by Helen Ellis
Plan A had been to save myself for Michael Jackson, George Michael, or Boy George because these men were different. Two out of three had dated Brooke Shields, so they were obviously marriage material. Would I like to wake up every morning to the dulcet tones of an angel or shop for Day-Glo shorty-shorts? I most certainly would. Did I have a poster of Culture Club over my bed because I thought the lead singer with his Karma Chameleon braids was the man for me? I most certainly did. I copied his kabuki makeup. I thought, When we go on our honeymoon, we’ll share a Caboodle.
The cliché Southern man is a gun-toting, tobacco-chewing redneck who rides a tractor like an inflatable pool toy and slurs racism like Carol Channing slurred her way through Hello, Dolly! But my favorite kind of Southern cliché is a fabric-book-carrying, mint-julep-sipping mama’s boy who knows all the words to Julia Sugarbaker’s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” rant and doesn’t need to be asked to give you his opinion on anything. Especially Patsy Cline. Or personalized note cards.
Growing up, I did not think of this kind of man as homosexual, I thought of him as Southern Effeminate.
Southern Effeminate men are eccentric. They wear seersucker and bow ties. They garden and read and paint miniatures. They antique. They collect salt shakers and cookie jars, linens and art. They see their mothers every Sunday. They escort rich widows to cultural events. They help their women friends wax their legs and lip-sync “Love Is Strange” by Mickey and Sylvia in a talent show like Anthony Bouvier did on Designing Women.
Now, when I meet a man who carries a dog like a monocle and has an accent as peppery as white gravy, I think, Is he gay or Southern Effeminate?
Grandpapa was such a Southern man. He was funny. He buttered onions. He owned and played a piano. He dressed well. He had an umbrella stand of polished walking sticks. He let his daughter, my mama, raise forty-five cats in their backyard. When I earned top academic honors in college, he speed-needlepointed a ninety-inch rug runner to the soundtrack of Oklahoma! that read: “Lawdy! Lawdy!! My Gran’chile Is Summa Cum Laude!” When I slept on an egg-crate mattress pad on the floor of my first Manhattan apartment for eight months, he bought me a twin bed and box spring. Every year for my birthday, he sent me the amount of money of the age that I was. So, the year he gave me the bed, he also gave me twenty-two dollars.
Grandpapa and I got on fine because I wrote my thank-you notes. Not everyone wrote their thank-you notes, and if you didn’t write your thank-you notes, he cut you off. My sister never got more than thirteen bucks. And to really teach her a lesson over the following years, Grandpapa sent her cash-enclosed birthday cards that were empty.
Grandpapa had a dark side. A shady side is more like it.
“Have a nice day, sir!” someone would say. And Grandpapa, with a singsong voice that sounded like coochie coochie coochie coo, would say, “I’ll have any kind of goddamn day I goddamn want to!”
Grandpapa never ate at a restaurant without sending food back. He gossiped. He carried grudges like handkerchiefs. He dropped the N-word like marbles from a busted bag of marbles. And then there was the man who I’ll call Norman.
After Grandpapa’s wife—my grandmama—died when I was an infant, and then Grandpapa’s next-door neighbor—his mama—died when I was a kid, and then two spinster sisters drove their car through the side of his house, he moved from Yazoo City, Mississippi, to Cincinnati and moved in with Norman.
As far back as I can remember, Norman was always in our Kodak pictures. He was younger than Grandpapa, closer to my parents’ age, but I always thought of him and Grandpapa as a matching set. Grandpapa and Norman came to our school events and on vacations. Grandpapa and Norman traveled for free on cruise ships because they agreed to dance with all the single octogenarian ladies. Norman was never called Uncle Norman. He was just Norman. They were roommates. They were friends. They hosted family holidays. And when we stayed in their home, Grandpapa and Norman stayed at a hotel.
Grandpapa died when I was twenty-four. As Papa drove my sister, Mama, and me to the graveyard, Mama reviewed Grandpapa’s eulogy—which he’d handwritten himself, underlining certain words for emphasis—but then stopped, looked up, turned to my father, and asked, “Mike, do you think Papa was gay?”
“Yes,” he said.
And that is all I’ve ever heard spoken about it. It was also the last time we spoke to Norman, who immediately moved to Florida and moved in with another man.
So why did—and do—Southern men keep their homosexuality a secret?
I’m sure there are a lot of reasons. Religion is a big one. To a lot of us, the threat of eternal damnation is more real than ozone depletion. Jerry Lee Lewis could marry his thirteen-year-old first cousin once removed, but if he’d gone to bed with the “Chantilly lace and a pretty face” of another man, he’d have gone to hell. He might as well have started weaving a hand basket. But cane and wicker crafts could make you a target. When I was a teenager, certain Southern boys got jumped in parking lots.
And again, not because they were gay as in homosexual, but because they were Southern Effeminate: quiet or small or smart or they dared to wear something other than Wranglers. One pair of Howard Jones parachute pants and a rattail would get you a Pepsi can thrown at your head.
Some boys ducked and covered with us young ladies. Looking back, I was a member of what I’m now pretty sure were two tribes of Three Girls and a Gay.
In one group, the boy named each of us after one of Judy Garland’s witches of Oz. There was the wicked one and the dead-to-the-world one. I, of course, was Glinda. To show me his devotion, this boy gave me an envelope filled with his fingernail clippings. Such flattery! I never felt so adored.
In the other group, the boy was our designated driver after each of us girls had chugged a Bartles & Jaymes Exotic Berry wine cooler. We thanked him for his support by letting him sleep on the floor during our slumber parties. At my house, boys weren’t allowed in my bedroom, but Papa took one look at this kid and waved him out of the living room and on up the stairs. I’d thought it was because the boy was so homely that Papa didn’t think he stood a chance with me. Now I know my father must have known what he knew about Grandpapa. But Papa, unless he was directly asked, was too considerate to let on.
Did I know these two boys were gay? Absolutely not. They never said they were, it never occurred to me to ask, and I honestly don’t know if they are now because I don’t do Facebook. But what I do know is that nobody bothered them in high school because they were shielded by us girls. And we girls could flirt and get tipsy without fear of having our reputations ruined. It was a wimp-wimp situation. We were all safe from regular boys.
At Central High, on the eve of the last day of tenth grade, a regular boy and his lackeys went after a Southern Effeminate boy because—as far as I can recall—he had a funny name. They rolled that boy’s house with Quilted Northern, blacked out every window with split Oreos, salted obscenities in the grass, and shaving-creamed the cars. And the next day, they sold T-shirts commemorating the prank.
A local business had customized and printed those teal-and-white T-shirts without question. The regular boys sold them out of cardboard boxes in the school cafeteria. No teacher stopped them, and as far as I know, all 868 of us tenth graders bought one. Me included, I’m ashamed to admit. But so did the victim. That kid was so tough-skinned and ahead of his time, he considered himself a celebrity. Rightly so. Thirty years later, his name is one of the few I remember.
When I return to the South, I’m always unsettled when a man I assume is gay—because he has a face pulled tighter than a gift bow or starts every sentence with “GIRL, please!”—introduces me to his wife. Or when a straight man qualifies a comment that could be taken “the wrong way.” For instance, on a Delta flight out of Atlanta, a good ole’ boy in a trucker’s cap that read AMERICAN BY BIRTH, BUT SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD struck up a conversation w
ith me by saying, “Now, I’m not gay or anything, but I like making jam!”
After twenty-five years in New York City, I still get a thrill when I meet a man who’s out of the closet. Most gay men I meet here are out of the closet. So I live my life regularly delighted.
My friend Martin was my gateway gay. He’s four years younger, so I didn’t know him at Central High, but after I left for college, he took my sister to a dance. There is a photo of them standing shoulder to shoulder in our front yard. He was so “respectful” he never even tried to hold her hand. When Martin moved to Manhattan, we became friends. And like Heather Locklear in a Faberge Organics shampoo commercial, Martin introduced me to two of his gay men friends and they introduced me to two of theirs. Through Martin, I met Bernard; and through Bernard, I met Carmine.
In our thirties, Martin started a book club that was half gay men, half women. All the women, except for me, got pregnant and dropped out. When the last to leave—a woman who’d grown up in Manhattan—was debating whether to quit, she said to me, “I just don’t want to spend two hours a month listening to a bunch of queens bitch about books.”
I said, “That is all I want to do.”
To me, a room full of gay men is like Narnia. It’s a place I hoped was out there, on the other side of a closet door, full of talking lions that I always deep down suspected could talk.
To be beckoned into such a world makes me feel incredibly special.
Carmine’s bachelor party was at Raoul’s, an old haunt of an Italian restaurant on the Lower East Side. At the time, I had a Louise Brooks bob and still wore a Boy George red matte lip. I slipped into my highest heels and a chocolate-brown Tory Burch mini dress with white piping. The dress was stiff and had a deep V-neck. Nobody there would be interested in my cleavage, but I jockeyed up my breasts like I was setting out Waterford crystal ashtrays.
I made an effort.
I knew I was never going to be Cher or Barbra Streisand, but I could be Karen Walker or Auntie Mame: a fabulous lady of a mature age who can hold her liquor and carry on a conversation.
My friend Jason arrived and escorted me up a winding staircase to a private dining room. Hors d’oeuvres were passed by older professional male servers, the likes of which you’ll find more commonly in the French Quarter. I was introduced to some kind of vodka that’s not made from potatoes and thus doesn’t get you fat. Guests mingled before a candlelit table for twelve. There were architects, doctors, and lawyers. Men in publishing and TV. All were at the top of their games. I was the housewife. But it was my place card set next to Carmine’s.
At the far end of the room were a man and a woman whom nobody knew.
When the best man gave the first toast he ended it by saying, “Now, Carmine, to make sure you really want to marry Bernard, this heterosexual couple is going to have sex for us.”
The collective gay gasp was strong enough to suck the tablecloth out from under the china.
“Just kidding!” said the best man.
Throughout supper, the man played a keyboard and the woman sang every Broadway show tune related to marriage. There are a lot of such songs. She sang through cocktail hour and two courses.
Dessert was brought out by two waiters, who weren’t waiters. They were younger than our waiters. They were younger than all of us. They were gorgeous. They set down flourless cakes and, before anyone could take a bite, stripped nearly naked. There is a picture of me screaming with abandon with my hand on an ass cheek that is as chiseled and polished as Michelangelo’s David. If Michelangelo was into Puerto Ricans.
What happened after that, I’ll keep a secret. Because I want to continue to be invited into rooms of men with nothing to hide.
THE OTHER WOMAN’S
BURBERRY COAT
This isn’t my trench coat, but it looks like my trench coat. It’s Burberry and tan; but on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, women have tan Burberry trenches like women in the South have gigantic dogs. It’s the same size as my coat and the lining is plaid like my coat, the pocket has a MetroCard in it like my coat did, but the belt buckle is wrong. My buckle was metal, it clanked when I walked. This buckle is plastic. Or leather. I can’t tell the difference and I don’t know which material signifies the more expensive coat—there must be a difference. This trench coat feels cheaper. Mine cost $795, which is more than my wedding dress (a charcoal-gray cocktail number I bought off the rack). My husband gave me my trench coat for Christmas after I’d lived in Manhattan for twenty-three years and been married to him for fifteen years. I wore it with everything: jeans and white shirt; a dress and high heels. And then I reached into a closet—at a friend’s house or at bridge club or at Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door Salon—and put on another woman’s coat and walked straight out the door.
No, I didn’t notice right away. I noticed within the week. It didn’t smell like me (Chanel’s Sycamore, peppermints, and a faint whiff of cats). It was shorter, I’m sure of it. It was snug in the bust. And then there was the issue of the buckle, which I tried to convince myself that I was remembering wrong. My diagnosis: menopause was upon me like a panther in the night. Hot flash: in less than a week, I’d gained weight and lost my mind.
But I did my due diligence. I emailed my friend Carolyn, who’d hosted a dinner party.
April 2, 2017
Subject: Weird question
Me: By any chance did I take your Burberry overcoat out of your closet instead of mine?
Carolyn: Nope, I still have mine.
Me: I think I must be going crazy. I’ve been walking around thinking I’m in someone else’s coat. Hmmm.
Carolyn: Remember on your way out the door from my apt. you said you were able to tell your trench by the hair dye marks near the collar? You at least left my apt. with your trench…
This is true about the hair dye. I dry-clean my trench coat—not because of city streets and subway seats, but because of my ring around the collar. But, again, this is Manhattan: forty-and-older brunettes are as common as monogrammed SUVs in the South. I visited Vermont recently and was shocked by the silver heads that dotted the Mad River Valley like thistles. A friend told me Alaska is also like this: full of wild-haired women. You do not see gray hair on the Upper East Side. Salt and pepper is for the dinner table. Women like me will give up rent-controlled apartments before we go back to our roots.
I emailed my friend Terri, who’d hosted our bridge group.
April 3, 2017
Subject: Weird question
Me: By any chance did I take your Burberry overcoat out of your closet instead of mine?
Terri: No.
Terri (a day later): Did you find your coat?
Me: NO and I am positive I’m wearing someone else’s.
I retraced my steps and no other woman had reported that she’d walked away with the wrong coat. So, I took the trench (that wasn’t my trench) to the good dry cleaner. “The good dry cleaner” is Southern Lady Code for the one that costs so much you rip off the receipt before you open the plastic bag, then crumple that receipt like a dirty Polaroid and cover it with cat litter in the garbage can because you are so ashamed of how much you spent. The good dry cleaner made the trench look brand new. I wore it until it started to smell like me, but it still felt wrong. Every time I put it on, it felt like a lie. I felt like a thief. I was in someone else’s skin. Or I was the tiniest bit of a lunatic. The coat did not spark joy.
My husband asked, “Do you want to give it to Goodwill and buy another one?”
“No,” I said. Believing I was wearing another woman’s trench coat was one thing, but giving it away and buying a new one would really be crazy. The Case of the Mistaken Trench Coat is not a mystery that should be solved.
This is the way I handle a lot of problems that are not real problems. Aka: Rich people problems. I’m lucky to have the life that I have, so my
motto is: Oh, it’s fine.
I don’t send food back in a restaurant unless there’s a finger in it. There’s never a finger in it, so I don’t send food back. Oh, it’s fine. If the chicken breast is as pink as a prom corsage, I just don’t eat it. I pay for it, unless the waiter offers to take it off the bill.
When I sold my short story collection, I took a chunk of the advance to redo our bathroom. This included wallpaper, tiles, fixtures, and plumbing. We kept the floor (original), tub (huge), and toilet (tank-free with a flush as strong as a riptide). But the tile went up wrong. The contractor picked a harsh grout, so it scratched all the tiles. The tile was redone, and I was pleased until my husband shut the door to christen the bathroom and I heard him say what you never want to hear your husband say behind a closed bathroom door: “Uh-oh.”
The second round of tile had been put up without shaving back the walls, so the walls stuck out so far that the toilet lid hit the wall and wouldn’t stay up on its own. To boot: the plumber installed the shower knobs backward.
I said, “Oh, it’s fine,” which in this instance was Southern Lady Code for I’m not going to have them redo this a third time, the room looks gorgeous (who cares if it’s not 100 percent functional?), let’s just get on with our lives.
My husband and I live with such problems (undercooked chicken and a toilet lid that he holds up with one knee) because these are the kinds of problems that we want to have. We’ve faced real problems. My husband watched his parents die. The two of us watched his brother and grandmother die. I was raped. So what if I’m wearing another woman’s Burberry trench coat? I mean, really? It really is fine.
But I did worry that I might be wrong about the coat being the wrong coat. Going crazy would be a real problem.