(WAS TO LOVE YOU)
(TIMOTHY)
(From the song “My Mistake (Was To Love You),” from the album Diana & Marvin, 1974, composed by P. Sawyer/G. Jones)
n
1976, Timothy Barber set his sights on me. He lived across the street, watching
my comings and goings, but I had never noticed him. He simply wasn’t my type. I
would never have given him a second look if I had run into him on the street.
There I was, loveless and jobless. In my basement apartment in the urban
jungle of Baltimore, I sat brooding.
The last thing I wanted to do was move back to Portsmouth with my mom,
who would have gladly welcomed me.
My father was not an option. I had to pay rent and needed a solution to
my financial dilemma. That answer came in the form of a letter slipped under my
door one day. It read:
Dear Dale,
I find you very attractive and would love to get to know you
better. I see you around the
neighborhood and I finally got the nerve to tell you how I feel. Tomorrow I
think I will go one step further and knock on your door. I hope you will open
it.
Your Secret Admirer
I had already decided to open the door as I put the
letter on the counter. It did not
matter what he looked like. I
needed a sugar daddy, because I did not want to have to go home in failure to
my real dad.
I got a knock on the door around ten o’clock the next
evening. Timothy sauntered into my place, surveying my collection of Supremes
posters. Sugar daddy he was
NOT. “Sugar Baby” was more like
it. He was short and dark, with a broad forehead and a wide nose. He had long eyelashes and a protruding
stomach, and reminded me of a bald, pregnant woman. Think Truman Capote, but black. His voice was nasal, high pitched, and irritating. He wasn’t at all physically attractive
to me.
“Hi, my name is Tim,” he said as he extended his
hand. “But you can call me
by my middle name, Andre. I
wondered what this basement apartment looked like on the inside. I live across the street with my mom.”
He pointed to a row house less than two hundred feet
away. “Jesus,” I thought. “He
lives with his mom. What can he do
for me?”
Timothy then launched into a pitch that would have
made any car salesman proud, thrilling me with tales of his recklessness. He told me he was nineteen, (a year
older than I was), and was already causing a stir in his family. His mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, and
Tim had joined the church and had been helping her knock on doors and leave
pamphlets about salvation. I
laughed at this, thinking about all the times growing up in Portsmouth when we
never opened the door for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Our mother would make us stop
playing and be really quiet, or would turn the television down until they gave
up and went away. Tim told me that
he would return to the homes later, after his mother had spread the word of
Jehovah, and have sex with whatever man had secretly given him the eye. The
scandal had gotten him expelled from the congregation, and his mother wanted
him to leave her home.
That delicious bit of information was enough to make
me curious, at the least. He sat
down and we told each other our life stories. He revealed that he could sew, which fascinated me, since I
had always wanted to be involved in fashion design. I pulled out my portfolio
of watercolor and charcoal sketches that I had saved since junior high school.
I had treasured those drawings, hoping to one day create some of my fantasy
designs. Tim looked them over.
“These are really good,” he said with a smile. “I
don’t draw at all. I take sewing patterns and change them around. You’re a real
artist, you draw originals right out of your head. We could make a great team,
I already see you modeling our designs. If you can draw it, I can sew it.”
He told me he used his middle name, Andre, as his
designer name, and said that he was looking for a fresh start. By the time the sun came up the
following morning, he had brought over his sewing machine and had made plans to
move in by the end of the week. I had no idea that I was being manipulated by a
master.
I nicknamed Timothy “Miss Get-Over” because he knew how to get through almost every
legal system. He got me through
the process of unemployment, and showed me how to get food stamps and a welfare
check.
Timothy nicknamed me “Miss D.” Every gay man was a “Miss” in those
days. I think it had to do with
Bette Midler’s 1972 album, The Divine
Miss M. I was young and scared
of being out in the world, so I needed Tim.
Although
he didn’t consider himself an artist, (or at least that’s what he told me), I
thought Tim was a talented designer. I had always wanted to model, and he
always had me looking good when I stepped into the clubs. He managed to gather
a few of the club kids together as models, and we would do fashion shows in the
local discos and local social organizations. It did not pay a lot of money. We
mostly got free drinks and many of the models paid for the fabric in exchange
for getting to keep the outfits. Everyone just wanted to be seen looking fabulous
in the disco. My good friends Gregory and Raymond did not care that much for
Timothy, but they too loved wearing new fashions in the nightclubs. We all put
up with Timothy for our own selfish reasons.
I
knew I didn’t love Timothy, but I did love the excitement he brought into my
life. But with the excitement came
the drama. One night we were in
Washington, D.C., at a nightclub called The Washington Square. While Timothy was in the bathroom, a
really sexy guy asked me to join him on the dance floor. I was extremely
attracted and enjoyed flirting with him. As we danced, I could feel the energy
getting hotter. Suddenly, without
warning, my admirer turned and ran from the dance floor. When I turned around, Tim
was standing there with a crazed look on his face.
“Miss
D,” he whined, in that nasal tone, “What the fuck you doing dancing with some
guy when we came to this club together?”
Flustered
and embarrassed that he caught me enjoying myself, I answered, “He asked me to
dance -- I didn’t see any harm in it.”
“Well,
you have a lover and that’s me and I ain’t playing that kind of shit up in
here. Do you hear me?”
He turned to leave and I followed. I figured I had to,
since I did not even know how to drive.
An invisible chained pulled tightly around my neck and I could feel the
stares as we left the club. Do I
really need to say that I was his Mahogany
and he was my Tony Perkins? Or do
you already get that? Oh, the
sweet taste of freedom from my father was turning pretty bitter by then.
In front of my friends
You broke me down….
My mistake was to love you, boy
I grew to despise Timothy. On top of his
possessiveness, he continued to have sex with other men. I discovered a
discharge in my underwear one morning and confronted him.
“Look
what you have given me -- a fucking venereal disease!” I screamed, as I threw the underwear in
his face.
“That
motherfucker,” Tim whispered to himself.
He was slightly irritated, but not with me. “Oh, Miss D -- I did it for
us. I let this dude fuck me in order to keep that temp job in the real estate
office. Chile, all we gotta do is go up to the free clinic on North Avenue and
get a couple of shots. You will be fine. I should be a bitch and not tell him,
see if his wife figures it out.”
“I am sick of this shit,” I blurted out. “We need to end this mess of a
relationship.”
That’s
when he outright threatened me.
“You ain’t going nowhere, Miss D.”
I hated the name he’d created for me, after years of
wanting a nickname. “Vincent” was
the nickname I’d created for myself as a child; my best friend had called me
“Big D” and now this queen was calling me “Miss D.” I’d had enough. I just wanted to be Dale.
“Oh,
yes I am!” I yelled. “I’m outta
here!”
Before
I could finish my last syllable, Tim pulled a kitchen knife on me. We struggled
and I scratched him so deep that my fingernail broke off in his chest. I was
scared of what I had done, afraid that I really could have killed him at that
moment. Never before had my anger
caused me to injure someone. I was such a sissy in school that I had never
stood up to the bullies. But Tim
had pushed me to my limits.
Tim used my fear to control me. I stayed with him to
attend to his injury and to ease my guilt. A keloid scar grew over the place
where I’d stabbed him with my nail. He loved to show people the scar and brag
about how he carried a bit of “Miss D” in him all the time. Nevertheless, I kept waiting for my
chance to leave.
My mother and sister came to visit Tim and me once,
and they were so impressed with our home. My mother was very accepting of our
relationship because she only saw it on the surface. She was also indebted to Tim because he had sent her some
needed money when my then seventeen-year-old sister had faced a pregnancy
scare.
In less than a year, Tim and I moved out of my
basement apartment near the Pimlico racetracks and into a beautiful one-bedroom
apartment that had a balcony overlooking a hillside in Northwest
Baltimore. Yet neither one of us
had a real job! We had credit
cards in every major department store, but they were all in my name because his
credit was shot. We bought new
furniture on credit, hosted parties, and lived like the rich.
What
I started to realize was that Tim had noticed a young, naïve boy recently out
of the closet, (me), and thought he could make me into anything he wanted. Tim lived to control everyone’s life.
He was all into his sister’s relationships and he wanted to control who my
friends were and what I did. He
was extremely jealous of my buddies Gregory and Raymond, and watched me like a
hawk when they were near. He
integrated himself into my relationships with them to exert more control. I
became very rebellious and, on the rare occasions when I could get away, Greg,
Raymond, and I ventured to Druid Hill Park and went looking for trouble down
the “yellow brick road”; this bricked strip of roadway was behind the snake
house where cars would drive through slowly and men would pick up men to have
sex in the park bathrooms.
To keep me happy, Tim arranged for me to meet some
directors who were with the Arena Players. This theater group, once called The Negro Little Theatre,
was formed in 1953 to provide acting opportunities for African-Americans where
there were none. Today it is known
as America’s oldest, continuously operating African-American regional theater
group. Upon my introduction to the
group’s directors, in 1977 I landed the lead in a one-act play called Shoes. It was the first play I did outside of high school. Two other one-act plays ran on the bill
with Shoes, and during that run I met
two actors who would become significant to my life. The first was Kay Lawal -- she would pop up again ten years
later to help me form the troupe Actors Against Drugs. The second was Vernon
Blackstone -- he would become the first man to truly satisfy me sexually and
give me the courage to leave Tim.
Vernon was playing the role of a boxer in the second
play on the bill. He was muscular with the most beautiful, dark, smooth skin.
He was also several years older than I was. One night, he asked me to rub baby oil on his body so it
would shine. He reminded me of melting chocolate ice cream. Soon I was in
his dressing room, giving him oral pleasure. We later retreated to his
apartment and had mind-blowing sex. I called my friends Raymond and Gregory.
“You guys have got
to meet this man I met at the theater. He did things to my body that still have
me cumming!”
You would think I’d have wanted to keep Vernon all to
myself. That was not the case, given my “free style” sexual attitude of the
70’s. I encouraged Raymond and Gregory to have sex with Vernon because I wanted
them to experience the same great sex I’d had, just as I would want them to
sample the same great meal I’d enjoyed at a good restaurant. Vernon
was so easy going to be with because he did not pressure or try to control
me. Our meeting arrangement was convenient because we were
working in the same theater. Once the play ended, I dared to meet other
men for pleasure.
When the unemployment checks ran out, Tim got a
permanent job as a secretary in a rental office and I found a summer job as a
teaching assistant at Langston Hughes Elementary School, down the street from
where we lived. Then Tim found out
about a guy I was meeting in the park.
We got into another knock down, drag out fight. As I tried to
walk out the door of the apartment, Tim held on to my legs to prevent me from
leaving. I'm sure the spectacle of a grown man attached to my leg as
I tried to pry him loose looked like a scene from a bad Joan Crawford
movie. I was a prisoner in my own home and Tim was the warden. I don’t
know why I let that little beady eyed, ugly man control my life. Greg and
Raymond called us "beauty and the beast" behind Tim’s back.
Where did Tim’s “beast” strength come from? Where was mine?
Later that night, after we had make-up sex, I looked
at his disgusting body and became more disgusted with myself for even being
there. I stood up wondering, "Why am I living this
way?" Leaving with just the clothes on my back would be the first
step in taking back my life. His body stirred. Before his eyes could
fully open, I walked out of the apartment barefoot and into the cold,
and ran about half a mile to my father’s place. I asked him if I
could spend the night. For
once, he didn’t ask any questions. Tim telephoned, but I refused to answer his
calls.
The next day, I called Greg and Raymond and they
helped me gather a few of my possessions. Then I called Vernon to tell him I
was finally free of Tim. He made a call and within days I moved into my
own apartment in Vernon’s building.
My new place would take me out of the “urban jungle” of Northwest
Baltimore and into beautiful historic downtown Baltimore in the heart of the
gay community. I lived within walking distance of all the gay clubs and was
close to the theaters and art museums. The place was not much. That first week, I had to put my
lunchmeat on the windowsill to keep it cold, until I got a refrigerator. However, I had a bed, my clothes,
a stereo, a television set, and my Diana Ross and the Supremes albums.
I made many missteps during my first “real world”
relationship, and I cannot blame Tim for the choices I made. I had
used him for room and board and was eventually forced to pay up because
nothing is free. It’s like selling your soul to the devil -- the price is high
to pay to get out of the contract. Yes, I had "sold my heart to the
junkman," but now I was free.
Or so I thought.
Many a smile
You put on my face
But I paid dearly
With the tears I taste….
You put on my face
But I paid dearly
With the tears I taste….
My mistake…
“When you go into a relationship to use someone, the real person
who ends up getting used is you.”
