I'm starting a new series of autobiographical stories with a Gemstone connection, mostly South Carolina or megachurch-related. First up: Cousin George:
My Cousin George, son of my father's older brother, was just my age, tall and blond, with a hard chest, a thin belly, and a Southern drawl. He lived in Walterboro, South Carolina, about 50 miles from Charleston but a thousand miles from Rock Island, so we visited only a few times during my chiildhood. Usually my Grandma Davis took me down on the train.
What I remember most about my visits: the sizzling heat, the humidity, and the beefcake. No one in South Carolina owned a shirt. I had never seen so many muscular bodies.
And the racial diversity: Cousin George had friends who were Native American and Chinese, and even black (I never saw anyone black in heavily-segregated Rock Island).
We went fishing and crabbing, and Cousin George warned me to avoid the "dead man's fingers" inside the crab shells that would turn you into "a goon."
We went swimming in the warm salty Atlantic Ocean.
At night Cousin George and I took our baths together together in scalding-hot water, and then slept naked together under thin sheets -- "only fools wear pajamas," he insisted.
When I was 13, Grandma Davis got sick, and the train-visits stopped. We didn't stay in contact. Occasionally my father would tell me something about his three older sisters, but he never mentioned Cousin George. Apparently my uncle never mentioned him. Was he dead, or disinherited, or a disappointment?
We went swimming in the warm salty Atlantic Ocean.
At night Cousin George and I took our baths together together in scalding-hot water, and then slept naked together under thin sheets -- "only fools wear pajamas," he insisted.
When I was 13, Grandma Davis got sick, and the train-visits stopped. We didn't stay in contact. Occasionally my father would tell me something about his three older sisters, but he never mentioned Cousin George. Apparently my uncle never mentioned him. Was he dead, or disinherited, or a disappointment?
Years later, when I was a visiting assistant professor in Florida, I got a job interview at a college in South Carolina, and afterwards I thought I'd look up my relatives. I visited my uncle and aunt, and Cousin Suzie, and then I asked about Cousin George.
They all exchanged glances. "Oh...um...we don't talk to him much," Cousin Suzie said. "He lives in Charleston." She said it with palpable disgust, like it was a cesspool of immorality.
"That's only an hour away," I pointed out. "And it's on my way home."
"Oh...um...he's busy with his own affairs, is all."
What would cause such obvious discomfort? I wondered. Only three things:
1. My South Carolina relatives were all strict Nazarenes. Maybe George was a backslider.
2. They were somewhat racist. Maybe George was in an interracial relationship.
3. Maybe he was gay.
Turns out: all three!
Cousin George came home from work about an hour later, a massive blond bodybuilder-type (this isn't him, either).
We went out to dinner at the Boar's Head, a gay-friendly restaurant, and talked about bodybuilding and our jobs and romances, and the difficulty of dealing with fundamentalist relatives.
"You should have known about me back when we were kids," Cousin George said. "Why do you think I wanted to take baths together?"
"And sleep naked," Rod added. "'Only fools wear pajamas.'" They exchanged a glance and laughed.
Apparently he had heard a lot about my visits.
No, I didn't hook up with my cousin. But I did discover that both Rod and George still slept without pajamas.
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