126 Trade Winds Road
Bruce Genaro
It is Indian Summer on Cape Cod, that fifth season of the year that arrives without notice and then departs just as quickly. I am driving leisurely on route 6A through Truro, a town at the northern-most tip of this tiny peninsula. All the windows on the red Ford Mustang that I rented earlier this morning are down. The air is warm and yet cool, stagnant outside, but the wind whipping around inside the cabin tousles my hair, ruffles my shirt. The sun beating down, dances on the hood of the car, practically blinding me, mocking my sunglasses. The sand dunes on my right are piled higher than I remember and sprouting tufts of tall green sea grass. The gentle strains from some classical station leave the tiny speakers on the dashboard and drift out towards the ocean. At a certain point on this road (which I am fast approaching) you can turn left and head for the center of Provincetown, a quaint and cosy artist colony at the end of the world. Commercial Street dominates this city, aptly named for the hundreds of little antique stores, dress shops, tee-shirt emporiums and artists booths that dot the street on both sides. Instead, I keep the car pointed on its steady course towards the horizon and the National Seashore, a beige strip of sand that harbors so many fond memories for me. I am just two miles from the Herring Cove Beach parking lot when my eyes fill with tears. And as no thought precedes them, they seem to appear for no reason. But I know why they come and let the cool droplets tumble over my lashes and spill down my cheeks. The salty water feels cool as it evaporates, and changes energy, becoming some other part of the universe. Oddly, it makes me feel more alive.
The house sits up on a bluff at the end of town over-looking the Atlantic Ocean and the horizon. The bright orange roof surprises and pleases me as I approach it. Surprises because it is so unlike most of the other traditional “Cape Cod” homes in this enclave. Pleases because it reminds me of Todd, the friend who designed and built it eleven years ago. What strikes me most about the design of this house are the columns that support the roof and create a portico at the front. Huge Doric columns that bulge slightly at the center, magnificent in their simplicity, and painted white. Not just white, but a white so bright you are drawn into them. A white that has the intensity and vibrancy of colors usually only found in a rainbow or a Warhol painting. A white that seems to glow against the landscape and the sand and the gray slate of the building itself, intensified by a blazing October sun.
I turn right onto Trade Winds Road past that house with the ocean view and drive to the end of the cul-de-sac, stopping the car in front of another house. This one is a very large and modern looking building, all glass and angles, and I wonder how this design ever got past the planning commission. I shift the transmission into park, my right hand resting on the stick shift. I sit there for I don’t know how long, breathing deeply, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel to Ravels’ Bolero which is now flowing over the fm airwaves. This was a detour I hadn’t expected to make. A side trip I foolishly thought I could avoid. I want to get out of the car, walk up the front steps and ring the bell, but I am unable to move. Transfixed, I am here, yet I am somewhere-else. Several more minutes go by before I shift the car back into gear and pull into the driveway of 126 Trade Winds Road. As I get out of the car I flash back to all the floor plans and elevations that Todd showed me with such pride during the construction phase of this vacation home by the sea. Always asking my approval of marble samples, paint chips and wood stains, surely knowing that I idolized his talent and would never find fault with any of his choices. He inherently made the right decisions while I was only capable of verbalizing and agreeing with what he instinctively knew. His creativity sanctioned by my intellectualization.
It was twelve years ago last month that we met, several summers after Anita Bryant became a Nazi and The Post Office Restaurant poured all of their orange juice onto Commercial Street in protest. Several years before we would again be in the streets, protesting, this time for our lives. I remember sitting around the pool at The Great Western, an anonymous little motel on the outskirts of town. It was a week of hot weather and blue water. A Walkman with the only two tapes I had brought playing over and over. Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade and the voice of Grace Jones singing Autumn Leaves embedded in my head forever. The rental car, an extravagance I could ill afford during that period of my life, sat inactive in the parking lot for most of the week. I sat there by myself till the loneliness became unbearable, forcing me to don my tee shirt and 501’s and head off in search of validation. All of those summers seem to blend together as if they were one continuous holiday. Too much sun and too many boys. Nameless boys. A moment’s diversion. A detour from pain. For a few hours I was no longer invisible.
Standing at the Boatslip, a Miller Light in my right hand while the left is actively involved in peeling off the label. My right foot taps uncontrollably to the disco beat emanating from the dance floor, while the rest of me tries to appear aloof. To my right The Atlantic Ocean and to my left The Sea of Boys. Familiar faces parade by in tee shirts and tank tops followed by more nameless faces appearing on the deck for the first time and never to be seen again. Where did they come from? New York, San Francisco, Barcelona? Where will they go? Ten years later I will not recognize one familiar face. Where have they gone? Moved away? Coming next week-end? Dead? Dying? How many acquaintances will I never see again? How many friendships have I lost or never made? How many talented, interesting people have I had the opportunity to know and didn’t? Too timid was I to approach anyone. Too invested in putting up the front that I needed nothing and no-one. Standing there by myself, hoping, praying to be acknowledged, and when I was I would greet them with a slight smile and an air of indifference that tried to mask the loneliness that seemed to dominate my world.
“Hi” said Todd so effortlessly. “Hello” I said, looking in his eyes for a fraction of a second before returning my gaze to the amber bottle with its label in shreds. The silence that followed was deafening. I have always had a problem with silence, usually preferring to ramble on endlessly just to fill in the void. Todd was tall and lean and carried himself with confidence. He had blond hair and brown eyes, a combination I had only recently developed a weakness for. He shook my hand strong and hard and smiled brightly as we made introductions. It was a reprieve from the awkwardness of first introductions when I found out that Todd was an architect and a partner in a small local firm. I had just recently moved to Boston to attend the Boston Architectural Center, a four year program (usually completed in six) that leads to a Bachelors degree in Architecture. At least we had some common ground to stand on as we danced the getting-to-know-you waltz.
After about an hour of socializing and, well, yes, flirting, Todd and I decided to slip away from the throng of people and pounding music and grab a beer at a cafe around the corner. Todd discussed with me in detail problems he was having with a construction firm that was building a mini-mall in Andover. I bragged about how well my first studio project had been received. I was comfortable with him. Odd for me because I was never one to be comfortable with anyone or anything, including myself. Low self-esteem was a legacy from my parents and a somewhat common side-effect of being gay. I’d like to say that we didn’t sleep together that first night. I’d like to, but I can’t. I was putty in the hands of anyone who paid any attention to me back then. Besides, he was awfully damn cute. Any romantic notions I may have begun nurturing were dashed with the revelation that Todd had a partner, Jay. They had been together for five years. Jay was an intern at Boston General and was on call all that weekend, allowing Todd an infrequent bout of Bachelorhood. From that night on we were close friends, as close as I would allow, but now that I knew about Jay it was strictly platonic. He and Jay had a large circle of friends and eventually adopted me into their extended family although I resisted at every turn, fearful of any intimacy. Sex I could handle, relationships, friendships I couldn’t. For some reason they never gave up on me and I was thankful yet cautious of every invitation.
Having Todd as a friend allowed me to tolerate my job as a grunt, an apprenticing position with Jones&Brazzen that The BAC had secured for me. It was a large firm for an architectural office and lacked many of the things I was hoping to find while apprenticing, like mentorship, creativity and ethics. Jones&Brazzen was quite successful in their field, but not well liked in the community. They had a reputation for designing cookie-cutter buildings. I personally and openly referred to them as the J.C.Pennys of Architecture. Every office complex they designed (and I use the term loosely) seemed to be the same repeating pattern; a pre-cast concrete band followed by a band of gray reflective glass, followed by a precast concrete band for as many stories as the building had. It was with a combination of disappointment and satisfaction that I would read the Boston Globes’ scathing reviews of their latest building. The partners and principals of the firm were about as cliche as you could get. Many of them Boston Brahmins or Brahmin wannabes and way too many bow ties and round le Corbusier glasses for my taste. I spent my days as an outsider, drawing floor plans, running errands and keeping to myself as much as possible. My feelings for the designers always wavered somewhere between envy and contempt, and I survived by making the occasional phone call to Todd’s office for a sanity check and a little stroking.
I had dreams of one day joining Todd’s’ firm, but that was not to happen. I was not meant to be an architect, suffering hours and hours of solitary confinement with a pencil and a T-square, drawing (again, I use the term loosely) bathroom elevations and floor-plans at quarter inch scale. I remember sitting in class one of the first days of my first year, the lecturer asking us to look around the room at the other students. The auditorium contained about a hundred and fifty other people ranging in age from 20 years old to 50. He said, rather definitively, that only about ten of us would ever complete the curriculum that would lead to a degree. That was just the statistics. I don’t know why he told us that, but I remember swearing to myself that I would be one of the ones that made it. Two and a half years later I had dropped out, still working for Jones and Brazzen, but wondering what I was going to do with my life.
It was Todd who talked me out of being an architect and into being a writer. Although it pained me to admit it, I never did quite have the talent required to design buildings. I could appreciate them more completely than most people, certainly more than most outside of the industry, but I could never quite turn my appreciation into inspiration. It had become apparent to me that my essays always received better grades than my design projects. Not a good sign. While my appreciation for the use of space and materials only increased during that time, my execution and implementation of them failed miserably.
So, if I wasn’t going to be an architect there was no reason to hang around the east coast any longer, enduring those Arctic winters and shirt drenching summers. California or New York was where you went to be a writer, so I opted for warmer weather and moved to Mill Valley to be among my new peers. Over the next ten years I made annual visits to Connecticut to visit my family, always making it a point to fly into Boston first, rationalizing it with the fact there were no direct flights to Hartford. In the three years that I lived in Boston, Todd’s friendship and encouragement saw me through some very difficult times, exams, failed relationships and a minor drug habit to name a few. Todd was more a family member to me than my real family. Only now do I understand that the reason I saw my family so often over the past decade was to have an excuse to visit him no matter how brief my stay. I had made a good life for myself in California, but a good, true friendship like ours had failed to materialize for me again on this other more transient coast.
Unfortunately three thousand miles and ten years puts a great strain on a relationship, especially a friendship lacking those romantic ties that bind. As the years drifted past, our phone calls became ever more sporadic and letters dribbled down to a yearly vacation post-card. I blame myself for that, too fearful of rejection, even from a good friend, to pick up the phone just to chat. Fearful that the saying “out of sight, out of mind” was created with me in mind. In my case it was more like “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” He was always in my thoughts, always with me. I had imaginary conversations with him standing beside me on vacations as I marveled at the frescoes in Florence, lit candles in cathedrals in Rome or sat on the banks of the Seine taking pictures of Notre Dame. He was that rare thing, a true friend. And I put up as much resistance to him as I could. And when resistance didn’t work, I put up distance.
It was this past December, less than a year ago that I received the Christmas card from his partner Jay. The card that said matter-of-factly that Todd had passed away in October. I wrote back immediately with my regrets leaving out the part about my anger of not being told that he had even been sick. Of having been shut out of what was obviously a difficult time for him. Of not having had the opportunity to say good-bye. But I had no right to be angry, least of all with Jay. Maybe with myself. I have not been crying because Aids has finally touched my life. I have not been crying because Todd is gone. I cry because I never really let him know how much he meant to me. I cry for the life I have lost to fear. The fear that makes me push people away. The fear that if people “really” got to know me they wouldn’t like me. And now, here I stand on the steps of Jay’s home, the home that Todd designed and built, ringing a doorbell that my friend will never answer.
