4:44 am – My bones
are excited that they’re going to Texas. I get up, get coffee and work for a few hours.
1:21 pm – the
chick-a-sticks, pretzels, and pear did me in. I am full.
1:22 pm – current
buzzards-in-the-sky count = 11
1:23 pm – got out
of car and dragged a rusty bumper off the bridge and roadway
6:03 pm – Park
behind the bars off Cedar Springs. I find
Sue Ellen’s when I turn the corner. I’m
a bit overwhelmed. It’s a really nice
bar; it’s a good sized bar and feels empty with only a few women. After exchanges, the bartender makes the
connections for us.
Somehow the
conversation gets personal really fast. I hear the older lady say that she had been
married. “I lost my husband and baby.
They were in a car wreck.” She started
a new life after.
The bar tender talks
about her pre-teen son. She raises him with her ex-partner and the stepmother. They are a family who share everything from holidays to rising costs.
She beams because she knows how important it is to do your best with a
tender little soul.
“It must impress
the other parents,” I am thinking while she tells that she eats lunch in the
school cafeteria with the little guys who make up her basketball team. They call her “coach.” I proselytize to her passion and devotion to
them. I think of how she's teaching them to love a lesbian before the boys become men.
8:25 pm - The
bartender and the barback have both been named Sarah by the patrons. I
begin to wonder if this is a generic name for lesbians like Mary is for gay men. The other
two ladies left and the third bought me a second Shiner, but I have to shoot
down Cedar Springs to Dallas Love Field.
My mom is flying in from Birmingham.
10:01 pm – We
arrive at Auntie’s house. I go in and hug her and her partner, Murph. Susie is
there too. She’s been my aunt’s friend for
as long as I can remember. Memories of them together at different stages of my life create gravity for my fatigue-filled mind.
After a few exchanges, Auntie says, “I want you to know, today is our 35th anniversary.”
We congratulate her
without champagne, a ballroom dance, or a proper celebration. Still, we’re all just grateful to be together.
7:35 am - I get up
early to talk to my aunt.
8:35 am – A
neighbor comes over and brings frozen trail mix varieties that are the
leftovers from a bulk purchase. After a
few exchanges, the neighbor asks about the doctor’s prognosis.
“What’s the good
news?” I asked him. Auntie shares the exchange.
“There’s not any
good news,” the doctor said soberly.
“He hugged me. I got a hug out of him. That’s the good news,”
Auntie said.
9:01 am – An old
friend called. That call was followed by a series of calls from all over the
US. Later, a lady from San Antonio
called.
“Is that the woman
who was a nurse?” my mom, the nurse, asked.
“Yes. The other one
died,” Auntie angled the phone away.
I had met this pair of lesbians in
the late ‘80s. I think they took me on a
road trip during the second year that I was “out.”
11:24 am – I am
ready to drive Murph to the beauty parlor. It’s one of the businesses on this retirement campus. It’s next to the “protestant” and catholic
churches, a laundry room, and a consignment store.
“You guys have more activity in one morning
than I have the entire week,” I’m smiling and pulling on my socks.
“Just wait until
you’re dying,” Auntie says.
“I hope I’m as
lucky.”
11:30 am- I’m
putting on my shoes.
“Where’s Murph?”
“She went to the
beauty parlor,” my mom said.
“Did she push her
walker there?”
“No, she drove,” mom said.
“The golf cart?”
“No, the Toyota,” Auntie said.
“No, the Toyota,” Auntie said.
“Should she be driving?”
I ask.
When we go in,
Murph’s hair is already in curlers. She’s
under the dryer. The beautician takes my
aunt to the back to wash her hair. I hear them talking.
“She’s a lesbian,”
my aunt says out loud because her ears are underwater or because my aunt is an
external thinker.
I’m sitting next to Murph who is an observer
like me. I believe this is why we’ve always
had a secret alliance. Also, she would pull
beers out of the garage fridge and toss them to me. Before they moved to the retirement campus, they
had property and a kennel service. We
would walk over and look at the day’s variety of dogs. But today, we’ve gotten into a bucket of
left-over Halloween candy, choosing a variety of pieces and pretending that
we’re not high from too much coffee and sugar.
2:10 pm – Lunch
with Martha who is a friend of my aunt’s from Corpus. That means they’ve been friends for more than
35 years. And, that means that she and
my aunt were young(er) lesbians together, running the streets and going to
bars.
4:00 pm – The
others take naps. I go to Trader Joe's for a trunk full of carbohydrates
7:00 pm – Murph and
I chill a bottle of wine
8:00 pm - My aunt
takes me to her room and asks me to help her create a letter. We talk about everything except the letter. Just when we get a sentence typed, my mom
comes in.
“It’s Buddy,” she
says. “He wants to talk to you.”
I look over at the top of the dresser where there’s a picture of Buddy when he was young and in Dorothy's Wizard of Oz dress. He’s been in Auntie’s
stories since I was a kid in Corpus. I
think he talked—counseled seems to be too strong a word—to my brother when he came
out of the closet. (See "Fleas on a Hot Tar Roof."). Not that it was a secret.
When my brother was 11, he put on my mom’s dress, wig, and high heels, and then he walked the neighborhood sidewalks. He came out when the neighbors told my mom what she already knew. It was good that my aunt had a lot of gay male friends who looked out for my brother during his young adult years. I'm sure Buddy was one of them.
When my brother was 11, he put on my mom’s dress, wig, and high heels, and then he walked the neighborhood sidewalks. He came out when the neighbors told my mom what she already knew. It was good that my aunt had a lot of gay male friends who looked out for my brother during his young adult years. I'm sure Buddy was one of them.
“Hi Puss.”
PAUSE.
“Lisa is here. You remember Lisa?”
PAUSE.
“Did you happen to touch
her like you did her brother?
“You two are not right!”
I yell toward the phone. I imagine that
this is an inside joke that they've shared for three or four decades.
Auntie chuckles, and then they talk, swapping
more inside jokes that are funny and bad too. Before Auntie hangs up,
she says, “You’re going to get a letter from me.”
PAUSE.
“Bye-bye, honey.”
During the
conversation, she mentioned another friend Clifford. I was at his house, in Corpus, that night my aunt
talked about my being gay. It had been a short conversation. She remembers that I shouted, “I’m gay,” from
Clifford’s balcony. I remember that she
said very soberly, “So, you’re mom tells me you’ve kissed a girl.” We’ve always observed the world from
different angles and haven’t done so well as a result. This weekend is the first I’ve spent with her
in 15 years. Still, she gave me great
advice that night and on many weekends while I was in college.
Now, I’m sitting on
her bed and about to write the
letter. I feel honored.
“Do you remember
Clifford’s boyfriend?” she asks.
“Yeah, he was
younger, right?”
“I ran into him in
an airport. I couldn’t believe it was him. I hadn’t seen any of those guys in
so long. He was a real sweet guy,” She
pauses to reflect. “He’s in Houston. Buddy saw him.”
I start to remember
the late-80s. When I would come home for
holidays or summer break, I would hear from my brother about the men in that
circle who were dying. It was
overwhelming. Somehow Clifford, Wes,
Buddy, and my brother survived Reagan’s plague.
9:45 pm – We finish
the letter. “I’ve had a good life; I’ve
had a fun life,” she says while I type.
I think about how my aunt is always looking for a reason to smile a mischievous
smile. Aside from making her family
crazy, she fills so many lives with light and support. I will be blessed if I have half the friends.
11:59 pm – Auntie,
Murph and mom are awake. I am in bed with ear plugs and the fan is on high to
create white noise. “I can’t wait to go
home so that I can sleep without these party animals,” I pop an
over-the-counter blue pill and roll over.
8:00 am – Auntie is
up. I get up.
10:35 am – The
reverend is making announcements. Martha slides between me and Murph. The room
is full, and it’s wonderful to see so many different LGBTs filling the pews,
wrapping their arms around each other, and singing with reverence to God while people all over the nation are singing too.
“This is the life I thought I would live,” I remember the world that my lesbian aunts built. When I would come for the weekends, their lives were balanced and full with good friends that made everything seem normal, perfect.
“I want to
acknowledge Auntie and Murph’s thirty-fifth anniversary,” the reverend says.
1:00 pm – At lunch
we talked about the church and the day’s service. During the program, they acknowledged new
members, announcing a total of 560 with the recent ones. There was a straight couple on the stage,
holding hands.
“They had a gay
son,” my aunt explained about them. “When they moved here, they tried a lot of
churches. So many preach against
homosexuals. Finally, they looked and
found our church.”
“Wow,” I thought. “It’s
an evolution.”
2:10 pm - There’s a
storm coming and I have an 8 hour drive. I hug and don’t linger. There’s too much to sort out and there hasn’t
been time to talk. I’ll have to
get back before too long. We have to figure out how to take care of Murph.
9:37 pm – At the
base of the Mississippi River bridge, I pull a warm beer from the Trader Joe’s
bag that’s behind the driver’s seat. I
put it in the ice chest because I’m 15 minutes from home. I can’t wait to hear
my dogs go nuts.
“It’s nice to love and to be loved.”
“It’s nice to love and to be loved.”
In the course
of a few days, I was introduced to so many different approaches to gay
life. It was serendipitous to hear the ladies at Sue Ellen’s and sit with the congregation at Celebration
Community Church. I wanted to share. Also, I hope this story about my aunts’ long relationship gives you stamina someday. It’s possible to find love late in life and
love that will happily follow you to a retirement campus. I think the secret to Auntie and Murph’s relationship
is so very simple.
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