, thoughts of our time together never failed to generate heat between my legs. One freezing January day, as I was returning from setting trap lines in the snow-covered woods, I spotted Mary Kay walking along the road. She was bundled from head to toe, but the sight of her fascinated me. I crouched low, not wanting her to see me, then began following her, careful to keep a safe distance between us. She turned into her driveway, bypassed her house, and then disappeared inside the barn-like tool shed in the back yard. I couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there, and I really didn’t care, but I suddenly found myself at the shed door, pushing it open. Mary Kay was sitting on an old crate, huddled next to a frost-caked window. She turned away from me and said, “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, closing the door.
“Well, you’d better go.”
“I want to stay,” I said, stubbornly. The admission surprised me. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to be with her.
“Well, you can’t.”
“Why?” I moved closer to Mary Kay, stepping cautiously over scattered nails and bits of broken wood. “You haven’t really spoken to me since we were underneath the bridge.”
She raised her mitten to the frosty pane and ran her fingers in small circles, creating a blurred pattern. “You haven’t spoken to me either,” she said, finally.
“I’ve thought about it.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she sighed, her breath clearly visible in the cold air. “We’re not supposed to talk to each other.”
“Why? Who said that? Did you tell your mother?”
She turned slowly to look at me. Her face, the small portion that peeked through the furry trim on the hood of her parka, showed no sign of anger. “No, I didn’t tell anyone,” she answered calmly, “but what we did was wrong.”
“I think it was wrong, too.”
“You do?” she said quickly. She actually sounded relieved that we were talking.
“Yes—and I don’t think we should ever do it again.”
Mary Kay signed once more, sending a shaft of white air across my cheeks. “I don’t either,” she agreed.
I smiled and so did she. Then I sat beside her and we talked about our guilt, and unhappiness, and all the things we’d missed by avoiding each other the past months. We were completely open and honest, especially about sex. Somehow, the subject always came back to that. “Being with you was one of the best things that has ever happened to me,” I admitted. “Except Christmas mornings, nothing has ever made me feel so good.” Looking into Mary Kay’s eyes, I knew I wanted to feel good again. The pleasure she gave me, no matter how fleeting, made all the guilt seem worthwhile.
My hand found its way to Mary Kay’s thigh, and I began stroking it very gently. A moment later we were standing, unzipping our jeans, and pressing our warm bodies together. We didn’t even notice the icy cold that surrounded us.
I saw Mary Kay many times after that.
And Gloria!
There were other young girls as well.
In the four years since I began straying to escape Harold’s tirades, I learned that home was not the place for me. Home stood for pain and violence; fighting and bickering, anger and hiding out. In its place, I discovered a worthy substitute in sex. Sex brought a closeness of one-on-one comfort. It allowed me to be warm and caring, to kiss and touch and experience pleasure. It was, I felt, the perfect intimacy between the love and feeling that I should have been receiving at home. As such, any strange girl became more close to me than my own family.
As I entered my teen years, I turned more and more to sex. It was the only family I needed. I knew, too, that I had just about all of Harold that I could take for one lifetime. I needed to get away, but wasn’t exactly sure how to go about that. My young mind finally came up with a plan, and that was to join the army. There was only one hitch. Because of my age, I needed the approval of a parent. My mother didn’t argue. She signed the papers and I was gone.
Believe it or not, the army was good for me. I can’t honestly say that it taught me any morals or sense of responsibility; I had been raised with those qualities. I can’t even say that it taught me to be an excellent sharp shooter since hunting in the woods all those years had made me a good shot. But I did learn something, and it wasn’t in any manual. What the army taught me was that there was a whole world of sex I had yet to discover.
While stationed in Germany, I heard about a cathouse filled with voluptuous women of various ages and sizes. But just hearing about it wasn’t good enough for me; I had to check out for myself. It didn’t take long for the madam, a woman edging into her forties, to learn of my “talent,” and once she did she refused to allow any of her girls to be alone with me. I was hers and that was final; she made that clear to everyone under her roof. Being the young man that I was, I didn’t argue considering the nature of the place. Besides, I didn’t have to pay for any of the services as the other customers did. It was a great arrangement.
Whenever I had a night off, or a weekend pass, just about everyone at the base knew where to find me because I was always with Madam Helga. Everything was going smoothly until one day I arrived to find Madam away on an errand. A lot of the girls flirted with me whenever they had the chance, but few of them would cross the line for fear of losing not only their jobs but also their nightly romps with horny soldiers. But with Madam Helga gone, one hot little number decided the risk was hers for the taking and, given the circumstances, I wasn’t about to argue. We were going at it hot and heavy when Madam Helga suddenly burst into the room. That’s when I learned the meaning of the words, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Ranting and raving, Madam Helga dragged my lusty partner of the moment out of bed and down the stairs by her golden hair and out the door, all the while threatening that she would end up in a box if she ever returned. By the time Madam Helga ca
me back for me, I too was gone, never to return to her establishment again. That confrontation left a lasting impression on my young mind for it was the first time I really ever experienced the wrath of jealousy. I guess I didn’t expect an “older woman” to react that way.
While in the army I met Tony. He was from New York City and he seemed to know all the ropes when it came to seducing women, sometimes for lust, sometimes to boost his ego, but more than anything, for money. Tony fascinated me with stories of his sexual escapades, and before long I found myself hanging around the young dark-haired fellow with the piercing blue eyes. How he could end up with the most gorgeous girls, then later brag about the money and jewels they would insist he have, absolutely amazed me. He had so many girls in love with him at one time that he could have given some young movie star stud a run for his money. I liked women, too, and I loved to have sex, but Tony gave a whole different meaning to “enjoying a job well done.”
Tony and I were released from the army together on August 24, 1964, sixteen days after my twentieth birthday. During our time together in Germany, Tony had invited me to go to Brooklyn with him to check out the sights before my return to Ohio. I wasn’t in a hurry to get back there anyway, and I hadn’t a clue of what I was supposed to do with my life. “Why not,” I told him.
Tony became a very good friend, and a very good teacher. He introduced me to so many people in the fast lane that I thought my head would never stop spinning. Why, there were more women in New York than there were farmhouses in Ohio! I thought I had been a sex-craved fiend before I returned to the states, now I knew for sure that that’s what I was.
The sexual revolution was clearly on its way in New York. I realized that once I had gone out with the sister of one of Tony’s girlfriends. At first she came off as being a petite, seemingly shy little gal, but she ended up being a flying nymph. Shy? I don’t think so.
The next day Tony approached me with an odd look on his face. Apparently my date told her sister of my unusual appendage, who was then on the phone to tell Tony. I was really embarrassed when he asked me if it was true that I had three legs (Tony had seen me naked but never with a hard on). My embarrassment soon faded, however, when he began to tell me how much money I could make with my “extra leg.” That was all it took to whet my appetite, and before I could change my mind Tony was teaching me the fine art of being a male prostitute.
It wasn’t long before I was having more fun than I’d ever had in my life. Who would have thought that little (big) “Johnny Buck” from Ohio could have his cake and eat enough of it to survive in New York City? It was a definite improvement from the life I thought I’d be returning to, without question. For seven months, I had all the sex I could handle; my pockets were always filled with money, car keys, jewelry, and all the night life I could stand, but I was living a fantasy that seemed to be spinning out of control. Satisfying as it was, I knew I couldn’t go on like that much longer without burning out or getting in deep trouble. There was something else. Strange as it seems, I had been raised with strong morals, and a voice within me kept saying. “This is really crazy.”
I had heard about the warm, paradise-like climate on the California coast. All the babes in their little bikinis soaking up the sun would be more welcome than the brutal cold I had grown so tired of. I could get a job, go to school and learn all about Hollywood. I halfheartedly joked around with myself saying, “Who knows, I might even be in a movie someday.” I never really believed that would happen of course, but the warm, sunny climate and the beaches filled with shapely women were enticement enough for me to seek the journey.
It wasn’t much later that I bought a bus ticket and headed west, first stopping to see my family. I had hoped to avoid Harold but I knew that if I wanted to be with everyone else I’d run into his sorry ass, too. I even visited Mary Kay while I was there. She was going through some really hard times and needed money desperately. I gave her all the cash I had but twenty dollars, figuring she needed it more than I did. I was certain I could get more where that came from. Maybe I felt guilty about the way I made the money and believed that helping Mary Kay would right what was wrong. All I know is that helping her made me feel better. After my short stay in Ohio I didn’t have enough money for the bus ticket that would take me all the way to California. I went as far as I could on fifteen dollars then started hitch-hiking westward across the states. From then on it was odd jobs along the way, whatever it took to get across the miles.
3
I thought I’d never get to California. I wasn’t in any rush, but there were times when I thought I’d never get out of Missouri. With no money, it seemed I was stopping at every farmhouse along the way to ask for a day or two of work, a meal and a place to sleep in the barn. “I just got out of the military,” I’d tell the farmers, “and all my money’s been stolen. I am trying to get home to California.” A blatant lie, but I had to earn some cash. Half the time I got lucky. A few good people even gave me five or ten dollar handouts as I was on my way again.
The pace picked up once I crossed the Oklahoma state line. As I was hitchhiking along the highway, a man in a new Mustang stopped to give me a ride. His name was Terry and he had recently left his wife in Virginia to head for Hollywood to try for a career in acting. When I heard where he was going I knew my days of roughing it was over. Unfortunately, Terry was also short of cash. By the time we reached Texas, both of us were stone-cold broke. This time I took the easy way out. A collect call to my mother netted us twenty bucks, enough to get us to California. We looked like a million dollars traveling in Terry’s new car, but we were counting our pennies the rest of the way.
I was hoping that Terry and I could share a room or small apartment once we arrived in Hollywood. He was an easy going, pleasant guy in his mid-twenties, and we got along great together, with no problems. But Terry had other plans. “I’ll be staying with friends in the San Fernando Valley,” he told me. “You’re welcome to come along. It’s a big house. They have plenty of room.” I thought I was doing the right thing by turning down his offer. Once Terry had driven away, however, I found myself stranded in a strange city with no place to go, and without any money.
Hollywood in March, 1965, was even more bustling than it is today. The streets were crowded not only with tourists eager to see all the sights, but with people who worked at the networks—CBS and ABC—as well as the local radio and television stations and nearby motion picture and recording studios. Then there were the movie and legitimate theaters with their glittering marquees, the restaurants and night spots, and the shiny stars of the Walk of Fame. Wandering about was fun for a time, but I felt totally lost.
I had one phone number in my pocket. It belonged to a family in Garden Grove, former neighbors from back home in Ohio. Where Garden Grove was exactly, I had no idea, but it sounded nice and it was in Southern California. As it turned out, Garden Grove wasn’t too far away, southeast of Los Angeles near Anaheim, the home of Disneyland. With an invitation to stay with our ex-neighbors, I found myself on the road again, hitchhiking to Garden Grove.
The family couldn’t have been nicer to “Johnny.” For next to nothing, I was put up in a small but private room with connecting bath, given kitchen privileges and a key to come and go as I pleased. Within a few days I landed a job as an ambulance driver, which had me cramming the Thomas Guide every night to learn where the hell I was going at full speed with siren wailing and lights flashing. I knew from the start I wouldn’t last long. If there’s one thing that really gets to me it’s seeing someone or something suffer—people, animals, anything. In the weeks that I stayed with the ambulance company I saw more gore than I thought I’d ever see again: freeway accidents, hit-and-runs on city streets, twisted, beat-up bodies in their homes -kids, grown-ups, elderly people. To get up every morning and know that I would have to face that at least once during the day was more than I could handle, so I quit and began a series of odd jobs that took me from a candy factory to selling furniture, then shoe
s, the Fuller brushes door-to-door. None of these jobs lasted long either, nor did they interest me. More than anything I wanted to study cinematography at UCLA.
By June I was back in Hollywood, this time sleeping next to a trash can behind the Cave Theatre at night and washing dishes at a hot dog stand on Hollywood Boulevard by day. I could have rented a cheap flophouse room somewhere, I suppose, but I was trying to save, not spend. I can be a real hoarder with money, especially when I have a goal in mind.
It was over the counter at the hot dog stand that I met Linda. A regular lunchtime customer, she worked within walking distance at a law office as a secretary. Within a week, Linda had a new roommate.
Living with Linda in her apartment was the best thing that could have happened to me. It certainly had its advantages, sleeping with her for one. We had such good times in bed she rarely mentioned the rent money we had agreed to split. Even when she did mention money, it was with a wink.
On weekends Linda went her own way and I went mine, no questions asked. I welcomed the time to make extra money washing cars, which meant my hands were in water seven days a week. I think I washed almost everything in Hollywood at that point, but I wasn’t complaining, as I finally had enough cash to enroll in the summer session at UCLA. To earn extra spending money, I applied for an on campus job as a nude model for Life Drawing classes. I did it as a lark, really. With my stringbean build, I knew I wasn’t the model type. Still, I felt I had something of interest to offer the would-be Picassos.
Linda was full of surprises too. One evening she arrived home from her office to tell me she’d had a fight with her boss and quit. I certainly wasn’t making enough money to support the two of us until she found another position. But Linda had more to tell me, news that she’d been keeping to herself. Part of her job with the law firm had been to “entertain” the wealthy clientele. Suddenly everything began to add up. No wonder her weekends were always booked. No wonder she wasn’t concerned about the rent money. She was raking it in on the side.
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