The Road to Frankfurt

By Don Schecter

The Road to Frankfurt is the second episode in the series A Complement of Lovers. It's a path of discovery for two lovers who run up against the practical side of unbounded freedom in the 1960s.

Meg and Rodney believe their future is bright. Don't opposites attract, and can't each provide the other what's lacking? What could possibly go wrong for a young couple that makes its own rules and stands by them?

But they find The Road to Frankfurt is paved with good intentions. In a time of rapid change, moonwalks and assassination, women that sought control over their lives and bodies were blocked by convention at every turn. Even supportive men limited their partners' options.

Follow along with Meg and Rodney on their unusual journey .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Schecter
• Release date: Oct 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311348395

Don Schecter

I had an exciting career in communications with the National Security Agency in Maryland. Retired in San Antonio TX, now I travel and write fiction. My work has appeared in magazines, an anthology, and on internet sites. I've written five volumes of short stories dealing with the gay experience. HEIGHTS OF PASSION (2009), OUT OF THE BOX (2010), DISCOVERY OF FIRE (2011), LOVE WANTED, WILL TRAVEL (2012) and STILL YOUNG (2018). These are realistic stories, not intended as erotic fiction but listed under that heading because of their honesty. Sex happens because it's part of the plot, just as sex drives our lives. In 2019, I collaborated with a longtime Dutch friend, Jaap Cové, to produce REMEMBERED PLACES (2020). We had traveled the world in our full lives and certain stories recall their foreign, or local, settings. The longest tale is the true story of the man who gave the gay world The Spartacus Guide and the tortuous path he took rising to success only to tumble ignominiously from the heights.I used my life experiences in a series of novels. A COMPLEMENT OF LOVERS, published in 2013, is a full-length novel that describes the romance of a young couple, Meg and Rodney, who try to make their own rules for living, but come into conflict with the conventional thinking of the 60s. THE ROAD TO FRANKFURT (2014) continues their struggle to adapt while maintaining their individuality. UNCOUPLED, the third novel in the series, was published by Smashwords in August 2015. It follows Meg and Rod through the mid-70s. The fourth in the series, NEVER PROMISE FOREVER was published in 2016. In CUSPS, volume 5 published 2018, Rodney accepts that he is gay, while his daughters are becoming young women, and the family must adjust to a new reality. I'm currently at work on the final volume in the series. Rod begins an open, live-in relationship, hoping that his daughters can adapt to two dads.I hold degrees from Columbia University in both Arts and Engineering, and an Arts degree from Loyola University.

Book preview

Part I March 1963

Chapter 1 – Record-Go-Rounds

Chapter 2 – Moving Up

Chapter 3 – Lure of the Orient

Chapter 4 – The Seat of Sex

Chapter 5 – The Harmans of Chicago

Chapter 6 – Dinner with André

Chapter 7 – Another Sea Change

Chapter 8 – The Brodys of New York

Chapter 9 – Circle of Life

Chapter 10 – Driven Together

Part II September 1963

Chapter 11 – Driven Apart

Chapter 12 – Flying Together

Chapter 13 – The Plastic Pit

Chapter 14 – First Blood

Chapter 15 – The Mourning Dove

Chapter 16 – Mysteries of the East

Chapter 17 – Party Animals

Chapter 18 – The Linguist in Winter

Chapter 19 – Shoeboxes

Chapter 20 – Today I Are One

Chapter 21 – Trimming Expenses

Chapter 22 – Love in a Museum

Chapter 23 – On the Move

Chapter 24 – Europe on $5 a Day

Chapter 25 – Eysseneckestrasse

Part III October 1964

Chapter 26 – The Road to Frankfurt

Chapter 27 – Saturation Bombing

Chapter 28 – Nanny Hunt

Chapter 29 – Blagden

Chapter 30 – Truman Lassiter III

Chapter 31 – The Silk Bequest

Chapter 32 – Plebe Day

Chapter 33 – What Took You So Long?

Chapter 34 – Gurgle, Gurgle

Chapter 35 – Out of the Blue

Chapter 36 – Second Time’s a Charm

Chapter 37 – God on a Machine 1

Chapter 38 – A Complement of Lovers

Chapter 39 – One Small Step

Chapter 40 – God on a Machine 2

Chapter 41 – Wishful Thinking

Chapter 42 – Rough Draft

Chapter 43 – Wheels Up

Endnotes

Part I – March 1963

Chapter 1 – Record-Go-Round

This is bullshit, Rodney sighed into Meg’s ear after they heard the door slam behind one of his roommates coming home earlier than expected.

Five weeks had passed since the day she agreed to help him resolve his sex hangups. That very afternoon he succeeded in penetrating a woman with a rigid erection for the first time in his life. At twenty-seven, the effect was as thrilling for him as it was for any young man, regardless of age.

Once he got the hang of intercourse, it was like riding a bicycle or diving into a pool. There was a short trial period when he waited to see if his fear of failure was permanently gone, and when he found that it was, life simplified. He wondered why he had made such a big deal about nothing, why he had gotten hung up for ten years on such an easy thing—something natural that men were born to do. And suddenly he drew a blank: he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember how it was possible not to be able to do the things that now came so easily. He ended up concluding: I must’ve been a fucking idiot!

Their problem was finding space to enjoy their new pastime. They used his apartment when his roommates were out for the evening or away for the weekends, or her flat when her roommate was occupied with a new boyfriend who had his own place. It was less than satisfactory because they couldn’t relax—each had to keep an ear open for unexpected interruptions.

You could always sing while we’re fucking to hide any noise we make, Meg whispered.

Rodney grinned, remembering the time he had sung the national anthem while making love, just to see if he could. Nah, he’ll just bang on the wall to tell us to be quiet.

Once he discovered how much fun sex was, he was like a boy playing with a train set he’d found under the tree at Christmas, or a man waking from a coma and wanting to make up for lost time. For the first two weeks, he had chased Meg around the bedroom like a randy teen, trying anything and everything that came to mind. Then they consulted the Kama Sutra (as any learned couple would) to see if they had touched all the bases and to discover some less obvious positions. It was a month before Rod settled into a reasonable schedule, and by that time they had converged on two positions that pleased them both.

Their favorites were the+≠ standard missionary coupling and her riding him while he was on his back. Both positions allowed them to kiss while he was inside her. In the first, he was in charge, but in the latter, she called the shots. Fortunately, the two positions were flip sides of one coin that could be achieved alternately by simply rolling over. They disregarded poses where Meg was on all fours because, rather than imparting a feeling of togetherness and unity, those positions offered dominance to Rodney while placing Meg in an attitude of subservience. In their own way, each was aiming for equality.

But now that Nick or Bart was home, they cut their session short because neither liked the idea of making noises that others could hear through thin apartment walls. Rodney put on his pants to check the hallway.

All clear, he told her. Whoever it was went into the bedroom and closed the door.

Meg dashed to the bathroom carrying her garments and emerged in a few minutes dressed and refreshed. Rodney was in the kitchen making coffee.

My turn to wash up. Be right back, he said.

She had two steaming cups ready when he returned, and they settled themselves comfortably on the sofa and smoked a while.

What a life! Sex followed by coffee and cigarettes was heaven on earth. Rodney knew no time when he had been happier. Meg had provided the elusive key to the cage he had trapped himself in, unlocked the door, and watched him roar like a tiger into a brand new world where he was the equal of all other men.

There had been many confusing things in Rodney’s life that he now automatically understood. At last, he had firsthand knowledge of the sensations and emotions that drove the love scenes in books and films that he previously accepted on faith. And he gained an inkling of what made his roommates tick; he was no longer at war with them or with any man for that matter. Johnny had switched feet and was finally marching in step with the troops.

They were in the midst of discussing Meg’s interest in looking for a better-paying job when the front door opened and Nick entered carrying something large and unrecognizable. It was such an awkward shape that he had to back through the doorway and edge it in carefully to avoid skinning his knuckles. He wore one of his famous shit-eating grins and was obviously delighted with himself.

Hey, you two. Glad to see you both here.

What the hell is that? Rodney called in greeting.

Heh, heh. Nick said. That’s what you designed, buddy; what you asked for.

I’m sorry, I’m not with you. I don’t recognize that thing.

Nick set the two-tiered contraption in the middle of the living room floor and swiped a palm past the lower shelf. The bottom of the device spun like a merry-go-round.

That, my dear roommate, is your invention. I give you the Record-Go-Round. He already had a few LP covers in his hands and stopped the base to slip them vertically between the divider rods.

Oh, now I see what it’s for, said Meg. Where did it come from?

Don’t yas remember nuthin’? You were moanin’ one night about how we had piles of records and nowhere to put ’em. Y’said what we needed was a rotating table with a stationary top to store records. Well, I was up in Pennsylvania this weekend and my brother and me was talkin’, and before you know it, he slapped this baby together. Whaddayas think? Neat, huh?

Rodney walked around it slowly. Then he set his half-filled coffee cup on the tabletop and gave the base a spin. The surface of the coffee didn’t ripple.

"Nice action; I’m impressed. I am fucking impressed. Will you look at this thing! How many records does it hold?"

A hundred, five between every two divider rods.

What’s it made of?

This one’s solid walnut.

How much did it cost?

The material was about seventy dollars. But there’ll never be another one like this baby here. That’s a solid walnut post in the center. Way too expensive.

You make it sound like you want to sell them.

Well, everybody we showed it to liked it. We thought we could make a few. It’s a possibility.

Bart came charging out of the bedroom in his inimitable style. Hi guys. …And girl. He nodded to Meg. What’s up? I thought this place was empty when I came home. Now we got a full house.

Hey, Big Bart, Nick said proudly, take a gander at this. Whaddaya think? Neat, huh?

If I knew what it was.

Go ahead, try it. Give it a spin.

A smile spread across Bart’s face as he ran fingers through his curly hair. Is that what I think it is? And the top stands still? That’s great. Let’s fill it up.

Everyone grabbed a stack of records and Nick inserted them in the slots. They extended radially, three inches beyond the table top, in a circle.

It’s terrific, Bart said. Y’can see the record covers. Y’can sit there and thumb through your whole collection.

See, said Nick. What’d I tell ya? Everybody who sees it likes it.

I could sell that thing, Bart announced.

Whaddaya mean, you could sell it?

I could take that thing to Woodie’s or Hecht’s, and they would buy it. That’s a great item, man. What would it cost to make?

Yeah, well. We don’t know that yet. We’d hafta figure out how to make it cheaper. Whaddaya think somebody’d pay for it?

Meg piped up. It’s very smart-looking. I’d pay twenty dollars.

So we’d hafta make it for five.

How do you figure? Rod asked.

We sell for ten and the store retails it for twenty.

Bart pressed. Could ya? Could ya make it for five?

I dunno. I’d hafta talk to my brother. Gil’s the handy man. He can do anything with his hands.

Well, find out, ’cause I wanna take one to a department store.

Rodney inserted his two cents. Listen, fellas, let’s not go overboard. How are you going to take that to a store? Under your arm? It’s a crazy shape. And it must weigh a ton.

Now look, Rod, Nick said, Bart’s got an idea here. Don’t go puttin’ cold water on it. We don’t know nuthin’ yet. Give my brother and me another week to figure what could be done. You thought it up, now take a step back and let us do our part.

Okay. Be my guest. Rodney quashed his objections. I like the table, but it needs a name.

You already named it. Ya said ya wished ya had a record-go-round.

Bart grinned. Catchy. I like that.

Okay, it’s got a name, Rodney said. Your brother did a great job. It looks like a finished piece of furniture.

Like I said, Gil can do anything with wood or machinery. He’s a natural.

We’ll get a lot of use out of it. He switched subjects. All that spinning makes me hungry. How about you, Meg? Let’s go to Howard Johnson’s for fried clams. It was one of Rodney’s favorite meals.

That sounds great. I’m so tickled I can eat again. I haven’t had fried clams in ages. Just give me a minute in the ladies’ room.

I’ll get the car. We’re at the far end of the lot. Pick you up out back.

Bart sat on the floor and played with the rotating table. Fascinated, he watched the record albums flash by.

As Meg came out of the bathroom and started for the door, Nick stopped her and very formally said, Uh, Meg, Bart and me, we wanna thank you. You made our roommate easier to live with. We think you been a very good influence on ’im.

Yes, there’s been a big change. I’m glad we finally got it together. She winked at Nick. Bye, Bart.

Bart waved absently, hypnotized by the spinning colors.

Chapter 2 – Moving Up

The record stand took over the minds and lives of Rodney’s roommates, and ultimately ensnared Rodney. Nick and his brother had remade the solid walnut device out of pressed wood, plastic laminates, painted divider rods and self-adhesive, wood-patterned paper. A fourteen-cent lazy-Susan bearing was found perfect for rotation and they estimated the whole thing could be glued together for less than seven dollars, if conditions were right.

Close, but no cigar.

The trick was to make them in quantity to reduce costs. While they pondered that problem, Big Bart picked the table up under his arm and marched out the door with it. When he returned to the apartment, he announced he had visited Woodward & Lothrop, sat in the buyer’s office with six other guys, all of whom had some sort of gadget to sell, and come home with an order for ten units at fifteen dollars apiece. Rodney and Nick wouldn’t let him go to the Hecht Co. the next day because they had no idea how to produce the ones Woodie’s had purchased.

Geez, said Nick, holding his head. How in hell are we supposed to come up with ten o’ these? I gotta get back to Pennsylvania. There’s wood to buy, and glue and shit, and where’s the money coming from?

It’s a hit, man. Bart slapped Nick on the back. The buyer said he ain’t seen anything so useful and original in ages. He even liked the name. Let’s get busy.

Busy translated into building the units in Gil’s basement in Pennsylvania and hauling them to Washington in his pickup. Everybody chipped in for expenses. Nick and Gil had worked their tails off, and then they revealed the plans they had made while they were constructing the tables.

Nick’s position was, We need to set up a shop and tools. We need to locate local sources for materials and buy in batches to get lower prices. Gil has to move down here, and we’re in business.

If you guys can build ’em, I can sell this thing. That was Bart’s input.

Ever the pragmatist, Rodney’s thinking went this way: Hold up, you guys. Except Gil, we all have full-time jobs, and even if we can afford the start-up costs, when do we find time to build these things?

Their enthusiasm drowned his cynicism.

Actually, money wasn’t that hard to come by. In their third year rooming together, Nick and Rodney had split $2000 to buy a residential quarter-acre in Shirlington, Virginia, and promptly ignored the investment. They had extra cash on hand and, at age twenty-four, made big plans to become wealthy landowners. The trouble was that real estate moved too slowly; it was boring and they were impatient. Now that they needed money for a Record-Go-Round startup, they sold the property and had $2200 to bankroll the company.

They found an unheated cinderblock building on a street of junk auto repair shops in Hyattsville—a nearby Maryland suburb—and moved all the tools Gil could fit in his pickup out there. While the three government employees were at their jobs, Gil built rotating record tables one after the other. The roommates went to the fledgling factory every night after work, brought Gil fast food for dinner, and lent a hand. The brothers constructed tables, while Bart and Rodney performed unskilled labor like painting rods gold and unpacking materials. Rodney kept track of expenditures because he was the only one not frightened by numbers, and the man most unhappy with getting his hands dirty.

As the weeks went by, Rodney had to steal time to be with Meg, but in one sense it was easier. They knew that his roommates would always be out for the evening.

Meg didn’t mind their infrequent dates—she had her own busy life to occupy her. She had quit Ramsey, Inc. as soon as they finished the bird book, and went to work at Arena Stage as Zoe’s personal assistant (which was a euphemism for chief cook and bottle washer). She knew the job entailed doing whatever needed to be done, and that was the part that interested her. She wouldn’t be tied to a desk doing repetitive tasks, and everything she was responsible for had something to do with theater. Plus, there was a salary increase that made her truly happy because it meant she could afford an apartment on her own.

Rodney quickly came to hate the idea of finishing a day of work, grabbing a bite, and heading for the factory. He was doing repetitive work of the least creative kind and, since the orders were not difficult to come by, as Bart sold more tables, more of Rodney’s time was required to construct the damned things. For Rodney, the only interesting part of going to the shop each evening was to watch Gil work; he had the deepest blue eyes and was even more handsome than Nick.

As advertised, Gil was a whiz at metalwork and could devise and build anything they needed. He understood machine tools in a visceral way and could wield a welding torch with confidence. Where they originally had to drill forty-two holes through a template into the base to hold the divider rods, Gil produced two machines that drilled twenty-one holes at one time, just by lowering a handle. The laminated wood base was put in place and, ten seconds later, twenty-one outer holes were drilled. Then the base was moved to the next machine, which drilled twenty-one inner holes. What used to take thirty minutes now took two, and the holes were machined in both spacing and depth, instead of judged by human eye.

Metal rods were cut and bent in dyes Gil made so their angles were exact and, when painting proved impractical, he and Nick learned to anodize them in a chemical bath so the gold-look was permanent.

By the time Bart had sold a hundred units, some to the west coast, they realized that shipping costs loomed higher than expected—expected, hell! They hadn’t even considered transportation at the outset.

We gotta knock this baby down, said Nick.

That meant nothing to Rodney, but soon he was presented with individual parts and told to write up an instruction sheet so the buyer could assemble the Record-Go-Round in his own home using an included tube of wood glue. Rodney doubted the scheme would work.

It worked.

Soon the knocked-down version was being shipped cross-country for $12 including freight. The volume increased monthly, and then Bart sold to Macy’s and the national office of the May Co., which meant they had to move to a new and larger building across the street. This factory had a heating/air conditioning plant and a bathroom. That made the quarters worth the extra cost to Rodney, who was tired of working in a grimy sweatshop every night. For a white-collar worker, his fingernails were a disaster.

One day Meg called and asked him to tell the guys he was taking Saturday off because she had a surprise for him. He picked her up at Arena at noon and she asked him to drive around Dupont Circle, which was only two minutes from her apartment. She directed him to turn onto New Hampshire Ave. and pull into the underground parking for the Dupont, a high-rise apartment building bordering the circle.

In the elevator, Meg pressed the tenth floor and admonished, Don’t fart, her finger pointing directly at Rodney. He laughed at the reminder of the last time they had shared an elevator—that infamous night in January when they had dinner with his friends. Meg had displayed her new hourglass figure and he discovered she was Jewish.

Following her down the hall, Rodney assumed they were visiting a tenant, but Meg held a key in her hand and used it to open the door at the end of the hall. They entered a brightly lit, expensively furnished apartment with a southern exposure that permitted a wide-open view of Dupont Circle and a vast expanse of blue sky.

Very nice, Rodney said with admiration in his tone.

Meg set her handbag on a narrow desk that backed up the sofa. Removing her coat, she casually tossed it over the sofa’s arm.

Whose is it?

Placing one hip on a windowsill, she arched back in a glamorous movie star pose—like a pin-up from the ’40s—one arm stretched far behind her head, one leg extended, the other bent for effect.

What are you doing?

A small rotation of Meg’s raised wrist indicated, look around; it’s all mine.

Her continued silence started the cogs in Rodney’s brain rotating. He recognized the angle of her body as one that demonstrated complete ownership.

You? How can this be yours? You live three blocks away.

"I used to live three blocks away. I decided this was nicer."

C’mon—it’s a game. You didn’t say a thing.

"That would’ve spoiled the surprise. N’est-ce pas?"

It came furnished?

Nope.

He went to the refrigerator. It was chock full of the usual Meg Harman specialty items from Magruder’s. He could tell from the tins of pâté and anchovies, the olives, carrots and celery, that she lived in the apartment. Okay. I get it. You’re watching a friend’s place while they’re away.

Coming down from her perch, she followed him into the kitchen and said, Have a seat. We need a drink.

Coffee?

I think champers is better suited for the occasion. She popped the cork on a chilled split and poured two fizzy glassfuls. Grab a coaster.

I love this dining table. So pleasing to the eye, he said. And it breaks up the square lines of the sofa and the other wood pieces.

The dining table was round, delicately grained in a