Prologue
4/12/77 manhattan
Dear Bob,
This
is the second try at this letter, for the first time I realized that I
was so nuts that I had not even made complete sentences… I have
absolutely been unable to do anything with the apartment except what I
did when you were here. I can’t find time to sit for a minute. I hope
this carousel that I am on slows down, but something tells me it gets
faster. When I come home I am almost literally out of breath, and don’t
think I am joking. I close the door and go whew! You know how
impatient I am and everything seems to be a major ordeal as far as time,
yet things move so fast… much love, Jim
the problem,
of course, with letters between friends (unless you’re o'keefe and
stieglitz or any other equally famous wit/artist/politician) is their
one-sided nature. i have a stack of letters from jimmy from 1977
through 1982, that detail his adventures in new york and houston, some
more lucid than others, some type-written, others in the scrawl of his
manic-depression. and now, these many years later, it’s true that he
suffered greatly from depression–there were always great highs and lows
so far gone that you wouldn’t be able to see bottom should you feel
strong enough to peer over the edge of the precipice–which on occasion,
i did. i shudder with the fear of memory, that tightrope that we
often walked together and from his letters as well you’ll understand
what my role was in this pairing, this coming together, this meeting
(yes, of minds, for we were often of one mind) and this often deep
understanding binding us one to the other. it is true too that we were
often in a pique of ire with each other–my incomprehension of his
mercurial nature is what i first ascribed to it, but now, now looking
back i see it was his disease and i was unprepared for it (it had its
own personality, oftentimes you were dealing with more than just his
self.)
Act 1
but first a traditional
beginning (which you probably know is against my better nature, well,
i’m not sure if it’s a ‘better’ nature or not, but it is my nature to
skip beginnings and ends and just stick with the middles, but i have
slipped the leash and must carry on here): we were sitting on folding
chairs in a partially constructed (unswept cement floors, the dust of
drywall, the stink of turpentine and wet-painted walls) restaurant that
embraced an atrium in a chicago high rise on state st. in the near
north. there were maybe 20 or 25 young men and we were interviewing for
wait staff positions at the newest restaurant to make the scene in
chicago. arnie morton stood before us, his legs spread apart (colossus
of rhodes-like, and as i came to know him, his favorite standing
position–he also would un[self]consciously rearrange himself by shaking
one leg until his package was comfortably settled this side of the seam
or that one, often while standing in front of a table of guests – no
one ever disabused him of this habit – he was a genial bastard – yes
both of those traits – sweet and mean), but even he could not take his
eyes off two of the men seated in the front row; it was comical watching
him trying to focus his attention elsewhere, an unpainted wall or the
plants in the atrium or even on anyone but them, but his eyes would
always drift back to them, a little shock of surprise registered on his
face each time, but he kept talking about what he wanted, “young,
good-looking men” who had “dramatic flair” to “be a part of the circus”
that was his vision for the restaurant.
the first thing you
noticed was their hair; they both sported an aureole, a nimbus of curly
hair; one blond and the other black (like salt and pepper as they
themselves would often say)–they were exotic looking (birds of a
feather), with their polyester shirts and bell-bottom dress slacks and
high heeled boots/shoes, as whippet-thin as a willow switch (both of
them) and the rest of us, even those of us more dramatically inclined
(there were plenty) took a back seat to their opulence, deference paid
to superior beings, demi-gods, queens.
scroll forward, i was embarrassed by his brash behavior, his use of french (fluent, moi aussi,
but i kept it to myself, i wanted to know the lay of the land, he set
out to conquer it at once), a diva when the word still meant something
important, but finally, and this might be what i could not look away
from, was his fearlessness. it wasn’t that he was always right, it was
a combination of intellect and street smarts that i’d not encountered
before in a gay man–it was an appealing alternative to consider in the
coming-out days of the gay movement in 1974.
i could not tell you,
as is often the case in this tale, when we first fell together,
conspirators with heads together, but fall together we did. we
pressured our supervisors to make sure we worked much the same shifts
and that our stations were close to each other so the shared painful
existence of waiting tables could be tolerated with the other within
earshot of a distress call. we would stand in back just around the
corner from the restaurant floor at the wait stand and smoke, his love
affair with benson & hedges and my flip-flop with
kools/marlboros–oh don’t give me that side-eye, everyone
smoked then and those who didn’t – whoever they might have been – kept
their mouths shut about those of us who did. the restaurant patrons
were a smoking bunch as well–and oftentimes there was a layer of smoke
hanging a few feet below the ceiling like a storm cloud and the racket
of diners, with their silver clanking, the crystal clinking, the loud
talking of drunks and the waiters with their covered dishes, the soft
whoosh of the serving cart wheels on the lush, deep carpeting, the
busboys snapping tablecloths, and the piano player pounding out a fast
one; lights, camera, action, darling.
but it was after
hours that were most important to us. that gathering of gay men in the
night, circling a bar, a louche lounge, leaning back against a wall,
legs crossed, your sex front and center (if that was what you were
selling that night–or conversely, you’d put your tightly clad ass out
into the room, waiting for him or him or him to brush his hand across it
in passing as he went round and round, everything about you a lure,
finely feathered, delicately knotted, brightly colored and those who
were the best at this expedition had the subtlety and control of the
most experienced of fishermen, casting their lines, reeling them back
in, changing this dramatic fly for another equally flamboyant or subtle,
only noticed by those of us who were looking/learning.)
at first
we were a tight little universe: jimmy, bill, me, toni (the lone female,
but not the dreaded fag hag you might be imagining, but a beautiful
young woman who found some comfort among gay men) and usually one or
another satellite, a moon or asteroid revolving around us, attracted by
our gravitational pull, keeping close but not too close for fear of
crash landing and blowing apart in a million little pieces. we were
fierce (in the 21st century vernacular.)
i have three distinct
memories of this particular time: waking up in bill’s bedroom one
morning, the four of us a puppy pile, bill’s architect lover at the foot
of the bed with a scowl on his face and the weak chicago winter sun
leaking in through the window above the bed, the smell of coffee,
morning breath and that particular morning smell of warm bodies all
under a white down comforter. another night i insisted that they all
come up to my apartment in uptown, which they did and when they had
shaken off the cold and were standing in the entryway i realized that
they were completely out of place in my hippie pad with its soft
furniture and pillows on the floor, my three roommates making excuses as
they passed through or getting up quickly and heading to their rooms.
my friends stood uncomfortably while i got drinks, but as soon as they
had finished i hurried them into their coats and down the steps and out
the door and in a cab. i never had all three of them in that apartment
after that little social misadventure and it wasn’t until i moved a
year later and was living in a respectable high-rise in lakeview did any
of them ever set foot in my home again. it’s possible that i have this
next memory confused with the first one in a time line that has faded
with drug use (that was then) and now age, but i know it was my 22nd
birthday and i finally found the voice to blurt out, “i love you, bill,
and for my birthday may i sleep with you?” greeted by genial laughter
and hugs all around, we repeated our first sleep-over, but now bill was
living in a converted church on diversey with another architect lover
(he collected them) and we all piled into his bed and slept. just as i
had asked.
there was an innocence then about love, relationships, a
social order; we were all finding our way in the world, these nascent
“it’s okay to be gay” days had an aura of the impossible suddenly
possible, a surprise, a delighted surprise that the birthday cake turned
out so well, hands together in applause at our own immense joy of being
alive, that we had achieved something we could not name had we been
asked, but that we felt was truly ours and it was a feeling that could
be celebrated by the mere fact that we loved each other, our faces lit
by the tiny flames atop the frosting (the gaslamps of lautrec), poised
to blow out the candles.
Act 2
and so
it went. it was the innocence of the dispossessed, of course. there
weren’t norms or standards of behavior for gay men then (and i ask you,
are there now?), and in spite of the mood of liberation, there was still
much that was done in the dark and out of sight, for the shame of being
queer still hung around our necks like a heavy chain, still a slave to
the disapproval of, well, of everyone. shuffling in the bushes
at dusk along lake shore drive (lawrence avenue was particularly
active) cruising for a quick pick-up (your place, mine, right there if
the stars were aligned, always on the lookout for the police) or the
bookstore that sold porn on broadway just north of diversey, run by a
transgender lesbian with a gray crew cut, her blue shirt with the rolled
up sleeves and an anchor tattoo bleeding ink down one forearm (navy)!
it had booths where you could drop a quarter and watch 10 minutes of
badly produced porn, the light of the next booth flickering through the
glory hole, and wait for another man to make a move on you (they did).
bug house square, with its men in cars cruising around the park late at
night and the hustlers lounging on the park benches, lit cigarettes
dangling from their lips, legs splayed (merchandising) and lazily
standing when the right offer came along, slipping into the waiting open
door of car, motor running, a head dropping down into a lap.
now, layered on top of the old gay sex was this new gay sex (it was not more respectable, it was tolerated,
much like that annoying dog of your neighbor that insists on humping
your leg, all the while the both of you act as if nothing untoward is
happening.) the new gay sex had many of the same old gay sex rituals,
but now instead of scurrying around in the dark of parks, alleys and 24
hr. porn shops, it happened in dance halls and deliciously dark bars,
where the night life was made new, no fear of police raids (i was only
approached once by a cop when i was sitting with a boy friend in the
alley behind a bar on rush st. rolling a joint when the cruiser he was
driving pulled up along side us and he leaned out and said, “you boys
watch what you’re doing, i don’t want to find you out here again,” and
drove off. warning duly noted, officer!) a congregation poised to
raise up in praise to a new god.
this is the part where i write
about drugs and gay culture, but before i detail the destruction and
descent (why is it always about going down with drugs? is there any
good reason why it can’t be “my ascent into drug use?”) these passages
from my journal:
february 11, 1976–wed:
i am witnessing
(and i might add, unable to help) the mental breakdown of a close
friend. our relationship is totally love-hate and is definitely
difficult to maintain–unfortunately he is losing his grip on reality or
his grip has become too tight and he is close to breaking it in two –
and there is nothing i can do except be there and watch it happen, i’m a
captive audience at a performance that i don’t care too much about
seeing. yesterday, he was totally without control - he unmercifully
attacked me and kept at it until i nearly hit him. he hurt me mentally
& emotionally but i kept it together and let him scatter himself far
beyond normalcy. perhaps i should just beat him silly sometime when he
does that to me. i guess i’m more mentally and emotionally resilient
than he is because i’m never in one state for too long.
feb. 17, 1976-tues.-
last
night i tried to cut my wrists, just to see how far i could go.
obviously not far enough i’m still here–society, in particular gay
society, has me so depressed. am going to stop dealing with them as
much as possible.
february, 20, 1976:
it has been one the most
mentally trauma-filled week(s) of my entire life. exactly a week ago
on Friday the 13th (the date is wrong) bruce and i broke up. monday the
16th i tried to cut my wrists. pressures at work and school are
becoming increasingly difficult to cope with. last night jimmy took a
diet pill, added several chivases then took nembutal–i believe he
nearly died. the emotional upset it caused him i’m afraid he’ll never
remember–he’s so sick he may have to be hospitalized, perhaps even
tonight.
it is so classic a story that it might viewed as
trite if it weren’t quite so harrowing a tale. to any of you who might
have avoided excessive drug use in your 20s (or at whatever age) you may
not understand the euphoria and happiness that comes with it. along
with those blissful states though, like an unwanted guest at your soiree
is the anxiety about and the avoidance of the real issues drugs only
put lipstick on (such are the nature of pigs and cosmetics.) it is the
sadness of being alone that is the hardest thing to accept as a gay
man, now as then i imagine. you want to revolutionize relationships and
yet at the same time, all you can dream of is a husband, a car, a house
with a white picket fence and cocktails on the patio with your
neighbors. that seems like settling (as many of us have, myself
included.)
during the day we would temper our marijuana use with
amphetamines (love you little white crosses and you big black beauties!)
and coffee, i guess you could say we were high-functioning…things got
done: laundry, errands, school, homework (can you imagine? but i did, i
did.) it was evening though and the ritual of going out to the disco or
dinner and then hitting the bars that set the standard for drug use by
almost everyone i knew. getting high was basically what we lived for;
where was it coming from, when could we get it, how long would it last,
would there be enough to share (and with whom would we share it–after
all, it isn’t much fun to get high all by yourself–or so you think at
first.)
marijuana, amphetamines, quaaludes, cocaine, mda
(pre-ecstasy), acid and other hallucinogenics, including, but not
limited to psyloscibin mushrooms, hashish and opium. taken with scotch,
bourbon, champagne, gin, vodka, tequila (a subset of high all its own).
you
could say we were living our lives on high alert, for that constant
altered state of consciousness (and sometimes unconsciousness) was our
norm and not being high was to be eschewed at all costs. self-hating
you might say and perhaps you would be right (sometimes, but not
always).
here’s the catch as it pertains to our hero of this
particular tale: he was already battling mental illness (of course,
this is knowledge now gained in retrospect). on top of his already
hypersensitivity and his immense intellect he added the dulling effect
of multi-layers of drugs, both prescribed and as we often jokingly
referred to them, the “over the gutter” drugs, whatever we could find on
the street or through our multiple sources. he strove for
understanding and release through drug use; we would get high and talk
for hours in his bathroom while he prepared himself to go out.
the
ritual consisted of him tending to his hair, spongies to add to the
natural curl, the lotions and creams he would apply to his face, the
slightest hint of makeup around the eyes to erase the lines, the ironing
of a shirt or pants or even fixing a meal so we would “have something
in our stomach when they pumped it” (we laughed.) before you assume too
much about jimmy’s sexual predilections, please note that for all his
effeminacy, he was all man (we were not sexual partners, but we talked
constantly about our conquests and loves, both found and lost. we were
innocently comfortable with each others nudity–both of us thin, thin,
thin, me with dark blond hair – head & body; he with that blond
mass of curls and covered with a fine down of blond hair starting with
his beard and traveling down to the tops of his toes, he shimmered in
the cosmetic lights of his bathroom.) he had balls and their
satisfaction was a goal he often made a top priority, is what i’m saying, he winked.
i
was less inclined to primp and powder, not until i had my hair cut into
a dorothy hamill wedge did i even think to style my hair–it was mostly
wash and comb, for me preparing to go out consisted of showering and
putting on clean clothes, then taking the elevator up from my apartment on 11 to his apartment
on 14 to sit on the closed toilet seat and watch him go through his beauty
rituals, tend bar, look for blackheads on his back (only if he suspected
there might be one), answer his phone should it ring, go through his
closet advising on this shirt with those pants or that sweater (too much
orlon!) with those slacks (it was always slacks for him. jimmy was not
a jeans wearer–is using the word 'jeans’ instead of 'levis’ a
regionalism like saying 'pop’ instead of 'soda’?– and for the life of
me, i cannot ever recall seeing him in a pair. i, on the other hand,
lived in jeans: bell-bottoms, patched, boot cut, carpenter’s, you know,
they just fit me better and i liked how they outlined my assets–so my
advertising would do the talking for me once we were on the street),
smoke cigarettes, roll joints for the evening, take a 'lude or some
other pharmaceutical, and encourage, listen, discuss, complain, lend an
ear while he prattled on about the infatuation du jour, his other
friends (where were they in all of this? apparently i had more patience
for it than they did) not privy to this nor as close.
there were
times when, after all of this preparation, we’d gotten so high that we
decided to stay in, but that would have been the rare occasion, because
that siren call of men, boys (you do know that when i use the word
'boys’ i mean young men above the age of consent, don’t you? contrary to
the belief of the chef at arnie’s we were not pedophiles), drugs,
danger, the call of the hunt (cue the horns) was impossible to ignore
and with all of chicago ours to lose, we felt victorious for a few
shining moments (the knots on the skein of one’s life.)
with him,
though, there was always the need to go further, push harder; no was not
an acceptable response to his onslaught, whether you were locked in his
sights as a possible trick or arguing with him the finer points of
theater of the absurd.
Act 3
one day he
decided chicago was too small for him, an ill-fitting pair of pants, too
tight in the crotch, the legs too short (in preparation for the flood, i
should have told him), the zipper broken, a hole in the right hand
front pocket (coins and keys lost–although i should mention here, that
jimmy had extraordinary luck finding money on the street and not just
pennies, nickels, dimes or quarters, we’re talking 5s, 10s, 20s, and on
one occasion, a hundred dollar bill), all of his desire (his mania) to
be the center of the universe shrinking with each wearing, an impossible
reality (and metaphor) to sustain.
we moved him to new york.
he’d flown into the city early one spring morning, found a job waiting
tables at tavern on the green (a letter of introduction from arnie
morton his ticket in) and an apartment at the back of a brownstone on w.
74th st between columbus and amsterdam. a few days later (after a
thorough drug-fueled debauch) he flew home and somehow convinced me to
drive a 5 speed 24’ long u-haul truck with his shit in it to new york
city. a crazy mix of amphetamines kept us awake for the
straight-through drive. in a parking lot somewhere in the middle of
ohio, when i could not see to drive any longer, i tried to teach him
how to shift and drive the truck (he knew how to drive, just not how to
use a manual), which lasted about 100 miles before i was back behind the
wheel again, having been scared shitless as he ground through the gears
trying to pass an 18-wheeler on a two-lane highway with oncoming
traffic so close you could see the panic in their eyes as he squeezed us
through the smallest of openings. no. that would not do.
dawn
broke over the george washington bridge as we fell into the city (btw, i
do not recommend driving a truck in manhattan) and somehow we got to
his new apartment, unloaded the damn thing and parked it across
the street. i may have collapsed in a soggy, hysterical heap.
the next morning, i was up again at dawn because the
truck needed to be moved for street cleaning, and again i drove around
and around and around the west side looking for a parking place that
would accommodate a 24’ long truck. i considered murder too good of an
end for our friendship.
all of this for my friend. he so wanted
to be a star, this ill-defined something that he knew, just knew was
waiting for him, maybe not around this corner, but surely the next one.
it would only take the right person, the right time, the sun in his
seventh house, and jupiter aligned with mars, for it to come true.
now, in consideration of our friendship, i don’t think it mattered to
him so much what kind of star he would be, but that someone, you know, that
someone (a stranger) would consider him worthy of all of the attention
the world could bestow upon such a celestial being and that this someone
would help everyone else know he was a star, the brightest star in the
heavens. and i may have encouraged this line of thinking, but only to a
point, because his drive for stardom was also a rejection of our
friendship in a significant way to me. the fact that it was so
ill-defined stung me through and through. i know i voiced my opinion.
4/19/77
et maintenant,
nous avons rendu compte de la realité que je ne suis pas là et tu n'est pas ici.
i
could literally sit here for hours pondering over what to say for a
thousand thoughts rush through my mind. this must be short because i
cannot think it over too long. it disturbs me so. as you once said to
neil – no regrets for we enjoyed each other’s company then and there.
needless to say a pervasive emptiness fills my whole being and as no
consolation time and space seem to be the only solution. many times
have i read and thought about that quote on happiness.
we
have shared a very special feeling that some people never have even
once. remember what we talked about driving here and someone new
filling that space. make them work for it–i intend to do so. and no
my dear friend we shall not loose [sic] contact, not for a moment. we really
do not need to be together but it is nothing more than human to
experience that desire.
it is not the end, but a new
beginning. a beginning for a new me and a new you. keep a dream in
mind, peace in your soul and happiness in your heart. the world is only
full of those things in us we want to see.
i must close for now, i’ve lost control of myself one too many times while writing.
i love you dearly, jim
he
was right. time and distance did make a difference eventually. he
found new people to stay up all night with and i made my way with a new
group (and i like to think a more significant group) of friends, ones
who only left me because they died. i put his letters in a shoebox with
correspondence from other friends i made who moved away or never lived
in chicago in the first place. in one letter he wrote not long after
the one above, he said, “let’s keep each other’s letters, okay? it’ll
be fun when we’re old and gray to go back and read them to each other.”
do you think he’s listening?
Epilogue
crazy jimmy was manic-depressive.
of course, i couldn’t see that when we were friends as being his friend
demanded too much of my time & focused attention to have delved
past any other personality disorder other than his constant need to be
the center of attention (unless, of course, he didn’t need to be, at
which time he would withdraw his beneficence from all of his friends,
save one & you never knew if it would be you or one of his
other devotees—a small select group needless to say.)
crazy jimmy wasn’t really crazy.
he was brilliant. he was from texas. he was handsome & fucked
like a madman (so i heard, we never were lovers.) he spoke french like a
parisian, spanish like a dishwasher & english as well as the queen
of england (of course.) he would talk to anyone about anything & as
an expert. he read voraciously, always eager to parse or explicate the
text with anyone (usually me) who would listen. some people would say
that he wasted his gift, but for jimmy it was all about living for the
moment. he could rarely face the past & hated the future.
my mother loved him.
they met once & became fast friends, speaking on the phone at least
twice a month for several years (until he moved to nyc & his
illness took him to the dark recesses of depression enhanced by his
constant drug abuse.) she may have thought we were lovers, but she never
pressed the issue, commenting only that “jimmy & i were talking the
other day about you.” which both intrigued me & scared the shit
out of me.
i’ve been trying to find a decent photo of the two of us to share with
you, but the only i have is below, which, all things considered, is appropriately ruined or just right, you decide. i guess we were too busy
living in the now to have stopped long enough to consider the future. maybe, in the top photo, you will see in his face
the pain that haunted his life (it would be a fleeting glimpse as he was
often a master at the glacial stare—a royal sense of privilege that one
finds in those whose lives are lived separately from our own.)