Parting Glances Pages from a book (Pt. 9)

I was 19 the summer I graduated from high school. I flunked courses, staying an extra two-class semester. Free from studies, living at home, taking time off before job hunting, I was keen to explore Detroit's gay scene.
I heard from friends about the infamous Hub Grill, located on Farmer at Bates, inconveniently within a short trek of the 1st Police Precinct Headquarters and Old City Hall.
The Hub Grill was a greasy spoon (knife and fork) with large windows, angled on the corner. To enter was to be self-identified as queer. To stool sit in everybody's sight was thumb-your-nose brazen. Next door was a flea bag hotel, where for ten bucks you could have a sqeaky-bed quickie.
"Let's go to the Hub for a bowl of chili and a trick," was our weekend quip.
Two sisters, Fran and Flo, and a scruffy cook, Uncle Jimmy, held bicarbonate-of-soda court. Fran rarely smiled, and smoked nonstop. Flo, her hair worn in 1940s Rosie the Riveter upsweep, was all winks and confidential tease: "Miss Thing, don't you look all Hollywood. You gonna snag husband number five tonight, or is it six?"
I hadn't sat down more than five minutes (far from outside viewing), when a talkative number at my elbow – she called herself Marshmallow – asked, "Are you a make-out King or a Queen?" Not knowing what she meant [top or bottom], and wanting to be newcomer polite, I answered, "Is there such a thing as a make-out Prince?" "How about Princess?" she clucked.
A jukebox took up one corner, and for a quarter played six songs. Whenever someone chose my favorite Doris Day song, "Secret Love," from the movie Calamity Jane, I felt myself go romantic: soft in the head and heart for an yet-unidentified shining knight in tight-fitting armor, codpiece optional.
After several weekend chili-with-cherry-coke trysts I got to know the regulars by face, if not by nickname. (Nicknames were protection against "known homosexual" exposure or, as sometimes labeled in Confidential magazine, "avowed homosexual".) Many regulars gave themselves the honorific title of Miss. A few merited it.
I mooned over Rich, a blond stud, who wore high-collar, pastel Mr. B shirts (B for singer Billy Eckstein), peg pants, and combed his hair in a pomaded ducktail. I thought Rich was "tourist," straight. He was usually with a stylish brunette, Sharon, and often, a hefty, thirties-something sister of Sharon's, who called herself Big Mamoo.
It was the custom summer nights to stroll onto the streets to watch who paraded in and out of the bars: The 1011 (formerly the Rio Grande), the Silver Dollar, and LaRosa's. (I had heard about LaRosa's when I was 13. "It's a queer bar. Fairies go there," confided a buddy one Halloween night when we spotted some men in drag getting into a Checker Cab.)
At 19 I weighed 175 lbs., buff in my penny loafers, was 6' 2", and had a 30-inch, bona fide Levi's waist. I was told I looked like actor Carleton Carpenter (later mystery writer), who starred opposite Debbie Reynolds in a no-brainer B movie, singing "Abba Dabba Honeymoon." (Carpenter was in town one year. I called his hotel. He was cordial, but expressed no interest in meeting a self-styled, quite willing, but aging Abba-Dabba understudy.)
Standing on the corner during those carefree, adventuresome nights, we underage teenagers flirted and flaunted, hoping to meet someone special — i.e., someone reasonably butch — when the bars closed. Unfortunately, I had to be home by eleven sharp.
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