When I met Padric McGarry in 1976 he looked like a tall, henna-haired Dorothy Lamore from long-ago Hollywood; shoulder length, thick hair, winged shoulder blades, poised with a straight back. His alert, hazel eyes didn’t miss a thing that went on around him. He described himself as “flaming, not nelly with a skinny, fruit body.” We met in New York when he was fifty-one years old. I last heard from him in 1982 and shortly afterwards received a letter from a bereft friend describing a massive heart attack in San Diego, California that had killed him.

Padric had asked me to write his biography but he died before we could assemble ample materials. Time stole me away, other writings were undertaken while thoughts of his life were no longer at the front of my mind. Twenty years passed; ten books were published. I crisscrossed the country and world; matured and became less restless.

When I recently came up for air, thoughts of Padric returned so I searched for our papers and tapes. I found them buried inside a cardboard carton, stored for more than twenty years. The rubber bands had stiffened. They disintegrated and stuck to batched pages and to plastic cassette cases when I lifted them from the carton and more gently pealed.

My novella [The Potato Eater] under construction will be based on what sparse materials were gathered long ago; taped interviews, an outline of a fictionalized sketch drafted with a friend named Spencer that Padric had given me as a springboard, fragments of remembered conversation and events, a few letters and my own imagination. At all times it will reflect his mind-set – camp, sex-obsessed, graphic in the gay language of his (now historic) time.

Padric’s story will be expanded, textured, fictioned and molded into a sculpture made of bell metal in the shape of a tall, slim man of Irish-American descent who was born out of wedlock in 1925 in the Bronx, who didn’t want his experience as a gay man in a straight world way before Stonewall to be forgotten.

Stay tuned.

            “Sex was always instant and quick – you were ever-ready. I knew that the best way to a man’s heart in prison was through his prick or asshole, and learned quickly to have at least five husbands. It was smart to have a man in the kitchen because the food was so terrible – connections for sandwiches. A man in the laundry so I could look pretty. A man in the library so I could keep my culture and intellect high. A man in the hospital for little goodies like cold cream. Vaseline. Shampoo. A man working in one of the factories because he earned money – to have a Daddy with money.

            “I became a seminal dump. My only reality was the second of ejaculation. I’d choose the freakiest of mates – Neanderthals – humpy-punky but masculine. I was sometimes known as Millicent Duchess of Southerland, sometimes as Tarzanna because I could swing up through the catwalks from tier to tier. If I had a boyfriend, we’d make arrangements between count time when the guards came by, I’d swing up to his tier, turn the trick, and swing back down in a matter of minutes.

            “I fell madly in love with a big Irish donkey who worked in the kitchen and was almost directly above me on the second tier. We began our romance. He’d write me love notes. He’d get a big hard-on and bang it on the locker to let me know, like the cave man beating his chest. We’d send each other our jockey shorts, and occasionally we’d exchange tiny bottles of seminal fluid. I’d sing to him because we almost never got together.” [from taped interviews for The Potato Eater]

In our interview, Padric continued speaking

      “Immediately I had ‘Homosexual, Degenerate, Cock Sucker’ stamped on my records so I was rarely in population with the rest of the men. I was kept in segregation with junkie queens, wino queens, booster queens, prick peddlers, drag queens and some men who just preferred to be in the homo block where they were adored and given sexual comfort. Life in segregation with those mad sissies was like being caged with a mass of mad, screaming peacocks.

       “Sex was always instant and quick – you were ever-ready. I knew that the best way to a man’s heart in prison was through his prick or asshole, and learned quickly to have at least five husbands. It was smart to have a man in the kitchen because the food was so terrible – connections for sandwiches. A man in the laundry so I could look pretty. A man in the library so I could keep my culture and intellect high. A man in the hospital for little goodies like cold cream. Vaseline. Shampoo. A man working in one of the factories because he earned money – to have a Daddy with money.

(more to come)