Charmed Lives
Gay Spirit in Storytelling
·
edited by Toby Johnson & Steve Berman
A White Crane Book
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords
Copyright © 2006 by White Crane Institute.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief citation or review, without the written permission of White Crane Institute. For information write: White Crane Institute, 172 Fifth Avenue, Suite 69, Brooklyn NY 11217.
editor@gaywisdom.org
www.gaywisdom.org
Cover photo by Kip Dollar
Cover design copyright © 2006 by Sou MacMillan
Published as a trade paperback original by White Crane Books, an imprint of Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Ave, Maple Shade NJ 08052.
First U.S. edition, 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Charmed lives : gay spirit in storytelling / edited by Toby Johnson & Steve Berman. -- 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm. -- (White crane wisdom series)
ISBN 1-59021-016-6 (alk. paper)
1. Gay men--Fiction. 2. Gay men--Literary collections. 3. Gay men’s
writings, American. I. Johnson, Edwin Clark. II. Berman, Steve.
PS648.H57C5 2006
813’.0108358’086642--dc22
2006036383
White Crane Institute is a 501(c)(3) education corporation, committed to the certainty that gay consciousness plays a special and important role in the evolution of life on Earth. White Crane Institute publishes White Crane, the Journal of Gay Wisdom & Culture. Your contributions and support are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. White Crane Institute, 172 Fifth Avenue, Suite 69, Brooklyn NY 11217.
White Crane Wisdom Series
White Crane Institute’s guiding principle: “fostering the gathering and dissemination of information about the critical role sexuality and gender has played and continues to play in the development of cultural, spiritual and religious traditions and to provide a nurturing environment for the continuation and expansion of those explorations for the greater good of all society.”
As Gay people we bear wisdom. As Gay people we create culture. White Crane is proud to present these valuable treasures through our Gay Wisdom Series. Our aim is to provide you with fine books of insight, discernment and spiritual discovery.
Also by Toby Johnson
The Myth of the Great Secret
In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld
Plague: A Novel About Healing
Getting Life in Perspective
An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
Gay Spirituality
Gay Perspective
Secret Matter
Two Spirits (with Walter L. Williams)
Also by Steve Berman
Trysts
Vintage: A Ghost Story
Table of Contents
Introduction: Straw into Gold Toby Johnson
Introduction: Straw is Neither Dross nor Gold Steve Berman
Ella, Kelly and Me… Mark Abramson
The Story Behind the Story Perry Brass
An Angel on the Threshold Eric Andrews-Katz
Shades Bill Goodman
The Canals of Mars Victor J. Banis
What Queer Spirit Sees Jeffery Beam
After Edward Michael Gouda
What Two Men Do In Bed Bryn Marlow
Great Uncle Ned J.R.G. De Marco
Beyond the Blue Bardo Sterling Houston
The Verse Jay Michaelson
My Last Visits With Harry Bill Blackburn
Reversing Vandalism Jim Van Buskirk
Grandfather’s Photograph Neil Ellis Orts
Gay Spirituality? Will Gray
“Charmed, I’m Sure” Mark Thompson and Malcolm Boyd
Viewing the Statue of David Jim Toevs
The True and Unknown Story of Albert Gale Andrew Ramer
Tom or An Improbable Tail Ruth Sims
Free Speech Martin K. Smith
This I Know Dan Stone
Musuko Dojoji Mark Horn
A Path of Mirrors Don Clark
Lines John McFarland
Left with Love Lewis DeSimone
Get Thee Behind Me Christos Tsirbas
His Paper Doll Steve Berman
Desiring St. Sebastian Donald L. Boisvert
Avalokiteshvara at The 21st Street Baths Toby Johnson
Manifest Love David Nimmons
Neighborhood Walk Steven A. Hoffman
My Pride and Joy Tyler Tone
The Bell of St. Michael’s Gary Craig
So What is the Charm? Bert Herrman
And, finally Michael Sigmann
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Introduction I
Straw into Gold: Storytelling as Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Toby Johnson
“Let me tell you a story…” These are words as potent as the creative declaration in Genesis: “Let there be light.” For in just the same way that from the light (of the Big Bang) flowed all that now exists materially, so from the stories told through the ages, the world of human experience has been created.
Everything we know we learned from “stories” others told us: about experience, about life, about meaning, about love and sex, about God and the whole of the cosmos.
Some stories scared us—like those about “the boogeyman” or about “the Terrorists” or, too often, about “the sexual perverts.” Some of the stories literally produced our personalities—like the stories of The Little Engine That Could or The Three Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. If we’re tenacious, provident and temperate as adults, it’s in great part because we took to the heart the lessons of those stories. Telling stories can be powerful. Stories set up “self-fulfilling prophecies.”
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The goal of this collection of stories and personal anecdotes is to offer alternative stories to the ones the culture is telling about what it means to be gay. The stories we tell ourselves and share with one another are the way we alter our attitude of mind.
Some of the entries in this collection are personal anecdotes and accounts of real experiences. Some are delightfully whimsical, some profoundly religious. Most are fictional short stories in the vein of the TV show The Twilight Zone, that is, tales with imaginative fantastical elements and neat and surprising—and meaningful—twists. Gay consciousness seems to naturally see life with a twist—sometimes ironic, or sardonic or campy, sometimes sweet and sensitive. The point of telling stories with a touch of the Twilight Zone is to move them into the realm of myth and metaphor. That is, after all, how the stories of religion have come down to us: adding mystical, magical, miraculous details to a story gives the insight or spiritual/moral wisdom eternal verity. Such stories are not literally “true,” but, and more importantly, they’re memorable and richly meaningful.
Such stories achieve mythic stature because they transcend ordinary reality to hint at something beyond. Dealing with death and afterlife is one of the most familiar ways stories achieve this mythic stature. A number of the stories in this collection are like that. Death signifies transcending ego, going beyond self into a greater—and mysterious—reality. In that sense, death is a metaphor for eternity.
The gay community has become sensitive to death in the last decades because of the mysterious happenstance of a new and virulent virus showing up among our numbers as the clue to a threat to planetary survival. So many deaths around us spurred gay spiritual awareness. Being in the presence of death tends to “focus the mind”—to cite the famous quotation from Samuel Johnson about the threat of being hanged—and to make one look at life from the larger perspective. Indeed, to cite another popular chestnut that’s come to be part of modern mythology, when you’re in the presence of somebody who is dying and the portal to the metaphorical “tunnel of light” opens for them, you yourself can sometimes see the radiance shining out, and it changes you.
That light is part of the story we tell ourselves about the larger universe referred to as supernatural. The supernatural is the realm of God, Jesus and the Saints of religion; it is also the world of vampires, ghosts and paranormal powers. The supernatural is what’s invisible to the eye.
“L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux,”according to the sexually ambiguous French aviator/storyteller/puer aeternis Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
And what’s invisible to all of us is other people’s consciousness—their thoughts and experience of being aware. So reference to the supernatural and the mysterious is reference to the larger consciousness of which we are somehow a part, but don’t immediately realize—all of us like neurons in the planetary mind of the sun as it has evolved on Planet Earth. The way we actually do experience other people’s consciousness is through being compassionate. That is why all stories about the supernatural realm are lessons about feeling others’ pain and others’ joys.
The aim of this collection is to offer new stories, new ways of thinking about gay experience. Mark Abramson’s story, “Ella, Kelly and Me…” reminds us of the camaraderie and opportunity gay life offers—and of the enduring quality of love. Joseph de Marco’s “Great Uncle Ned” will likely bring tears to your eyes, and remind you to get over personal biases. After reading Martin K. Smith’s story, “Free Speech,” you and your lover might find the reference to “kalpataru tea” can be the code word to allow you to speak what’s really on your mind; it could change your life. Truthtelling, after all, is at the heart of coming out. Mark Thompson and Malcolm Boyd’s account of their real life journey together gives hope and humor. And Don Clark’s recounting his spirit guides might suggest you too can see your life magically and spiritually guided. And that’s only mentioning a handful of the more than thirty stories that follow!
This is the work of religion—but in the modern culture religion has fallen behind. They’re not telling new stories. We need new stories: the old ones haven’t worked as they should. And gay people’s experience is a sign of that. We—of all people—are motivated to change the stories people tell about homosexuality, about deviance, about the meaning of incarnation in flesh.
Science and human discovery has been about dropping old stories and learning new and better ones. The story about the stork bringing babies is replaced by the story of sexuality, just as the story about God creating the animals in the Garden of Eden has been replaced by the story of the origin and evolution of species on earth. The whole universe is changing because we’re coming to understand just how arbitrary some of these stories are. What’s peculiar to modern human consciousness is that now we, unlike most human beings before us, can be aware of the nature and power of stories, yet can also stand outside them and see their metaphorical/mythical character. And we can contrive how to change them.
Changing stories is an act of transformation. And transformation is one of the great thoughts of the planet. We all resonate with it. This is the underlying meaning behind the great myths from Jesus and the Resurrection to Persephone and the seasons to Rumpelstiltskin and the secret for turning straw into gold. And indeed our current awareness of the nature of myth as metaphor, not history, is transforming how the content of the myths and stories is understood.
In traditional mythology, knowing the name of something—a god, a beast of prey or predation, a monster, a Beloved—was believed to give power over that thing. It bestowed the talent of summoning it. Hence the Biblical God had an unpronounceable name (just four consonants without vowels so it couldn’t be spoken, except once a year by the High Priest to whom had been revealed the vowels as a secret initiation). One of the powers that came with name-giving was transformation. Naming something transforms it.
Transformation is a power of gay people. In the most mundane way, “coming out” itself is an experience of transformation. The meaning and significance and feeling tone of homosexuality changes dramatically in this experience that people necessarily go through to be gay. You have to realize that almost everything everybody (including YHWH) says about sex, gender and love is wrong—at least for you. You have to look within to find your own truth instead of listening to parents and authorities. You have to transform your world.
And the traits that are associated with homosexuality—in particular, with gay men—are those of transformation. Rearranging the furniture, remodeling a house, making up a floral arrangement, doing another person’s hair, or soothing a patient’s pain, teaching a child, writing a book, composing a symphony—all are forms of transformation. And these require “talent.” Talents are what are spoken about in the myths as “powers.” And the people in the myths with powers—fairies, witch-crones, warlocks, blind seers, berdache two-spirits—are frequently gender variant.
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The secret of turning straw into gold in the fairy tale was tied to knowing the name of the elf/demon/daimon who performed the transformation. Knowing the name gave power. Remember the story was that a boastful merchant exaggerated the skills of his seamstress daughter and proclaimed she could virtually spin gold out of straw. When this exaggeration got reported to the King, it was taken seriously and a royal order went out that, under threat of beheading if she failed, the girl should transform a barnful of straw into gold for the kingdom’s treasury.
There was no way, of course, for the merchant’s daughter to accomplish this task. But then out of nowhere appeared an elf who said he could and agreed to perform the transformation on condition the girl give him a gift of her necklace. She did so and he spun the whole barnful into gold. The King was so pleased he ordered her to work another night at her spinning wheel. Again the elf appeared and agreed to perform, this time asking for her ring. And again the King wanted more gold and sent her back to work. On the third night the gift the elf asked for was the girl’s first son when the baby would be born. In fear of losing her head, the girl agreed.
The greedy King was so impressed he married the merchant’s daughter himself, and a year later she gave birth to a prince. Soon the elf returned to claim his final payment. The young mother begged and begged, offering all the wealth in the kingdom, but he was adamant. They had an agreement; he wanted the infant. But he agreed to drop his claim if in three days she could guess his name (i.e., identify the power by which transformation occurs).
The Queen sent messengers out to investigate the background of this magical creature. One of them happened to discover the elf out in the woods being elf-like, celebrating his power, dancing around a fire, singing: “Nobody can guess my name is Rumpelstiltskin.” On the third night, then, the Queen was able to confront the elf with his secret name and void the agreement and keep her son.
The secret of turning straw/dross into gold—the secret sought by the alchemists, in a complex metaphor for transforming human consciousness into divine consciousness—is linked to knowing the potent name. The name is a key to power. (Rumpelstiltskin, by the way, is a German name of a kind of poltergeist that shakes [”rumples”] the stilts of raised houses—not so terribly secret.)
In a surprisingly similar way, one of the healing powers of psychotherapy and medicine is giving a name to troubling symptoms. We’ve all likely had an experience of the power of medical diagnosis. Just having a doctor look at some condition and giving it a name can result in the symptoms disappearing. This is an aspect of what’s called the placebo effect, and it is especially so in mental health services.
A major way that psychotherapy works is by giving the patient a name—a handle—for their problem and/or assuring them the problem is “normal.” Of course, knowing the diagnosis Broken Arm isn’t going to make bone knit back together automatically, but seeing the doctor and getting X-rays can make the pain diminish immediately, if only because uncertainty and anxiety are assuaged. And being told you’re just having a predictable mid-life crisis does make your craziness seem more manageable—and the shaking of the stilts of your life less threatening.
People tell themselves stories in their mind. They repeat over and over comments made by parents or teachers or ex-boyfriends or girlfriends; in serious schizophrenia these are experienced as hearing voices. Such self-talk becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. How we experience our lives is mediated by the stories we were told and the stories we are still telling ourselves. Some of these stories have contributed greatly to our lives; some have resulted in torment and guilt. Psychological maturity—the aim of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis—includes being aware of the stories and taking responsibility for continuing to honor or believe them or deciding not to. Sometimes maturity and mental health comes from not listening to the stories anymore or beginning to tell oneself new stories.
People become what they think they are. They become the labels they use for themselves. If you think of yourself as a “miserable sinner” and continually berate yourself for failing to succeed at anything you try because, after all, you’re a miserable sinner, you’ll make yourself unhappy and feckless.
Cognitive styles of psychotherapy seek to change people’s behavior and self-experience by getting them to recognize the terms of their self-talk and then to change them. Thinking of yourself as a vital, loving person instead of a miserable sinner is sure more likely to enliven your life and attract other loving persons to you.
New Age Religious Science and Western esoteric tradition calls this phenomenon The Law of Attraction. We become what we think we are and we attract into our lives what we think about. The stories we tell ourselves become true, sometimes through what seem like coincidences or, even, miracles. This is the dynamic of self-fulfilling prophecy and it operates even at the level of karma and luck: what we expect to happen comes true because we—consciously or unconsciously and maybe mystically—set it up to happen.
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Homosexual liberation comes from being able to name the experience of inexplicable and taboo feelings of sexual attraction for members of one’s own sex. The first step of coming out is being able to say to oneself “I’m not like everybody else. I’m a homosexual.” And because the word homosexual has been given such negative connotations, the gay population over the years has given more felicitous, self-chosen names for this experience of sexuality.
Naming our aberrant sexual orientation has been an ongoing theme. Each generation and wave of political and cultural organizing has sought to rename itself to give a new and different tenor to homosexual consciousness and set up different self-fulfilling prophecies in order to transform and improve gay people’s lives.
“Gay” is, indeed, the word that’s been in use for at least the last century, though organized groups of homosexuals and individuals have called for other self-identifiers to suggest other connotations: uranian, intermediate type, urning, third sex, homophile, gay, lesbian, bisexual, faggot and dyke, queer, same-sex, men who love men and women who love women, LGBTQ, even “I-don’t-want-to-be-labeled.” Each of these names suggests certain qualities of sexual orientation—either of innocuousness or of threat, depending on context and political or personal vicissitudes for which the identification is proclaimed.
If you think about your homosexuality as creating a psychiatric condition, a cause of sin and a perverse abnormality (the way the anti-gay forces teach), something to keep secret, you’re likely to become a miserable sinner. If you think of your homosexuality as revealing Rumpelstiltskin’s secret for producing gold, you’re much more likely to find happiness, love and fulfillment. The transformation comes from relaxing resistance to the way things are. So listen to your heart, and be what and who you really are.
Twisting the straw metaphor, you might say life is like the game of drawing straws: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, most of the time it’s all a matter of chance. If you think you have won the game, you’re ahead. The way to change your fortune is to conceive of your life as having pulled the long straw in this lifetime. And being gay is one of the long straws in the game of karmic straw pull—indeed, a gold one.
There’s a charm in gay life, a bit of magic, of specialness, a secret the others don’t know, a talent in how to live well—joie d’vivre—and how to see and tell the truth. There’s an allure to gay life, a golden glimmer—at least for those of us who see it—that our gay conscious-ness, born of seeing from a different perspective and through different filters, gives us insight into eternal, spiritual truth. The charm makes us lovable people, makes our lives interesting and helps make the world around us richer and neater for everybody. We perform an act of transformation when we claim and live our charm.
That has been the long-term goal of all the various manifestations of the homosexual rights/gay liberation movements. When homosex-ually-oriented people think positively and felicitously about homosexuality and tell themselves and others positive stories about their sexual experiences and affections, they—and everyone around them—are going to be happier, more fulfilled, more productive, and more contributing to society.
That’s why positive and charming stories about homosexual experience—and positively charged names for these experiences—are an important part of improving gay people’s lives.
New stories change how we see the world.
And, lo and behold, the world will change to fit the better stories. This is how we change the world. This is how we save the world. Metaphorically, this is how we create gold out of straw.
Introduction II:
Straw Is Neither Dross or Gold
Steve Berman
So I wonder who taught Rumpel-stiltskin how to spin straw into gold. Certainly it’s a useful talent. Yet, by the end of the fairy tale, this magical skill fails to obtain the stunted faery’s deepest desire: companionship (why else would he want the child?). Rumpelstiltskin is not interested in the maiden’s hand; rather, he seeks to circumvent what society often considers the proper mode of family life—taking a wife—for an entirely male household.
As a writer, a fantasist by nature, I have always wondered about Rumpelstiltskin. He seems symbolic of so many gay men. Capering and mischievous, forced to the edges of the general public, reviled yet sought after for his gifts. We are as fey as he is. And, like Rumpelstiltskin, we often try to transform the world from something lackluster into enchanting.
But what is wrong with straw? Or our lives? These amber stalks have been our bedding and roofs, and have been woven to carry our every belonging. Sheaves of wheat will not really turn to pieces of gold in our hands, and the majority of us lead very ordinary lives without the adventures of fairy tales.
Perhaps that is for the best. For when we only see the dross, the less-than-perfect aspects of our own existence, then the simple pleasures become meaningless. In those old stories, the simpleton son is often the happiest of his brothers, understanding that life may not be fair, but it can still be enjoyed. By not chasing after fool’s gold, the simpleton emerges the victor and lauded by his kin and neighbors for actually being the wisest of them all.
I’m not saying gay men should avoid daydreaming or hoping for a better life. To strive for more is human. But we need to take some time and notice the golden aspects of our present. The warmth of a lover’s hand, the encouragement in a sibling’s smile, remembering all the leaps forward.
Rumpelstiltskin was alone. Many gay men feel that way too often in life. In the stories that follow, loneliness and despair are the real villains and hope comes in knowing that such conditions are temporary. Much like the pitfalls in a fairy tale. Perhaps the best transformation is not straw into gold, but gilding the heart and spirit.
Oh, if you happen one evening to be out for a late walk and happen upon a bitter little man complaining of the selfishness of princesses, do tell him your story, spend some time with him, become friends. It may end up magical for both of you.
Ella, Kelly and Me
Mark Abramson
“There is no greater agony than bearing
an untold story inside you.”
Maya Angelou
I was sweeping out the dressing rooms of the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco’s Mission District after our first annual AIDS benefit, Men Behind Bars: the bartenders’ folly, when I found an unmarked audio cassette. I figured that a cast member had been using it to practice dance steps and now that the show was closed, had left the tape behind. It found its way into my pocket and came home with me. I didn’t know who the singer was, but the music was soothing and uplifting.
I worked as a bartender on Castro Street in those days. After college and some graduate school, I was at an age when I knew everything except what I wanted to do with my life, so it was the perfect choice at the time. It wasn’t a bar I frequented before I took the job. It was the sort of place that regulars came in to visit old friends more than to meet someone new.
That bar on Castro Street was just a neighborhood watering hole on one of the gayest blocks in the world and some of the customers had moved to San Francisco before I was born. Other than tourists, most of the guys my age didn’t show up at the bar until they got off work, so I grew to appreciate the old-timers, as I first thought of them. They had a vast knowledge of history, books and music, Hollywood trivia, politics and just about everything else.
One day at work I played the tape I’d found. “That last song was Ella Fitzgerald singing Blue Skies from the Irving Berlin Songbook on the Verve label in 1958,” a guy named Woody said. Whenever they asked for dice in order to play 5,000, Woody reached for the pen and pad. He didn’t mind keeping score—in Roman numerals.
“And this one’s Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered by Rogers and Hart,” another customer growled. His name was Bill, but everyone called him Juanita, even though he stood well over six feet tall and had a deep thundering voice. His demeanor was imposing, but he was a sweetheart. “Someone put a tape together from different songbooks, but it’s all Ella Fitzgerald. Nice stuff.”
I’d never heard the uncensored lyrics to that song before, but she sang them all: worship the trousers that cling to him and horizontally speaking, he’s at his very best. Hers was also the most amazing voice I’d ever heard, once I stopped to really listen. Now I wanted to hear more. I’d heard of Ella Fitzgerald, I suppose, but where I grew up the radio played twangy country music that poured through the windows of dusty pick-up trucks on gravel roads. Even back then, something told me there were better things.
I bought a couple of dozen Ella Fitzgerald albums before I realized she’d recorded nearly a hundred by then. I bought a lot of other albums, too. The boss kidded me about my new passion. When a ballad came on, he’d make wrist-slashing motions and say, “Those dead black women are depressing, but your customers seem to like them.”
“Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington may be dead, but Nancy Wilson and Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald are still very much alive,” I told him.
One day I came home from work, opened my mailbox and found a glossy brochure from the Paul Masson Mountain Winery advertising a series of summer concerts. There was Ella Fitzgerald on a Sunday afternoon. I immediately wrote a check and walked it to the mailbox. By the time that Sunday came, I had talked my friend Doug into driving. I held the map as we headed south from the city with the sun climbing the morning sky. We parked halfway up the mountain and walked a narrow one-lane road the rest of the way to the concert site while a limousine crept past us on a single-lane road. There was no one else in sight besides Doug and the driver and me on that whole mountaintop until an old woman popped out of the back seat with her arms full of sheet music. She spoke in a cheerful little girl’s voice, “Hiya, Fellas!”
Doug said, “Good morning, Miss Fitzgerald.” He wasn’t star-struck like I was. He could have taken a picture of her or of the two of us or asked for her autograph or he could have done anything besides watching me back into a tree.
Ella Fitzgerald looked right at me. “Are you okay?” she asked, as if I weren’t stupefied. I tried to nod and smile and she went on, “Did you boys drive all the way down from San Francisco? That sure is a pretty town. Thanks for coming to see me. You got here plenty early. Well, I hope you get some good seats and enjoy yourselves on such a beautiful day.” She was talking directly to Doug and me and I couldn’t even speak.
A man in a suit finally appeared and led her away, but we had a couple of hours to kill, so we drank some wine, ate lunch and were first in line. A trio came out to set the tone and then Ella Fitzgerald appeared in a long sparkling dress. Everyone leapt to their feet and cheered as she neared the microphone, “Babies, babies, sit down. It’s too hot for all that! You haven’t even heard me sing yet. See if you still feel that way later. There’ll be time. Maybe it will even cool off a bit. Sit down now and relax.”
She sang.
It wasn’t exactly like the albums. She didn’t pack the power of her younger recordings. When she forgot some of the lyrics, she made up her own. Still, there was an effervescent glow that radiated from her like the sweltering heat that afternoon as she projected such joyful love of the music and the rhythm! And a couple of times she ended on a note so pure and round I could almost see it soar on a breeze across the Saratoga Valley to the next mountain top, miles away.
Ella Fitzgerald was a far cry from what most of my friends were listening to in those days. I like to think of gay men as successive generations of a tribe. For my peers, most of the music and the dance were steeped in the sweat of young men on the disco floor under strobe lights and fog machines. Still I was grateful to learn the value of the elders as they passed down their lessons like secret family recipes from one generation to the next.
When I was very young, an older man once warned me, “Never date a bartender.” Tending bar on Castro Street, I finally understood what he must have meant. The hours can be lonely, tips are quickly earned and spent and innocent flirtations can cause jealousy. Even in those years during the worst of the scourge of AIDS, I met incredible people from all over the world. I altered the rule to never date a bartender unless you ARE one. Other bartenders understood.
Sometimes I worked nights. Tips were even better and I met more guys my age, but I still enjoyed the daytime crowd, the men who had been here before me. I learned how they’d banded together in the face of hostile persecution. A neighborhood bar was their sanctuary, an extension of their living rooms, if not their bedrooms. In some ways it reminded me of the small-town church where my family belonged. The bar was where they celebrated their victories and mourned their losses and where they kindly took me under their wing.
I loved to listen to their stories. One guy named Bob had once met Ethel Merman at a cocktail party on Long Island and could still recite every word of their conversation. Jim had danced with her in the chorus of a Broadway show. Back in 1963 when Judy Garland performed here for the last time, Bill knew an usher who snuck him into her dressing room and they shared a bottle of scotch. That same year, Dan went to hear a young new singer at the Hungry i in North Beach. Afterward, they went to the Black Cat in time for last call and the cops raided the place. Dan said he rode knee-to-knee in the paddy wagon with Barbra Streisand all the way downtown.
They called one of the guys Granddad. He remembered before there were gay bars all over San Francisco. People had cocktail parties at home or met at a certain bar in the Fairmont every other Tuesday or every third Monday at the St. Francis. I was playing my Ella Fitzgerald tape one day when Woody said, “From This Moment On… Cole Porter Songbook, 1956,”…and that was Granddad’s cue to tell us about when Cole Porter came to town. It was one of my favorite stories.
Granddad had been about the youngest guest at a party to meet the famous composer. Bouquets of roses filled the Nob Hill apartment and it was a perfect night for the view. A butler greeted each guest, took his topcoat and served him cocktails. An hour went by before people asked, “Where is he? Isn’t he coming?” Everyone knew everyone else except the butler, who turned out to be Cole Porter. It had been his idea to find out how San Franciscans treated their servants and they passed his test. There were stories about other famous men, too, especially Liberace. Several had encountered Nureyev at the Ritch Street baths and everybody had a Rock Hudson tale.
2
Having been a bartender for a while, I recognized most of the faces in each week’s obituaries in the B.A.R. With so many deaths in such a short time they became surreal, an endless swirl of bad dreams descending like a cold dark fog from Twin Peaks after a sunny day. San Francisco had survived earthquakes and fires, the Zodiac killer, mass suicides in Jonestown, assassinations in city hall and potholes, so I always believed that the spirit of the Barbary Coast would come alive again whenever creative people came here looking for it. But AIDS had become an even greater part of our daily lives. I was sure I would join its victims soon and grateful to have experienced what I did.
One of those experiences was Kelly. The night we met we were still talking in my bed as the sun rose. I couldn’t imagine why we’d never met before. He was a bartender at the Pendulum, around the corner from where I worked and he only lived a couple of blocks away from me. I remember telling him, “My grandparents came from Sweden, but I grew up in Minnesota. Where are you from?”
“North Carolina, but I grew up in Florida and Harlem. Kelly is my last name. My great-grandfather was obviously an Irishman who raped one of his slaves. I’ve never had a good look at the family tree, to tell you the truth. I’m part Cherokee and part Jamaican, but I consider myself black. When I was a model in New York I wasn’t black enough for some gigs. What did that mean? I remember the drinking fountains in Florida—White Only. There wasn’t a fountain for Not Black Enough.”
All I could say was, “Wow.” We didn’t exchange numbers, but I knew where he worked. After he left I found a silver ring with three onyx stones on my bathroom sink. I wore that ring until the following Christmas, when he gave me one to replace it. I still have that ring in Kelly’s old jewelry box, but one of the stones has fallen out.
We soon reached that corny stage of leaving each other little notes and surprises of cards and gifts. For Valentine’s Day he bought me a huge framed photograph of Ella Fitzgerald. For his birthday I made dinner and gave him one of Billie Holiday. He wouldn’t take it home, though. He said they’d look great together in our apartment someday. Kelly wanted to move into a place together, but I had another rule besides the one about dating bartenders: “Don’t give up your apartment in the first year.”
Two months after we met, an electrical fire started in my kitchen in the middle of the night. We were in the front bedroom. By the time the alarm went off, there was thick smoke coming down the hallway and flames from floor to ceiling in the back. I tried to wake the neighbors while Kelly ran toward the kitchen with a towel. The fire department came, six trucks with nearly thirty firefighters who quickly doused the fire, but everything beyond the bathroom was destroyed. Kelly came to the front door coughing and covered with soot. Once we got out in the fresh air on the sidewalk I told him, “I think you’re definitely black enough, now.”
He didn’t laugh, but said, “I think it’s time to get over your ‘one year’ rule. How about coming to my place? We can get cleaned up and decide on what to do with the rest of our lives.”
I put my arms around him and said, “Sure.” I didn’t care where we lived any more. We were crowded but happy in his studio apartment near the Mint until we found a larger place on Castro Street. Both the framed photographs of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald had survived the fire.
Kelly said he couldn’t cook, but he lied. I’d come home to find him stirring something on the stove with a coconut cake in the oven. Another day he was making fried chicken and biscuits. The crock-pot was full of beans and ham hocks. A cherry pie was cooling on the table. I’d been at work and missed the preparations, but it was one of the best meals ever. He had a little gold box full of recipes he always hid from me. If I tried to look inside, he would snatch it away.
When I asked about the chicken, he teased, “I learned to fry a chicken at my grandmother’s knee and she made me swear never to tell her secrets to a white person. Go on now, before you get splattered.” After Kelly went to bed, I poked through the trashcan for some secret ingredients, but I never discovered any and I gave up on finding that gold box while he was still alive.
Kelly and I each had our own histories and our own photo albums. As we showed each other pictures, they would fall out and get jumbled. My Swedish family members ended up among his more exotic ones. Old friends of his and mine were mixed together as if they’d always known each other. We knew we would never have to sort them out and I suppose we tried in this way to claim parts of each other’s pasts as well as whatever future we had.
We worked at our respective bars the first Sunday in October, the day of the Castro Street Fair. When we finally got home off our sore feet and started counting tips, Kelly shouted, “Let’s take a trip to New York!” I was almost too tired to think straight, but I was game.
I have always loved to visit New York. You can feel its beat through your shoes as if the long fingers of a bass player were plucking the city’s heartstrings from somewhere up in Harlem. Taxi horns are trumpets on the doo-wops and scattered bits of melodies are all around. The rhythm depends on the time of day or night and your frame of mind. I hadn’t been there in years and I knew it would be fun to go with Kelly. During his high school years, he had lived with his Aunt Claire on Riverside Drive in Harlem.
Claire Leyba was the actress who played Blanche in the all-black version of Anna Lucasta in the New York play, for a long run on the London stage and in the movie version with Eartha Kitt and Sammy Davis, Jr. Also, for the past forty-odd years, Aunt Claire had been the lover of the great jazz singer, Carmen McRae. Claire wasn’t about to give up her rent-controlled apartment to live with Carmen full time, so they were constantly back and forth between New York and Los Angeles.
Kelly warned me, “We’ll check into our hotel before she even knows we’re in town. She’ll want us to come by, but we’ll already have plans for every minute. If we go to her place, she’ll try to feed us. Avoid eating anything Claire serves! It could be tragic. Trust me.”
During the flight Kelly told me more about life with Aunt Claire. “The toast of Harlem,” he called her. “No one would dare to plan anything important without inviting her first. Then, if she couldn’t make it, they’d have to change the date, even for a wedding or a funeral.” Now he was pulling my leg, I was sure.
We crawled into a taxi at JFK. The back seat’s plastic cover crackled with the cold and the driver blared Christmas music on tinny rear speakers on this, the first weekend in November. A forest of cardboard pine-tree air fresheners made breathing painful. By the time we finally got to our hotel I felt sick. “That ride was horrible!” I complained.
Kelly frowned and pressed his hand to my forehead. “You’re burning up. I packed some aspirin. I’ll go get it.” I promised Kelly I’d feel better in the morning, but spent most of the weekend in a daze of fever which varied by the time of day and how much aspirin I could stomach.
Saturday we walked and shopped for gifts and souvenirs. I’ve always had a few rituals about travel and especially visiting New York. I like to look at the view from the tallest place I can find. Rituals seemed especially important during those years in the heart of the AIDS crisis. I dragged Kelly along to the top of the World Trade Center. He took me to Radio City Music Hall, where he had once been a tour guide and could still rattle off his spiel. I thought my fever must have come up again since I was getting excited hearing about the animals they use in the Christmas show.
Aunt Claire arrived at our hotel that evening wearing a floor-length coat and fur hat that covered every inch of her except her face. She wailed, “Kelly! My Baby! Let me look at you!” When he hugged her, his chin just touched the top of her hat. He had to bend down to kiss her cheek.
“And you are Mark! Her voice sounded much deeper than in the movies, especially when it was directed at me. I’d finally seen Anna Lucasta by this time, but that was made over thirty years ago. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance. You really dig my Kelly, don’t you?”
This was not a question, but I answered, “You know I do.”
“I can tell… whenever he calls me, which isn’t nearly often enough. It’s about time you both settled down and made each other happy,” she said. Kelly had insisted that we be dressed in suits and ties so we could take photographs. Now we put on our winter coats and hats and gloves to walk the few blocks to the Algonquin Hotel for another New York ritual of mine: a Martini to Dorothy Parker’s memory.
Aunt Claire said she had to be uptown a little later because a friend of hers was doing a reading and she’d promised to come, but she and Kelly had a lot of catching up to do first. She talked about her recent stay with Carmen, but how she still didn’t like L.A. very much. In spite of what Kelly had said, his eyes sparkled as he basked in her attention. Maybe he warned me about her to keep me from being let down, but he should have known better. She glanced at her watch after while and said, “My name is at the door. I can get us into my friend’s reading for free and we’ll all go out for a drink with her afterward. Think about it…” She asked a waiter for directions to the powder room.
I turned to Kelly and said, “I’m sorry, but I think my fever’s coming back.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t want to go to some poetry reading anyway…”
“But now we’ve made her late…”
“Oh, you sure don’t want to worry about that! She wouldn’t have it any other way. Claire loves to make an entrance! “
There was a cold rain falling gently through the street-lamps as we left. Aunt Claire kissed Kelly goodnight as I flagged a cab for her. I said, “I loved meeting you. Take this… for the cab fare,” I slipped a five and a ten into her coat pocket.
“Oh, Mark. Sweetheart, that isn’t necessary. You boys call me tomorrow. And take good care of each other. G’Night.”
As the cab splashed off in the thickening rain, Kelly said, “That was very sweet of you, but I know my Aunt Claire. She’ll have that cab driver drop her off at the nearest subway station, tip him a quarter and pocket that money for later.” We both laughed and walked back to our hotel. Even with a fever, I loved being in New York.
On Sunday morning we went uptown for brunch and then walked through the Guggenheim and Central Park. We were talking about his teenage years again when I asked, “Kelly, will you take me to Harlem?”
He said, “I thought you’d never ask.”
While Kelly paid the cab driver, I noticed the Marquee of the Apollo Theatre just up the street. “Kelly… Look!” I shouted at him. I knew that Ella Fitzgerald had won their famous Amateur Night as a teenager. I’d watched Showtime at the Apollo on television and wondered what it really looked like. Now here I was within a block of the place.
“Sure, we can go by there later,” he said, “but c’mon… I haven’t been in this old gay bar in ages.”
It was a dark narrow room. The only patrons were half a dozen elderly black women down the bar. They were all dressed up in big hats and matching gloves. It seemed like a place you might end up after going somewhere else, but never a destination. We sat at two stools near the front door and I asked Kelly, “Are you sure this is a gay bar?”
“Of course it is.”
“But those ladies are so dressed up. They don’t look like lesbians to me.”
Kelly laughed and asked, “Does Aunt Claire?” I could see his point. “And besides, it’s Sunday. They all came from church.”
“Do you think they’re friends of Claire?”
“I’m sure they know her, anyway. Everybody does. That reminds me I promised to call.”
The bartender ambled toward us. “I’ll bet you fellas are here to see Miss Lynne’s show up at the Apollo,” he drawled as he glanced at his wristwatch. “You got plenty of time for a drink or two.”
Kelly said, “We sure are,” and placed a pair of tickets on the bar in front of me.
I read the tickets: The Apollo Theater presents…Arthur Prysock, Gloria Lynn, and Lionel Hampton. How did he score them without me knowing?
When Kelly came back from the phone, I said, “You just made my whole trip, you know. This couldn’t be more perfect… how’s Aunt Claire?”
“I think she has a hangover, but she was crazy about meeting you last night.”
“I loved her, too. How was the reading? Did we miss anything?”
“Oh yeah, Claire said Maya sends her love, too. They went out afterward and Claire told her all about seeing me… and about you, of course.”
“Who’s Maya, some new girlfriend of hers?”
“Hardly… Maya Angelou… Claire’s friend. The reading, remember?”
“Maya Angelou!” I shouted. “You mean I missed out on a chance to see and maybe even meet Maya Angelou… in person?”
“I thought you knew… besides, you were sick.”
“I didn’t know who was reading! Did you?”
“Yeah, Claire said… maybe when you went to the bathroom at the Algonquin.”
“I didn’t go to the bathroom at the Algonquin, Kelly.”
“Maybe it was earlier at the hotel, or when I phoned Claire about meeting us. Geez, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d even know Maya Angelou.”
“She’s only the Ella Fitzgerald of writers.” I nearly shouted before I looked down at the tickets again and sighed. “Kelly, I’m sorry. You didn’t know… and I was sick. If I’d stayed out I wouldn’t have been able to come here today. Come on. Come and show me where Ella got started.”
The bartender said, “Now you fellas stop back in after the show, y’hear? Miss Lynne will be in to hold court between the matinee and the evening.”
“Does everyone know everyone else in Harlem?” I asked Kelly, but he just smiled.
The entrance hallway’s crystal chandeliers lit caricatures of every black entertainer from a young Michael Jackson to Gladys Knight to dozens more I wouldn’t have recognized without Kelly there to name them. The building held the magical smells of an old theater, that mixture of make-up and sweat, dusty curtains and pulleys and greasy ropes. I wasn’t sure I knew the first two performers until I heard them sing and I recognized their hits. Lionel Hampton went on far too long, but still it was great just to be there. Outside, the rain was pouring down. “Where’s the nearest subway?”
“It’s a ways,” Kelly said. “We can take a cab there.”
“How will we ever catch…?” I started to ask, but before I could finish, there was an unmarked car at the curb and we were inside. Later, on the subway, Kelly explained to me about gypsy cabs and I asked, “Aren’t they dangerous? How do you recognize one? Don’t they take business from licensed drivers who pay taxes? How do you know they aren’t ripping you off?”
“Listen!” he said. “When you’re a 6’3” black man, it doesn’t matter if you pay your taxes, how well dressed you are or where your mother buys her diamonds. You watch fifty cabs pass you by to pick up some white guy who’s drunk and cheats on his wife and his taxes. You do that a few times and you start to feel invisible or worse… and you find other ways to get by in the world… and that’s something you’ll never need to worry about. Enough said. “
I had wanted to see New York through Kelly’s eyes, but this weekend was more than I could have imagined. God, I loved that man.
3
One morning in June, I realized it had been nearly ten months since Kelly died and I still wasn’t used to sleeping alone. I looked out the bedroom window at the giant rainbow flag above Castro Street and wondered if the fog would burn off the hills that day. I groped my empty bed for the TV remote and the first words I heard were that Ella Fitzgerald had died. I wanted to pretend it was only another dark dream, crawl back under the covers and shut the world out again. Instead, I clicked through the channels to see what they said about her, mostly brief snippets of old guest spots to tell of a great woman’s life. There were clips of duets with Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Judy Garland. Friends of mine in Europe said the news of her death was enormous there. Radio stations played nothing but Ella Fitzgerald’s music around the clock. The tributes I heard here seemed inadequate for the “First Lady of Song.” What did I expect? We always seem to be looking for the newest craze, but never toward the past.
Kelly and I had called his Aunt Claire more often after our visit to New York and I kept it up after he died. She and I had only met once, but she was a comfort to me through those times and I hoped I was for her too. That Saturday morning in June I picked up the phone and called New York as I poured a cup of coffee. Aunt Claire recognized my voice right away. “Mark, I’m so glad you called today. I was feeling kind of blue, you know?”
“Yeah… me too,” I said, “I guess you’ve heard about Ella.”
“Yeah, Baby, I heard. I got a phone call first thing this morning from L.A.… that sweet brown-skinned girl.”
“You know, Claire… I loved Ella’s music even before I met Kelly. I even got to meet her once… sort of. I went to see her every chance I got, but Kelly and I only saw her once together down at the Circle Star Theater.”
“I think I saw Sinatra there,” Claire said.
“Really?” I asked. “Claire, I was thinking how sorry I am that we didn’t call you when Carmen died. Kelly was so sick by then and I was in a daze, taking care of him. We were thinking of you so much, but if we’d called, you would have worried about him… hearing his voice and how weak he was. I think we wrote to you. I meant to. “
She said, “I know, Baby. I understand. Yes, you boys sent me a beautiful card. I have it right here in my hand. Sweet Kelly, sweet Carmen, sweet Ella. They’re singing with the angels now and I don’t know why I’m here. You and I must still have some work to do here on this earth, I guess… don’t we, Baby?”
I went on, “Claire, I just wondered if you knew her… Ella, I mean. It seems like you and I have talked about so many things since Kelly died, but we’ve never talked about Ella Fitzgerald.”
Claire started to laugh and then she grew quiet. I imagined her thinking back over her life. She finally said, “Oh, Baby, I knew Miss Ella and I loved her like nobody’s business. Carmen and I would always be in the front row when Ella sang… whichever city we were all in at the same time, you know? There are so many years… so many memories.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And if Ella was in town when Carmen was on that stage, Ella and I would be right there sitting together in the front row at the center table.”
I longed to have been there. I could almost picture myself, maybe a miniature self, about three inches tall, hardly big enough to notice. My tiny clone could recline in the ashtray on the table between them with my hands clasped behind my head and my feet up. Ella Fitzgerald in one chair and Aunt Claire in the other and Carmen McRae in a spotlight just a few feet away, leaning into the curve of a grand piano and singing Summertime.
“And after the show, the three of us would go out and paint the town red! Carmen used to get jealous with me for having such a good time with Ella like I did. She’d say, ‘Claire, I think you love Ella better than you love me.’ But I’d just laugh and I’d say, ‘Carmen, you’re so crazy. I love Ella, but you know I love you too, Baby. And you know Ella don’t go that way. Ella’s into men!’ ”
Claire laughed and I laughed along with her. If I ever dreamed while I was growing up on a farm in Minnesota that their world even existed, I never would have believed I’d be nearly able to touch it one day. “You know, Mark, I’ve had some little mini-strokes lately and sometimes I don’t remember things like I used to, but I’ll never forget Ella Fitzgerald,” Claire was saying all of this to me on the phone while Ella’s face flashed across my television screen.
“I’m so glad you called to lift my spirits today. How are you doing, Baby?” she asked.
“Okay, I guess.” After Kelly died I counted each Wednesday as another week I’d survived. They were starting to get mixed up in my head, so that was probably a good sign. “I miss Kelly, but I get by day to day. I have a lot of friends here in San Francisco. Not as many as I used to, but I’m good at meeting people… friends, I mean. No romance. I’m far from there, yet.”
“Now Baby, you know Kelly’s up there watching out for you. He’s right beside you whenever you need him. I have to confess I still have the ashes you sent me. I haven’t been able to bring myself to part with them yet, but I promise to do what you asked… at the Apollo Theatre… before I die.”
“You can keep them as long as you want if they’re a comfort to you,” I told her. “We talked about so many places and it will take time. Friends of ours sprinkled some of Kelly’s ashes off the Eiffel Tower last week. I took some to the Russian River and a flower bed in Seattle. Most of him is up on the red rock hill above Castro Street. He could see that hill from the bedroom window and he used to look out at it for hours. There’s no hurry. Kelly has all the time in the world now.”
“Thank you, Mark,” she said, “I need to hold on to him for a while. You know, I pray to J.C. every day out my window and I talk to Kelly too. J.C. is taking good care of Kelly and Carmen and now Ella too. What a heavenly choir up there these days! You be good to yourself, Mark, and thanks again for reaching out to me from so far away. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Aunt Claire,” I said. “Good-bye.”
Ella was singing with the angels, now. Maybe she would have run into Kelly on the other side and he would have told her how much I loved her music.
I called Claire every few weeks to see how she was doing. Then there was one Saturday morning when I knew that our ritual had changed. She seemed fine at first, but then she’d stop and say, “Baby, it’s so nice of you to reach out to me… and your name was?”
“Mark.”
“Yes, Mark… I’m sorry… and you were married to one of my relatives? Do you have children?”
“No Claire, just the dog…”
“Oh, I know how much comfort a pet can be. My pussycat is a real whore; she just lies on her back with her legs in the air…” She laughed and then there was another long pause before she asked, “Have you and I ever met?”
“Yes Claire, when Kelly and I were in New York we went to the Algonquin and drank Martinis.”
“Oh, I still like to have my little vodka now and then, but I had to give up the reefer, you know? It makes me confused,” she said.