Short Circuits (39 page)

Russ looked at her calmly and listened until she had finished. Then he said: “Madam, my mother was in the audience last night. She was not offended. And she is ten times the lady that you will ever be.” And with that, we walked away.

I loved going to the movies with Russ, though I'm sure my pleasure was not always shared by other members of the audience. Comedy or drama, slapstick or Shakespeare, he would have me laughing hysterically throughout the film. I remember one movie we saw had a very dramatic scene in which one of the male characters, emoting to the rafters, had just reached the end of a particularly heavy speech, yelling at the lead: “What are you going to do about it?” Russ leaned to me and imperiously commanded me: “Shoot that man.”

Another movie episode I will never forget was in the much touted film
Cleopatra
. A lavish spectacle with a cast of tens of thousands, one of the major—and longest—scenes revolves around Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) arriving in Rome to be received by Julius Caesar. The film makers spared no expense. Every one of the tens of thousands of extras was on hand. There were trumpets and drums and elephants and the parade went on endlessly. Finally, her slaves lower her chair to the ground and Cleo steps off to approach Caesar. At this point, Russ again leaned to me and whispered: “If he says ‘how was the trip?' I'm leaving.”

Russ was, as I've indicated, an absolutely wonderful teacher…English, of course…and his students adored him for every one of the 20 or 30-odd years he taught before retiring. He helped write a textbook on English literature used in the majority of high schools throughout the United States.

Russ, in addition to being the quintessential English teacher, was also the quintessential friend and learning of his death created a vacuum in my heart which can never be filled. I never understood why he cut me off toward the end of his life. Perhaps he knew his health was failing. The last time I heard from him was when he called to tell me he had bought a condo in Florida and was moving. He said he did not have the address, but would mail it to me. He never did and I had no way to get in touch with him, though I tried.

Russ was my friend. Russ
is
my friend, and I would give anything to go to one more movie with him.

* * *

BYE, BYE, BIRDIE

Here we go again. Sitting at the computer, minding my own business, when the radio begins playing “Bye, Bye Baby” from
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(or, in my case,
Blonds
), and suddenly it is 1953 and I am back at Northern with my friends Zane and Stu. I had a terrible crush on Zane, and we had just gone to see the movie version of the musical. For some reason…my mind was accountable only to itself even in 1953…I associated the song “Bye, Bye, Baby” with Zane. I still do, to this day.

I think Zane and Stu and I thought of ourselves as something like the gay Three Musketeers. Stu was incredibly talented in a number of areas, but a classic case of A.D.D. before anyone knew what Attention Deficit Disorder was. He was always starting grandiose projects and never finishing them. Very tall, thin, and with red hair, Stu's flamboyance stood out anywhere he went and his sexual orientation was not too terribly hard to guess. He was the campus cut-up at college, but away from campus, among people he did not know, he attracted a lot of unwanted attention. Though his reaction to being stared at was to defiantly kick up the flamboyance level several notches, I knew it hurt him.

Zane was to the theater born. Actor-handsome, and of Greek heritage, he shortened his real first name from Zenon to Zane. He was suave and confident, and represented a lot of the things I wanted to be. And, as I say, I had a huge, unfortunately unrequited, crush on him.

One night, in one of their rooms, they decided that they should practice their makeup skills on me, and brought out a makeup kit they'd borrowed from the drama department. I wasn't particularly wild about the idea…especially when they brought out the lipstick and eyelashes, but went along. About half an hour later, they declared they were done and told me to stand up. Stu then brought over a mirror, faced away from me. Holding it up in front of my face he turned it around to give me the full effect of their efforts—a rather tarty-looking woman. I was so revolted that I fainted. Literally.

We had made plans to meet in New York during summer break. I was totally excited by the prospect, but my father was not, and we had a number of rows over it. Finally he gave in: “Okay, so go to New York with your queer boyfriends.” That was the first time my dad had ever said anything like that, and I was truly shocked. He had met Stu and Zane many times and had never said a word against them. He of course knew full well that I was also queer, and I guess he was just afraid that three gay boys alone in the big city of New York might get into more trouble than we had bargained for.

We had made reservations at a hotel called, if I remember, the St. James. Stu and Zane were to arrive a day or so before me. When I arrived and checked in, they were not in their rooms, and I decided to go out exploring by myself. Naturally, I headed for Times Square, which in 1953 was not quite what it is in 2008. And there, in a city of 8 million people, as I walked down 42nd St., I looked across the street to see Zane and Stu.

My memory for such momentous events in my life is usually very clear, but for some reason I cannot recall details of our stay, or even be absolutely sure that this was my first trip to New York. I imagine it was. In any event, I know we had to have had a marvelous time. And if it was my first time I do remember that the first show I ever saw on Broadway was Rogers & Hammerstein's
Me & Juliet
, which used the music Hammerstein had used for the immensely popular TV series,
Victory at Sea
, and Cole Porter's
Can-Can
.

Oh, to be 19 and with friends in New York City again!

* * *

STU

I learned, from the same long-lost friend who sparked my recent “Letter to a Nun” blog, that one of my very best friends from college, Stu, had died of AIDS…
20 years ago!
How could that be? How could that possibly be? Stu? Tall, crazy, skinny, incredibly talented, hyperactive redheaded Stu, dead? For 20 years??

I met Stu when I entered what was then Northern Illinois State Teacher's College in September of 1952. He, Zane, and I were all interested in theater, and soon became friends. (Isn't it odd that even today I hesitate to mention last names out of concern for opening closet doors?) We were something of the Three Musketeers, though Stu and Zane were far more outgoing than I. Not having to even attempt to hide the fact that we were gay when we were together was exhilarating.

During the break between our Freshman and Sophomore years, we agreed to meet in New York City for three days. I got my first direct evidence that my dad knew of my sexual orientation when, after an argument over the money for the trip being better spent in other ways, Dad finally said, in exasperation, “All right, go to New York with your queer boyfriends.”

One weekend at school, Stu got hold of a makeup kit from the drama department and he and Zane decided they were going to give me a makeover. I wasn't happy about it, but went along. They wouldn't let me see their work until they were done, and when they finally gave me a mirror, I saw an eyelinered, rouged, lipsticked drag queen. I fainted. Literally.

Stu was, as I've said, multi-talented. One time he designed costumes he, Zane, and I were to wear for Halloween (Zane was to be the sun, I the moon, and Stu the stars). They were beautiful. But like everything else Stu started, they were never completed. He was the poster boy for A.D.D. before the condition had a name. He would start one project, then drop it after 20 minutes to go on to another, which would be dropped in the same amount of time.

He was totally impulsive. At one point, while I was on my two-year break from school for the Navy, he decided there was a play opening in London that he absolutely had to see. He somehow scraped together enough money for a plane ticket to London…but not enough for a ticket back…and took off. I still can't remember how he got back, but he did.

Our friendship was interrupted for the four years it took me to do my two year military service and to finish my last two years of school. When I graduated and planned to move to Chicago, Stu and I agreed to get an apartment together, which we did…six blocks and on the same side of the street as the building in which I am now living after my return to Chicago following a 38 year absence.

Stu could easily have starred in a play about Ichabod Crane, whom he strongly resembled. With his red hair and gangly frame, and his flamboyant style, it didn't take much for perfect strangers to determine his sexual orientation. People would stare at him, and it would hurt him deeply, and he would react by becoming even more outrageous. If they wanted queer, he'd give them queer.

I got on his nerves (I can't imagine how that could possibly happen, but it did). One night I asked him five separate times what time he wanted dinner. Finally, he snapped. I don't remember what he said, but he never spoke to me again, and he moved out of the apartment within a week.

Several years later, I turned on the TV and caught him on a game show…a little older, but the same old Stu. It hurt.

True friends come along very seldom in life, and I always thought of Stu, even in the years after we parted ways, as one of the best friends I've ever had, and I was so very sorry to have lost that friendship. That it can now never be rekindled fills me with a renewed sense of loss.

Here's to you, Stu.

* * *

PAT

One of my favorite people during my Los Angeles days was Pat Mallon, who when I first met her was secretary to the President of the statewide (and politically powerful) Engineering and Grading Contractors Association. I was working at the time for a firm called NPR, which was contracted to produce a glossy house organ, called simply
EGCA.
I was the magazine's editor, so Pat and I were in frequent contact, which developed into a friendship.

Pat was…well, to call her “one of a kind” would not come near to describing her. Pat was one of those wonderful Charo-like souls who, in her passion for life, simply ignored age. She was probably in her 60s when we met. Her hair was very long and pitch black. She wore probably about as much makeup as Tammy Baker, but she wore it much better. She favored toreador pants, spiked heels, low-cut blouses (often tube-top) and lots of expensive jewelry. (She at one time had worked with noted jeweler Harry Winston and conducted a side business selling jewelry. Her business card referred to herself as “The Diamond Lady.”) Unlike so many outwardly effusive people, her joy for living went to her very core. In many ways, including her voice and certain of her actions, she reminded me of Carol Channing, and I found her just as charming.

I'd see her every time I went to the EGCA offices, but our friendship was cemented during an EGCA conclave in Las Vegas, over several French Cannons…a delightfully refreshing libation consisting of a equal parts champagne and brandy, three of which could easily have rendered me comatose. But Pat could belt them back like water and never bat an eye.

When we first became friends, she was married to a great guy named Chuck…I am totally embarrassed not to be able to recall his last name (forgive me, Chuck)…who had been a singer with one of the big bands in the 40s. They lived in a beautiful house in the hills overlooking the entire San Fernando Valley. The memory of looking out from their patio at night, with the valley spread out below like a carpet of glittering jewels that put the stars to shame, is one of my fondest memories of L.A.

Chuck traveled a lot, so Pat spent a great deal of time on decorating the house to suit her unique taste, including curtains made of strands of crystal which, when the sun hit them, became a million prisms reflecting their light on every surface. She also spent literally hundreds of hours painstakingly gold-leafing every door frame in the house.

But though I considered Pat and Chuck to be the perfect couple, apparently they did not, because Pat filed for divorce and their house was put up for sale. She could not understand why the realtor did not feel that all her expensive gold-leaf and hard work would not be reflected in setting the selling price. The fact that the new owners may have different tastes or even want to repaint the house and door frames was incomprehensible to her.

Her second husband, Bob Mallon, was a very nice guy who adored her, but was not overly fond of gays, though he was always very pleasant whenever Pat would have Ray and I over, or invite us to one of her lavish parties, for which Pat would spend several days in preparation. Their house, on a hillside just up a winding road from Ventura Blvd., did not have the view of her old house, but there was a large if steeply inclined back yard set into a hillside, on which she and Bob spent a fortune landscaping and decorating with colored lights.

After I moved from Los Angeles, we more or less lost touch, though every year I would get the same mass-printed postcard saying “Keep in touch!” and signed “The Diamond Lady.”

While reality (my arch enemy, as you know) tells me that Pat may no longer be alive, I cannot (or, rather, refuse to) accept the idea. But I tell myself that of course she's still alive, bubbly as ever, still throwing her parties and being her effervescent self. In some ways, Pat was for me a symbol of all my L.A. days, and every now and then, I truly miss them…and her.

* * *

NICK

While I didn't really know Nick long enough to call him a friend, he was definitely a part of my journey through life.

Nick never knew his father, though his drug-addict mother named her son after him. His name was Nicholas, and the fact that she deliberately misspelled her son's name as “Nickless” was only the first indication of his fate.

While still very young, he was taken from his mother and placed in the Foster Care system, where he was passed from foster home to foster home like a bowl of potato salad at a picnic. His last ten years in the system was spent with a former marine drill sergeant who continually sexually abused him.