My Southern Gothic Life

I am a Southern Gentleman.  I can’t help it.  It’s who I am genetically, who I was raised to be and, simply, who I am.

That means, I put women on a pedestal.  I was raised to view them as these ethereal, superior creatures that I am here to protect and serve.

I was never taught to view them as less than me, but still, I know some Feminists, justifiably, have issues with men like me.  Even though I consider myself a Feminist of a sort.

I firmly believe in empowering Women.  I know they don’t really need protection.  They need equality and for us to get past the games we used to play.

I’ve had women bosses and that’s not a problem for me.  It’s actually easier for me than some men, I think, because I always assumed women knew more than I did.

Therefore, I easily accept that running things is their role and their prerogative.  God knows men have made a mess of running things over the centuries.

But put me in a social context with the biggest motorcycle dyke with a shaved head and tattoos and I’ll still open the door for her.  I can’t help myself.

There were a lot of important women in my life.  My Grandmother Sigmon and my Aunt Goldie among the most important.  But they aren’t part of this particular story.  I’ve always been a master at compartmentalization, so why change now?

Instead, I’ll talk about three key women who defined my relationships, socially, with women over the years.

They were:  My Mother, the Southern Belle.  The Woman I Almost Married.  And the Post Feminist Belle.

First, I need to say, whenever I think of these women, the one thing that comes to my mind as a commonality is the Stephen Sondheim song “Pretty Women.”

Pretty women
Fascinating…
Sipping coffee,
Dancing… pretty women
Pretty women
Are a wonder.
Pretty women!

Sitting in the window or
Standing on the stair
Something in them cheers the air.

I have always found women much more fascinating and complex than men.  At least until later in life.  It took me until my 30’s to realize that men are every bit as complicated as women.  Maybe more so.  We are just raised to try to keep anything that is not simple, hidden.

I should have realized this much earlier from the guys I grew up with and my friends at W&L, but I needed time and distance to really understand them-and myself.  I had to grow up before I could look back.

And I needed to  realize one commonality that is so often missed.  We are all people.  Men and Women are not really totally different species.  Some of us were just raised to think so.

Anyway…First, My Mother, the Southern Belle.

My Mother adored Scarlett O’Hara and on a good day could give her a run for her money.  But, as I’ve said before, there is a reason “Gone With the Wind” ended when Scarlett was not yet thirty.  That is the expiration date for Southern Belles.  If not sooner.  My Mother never knew this…She was still tossing her earrings and tilting her head when she was almost 70.

One of the key memories I have of my Mother was when she was young beautiful and sitting at her vanity putting on her make-up and jewelry before she and my Father went out for the evening.  It must have been when I was very young, because they didn’t go out much as time went by.  As she sat there and talked to me about he evening ahead, she was entrancing.

That memory of that young, beautiful woman is what I have to cling to today when I’m dealing with a fat, crazy old woman with dementia living in an assisted living facility.  I have to remember her as she was to deal with her as she is.  That flashback is all that saves me sometimes…

She was a master manipulator.  She could make her eyes flash and toss her dangling earrings with the best of them.  She could turn tears on and off at the drop of a hat.  She was raised to get her power through men, by manipulating them to do her bidding.  She prided herself on being a total, untouchable, lady.  God help my Father.

He would often have a few drinks and talk about the fact that she was “untouched” when he married her and a total lady.  He seemed to be amazed that he had won her.  At least in the early years…

In later years, I remember the first time he called her a bitch and she threw a lead crystal ashtray at him, barely missing his head.  She said:  “Always remember.  I am a Lady and I am your Wife.  Never talk to me like I’m one of your whores.  I will not have that.”

I think that scared him more than the flying ashtray.  That was the first time she ever faced off with him with any degree of directness and honesty.  She usually preferred to subtly push buttons until he exploded then feign innocence and victimhood.  That is also another scene I will never forget.  The mask had slipped on both sides.  It was never firmly in place again…

My Mother also told me that women will use sex to get men to marry them and to do anything else they need them to do.  She thought that was the sole purpose of sex, besides procreation. Manipulation.  She said she told me this  so I was forewarned and wouldn’t let “some little tramp trick me into marrying her.”

That was the extent of my sex education from my parents.

I once told her, in jest,  that those conversations and motherly advice  were probably why I was gay.  She did not see the humor in this.  She said, if I insisted on being Gay, it was not her fault and not to try to blame that on her.

For the record, I don’t blame anyone as there is no need for blame.  It is simply part of who I am, like brown eyes and greying brown hair.

She always said I was pretending to be Gay mainly to embarrass her in front of her friends.  Until she found out half of them had Gay sons.  And I moved in with Steve.  But that’s another blog…

Everything was always about her.  The world revolved around her.  At least as long as she could keep it small enough to control it and therefore insure it did revolve around her.

Pretty women
Silhouetted…
Stay within you,
Glancing… stay forever,
Breathing lightly…
Pretty women,
Pretty women!

Now, let’s talk about the Woman I Almost Married.  She haunts me to this day…not that we didn’t make the right decision, but I fear I led her on for too many years.

We had much in common.  Including the fact we both liked men.  Those were some of the most painful years of my life.  And, I suspect, hers.  We tried very hard to make something work that just couldn’t work.

I was raised to play a role.  I was supposed to go away to school–and hopefully marry a girl I met there.  Preferably, with money.  My Mother always said, it was just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor girl.  Shows how little she really knew about life…

I had a brief affair with a madcap Texas deb who made me an offer, of sorts, I couldn’t help but refuse.  I still believed in true love and knew she was not the one…

I honestly was not so sure with The Woman I Almost Married.  It was a very confusing time.  In my own way,  I did love her.  Just not the way one needs to love someone to make a marriage. I like to think I was honest.  I know I eventually was…

I told her we could marry and have a marriage like my parents.  I would do well in business, we would join the Country Club– all the things my parents wanted– then I would drink myself to sleep every night and cheat on the side to try to tolerate it all.

She was smart enough to say no…That wasn’t good enough for either of us or what either of us really wanted or needed.  We moved on.  We both ended up happily married to great men.

Blowing out their candles or
Combing out their hair,
Even when they leave
They still are there.
They’re there

Ah! Pretty women, at their mirrors,
In their gardens,
Letter-writing,
Flower-picking,
Weather-watching.
How they make a man sing!

Then there was the Post Feminist Belle.  She is the through line in my story and my journey.  She was there from the time I was a teenager until we were thirtysomething and went our separate ways.

She was the myth who became the reality.

She could make Scarlett O’Hara look like a rank amateur.  She was breathtaking.  But she was real.  Our paths always seemed to cross at key moments, at least in my life.

She was beautiful, but she was also smart and honest.  Once you got to know her and got past the “Moonlight and Magnolias.”  We shared cocktails, cigarettes and secrets.  She was the one who let me see “behind the curtain.”

She once told me: “I can give them Scarlett O’Hara or Bella Abzug.  Whatever works…”  She knew it was all a game and she played it well.  As time went by, she played the game less and became more real.

I’ll always be a lot in awe of her and, honestly,  a little bit in love with her.  I may be Gay, but I’m a Southern boy and I can’t help it.  I never wanted to sleep with her, I just wanted to hold her close and keep her in my life.  She was my friend.

For most of my life,  she’s been someone precious to me.  She was part of my High School life, drifted in and out during  my College life and reappeared at a key moment in my post College life.  That’s when I really got to know her.

She went from being an objectified Southern Belle, to me, to being a real woman and a real person.  She helped me break down a lot of walls and taught me to take chances.  She helped me become free.  I’m not sure she ever really knew this, but I think she did…

Proof of heaven as you’re living,
Pretty women! Yes, pretty women!
Here’s to pretty women,
Pretty women,
Pretty women,
Pretty women

Never let it be said that Gay men hate women or want to be them.  At least that’s not my experience.  We just may understand them a little better.  And they understand us, too.

When a man comes out as Gay, he gives up a certain inherent power position that is bestowed at Birth, at least to White Men.

That made my Mother crazy- that anyone would give this up.  I think it made The Woman I Almost Married sad for what might have been.  It made the Post Feminist Belle see me as an equal.

Most importantly, it made me free.

I love all the Pretty and not so Pretty Women I’ve met along the way.  My life is far richer for them.

I’m just glad I waited for true love and ended up married, to quote another song,  to a “Wonderful Guy.”

Now that I’ve made the John Hughes “Breakfast Club” analogy, I guess I can now refer to my old High School gang as the Brat Pack.  We did work hard to earn the title.

I think it is safe to say, that we had a lot of attitude– especially by our Senior year in High School.  Especially second semester of our Senior year in High School.

We had all been accepted at the schools of our choice and, frankly, we were hell on wheels.  We could smell freedom in the air and just had to get through the formalities of graduating from High School.

We were so over Danville and High School and so ready to move on…

We were a teacher’s nightmare.

Back them, you had a certain amount of days each semester you could miss classes.  It was some ungodly number like 15 or 20.  We viewed that as an entitlement.  Like Corporate vacation days.

We were determined to use all our “cuts”.

Teachers and the Administration viewed this differently.  They seemed to think we should actually show up for all our classes.  We did not understand this thought process…

Even our parents were tired of the game by our Senior year.  They knew we were cutting classes.  They knew we were going to college, so who cared?  As far as they were concerned, their jobs were over.

I’ll never forget the Attendance Office calling my Mother at work and telling her I was not at school one day Senior year.  She was most annoyed.  She told me about this later…

They said:

Scott is not in school today.  Did you know that?

She responded:

Is there anything wrong with his grades?  He’s been accepted at Washington and Lee.  Unless he’s doing something to puts that in danger, I don’t care.  He’s leaving next year anyway, so I assume he can manage his own time.  I have a job, why are you bothering me?  How can you expect me to keep up with what my children are doing?  Call me if he’s having trouble making his grades, otherwise, I’m fine…

And I assume she then went back to talking to her friends on her work phone as usual…

They weren’t quite ready for this response at the Attendance Office…and apparently she had decided we weren’t in danger of joining the Manson Family anymore now that they had been in jail for several years.  I think they got similar responses from several of our parents.

My parents always had the philosophy that, as long as it didn’t interfere with my/their long-range plans, they really didn’t care or want to know about it.  That’s how I always read whatever I wanted, saw whatever movies and TV Shows I wanted and they were fine.  Unless it was something controversial, like “The Exorcist” or “Cabaret” where they wouldn’t let me go because people might see me and  “people might talk.”  Otherwise, they didn’t like to be bothered too much by their children.  I think that was healthy.

As usual, I digress…

Anyway, we often met at McDonald’s in Ballou Park for Breakfast and cigarettes to decide if we were actually going to go to High School that day.

We were bored out of our minds with Danville and High School and were always open to any alternatives to classes.  If we actually attended classes, then we had to go out to lunch,  off-campus to, deal with having to put up with a morning where we had to actually be in classes and deal with all that mundane foolishness.  And we were usually late coming back from those lunches…

I might add, as one of the key Yearbook editors, I had the authority to give hall passes that got people out of classes for even more cuts.  For pictures and things.  We took lots of pictures.  I was most popular with my friends.

I think we maxed out on cuts in all our classes and still basically made straight “A”s.

Looking back, this was not good prep for College.  We thought that would be easy, too, and not interfere too much with our social lives.  We then had to adjust our expectations somewhat, but that was down the road at this point in the story…We all had rough Freshman years….

Anyway, back to High School.

Our Senior Year, we were all in what would now be called “Honors Classes”.  One of which was “Novels”.  It was the study of novels over the centuries.  It was High School, so subjects could be shallow and broad.

We had a new teacher, fresh out of College, who was most full of himself.  The first day of class, he had us arrange our chairs in a circle to facilitate discussion.  Then he advised us this was a most special class and class discussion was most important.  It was key we were there everyday.  He would not tolerate us missing classes.

A gauntlet had been thrown down…

We all looked at each other across the Circle with one eyebrow raised and telepathically shared the same thought:  “Skip Day tomorrow!”

Now a couple of our friends would not cut school until after their first period math class.  There was a math teacher, who was about 4′ 10″,  who scared the hell out of them.  We thought they were being silly.  Why show up for one class and ruin the day?  Sometimes the rest of us would have to wait at McDonald’s and smoke more cigarettes until they got “sick” after first period.

Then it was off to Greensboro.  Everyone in Danville went to Greensboro for everything back then.  My Father used to say to us:

I don’t think you people can go to the bathroom unless it’s in Greensboro.”

Funny that I ended up there.

We would also go other places.  We took lot’s of College Tours.  We would tell our parents we were going to Lexington, Lynchburg, Harrisonburg, Chapel Hill or Charlottesville to look at schools.  For the day.  That was excellent prep for college when we all lived on the roads doing the circuit of our respective colleges both on weekends and during the week.  It also meant we could be out later.

Then we would head off to wherever we were going for the day.  We would make a cursory look at a College, then go have lunch and go shopping.

Greensboro, however, had extra thrills.   We knew it better.  One of our favorite things to do was go to Greensboro, have lunch, go shopping and drive by the Adult Book Stores.

Since no one ever talked to us about sex, we had no idea what that meant.  So one day we had to go in….I don’t think we really knew what we were looking at or what really went on in there, but we had to go in for the adventure.  We may have spent 5 minutes max in there before they threw us out…

The important thing is we went in to satisfy our curiosity and sense of adventure.  And to be able to tell people when we got home and scandalize them.

At 16, 17 and 18, to us it was most important for us to be free and to seem more sophisticated than we were.

I remember our Senior Year.  Studio 54 was in all the magazines.  The disco phenomenom was starting…and they were opening a disco at a new hotel in Greensboro.  We thought this would be our chance to check this disco thing out.

It never crossed our minds to be concerned that we ranged in age from 15-17.  We just went in through the back door, through the Kitchen and we were in.  We had a blast.  Until they thew us out…

Back to Novels class….

The “New Teacher” had a melt down the day after our road trip when we came back to class.  For some reason, he was shocked that teenagers didn’t listen to him.

It was open war for the rest of the class.  Us vs Him.  We challenged him constantly.  He would scream at us and actually threw a book at one of us.  We were too smart for him to give us bad grades and it made him crazy.  We just smirked our way through and headed off to College in the Fall.

He retired a couple of years ago after doing his 30 at the same school.

That’s why I don’t understand today’s parent/child relationships.  We were never “friends” with our parents.

We wore them down until they left us alone.  Same with our teachers.  That’s how we learned independence and self-confidence.

That’s also why I fear for American civilization.  With all these mellow, passive, protected children, how are they going to know the adventures we knew?  How are they going to learn to think for themselves and step outside the box society puts people in?

How are they going to learn the skills and guts to challenge authority?

That’s key to survival in a Democracy.  That’s the key for the survival of a Democracy.

The importance of developing rebels seems to have been lost.  People forget this country was founded by rebels.

We are becoming a nation of followers or people who just mumble discontentedly among themselves.  They don’t do anything about it.

We no longer train our kids to take chances, defy authority, stand on their own principles, manage the situation and take the consequences.

That scares me…

God knows, we were far from perfect, but we weren’t mindless followers.

Followers can quickly become lemmings and lead a Society off a cliff….

We definitely weren’t lemmings.

We were the Brat Pack.

As I think back, I realize my High School friends and I were the Original Breakfast Club.  You know, like the John Hughes movie in the 1980’s.    Except our bonds were by choice, not forced by Detention…

We all also seemed to be ahead of our time in a couple of ways.  First, we formed a “family” by choice, not by birth, and we pioneered the “group dating” concept that seems to be the “new normal” for kids today.

Back then, 35 years ago, we were just strange.  Our so we liked to think that’s how people saw us.  Who knows where the truth lies after so many years?

We were a disparate group.  Each very individual, but with so many things in common.  And we clung to each other and needed each other, even if we would not or could not admit it then…

Our group had the Sensitive Jocks- both male and female.  The Nerds.  The Avant Guard.   The Social Pioneers.  The Artistes.  The Preppies.  The Brains.  The Socialites.  The Outsiders.  Sometimes all in the same person.

The one thing we had in common was we all thought we were all too smart for the little room that was Danville, Virginia in 1975, 1976 or 1977.  And we were right.

We were also mostly good kids and smart kids whose parents didn’t quite know what to do with us.  Smart was not something they knew how to handle.  All our parents were determined that we go on to College and succeed, but they didn’t know how to get us there.  We were on our own, most of us, as the first generation in our families to go on to College.

We were leaving our birth families behind very quickly and needed each other to get us to the next level in life.

We somehow knew we were going to take a big step in life that our parents were not equipped to understand…so we had to have each other.

Some of us went far away to College.  Most of us stayed in Virginia where we could still see each other on weekend road trips.  We went to schools like Washington and Lee University, Randolph Macon Woman’s College, Mary Washington College, Mary Baldwin College, James Madison University and the University of Virginia.  Some of us took different paths and ultimately didn’t go away to College at all…

The Group expanded and contracted over time, but there was a core group that, those who survive, still have bonds that last through today.

We were called many things in our time and I think we hoped to be called more.  We wanted to be more sophisticated than anyone else we knew.  We wanted to be special.

We also were not “big group” people.  We may have been parts of larger groups, but we never really felt like we belonged anywhere but with each other.

For instance, my parents insisted I be part of the High School Band.  I met some great people there, but never felt I belonged there.  I wanted to spend my weekends with my friends.  I quit after a year or two…

As I said, we were an unofficial “family” even if we didn’t see ourselves that way at the time…We dreamed of getting out of Danville.  We talked about how we would all live together, in our separate apartments of course,  in New York.  Others argued that we were crazy to have these thoughts….but we were determined to leave the Big D and most of us did.

Now, if I were to look back at our High School yearbooks– of which I was one of the key editors- you would never think of us as outsiders.  We either ran or were in all the key clubs, groups, activities, sports and social events.

When dances came along, we divided up and went.  But not as couples.  It was the Group that mattered.  We all wanted to be together, not coupled off.  Well, most of us….

It was a different time and place where on a Friday or Saturday night, you could spend $1.99 on a six-pack of beer and 50 cents on a pack of cigarettes and ride around and feel free all night.  As long as you each chipped in a dollar for gas for the designated driver…

On a really good night, one of our older friends went to the liquor store.  On a really, really good night, one of our parents were out of town and we could take over a house and have a drunken slumber party.  We would spend the night talking and drinking.  That’s all…

We just never felt like we belonged were we were….I guess that’s mainly because we were 16, 17 or almost 18.  No one should feel they really belong anywhere at that age.  If you do, you are in for a rough life after High School…

Time passed.  We still stayed in touch, but not as frequently.  We married.  We found partners.  Some had children.  We had careers….We learned we were more different from each other than perhaps we imagined in 1977.  But it didn’t matter.  We had those years together and we were bonded. For life.

When parents began to die, if at all possible, we all came to the funerals to support each other.

When the first one of us died, we all pulled together in a way that amazed our parents.

I’ll name a name here.  I’ll speak the name because I don’t want it to be forgotten…

Dennis Elliott died in the early 1990’s.  He was the first of us to go.  In many ways, he was the star of our group that drew us together.  He was smart– very smart, funny, talented and insecure as hell.  He was the first one to withdraw from the “family” and go out on his own.  I think he thought he had to leave us behind to find himself.  Unfortunately, I think instead he lost himself along the way…

He put up walls and left us behind.  We never quite knew why…

But when he died, we all came together again.  With a kind of love and anger that was only possible when you are 30-ish and the first one of The Group dies.

We had suddenly moved from “The Breakfast Club” to “The Big Chill.”  Very much against our will…

Dennis died of AIDS.  His family said Cancer.  Everyone knew the truth, but we let his family do what they needed to do.  It was Danville and the truth never really mattered there…

I’ll never forget how we all gathered in the cemetery at his funeral and his mother’s amazement when she looked around and saw that we all had come.  She came over to us with tears in her eyes…

We had not seen him in years.  He had pushed us away…but he was still one of us and part of us.  He still is…

I’ll also give my Mother some credit.  We lived around the corner from his family and did not feel we could be honest and part of the group at the “official” family reception.  We gathered at my Mother’s house for the unofficial “family” gathering.  Mad as hell.  Angry at everyone and everything. Furious at the injustice of it all.  Scared and vulnerable at facing death among our own….She opened the house, gave us our space and stayed out of our way.  I thank her for that.  She gave us room to move and room to grieve.  She recognized we were a family she was not a  part of…

We all still talk.  We have FaceBook.  We see each other every now and then.

And I doubt any of us has ever forgotten a moment of what it was like when we were young together in Danville Virginia in the late 1970’s.

We were brothers and sisters and we still are- some closer, some more distant.  But we are still bonded…

Like most families….

My Father died in the early 1980’s when he was about 54 years old.  Technically, the cause of death was cancer.  I always told people that, after more than 30 years with my Mother, I strongly suspected he really just really wanted some peace and quiet.

See, my Mother truly believed in “till death do you part.”  She even had some questions for our Pastor about if, perhaps, the marriage bonds extended into the afterlife.  I could never figure out if she was concerned with avoiding the effort of finding a new husband in Heaven or just trying to hang on to my Father forever.  Literally.

In any event, it was a long, painful illness.  I found out he was sick when I came home from college for Spring Break my Junior year and my Mother had left a note.  She didn’t want to “bother” me at School, so she left a note they were in Winston-Salem for my Father’s cancer surgery.  I’ve never quite figured that one out….

He came through surgery and was in remission for several years.  Then it came back with a vengeance.  He did fight gallantly to the end.  But I don’t want to talk about that…at least not yet.

In any event, he was in the Baptist Medical Center at Bowman Grey Hospital in Winston-Salem and I was staying in Danville to work and keep up the home front.  They were there for weeks.  Truthfully, the “Death Watch” was just never my thing.

My sister called me, when the end, was obviously very near, to relay a message from my Mother.  She said:

Daddy’s dying.  It’s for sure this time.  Mother wants us to get ready.  She wants us to all wear all Black to the funeral.  Like the Kennedy’s.

See, my Mother had been mistaken once for Jacqueline Kennedy, by some obviously senile woman, when she and my Father were staying at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach in the mid 1960’s.  She dined out on that story for years and never got over that moment…

I made a mental note to wear my dove grey pinstripe suit.

Daddy did pass and the funeral drama began.

No one, outside the South, has any idea of what Southern funerals are like here.  Appearances must be kept up, dignity must be maintained at all costs, everyone must be received using the best of everything and secrets come tumbling out of the closet.  This is how the newly departed immediately becomes a Saint.  It’s part of the fast-pass process.

The first major issue we had to deal with was the Family Plot was full.  Of Rushes.  My Father’s family who never quite took to my Mother.  Her family plot was in the Mill Village Cemetary and she did not want to spend eternity in a place she had worked so hard to get out of…She decided a new plot was in order.

Off we went to the cemetery.  In the pouring down rain.  A deluge.  My Mother still insisted we all be dressed up in case we “ran into anyone”.  So, she my sister and my Mother’s older sister, my Aunt Goldie, were wearing suits or dresses, full jewelry and makeup and 4 to 6 inch heals.  To tramp through the grass and mud to look at potential spots for Eternal Rest.

I had not been so wet since I was a Paperboy and I never delivered papers in a Hart, Schafner and Marx suit and Florsheim shoes.

Of course, my Mother was in her element.  Several men with Golf Umbrellas paying her total attention and trying to “protect” her while the rest of us slug through the mud on our own.

She had many, specific requirements.  She wanted a big plot with lots of room.  My Mother always bought twice as much as she needed of everything.  Including Cemetery Plots.

She pointedly said to me:

“Maybe one day you and your wife will want to join us.”

I pointedly replied

“I seriously doubt that-on many levels.”

The first place we looked was at the bottom of a hill.  She thought that was too damp.  Not the best real estate to show in the rain…

The next place we looked at, she asked:

What direction would we be facing?  I want to be sure we are facing East so we will be the first ones caught up in the rapture and see Jesus when he comes.

My Aunt and I both muttered “Jesus Christ” under our breaths.  The Cemetery Man told her he thought these plots faced North.  She said that would never do and wanted to look at other available properties.

The next one we looked at, again in the pouring rain, seemed acceptable.  Then she asked:

Who are the neighbors?

Meaning who was buried nearby.  She wanted to be sure she wasn’t with the riff-raff.

My imminently practical Aunt Goldie finally said:

Dammit Lou, you will be dead, who the hell cares?  Buy the damn plot and let’s get out of the rain.

Any wonder why I am a firm believer in Cremation?

The Main Event took place at North Main Baptist Church, which was the largest Church on our side of town.  My Mother and Father were Founding Members and it had grown to be quite the space.

She thought the Funeral Home would not be big enough to hold the crowd.  She was right.

Of course this being An Event, she had to make an entrance.  I had to escort her in and down the aisle on my arm to the front row.  For the record, she wore an all black suit, and a pill-box hat with a chin length black veil.  And the Opera length pearls -before 6:00 p.m.-which I knew was not done and horrified me.  But I let her get away with it since they were one of her 25th Wedding Anniversary presents from my Father.  My sister wore a simple black dress.  I wore the dove grey pin stripe suit.

The funeral itself was a blur.  I was grateful so many of my friends came back for it.

Then there was a long reception at our house with everyone sharing stories about my Father.  He had his faults, but he was quite a guy with a great sense of humor.  She seemed to always miss that part of his personality.  He was too smart for her room.

Anyway, eventually, everyone left but the equivalent of the “Steel Magnolias.”  Her friends from girlhood.  The ex-cheerleaders.  Many of whom, at 50-ish,  were already widows.

I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the life expectancy of the husbands of Cheerleaders from the late 1940’s- early 1950’s?  I think the results would be startling.

I didn’t quite know what to do until one of my Mother’s friends came into the kitchen, where I was hand washing the silver, to take charge of the situation.

She was the Senior Widow, whose husband had died of a massive heart attack when she was only in her late 30’s.

Her husband had been my Father’s best friend.  He had been in Japan with my Father, just after World War II.  We had visited them, repeatedly, in Richmond, when we were children.  I remembered him, the raw shock of his death to my parents and us leaving for Richmond right away.

I still have a faded newspaper clipping of them all together at at dance from the Social Pages of our local paper in the late 1940’s/ early 1950’s.  I found it in my Granny Susie’s-my Fathers Mother’s- scrapbooks.

I remembered her very well.

She was, however,  more “in charge” than I remembered her being…

She said:

I know Lou likes to pretend she doesn’t drink, but I also knew your father.  Where’s the bourbon?  I know it’s here somewhere so just tell me where it is and save us all the trouble of looking for it.  My guess is she hid it under the kitchen sink as soon as she got home from the Hospital.

She was right.  An almost new half-gallon of Virginia Gentleman, appropriate to the occasion, was stashed under the kitchen sink where she hoped the Baptist Church Ladies wouldn’t find it.  I readily gave up the goods.

Her friend said:

I’m sure there is somewhere you would rather be to find your comfort in your own way.  Get out of here and don’t worry about coming home tonight.  We’ll be fine…

I went off to see an older gentleman who I was, mistakenly,  spending entirely too much time with, but who did have a generous bar.

Before I left, I did look into the dining room one more time.

They were all sitting there.  The Belles of 1950 from Schoolfield, Virginia.  With their pumps kicked off and their feet up on the chairs.  Ashtrays ready.  And a half-gallon of Virginia Gentlemen smack in the middle of the dining room table.  Each with a glass in their hands.

I knew they would be just fine…

I will confess, growing up, every time my parents said “don’t”, I “did”.

Smoking was one of the key examples.

I know this is totally politically incorrect, but I have had a love /hate relationship with smoking ever since I can remember…

As a teenager, my parent absolutely forbade it.   Therefore, I had to do it.

I grew up in Tabacco Country.  My hometown was known as “the world’s best tobacco market”.  Every one smoked.  Except my parents.  They were the exceptions to the rule.

Daddy did smoke a pipe as he forbade cigarettes.  Consistency was not important…

My Aunt Goldie, who was always my favorite adult, smoked with gusto.

Movie stars smoked. Audrey Hepburn had to to stay so thin….Clark Gable….The unforgettable Bette Davis.  Katharine Hepburn.  And, of couse, Bogie.  Mr Humphrey Bogart.  With a name like “Humphrey” you had to smoke to be cool.

Then, I went to college at Washington and Lee University.  All our fraternity parties, at least during “Rush”, featured trays of cigarettes out for everyone to help themselves.

I smoked.  All my friends smoked.  It was our life.  We lived for cigarettes.

But it was complicated.  You had to smoke right.  Thank God, my father at least tried to teach me the way of the world when I was 16 or so….

I’ll never forget one of the first time I stumbled home one evening, while I was in High School, after a few drinks, and my Father caught me.

He had been sitting in the den smoking his pipe and drinking bourbon himself for a few hours.  Situation Normal.

He wasn’t the least bit concerned with the drinking, but he was worried about the smoking.   And he, as always, wanted to make sure I was doing things right.

He said to me:  “I can tell you’ve been smoking.  I can smell it.  If you are going to do it, don’t sneak around.  If I can smell it, she can.  Your Mother will just think you’ve been smoking pot, instead of cigarettes and freak out and think you are going to join the Manson Family. Go ahead and smoke.  That’s why we have ashtrays in this house.”

So I lit up.  And then he freaked out.  He said: “My god, you smoke like Bette Davis.  Give me those goddamn cigarettes and let me teach you how to smoke like a man.  If you are going to smoke, smoke like Bogie”.

That was the night my Father tried to teach me to smoke like a “man”.

It didn’t take…

A few years later, I was at my desk for my work-study job at W&L in the News Office, where we all smoked like chimneys while we drank pots of coffee and tried to be sophisticated.

One of my favorite professors came in…a couple of years later, when we were social friends, he said:  “I knew you were Gay the first time I saw you in the News Office.  You were sitting at your desk and you smoked just like Bette Davis.  I practically heard the theme music from “Now, Voyager”.

Daddy’s lessons apparently didn’t take.

God, we were obsessed with cigs in college.  I can remember walking all the way over to the Law School cigarette machine, in 15 degree weather in February at 3:00 am with my friend Ralph because we were out of cigs and had to have some.  This was after we had searched all our coats first to try to find at least one pack, or even one cigarette, we might have missed…We were obsessed.

I remember driving to Richmond once to try herbal cigarettes when we first heard of them.  We thought they might be better for us.  A way to smoke with safety.  They didn’t take…

When Steve and I met, I still smoked and he didn’t try to change me.  I think that’s one of the things that made us work…He let me be me, no matter how different I was from him.

We got together.  Then I quit on my own.  For 10 years or so….with exceptions for parties- I didn’t smoke at all.

I will say, I don’t think I’ll ever separate cigs from cocktails.  It’s genetic or it’s chemical.  I’ll probably always cheat if alcohol is involved…

But, I did really well for many years.

Then last year, I was diagnosed with Melanoma.  On my face.  And I freaked out.

After trying everything else to take small spots out, my dermatologist finally said I had to have radical surgery.  I left her office and stopped at the first Quick Mart I came to and bought a pack of cigs.

I was kind of thinking, “what the hell?  I have cancer, so what’s to lose?”

They ended up taking out a piece of the right side of my face the size of a golf ball.  I had a “Y” shaped incision about 4 or 5 inches long with big black stitches down the right side of my face.  My right eye was black and swollen shut for over a week.  I looked like hell.

I looked like a cross between Frankenstein and Joan Rivers after a bad lift.

I also had a very good plastic surgeon.  If I had known he was so good, earlier,  I would have gotten him to do a couple of other things while he was at it.  I could now have the eyes of a 25 year old.  But then, I just wanted to be sure I could face the public.

I was raised to be presentational and that there was no worse sin than being unattractive.  I have never been so scared in my life.  Not of cancer, but of how I would look….

Thankfully, I healed beautifully…

But I still smoked once I healed.  I couldn’t stop yet…And I smoked like Bette Davis, I’m sure.

My next excuse was my Mother’s decline.  As soon as my face healed, her downward journey started.  And I had to spend time with my sister…who truly smokes like a chimney…

I know I need to quit again, but…

Smoking is an indecent obessesion.  It’s so seductive.  It’s so comforting.  It’s so Southern.  It’s so Virginian.  It’s so old Hollywood.

It’s also so socially wrong now, it pisses me off.  I’m back to where I started.  It’s politically incorrect and everyone is against it, so I feel this need to rebel.

Even though I take Yoga and go to the gym several times a week.  At least I don’t smoke on yoga or gym days…

It’s so hard to give up the forbidden fruit altogether…

And it’s so hard to quit something that’s been such a good friend for so long…

I always said, as long as you smoke, there is always something to look forward to– that next cigarette.

But I know I have to say goodbye…

I’ve probably pissed off more people saying all these nice things about smoking and shocked more of them than when I came out as Gay.

It’s much less socially acceptable in our crowd…

Anyway. I’ve used up all my excuses…

It’s just a question of “when”….

My Father’s lesson’s obviously didn’t take….

Bette and Bogie are dead

And I realize I finally need to quit for me.  Not for anyone else.  Not because it’s socially unacceptable.  Not because it upsets some of our friends. But for me….

I’m too much of a rebel to quit for any other reason.

I’ll just have go find the right time and place.  To let go of my old friend…

I’m pretty good at that….

I’ve done it many times….

I know people today think that you come out of the womb with your cell phone already in your hands so you can call your mother and tell her you’ve been born.

However, that was not always the case.

There was a time when everyone did not have cell phones.

There was actually a time when there was only one phone in the house.  And it stayed there.  In one place.

It had a long black or white cord that tied it to the wall.  You had to go to it and talk where it was, no matter who else was around.

Of course back in those long ago days, we believed in the quaint concept of privacy, so people would normally give you your space.  We also actually had secrets and hid things from our parents.  Our parents were even known to keep secrets from each other as well as from us.  All, alas is gone with the winds of change…

It was a primitive time, but we managed to survive.

We also overheard a lot of really good stuff.

My Mother lived on the telephone.  She would normally sit at the kitchen table, where she was near food and water and could therefore last longer without stopping her tel-a-phon.

Some of the bits and pieces of conversations overheard still stick with me:

“She was passed out cold in the men’s locker room.  Well, she is a divorcee…”

“Those new suits at Belk’s are really good Chanel copies.  They even have little chains sewn in to weigh down the hems and make them hang right.”

“Well, he’s just White Trash.  That’s all there is to it.  Always has been and always will be…I can’t believe he’s my brother.”

“We have to change Dry Cleaners again.  Who do you use? They ruined my light blue linen dress….Mustard…well, it’s not my fault, they should have been able to get it out…I just told him the cleaners ruined it…. How was I to know he would go down there and yell at them?”

“She looks like a two dollar street-walker, but she wins State Championships.  We have to get her to train the girls.”

” I told her 20 years ago she would spend the rest of her life pulling him out of strange beds.”

“What can you expect?  They are Yankees from some god awful place like Ohio or something.”

Such were, The Days of Our Lives…..

As she got older, this phone addiction only intensified.

She also had a princess phone in her bedroom where she could lay down and chat.   However, that phone was usually reserved for performances of “how sick I am”.   She loved to call people and tell them she was on “death’s door”.  She still does.

The height of the “how sick I am stories” occurred a couple of years after my father died.  She had the Life Saving Crew take her to the hospital because she thought she was having a heart attack.

She had indigestion, but refused to believe it.

To make a long story short, she talked the doctor into putting her into the Coronary Care Unit for monitoring.  I think he did it just to shut her up.  Then she talked the hospital into running a phone line down the hall to her room in CCU, where phones normally were banned.

Then she started dialing:

“I don’t want to worry you, but I thought you would want to know.  I’m in the hospital… in the Coronary Care Unit…..they aren’t sure whats wrong…..I’ll be here a few days for tests….I know the Good Lord will take care of me….you don’t have to do that, but flowers are always so nice…Well, if you want to drop some food off when I get home, it would be so thoughtful.  I don’t know when I’ll be strong enough to cook again”

I happened to know one of the nurses there and we went outside for a smoke.  That’s when she told me there wasn’t anything wrong with her, but a tendency to over act.

That episode should have been a warning.  It started a chain of events that eventually led her to assisted living.

Over the years, she moved more from the kitchen phone behavior to the bedroom phone behavior.  She shut the doors and covered the windows.  She let go of her friends and focused on herself and her imaginary ills.

She lost the black cord and got about a dozen cordless phones and a cell phone so she always had one close by in “case of emergency”.

She started being afraid and believing her own stories.

She eventually cut the cord to reality…

I have a confession to make.  I was a Paperboy for almost 10 years.  I still have nightmares about it sometimes.

It was a fascinating way to both earn money and to meet and spend time with friends.  It also gave you some amazing insights to people’s lives in the 1970’s.

Back then, there were two daily papers and I delivered them both.  I’ll be honest, it was a real bitch to get up at 5:00 am for the morning run- especially in  my late teens when I was frequently hung over…

But it gave me the two things I most desired:  Money and Freedom.

My paper route paid for my first car and assorted clothes and housewares.

It also thoroughly pissed off my control freak father.

His control lever was always:  “I won’t pay for that”.  My response was always “I have a private income”, which I got from seeing too many movies.

In short, I had cash, so he had no control.  In fact, once, due to my Mother’s proliferate spending, he once had to borrow money from me….

It was lovely.

In case you have not figured this out by now, it also fulfilled my major desire in life:  It got me out of the house.

I would schlep through the snow, sleet and freezing rain  to deliver the morning paper as long as I could spend several hours socializing while delivering the evening paper.  And visiting with my friends.

My friends may have teased me about this at times, but it saved my life.  Besides, I only worked a couple of hours a day and made as much money as they did as bag boys and at restaurants.

Early on, I could spend a couple of hours both delivering papers and talking to my friend Renee.  I was out of my house and talking with someone who understood me and who I understood.  I’m not sure she ever knew how much that time meant to me.  I hope she does now.

Later, I would spend time with my friend Gail- or her Mother.  Even when Gail wasn’t speaking to her.  It could take me hours to deliver papers as I was so busy socializing…We would sometimes talk to Terri.  Mary.  Stuart.  Whoever came along…We lived in the streets of Temple Terrace.

We talked face to face.  I know that is strange to kids now for two reasons:

1. They consider their parents their friends and can’t imagine wanting to be away from them
2. They don’t understand we didn’t have the internet and video games.

We had to talk face to face.  As scary as that might seem now…we learned to give and take.  We interacted in person.  We talked through all the adolescent crap and got through it together. As we grew older, we talked about how ridiculous our parents were and how we never wanted to become them.

We gossiped, we chatted, we plotted and we survived adolescence together by finding commonalities no matter how different we were.

We are all young and in Temple Terrace in Danville, Virginia with screwed up parents, but we were together and aware of the strangeness and newness of life.

We had hope and we had plans.

Mostly to get out of Temple Terrace.

It was also fun for me to see the adults.

Looking back, with the wisdom of my years, I can see drama I missed then.

People who wouldn’t come to the door to pay their paper bills when I called.  People I woke up at 4:00 in the afternoon.  The “bachelor” who lived alone and played classical piano at night while drinking as soon as he got home.  The man who was so differential to his wife that we were all shocked at the murder/suicide a few years later.   The sons who finished college but never quite left home.  The men who came to the door in their boxers when their wives weren’t home…

I learned a lot.  And a lot of it went over my head at the time.

Thank god….

But I interacted with people and I survived.  Fortunately– or unfortunately– with my innocence more or less intact.

It makes me wonder, why are people so scared now?

Is it because of Cable TV needing to fill a 24 hour news cycle and magnifying every crime?  Has it made everyone paranoid?  Is it the Internet?

In any case, I strongly recommend your turn off the computer and the TV and throw your kids into the street.  Without their cell phones.

Let’s see if they survive.

They may surprise both you and themselves….

I’ve pulled this new blog together rather quickly.  So maybe, I should take a moment to catch my breathe and think this through…

I think the fact that I don’t have to worry anymore about my Mother’s thoughts  and opinions has somehow freed me.  I also admit, I’m using this to deal with her current situation.

Now I feel I can tell my own story on my own terms.

I will fully admit that I waited almost 50 years to do this and am only being this open about all this now that I know that she longer knows or cares what I might say.

As I was raised to do, I have kept up appearances for almost 52 years.

But still, I’m feeling a little like Christina Crawford writing “Mommie Dearest”.  Or Grace Metalious writing “Peyton Place.”

Neither was my intent.

I really am just feeling free to share my own story for the first time in my life.  That’s a rather strange sensation when you are were raised to honor the past and the “family” above all else.

Truth was always a peripheral concern.

Some of you may consider this the Cowards way out since my Father is dead and my Mother can no longer defend herself.

My take:  “He is gone.  I’m still alive.  She never fought fair, so why should I?”

I will say, I never, ever intentionally embarrassed her or caused a public scene while she was sane and living her public life.  I was always the Gentleman.  Sometimes to my personal detriment.

She has now, as they used to say about the great movie stars past their prime, “Shut the door.”  Someone, in another era,  once said:  “The world loses a great Star every time a Southern Women decides not to take the stage.”

I may be a little premature, but I am now taking this time to claim my own story and tell it on my own terms based on my own memories.

Hopefully, with a little humor along the way…

I was raised in a house where “keeping up appearances” mattered above all else.  That’s why so few people know these stories.

I’ve been surprised that some of my best friends either did not know these stories or were horrified that I was telling them.  That really makes me feel badly, but also realize how much it means to tell them now.

In my generation and before, we were all very good actors.  We were taught to have public and private faces.  With as little difference as possible.  Repression was strongly encouraged.  Perception mattered more than truth.

I spent almost 40 years in the closet, admittedly with the door widely cracked, and have truly learned that the truth does set you free.  It does matter.

It’s time.

I’m at the point in my life where I don’t play games anymore.  With anyone.  I tell it like it is, or at least how I see it, and let the chips fall where they may.

It has been a long journey to get to this point.  I think you will see that as this blog continues…

This is my truth, as I remember it.  Be it accurate or not.  I also realize Truth is a relative concept when you are dealing with memories.  Therefore, you have the right to disagree with me at any point.

I don’t mean to be fair, I mean to be honest.

And I’m not really thinking of the future or what this blog might mean.  I’m living in it as my present journey as I sort through all this stuff from the past…

It’s a big step for me to say “I own these stories and I own my past.”  And I’m willing to share…I’ve hid it all for too long just as my family has…

Now, I just want to tell a story…

My story.

As I remember it.

I hope you have some fun sharing my journey.

As I said in “Peach Chiffon Cocktail Dress”, I learned very early to hide who I was and it took me almost 30 year to work past that.

That was the family motto:  Perception, Not Reality, is What Matters.

In closing this post…

When I was a little boy, I would lock myself in my bedroom in the basement of our house in Temple Terrace in Danville, Virginia and play Broadway Cast albums and movie soundtracks.

Like every other little Gay boy, before or since, I would dream of escaping to Hollywood or New York.

One of my favorite Albums was “Gypsy” with Ethel Merman.

I always loved “Some People” about escaping small town life.

But I also, even as a 1o year old,  loved “Rose’s Turn” where she realizes the lies she’s told herself, the frustrations of her life and lets it all hang out in one big, show stopping moment.

She finally stops lying to herself.  She tells herself the truth.  She breaks free.

Maybe this is my “Rose’s Turn” where I finally tell the truth, if only to myself,  so I can go on with my life.

I do love a Broadway analogy.

Besides camping, another pivotal event happened the year I was 12  years old.

A Minister, filling in at one of the Southern Baptist Churches,  had a sudden heart attack and died, leaving his wife and 4 children stuck in Danville.

I can’t remember all the details about how they ended up in Temple Terrrace.  However one of the sons was about a year older than me.

My Mother felt it was her Christian duty that we should be friends.  Besides, she always felt badly for any woman without a husband.  She could not imagine a worse fate.

This guy turned out to be one of my best friends and one of the pivotal relationships in may life.

I thank my Mother for that.

But I’m going to save the rest of this for the book!

Which I am writing concurrently to this blog….