Little Brett, Big City

Behold my first professional headshot in the Fall of 1988. It could also double as an 80s print ad for Clairol hair mousse. (Big fan!) The photo was on the back page of the MoundVue employee magazine I created as that semester's PR intern at EG&G Mound Laboratory, a Department of Energy facility in Miamisburg, Ohio. They basically made parts for nuclear weapons for the federal government. At least that's how I boiled it down. I never learned the real details because I worked outside the "perimeter."  All employees had to have a high-level federal security clearance. But due to a backlog in requests and approvals, mine never arrived the entire semester. So I was stationed in a small office building outside the main gates with about two dozen engineers, researchers and IT analysts.  They didn't have much to do since their jobs depended on access to classified information. I however was busy creating a 32-page internal magazine. So I had lots of employees to int...

  As our train pulled into Philadelphia, I saw rhinos at the zoo next door before we slid in the dark station. The minutes dragged on and on as they switched out engines. Waiting for a doctor in an emergency room took less time. I rocked in my unforgiving seat and, for the first time, thought about abandoning my mission to conquer New York.   After finally leaving Philly, our frequency of stops increased in familiar-sounding towns: Bryn Mawr, Princeton, Trenton, Newark.   I knew we entered the zone when a trio of teen girls bopped into the car, giggling and talking excitedly about their upcoming night in the city. Shit just got real. My low-grade nausea detonated into chest-pounding fear. I kept watching out the window, searching for more signs.   The train banked to the right, opening up my view. Sunlight glinted off of metal far in the distance. A closer look through August haze revealed jagged spikes poking the air. There. There she is. The Manhattan skyline, baki...

  I heard it before I saw it. More “Honk Honk” than “Choo Choo.”  Then faint lights down the track illuminated other faces near me on the platform, growing as the train approached. Muggy air pushed ahead by the engine car cooled my forehead. Amtrak’s Broadway Limited then glided into its brief stop in Lima, Ohio.   The nervous vise around my stomach loosened. After a two-hour delay, my getaway to New York was here! I grinned as my eyes darted all over the humming train, trying to identify the right car to enter.   People streamed to my left towards a porter waving from his perch on the train several feet above us. I floated that way and finally got to step up into the car’s threshold. I flashed my ticket to the porter, who barely nodded.   Inside, I turned left toward some seats half filled with slumbering passengers. The dim coach smelled like diesel fuel mixed with recycled air on a jet. I chose a spot, dropping “The World’s Heaviest Briefcase” on the emp...

(ICYMI. Happy Summer!)  Family Ties wrapped up its 7th and final season 31 years ago.  So did other iconic 80s TV series Miami Vice and Dynasty . I lost interest in those two by that time in 1989. But who didn’t love the annual Krystle-Alexis beatdown?   I was too busy to follow specific shows when I was at Bowling Green. MTV was always on, like a roommate who never went to class and threw the best parties every night.   But I did watch the Family Ties finale. I had always appreciated the Alex P. Keaton character. Too conservative of course, but I was totally into his drive to hit the “Big Time.”   The series’ last episode spoke to me. Alex had accepted his dream job with a Wall Street investment firm and was packing quickly to move to New York. Ohio was already history to him.   His excitement and eagerness to leave was a bit much for his mom, Elyse. In her eyes, Alex was too gleeful, too quick to exchange their family life together for the “bright ligh...

The YMCA I decided to stay at on 34 th Street did not take reservations, but they said not to worry because they always had rooms.   Worrying was my top extracurricular activity. If it were an official sport, I would have gotten a four-year scholarship to Bowling Green.  After checking to see no convention was in New York the weekend I planned to arrive, I decided to just go with it. I had to trust that the YMCA staff wouldn’t turn me away from the inn without recommending a good alternative.   Physically getting to New York would be based on more certainty.  I fell in love with the city during my high school Drama Club trip in 1984. (Shout-out to Don and Sue Smith who took a bunch of high school kids to the Big Apple. What could go wrong?!) We traveled by train from Lima then too, riding through the night until we walked out of Penn Station the next afternoon into the heart of the roaring beast.   It’s a tedious and draining 17-hour ride, but the familiarity w...

  Once I decided to move from Bowling Green, Ohio to New York in 1989 with no job or home, I sent away for The Guide To Temporary Housing in New York City.   The YMCAs listed on its photocopied pages seemed to be the safest and cheapest options for Manhattan. I would have had more choices if I were a young lady looking for a chaperoned, Christian environment. But I was going in the opposite direction.   Once I graduated, I went back to my mom’s house in Piqua to execute my escape to New York.   But as the days passed, my commitment sagged like an old Mylar balloon. What seemed like my destiny in Bowling Green, felt like pending doom from the family living room. Angst paralyzed me from calling the Sloane House near Penn Station, final destination on the train I would take from Lima. Making a reservation at the Y meant making a commitment to leave everything and everyone I knew. And risking my life to a virus that had me in its crosshairs as soon as I stepped into the ...

Family Ties wrapped up its 7th and final season 31 years ago.  So did other iconic 80s TV series Miami Vice and Dynasty. I lost interest in those two by that time in 1989. But who didn’t love the annual Krystle-Alexis beatdown?   I was too busy to follow specific shows when I was at Bowling Green. MTV was always on, like a roommate who never went to class and threw the best parties every night.   But I did watch the Family Ties finale. I had always appreciated the Alex P. Keaton character. Too conservative of course, but I was totally into his drive to hit the “Big Time.”   The series’ last episode spoke to me. Alex had accepted his dream job with a Wall Street investment firm and was packing quickly to move to New York. Ohio was already history to him.   His excitement and eagerness to leave was a bit much for his mom, Elyse. In her eyes, Alex was too gleeful, too quick to exchange their family life together for the “bright lights, big city.”   “Elyse, he...

I was proud of my new briefcase. A mahogany leather beauty with brass clasps that sprang open once you dialed the discrete lock’s combination. And it was solid. Solid as a rock. It was a graduation gift from Aunt Karin and Uncle Louie, my only relatives to have finished college too. I carried it with me on the train ride from Ohio to New York because it held my most precious cargo – my resumes. I couldn’t wait to pop it open during a job interview and hand the recruiter a resume. The case would signal that I had arrived, ready to be a Manhattan yuppie. But it was heavy. So heavy, I had to switch arms every five minutes whenever I held it. And after carrying it for blocks and blocks in my only (wool) suit in late summer, I was drenched in sweat before any of my meetings. It was so heavy it toppled off of my lap in one interview, spilling all of my resumes and writing samples on the floor. I still got the job, but I should have seen it as an omen of how...

It sure doesn’t look like a portal to your dreams. But this was the station in Lima, Ohio where I caught a train to New York City in late August 1989. “The Broadway Limited” lived up to its name that muggy night, arriving over two hours late. The butterflies in my stomach got to multiply, churning up doubts about my escape to Manhattan to find a job and to come out. But once my chariot of fire pulled in, my anxiety turned to excitement. Like the Nike commercial on TV said, “Just do it.” I made it to New York 17 hours later. Today, you pay your water bills now at the former Lima train depot. Everything changes. Photo: Trainweb.org

When I left college in 1989, I was a virgin with corn-fed drive and a terrifying secret. It could disappoint or disgust my family and friends. It could even kill me. But I couldn’t hide from it anymore.  With "The World's Heaviest Briefcase," I escaped on a midnight train from Lima, Ohio to the YMCA on West 34th Street in Manhattan. Being gay had to be easier in New York, even though I was arriving with no home or job.   Right away, a hooker chased me in Times Square, and perverts watched me shower at the Y. I filled payphones with quarters each day, desperately seeking work. Ultimately, I was confronted by my biggest fear when dating my first man – a member of AIDS activist group ACT UP.  Could I really survive in one of the hardest cities in the world? Or would I fail and return to Ohio, back in the closet to find a wife and a lawn to mow.   l i t t l e  b r e t t , BIG CITY celebrates finding your own place in the world. Here I...