Not So Good a Gay Man

by Frank M. Robinson

  Penn was a generous man on filming. They had found the original longshoreman with whom Harvey had agreed to help boycott Coors beer—provided that the longshoremen’s union would make room for gay drivers. But the original longshoreman was not the husky man he’d once been. He was small, thin, and the uniform they gave him hung on him.

  The obvious thing was to let him go and hire an actor to take his place. But Allen Baird had desperately wanted to be in the movie, which, after all, honored a longtime friend whose death had been as much of a blow to him as it had been to everybody else. To fire him from the movie might be practical but very cruel.

  I’m pretty sure it was Penn who suggested doing a long shot of Allen so you wouldn’t see he was now an elderly man. Penn dubbed his lines in voice-over.

  I never met Josh Brolin, who played Dan White, but everybody who had, said he was a sweet guy. I did see him act in one scene. It was a confrontation between White and Harvey—broken up by the sudden appearance of Harvey’s lover, Jack Lira, who resented the attention Harvey was giving to White.

  (Jack Lira was played by Diego Luna, one of the stars of Y tu Mama Tambien. I didn’t recognize him when he came on set and asked him who he was. When he told me, I blurted, “You’re a great actor!” He grinned and gave me a heartfelt thanks. Again, high praise from an unknown stranger is the best kind there is.)

  It was a sensitive scene to shoot, so it was a closed set, with folding doors hiding the actors and the action. Fortunately for us would-be onlookers, there was a space between the folding doors and we had our eyes glued to it. White was drunk while trying to find common ground with Harvey and thought he was succeeding when Harvey’s lover breaks in and tugs Harvey away. Harvey had to choose between White and his lover and he chose Jack, leaving White talking to thin air.

  That was shot number one. The second one was a variation (the one that was used in the film). The third one was after Harvey was dragged away, White punches madly in the air, insulted that Harvey had chosen his street lover over him, and striking out at the empty air, wishing it were Harvey.

  Tough scene to shoot. Brolin was as convincing at being White as Penn was at being Harvey. Brolin’s anger was also genuine, as was Penn’s growing realization that White was trying to be friendly but Harvey couldn’t resist the attraction of his bed partner.

  That was the scene that broke any thread of friendship between Harvey and White.

  The next scene was a lot more cheerful. It was a big room with a dance floor at one end. Gus asked me if I wanted to dance, and I said I couldn’t. He looked disappointed and it occurred to me that it wasn’t very smart to disappoint the director. “Oh,” I said, “you mean boogie.”

  “Yeah, Frank, boogie.”

  It had been a long time, but at least I was dressed for the part. A pair of brown, checkered pants with suitcoat to match and I was all set. Moving my arms was easy; moving my feet would have been disastrous.

  At the back of the room, Sylvester (long gone but a double that made me believe in reincarnation) danced up the side of the room, followed by Penn and a few others. Penn, I decided, could do absolutely anything.

  The occasion was a birthday party for Harvey, and several actors lugged in a huge faux cake while the rest of us sang “Happy Birthday.” Penn put out a finger to fake tasting the frosting and somebody—unexpectedly—hit him in the face with a pie. He slipped on the dance floor, and I was the nearest to catch him before he hit the deck. (I figured that made up for my dishing Coppola in the restaurant.)

  My last scene (I’m cheating—I had one before that) came when I wasn’t on camera (dammit)—I said “dogshit,” and everybody in the theater heard it. Hot damn, I was now an honest actor—I had earned my SAG pay!

  I asked Gus if he was going to give me a gold watch and instead he gave me a eulogy.

  It was hugs all around, and for them I felt great.

  I hung around and watched some other scenes being shot, one of which had Penn standing on the steps of city hall delivering a speech that mentions what’s inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. I had seen Penn standing in the wings apparently talking to himself and now realized he had been rehearsing his lines.

  I was thrilled when he moved to the steps and started to deliver his speech. I recognized it immediately as one of the speeches I had written for Harvey. At the time I hadn’t known what was inscribed on the base of Liberty and had to look it up in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

  The very last scene was the funeral march for Harvey late at night. I knew it would be very emotional for me and I talked with my doctor first, who laughed and assured me I wouldn’t die of a heart attack in the middle of the march.

  Some of the film assistants were afraid for me and locked me in the actors’ trailer. I got out, caught one of the film’s vans, and made it to Market Street just in time to join the front of the parade. It was late at night, and it had been open casting—some four thousand extras showed up in street clothes, holding paper cups and candles in them. All of the major actors were in the front row for the camera shoot. I was at the far end and doubted that anybody would see me.

  The parade started and passed through an underpass. For the film, Gus had spliced in actual newsreel footage of the parade before it reached the underpass. The final parade on-screen looked like it stretched all the way down Market to Castro with forty thousand marchers, almost all of them crying.

  In the front row a man standing next to me had to hold me up. I was time traveling, and in my head, I was in the real parade, weak and sobbing.

  Roll the credits, the film was done. I went home and went to bed and cried myself to sleep. (I would see the movie seven times and would cry at the ending every time. It had become a Pavlovian reflex.)

  The “wrap” party at the end of major shooting was a real hoot. I invited a good friend of mine, Terry, who worked for a local radio station, to come along—he had a car and I didn’t. All the way to the bar where the party was being held he complained how he had been to a number of these and it was always cheap wine and bad food and you’d be bored to death. He even stopped to pick up a slice of pizza at a hole-in-the-wall in the Tenderloin so he wouldn’t go hungry.

  The party was jammed with everybody who had been in or had worked on the film. The wine was good, the food was great. There was a short receiving line of Gus and Lance and I think one of the producers, and Terry was suddenly stagestruck. He knew that Lance had been a Mormon, and Terry, who once had a Mormon boyfriend, hurried over to make friends. The first thing he did was to get Lance’s name wrong. He was talking a mile a minute, and an assistant casting director a few feet away noticed and came over to rescue Lance.

  She smiled at Terry and said, “How would you like to be in the movie?” There were a few pickup scenes yet to be shot.

  Terry, of course, was delighted. All the way to my house—he got lost three times, though he had visited me half a dozen times in the past—he talked constantly about “his” scene, a shot of Penn addressing a group of Teamsters. Would people see him? Terry wondered. Would they recognize him? (No and no, and Terry was vastly disappointed.)

  Terry and I left the wrap party early, and Penn, who had been chatting up some dolly in the corner, came running over and gave me the biggest hug of my life. “It was great working with you, Frank!”

  He had it all wrong, of course. It had been great working with him.

  It was all over now, and the only thing left were some interviews with the original people who had known Harvey. Everybody had a twenty-minute tape, except for me. They used up three tapes, but only after Lance and a young PR man did a lap dance to warm me up. Thoughtful of them.

  A prescreening was held at the Lucas Theater in the former military base on San Francisco’s oceanfront, now taken over by Disney and Pixar. Half a dozen of us who had known Harvey were invited, and when it was over, we just sat there for a few minutes without saying anything. (Gus had been curious how we would react to it.) I finally tur
ned around to Gus and said a simple, “Thanks.”

  The preview of the film was held at the Castro Theater, complete with a red carpet out front. Across the street was a small group of people protesting the anti–gay marriage initiative Proposition 8 and holding up “No on Eight!” signs. I wanted to show my solidarity, so I cupped my hands and shouted, “NO ON EIGHT!”

  Penn was right behind me and upstaged me by walking across the street and shaking their hands.

  The film, of course, received nothing but applause. I was sitting on the aisle, and as Cleve walked by, I turned my face into his shoulder because I couldn’t stop from crying.

  The studio had rented the whole first floor of city hall for a party, and that was jammed, too. A friend of mine—the soon to be much-married David Moloney—flew in from London for the premiere, complete with tux. He and his partner, Richard Link, were first married when San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, made same-sex marriage legal—for a short time—in 2004. (After the wedding, I made the huge mistake of taking the wedding party—all fourteen—out to lunch at the Garden Court in the Palace Hotel. I never went through half a grand so fast in all my life.)

  David and Richard were Canadians who had worked in the States for ten years, but their green cards were pulled almost immediately after the wedding. They fled to London (David’s father was British and he had citizenship), and when Canada made gay marriage legal, they went back to their hometown of Calgary and were married still again.

  That one I had to attend—I was the only one around who had been at their first wedding. Unfortunately, I was the only single man among married couples of both gays and straights who attended the wedding, but David and Richard insisted I say something appropriate to the crowd about love. I forget what I said, but it drew great applause. Immediately afterward I decamped for Lake Louise, Canada’s most popular tourist trap. On board the bus, I speculated about where David and Richard would be married next.

  David loved the film—he had once met Harvey in years past—and was glad to have made it to the party and premiere.

  I stayed for about an hour at the Milk party and then left. On the way out, Lance hooked his arm in mine and we went skipping to the doors.

  It was the first time since I was six that I had skipped anyplace. I felt very foolish and at the same time very brave (I didn’t fall once).

  There was a part of one scene that never made it into the film (because of the WGA strike). Harvey (Penn) is addressing a roomful of radicals and telling them that if they wanted to change people’s minds about gays, all of them had to come out. I was sitting in a sling chair, and Franco kept hitting my foot—he wanted me to ad-lib something. I got up and asked Harvey if he wanted me to tell my family that I was a fucking faggot. Gus came running over and said no, no, it’s a statement, not a question.

  I time traveled again. My family were all gone, but they still lived in the back of my head. I took a deep breath and finally told them that I was a fucking faggot and it was loaded with all the self-loathing I had felt back then. I started to shake, and Sean held me for an extra second before I went out—I think he was the only one who realized I was coming apart on set.

  Outside, it was a cold night and I began to settle down. The world had changed for me. The words now meant nothing to me—I was what God and my family had made me, and the stone that had been in the middle of my heart for decades suddenly disappeared.

  When the residual check came in half a year later, I cut it in two and sent $7,000 to UNICEF for Haitian relief. Sean Penn had been working down there for six months getting his hands dirty in the muck of that little country. The money wasn’t much, but it was the only way I could thank him for what he had done for me, even if he hadn’t known it.

  Sometimes small things are really huge.

  But there was more to it that I really didn’t realize until a few days before writing this. For some people it’s not easy for them to love themselves. In college there had been those who never considered themselves worthy of love (I was one). Most of them came from fractured families, kept their secrets to themselves, and if they couldn’t find a way out, took another way out.

  I was lucky. There were those who weren’t. When I found Herb and his boys, it was usually a quick financial transaction. It satisfied part of me—for a while—but not the really important part. The Castro was, as Cleve Jones once put it, “all about sex.” You could multiply the number of times you had sex and the next day be ready for more.

  Everybody has their own opinion, but for me something was always missing. Marriage was looked down upon; “open” partnerships were tolerated. The answer was still, always, sex.

  The first break came when Gavin Newsom made it relatively easy—for a short time—for those interested to get married. I was a best man at the marriage of David and Richard and noted that it was mainly women waiting in line for a license—most of them in their thirties or so, some bringing along children.

  It didn’t make much of a dent in public attitude and then—a miracle for me—more and more people were beating the drums for marriage. This last weekend (as I write this) the dam broke. There were a million and a half people gathered for the Gay Pride Parade. The number of people marching and bragging about either their present marriage or their coming marriage was staggering.

  Suddenly it wasn’t all about sex. It wasn’t left out, but concern and affection and mutual help had been added.

  There was, suddenly, another goal beyond the hot number standing on the corner.

  Judge Vaughn Walker handed down the decision that broke the logjam in California. Lance Black wrote a play where the only dialogue was that taken from Walker’s opinion. A lot of known stars wanted to act in it.

  When it opened in San Francisco at the Castro Theater and Judge Walker walked in, there was a standing ovation. Walker’s decision had been carefully crafted. Two out of three appellate justices passed it. Justice Anthony Kennedy and others on the US Supreme Court said the plaintiffs had no standing—they had failed to prove that if two persons of the same sex got married, that somehow it would endanger the marriage of those who had complained.

  That’s all I can write, Bob. For most of it I’ve been writing about dead people and it’s been breaking my heart.

  The next book I write will be full of aliens and spaceships and huge explosions. I’ll make a million dollars and grab a friend and go to London and Paris and Venice—and Florence, to see if Michelangelo did as good a job on David’s butt as he did on the rest of him. (I’m pretty sure he did.)

  Right now I’m sitting on my front steps and it’s a warm, sunny day and I’ve got my shirt open so the sun hits my far-too-white skin. I’ve been sitting here for maybe fifteen minutes and waving at the people passing by on the sidewalk, and this being San Francisco, they all waved back. I’ve seen a guy and his girlfriend walk by and then two women with a little boy between them, looking in wonder at the world around him. And two young men, maybe in their mid-twenties, strolling hand in hand. If they were open to advice I’d tell them to get married.

  Maybe they already have; if not, they’ll probably have to wait in line.

  It’s a different world now, and as I look at the couples passing by, I can’t tell any difference between them in any ways that really matter.

  All my love,

  Frank

  AFTERWORD

  The Most Interesting Guy in the Room

  BOB ANGELL

  To be the recipient of a letter like this one is at once daunting, intimidating, and marvelous. It is, without a doubt, the longest and most wonderful letter I will ever receive in my lifetime, and from a man I considered to be one of my best friends.

  Like so many people who knew Frank, I met him at a science fiction convention, World Con 2004 in Boston, just a couple of months after graduating from the Clarion West writing program. The year was also notable because on May 17, Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex marriage, and there was a general optimi
sm floating through the gay community. Two thousand four was also the year that Tor published his thriller The Donor.

  I dropped in late at the gay fandom party and there was this older guy wandering around and being ignored by all the young gays who were busy talking with one another.

  “Whose the old guy?” I asked a friend.

  “That’s Frank Robinson,” he said. “He wrote The Dark Beyond the Stars, a Lammie Award Winner. Oh, and the book that became the movie, Towering Inferno.”

  “So why isn’t anyone talking with him?’

  A shrug was my answer.

  So I went over and said hello and discovered one of the most interesting people I would ever meet. Frank had a deep, sonorous voice with a decidedly Milwaukeean accent coupled with a nimble and articulate mind. He was captivating.

  We talked for hours about books, movies, but most of all about gay activism. You see, Frank had been Harvey Milk’s speechwriter, and at the time I was deeply involved in the marriage equality movement back home, and there were a lot of relevant current events that we had in common.

  He asked me what I had written. I told him that I had a few short stories published and that I’d also written three unpublished novels and a collection of linked short stories mostly unpublished and mostly autobiographical about growing up gay, working for a defense contractor, being on a gay swim team, guarding the AIDS quilt the first time it came to DC, and so on.

  “Send it to me,” he said.

  We began talking on the phone regularly, which wasn’t the easiest of things because I was East Coast and he was West Coast. E-mails were easier, but it was more fun to talk with him.

  I started reading everything he’d written that I could get my hands on. Through an interlibrary loan, I checked out a copy of The Power, his first book, published in 1956, the year I was born. It had been made into a movie with George Hamilton, Suzanne Pleshette, Michael Rennie, and other big names, but the movie, like the book, was out of print and impossible to find. Frank sent me a copy of the movie on DVD and a hardcover copy of the book.