“Not that,” Louise said as I wrapped a protuberant chuck of brown turkey meat — hard and round and as brown as the earth. “That’s the Pope’s Nose and that’s a special treat . . . for the cook.”
“Really,” I said. “Never heard of the tradition.”
“My mother always saved the Pope’s Nose for herself, although in her day they called it the Parson’s Nose, only we’re Presbyterians. However, this year the honor goes to . . . you.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“You must,” she said. “Or if you’re not up to it, give it to . . . Matthew. I know he’ll gobble it up.”
The idea intrigued me. Here was a mother’s gift given to me and I could bestow it on my lover. Louise retrieved a silver platter from the bottom cabinet. She placed the globular morsel in the center. She quickly peeled and quartered an orange, arranging it about the ecclesiastical schnozzle like the choir at St. Peter’s. It’s always about the presentation and I was impressed.
When I entered the living room carrying this prize like a coronation crown, Louise announced our entrance.
“Orange slices to cleanse palate,” she said. “And the Pope’s Nose.”
Sam twisted about. He gazed at the platter.
“You didn’t scoff it down, Louise, like you usually do?” He turned to Viv. “She usually carries it off like a squirrel’s nut and devours it in a secret hiding place.” He laughed.
“A new trend,” Louise harked.
I offered the orange slices around until I came to Matt.
“The Pope’s Nose goes to Martin this year,” Louise announced.
“And I’m giving it to Matt.”
“Pumpkin.”
Matt was astounded.
“Just like Luis,” Mary said. “Newt, don’t you eat that thing. You know I want it.”
She reached, but Matt plucked it off the platter and popped it into his mouth.
“I don’t get it,” Viv said. “What’s so special about a Turkey’s ass?”
Matt nearly spit it out. Mary grabbed for him. I almost dropped the platter. However, the golden sound about the room was Louise’s hearty laugh. She evidently found Viv’s comment rib tickling good fun. It was then that I knew I had found my family.
Part II
The Great Divide
Chapter One
Westward Ho!
1
It was Christmas again. Holly, angels, appliances, and carols sung by Jersey Gay Sparrows. The whole nine-yards including the expectation of another appliance — this time a blender to make Margaritas in the comfort of one’s own home (or apartment or the apartment of your . . .oh, never mind). Christmas was even better this year, because I shared it. Not with the heartbreak kid of the hour, but with my own bona fide boyfriend . . . hubby, if you will, deuces take the law. I had a ring. I had a hand and a heart. There’s nothing like buying a Christmas tree together, and then decorating it with sparkle and shine. We used my sparkle and shine, because Matt didn’t have any, although he bought the lights. He even rigged up an electric candle in the front window. Then together we made cocoa and love. Then, in the morning, when Viv knocked on the door (she had no key here), we bantered, exchanged presents and mixed up a batch of Margaritas.
My life had been transformed. Working retail was not just working retail. Russ avoided me now. He waved at choir rehearsal, but he no longer swooped down on me from the Tux shop and shot the breeze during his break. It was fine with me. I had a wise old queen once tell me that close friends sometimes get jealous of the new lovers. However, that queen also told me lovers come and go, but friends are for life. Well, I guess Russ had become an acquaintance. Things change and shit happens.
Life settled into a routine. It was different living for two, planning for two and finding out all the annoying habits my cowboy had. No matter how hard I tried to train him to depart from the room before farting, he’d let one rip whenever he saw fit. Announced it, even. Pumpkin, I believe your ship is coming in, he’d say, and then foghorn Flannigan, the room would rattle. I hated that. I’d wave my hand about and complain, giving him instructions, and then pranced out of the room while he laughed his ass off, which is a better use for it than cutting the cheese. Matt was easier going. Never complained. However, I suspected he got annoyed when I’d stopped mid-sentence, run for the dust devil and clean crumbs off the sofa. Despite this, we had made it to the first Christmas and beyond.
Matt even started to come to rehearsals, which surprised me. He would drive, because after three hours of practice, Pumpkin, you should rest your eyes. He would sort my music and could even handle the temper of Brian, the Librarian. Matt would sit quietly by the window, or if called upon, turn pages for Tim, the accompanist. At break time, he’d help with the set-up and clean up, and got to be a favorite with all the sissies in the choir. He managed even to hold Todd and Padgett at bay. He could distinguish between the three Rons and even had a kind word for Jasper. Russ rarely approached him, but I think Matt was fine with that. I guess he sensed that whatever Russ and I had as friends, Matt and I had in spades now. There was no room for a third wheel.
Matt had to have patience with this whole Gay Jersey Sparrow business. I mean, he didn’t sing, except that warble of Dixie, which I never encouraged him to perform. He couldn’t read music, but enjoyed it, and to sit through all the exercises, prodding and poking and even the directorial hissy fits — well, if I didn’t love it so much, I would have never subjected myself to it. Matt took mental notes. So much so, when I practiced my inevitable solos back at the apartment he’d yawk like a frigin organ grinder. You were supposed to hold that note longer and crescendo. He was always right, and I usually bristled at him. Critics I could take (well, barely), but tone-deaf music coaches were a bit much.
It was shortly before the spring concert that Matt sprung his biggest surprise.
“Pumpkin, I was thinking. Since we’re both going to GALA Festival, I thought I might foot the bill.”
I was appalled and elated.
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have the money.”
“Barely.”
“How do you know that?”
He knew. I had cried poverty over that trip for over a year. All he could do is smile.
“Well, if you don’t want me to do it . . .”
But I did. What kind of shit was I? Here was a man who gave me his all — his very being, and I was now willing to wallow in his cash wad. How different was that from the fireflies at the Otterson estate who vied for the Professorial favors? Wasn’t it the same thing?
“Something tells me, you’ve already done it.”
He grinned. He held an envelope behind his back. I tried to grab it. When I succeeded, I was even more surprised. It was a check for $ 800.00 — my check.
“Your deposit,” he said. “I retrieved it and paid for us both — in full.”
I shook the check at him.
“Well, I’m buying you lots of stuff with this when we’re there.”
“You can buy me a beer in the dust up, ‘cause the Gay Rodeo is there in town at the same time.”
I hugged him.
“I’ll buy you two beers and a steak.”
He kissed me long and hard.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said.
“You too.”
“I want to make sure you have the most wonderful memories of me in Colorado.”
That I found strange, because I would always have wonderful memories of my cowboy . . . always.
2
The solo for the Festival that I had landed was a plum. I didn’t expect it to be when I was told it would be a world premiere of a new AIDS memorial piece. Although I had never sung a world premiere, I have sung a crop of the maudlin, weepy memorial numbers. Now don’t get me wrong. At the time, I was rather ambivalent about the disease. I wasn’t heartless. These musical pieces were overtly moving and I heard the bl
ubbering when I sang my solos. In fact, a full third of our singing canon had AIDS pertinence. When I sang Bring Him Home from Les Miserables, I recall a young man collapsing into his neighbor’s lap, bawling. I knew it wasn’t necessarily my rendition, although I sailed a high G-flat that echoed throughout the venue. I admit that when we sang a short concert over a portion of the AIDS quilt, I found it emotionally moving. However, it came with the territory. If you sang in a GALA Chorus, you warbled requiems over the mounds of loved ones. Again, I wasn’t callous then, just untouched by it all. It was a bubble somewhere out there. I knew about safe sex, but didn’t give it much credence, although Matt was near clinical about it. Youth knows only immortality. The furthest thing from my mind was the grim reaper and the news items from New York and San Francisco. I mean, weren’t Haitians getting the disease too?
Still I was surprised at this world premiere memorial number. It was entirely in Cree. Not Creek. Cree, which I learned was a Canadian tribe, and somewhere along the inevitable line, the Cree managed to give birth to a one-hundred percent Gay warrior — a dancer named Little Fox. He was evidently a brilliant interpretive dancer and amazed audiences nightly at the Winnipeg Ballet. Then, like Nuriyev, he contracted the disease and withered away. His lover was a composer and thus wrote this memorial piece. It was rhythmic, filled with war-chants. I had a soaring solo — like an eagle. These wonderful vowels would let me throw passion to the wind and take flight. Surprisingly, the piece wasn’t depressing. It had all the in vogue dissonance. A paean to life — I think. Not a word of it was in English. However, the musicality of Cree and the pulse of the composer’s remembrances defied translation — it didn’t need one.
Jasper also had a solo in the piece — a secondary tenor line. We even had to sing a duetto for six measures, where he inevitably tried to blast me out. I knew I would need to sit him down for a serious talk. I mean, I understood his jealousy. Who wouldn’t, but this piece became a badge of honor for me — for the Jersey Gay Sparrows. Finally, when he upset the balance for the fourth time in rehearsal, and the director had given up, I did something I had never done before — and never since. I volunteered to relinquish the solo, to great protest from all. The flack so embarrassed Jasper that he took me aside and asked if we could give it one more go. I agreed. Perfection. He may have begrudged me my spotlight, but he finally realized that there was more at stake here than egos.
“You made me cry, Pumpkin,” Matt said on the way home.
“I’ve seen you cry before.”
Silence. I hit a nerve and I didn’t mean to do it.
“I’m sorry. I never want to intrude on your memories of . . . Luis.”
He squirmed, but that was the first time I had mentioned our resident ghost since we had met.
“I’m okay,” he said.
He was clearly not okay, but I let it be. I guessed that death, in its many forms, could be evoked in music — moving, soaring music. The moment soon passed and I began to hum the Cree piece. Matt hummed too, but he was in serious counterpoint. He hummed Dixie.
3
Vacations were granted by both A&S and Axum Labs and, once again, like our first B&B summer, we were free to go where we pleased. However, where we pleased to go was none other than Denver, Colorado. We left from Philadelphia because our travel agent found us the cheapest way out at that always under construction air hub. The flight was delayed — that is to say, conditions were normal. I didn’t mind. The Sparrows were twittering, making a scene for themselves before the straight public, who either enjoyed the campy antics or fled to a corner with their children huddled so as not to catch a disease. Didn’t you know that homosexuality was contagious? The three Rons did a chorus line number, while Todd Moorehouse marched hither and thither complaining about the air quality in the waiting lounge. Brian, the Librarian, panicked when he came through the metal detector (a simple device in those pre-9/11 days). He was wearing so much metal body jewelry, his crotch set off the alarm. He broke down crying when the security guards asked him to remove his cock ring or at least account for it. We roared and had a tale for the ages to tell around rehearsal halls and dinner parties for years to come. Do you remember when Brian set off the metal detector in the Philadelphia Airport?
Once boarded, the shenanigans didn’t stop. You see, while we waited in the lounge, Padgett passed around some props — Dixie cups attached to rubber bands and toilet seat covers. When the flight attendant began her spiel, we were all rehearsed to synchronize our movements with hers. We popped open the seat belts and waved the flight instruction cards. The attendant, at first, was not amused, but her male counterpart, who was clearly a member of our tribe, joined in the charade. Even a few of the straight passengers, the ones that weren’t shaking their heads and going my, my, my, this plane is doomed for hell, waved their cards in support. Then came the piece de resistance. When the oxygen mask was demonstrated, we all had our bouncing Dixie cups, ready to apply to our dainty noses. Life jackets? Toilet seat covers. The plane was roaring with mirth now. Guess they were wondering what we had planned for flotation devices, but there we drew the line.
Things calmed down a tad once we were airborne. Matt liked the window seat and was quiet. Brian, the Library, sat in front of us and occasionally would turn around and try to engage us in conversation.
“I hear that they have a wonderful collection of Rainbow Jellies at the Denver Aquarium,” he said.
I didn’t know they sold jam in an aquarium. I didn’t even know that Denver had an aquarium. It took ten minutes of his babble before I realized he was talking about some rare species of jellyfish that swam in Amazonian waters. It put Matt to sleep. All I did was bob my head and prayer for the man to turn about. Suddenly, Padgett was taking drink orders. It appears he had usurped the flight attendant’s coffee pot.
“One lump or two, sweeties,” he said. “We have a variety of soft drinks and tiny little bottles of the hard stuff. Wine is served in an eyedropper. Pretzels and chips and, if you’re real nice to me, I’ll cut the cheese.”
The attendant was attempting to regain her cart, probably realizing that about ten F.A.A. regulations had been broken. Our director, on the other hand, was keeping the gay steward company somewhere in the rear of the craft, and we supposed that that may have been the sum of it.
Besides an occasional Behave yourselves bleated out by the humorless, we managed to be model gay citizens out on a lark above the friendly skies. I eventually conked out only to wake to a dry tongue and every joint yearning to be free. I don’t like air travel, with or without a bevy of silly sissies. However, I remember gazing over at my sleeping cowboy, his hands folded, the ring shining in the dim reading light. I have looked forward to this trip for a long time, I thought. But who could have predicted this? Who?
Then there was light and voices and the Captain speaking. Prepare for landing, and all that standard crap. I woke Matt up, and together we peered out the window. These were the days of the old airport — Stapleton, before they had the mega-port that ate everyone’s luggage. Denver spread before us and, in the near distance, like a curtained wall — mountains. But not just mountains. The Rockies. The Big ‘uns. The Great Divide. The red sky bled over the crags and ridges. My heart and body were both a mile high.
Chapter Two
A Proposition
1
Our warden, a sweet African-American sissy wearing an outsized beanbag cap glittering with rainbow rhinestones, met us at the airport.
“Welcome to Denver,” he sang out.
His name was Derek or Dean, I quite forget. We only saw him when we were summoned to be somewhere. And I remember that one night he took us to a karaoke bar called Rallingon’s or Remington’s or something like that. It was dark and smoky and in need of my vacuum broom. He sang with soul and was worthy of his beanbag cap.
So we all shouted out a good old New Jersey Howdy complete with a flutter of Z-snaps and Liza poses. Matt seemed pale to me. I guessed it was the flight, although he s
lept during most of it. Perhaps it was the ham sandwich and stale cookies. Those were the days when airlines at least shammed a good in-flight experience instead of devolving into hauling cargo across the Great Divide. Matt assured me that he was okay, that he needed to get his land legs. So I followed the beanbag glitter hat, like the rest of the Sparrows, into an awaiting bus.
Denver surprised me. I expected it to be set on the roof of the world. We were on the roof, but in a flat plain surrounded by mountains. They loomed as a distant curtain. The city spread in every direction. I remembered passing the State Capitol and the performing Arts Center, where GALA Festival was hosted. Then were crossed a river — or something that once was a river, now a wide expanse of mud with a trickle running down its center. Our hotel overlooked this trickle and the new baseball stadium.
Derek or Dean . . . no, now I remember it. His name was Desmond. He chattered about how he was with the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus and each member was responsible for a different visiting choir. I recall thinking how large the Denver chorus must be to spare a member to cover each of a hundred and ten performing groups. I was excited.
We settled into the hotel. I wanted Matt to rest. We were lucky, because the Sparrows were four in a room, but Matt paid to have us private, which had some tongues wagging. But I didn’t care. This was like a honeymoon and I didn’t need a Padgett or one of the three Rons to be intruding on my happiness. There was no time to rest, however, because we unpacked, washed our faces and it was off to Boettcher Auditorium for the opening ceremonies. I could hardly catch my breath.
The full compliment of choruses hadn’t arrived yet, but the program was set, so the commencements could not be delayed. It was generally known that some of the gay men’s choruses would be fashionably late. Our very own Erastes Errata Chorus had arrived the day before from Newark, or so it was reported. We couldn’t find them. They were supposedly staying in a place called Aurora, so we would need to thresh through the seven-thousand hoohoo’s attending the Festival to find them. We didn’t until a week later.
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