Michael Tolliver Lives

by Armistead Maupin

  “I’ve only got three more days,” Shawna said, trying sweetly to reassure me. “Then I’m moving on to Heirloom Tomatoes.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “Simple wholesome produce.”

  “Actually, it’s a group of old broads in West Marin. They’re into lingerie. Heirloom Tomatoes…get it?”

  I told her that was cute, and meant it, comparatively speaking. It was a whole lot cuter than this unionized mastabatorium, that’s for sure.

  “Once I’m outta here,” Shawna went on, “Pacifica takes over this booth. She’s seven months pregnant, and that’s the bomb with some of the customers. I’m thinking about doing a piece on it.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “Well, why not?”

  “You mean she—?”

  “Don’t make that face. Lotsa people find pregnant women hot. Lotsa guys, in fact. That’s good news in any woman’s book.”

  There’s justice, I know, in the fact of an aging gay libertine being made to squirm about sex. Shawna is my karma, I suppose, my just desserts for banking too blindly on the power of my own liberation. There’s plenty I don’t know about, or care to know about, in my comfortable, vagina-free existence, and Pacifica the Pregnant Lady and her devotees are just the tip of the iceberg. I’m not proud of this; it’s just so.

  My friend George felt stifled by his own limitations and made up his mind upon turning forty to eat pussy at the next available opportunity. It was not a success, he said, and the woman who had volunteered for this noble experiment had freshened up with a cinnamon douche, so George was left only with a lasting distaste for breakfast rolls. He worked as a ticket agent for Southwest, so the smell of warm Cinnebons wafting through an airport could undo him completely. Some things are better left alone, he said.

  Shawna, as it turned out, had decided to move to Manhattan when her book was published and wanted my take on how Brian would react to the news. She’s always been this way, anticipating her father’s feelings like a devoted but anxious wife, desperately afraid of hurting him—of betraying him, really, as strong as that word may seem. The considerate children of single parents often seem to carry that additional burden.

  “I think he’s got plans of his own,” I told her.

  “You mean the RV?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s not serious about that.”

  “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

  “He’s Mr. Inertia,” she said. “And he’s happy that way as long as nothing else changes.”

  I remembered Shawna’s mother saying something similar when she left Brian and her little girl to launch her career in New York. She had found Brian’s mellow passivity intolerable, a serious obstacle to her own ambition. Shawna loves her father as is—down to the last tie-dyed T-shirt and Neil Young album—but she’s leaving town just the same; she must worry a little about reconstituting that earlier trauma.

  “He’ll be all right,” I told her. “He always is.”

  “I guess so,” she said, fiddling with a tassel on the pillow. “Will you and Ben come visit me once I’m settled?” She seemed almost waifish at that moment.

  “Of course, sweetie. Ben’s crazy about New York.”

  “I know you aren’t,” she said, “but I’ll make things fun for you.”

  “You always have.”

  I felt tearful all of a sudden, sitting there in that fuckless brothel while the apple of my eye laid out her dreams for my approval. She looked a little wistful herself.

  “Don’t let him grow a ponytail,” she said. “He always does that when he gets depressed.”

  I laughed. “Don’t worry.”

  “I hate ponytails on old dudes.”

  “I hear you.”

  “A guy was in here yesterday who had the greasiest ponytail and every time he—”

  “Can we talk about something else?” I said.

  “All right, Auntie,” she said with an impertinent grin.

  5

  The Family Circle

  It occurred to me recently that this is probably the last house I’ll ever own. (It was the first as well, come to think of it.) The endless possibilities of my youth have been whittled down to this little plot on a hillside, this view of the valley, this perfect lamp, this favorite chair, this flock of wild parrots breakfasting in the hawthorn tree. I’m still enough of a Southerner to love the notion of my own land, my own teacup Tara.

  It’s not unimaginable that Ben and I could one day pick up and move to a condo in Palm Springs or Hawaii, but I wouldn’t bank on it. This is my home on the deepest level; it comforts me in ways I’ve forgotten how to measure. And were we to leave for momentarily greener pastures, I know we’d harbor the fear of all San Franciscans who leave—that the real estate market, that cruelest of sentinels, would never let us back in.

  So I concentrate on what I have and where I am. I take pleasure, for instance, in the way the house is aging—the shingles in particular, which have moved so gracefully past tan and tarnished silver to a rich dark brown. Some of this is just dirt, of course, left there by the vagrant fog, but the effect is enchanting. The shingles have grown as rough and mossy as bark, so the house seems more organic, like something rooted in the earth that will have to return there, sooner or later. To my overly romanticizing eyes, shingles are most beautiful when they’re closest to collapse.

  On my better days, I try to see my own weathering this way. I rarely succeed. I’m not ready to discolor and rot, no matter how charming the process might seem to others. I’ll have to get over this, I know, since I’d rather not leave the planet in a state of panic and self-loathing. I’d rather there be peace and a sense of completion. And I’d like Ben there, of course, cuddling me into the void with the usual sweet assurances. I know that’s not original as fantasies go—and impossible to ordain—but a boy can dream.

  In the meantime, I tinker with our home in a way that Ben finds comical, if not a little pathetic. I arrange objects like talismans in a tomb, carefully balancing according to color, texture, and motif. I could show you, for instance, how the rivets on the bowl on the coffee table are repeated in the frame of the dining room mirror and the base of an Arts and Crafts candlestick. I know where every spot of Chinese red can be found in the living room. I never add anything to the decor without considering the metal-to-wood ratio and the need for the sheen and color of ceramics. “Have nothing in your houses,” William Morris decreed, “that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,” and I can show you a wastebasket that fills that bill to a tee. I bought it off eBay for $385. This house will be perfect by the time I’m committed.

  A case in point: one night Ben and I were watching Six Feet Under when I sprang from the sofa and began rearranging the art pottery on the shelf above the TV tansu. Ben indulged me sweetly as I swapped the purple Fulper ginger jar for the light-green one and offset them both with the large bronze Heintz vase.

  “That’s been bothering you, has it?”

  “I couldn’t put my finger on it,” I told him, “but it’s better, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “Don’t look at me like I’m Rain Man,” I said.

  “Come back,” he said. “Keith is about to get naked.”

  As we settled in again for the show, Ben’s head warming my chest, my gaze began to creep away from the television screen and back to that shelf of now perfectly composed pottery. And Ben somehow sensed this without looking up.

  “Stop that,” he said, slapping my belly. “Watch the damn show.”

  If I’m a stickler for perfect interiors, Ben is our tech support, our resident troubleshooter. He’s practically a dyke in this regard, so I’m lucky to have him, since I’ve never troubleshot anything beyond a snail-infested garden. Anna, my octogenarian friend, is much the same way and has learned to tap Ben for his expertise in thorny matters of the new millennium. She’s always been good about asking for help.

  “They’re turning off my emai
l,” she told him bleakly one night. The three of us were eating Thai delivery food in her garden apartment off Dubose Park.

  “Who’s turning it off?” asked Ben.

  “The people at Wahoo,” she said.

  Ben smiled faintly but didn’t correct her. “Have you paid your bill?”

  “Certainly,” she replied, “but they found a virus on an email someone sent me. It was called ‘Your Doom.’ Can you imagine? Like a Gypsy curse out of nowhere.”

  “Sounds fishy,” Ben said. “They don’t cut off your email because of something that’s been sent to you. Did you click on any attachments?”

  “Well, no. The mention of my doom scared the hell out of me. Was I wrong? Should I have clicked?”

  “No, just delete it. It’s probably carrying a virus itself. They’re trying to scare you so you’ll do what they want.”

  “How wicked,” she said. “Like the president.”

  “Yes,” said Ben. “Except no one’s dead yet.”

  Anna smiled at him appraisingly, then turned and looked at me, widening her eyes. “This boy’s a treasure, dear.”

  I told her I knew that already.

  “Well, aren’t you glad I made you go after him?”

  “Oh,” I said, teasing her. “You want credit now?”

  “It certainly wouldn’t hurt.” She dunked her chicken skewer into the peanut sauce.

  “Well, I’m grateful,” said Ben.

  “Thank you, child. You get some more Pad Thai.”

  “It’s delicious,” I said, grateful for a chance to change the subject. I’ve always been uneasy about proclaiming my bliss too confidently, for fear of it deserting me—as fucked-up as that sounds. “Where did it come from?”

  “A new little place down the street. Shawna told me about it.”

  “God,” I said. “What doesn’t that girl know about?”

  “She’s just interested,” Anna said. “That goes a long way in this world.”

  She meant it only as a compliment to Shawna, but somehow I felt reprimanded for my failure to be more adventurous.

  “Michael went down to the Lusty Lady,” Ben offered.

  Anna blinked at him in confusion.

  “You know,” said Ben. “The strip joint Shawna’s writing about.”

  “Oh, yes!” Anna crowed. “I can’t wait for that one. She’s always so sharp and funny. And she gets so involved, doesn’t she?”

  “I’ll say,” I muttered.

  Anna dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “You sound like you don’t approve, dear.”

  “It’s not a question of approval,” I told her. “I’m just concerned.”

  “Oh dear, that was Brian’s line, too. You boys are being silly. She’s an extremely sensible girl. What she’s doing now is just…raw material…not a way of life.”

  “Gimme a break,” I said. “She’s diddling herself in a plywood cubicle.”

  “Oh,” said Anna, remaining deadpan. “And you never did that, I suppose?”

  Ben chuckled. “She’s on to you, baby.”

  “That wasn’t for money,” I shot back. “And I wasn’t dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl.”

  Both of them were laughing now, and not entirely with me. “Oh, well,” said Anna, winking at Ben. “Thank God he has standards.”

  It’s awful when young and old alike can team up to mock you.

  After dinner Jake Greenleaf joined us in the garden. Jake, you may recall, is my sometime assistant. He’s a short, stocky bear of thirty or thereabouts with a trim little beard and soulful gray eyes. I brought him into the family four or five years ago, when I was still single, having picked him up at the Lone Star Saloon one night. Though he lives upstairs from Anna in another apartment, he comes and goes freely as a helpmate.

  Appearing on the terrace that night, Jake looked like someone from another era—my own, in fact—in loose khakis with wide suspenders and a flannel shirt. The effect of this mining-camp getup is just as deliberate as Jake’s rusticated name. Both were chosen to suggest the strong, earthy, no-nonsense person he intended to become.

  “You guys wanna vaporize?” he said, holding up a wooden box from which a plastic hose dangled like an umbilical cord. Vaporizers, for the uninitiated, are designed to heat cannabis just enough to release its psychoactive ingredients but not enough to create harmful respiratory toxins—i.e., smoke. They’re all the rage now among the health conscious and the elderly. The ordinary kind is sold for a hundred bucks or so at shops in the Haight, but this wacky contraption was Jake’s own creation. He was proud as he could be of it. He had built it out of barn timber from Sonoma and adorned it with eucalyptus pods.

  “Your timing is perfect,” said Anna. “Come sit down, dear.”

  So Jake joined the family circle and plugged the vaporizer into an outlet in the terrace. Soon we were passing the tube around, sucking up the smokeless, pot-flavored air like Alice’s caterpillar. Ben, as usual, abstained. By his own account, he did too much speed and ecstasy in his youth (way back in the mid-nineties), so he limits himself to wine and the occasional mojito. He would never be so sanctimonious as to say that he’s high on life, but he is, the little bastard; he’s his own source of intoxication.

  “What is that smell?” he asked, when the rest of us were pleasantly buzzed.

  “Can you smell it?” asked Jake. “Your nose must be really sensitive.”

  “No. That floral smell. It’s so intense.”

  “That’s the datura,” said Anna. She lifted her wobbly blue-veined hand and pointed to the tree at the end of the garden. “It releases its scent at night.”

  Ben turned and looked at this preposterous plant with its dozens of pendulous trumpet-shaped blossoms. “It has psychotropic qualities,” I explained. “Shamans have used it for centuries to see spirits and induce trances.”

  “It’s also a poison,” Jake added. “It can drive you insane.”

  Anna was already lost in recollection. “We had a lovely one at Barbary Lane. A golden one. In the corner next to the garbage cans. Mona was always threatening to make tea out of it.” She turned and looked at me sweetly. “Do you remember it, Michael?”

  I wasn’t sure I did, but said so, anyway.

  “The more I trimmed it back,” she said, “the more blossoms it grew. All year long. I thought it would never stop entertaining us.”

  There was a distinctly bittersweet ring to these words, so Ben, bless his heart, leaped gallantly into the silence that followed. “Michael’s told me about Barbary Lane. It must’ve been wonderful. Your own little secret world up there.”

  “It was nice,” said Anna, keeping it short and sweet. She seemed on the verge of tears. “You should see for yourself, dear. It’s an actual city street. They can’t keep you out. Just walk up the stairs and act like you belong there.”

  Later that night, when we were done with the vaporizing, I told Anna and Jake that Ben and I would be visiting my family in Florida the following week.

  “Well…that’ll be nice,” said Anna. “For how long?”

  There was a trace of anxiety in this question, so I tried to minimize it. “Just three or four days. No more than that. My mother’s not doing very well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Anna. “Would you give her my best?”

  Anna met my mother no more than twice, and well over twenty years ago, but she never stopped sending her best to Florida. My mother had little use for it. She rarely ever remembered who Anna was, unless I broke down and referred to her as “my colorful landlady.” That always nailed it for Mama, and I’m pretty sure Anna’s “color” was what made her suspect in Mama’s eyes. I don’t think she had a clue about Anna’s sex change, but the instinct that “something ain’t right” was deeply embedded in her DNA. “When it comes to folks,” Mama always said, “you can’t be too careful.”

  “When were you last home?” asked Jake.

  “You mean in Florida?” I said. “Two years, I guess.”

/>   “Have they met Ben yet?”

  “No, but they’ve torn up his picture.”

  Ben flashed his sexy jack-o’-lantern smile. “You don’t know that.”

  “Well, they aren’t showing it around, that’s for sure. Unless they’re praying over it at an Ex-gay meeting.”

  “Don’t be naughty,” said Anna. “You’re frightening Ben.” She turned to the object of her concern. “I’m sure they’re lovely people, dear. I’ve met his mother and she’s the salt of the earth.”

  “Salt of the wound is more like it.”

  “Michael!” This was Anna and Ben, scolding me in unison. Jake, I noticed, was leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, arms folded, chuckling manfully under his breath. He knew what I was talking about. He has a mother like mine in Oklahoma.

  The evening didn’t last much longer. Anna was getting tired, and Jake had to get up early to help me thin a clump of bamboo at a house in Parnassus Heights. Ben and I kissed Anna goodbye, and Jake, as usual, escorted us down the passageway to the street. It was a tight squeeze between the houses, but it was strung with colored lights year-round—a nod to the full-scale fantasia Anna once orchestrated at 28 Barbary Lane. This little studio in the flats with its lone datura and its two potted azaleas was a touching distillation of everything Anna had left behind. It seemed to make her happy, though; it seemed to be all she needed.

  “She looks good,” I told Jake, once we were out of earshot. “She’s over that flu, I guess?”

  “Pretty much,” he replied. “Notice her new nail polish?”

  “Nice,” I said. “Very Sally Bowles. I should’ve said something to her. Are you responsible for that?”

  “Yeah, right,” Jake snorted, reminding me that he was strictly the heavy-hauling dude in the building; the seriously girly shit was left to his flatmates.

  “Who’s Sally Bowles?” asked Ben.

  I turned and looked at my younger, less theatrical half. “She used to be married to Ansel Adams.”