THREE

1988

Years before I lived in New York City, beginning in high school in Florida, I bought a subscription to the Village Voice and only stopped getting it by mail when I actually moved to Manhattan. There, like any good city dweller, I would buy it at the newsstand and revel how the events and places I once only read about were now around me. I have a habit of reading periodicals from back to front and the back page of the Village Voice was where one could post an inexpensive message. There would be anonymous sightings (TO THE GIRL WITH THE PINK HANDBAG ON THE UPTOWN L), wedding announcements, meetings and one day I saw a notice for a memorial service for G.

G. was literally the first man I’d had an affair with when I moved to NYC years before. He cut hair, had lived in the city forever and several of his clients were celebrities from his days at Studio 54. He was a real looker, a slightly polished Marlboro Man, and it so happened horses were one of his obsessions. We once spent a long weekend at his house upstate and for years I carried a Polaroid I took of him on his farm hugging one of his horses, his strong jaw and upturned shearling collar imbuing the snapshot with an air of elegance.

The memorial service was held in Trinity Chapel on Wall Street which I discovered later denoted it’s own glamourous, elite irony. Indeed upon entering the chapel you were greeted by a large portrait of G. taken by Francesco Scavullo, the fashion photographer who took the photos for the Chicago Film Festival and who discovered Brook Shields. The chapel was crowded with mourners but the only person I recognized (other than Mikael Baryshnikov sitting near the back) was a handsome acquaintance who was also a well-known DJ at the time. R. was sitting alone and reading the program and I sidled in the pew next to him and we smiled and waited for the service to begin.

During the various speakers, I kept wondering how R., the studly DJ, knew G. until it finally dawned on me R. was one of G.’s past affairs like me. He’d probably seen the same Voice announcement I had and now we’d both come to pay our respects. R. softly began sobbing at some point and impressed by his display of emotion, I did what I could and put my arm around his shoulder to comfort him. I did not cry but as I left, I put the Polaroid of G. in the bowl left by the door for charitable donations.

Outside it had begun to snow and R. asked if I’d like to go eat. We took a cab to a restaurant in the Village where we sat in a back booth for our impromptu lunch. When we finally left, R. invited me back to his apartment. In R.’s apartment, he pulled out a small bottle of Ketamine (also called Special K) which was a popular drug at the time. Ketamine is actually a veterinary tranquilizer which comes in a clear liquid. As I learned, one pours the K into a glass baking dish which you then bake in the oven until the moisture evaporates and one is left with a white crust flaking on the glass which one scrapes off with a blade. The resulting powder you snort and the effect is akin to cocktails and quaaludes.

So we spent that snowy afternoon snorting K and talking and R. mixed records and I lolled on the bed and we got naked and Did It and snorted some more. I never got the chance to cry but in hindsight I’d like to think that somehow G. would have enjoyed the decadence of the entire incident.

1992

A. was a close friend of mine when I lived in NYC who was a Park Avenue Decorator. He’d also been a denizen of Studio 54 years before but as he aged and his business grew he eschewed his younger, wilder ways. A. wore custom double-breasted suits with shirts that needed cufflinks and a silk handkerchief poking from his breast pocket. He dressed this way all the time and while he was quite dapper, I always felt like a slapdash college kid regardless of what I was wearing.

A., being both Hispanic and Catholic, also had a fascination with the Occult and was constantly insisting I visit some tarot card reader or psychic he’d recently seen. Therefore when he recommended an Astrologer I wasn’t surprised but after some investigation I learned M. was not just some astrologer, he also had a Weekly Horoscope in the leading Gay New York paper, The New York Native, and had also written a book. His readings were fascinating, not Spooky-Kooky at all but more historical and literate. He spoke of characters in great books, kings and queens and physics. I went to him several times and we’d often chat on the phone.

I heard about M.’s memorial service through A. who naturally heard the news before anyone. A. and I arranged to attend together and when we arrived we found the service was being held in a synagogue, the first and only time I’ve ever been inside a Temple. I followed A.’s lead, picking up a small white skullcap at the door. At the time I had hair and after donning the satin disc, A. commented it looked like someone had dropped a diaphragm on my head. I smiled weakly, both to remain appropriately somber and also because I had no idea what a diaphragm looked like.

From the attendees present, I gleaned M. must have had some political connection due to the number of prominent gay public figures present. At one point the Rabbi asked if anyone wanted to speak and I felt compelled to stand and say something. I would have but A. gently but firmly placed his hand on my forearm and stopped me from rising.

When I got home, I took out one of the cassette tapes M. had given me of my reading and played his calming voice until I fell asleep. I missed him but I never shed one tear.

1996

G. was one of my best friends and I happened to be his caretaker until his death. G. was a short Italian bodybuilder who, oddly enough, also was an expert on American Indians. In fact, at one point he was “inducted” into an Indian tribe as part of a ceremony and he was a curator at several prominent museums including the Metropolitan where he’d frequently run into Diana Vreeland.

In his will he’d left all arrangements in the hands of his best friend from childhood, a lovely woman whose path had led her to being a Park Avenue Society Woman. She arranged a memorial service at a bright church near Washington Square and we split the list of people to contact with myself taking the majority of G.’s ex-boyfriends and gay men.

People handle grief in so many ways including attaching their emotion to things. One of my calls included insistant inquiries from one of G.’s exes regarding the eventual placement of G.’s highly collectable Biedermeir Sofa. I was taken aback and slightly mortified. The childhood friend insisted I go through G.’s apartment first and take any personal effects I wanted. I did not take the sofa. I chose several Indian blankets he’d received as gifts from various tribes, an Indian doll which I had no clue about but seemed to need a home and some smaller items which only G. and I knew he’d bought at Tiffany & Co., one of his favorite haunts. In the back of his closet I found a signature blue gift box from Tiffany, tied in white ribbon with a blank gift card under the bow. I opened it and inside was a Limoge cigarette box with a small cocker spaniel sitting on the lid. It was a bit twee for my taste but it made it’s way to my house with the other things. We never found out who the gift was intended for and I was the only one of G.’s friends who smoked.

I was asked to deliver a eulogy and when I arrived I discovered the mourners looked like a cattle call for A-list Manhattan musclemen which made me a total wreck. Even in this circumstance, I struggled with my grief versus concerns over my presentation. I was shamed at my superficiality but my concern was what I used to hold myself together until it was my time to speak.

Immediately before my turn, a man rose from the front row and stood in the aisle at the front. He was wearing jeans and a brightly colored western shirt with long dark hair covered in a cascade of feathers. He was a chief from the Indian Tribe who’d adopted G. years before and he’d traveled from Oklahoma. He briefly stated he was there to sing a song that would comfort and guide G.’s soul into the next place. He opened his mouth and released the most amazing sound. It was hardly human, it didn’t even sound like the voice of a single man. It was as if everyone who had died was slowly strolling alongside us and as they passed, all who needed guidance and company were invited to join. The sound filled the church, pressing against the roof and slipping inside your pockets. Even after he stopped, the song lingered in your ears until passing on to continue it’s job elsewhere.

I could not tell you what I rose and said next. I may have carried through my plans to talk about G. and our relationship and how we read his hospital menu in French like it was a four-star restaurant. I might have talked about how courageous G. was for such a small, funny man. The song had burrowed in my guts where it pushed the words out of my throat until I was left with just a wet pulpy phone book of tears and all I could do was stand in front of all the people and cry. I cried for snowy afternoons escaping from the World, I cried because noone could ever explain the stars as well as M. had done and I cried that the blankets and Limoge box would never replace my friend. Mainly I cried because the song was now mine, buried inside, and I’d never find the perfect place to put it until the day we all have when we realize they’re singing for us.

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