Tinderbox

by Robert W. Fieseler

  The timing of these afternoon services made a meal in the Quarter, followed by two hours of beer bust at the Lounge, something of a routine. Solomon parted ways with the MCC shortly after his attempt to embrace politics, and church elders tapped Bill Larson to fill the position. Larson moved into the Magazine Street cottage and spruced up the location, while Solomon went into a kind of exile in rural Bogalusa, Louisiana.55

  Bill Larson accepted the title “Interim Worship Coordinator” for a church that, by then, had expanded to roughly thirty gay men. In his liturgical style, Bill preferred “High Church,” the traditional style of Christian worship common to Catholics and Episcopalians. He served communion with a calm demeanor he’d perfected years before as a lay minister for Methodists. There would be no more playing cute with communion hosts. Reflecting the transition to his new style of pastoring, Bill Larson adorned the Magazine Street sanctuary with such simple decorations as a tapestry of the Last Supper.56 As Bill spoke, two candles would burn beside him in brass holders.

  A congregant named Lucien Baril lent sobriety to these services. He often stood beside Larson, assisting while wearing formal religious attire—a cassock and skullcap. Baril had a great love of religious pageantry and served as what Henry Kubicki called “an adult version of an altar boy,” having zealously purchased this spiritual clothing unbidden. No one remembers exactly what Bill Larson preached on these Sundays—his messages were, undoubtedly, tamer than his predecessor’s—but congregants such as Ricky Everett expressed relief at the subtler expression of Christian faith. “His creed was innocent,” said Courtney Craighead. “He believed in freedom and love. He wanted the right of individuals to make their own choice—without any harm to anyone.” Larson had a stunning singing voice, honed performing at the orphanage and at churches over many years,57 and he would often break into song from sermon.

  Like Larson, Deacon Mitch Mitchell had received a promotion; he presided each Sunday as assistant interim worship coordinator. Mitch would lean on the podium and preached round-shouldered, round-bellied. He was a handsome man whose girth accentuated his message. “He had a wild and wooly manner,” lovingly remembered Troy Perry, “and was far from sophisticated.” At the Up Stairs Lounge, Mitch had famously dressed as Queen Victoria one Halloween, and photos of him in costume still circulated. Mitch worked weekdays as a salesman for Danos Beauty Supply Company. On the weekends, he was a church deacon and a devoted family man. Mitch and his lover, Horace Broussard, had, in 1971, been joined in a “holy union” ceremony at the Up Stairs Lounge to announce their fidelity and soulful love. Although not a civil marriage, their union represented a kind of spiritual conjugation sanctioned by the MCC, a promise until death did them part. These Christian “celebration of commitment” ceremonies between two men were then considered beyond the pale. In June 1973, a pastor in Boston was voted into forcible retirement by the United Methodist Church for the scandal of performing such a ritual.58

  Much like Bill Larson, Mitch had tried his hand at heterosexual life as a young man. He had married a woman, become a father, and then divorced for reasons that became apparent. Back in his home state of Alabama, Mitch’s ex-wife, Vicki Tane, raised their two young sons, Duane and Stephen, during the school year. Unlike Bill Larson, however, Mitch stayed on friendly terms with his ex, and he often showed up on holidays to lavish gifts on the boys. Every summer, Vicki Tane shipped the kids to New Orleans to visit their dad and Uncle Horace. On Sundays at church, while Mitch preached, their family would sit in a back row. Horace often brought comic books to occupy the boys, who tended to be quiet and well behaved.59

  Guy Andersen (sometimes spelled “Anderson” for anonymity purposes), a former teacher from Illinois, attended this June Sunday. Deacon Courtney Craighead—a heartfelt, if occasionally brash and self-proclaimed “Arkansas hillbilly”—sang loudly near Mother Cross and the rest of their gang. Glenn Green had traveled in from across the river to worship.60 Likewise, Perry Waters, a closeted dentist living in the suburbs, and Luther Boggs, a businessman, counted themselves among the day’s celebrants.

  Ricky Everett and guest Ronnie Rosenthal, the friend visiting from the MCC of Atlanta, also sat and sang. Reggie Adams, an ex-Jesuit seminarian, notably bowed his head and adulated Christ. Reggie was one of the few black members of the congregation. Like many, he had arrived via a wayward path. Reggie had grown up in a shack near the housing projects on the west side of Dallas, Texas. He had demonstrated enough intellectual gusto to be accepted as one of the few black scholarship students at Jesuit College Prep. Eventually, Reggie decided to become a priest and moved to New Orleans.61

  The Crescent City had been eye-opening in unanticipated ways. Reggie had caught the scent of a dashing young prospect at the Up Stairs Lounge. This person, born Richard Soleto, performed in charity drag shows at the Up Stairs Lounge and was trying on female personae. Reggie—from his Catholic background—was accustomed to being the only black man in a room full of white worshippers, and so he readily identified with Ricky Soleto’s sense of individuality.62

  It’s remarkable that, in a city where relations between the races tended to be polite but at arm’s length, Reggie felt as comfortable at the Up Stairs Lounge as he did at the Safari Lounge, a predominantly black gay bar on Iberville Street.63 Hence, Reggie and Ricky Soleto were encouraged to flirt and date by other patrons. At the time, Reggie had been preparing for ordination with the Jesuits, but this new relationship provided a compelling reason for him to reject that path.

  It was Reggie who suggested the new name “Regina” for Ricky Soleto; “Regina” meant “reigning queen,” and Reggie often liked to call Soleto “my queen.” Thus were Reggie and Regina (as Ricky was known from then on) an unmistakable pair—bridging race and gender. During MCC services, Reggie would fold his hands in prayer and reveal the gleam of a high school ring given to him by Regina—a symbol of their bond. They shared a French Quarter apartment and made a romantic ritual out of Sunday nights at the Lounge. The place held distinct memories.64

  Bill Larson ended his service with a blessing. He bid his friends to go out and serve the Lord. But the congregants stuck around: for one thing, they were jubilant about the miraculous gift of an air conditioner.65 As this was New Orleans, where merrymaking can happen especially on the fly, the group resolved that the surprise donation was right cause to celebrate. They agreed to meet later at the beer bust for extended fellowship.

  Bill Larson, Ricky Everett, Ronnie Rosenthal, and their cohort trudged in punishing heat toward cars or the nearby St. Charles streetcar, the last working trolley line in New Orleans. By then, these trolleys had become symbols of the quaint character of a city that seemed to bathe in eternal lassitude. Indeed, the green, wooden coaches continued to be of practical use for MCC congregants like Henry Kubicki, who worked in the service industry. Puttering toward the French Quarter, the trolleys would pass through the turnabout of Lee Circle and its famous Robert E. Lee monument, a white pillar erected to honor the Confederate general (it was taken down in 2017). On January 19, 1972, a young Ku Klux Klansman named David Duke had been arrested for “inciting a riot” during which bricks had flown at a rally at this monument, as segregationists clashed with a local retinue of Black Panthers.66

  At Canal Street, the trolley would halt. Doors would fling open, and people would exit into the French Quarter, toward dinner and the promise of a light buzz. A pink, crepuscular haze, beribboned with fumes from nearby oil refineries, framed the sky above. Some of their flock might already be at the bar, but Bill, Ricky, and Ronnie still had time to dine before catching the drink special. There seemed no reason to hurry. The Up Stairs crowd was hosting a benefit for the Crippled Children’s Hospital later that evening, this one a drag show and piano sing-along, which might or might not serve as a preamble to a larger benefit that would incorporate the Up Stairs Players (of nellydrama fame). No one could precisely remember the details, and no one sweated them.67

  Slightly delayed, Mitch and Horac
e rewarded Mitch’s sons for another peaceful Sunday by driving them to the Prytania Theatre, a historic movie house closer to home. Mitch and Horace knew the boys would be safe at these matinees for children supervised by the theater’s owners and parents from the neighborhood. They got in line for tickets to the Disney blockbuster The World’s Greatest Athlete, starring teen heartthrob Jan-Michael Vincent. The year prior, Vincent had gotten into some heat over a Los Angeles Times interview in which he’d reputedly used the word “fag,” although the actor had disputed this. “I didn’t say any of those things in the article, man,” Vincent later told The Advocate,68 and The Advocate had let the issue rest as a case of misquotation.

  In The World’s Greatest Athlete, a loincloth-donning Vincent starred as Nanu, the Tarzan-like athlete who “brings the jungle to the gym” by competing in every event of an NCAA track and field competition. Mitch and Horace, no doubt, chuckled at the irony of a homoerotic muscle man starring in a family-friendly flick. But the Disneyfied story line made excellent fodder for kids, and the movie house brimmed with high-pitched giggles, befitting the playgroundlike atmosphere. Mitch and Horace bid adieu to Duane, eleven, and Stephen, eight.69 They left the children to watch the movie and drifted down St. Charles Avenue toward the beer bust.

  They’d be back, they assured the boys, before the end credits rolled.70

  CHAPTER 3

  Gay Liberation

  Evening

  Bill Larson and Ricky Everett dug into burgers at the Fatted Calf, a gay-friendly diner located on a slip of St. Peter Street between the promenades of Bourbon and Royal. The din of this greasy spoon was paradoxically endearing for both tourists and locals: bells rang with orders, surly waitresses scribbled on pads. The Fatted Calf could turn over tables several times per hour, especially on a summer Sunday. Ronnie Rosenthal, the Atlanta native, was getting his introduction to this French Quarter institution, where burgers were named after characters from Gone with the Wind. It was already clear that emotions were ricocheting across tables. Through stealthy glances and body language, it became clear that this trio of gay men harbored several layers of affection.1

  No one put it into words, but Ricky Everett was fast developing more than a crush on the out-of-towner, and Ronnie was returning the feeling. To complicate matters, Ricky also harbored some affection for Bill Larson, though the attraction that he and Bill shared remained unexplored. “We could have been partners, but I was in a relationship,” Ricky remembered. “And he respected me and the relationship.” Much of their connection stemmed from a mutual love of Christ. Raised Presbyterian in Monroe, Louisiana—deep in “God’s country”—Ricky was both devout and devoted. He beamed purity and innocence, having grown up in what he called a “bubble of protection,” despite his budding inclinations. But Ricky was hardly an ingenue, as he’d been around the New Orleans scene and was no stranger to its ways. Like untold Christians before him, Ricky found his pastor enchanting. “Bill was just a very legitimate person,” remembered Ricky. “And I loved him very dearly as my very closest friend.”2

  Between bites, Ricky kept looking across the table at Bill. Though memory over decades can deceive, Ricky is certain that he voiced an unusual thought. “Bill, I don’t know why, but I just have a bad feeling that you’re going to die,” Ricky remembered saying. Bill looked back with concern and slowly responded, “Yeah, I know.” Overall, Ricky preferred to be honest to a fault with those he loved and trusted, and Bill was not shocked. Their conversation moved on, dissipating in a haze of laughter and flirtatious remarks. Eventually, they settled up with the check and left.3

  Strolling through the Quarter, the three men passed Preservation Hall, the world-famous jazz venue, and Pat O’Brien’s, home of a fruity drink called the hurricane. They then turned on Royal Street near the quaint, backyard garden of St. Louis Cathedral. This was the backside to the city’s grandest church—situated before the expansive greenery of Jackson Square and framed by two stately museums. Glistening off-white above the cacophony of pedestrians, St. Louis Cathedral was the basilica for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. An ancient structure, it had been built, burned, and rebuilt several times over, with foundations dating to French governance in the 1720s and Spanish governance in the 1790s, shortly before New Orleans was passed back to France and then formally acquired as U.S. territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Mud-caked roads presently crossed in front of the cathedral as part of a film set for director Sergio Leone, in town shooting a western with Henry Fonda titled My Name Is Nobody.4

  Bill and Ricky kept on Royal Street, thereby avoiding the movie set, but Bill seemed to be thinking as he moved. Perhaps he took Ricky’s words as a premonition, or perhaps he was just aligning what he heard with something Ricky told him weeks earlier: “Bill, I have this feeling that you’re not going to be on the pulpit much longer.”5

  BLOCKS AWAY ON Iberville Street, in the direction Bill, Ricky, and Ronnie were headed, a twenty-six-year-old man named Roger Dale Nunez was making a drunken scene at the bar Gene’s Hideaway.6 He hounded friends to head with him a few doors down to the Up Stairs Lounge. Drinks would be even cheaper during the beer bust.

  Roger’s brown hair looked to be slightly disheveled. A musty perfume of booze wafted from his pores. Known as a drifter, Roger’s life seemed to exist in permanent transition. He hustled on the side, when he could. Gene Davis, the owner and namesake of Gene’s Hideaway, had been shilling drinks and observing Roger’s exploits for hours. Davis commonly wore bowling shirts over his swell of a belly and styled his hair in a gelled pompadour. A married man with children, he spoke with machismo and walked with some swagger, but he was no stranger to the affections of men. He was known to take home hustlers and pay for them out of the till from his bar. After all, this was New Orleans. Roger had briefly worked for Davis, and they remained friendly. The truth was that Davis pitied Roger enough to let him keep his clothing in the bar whenever the ragamuffin lost a job or ended a relationship and had no place to live.7

  Gene’s Hideaway was a sort of “last kind words” saloon for the downcast, the lost and the broken. Dust matted in corners, and the wallpaper bore clear signs of aging. Davis was reputed to be a minor figure in New Orleans’s underworld, although no one really knew if they could believe these whispers. He had been arrested in 1958 for his involvement in taking pornographic photographs of a fifteen-year-old male runaway, charged with a “crime against nature” for illicit sex. His name had also surfaced in the 1969 Clay Shaw trial, when a local lawyer testified that Davis had once been introduced to him as “Clay Bertrand,” the mysterious pseudonym that obsessed District Attorney Jim Garrison.8

  Clay Bertrand’s possible connection to Gene Davis, despite the testimony, led to no arrests and only added to the bar owner’s mystique. Many assumed that Davis was a protected asset, so to speak. He had audaciously sued NBC when a newscaster identified him as “the real Clay Bertrand,” but that suit was ultimately dismissed. In 1970, Gene’s Grill, another of his Iberville bars, suffered fire damage, with two related deaths, and he claimed $20,000 in water damage from the hoses that put out the blaze. Davis had chosen to run Gene’s Grill with no insurance because, he explained, “They’re always having fires.”9 Places like Gene’s Grill and Club My-O-My just burned down in New Orleans.

  At Gene’s Hideaway, Roger Nunez had been hustling a “john,” or prospective customer, in plain sight, but it caused no stir. This bar was devoted to such practices and served customers of “exotic” tastes—businessmen seeking cross-dressers, wives buying men for their husbands, etc. Roger’s hustling prospect, Donald Landry, was an elderly gentleman who happened to be wearing a colostomy bag and seemed open to Roger’s flirtations.10 Initially, Roger had been doling out the sugar in exchange for free booze from Landry and the promise of future favors.

  While flirting, Roger spoke with a deep Cajun accent. He was last employed as a custodian at the Marriott Hotel down the block, but no one knew whether he worked there anymore. Roger was
currently spending his nights on the couch of an acquaintance named Cynthia Ann “Cee Cee” Savant. Roger had asked Savant this favor because she, having survived on Quarter streets as a thirteen-year-old urchin, possessed a reputation for being bighearted. Unfazed by Savant’s criminal past, as his was no better, Roger had asked if he could crash at her place, and Savant had said yes, provided that he was a clean roommate. Still, Savant never quite viewed Roger as a friend. “I didn’t know Roger,” she would later say. “Nobody did.”11

  Born Rodger Dale Nunez, with a “d” in the first name, the man grew up in a place called Abbeville—a small town in bayou country where some preferred French to the English language. Abbeville, at the time, was associated with oil rigging, horseback riding, and the Cajuns—a rollicking rural society descended from the Acadians that had been popularized and even commercialized worldwide. The famous Tabasco factory peppered the air about twenty miles from Rodger’s hometown. Local Cajuns held “fais do-do” dance parties for all ages and “boucherie” hog slaughters and feasts.12 Carnival season held its own traditions, separate from Creole New Orleans, with the Courir de Mardi Gras being custom, when men in comical costumes ran between homesteads in search of live chickens for gumbo. Young Rodger, whose February 22 birthday often fell within Mardi Gras season, would have delighted in these pantomimes, proof positive that there were more ways to be rich in life than material wealth.13 Shelton Nunez, a relative born the year before Rodger, was the right age to be Rodger’s brother, but Shelton was actually Rodger’s uncle, a phenomenon relatively commonplace in a bucolic region where infant mortality rates remained high and relations stayed put. Shelton’s and Rodger’s were both likely home births, and they grew up side by side. People in town tended to marry early, as religion dictated, and some began to whisper when Rodger never settled down like Shelton, but even sexual differences could be balanced in Abbeville if unique “tastes” could be kept a family secret.14