Charles Troob

Rabat, Morocco

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by Charles Troob

In the summer of 1967 I had an internship in Rabat.  This clean and safe capital city on the Atlantic was the Third World on training wheels.  Even when the sun blazed there was a fresh ocean breeze.

My office—I was at the United Nations Development Programme—was closed from noon until four.  I’d lunch alone at a nearby bistro—I would pick one at random—where for five dirhams (about a dollar) I’d have three courses of simple French food, with couscous as an occasional plat du jour.  Some customers were at the same places each day, seated at the same table, as though it were a private dining room.

On the far side of the palm-lined main boulevard was the gate to the medina, the fragrant old city.  Here I would stroll past butchers and fishmongers; gorgeous arrays of spices and vegetables; fabrics in brilliant colors; rugs and baskets; wallets, belts and leather jackets; and metalware: bowls, pitchers, candelabra, and “hands of Fatima.”   In time I learned to shop and haggle.

There would still be hours to kill before returning to work.  One day I went to a public beach, but there I felt like a rich invader—foreigners and bourgeois Moroccans drove to swimming clubs down the coast.   So I’d usually visit the Jardin des Oudaias, a walled Andalusian garden with a teahouse.  A waiter would bring a metal pot filled with boiling water, sugar, and a large handful of mint.

I’d inhale the pungent fumes and sip slowly, admiring the shrubs, flowers and fruit trees, and pondering my uncertain future.   This summer in Morocco had been fascinating, but the long hours of solitude—midday and evening—were a heavy burden, and I didn’t think I could make a life of this kind of work.    I would be a closeted gay man in a foreign country, without a family to keep me company, too cautious to have a wild time….

 It was a privilege to be twenty-one and melancholy in such an exquisite setting, like a Romantic poet or a character in a novel.  My sadness was as sweet as the mint tea.

 

Charles Troob: This piece was written for the LP² Writing Workshop, which I’ve co-coordinated for over a decade.  I’m still learning to write!  

My Face

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by Charles Troob

 

  1. Age.

A year ago I attended the 75th birthday party of a woman who went to high school with my younger brother.   I was startled by an uncannily familiar face.  “Jane,” I said.  “What is it, 50 years since we saw each other?   You’re exactly the same, just grayer with a few wrinkles.  I’d know you if we met on the street.”  She laughed and said, “You, too, Charles.”

It’s in my genes.  My father, who lived to 96, looked pretty much the same at 80 as he did at 40.  Only at 85 did he show signs of advanced age, and even then, he was just a frailer version of himself.

I once looked unlike my two brothers; now there’s a hint of a family resemblance.  But on balance my face has changed so little that people have a hard time guessing my age.  I’m surprised when I’m offered a seat on a bus.

 

  1. Mustache.

At some point in the late 1960’s I grew a beard, because I could:  it seemed a badge of maturity.  Nobody hassled me about it, but nobody said it looked terrific.  When I look at old pictures with the beard, I think, “Eh.”

In 1971 I went to see “The Virgin and the Gypsy,” based on a D.H. Lawrence novella.  Franco Nero was dazzlingly handsome as the swarthy gypsy—but I was also drawn to an elegant young major with a bewitching little mustache.

I’d associated mustaches with cartoon villains, with Adolf Hitler, and with repressed and proper Englishmen, like Alec Guinness in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and David Niven in almost anything.  In other words, not an appropriate look for a twenty-something during the early years of the sexual revolution.   But this mustache was different.  It beckoned and hinted:  my mouth is available for a passionate kiss.

That night I shaved off my beard, leaving only the hair on my upper lip.   No movie star—still, a definite improvement.  I’ve had that mustache ever since.  Twice I grew back the beard for a year or two, only to get rid of it.  I preferred my bare chin, and its cleft.

I used to shape my mustache myself, but now my barber Avi takes care of it when he cuts my hair and trims my eyebrows, which in recent years have grown bushy.   I don’t much care how long my hair is, so I wait until the mustache in the mirror reminds me of John Bolton, a very silly looking man.  I then head over to Chelsea for a reset.

From time to time I wonder whether I should get rid of the mustache and present my face as it really is.   But it’s as fixed in my image of myself as the eyeglasses I’ve worn since I was five….  I’d feel incomplete, naked without it.

 

  1. Skin.

In June of 1961, after my junior year of high school, I went to the beach at Rockaway with some classmates.  We spent the entire day there, and for over an hour I lay on my left side playing Scrabble.   Unfortunately, I had the harebrained notion that I needed sunscreen only on my face, arms and neck.  The next day my right leg was purple and sore.  It never blistered, but it looked sunburned for months.

I expected that this leg would be doomed to skin cancer or some other pathology.  It hasn’t happened.  Every six months my dermatologist does a full body check, but he never finds anything—except on my face, which requires constant attention.   If I’m lucky, he merely freezes off a pre-cancerous cluster.   But I’ve had half a dozen positive biopsies—basal cell carcinoma—followed by Mohs surgery, a procedure that sounds scarier than it is.   Dr. Mohs, whoever he was, developed a protocol for removing the surface layer of skin, then examining it under a microscope, and, if necessary, taking off a second layer, repeating the process until all is clear.

The face has remarkable recuperative powers.  I once had Mohs on the top of my left ear, and when the bandage came off it looked like a dog had nibbled off a chunk. The ear grew back, and now there’s only a faint scar at the site.  Other Mohs procedures usually end with an inch-long incision: the surgeon cuts beyond the cancer site to create two flaps that are sewn together to close the wound.  A month or two later it’s difficult to locate where the surgery took place.

When I have Mohs I feel like a car brought in for an oil change or a new battery.  It’s routine maintenance that leaves me as good as new.

 

  1. Nose.

My mother had a peculiar attitude about being a Jew.  Though nearly all her friends were Jewish, she was made uncomfortable by such markers of Jewish identity as Brooklyn accents and big noses.  As a child of immigrants, she needed to feel fully “American.”

Fortunately, none of her sons had big noses, and for some reason she particularly liked mine.   In addition, unlike my brothers, I was blond and blue-eyed.  She often said with great pleasure that as a little boy I “looked like a Polish prince.”  Mother was certainly aware that actual Polish princes oppressed Jews and serfs, and she wouldn’t have wanted one in her house.  What she meant by the Polish prince thing was that it was great that I didn’t look at all Jewish.

A people-pleaser by nature, I took to heart Mother’s message that it’s important to smooth any rough edges, blending in with the majority culture.   On first meeting, people rarely tag me as a Jew, as a gay man, or even as a native New Yorker.  I’m comfortable with all these identities, but I don’t embody them in my speech and bearing.   I travel incognito.

I’m a little sorry about this.  After all, I was raised in Queens, not far from Fran Drescher of “The Nanny,” and I’m perfectly capable of invoking her nasal whine: “Oh, Mr. Sheffield.”   In the early 1970s, when I taught at Lehman College in the Bronx, it gave me great pleasure to talk like my students–at least a little like them.

But I can’t do anything about my nose, not that I’d want to.

 

Charles Troob:  This was written in response to a prompt from David Grogan in his wonderful memoir study group. 

The Continental Baths, 1971

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by Charles Troob

         “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive…”  William Wordsworth

In 1970, I returned to New York from grad school, a twenty-four-year-old gay man attempting to emerge from the closet.   The next year I moved into a shared apartment on Christopher Street in the West Village, where my new life included street cruising and late-night bar pickups.   In the Village Voice I read about the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse that was also an entertainment venue.   Cabaret and anonymous sex?  How did that work?

It didn’t take long to answer the question.   A college roommate and his wife had me over to dinner at their Lincoln Towers apartment, and my hosts went to bed early.  At 10pm I was free, only a few blocks from the Ansonia Hotel—the baths were in the hotel basement.  I wasn’t out to Greg and Emily, or to any of my college friends, and as I made my way to Broadway and 74th, I felt a little like Dr. Jekyll switching to Mr. Hyde.

I paid the admission fee and descended, excited but edgy:  what if someone saw and recognized me?   I knew this was silly—everyone here was after the same thing I was—but paranoid secrecy is a hard habit to shake.

I stored my clothing in the assigned locker, then wrapped my towel around my waist and went off to explore.   I found myself in a large room, with rows of chairs, a small stage—and, to my surprise and amusement, a tacky pool party.  Men in towels were chowing down on Chinese food from a buffet table, while a few others were swimming naked in the next room.  So much for erotic adventure.  This wasn’t the whole story, of course:  beyond the pool, men were entering and exiting an unlit area filled with bunk beds and mattresses.

But it was showtime!  The munchers put down their plates and took seats.   I joined them.

A door opened.  In came an attractive Latina with her band, followed by a half-dozen male-female couples, dressed for a night on the town.  The new attendees sat calmly in the front row, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to take in a show among bare-chested men—a stone’s throw from a gay orgy.

There was a fanfare from the band, and then the singer took over.  (I think it was Liz Torres, mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the Baths—along with Bette Midler, Barry Manilow and others.)  Her patter and songs were directed knowingly at a gay audience—and as innocent as anything you could see in midtown.

The set came to an end.  There was enthusiastic applause.  The performers and straights departed.  And it was now time for me to enter the dark room.  There I found welcoming bodies and sexual release.

Only two years after Stonewall, the gay community was setting the pace in New York nightlife.  The relaxed air—the festive music—the unfazed straight couples—the easy friendly sex—all these suggested that the promised free love of the Sixties was now a done deal, at least for a few of us.   But over the decade, the freedom was to go in an unexpected direction.   The city became more dangerous, the mood darkened, and the gay scene turned to disco and drugs, gym bodies and leather.   The place to be seen was the notorious Mineshaft, with kinky sex under bright light.   The few straights who visited there were jaded sophisticates, not cabaret fans.

The Continental Baths lost its audience and closed in 1974.   The openhearted campiness of Bette Midler et al. remained a part of New York gay life, but as a grace note—not the leading edge of the culture.

Charles Troob: This piece was written for the LP² Writing Workshop, which I’ve co-coordinated for over a decade.  I’m still learning to write!

Metropolitan Diary

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by Charles Troob

Dear Diary,

The optometrist who gave me eyeglasses as a little boy was chatty and warm, a real New York character.  I stayed with him as an adult.  When he finally retired, I switched to the pleasant doctor who bought his practice.   So I still travel a few times a year to the neighborhood of my childhood, on the border between Forest Hills and Kew Gardens.

Last May, I went to a grocery-café on Queens Boulevard near 77th Avenue.  I ordered a panino from the owner, a recent immigrant from Genoa.  I startled her—both of us, really—by telling her that I’d grown up on that very block.   I took my sandwich to a table by the window and gazed across the wide boulevard.  In the 1950s my older brother and I would buy stamps on the far side, in a shop on the ground floor of an apartment house.  The buildings of that era are still there, looking just the same except for the storefronts.

After my eye exam I went down into the subway.  The Union Turnpike station is also little changed in more than half a century.   I inhaled the familiar damp funk, and suddenly I was five years old once again, holding my mother’s hand as we awaited the E train, to visit my grandparents, two stops away in Jamaica….

Then I took an E train in the opposite direction, to Manhattan and 2023.

Charles Troob: This piece was written for the LP² Writing Workshop, which I’ve co-coordinated for over a decade.  I’m still learning to write!

Shaving

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by Charles Troob

The Harry’s Shave Gel can is a narrow seven-inch-long cylinder. I grasp it with my left hand, into which it fits comfortably, and press the curved dispenser with my index finger. Out oozes a viscous white cream, filling my waiting right hand. The obvious symbolism amuses me. I wonder whether the Harry’s design team was similarly amused when they created this suggestively shaped can.

I smear my face with the gel. I use a finger to fill the cleft in my chin, and think of my mother, who for some reason was delighted by this feature of mine. Then I spread my hand to cover the area under my chin and my neck, gently massaging the sides of my windpipe. This lubricated contact of my warm hand with my face is a mildly erotic and luxurious start to the morning.

I place the bladed side of the razor against my left temple, under the sideburn. I gently pull downward and over the jaw line, removing gel and hair as I go, repeating this until the entire side of the face has been shaved. I shave the chin, spreading the skin to expose the hairs in the cleft. Then I move to the right temple. This side is a little trickier because I’m right-handed; I have to raise my chin to position the razor at an appropriate angle.

I lean my head back to shave the neck and under the chin. I make short vertical strokes, gradually moving from left to right. It’s like painting a wall, except that I’m removing whiteness rather than adding it. Usually a musical earworm in my head accompanies and guides the rhythm of my hand. It’s a jaunty tune, from the finale of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love): the quack Dr. Dulcamara sings it to hawk his cure-all patent medicine. (You can see and hear him at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI8VUsb2Z7s. ) A few years ago this melody came into my head while I was shaving, and it returns unbidden when I begin my short strokes—Pavlov would understand. Occasionally I hum along or jiggle my body in time with the music.

Before the doctor finishes his sales pitch most of the gel is off my face and in the sink. I rinse with warm water and rub my hand over my neck and jaw to test the smoothness. Invariably there are still a few bristles. I am fair, and can get away with a not-very-close shave, but if I’m feeling obsessive I stroke a few more times to improve the job. Then I towel down—I’ve showered before shaving, and am almost but not quite dry at this point. I leave the bathroom to dress for the day, feeling pampered and refreshed.

The mustache? Ah—that’s another story.

Charles Troob: I’ve been a participant or a coordinator of the LP² writing workshop since 2010, and I’ve been shaving considerably longer than that.

Napoli

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by Charles Troob

Look darling a lava pizza
bubbling and overflowing
a change from pepperoni
and heartburn

Nero’s bad press was earned
but we all do regrettable things
and Nero smelled nice
when he wanted to

though maybe I’m thinking of Marcus Aurelius
or Nebuchadnezzar
I’m not good with names

the pizza is ready
peel away the magma
and plunge in with me

Pizza and a volcano crater–once you associate them in your mind, it’s hard to unsee.  I have fond memories of a study group on Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, but the real inspiration is probably “That’s amore.”

Fortune

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by Charles Troob

After a heavy snowfall, I look out
At the cityscape, newly picturesque:
Leafless trees delicately traced in white
Like skeletons posing on a runway;
Streets and walkways, reupholstered, empty
Of traffic, savoring a brief pristine
Moment out of time, before the filth,
The ice, the slush, before the sand and the salt;

And then I think of myself, surrounded
By love and books and comfort, drowsily
Whiling away a quiet afternoon—
And my mind flashes on men shivering
Under flattened cartons and old blankets
Burning paper in oil drums to keep warm.

Shortly after I joined the IRP years ago I signed up for a poetry study group given by Sarah White.  The first class was cancelled because of a snowstorm.   Sarah had sent us sonnets to read and suggested we try to write one.  I sat at my desk, thought “why not?” and looked out the window.  I brought this poem to class the following week, and people had helpful suggestions to improve it.  

 

Happy Birthday

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by Charles Troob

On my twenty-third birthday, with a great deal of trepidation, I attended a meeting advertised on a Yale bulletin board as a “Homosexuality Discussion Group.”

I had been slowly cracking open the closet door. I was now “out” to my housemates and to one friend in New York. This would be another baby step.

I walked in and looked around. Everyone there looked pretty much like me—nerdy grad student—but I had no feeling of fellowship or relief. These men, I supposed, had accepted their assignment to the category “gay”—but I hadn’t. Though haunted by my attraction to the male body, I wasn’t prepared to exile myself from the world I’d grown up in. I still hoped that I was really a latent heterosexual: I wanted a future with a wife and family, my gay urges either suppressed or somehow dealt with on the side.

Why then was I here? To get over the secrecy that was poisoning my life. I was terrified to be known publicly as gay—or gay-ish: to have the world see me as I really was.

I’d been with a dozen men, but those sexual encounters had taken place in a shadow world, as though a second person inhabiting my body was indulging in them—think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I wasn’t mentally disordered: I knew that the carnally curious Mr. Hyde was the real me. If anything, he felt more authentic than the pleasant bland young man I presented to family, friends, and fellow students. To move ahead in life I would have to end this strange double identity—but that required me to find the courage to reveal to others the truth about myself.

So it was a milestone to say my full name loudly and clearly to this group. I then sat silently, my head swimming, barely hearing the discussion. Though grateful for the presence of these men, I told them little and gave them nothing. Just to be here was effort enough.

The habit of hiding in fear and shame would prove to be hard to break. It took many years and birthdays before I was as comfortable in my skin as I am today.

It has been challenging and valuable to write about myself in study groups at IRP/LP2—and to hear the stories of others as well.

I Remember

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by Charles Troob

I remember that I went to the Flushing Progressive School  until I was in second grade and was driven there in a station wagon with half a dozen other kids by Mrs. Conway, whose husband was a fireman. I remember that we visited his firehouse on Horace Harding Boulevard (before it became the Long Island Expressway) and I remember the pole that went up to the second floor so that the firemen could come down in a hurry— but I don’t remember Mr. Conway or the other firemen. I remember that one winter in the station wagon we all sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and at the end of the song—“You’ll go down in history” –I asked, “What is history?” and someone answered, “I think it’s some kind of a book” and I was puzzled because I didn’t know what it meant to go down in a book.

I remember that the Flushing Progressive School was in a house on Franklin Avenue and the littlest kids were on the ground floor while the first and second graders were on the second floor. Every day at lunchtime they came down the stairs to get their trays—colorful plastic ones, with beaded edges—and then go back upstairs to eat their lunch. I remember watching them and wondering how they managed to carry their trays upstairs without spilling stuff and being afraid that I’d never be able to do that and how grown up first graders must be. I remember that we had the same lunch each Monday, Tuesday, etc. and my mother was annoyed that on Mondays we usually had baked potato and creamed corn and why were there two starches and I remember wondering why she cared and thinking that Monday lunch was OK with me, though not as tasty as creamed chicken and noodles on Tuesday or macaroni with ground beef on Wednesday.

I remember that when I moved upstairs the first graders were on one side of the room and the second graders on the other side and we all faced front and Mrs. Caven, who was very sweet, would give lessons either to one group or to all of us. I remember that I didn’t want to interrupt her to ask to be excused and I messed my pants a few times and had to be taken to the toilet and cleaned up. I remember that I was unable to insist on what I really needed for myself until I was an adult.

I remember that we were given a reading primer and I didn’t know what “primer” meant but I read through it right away and on the back page was a numbered list called “Vocabulary.” I didn’t know that word either. After each number on the list there were a few words. I looked at this list again and again and finally figured out (eureka!) that the numbers referred to pages in the primer and each word was listed according to the page on which it first appeared. I was very pleased to make this discovery, but I still didn’t know what “vocabulary” meant or why the list was there.

I remember that I was upset when my mother wouldn’t let me go to school on Rosh Hashanah and we had an argument about it at the lunch counter at the Girard Pharmacy on Queens Boulevard. I didn’t want to miss anything at school and I knew that at home on Rosh Hashanah I would sit around and be bored.

I remember that in second grade I was excused from reading lessons and sat in another room with a girl named Barbara who also could read. I remember that we had second and third grade readers—Friends and Neighbors and Streets and Roads—to read on our own.

I remember that there was a piano and during the lunch break we sang “Santa Lucia” and “Funiculi, Funicula” and afterwards one of the teachers read Mary Poppins to us, a chapter at a time.

I remember that the second graders were once given a special privilege. We went to the third floor where Mrs. Tucker the principal lived and there was a small television and we watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. I remember wondering what this ceremony was about—if her name was Queen Elizabeth, didn’t she already have a crown like every other king and queen?

I remember that the Flushing Progressive School was planning to offer a third grade, but my parents told me that I was going to attend PS 196,  a beautiful new school about to open in Forest Hills. I would be very sorry not to see what happened to the scarlet runner beans I’d planted in June in the school garden, but I was glad that I would finally be going to school with children from my neighborhood. I remember thinking that PS 196 was huge and impressive, particularly the auditorium and gym, and that I liked it very much, except that the teachers were always yelling at us to get in line and keep quiet. At our age! Even kindergartners could—and did—get in line quietly. These ladies were a little nutty and mean compared to the pleasant teachers at my old school, but they taught us a lot and they were nice enough to me, so I really didn’t mind.

I remember that in my freshman year at Harvard, a Cliffie in my English class asked me if I’d gone to the Flushing Progressive School. It would be an understatement to say that I was stunned by the question. Mr. Blyth called her Miss Hutter, but I knew that her first name was Barbara—and so she had to be the Barbara I used to read with. “How on earth did you recognize me?” I asked. “Oh,” she replied, “over Thanksgiving at home I was looking at pictures of my second grade birthday party and there you were.” I remember being quite abashed that I had changed so little since second grade, and also that I had no memory of the birthday party or of ever being at Barbara’s house. I remember that despite this amazing link between us, Barbara Hutter and I had no further conversations about our childhood or anything else. I remember that Harvard was not a friendly place.

 

This was written for David Grogan’s Guided Autobiography study group.  David’s writing prompt was based on the work of Joe Brainard, an artist and writer associated with the New York School.  Brainard’s I Remember, a book-length collection of sentences and short paragraphs all beginning with these two words, is considered a contemporary classic. 

Ah, Youth!—Three Memoirs

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by Charles Troob
 

Ancient Greece 

In 1966 I was in a master’s program at the London School of Economics. Over the long winter break I traveled to Greece, Cyprus and Israel. The day before my departure, London friends gave me a Blue Guide to Athens. An hour into the flight from Heathrow I put down Thucydides and picked up the guide. One entry caught my eye. “There is a wonderful view over the city from the top of Mount Lycabettus. It’s recommended that one should go at sunset or sunrise.”

I was on a red-eye, arriving in Athens at 4 am. When the lane landed, I took a bus to a terminal downtown, where I checked my suitcase. Blue Guide in hand, I explored Syntagma Square, then followed the map to the foot of Lycabettus. On the steep road up I passed nondescript apartment houses–this quiet city was disappointingly dull. But the air was fresh and stars twinkled in the cloudless sky.

At the top of the hill was a lookout. Greece was hidden in the dark. I impulsively took off my clothes, and stood naked in the cool breeze. As light began to surround me, the shoreline of the Aegean came into view; then, to my amazement, the Acropolis lay right below. Piraeus, Corinth, Argos–here I was, not quite twenty-one, communing with the ancients.

The exaltation lasted an hour or two. Then I descended into modern Athens, where hardly anyone spoke English, and I felt stranded, alone, exhausted after a night without sleep.

 

Army Life 

I dropped out of grad school in 1970, and thereby relinquished my student deferment. I had a fairly high number in the draft lottery, so I thought I might be safe—but in December I received an induction notice. Along with hundreds of others I reported for my physical to Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. When I got to final clearance—it looked like the checkout area of a supermarket—nearly everyone else had been loaded onto buses and sent off to Fort Dix and a dangerous future.

I handed my papers to the clerk—along with a letter from a psychiatrist in New Haven. When his eyes got halfway down the page he trembled slightly and called me over. In a very low voice, he said, “This letter says that you are a homosexual. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I was appreciative of his tact, amused by his discomfort.

“Have you committed homosexual acts?” He paused, gulped, continued. “Oral? Anal?”

“Yes, yes,” I said airily. To my surprise—I was very much a closet case at this time—I was enjoying myself. I hoped he’d ask for additional graphic detail—that would make the experience really perfect. But he just nervously wrote a few things on my papers, then stamped them and waved me away.

I wondered idly if this official documentation of my infamy would stay buried in Army files, or might come back to haunt me at some later time….

When I went to get my coat there was one other man in the locker area. “You’re not going?” he said.

“No. I told them I’m a homosexual.”

He laughed. “I said that too! I just thought of it when I got here. What an easy way to get out!”

“I was telling the truth,” I said. “I had a note from a shrink.”

He gave me a funny look, turned, and walked away.

 

Teleport

In 1976 I got a job in Washington DC. I returned to my New York apartment on weekends. Friday evenings I’d queue up at Union Station, waiting for Amtrak to teleport me from a world of offices, malls, and soccer moms to a hothouse of culture—and sex. A few hours later I’d emerge from Penn Station onto Eighth Avenue, assaulted by the energy of the city. I could hit the bars and sample the sleaze. I could climb a dingy warehouse stairway and applaud some crazies who were reinventing theater. New York was dangerous at that time, but hey, it was a danger to flirt with and dance around, not one to avoid. My weekends were filled with adventure and exploration—and then on Sunday night I went back through the wormhole to Dullsville-on-the-Potomac.

But somehow I was happy on Monday morning. In DC I felt myself growing and stretching.  Working for DHEW—the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—was like grad school on steroids.   I was quickly promoted, with a choice of jobs. So I was never sure which phase of this cycle was the main narrative, and which the parenthesis.

Still, in time the ping-ponging back and forth wore me down. The double life felt like a refusal to commit to an identity. Put that way, the choice was easy—I was a New Yorker. After three years I cut the DC knot. Without a tinge of regret, I slipped away from the dream career and came home to rejoin the carnival full-time.

Or so I thought. Soon AIDS hit New York—and Reagan hit Washington. The 70s were history.

 

These three pieces were written for the IRP Writing Workshop.  Charles Troob joined this workshop when he entered the IRP in 2010.  After a few enthusiastic semesters he was invited to become one of its coordinators.