by Shaw Sander
“I love Birgitta, you know,” he said all of a sudden, eyes on mine, his feet moving automatically, gracefully.
“That’s…that’s wonderful, Jerry.”
“I intend to marry her.”
“Holy shit. Does she know this?”
He grinned at me and whirled me in a fast turn-about, trying out his chops. I heard Gitta applaud from the corner and Simon whistled.
“Not yet. I have a ring in my pocket. I’ve had it there for a week, waiting for the right moment. I wanted to make sure it was…okay with you, with the group. You all seem to come as a package deal and I hope I am good enough to get in the Inner Circle.”
“Oh, wow, Jerry, you get right to the point, don’t you?”
“Years of therapy,” he smiled, dipping me backward as we slowly ended the song. “I know it’s soon and all but we aren’t getting any younger. I’m closer to fifty than forty. I want her in my world.”
He bowed and I curtseyed, then we held hands back to the table.
“Fine by me,” I said, tightening my fingers on his hand and leaning up to kiss his cheek.
“Fine by you what?” asked Gitta, searching our eyes.
“The dance,” Jerry said, kissing her. “She says I dance just fine.”
“You were awesome, Annalee. I wish I had that grace. I’m the only black man on the planet who can’t dance or play basketball. Like ‘The Jerk’in reverse. But watching you…” he pulled my ear to his lips, “…makes my dick hard.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I replied, slugging back my Cosmo.
“Excuse me,” said a tall drag queen who appeared in front of Drake, her safety-orange wig piled as high as Marge Simpson’s. Long red nails raked Drake’s thick hair and the slit of her skirt stopped at exactly at Drake’s eye level. “Aren’t you that Poor Little Rich Boy from Spokane who was the victim of an international hate-crime incident not so long ago?”
“Why, yes, I am,” Drake exclaimed, looking down to the five-inch platform shoes then straight at the top of the slit. His eyes eventually reached up at the towering specimen’s face as the stranger waited.
“I’m Magic Wanda.”
Drake simply looked blank.
“Aka Larry O’Toole.”
This meant nothing to me or any of the rest of us but we watched as Drake went completely pale.
“Oh. My. Fucking. God.”
Drake spat each word out separately, his eyes never leaving the drag queen’s face.
Wanda bent down and kissed Drake full on the mouth. To our astonishment, Drake reached hungrily around the ruffled collar of the taffeta red dress, holding the kisser in a tight grip.
We all stared at each other, waiting, mystified, as this transpired. It took a moment for understanding to be imparted, their shared moment completely private.
We waited.
Kissing finally released with a loud thwock, they held each others’ hands as if reunited post-Titanic.
“Where, Larry, have you been all my life? Darlings,” Drake shakily announced to us all. “Meet Lawrence O’Toole the Third, my middle school crush and first closeted kiss.”
Over fresh drinks, they explained. After being caught near-congress in Drake’s family wine cellar, Larry had been immediately cloistered in a distant Catholic boarding school then sent to Europe for social refinement. Drake had been hastily enrolled in a private prep academy then pushed into the University of Washington in Seattle.
Contact had been severed, everyone barely escaping public shame. In each family, the other boy’s name had never been mentioned again.
Malcolm’s wife Bernadette was well enough to attend the goodbye party we threw for them before they went to Alaska. Bernie was kinda dim but really nice. Her fake boobs and cat-eye curlique black eye-liner were distracting. She tried hard to smile through the event and we tried to include her.
It was clear we had all bonded without her, though, and the stories weren’t as funny to her, our escapades vaguely threatening, as if something untoward had happened while she had been laid up. Malcolm seemed to acquiesce, being less loud, less boisterous, looking caught in the middle of two worlds.
It felt a little forced, trying to be glad one of us was moving on. It made me think of Shelly and how the void she left still hurt me so much I couldn’t talk about her. I put her out of my mind. I’d miss Malcolm but he’d be a phone call away. He wasn’t dead. Life revolved, things changed, to everything there was a season.
Bernie was excited to be going to Alaska or rather, she seemed glad to be leaving Seattle. Maybe her fall had spooked her, or maybe there were things we didn’t know about their marriage. We hoped for the best for them.
Tears took over my eyes when Bernie patted Malcolm’s arm and nodded in the intimate marriage-language that meant she was ready to go. When he hugged me close, Malcolm whispered “It’s been a blast, hasn’t it? Now take care of Simon, Al,” and then they were gone.
Dew stayed quiet, no word from Chicago. I was so exhausted from his brutal illness and slow recovery that I guiltily welcomed the silence, following his lead.
He was a grown-ass man. He’d be fine.
Peanut was happy Dew was back in her portion of the country so as soon as she could get time off work, she was going to head down to Chicago. She had to make some money first, she told me in a moment of candor, because she’d been busted for shoplifting and had to pay a four hundred dollar fine.
Like Dew’s illness that howled I was the Only One Who’d Understand, I was glad she felt comfortable enough to tell me these things. But I was exhausted with the supportive role. I sighed and counted to five before responding, thinking over my words.
“Did you learn something, then?”
“Yup. Not doing that anymore.”
“What did you steal?”
“A lighter.”
“Was it worth four-hundred-dollars?”
“It is now.”
I burst out laughing, my cub always able to crack me up with her stark truths.
I was relieved my choices weren’t of the same nature anymore, my problems on a different scale, my choices more reasonable over the last decade. But I had done insane things in my youth. Who was I to frown and judge? I’d taken hella risks. We are all lucky to come through alive, not ending up incarcerated or removing ourselves from the planet with some idiotic Darwin Award move.
Gitta and I had long discussed this aspect of parenting, the wheel that goes around, unstoppable, turning through time the same for everyone, all of us repeating an endless loop of similar mistakes, the pattern repetitiously stamped in everyone’s DNA. Children do not absorb the parent’s lessons and move on from there, and every parent is amazed that the children won’t input experienced advice. Imagine how evolved mankind would be if each of us took the previous generations truths and errors into account and started from there.
With her boys in Kuwait, Gitta had to learn letting-go harder than any of us. She dreaded the knock on the door, sure one or both of her babies would be maimed or dead before war’s end. I assured her Kuwait was safer than the conflict zones but it wasn’t much help. Half a world away was still too far to safely touch them.
Meanwhile, Gitta had a grandchild growing in a teenager’s belly east-of-the-mountains and it made her recoil in horror. I knew she tried to think of ways to love this new life coming along but it was a nightmare for her. The mother-to-be had a Facebook page with pictures of her sprouting tummy, posed in front of a Confederate flag and two sharp-toothed Pitbull puppies. The baby shower announcement had Rhonda registered at WalMart.
Gitta FedEx-ed a silver-plate piggybank and a hundred-dollar savings bond. Hoping to hear no more until the birth, Gitta stayed busy with Jerry who, evidently, was still carrying the ring in his pocket.
I guessed the moment hadn’t yet arrived.
Larry O’Toole the Third took over pushing Drake’s wheelchair, the two of them completely glued together. Larry threw himself into Drake’s care, swooping in an
d comforting the man in every way possible, romancing him with Pike Place flowers, hot crepes from the little place down Queen Anne Hill, international newspapers from Bulldog News, and the occasional Blueboy. Nights were spent at one or the other’s place.
They had intense childhood history together and began referring to their blueblood upbringing as “back in the old country.” Years of catching up poured from one to another and soon it was like they had been together all their lives.
Larry did drag shows for fun, but the Rainbow Foundation he’d begun was what he lived for. His wealthy Irish Catholic family hadn’t disowned him and he was positively drowning in money he tried hard to spread around to every worthwhile gay charitable organization he could. Rainbow Foundation benefited children in AIDS families, providing clothing, school supplies, field trips, counseling, summer camp and after school tutoring.
It made perfectly righteous, karmic sense to him to support Drake, sharing the old wealthy privilege they’d known as children, embarrassing Drake’s parents in the process.
“Fuck those people,” he’d fume, insisting Drake move into his Capitol Hill blue and yellow Craftsman with the wrap-around porch. “Let them watch you enjoy your life, made wealthy again by the boy from down the street. They wanted to see you squirm and beg, now they can all squirm, pretending we aren’t doing our homo thing together two hundred miles away. Both sets of parents still lunch at the Club every month. Fuck them. The best revenge is living well. I will call my attorney the moment you agree and have papers drawn up. Since you’ve been disowned by your family, I can legally adopt you, and that would make you my next of kin. You’ll be cared for into perpetuity. Just say the word.”
“Whaddya think, Princess?” Drake asked me, gnawing his insides out over the offer of new comfort and stability.
It had come from out of the blue. He felt hurried.
“How old are you?” I asked. “How many times is such a deal going to be laid at your feet again? Is he good enough for you?”
“Thank you for that, darling. Yes, he is, and yes, I am getting older and no, this shall not pass my way again.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes, wildly so.”
“Do you know him?”
“Like my own soul.”
“Then the problem is…?”
My parents were Sunshine before I was born so I knew no other way of life.
Naked and barefoot, laughing with the other children, I’d scream through a game of tag under the willow trees, napping in the arms of whatever grown-up was available. This was how I grew. It seemed simple to me and only got complicated when I met up with the outside world.
I wondered if Amish kids or polygamists’ children felt the same easy bond, their world the small norm from which they looked out. But our lack of rigidity made Sunshine a comfy way of being brought up. There was no fear, no authority figure speaking from on high.
We had lived in a little cabin, my family expanding and contracting with the flow, my parents floating easily between partners. I had stayed mostly in the Fawn Camp with my friends, coming to my mother only when I needed extra comfort or a touchstone. I don’t remember my father much, except he used to tell me stories sometimes and play Revelry on the trumpet to call us home from the woods, but then he disappeared altogether. Other grown-ups abounded and I felt no real loss. There were lots of Pony siblings, a few Yins. Everyone got along.
We were taught to get out there and make our mark, start our own tribe.
Drake saw Larry’s lawyer to make it official. The only couple among us who couldn’t marry committed themselves first.
Come September, Jerry found the moment in Gitta’s basement, water overflowing from her washer pipes, a wrench in his right hand.
As Birgitta shrieked that her whole basement was ruined, Jerry waded into the water and tightened the gushing pipe to stop the leak. Gitta burst into tears, saying she was tired of the responsibility, being a single homeowner was too much, the weight was too crushing, she couldn’t afford another repair bill on her own, she couldn’t do this anymore.
“I’ve got the perfect solution,” Jerry said, taking off his soaked shoes on the basement steps. Since he was on the step below her, their faces were even.
Jerry pulled the half-carat floating solitaire from his jeans pocket.
“Marry me.”
Malcolm said Anchorage was beautiful, wide open yet cosmopolitan. He said the smell of the air was a tonic to Bernie and she was much better. They’d even had a little sex, he chuckled to me over the phone.
“And ya know what? It was a’ight.”
He sounded surprised.
“How’s the job?”
“Same restaurant, different city. Got some fine-ass white women up here far as the eye can see.”
I could tell he was rubbing his fingers together.
“Well, be choosy with the dick, you hear me?” I said, with a sudden pang of jealousy.
“Roger that. How’s Simon treating you, speaking of choosy dick.”
“He’s a gift from the gods themselves. Fine as you to look at, smart, easy-going, worships the air I breathe.”
“Give you a ring yet?”
“Nope.”
“Christmas is coming.”
“Fuck off. I miss you.”
“Ya know what? I miss you, too, Al.”
“I’ve re-thought Greece,” Drake sighed, picking at his salad. “The leg’s still not healing right. And I’m just so…”
He leaned back in his chair and looked away to the side, giving me his brooding profile.
“Comfortable?”
“Exactly.”
Drake’s face changed completely, lighting up with unconcealed glee.
“I am so fucking happy, Annalee, I’m just going to stay here and bask in the warmth of my sugar daddy. Mama-mia, he’sa one-a spicy meat-a-ball,” he accented, pinching his fingers together in an imitation Italian pleasure gesture.
“Then stay, goofy! No one said you have to go out in the world and make something of yourself.”
“But then I wasted those classes on Teaching English to Poor Hairy-Chested Boys.”
“You did not. As mothers in every social class but yours would say, you now have a skill to fall back on.”
“Larry is wonderful, Al. I simply have to be myself and that is enough. I sleep until I wake up, I eat whenever I want, I read, we go to the Market every day and he wheels me through the crowd like I am King Tut’s solid gold living progeny. Mommy, could I get used to being worshipped in my own home, especially surrounded by expensive upholstery for which, I might add, I didn’t have to pay.”
“Someday I’ll get the fuck out of FedEx and have a life. Maybe someone will support me so I can write.”
Jerry and Birgitta went to City Hall on their lunch hour in October and got married, calling us all from downtown to come join them for an impromptu happy hour celebration.
Peak season was starting and I was determined not to let it throw me.
It was something I had to go through, like a bad acid trip, see it out until the end. I didn’t have to like it but resistance simply made it harder. I made sure I slept a lot, ate vegetables and protein, went to the gym on weekends and saw Simon every spare moment I could.
As an early birthday present, I gave Simon a key to my house, the most trust-filled gift I could think of.
Simon began crawling into my bed in the middle of the night, shushing me when I woke, snuggling up deeply against my body. Sometimes there was sex, crazy and wild and full, and sometimes we just slept, spooned together. In the morning he’d pull on his work clothes and scoot out after a cup of coffee, his toothbrush dripping on my sink, the goodbye kiss all business as he focused on the day ahead.
I tried to get to his apartment once in a while to appear balanced but he understood my killing seasonal workload. Often as not he’d take me to dinner or bring something over just to make sure I wasn’t having a bowl of cereal before collapsing. M
y feet got rubbed, my car got new windshield wipers, my orgasms were guaranteed.
Not a cat person, he begrudgingly gave in and acknowledged that my cats adored him.
Over rotisserie chicken from Safeway I learned his Oakland upbringing was a little rough in the beginning, then more middle class as his father’s gas stations beginning to prosper. After they moved, Simon pole-vaulted at Berkeley High and tried to catch up scholastically with his peers, astounded at what he hadn’t learned in the Oakland school system. He’d driven a Microbus to Alaska, married a fellow fire-jumper and had two children, then joined the Marines. His lesbian half-Jewish ex-wife was now in upstate New York, their children finishing college.
Simon was fascinated by Sunshine culture and loved to hear any story relating to my upbringing. He understood why Peanut wished I had had her when I was a hippie.
“Where’s my jet pack?” Drake wanted to know, popping gherkins in his mouth.
Our entrees sizzled and flamed directly in front of us as we twirled in oversize chairs at 13 Coins’ counter. It was four a.m.
We were celebrating, he and I, since the second cast had come off his successfully healed arm. Our lovers were unavailable, and Gitta and Jerry were on their mini-honeymoon in Vegas. I needed to blow off steam, peak season making me insane with stress. The FedEx drivers who weren’t religious drank to get through and I was one of them, after years of toughing it out AA style.
We’d had a few all over town, ending up at the swankiest pre-dawn breakfast in town. Drake continued on the futuristic theme of which we’d obviously been robbed.
“What about my lawn chair with rockets attacked? And why is it always lawn chairs?”
“I know,” I tipsily replied. “We were supposed to be like The Jetsons already. I’m still driving to work in a car. I thought I’d have a personal jet bubble by now or at least some see-through transport tube.”