by John Foster
Indeed. But although there was some satisfaction in seeing the airline exposed, this did nothing to solve the problems of their erstwhile employee. He was surviving in temporary accommodation in a welfare hostel.
I still very unhappy with no job. Living out of suitcases really bother me. The hotel is full of ‘roaches’ everywhere. Smell terrible. I have my stuff in a locker in Penn Station because I know somebody was in my room. Nothing was lost but still is a welfare hotel with all kind of people. $65 a week for that ‘shit’. I who had an apartment for more than 11 years with all my things to nothing is very very depressing.
Well, I mess you very much and everybody too. Every small thing like songs and movies etc. that I saw there really send me back to Melbourne. That is crazy because I don’t feel like that any more for Cuba.
Take care. Kisses and hugs.
And remember that I love you very much.
Juan G. Céspedes
In fact he was no longer sure where he belonged. He had recently become an American citizen, and though the primary purpose of this step had been to secure an American passport in order to circumvent the complexities of travelling to Australia, paradoxically it also meant that he was now free, at least in theory, to visit Cuba, a country to which he was by no means as indifferent as he sometimes pretended. That was evident in his next letter.
I send the $42 for my 1er U.S. Passport that will make me feel legalized not only but secure. Now I know I will have no more trouble with ‘visa’ or ‘nasty Germans’ like in London. That I can go to Cuba too. That really is the icing on the cake. My terror is over and so my nightmare of been deported to a hustla country like Cuba.
Meanwhile, he took seriously his new status as an American citizen. After the presidential election in November 1984 he offered this analysis of the results:
Well, all is over and we still have the same President, like I told you and Murray one day in the house. I feel sorry for Mondale for the way he lost. And how he lost. Reagan won every state in the Union. People don’t forget how Carter and Mondale did not do much for the hostage crisis. He was in China and Germany and the Philippines to mention a few country and what happen? 444 Days of Degradation for the U.S.
You might think how American I am. Well no, I’m still the same. The citizenship have not change my view about this country, but I have rather be with Reagan than Mondale. Only for the record of both man.
This last comment was intended, I imagine, less for me than for Murray, a witty left-wing law student whom he had come to know in Melbourne and who teased him about his hawkish views. I was less concerned by the return of Reagan than by other snippets of more personal views.
Enough of politics. You know what is happening here. Well last week I was sick with a cold just like the one in Ingland. My chest was falling off and it hurt. Winter is here and very strong already. Is heavy coat, ah, tell Murray that he give you the pattern to make a coat, or get the name of the pattern at Michael’s Courner Store they have it because I want to make a coat for winter.
He survived the winter and in February 1985 he arrived in Melbourne for his fourth visit, this time with a six-month tourist visa that they happily stamped into his brand-new US passport. I hoped that on this visit he would make up his mind to stay—not that it would be easy to secure permanent residence, but there were encouraging straws in the wind. A Human Rights Commission that had been investigating discriminatory practices in the Immigration Department had recommended, as I learned from the gay rights grapevine, that discrimination against homosexual couples should be removed. This Minister was supposed to be sympathetic, but after the election in December 1984 there was a Cabinet reshuffle in which West was replaced in the Immigration portfolio by Hurford, and there was much anxious holding of breath in the gay lobby. A Catholic family man, they muttered darkly, as though the Pope himself were about to insert an infallible finger into the local political pie. But the signs from Canberra continued to be encouraging and slowly, with no fanfare, a new and more liberal policy seemed to be taking shape. The real danger was the possibility of adverse publicity, which we feared might be orchestrated by the more troglodytic elements on the Opposition benches against a background of mounting AIDS hysteria. But the news circulated only in whispers, and the flood of opposition that we anticipated never broke.
Despite the opportunity opened up by this change in policy, Juan was not yet ready to commit himself to stay. He wanted to come: he was thirty now, and at thirty part of him wanted to become a settled person, with a home, where he could look out the window and watch the passing scene from inside, where he could meet someone and invite them in for a meal and tell them casually, ‘Of course Johnny won’t mind. He always cooks enough for three.’
But he also knew there would be a cost, and it was a cost he would never cease to pay. He had learned that in America, even though New York—at least from one point of view—was almost an extension of Cuba. Cubans had always gone to New York. You could move in and out of the Cuban crowd twenty times a day. They knew where you were from and who you were. And even if they gave themselves airs and graces and told stupendous lies about how rich and important their families had been before the Revolution, that was also part of being Cuban. Or at least it was part of being a Cuban refugee.
But in Melbourne? Here they couldn’t even pronounce his name. He was like an exotic bird, the only one of his kind. And though occasionally I thought he was over-sensitive, I couldn’t deny that people did look at him in the tram and in the street. They did stare. They would have touched him if they had dared, reached out and run their fingers through his hair to see if those wet curls were real. At the market the Italian girls on the fruit stall saw him coming; they waited for him every Friday afternoon. ‘Michael, Michael!’ they squealed, because they thought he was a Michael Jackson lookalike. Of course that was before Michael Jackson whitened his face and became really strange, and the Italian girls meant it as a compliment, but we re-routed our shopping expeditions and went down another aisle to avoid them.
In the end it was not the distance from Cuba and not the thought of Michael Jackson that decided him. He was not quite finished with New York. He would go back one last time. With one more semester he would be able to complete his college degree. That was important. To be sure, it would not be the prestigious uptown piece of paper that Marymount issued to its graduates. They had finally terminated his scholarship in 1983 when his grades and his attitude had been deemed unacceptable. But a poor person’s degree from the Borough of Manhattan Community College was still a degree, and although they had no dance programme, he responded enthusiastically to their courses in travel and tourism, and discovered in himself an unexpected ability in biology and maths. Twice he had made the Dean’s List with three As.
And so, after a six-month break, he was back in New York City at the end of the northern summer, and the ‘my dear Johnny’ letters resumed.
I really don’t know how to beginning. People were in shock to see me because if you deasapeared is because you catched AIDS. So Hiram was very indifferent to me, plus I did have to pay him some $. My friend Jerry that I was keeping while sick didn’t let me a cent for all my work. That too is nasty. Still I did not espect anything, but some of the people who never were around when he was dying of AIDS got his condominium and car and other assect. Well, some are like that.
Jerry? Did I know Jerry? I had become used to the ways in which Juan compartmentalised his life, and I had learned to be content with the information he volunteered if and when he considered it to be appropriate. It would not apparently have been appropriate for me to know then—as he told me later—that Jerry had had sex with him even when he knew, as Juan did not, that he had been diagnosed with AIDS. Not that it would have made much difference to our sexual behaviour. We had discussed the question of infection several times. My attitude was fatalistic; we had been together now, on and off, for more than four years, and if there was any infecting to be done, it must surely ha
ve happened long ago. But in the last few months Juan had insisted on some minimal precautions. Was Jerry the reason for this—poor, rich, inconsiderate, dead Jerry?
Apart from the affair of Jerry, there were other frustrations now that he was back at college. The complications of his degree had long since left me hopelessly baffled, but I understood at least his disappointment when they told him that he would not be able to complete his degree, as he had anticipated, in one more semester. There were certain of his subjects at Marymount for which they could not grant him full credit and, in particular, he would still be lacking English I.
The lack of English I paled into insignificance compared with his lack of a home, his lack of money and his lack of luck. He had rented a furnished room from the low-income housing authority in the City, but for this they charged $79 a week, ‘so that I won’t last long in there,’ he wrote:
So far not even work I have and no money either. Your $200 went to pay 140 for part of the tuition; TAP award me only $512 of $612, plus $39.50 of activities fee. So there you have it. And I’m not counting three books I have to buy but I have to wait until I get some kind of work.
I’m free from classes M.W.F. to work. Have gone down the Village and made some store give me some applications for job, any job. I called People’s Express Airline and I still waiting to hear from them. The rats! I’m waiting to hear from a health food store run by some Hare Krishna set. The interview was very well, but nothing either. Tomorrow I will pass by again and see if the position have been fill.
I’m not very well. I have lost all the weight I came in with and more: in total 14 pounds. The heat is murder, the streets are full of people practically naked, man and woman no exception. I am running like a chicken without a head. Nothing seem to click.
And to top it all, last week was the biggest lottery ever in the US or the world for that matter. ‘44 millions.’ I still can’t believe the numbers were: 4-12-28-32-41-44, suppl 39. My # 5-12-27-33-42-45. I cry for at least an hour. I can’t believe still of how close I was. I still have the ticket to prove it.
He was plainly homesick now for Melbourne. Letters came with unprecedented frequency, always finishing with the command ‘Write! Write! Inform me!’
Tell me more of how everybody is doing. Even Father Foster. The Brady, the chucks, the peacocks, and of course Albert and please don’t cut off his balls. Have you seen Brent? Or Murray? I really mess everything and everybody, so make sure and tell them. Have they ask for me? And you, Papi, are you working in your books? How are they doing?
It should perhaps be explained that I—we—lived in a block of four flats, a solid thirties construction of clinker brick, and spacious as such buildings go. Our immediate neighbour on the ground floor was Father Foster—the Rev. John Augustus Cory Foster to be precise, which is necessary to distinguish him from me. In a lifetime of frugal and dedicated service to the Church, Father Foster—now well advanced in his eighties—had allowed himself, as far as anybody knew, only two passions: he was devoted, with more or less equal ardour, to the English cricket team and the work of the Foreign Missions. If anything upset him more than losing the Ashes, it was the sight of coloured men, as he called them, arriving as refugees or immigrants to take up residence in this country. It was, he said to me with high indignation, as though they thought they had a right to be here. ‘We took them the Gospel,’ he said, ‘and now they come and perch on our doorstep.’ The mysterious comings and goings of a coloured man in the next apartment must therefore have been a matter of some annoyance to Father Foster. Had this fellow not received the Gospel in his own country? And yet, with the passage of time this unnatural order of things grew to be familiar, and the familiar came to seem natural; so natural, indeed, that now and then there would be a tap on the back door, and Father Foster would appear with a tray of apple tarts or mince pies fresh from his oven. ‘The young man might like one,’ he would say; though in view of the unusual odours emanating from the old priest’s kitchen, the young man generally declined.
Beside our flats was the house of Father Jim, the parish priest, and beyond that was a bluestone church, a modestly pleasing Victorian pile in a style that might best be described as family Gothic. Together with the tennis court and kindergarten and the adjoining gardens, this compound provided an ample home for a constantly growing menagerie. The first animal we had acquired was Albert, a marmalade kitten who had emerged from the chemistry cupboard in the convent school where the priest’s wife was employed. This unusual beginning in life left Albert with a permanent neurosis and a standoffish disposition for which the cure, according to Juan’s diagnosis, was fatherhood. Consequently, on his next visit, we acquired a second cat which Juan bore home in triumph from a neighbourhood alley and christened ‘Victoria’.
Then there was the peacock. With this creature Juan developed a special affinity, even to imitating its distinctive gait: the sharp forward thrust of the head and neck and the cumbersome gathering-in of the body, as though when it walked it were rehearsing the memory of its own serpentine evolution. During its first few weeks in the compound we had kept it in the chookhouse, and when the time came for its release, citing the authority of his dimly remembered training at the Veterinary Institute, Juan took charge. To prevent it from wandering he tied a long string around one leg and attached the string to a plum tree, but it promptly tangled itself around the tree and burst into such a honking and shrieking that Albert shot up a pear tree, and Father Foster appeared in his doorway speechlessly flailing his arms and looking as though he would like to despatch both Juan and the bird to the nearest mission. A Cuban peacock might stand for this kind of treatment, but clearly for this one a different approach would be required.
This was the community about which he was so anxious to be kept informed. Well, I replied, for the moment the peacock was doing nicely, though it had recently paraded in Queensberry Street and brought the traffic to a halt. Father Foster was fine. Murray had got a good result for his thesis about the dingo which did or did not eat the baby Azaria and would be writing soon. Phips, the Old English Game bantam, had taken ill and died, and Prizzi, Juan’s rooster, which we had had to despatch to a friend in the country, had unfortunately been eaten by a fox. Finally, Victoria had produced five kittens under the kitchen sink. As the enclosed photographs showed, all were doing well, except that one had an infected eye.
This assorted zoological news was well received, and there was a reply by return mail.
9.22.85
I was very pleased with your letter. It was so beautiful to see my ‘babys’. She looks so motherly taken care of her babys. It bad that one is sick. Take much care and make sure is not contagious at all. How is Albert looking at fatherhood?
Sorry about the chuck but I told you they must be check by a vet.
Farmyard talk was a welcome diversion from his own troubles.
Me, well, that is another history. I had a minor triunf in school: but no luck with work. Too many promises and that’s all. I have failed so many applications and nobody have come true. That is now getting depressing because I’m broke. Practically stuck in one place. Now any fare unpaid and they stop you is 3 months community services. Is that I’m not into that!
So there. Just make sure you prey for me, please God! I’m really down and I don’t know how long I can take this shit.
Between writing and posting this letter his fortunes and his spirits lifted. As always happened when he was really distressed, or really excited, he put through a reverse-charge call to me. In these urgent moments time zones meant nothing, so I was frequently asleep when the unpredictable calls came through and was sometimes a little slow on the uptake. Or, in fairness to myself, I might say that it took a while to adjust to the tumbling sequences of his narrative. And so, after the phone call, he added a PS to the letter.
‘John,’ it began, which sounds as though I must have been particularly obtuse that night. Or did this solemnity mark the joy that he felt in recovering in himself s
omething that he had mourned as lost?
John, what I was saying is that I will be dancing in a new company directed by Alvin Ailey who’s main company was in Australia in Augost last. Is the second black co. of New York City.
Well, the program is made of dance from his repertorio and is called ‘Dance Search’ because its main goal is to seek out new talents in Junior High, College, etc. So we’ll be dancing in auditorio around N.Y.C. We will hold master classes to see who has talent so they can be properly place in school around the country. So I think is great. They ask me where do my training is from and I told from ‘Cuba’ and they were very please. I will have the chance to choreograph or teach; whatever I want to do. Only problem—no money involved. Is only ‘experience gain,’ but in my case I’m delited because I have not dance in 2½ years.
I’m sore in both legs, but O.K.
From Melbourne I also had encouraging news to report. In August I had been to a meeting to discuss the problems that gay couples were still encountering with the Immigration Department. Out of this gathering there emerged an organisation which called itself the ‘Gay Immigration Task Force’.
We were the oddest collection of bodies, united only by our same-sex preference and a common yearning to enjoy the monogamous comforts which the rest of the population found so constricting. In this circle, as I recounted to Juan, there were people in every conceivable conjugal state. There were two lesbians from Berlin: one had married a local man in order to qualify for permanent residence and the other, who had a botanical name I am inclined to think was Poppy, with hair to match, was well advanced with a similar marriage plan, which she hoped now might not be necessary. Next there was an Australian man of indeterminate years who had married an Englishwoman as a favour, and was now seeking a divorce so that he could apply for permanent residence for his diminutive Indonesian (male) lover. An older businessman from the outer suburbs was desperately in love with a Filipino boy to whom the Department had refused even a tourist visa. A self-effacing Jewish man who had dealt with the Department over Jewish immigration problems was there to give us his advice but not his name, because a gay identity was not considered an advantage in communal organisations. Finally, there was a West-coast American with that confidential tone of voice that translates so successfully from the seminary to counselling, and his local lover. They had met in Japan, and the American was here on a six-month tourist visa. ‘I’m going to keep in touch with them,’ I wrote to Juan, ‘because they seem to have their act together, and their case is not so dissimilar to ours.’