My Southern Gothic Life

I firmly believe in the Right Stuff.

By that, I mean the real thing- the right things-no imitations, no cutting corners and playing by the entertainment rules.   And, dammit, there are rules!

I can’t help it.  I’m from Virginia and I was raised that way.  And I’m Gay so that means I have to take it even further…

I want every party to be like the one Audrey Hepburn attended at the Larrabee’s in “Sabrina”.  I will always want to make my entrance with an orchestra playing “Isn’t It Romantic” in the background while everyone is impeccably dressed and enjoying cocktails on the terrace..  I know that’s not a realistic expectation, but, who cares?

This all seems to be something that has been lost in our convenience-oriented, disposable society, but not by me.  I was raised by people who believed in “a few nice things” and that you “did things right”.  At least during my formative years…

And frankly, I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal to use the right stuff as long as you have a good dishwasher…

But I also don’t judge other people who entertain differently.  I’ve been to many lovely parties where people didn’t do it “my way”.

I know I’m a bit of an anachronism…

But still…

My Grandmother may have lived in a 4 room house in a Mill Village, but for every Christmas or Thanksgiving meal, you used real plates- they may have been Correlle- and the “good” stainless.

I knew my Mother was slipping and on her way downhill, when she decided the China was too much trouble for Christmas and bought paper plates.  It was too much later that she headed to the Home. To this day, I cannot abide paper plates….

When I was setting up my first apartment in College, my Aunt Goldie really focused on “entertainment”.  She thought the main reason one went to College was to meet the “right people” and  to have a great social life.  I truly loved her and understood her.  We were simpatico…..

She always said,  the key to a  success in life to make the right impression on your guests and to make them comfortable.  And to do it with a bit of pizzazz….

She always said, parties were important.  That was a fact of life.  She also said  you couldn’t have an elegant party if you didn’t create the right atmosphere.  That meant the right music, the right people and the right service pieces. The people were most important…..and she taught me your job, as a host, was to make them feel comfortable and special.

When I set up my first college apartment, Goldie was heavily involved.  She gave me most of the things I used for the first 10 or 15 years of my entertaining life.

I’ll never forget the conversation when she showed up with boxes of stuff at my parent’s house for me to take to Lexington for my first College apartment.

“Here is a chip and dip set.  I haven’t used this in years.  It works really well with vegetables and dip.  You might get away with potato chips and french onion dip, but that’s really tacky.  Here are some recipes for good vegetable dips and a list of the appropriate veggies to pair with each.”

“I’ve also packed up my old, brown Ironstone dishes.  They are very masculine, so they should do you fine.  I don’t know why I ever bought something this masculine  in the first place”

“I do”, said my Father.  

Goldie replied:  “Shut up.”

She also gave me ash trays- back then you had to have lots of ashtrays scattered around- most of these seemed to have been stolen from various bars, hotels and clubs in fashionable East Coast spots.

“Now you can entertain in style.  That’s really important.  Anyone can sit down and get drunk, but entertaining is a talent.  A few things to keep in mind:  Pepperidge Farms Goldfish are really good with bourbon and beer.  I like them better than nuts.  Always, always keep cheese and crackers on hand for impromptu cocktails.  Buy good bourbon.  That’s what most people we know will drink.  

If you have friends who drink things like gin, that you don’t drink yourself, buy the cheap stuff.  If you pour a bunch of peppercorns into Aristocrat Gin and let them soak for a month or two and pour it into an old  Tanqueray bottle, they will never know the difference.  They really should be drinking bourbon anyway….don’t waste your money on them….I’ve also given you a subscription to “Southern Living”.  You should be able to take it from there…”

The somewhat garbled message was clear to a Gay boy who could read between the lines and supply his own interpretation: It’s a Host’s job to create magic….

I have so many happy memories of entertaining in my apartments in Lexington and the lovely evenings with my friends.  Only my friend Shakey could match- and sometime surpass- me.  But what’s the point of entertaining if you don’t have a challenge?  And we were both Virginia boys so we appreciated each other’s efforts.

I’ll never forget planning a college picnic with my friend Bob.  We were having a couple of Sweet Briar girls up and going to Goshen Pass to cookout by the Maury River.

Now, picnic takes on a totally different connotation when you combine W&L and Sweet Briar students in the late 1970’s….

The conversation went something like this:

Bob:  “We have to use your stuff since I’m a dorm counciler and you have everything imaginable for entertaining….  I like this girl- a lot- and this has to be perfect.  You’ll understand when you meet her.”

Me:  “Well, just get me a box. We’ll just pack up the dishes, stainless and glasses we need and take them to the river.  How else would we do it?”

Bob:  Thank god, you didn’t suggest paper plates and cups.”

Me:  “I’m from Virginia.  Get real.”

So Bob and I trooped off to Goshen Pass on the Maury River with Goldie’s Ironstone plates, my best Oneida stainless, several kinds of cocktail glasses and two Sweet Briar girls who saw nothing unusual in any of this….

We cooked steaks by the river on brick park service grills built in the 1930’s, drank Mateus Rose- out of the appropriate glasses- and waded elegantly in the water.  Bob and I wore khaki’s, oxford shirts and Bass Weejuns and the ladies wore skirts and espadrilles.  It is still one of the most perfect memories I have of one of the most perfect evenings in my life….

Who cared if we had to schlep back a bunch of dirty dishes?

Over the years, I have built up quite the collection of entertainment-ware….

I’m almost- almost- embarrassed to say this but, I now have 6 sets of dishes.  Everyday service for 8  that changes every few years. Funky Phaltzgraff Midnight Sun from my early years.  I have about 60 plain white dinner plates and 120 plain white cocktail plates from Crate and Barrel for large functions.  Wedgwood Amherst, service for 14 in China and, of course, Spode (Christmas Rose) for  the Holidays. Service for in Royal Doulton Tavistock.  I also have vintage Red Wing Capistrano-service for 24- from the 1950’s that I use every Thanksgiving.  Plus my vast collection of various antique buffet and dessert plates.

I have the everyday Oneida Stainless my Father gave me and the Gorham “party” stainless-service for 24 each.  And Towle Candlelight Sterling, my Mother’s pattern, service for 12.  And more serving serving pieces than can be imagined….

I have funky Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel linens for Parties.  Antique damask tablecloths and napkins.  Vintage Holiday tablecloths….

I have three antique punch bowls with matching cups:  Silver, Crystal and Milk White.

And I love it all.  Thanks to the seeds Goldie planted all those years ago….

I may not use this stuff often and no one but me may know what it means to me, but that doesn’t matter.  These are tools I use to give comfort to and share my style with the guests I entertain in my home.

I hope it makes people feel as special to use, even subconsciously,  as it does to me to put it out..and it ties me to the generations of Southern hosts and hostesses who came before me.  Like Goldie….

It all appeals to both my sense of history and my luxury-craving Libra sensibilities.

I don’t care if our guests might not know Oneida stainless  from Towle Sterling, or Spode from Wedgwood and Correlle…or that they might be just as happy with plastic forks and paper plates and napkins;  I wouldn’t.

I do this for me and for our guests who might find some subliminal, unrealized pleasure in it all.. And I like to think it sets a tone that matters…

It’s part of who I am…

And it also serves as the “canary in the coal mine”.

The first sign of my senility will be when I stop polishing the silver and use paper plates for a function.  If I ever slap a piece of tupperware down on the dining room table, it’s time to put me in the Nursing Home.

It means I’ve lost who I am…

I do know I’m an anachronism.  

I know no one else values these things and I wonder who I’ll leave them to when I’m gone….

I’m taking essay applications…

Good bye, Bob Mullican. This is one of the hardest sentences I’ve ever typed….

I met Robert James Mullican of Montgomery Alabama in the fall of 1977. He was the first friend I made at Washington and Lee University.

We met at the Natural Bridge Hotel when W&L used to rent it out for Freshman orientation to get us way from the Frat parties for our indoctrination. But they had kegs brought in to make the transition as painless as possible.

I met Bob at the Freshman Keg Party our first night at Washington and Lee. I was entering a world that was foreign to me. For the first time in my life, I was on my own. Away from my family and away from a group of friends who were my defacto family. I didn’t know if I could do it.

But then, I met Bob. We were both starting over. He was from Montgomery, Alabama and I was from Danville, Virginia. We were both entering the world we were raised to enter, but both doing it alone, and not totally sure it was the right thing. We were brash, young and appeared more confident than we were.

We stood around the keg and Bob told me how he was going to be a Doctor as long as socialized medicine didn’t come to be.  We talked and drank and went on to the indoctrination the was Freshmen Camp. I told him, in passing, of some issues I was having with my transition and my family’s adjustment to my going to W&L with my room-mate situation.

A couple of days later, back on campus, Bob came up to me and told me there was a room available on his hall in the Graham Lees dorm, two doors down from him. Someone was cut from the football team and decided to leave the University.  Since we didn’t really have a Football team, this was kind of amazing.

Thanks to Bob, I moved into a single room 2 doors down from him at Washington and Lee. I went from a dorm counselor who looked like a blond Hitler Youth to, George, who was more a forgiving, frumpy laissez-faire presence than an authoritarian one. This was the first time Bob saved me….

Back then, W&L was an all male school. I had friends at Randolph Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg and they set us up for dates. We drove over the mountain together and somehow survived driving home to W&L after more cocktails than either of us could recall. We wore Black Tie well and had a hell of a good time. We drank and danced and crawled back home to the disapproving judgement of George, our Dorm Councilor.

Bob pledged Lambda Chi, the fraternity all my friends told me to rush. I didn’t get a bid. But Bob made sure I was invited to all the parties and that I met his friends, like Ralph. He told me about the Christmas Grain party and told me to stay up and be sure he made it home to the dorm. He took a brief nap on a traffic island, but just when I was heading out to look for him, he, literally crawled in in a grain punch  covered night-shirt. We looked out for each other.

My Sophomore year, Bob made damn sure I pledged Lambda Chi and that they bid me. He and my friend Ralph worked their magic. I, the eternal outsider, was now an insider. I only made it through the ridiculous pledge period because of them…

And our lives changed forever. I met some people who are to this day, my dearest friends. Thanks to Bob….

And we met some incredible women from Sweet Briar College. And Bob fell in love. Totally and completely, with one of them.

When I look back on those years , I always look back through an F. Scott Fitzgerald filter. They were definitely Fitzgeraldian days dipped in Lisa Birnbach Preppy handbook filter. We were young, white, privileged and very cute. And it was a beautiful, if unreal world.

If I was Nick Caraway, Bob was our Gatsby in love with our Daisy Buchanan. And I have never seen a man as in love with a woman as he was with our Daisy. He was protective and cautious and the ultimate Gentleman. And too patriarchal and protective  for his own good. It did not end well.

That was the first crack in our perfect world….

Both our lives pretty much went to hell our senior year. Daisy had left Gatsby and my family was falling apart over my Father’s cancer and the resulting money issues. And I was freaking out about dealing with the fact I was gay.

We moved apart instead of supporting each other. I’m confident we meant well, but we had to deal with our worlds shattering on our own. We were men of a certain time and class. We were trained to draw in, not ask for support.

But we stayed friends. He went on to Law School in Alabama and seemed to pull it all together. My life was messier. But Bob, who I thought was the least likely person to deal with unconventional behavior, stuck with me.

Late night calls when I had too much to drink didn’t phase him. I remember one late night, drunken call when I told him I was Gay. He said “If you had told me in 1977, I probably wouldn’t have ever spoken to you again. But, hell, nothing else turned out like we thought it would, so I can deal with this, too. The world just isn’t what we thought it was…just be happy”

I went to see Bob in Alabama almost every year between 1981 and the mid 1990’s. The first trip was a bit awkward. We were watching something on HBO and he kept talking about the tits on the leading actress.  I had to tell him “Bob, I’m not going to jump your bones. You are my friend. That’s it. Don’t try so hard.” He adjusted. For those of us from my time and place, that was a necessary conversation.  After that, we spent the next 15 years discussing Diasy Buchanan and what had gone wrong in both our lives….

Until about 20 years ago.

Then we both finally grew up. He loved Fairhope, Alabama. I remember going there on my annual trip to see him and he told be how much he loved it there. Not Mobile or his condo on the beach. He loved the artsy world of Fairhope.

I fell in love and he was thrilled.  He met a woman, who I never met, in Fairhope and he fell in love.  Daisy was finally exorcised.  We were both happy. Finally. We didn’t need each other so much anymore…..

Time passed….

And we were talking about getting together again in Lexington.

A few years ago, my other college friends from W&L and Sweet Briar began getting together again in Lexington, Virginia where we spent those formative years together. Some of us had not seen each other in almost 30 years. But those years and those friendships meant so much, that, as we grow a little older, it meant a lot to regroup and come together again..

Most people will never understand the world we lived in. Preppy Boys School and Preppy Girls schools where we could put on our best faces, attitudes and clothes for the weekends we shared. And we only realize how much we lost when, in those pre-Facebook days, we weren’t able to re-connect because we did not share alumni associations….We were all a little lost without each other…

A couple of years ago, my College group started meeting again. When we feared Sweet Briar would close, it jump started our need to get together. The Daisy Buchanans, Nick Caraways, Jordan Bakers and all the other wonderful Fitzgeraldian  pieces of our past tried to find a new relevance.

I called Bob several times and begged and bitched at him to come meet us. He would never commit. The rest of us got together and talked about him and plotted how to get him to join us.

As my friend Carolyn said: “We are a jigsaw puzzle and Bob’s the missing piece!”…

And now always will be.

I found out Bob died when our friend Ralph read it in the Alumni Magazine and called me. Bob had already been dead for 5 months. I’m still in shock.

I keep thinking I should do the right thing -like Bob would have- and write his wife.  I can’t. I just can’t. Not yet.  That would make it too real.

I still need to think I can have too much to drink one night and call my friend and we can pick up right where we left off. We always did. For almost 40 years I could track him down in Alabama and we would figure out how to make the world right….

I haven’t cried for Bob until tonight. I’m finally crying as I type this.

I’ve always been a writer, or at least an observer. I’ve always had a wall between me and the rest of the world. I’m not good at interpersonal things. I just buck up and keep going. Bob was like that, too. We just tried to do our best, act as gentlemen, with a code of honor and decency, and keep going. Stiff upper lip and all that…

But I’ve finally just got to pause. And do the ungentlemanly act of publicly grieving for my friend. I’m sorry, I just can’t stop myself….he was just too special.

 

 

 

 

So Goldie moved to Charlotte in 1965….

This was a Big Deal back then when single women simply did not relocate for jobs.

But my Mother, as usual, took center stage.

“Goldie is moving to Charlotte.  I don’t understand this at all,but I hear they have good shopping in Charlotte.  We can go see Goldie and shop and buy things people in Danville don’t have and tell them we got it in Charlotte.  They have malls!  That will be so much fun!  Of course we will stay with her and visit, but the shopping will be great”

Mind you, the only gene my family has in common is the “shopping gene.”  We have can go generations without any commonality, we can have serious discrepancies in educational levels and political beliefs,  but you say the word “shopping” and everyone falls in line.

One of our first trips was to buy my sister’s dress for the Little Miss Danville Pagent when she was “Miss White Swan Laundry.”  Lou, my mother, must have looked at every party dress for a 4 year old in Charlotte.  She settled on a pale green chiffon dress with  about 75 crinolines at Ivey’s, that had bells, and was more pleased than if she had been a witness to the seconding coming of Christ.

We then went to see “The Sound of Music” at a theatre in Downtown, now Uptown, Charlotte, weeks before it came to Danville.  She acted like she had been to Paris to buy clothes and London to see theatre.

She couldn’t wait to tell everyone  she knew in Danville about her adventures.  And this would only work because most people in Danville only left town to go to Myrtle Beach for a week in August….

Goldie settled into her job.  She did her work.  She accepted her new place and, I think, loved her new apartment.  In Danville, she had had an apartment in an old house on West Main Street, near Averett College, in the Historic District.  In Charlotte, she was in a one bedroom apartment in a new part of town.  There was a drive in theatre behind her apartment and if you climbed on the kitchen counters, as I quickly discovered, you could see the movie for free over the fence in the back.  You might not be able to hear it, but…..

And since my Mother only ever wanted to go places she “knew people” besides Myrtle Beach, Goldie’s new apartment became her vacation getaway.

Goldie would tell me of her travels.  Of seeing Carol Channing in “Hello Dolly” in New York on Broadway.  She had a walk in closet full of fashionable 1960’s clothes.  She taught me the Twist and the Watusi.  Lou could not have cared less….If it didn’t happen in Danville, it was irrelevant.

And Goldie struggled with the bridge between her old life in Danville and her new life in Charlotte.  She missed her family but loved the new opportunities she saw…She struggled for balance.

I’ll never forget one visit to  see her.  A mutual friend of hers and my parents had stopped by.  A traveling salesman.  A real Don Draper….

I remember the night so well.  My sister and I had been put to sleep on the rollaway bed, but I had gotten up and snuck into the kitchen to watch  a movie over the fence at the Drive In.  My parents had said it was a dirty movie, so I had to try to see it….

I heard my parents and Goldie talking in the living room.  Since this was not in Danville, my Father was free to drink more than usual.  Since it was not in Danville, my Mother actually had a few cocktails since “no one would know”.  Her motto was always, “it doesn’t count if it’s out of town.”

Anyway….

Goldie was saying:  “Arrington Callaway came by last week.  He was too drunk to drive, so I let him stay.  I let him have my bed and I sat by the bed in the chair all night listening to him talk about his life.  He is such an unhappy man.  I never dreamed…”

Now my mother had Southern Belle Simple down to an art form.  Even before she got Alzhiemers, she could toss her earrings and put her head to the side and look at you in a way that made you believe absolutely nothing was going on behind her very fetching eyes.  She worked it to her advantage, like no one else I have ever seen, well into her 60’s.

But the woman could also drop the mask and get down to brass tacks faster than anyone I have ever seen.  And it was scary to watch the transition…..

My Mother Lou, who was on her third drink or so, said:  “Did you sleep with him?”  Goldie said, “No, of course not, his wife Susan is one of my oldest friends.  I just listened.  But I worry.  Should I tell Susan?”

Lou looked at her and said:  “That man is sex on a stick.  Are you sure you didn’t sleep with him?”

Goldie said: “No.  I swear.”

My Father, who had drunk himself into a stupor by then, piped in:  “I knew you were a lesbian.”

Lou said to my Father:  “You shut up.  I’ll deal with you tomorrow when you are sober.”

To Goldie she said:  “Listen, you aren’t married.  You don’t know what it’s like.  We all marry these hound dogs and it’s our job to keep them on the porch.  If they wonder, we don’t ask too many questions.  Susan knows what she got.  Believe me.  You did her a favor.  Keep your mouth shut.  If anyone knows about this, it will be blamed on you because you are a single woman over 30.  You will be called a slut for letting the old dog in in the first place.  I know because that’s just what we do.  We always blame the woman.  I put on my hat and gloves and went to see Herman’s boss and batted my eyes to stop his over night travels.  Susan should have done the same.  It’s more her fault than yours, but no one will ever see it that way.  That’s life.”

I think that might have been the night Goldie realized how much distance she had traveled….

And over time, we went to see Goldie less as a family.  Eventually, I would go see her alone or with my friends.

But Goldie always walked that tightrope between the old world in Danville and the new world in Charlotte.  Charlotte was never home to her, but she know she knew Danville was no place for her at that time in her life.  I’m not sure she ever found her place….

More to come….

Goldie….My aunt Goldie.  It’s very hard to write about her…

I  was always much closer to Goldie and my grandmother Sigmon than I was to my parents.  I’m not quite sure why…

But Goldie was probably the most important relative in my life…

Goldie was different.  She loved the sun.  When she spent a lot of time in the sun, she looked just like Lena Horne.  She was earthy, but elegant.  She always kind of made me think of Barbara Stanwyck.  She never forgot where she came from, but she was always trying to do better and to move forward.  She was grounded.

She was an ambitious woman when ambitious women were not fashionable….

She never, ever treated me as less than an equal.  From as far back as I can remember, she always talked to me like I was a friend and an adult- even when I was 5 years old.

Goldie shouldered the responsibility of supporting my Grandmother and several other crazy relatives.  She was the de facto Matriarch of my Mother’s family.  My Mother may have married and distanced herself from them, but Goldie never did.

My Mother and Goldie always seemed to differentiate themselves by  thinking Lou, my Mother, was the pretty one and Goldie was the smart one.  In those Mad Men days of the 1950’s and 1960’s, for women, pretty always trumped smart.

Goldie was a career woman-when most other women thought that meant you just couldn’t get a man.

Goldie could be the most elegant woman you could imagine.  The woman could dress to kill.  She was tall, thin and Lena Horne tanned, but that was not a fashionable look at that time…she was tall, edgy and angular, not soft and conventionally pretty.  She loved clothes and had some great ones, but could dress down with the best.  My Mother used to get her left over formal gowns and have them altered to fit.  When Goldie died, she spent months plotting how to get her fur coat…

And she always treated me as a friend more than a nephew.

One of my first memories of her is being with her in Ballou Park while she was waxing her car.  Goldie was wearing a man’s Brooks Brother’s Oxford shirt, capri pants and penny loafers…her usual uniform when not working or going out socially.

Cars were important to that generation.  Both Goldie and my Father had to have a new car every other year.  That was one of their many points of competition.  One year, they actually ordered the same Ford LTD in the same color and fought about who got the idea first for the next two years….They both almost died.

I digress…

That day, when I was 6 or 7. I was in Ballou Park with Goldie while she was waxing her Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and she was talking to me.  She always called me “Monk”, short for Monkey, for some reason…Maybe because she always said all small children always looked liked monkeys….

She was saying:  “Monk, I’m going to quit night school. It just doesn’t matter if I get my college degree from Stratford College.  No matter how hard I work and what degree I might get, I’ll aways be a secretary or, at best, an Office Manager.  Because I’m not a man.  I was valedictorian of my High School Class and I might be smarter than any man, but I’m still a woman and my options are limited.  I hate to quit anything, but I know when I’m beat.”

And she and my Father fought constantly.  Goldie was one of the very few people who would stand up to him.  There was a unique dynamic there….

My Father always hinted that Goldie was a Lesbian and she always hinted he was Gay.  It was subtle and took me many years to realize this was going on, but it was a constant undercurrent to their battles….

My Father used to say to her: “Are you going to the beach again with that bunch of loud women?  Have you all given up on getting any man?  You might get one if you weren’t all so loud and vulgar”

She would tell me:  ” I was so shocked when your Father married Lou.  I mean, he always hung out with the girls, but I never thought he would marry one.  I was eavesdropping the night he proposed to your mother.   I came out to the porch afterwards and ask him if he was sure he wanted to take on that much trouble…”

Usually, their battles were more symbolic.  They once had a fight about whether paper napkins or paper towels were more expensive and did not speak for 6 months.

And my Father always had distinct ideas of how Ladies should behave.  To him, my Mother was a Lady and Goldie was a Broad.

Ladies never went to bars or drank beer.  Goldie used to meet the boys at Earl’s Bar and Grill on Riverside Drive after work and drink all the boys under the table. She handled the boys in ways they were not trained to manage….

In the mid-1960’s, she was offered a very nice job promotion and a transfer to Charlotte. My Mother’s immediate reaction was “How can you move somewhere you don’t know anyone?  I don’t understand.”  My Father said:  “Hell, she is 37, what else does she have to look forward to?”

She sat down with me at her apartment on West Main Street and told the 6 year old me:
“Monk, I’m going to take the job.  There is nothing here for me.  I can go to work and put on my hat and gloves and play bridge with the Old Guard at the Ballou Park Nature Center each week until I’m dead, but I’ll always be poor Goldie, the uppity old maid from the mill village here.  And I have to support your Granny and Wiseman.  This will always be home, but I have to take this….I have to leave.  And leaving you is the hardest.  But you have to know when to leave.  Remember that….Part of fighting is knowing when to just quit the field and move on-no matter what is pulling you back.”

More to come….

I’ve been re-reading some of my old posts and there are some that I’m quite proud of….

This is one and it seems like a good time to revisit it:

The Modern Southern Gentleman

Some of the others badly need revisions and rewriting for the book version!