Vulgar Favours

by Maureen Orth

  Founded in 1967 by Cliff Pettit, a Fort Lauderdale travel agent who realized that closeted, affluent gays wanted to relax with one another on vacation, Gamma Mu has always been discreet and the subject of intense speculation. Is it the Gay Shriners or the Bohemian Grove? Hopelessly retro or fabulously fun?

  Ian Gibson, a defense consultant, gallery owner, and former Gamma Mu, will never forget his introduction to the exclusive group of 650 men from all over the country, many of whom are still closeted. After being referred, Gibson joined Gamma Mu’s gay ski week in Aspen in 1989. For $300, he said, he was expecting this “dirty little motel in the middle of nowhere.” Instead he got a plush condo with Picassos on the wall, located next to Little Nell, the chic hotel at the foot of Aspen Mountain. “I walked in and there were three men in their early forties. Making chitchat, one told me when I inquired, ‘I have a hotel.’ I said something about, ‘Isn’t it nice you run a hotel,’ and he said, ‘No, I own a chain of 146 hotels.” Ian Gibson promptly joined Gamma Mu, which stands for good men.

  The following year he went to some events in Washington, D.C. “The D.C. ball had three hundred men in black tie, the average age the forties, and all were deeply in the closet. I remember one of the high officials of the Republican National Committee. Many were accompanied by a lot younger gentlemen, who became the flavor of the week. In the closeted Republican gay communities, it’s far easier to find young protégés to train as you go up.”

  Not long after, Gibson was invited to a Halloween party hosted by a prominent Washington nuclear physicist, also a Gamma Mu member. “A lot of these people are high up and very discreet,” Gibson recounts. “My partner and I showed up in these Renaissance costumes—we tried to gauge it carefully. We got there, and the host answers the door wearing this floor-length gown in a gorgeous red. I said, ‘Oh, that gown looks very much like the one Marilyn Monroe wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.’ He said, ‘It is the gown Marilyn Monroe wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!’”

  At the twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration of Gamma Mu in Houston in 1992, Neiman Marcus put on a fashion show for the men. Gibson recalls that a young man came down the runway wearing a $150 swimsuit. One member shouted from the audience, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars.” The model said, “What?” The man said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for that right now!” Feeling no pain, the group then demanded that Neiman’s open its ladies’ hats area so that they could buy elaborate straw chapeaux to wear to the businessman’s lunch the next day—which they did, to go with their colorful Willi Smith blazers.

  “A lot of Gamma Mu members are closeted in their home environments,” explains Washington, D.C., public relations executive Wes Combs, thirty-three, who briefly was a member of Gamma Mu but found it too costly and the membership a bit senior. “Fly-ins cost two thousand dollars, and I’d rather go to South Beach.” Of the membership he says, “They’re prominent bankers and lawyers, and they like to go on fly-ins so they don’t have to worry they’ll run into clients.” Founder Cliff Pettit has been known to tell groups of sixty or so traveling abroad to “tone it down” lest the closet door fly open. “Believe me,” says Combs, “it’s pretty obvious.”

  Many older gays and gay couples, says Combs, “assume because people see them together, most people understand they’re gay, but they don’t say anything about it—they’re of that generation. The secrecy is based on physical safety but also [the fear of ] ostracism. Older gays say, ‘Why are you shouting it from the rooftops?’ Homophobia becomes internalized from the time you’re one to two years old. Boys playing with dolls are taught that that’s bad.”

  Combs was referred to Gamma Mu by his cousin, Billy Ruben, who thought the group would be a boost to a young man like him looking for role models. “In Hawaii, we met a guy so high up in the navy his finger was practically on the red button,” says Billy Ruben’s partner, Howard Greenfield. “So I said to Bill, ‘This would be a marvelous thing for somebody like Wes, who’s uncertain about his life and what life holds. Look at all those different people and how they would make him feel great.’”

  Billy Ruben and Howard Greenfield have been together as a gay couple for fifty years. They have been Gamma Mu members for more than twenty and have traveled to Gamma Mu fly-ins in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, New York, Washington, Fort Lauderdale, Boston, and Seattle, as well as Hawaii. They have traveled with Gamma Mu to Tahiti and New Zealand, and have been part of 166 Gamma Mus sailing around the Caribbean on a sailboat from St. Bart’s. They have barged down the Burgundy Canal in the south of France and have been taken on hot-air balloon rides with champagne. That trip began with Oktoberfest in Munich. Other Gamma Mu trips include sails around the Greek islands and a cruise on the Queen Mary II.

  Naturally there are times when romance blooms. “We met a doctor who had just separated from his wife on a flight down to Puerto Vallarta,” says Greenfield. “And on the flight he met his mate. It was his first fly-in and he was alone. Before we knew it, he had met that someone, and they’ve been together ever since.”

  Billy and Howard, both builders from Miami, were the hosts at the last Florida fly-in for a Banana Republic party. At their Fort Lauderdale home, a live jaguar met guests, and torches lit the paths into the tropical garden, where there were white cockatiels and an African band.

  “Bill and I have always lived a diverse lifestyle,” says Howard, who sports a tiny gold earring. “It was much different twenty years ago. There were some people who didn’t belong who thought it was an excessive society group. We have met some of the most wonderful people we know through Gamma Mu. What could be more fun than meeting people once a year during holidays without hearing about any problems? Only wonderful things. One of the many advantages.

  “There is not a city we go to where we don’t have connections to Gamma Mu who can tell us where the restaurants are, where the bars are, where the action is. In New Orleans, a woman in the French Quarter lent us her home. She wasn’t even there; she just said, ‘Here are the keys.’ It was marvelous.” In Houston, a handsome young married doctor, “also gay who has children,” gave the big gala. “He had a tented, sit-down dinner for three hundred, and he looked as if he had the entire state of Oaxaca, Mexico, as staff. He had wines and violins and an entertainment area with bleachers set up and a dance floor.” Where were his wife and children? “Oh, they went shopping.”

  “When you go to their city, they really go all out,” says Billy Ruben. “We form friendships all over the country. You meet people like you. If you go out to bars, it’s not the same thing. There are some people from Gamma Mu who never stay in any hotel. They always stay at members’ houses.”

  The advent of AIDS has changed Gamma Mu, just as it has changed so many other aspects of gay life. In the last decade Gamma Mu has set up a foundation that helps AIDS sufferers in rural parts of the country, where few support systems are in place. “I was unhappy with the foundation at first,” says Howard. “I loved Gamma Mu because it never ever pretended to do anything but have fun. We’re constantly besieged to go for charities. Once the foundation came in, I was afraid it’d be the same.” Today Howard says his fears were unfounded.

  In earlier times, Gamma Mu members were richer and overwhelmingly Republican. But the politics of AIDS and the current Republican leadership’s coolness toward gay rights have made Gamma Mu more democratic and Democratic. In order to attract younger members, it also had to go a bit downscale, so it now counts among its members “a blackjack dealer on the Mississippi River and, of course, those who want to play cops and cowboys!” For the most part, however, “these are patrons of high opera and the symphony,” Ian Gibson says. “They are big readers of the New York Times and Vanity Fair—the older and richer queens.”

  When Gamma Mu members flew into the nation’s capital in 1996, for instance, they had brunch on the terrace of the Kennedy Center, sipped cocktails in the rotunda of the Capitol, and had a catered dinner in a Georgetown mansion. A
t the annual Gamma Mu Foundation fund-raiser, the Stardust Ball, in Washington in April 1998, 250 male guests in black tie, representing “the highest echelon of closeted Washington,” sat in gilded straight-back chairs at tables covered with peach tablecloths and centerpieces of fresh spring flowers. Their silver heads bobbed in conversation, their diamond studs flashed off the candlelight. It could have been any chichi charity ball, except that there were no tiaras, no rustling silk and taffeta gowns, and not even a drag queen in sight.

  The ball, held in the sunken marble galleria of an opulent downtown Washington building, featured a bandleader in white tie and tails wailing on the sax. As the band swung into “Misty” and “Unforgettable,” one hundred male couples got up and danced cheek to cheek, some with arms entwined, others doing the big dip. When the band started playing “La Bamba,” the whole room immediately formed a long conga line that snaked up and down the stairway.

  Andrew Cunanan fit right in. By all accounts, when he arrived in Seattle with Norman he made an excellent impression. He was well dressed, he kept his laugh down, and his manners were impeccable. Although Bud Riley, a Gamma Mu who flew up on the plane to Seattle with Norman and Andrew, found Andrew rather boastful—“No matter what you were talking about, Andrew would interject as if he was knowledgeable on every subject”—another Gamma Mu, Phil Flick, from San Diego, thought Andrew “well read and interesting. If you were going to Paris and Italy, Andrew knew all the places—where to go, where to stay.” Art Huskey, head of San Diego’s chapter of Gamma Mu, says merely, “We always assumed Andrew was hired to be Mr. Blachford’s decorator.”

  A storm cloud passed over the businessmen’s lunch on Friday, however, when Andrew was welcomed as a new member under Norman’s tutelage. Tradition dictated that Andrew introduce himself and indicate his sponsor and his profession. According to a San Diego city official who was present, “When Andrew got up, he said, ‘Hi, my name is Andrew DeSilva. My sponsor’s Norman Blachford, who is also keeping me.’” Andrew got a big laugh, the official says. “But Norman got pissed off. It was a very memorable introduction.”

  The year 1995 proved to be memorable all around for Andrew. He not only found the man who could support his dreams, but also met the man who was his dream.

  11

  David

  ONE WEEKEND IN November 1995, Andrew was in San Francisco staying at the posh Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the city’s third tallest building, in a $520 room with a marble bathroom featuring a picture window over the bathtub looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge. He had returned to the city flashing big bucks. None of his closest friends from his Berkeley days even suspected that he was being kept, or even knew of Norman Blachford’s existence.

  Andrew was as hyper as ever and filled with tall tales. “I always thought he was a little too happy,” says Jesse Cappachione, the longtime bartender at the Midnight Sun, “always laughing and smiling—a little too good to be true.”

  On Friday night, at the “no name” restaurant on Market Street at the entrance to the Castro, Andrew was having dinner and holding court—making friends laugh by telling people in the restaurant that he was Count Frescobaldi—when he noticed a handsome blond alone at the bar. He immediately sent over a drink. The blond, whose name was David Madson, was definitely Andrew’s type—preppy-looking, not too tall, with deep blue eyes. An architect from Minneapolis, he was in San Francisco for a few days on business. “It was pretty sparky,” says a friend who witnessed their first encounter. That night they had a “nonsexual sleepover” at the Mandarin Oriental.

  For Andrew, to whom image meant everything, there was much about David that he could instantly fall for. David was vivacious, talented, and accomplished on many levels. What could be more perfect for Andrew than a dashing young architect? A waspy-looking golden boy? Architecture was one of Andrew’s passions, and he had always been attracted to blonds. Plus, David was considered by his friends to be “so charismatic that he blew people away” personally and professionally. David also had the gift of gab; he had won medals in forensics all through high school, and he could talk his way out of anything.

  David was driven and hardworking, the opposite of Andrew. But he too dealt in image, and Andrew, who started pouring on the rich-kid persona, seemed pretty interesting, especially if he was really as wealthy and cosmopolitan as he was letting on. Both of them loved clothes, knew food, and were very much aware of trends. Back home in his loft in Minneapolis, David had three closets stuffed with clothes, plus another closet in the basement. But unlike Andrew, David was willing to work ninety-hour weeks to support his tastes. He had always held a variety of jobs, from selling ladies’ shoes and gifts at Saks Fifth Avenue, Donaldsons, and Target, to washing dishes and finally becoming the maître d’ at a trendy Minneapolis restaurant. For several years he had worked part-time at a prominent law firm, helping with plans and graphics in the preparation of asbestos cases. Then—without a degree—he parlayed an internship into a job developing and publishing an urban development plan for the Downtown Duluth Waterfront Renovation Project.

  It had taken David a while to find his professional niche, but when he graduated from architecture school at the University of Minnesota, he was awarded the President’s Medal as the architecture student with the most outstanding thesis for the class of 1995.

  Like Andrew, David was the youngest of four, the adored little brother, “but not spoiled,” says his brother Ralph. “David got the best of all of us.” He was also a performer. The little old ladies in his tiny hometown, Barron, Wisconsin, still talk about David as Harold Hill, the starring role in The Music Man, in the high school production fifteen years ago. “In high school they had talent shows. It was nothing for him to get up to the microphone and sing ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ or anything that was popular,” says his mother, Carol. “He could just do it.” She describes David’s high school years as “filled with absolute fun.” One of his buddies then, Monty Shearer, says he learned from David, “A good one-liner is a good thing to always have on hand.”

  David was the quintessential Boy Scout, taking groceries to the needy at Christmas, helping others to learn. He was an aerobics, ski, and swimming instructor. “He taught half the kids in this town to swim,” says his father, Howard Madson, who owns the local hardware store. Madson moved his family to Barron, a quiet community of cornfields and turkey farms an hour and a half north of Minneapolis, in 1979. Madson was a branch manager for JCPenney, and David, who was born in Waterloo, Iowa, spent his boyhood in three other small Wisconsin towns before arriving in Barron for high school. Growing up, he acquired a strong work ethic and solid Christian values. “Both my sisters and David were certainly goal-oriented,” says Ralph. “There’s this belief if you set your goal and work hard enough, you work smart. It has served us well.”

  David, like Andrew, loved to be in the center of the action, but as a peacemaker. He was the mediator in neighborhood fights, and later the gung-ho resident adviser in a University of Minnesota, Duluth, dorm complex. As a hot young professional sailing through a presentation for his boss, David snowed clients, telling them, sure, they could have the impossible.

  He seemed so animated and involved that he inevitably drew others to him. Wendy Petersen, one of his closest friends in college, remembers seeing him first from afar in the dorm dining room at Duluth. “Gee, I thought, I want to get to know that person, because he looks like a bunch of fun. I think people always wanted to be around him because of the electrifying magnetism of his personality.”

  When the Salem Lutheran Church bus had a flat tire on a trip to North Dakota, David, whose family is devout Lutheran, entertained the group while the tire was being fixed. When a college friend felt sad and gave herself a one-person “pity party,” David showed up at her door in a tux to take her out for a night on the town.

  “He wanted to save people. He liked the underdog. David was kind of drawn to people who needed him,” says his former coworker Kathy Compton. “He had just s
een the movie Jerry Maguire and he said, ‘Jerry Maguire reminds me so much of me—always trying to make things OK!’”

  But his easygoing charm and need to help attractive, screwed-up cases made David a target. Before meeting Andrew, David had been deeply burned by a handsome lover of two years, who began stalking and harassing him after he asked him to move out. The stalker, Greg Nelson, who spread false rumors that David had given him HIV, finally had to be jailed after repeatedly violating a court order to stay away from David. Sometimes Nelson would call him as many as 120 times a day. He gave David’s number to sex-phone lines so that people “looking for action” would call. He sent pornographic literature along with a nude picture of David to senior partners in David’s law firm, saying, “Do you know what your employees do?” Rich Bonnin, David’s close friend and former roommate, explains: “David liked people to rely on him. Greg became very dependent on David. Then, when he no longer had David, he became obsessed.”

  This episode, which went on for more than two years, even after David had met Andrew, caused David untold misery and numerous court appearances. Nelson was arrested more than once. Meanwhile, David was afraid to open his door and he changed his phone number frequently. He never knew if he was going to find his car scratched and damaged.

  David hated violence. Once when he was little, his father took him duck hunting. “David did not like to see anything killed,” his father says. “We shot this duck, and he cried so bad I finally hid the thing over by a tree, and that didn’t do it, so a fellow happened to be next door, and unknown to David, I gave the guy the duck to get it out of there, because David was just beside himself we killed this duck.” When David was a dorm adviser, an angry student mistook him for someone else and pushed him through a pane of glass. He was uninjured but very shaken. “He was white as a ghost, very startled, and needed someone to calm him down,” says Wendy Petersen. “He was very scared. David wasn’t a big guy. He couldn’t rely on size. David was not a physical person.”