PAGE 28

620 CLUB

there's plenty at six-twenty

620 Frankfort Ave. Cleveland

FEST

HALLOWEEN

SUNDAY OCTOBER 3.1

STAG

OR DRAG

prizes for all drags

FREE ADMISSION

FREE PARKING Attendant at All Times

Downtown between W. 6th and W. 9th Just steps West of Public Square and the Mall

Phone 241-9719

Sahara Club

3402 Dorr St., Toledo

BETWEEN SECOR AND BURN

DISCO

OPEN 7 Days A Week

7:30-2:30

SHOWS

SIX NIGHTS A WEEK Tuesday-Sunday

HIGH GEAR

OCTOBER 1976

A YEAR WITH MR. WONDERFUL

By Marc Lewis

One year ago today, I sat at the upstairs bar at the Bayou Landing here in Cleveland, sipping a Beefeater and tonic and watching the fabulous Tiffanys perform. When the show ended, I made up my mind to leave when that drink was finished, since I was alone -the only person I knew had just left and since work would beckon in a few short hours.

I had noticed, as I finished my drink. a tall (taller than I anyway), dark haired guy in a sharp denim leisure suit standing nearby. His piercing yet warm eyes and his sculptured-mustache and beard intrigued me. I turned my back to him to catch my breath and held a quick debate with myself about the decision to leave "so early!"

When I turned to see if my eyes weren't in fact playing "tricks" on me, I found him gone. "Shit! The story of my life!" I swiveled around toward the bar again to discover him. across the way. Another moment to catch my breath and get the attention of the bartender for another drink. (Guess which. side won the debate?)

I looked back to where he had been gone again! In panic, I swiveled on the bar stool and brushed my knee.. against a smooth yet firm thigh!

"I know this may sound silly," he began, "but don't I know you from somewhere?"

Well, I'm not naive; maybe anxious, but not dumb. So I frankly didn't give a damn if it were a line or not.

"No, I don't think so," I replied, "and it doesn't sound silly at all."

That was one year ago today! And three hundred and sixty-five days later that handsome young man is still with me, being the lover I had always dreamed of: my Mr. Wonderful.

In the last issue of High Gear, I read the article "A Quarter Century of Love," the story about the twenty-fifth anniversary of gay love. I'm still.

not that far from the single life to know how it feels to read an article of that kind in an empty apartment somewhere. Stories like that and others of long-term gay relationships had always sounded like Our world's mythology --the gay's "once upon a time, otherwise known as "fairy tales'!"

This concept of the lasting gay relationship being something fanciful and unreal, is probably the reason I always made reference to my waiting for "Mr. Wonderful". Night after night at the bars, I would justify my presence with a firm "How else am I going to meet M.W.?" And then Liza's voice would be heard singing the melancholy "Maybe next time.." and I'd make a lonely exit, accompanied only by the all too frequent and not so consoling tears of

someone with no one to love. So those who might consider that gay relationship a myth or for those who feel such a relationship is simply and practically impossible, let me say to the one "Where there's life, there's hope look at me!" And to the other "Prove to me it can't work." See what an expert I've become in one year!

My M.W. and I are really two distinctly different personalities. I won't hide that fact -and he knows it-that I was apprehensive at first. I saw both the differences in the nature of our careers and in our previous life experiences more as liabilities than assets. Scientific technology and the arts have never had an easy time of it. Nor has east side, west side -and I mean far east side, far west side! And these are only the obvious differences. When one person has gone through a straight marriage with children and all and the other has spent twice that time totally alone, the adjustment for both is difficult to say the least.

What I guess I'm saying is that for all intents and purposes, I had become involved with a man I never thought would fit my mind's picture of Mr. Wonderful. Handsome? You bet! Generous? To a fault! Loving? Like NO ONE on earth! But all the other areas I thought important: career, previous life style, leisure activities, interests, political orientation all these disappeared or balanced out. Sex conquers all? That would be a terribly simplistic answer to a complex relationship. And

intimate personal/sexual felationships are complex if they are anything. I gave little serious thought to our relationship at first simply because it seemed

unlikely. Yet I failed to account for the one critical element in any such relationship. The one element that gets batted around a lot and yet is so little understood. The one element in a relationship that I had claimed was the only thing I wanted in life. Yet when it presented itself, I called it a figment of the imagination.

Luckily for me, Mr. Wonderful knew the power of love and kept it flowing so constantly and so powerfully that finally all the other trappings of a relationship faded away and that love stood out bold and strong and firm, anxiously awaiting the one loved to respond to it and satisfy it with love returned. I did. I accepted it wholly and completely, satisfying it and in turn allowing it to nourish the power of love in me.

Now a year later, we are enjoying our new home and the hope of a life together that is as rich and rewarding as our first year. "Yes, Mary, there is a Mr. Wonderful. He's out there looking for you. And believe me you won't find him in the closet! The gay bar and other gay haunts are not always fun places especially when you leave alone or leave with someone who you'll never see again. But it's probably the best place to meet a Mr. Wonderful -Just keep your cotton pickin' hands off mine!" √d