by Brad Fraser
I nodded. He managed a wan smile. He asked, “Did you bring me here?”
I realized he didn’t remember a thing from the day before. “No. The Russian called me. He found you.”
“Where’d he go?”
I said, “Don’t know. But I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Tears filled his eyes as he thanked me for coming after our not speaking for so long. He never offered an explanation, and I never asked for one.
When I went back the next day, one of his girlfriends from the airline was there. Tad introduced us and we had an instant bond. A few days later Tad’s sister from Winnipeg arrived and the three of us spent a week together at the hospital until he was out of the danger zone. After that we took him home and took turns caring for him until, after a few months, he was able to care for himself. By August he was well enough for me to take a trip to Amsterdam with my friend John the lawyer to attend the 1998 Gay Games.
If New York had been Sodom four years earlier when Gordon and I had gone for the Games, Amsterdam was Gomorrah. The sense of doom and perpetual mourning that had informed the New York celebration had dissipated, and these Games were suffused with, if not a sense of optimism, at least a sense of something other than mourning. Deaths from AIDS had slowed down, and in the more privileged demographics infections from HIV had lessened. Those of us who’d been immersed in the plague from the beginning got our first respite in over fifteen years. Realizing I might not have the opportunity again, I decided to see if I could set a record for number of cocks blown at a sex bar in a single evening. I was more popular than I’d expected. If all of the men on the earth had disappeared at that moment, there was enough DNA in my T-shirt to replace many of them.
* * *
—
After Amsterdam I had a month at home in Toronto before flitting off to Edmonton to open Martin Yesterday at the Roxy. Journalists across the country were outraged when it was billed as a new play. In interviews I reminded them that I had changed the sex/gender of one character and refocused the entire main conflict in the play, as well as having severely “toned down the sex and violence” for a straight audience. It played to nearly empty houses. I wouldn’t work again in Edmonton for a decade.
There was redemption for Martin Yesterday, though.
In 1999 I flew to Manchester to take part in rehearsals. The Royal Exchange is a high-tech wonder of glass and metal that sits like a futuristic machine in the centre of a vast Victorian building that was once the Manchester cotton exchange. When the IRA set off the largest bomb on English soil in 1996, it had devastated a large swath of downtown and led to a major rebuild. The upgrade of the theatre had been completed shortly before I arrived.
I’d been dreaming of seeing Manchester since the early eighties, when it was one of the hot spots for new music, introducing some of my favourite bands at the time, including Joy Division, the Happy Mondays and the Smiths. Even though the days of historic dance club the Haçienda were over, the Manc club and music scene was still legendary, and I was eager to explore it. The theatre had put me in a small apartment above a gay pub on Canal Street.
The play was being directed by Marianne Elliott, who went on to win many awards for her exceptional directing, including an Olivier and a Tony for War Horse twenty years later. Marianne had already directed Poor Super Man for the Royal Exchange and seemed to have a strong sympathy for my work. There was an amazing cast, including Ian Gelder—who’d played David McMillan in the production I’d seen at the Traverse a few years earlier—as Martin and his partner, the highly regarded Ben Daniels, as Matt. They had a wonderful chemistry that elevated the material above either of my productions.
I was amazed at how well the show worked in the Royal’s in-the-round configuration. The roller-coaster ride had been changed to one of those “lift you up and drop you down” rides that impressively utilized the advanced tech and three-storey height of the theatre.
It was a beautiful production, imaginatively realized and exquisitely acquitted on every level. When I had directed the show at Buddies I had wanted to make a statement—a proclamation of my queerness and an indictment of those who were hostile to it. Marianne Elliott directed this play. There is a difference.
This was the beginning of a two-decades-long relationship with Braham and the Royal Exchange that would foster some of my best work.
Thanks to the miracle of AOL, the press office was able to get reviews to me as they came out. I’d been terrified to look at them after the show’s reception in Canada, but forced myself to now.
They were not all raves. But they were not all denunciations of Brad Fraser, either. They were, for the most part, well thought-out and critically considered. There were homophobic comments, but there was also an acknowledgement that inciting this sort of reaction was exactly what I was going for.
In the Canadian papers there was a grudging smattering of reports about the positive reaction in Britain, but from this point on my relationship with the Canadian press would be deeply altered. I was a much less attractive subject when my international success, which they’d previously applauded so lavishly, contrasted with their own negative reviews. I’d been judged ungrateful, and if there was anything the Canadian elites hated, it was an ungrateful faggot.
It had also been just ten years since Pete had warned me about success and fame not lasting, and I had responded with my wish for at least a decade of it.
* * *
—
New Year’s Eve 2000 was approaching. It wasn’t technically the end of the millennium, but the world was acting as if it were. While many feared all computers would fail when they were unable to recognize the rolling over of the first digit, most of us were skeptical but excited about the change.
Just before Christmas the phone rang. “Hey, Birdley.”
“Randy! What’s going on?”
“Coming to Toronto.”
“Great. When?”
“I’m on my way to Bangkok but I thought I’d overnight in T.O. and spend New Year’s Eve with you.”
“Of course. Are you going on a holiday?”
“I might be working over there.”
“Great. You can tell me all about it on New Year’s Eve.”
On the day, when he buzzed me on the intercom from downstairs and I let him into the building, I could feel that familiar flutter of pleasure I got in my stomach whenever I saw Randy. Twenty years on he was still one of my favourite people. We grated on one another if we were together for too long, but we had a million laughs. I opened the door and hugged him, then took a step back with my hands on his shoulders so we could check each other out. He looked great. I looked great. Neither of us looked anything like we’d looked when we met.
We ate pizza with beers as we caught up.
“So what’s the plan tonight?” he asked.
“Tad invited us over to his place. His building faces the lake and there’s gonna be a huge-ass fireworks display. If you’re cool with that.”
He was cool with it, and the three of us had a lovely evening mostly talking about Edmonton in the early eighties and how our lives had changed since. Tad was working out again, and except for the hollowness of his cheeks, which was caused by the medications that kept the virus mostly in check inside his body, he looked as healthy as ever.
Just before midnight we took the elevator up to the fortieth floor and joined hordes of other people assembled in the gym, with its tall glass windows, and out on the deck, which is where we headed. It was cold, but Toronto cold, not Edmonton cold where your face would be freezing off. The sky and the water were dark mirrors, the Toronto Islands in the distance creating the only line that differentiated them from one another.
I stood between Randy and Tad. When the fireworks started I put my arms around their shoulders and pulled them into a sideways embrace. They put their arms around me as the sky explod
ed with fire and thunder, propelling us into the future.
I was feeling many things in that moment, but what I felt most of all was gratitude.
EPILOGUE
DISAPPEARING THE QUEER
STRAIGHT PEOPLE disappear queer people. They do it all the time. Often it is done intentionally and with malice, but nearly as often it is completely unconscious. Many so-called progressive straight people would be horrified if they realized how often they do it.
Historically many societies, particularly over the last two thousand years, have disappeared their queers through censure, persecution and death. Every law enacted against queer sex and every enforcement of that law is an attempt to disappear the queer. Nazi Germany is not the only place to have made a concerted effort to obliterate its queer population. Gay people are still punished with discrimination, imprisonment, torture and death in many countries.
Historians have intentionally and systemically attempted to destroy or conceal the rich history of queer relationships and acts in ancient history. If they can convince people queerness never existed previously, it makes it easier to disappear it in the present day. How many priceless artifacts that could comment on our existence were destroyed forever because of Judeo-Christian disapproval?
Every time someone in the popular media chooses to omit or change the queerness of a character in order to make the art palatable to a straight audience, they disappear the queer.
Every person who protests against responsible sexual education for children because they believe children shouldn’t know about queer existence disappears the queer.
Every family that has denied or suppressed knowledge of a queer family member has disappeared the queer. Every parent and sibling who rejects a queer family member disappears the queer.
Every person who claims to be accepting of equal rights for all but complains about our public expressions of affection or knowledge of our sexual lives is disappearing the queer.
Disappearing the queer is so pervasive that queers often do it to one another.
We do it when we rush to a fellow queer’s home after they have died, to sanitize it of any sign of their queerness so as not to embarrass the family. Some of this, like getting rid of a friend’s porn and sex toys, is common sense and done for straight people too; far too often the less publicly embarrassing signifiers of queer—pics with an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, campy souvenirs from trips abroad, photos in drag—are also eliminated. There was a lot of this during the AIDS years and it still goes on today.
We do it when gays and lesbians claim bisexual people don’t really exist.
We do it when we fail to grant authenticity to a trans person’s being because it does not match our presumptions about biology.
We do it when we exclude queers of other races and cultures from our spheres of privilege and try to pass that off as the result of an uncontrollable innate sexual preference rather than racism.
We do it when we brag we are straight-acting/looking.
When you are raised in a culture that is racist, homophobic and misogynistic, every citizen will feel each of those things to some degree, even if they are a member of the targeted group. Hatred from the majority works best as a control mechanism if it leads to self-hatred for the minoritarian member as well.
Like all queer people of my generation I struggled with self-hatred. When I was growing up, homosexuality was considered a mental illness. We were all expected to commit suicide or kill ourselves prematurely through our self-destructive lifestyle. I came to realize at quite a young age that, while my queerness was unique to me, many of my desires and experiences were not unique to being queer but were shared by most everyone who’s human.
The life I’ve lived has very little in common with those of my het family members, and I believe that is specifically because of my queerness. Out of necessity, being gay forced me from the world and class I was born into. I had to search for my place in the world and for the people who would genuinely love me for who I am. My survival depended on it.
To my critics, my greatest sin has always been suggesting that being gay might be better than being straight. In truth I don’t believe one state is intrinsically superior to the other, but I do love the reaction that comes when I make straight people feel, even for a moment, what it’s really like to be diminished for being gay.
I make no apologies for my appetites and I make no apologies for the techniques, conscious nor not, I’ve developed for coping with being queer in a straight world and being a truth-teller in a world of liars. I’ve done what I had to not just to survive but to thrive, to tell my truth, to effect the kind of change I feel the world needs. I may not always succeed, but I have never stopped trying.
For fifteen years of the previous century the world saw the biggest disappearance of queer people in human history. While millions of heterosexuals worldwide were infected with AIDS, in the West it was mostly queer men who were infected and died. In the retrospect of advanced age, fifteen years is not a long time. In the perspective of a young person living through that time, fifteen years was an eternity.
I knew some of those men. Many of them were discarded. Forgotten. Disappeared. This book is for those people, whether they’re named in these pages or not.
I have fought having my queerness eradicated for my entire life. I have fought it with my family. I have fought it with my enemies and my friends. I have fought it with society. These battles have scarred me, but they have made me hard. These battles have wounded me, but they have made me strong. These battles have made me resolute.
I will not be disappeared.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A book like this doesn’t get put together without a great deal of help along the way. I’d like to acknowledge the following people who were integral to the completion of this project.
Bruce Walsh and the University of Regina Press, for getting the ball rolling.
Paul Bellini and Spencer Schunk, who are my most willing and constructive readers; also, David Gale, Kate Newby, Adam Pottle, and Robert Ouellette, for their feedback.
Ali Machum, who provided crucial early editing advice.
Robert Black, who did the genealogy investigation and provided crucial support.
Michael Levine, who consented to represent the book and got it to this publisher.
Tim Rostron, and everyone at Doubleday Canada / Penguin Random House Canada, for their sensitive professionalism and guidance.
Freelance copy editor Shaun Oakey.
Rajiv Maikuri, for facilitating introductions.
The Ontario Arts Council for the financial support that funded the first draft.
PHOTO CREDITS AND DETAILS
1: Brad in the saddle (author’s collection); 2: Brad in grade seven (author’s collection); 3: Brad in ’76 (author’s collection); 4: Mutants clipping (republished with the express permission of Edmonton Journal, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.); 5: Angelo Rizacos and Karen Woolridge in Wolfboy at the 25th Street Theatre (author’s collection); 6: Brad circa Rude Noises (author’s collection); 7: Carl Marotte and Keanu Reeves in Theatre Passe Muraille’s Wolfboy (photo: David Hlynsky); 8: Brad with cast and crew of Chainsaw Love (author’s collection); 9: promotional panel by Brad for Young Art (author’s collection); 10: inspirational police poster (author’s collection); 11: cover of published play showing Kate Newby in Alberta Theatre Projects’ Unidentified Human Remains (photo: Trudie Lee); 12: Brent Carver and Greg Spottiswood in Crow’s Theatre’s Unidentified Human Remains (photo: Michael Cooper); 13: Unidentified Human Remains program (used by permission, all rights reserved, Playbill Inc.); 14: poster for the Montreal production of The Ugly Man (courtesy of Théâtre de Quat’Sous); 15: Damian Baldet, Michael J. Blankenship and Annie Fitzpatrick in Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati’s Poor Super Man (photo: Sandy Underwood); 16: Brad in a golden shirt (photo: David Hawe); 17: poster for the Sydney p
roduction of Poor Super Man (courtesy of Sydney Theatre Company); 18: Steve Cumyn, Jean-Philippe Cote and Rod Wilson in Martin Yesterday (photo: David Hawe); 19: Cam (photo: Brad Fraser).