And then it was time to leave on the second major road trip of the summer. This one didn’t cover as many miles, but had its share of interesting adventures.
Dateline: Columbia, South Carolina –
Well, I am off on part 2 of Andy tours America. The distances aren’t as great this time around as I am staying around the eastern seaboard so no 900 miles across the Texas plains or anything of that nature. The destination this time is New York City, where I plan to stay for a couple of weeks, catching up with a couple of folks and playing in the city. I should be in residence starting next Monday until roughly Monday the 2nd when I will start heading back south. This is all liable to change depending on mood and other vagaries.
I did not get moving this morning so i did not leave Birmingham until after one and have stopped in Columbia for the night. I am having breakfast tomorrow with my old Birmingham theatre partner in crime, Frank Thompson so we can catch up on various things, than I think I’m going to head for Charleston and the Carolina coast as I have never been there.
Today’s drive was uneventful and dull, other than navigating the usual Atlanta traffic and did not bring any specific stories to mind so I’ll go back to Sweeney Todd from the other night.
Sweeney opened on Broadway when I was a junior in high school, but I didn’t discover it until a couple of years later – I bought the double LP cast album for myself for Christmas my freshman year of college and immediately fell in love with the show and the score. I’ve seen a dozen or so productions including the original on tour, NYCO’s recreation of the original with Elaine Paige; Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christine Baranski at the Kennedy Center; The Patti LuPone/George Hearn SF Concert on tape; The Emma Thompson Concert on tape; college productions; community productions and I’ve never seen it fail as long as it’s cast with actors who can sing the score. Sweeney is a bucket list role for me. I’m the right type and voice type but I’m realistic enough about my talent to know that I don’t have a powerful enough voice to ever actually do it – except in the shower where I have a killer Epiphany.
My favorite Sweeney memory comes from 1985. The Stanford University student musical theater group, Ram’s Head, did a production for their spring show (naturally the year after I graduated) but I was able to take some time off during my first year of medical school to go back to the Bay Area to see it My old friend Marc Fajer directed it and did some interesting things with the staging so that it was not the carbon copy of Hal Prince that so many productions are. Macall Dunahee Gordon was a wonderful Mrs. Lovett and Elizabeth Bryant was the beggar woman. I do not recall who played Sweeney. Anyway, my cousin, Jenny, who was in her senior year, was the costume designer for the production and I arrived to find her behind in finishing Mrs. Lovett’s second act dresses. We spent the better part of the day and evening sewing and hot gluing frills and furbelows as we caught up with each other. It’s just the kind of thing I would do with Tommy. He would be behind on wigs and all of a sudden I would find myself having to roll wigs with no talent or knowledge, but needs must.
Twenty years from now, I’m sure I’ll be sitting on a floor somewhere readying some last minute prop for some production to help somebody out. It’s what I do.
Michael Mayes and Maria Zifchak in Atlanta Opera’s Sweeney Todd
I was too sleepy to write last night, so I’m laying here in bed, thinking about finishing my packing for road trip, part 2 and writing this instead of actually doing that. I have procrastination down to an exact science.
The day after the memorial, I said goodbye to the family who headed back to their lives in Seattle and I decided I needed to do something for me and get out of the house so I got on line, bought myself a ticket in the front row of the mezzanine for Atlanta Opera’s production of Sweeney Todd and headed off to the ATL. I decided to spend the night so I wouldn’t have to drive home late night. The production was well cast, well sung, and to hear that score played live by a full orchestra is always a huge treat. Michael Mayes, who sang Valentin when I was in the chorus of Faust, some years ago, was great in the title role. He’s made quite a career out of DeRocher in Dead Man Walking the last few years and he’s superb at projecting menace on stage. He’ll be back in Atlanta this spring for Dead Man Walking and I’ll have to make sure I get over to see that. I’ve wanted to see a production for years. Leah Partridge, who was Ophelia in the Hamlet we did a few years ago, was The Beggar Woman. She was obviously having fun and was in great voice.
Seeing Leah on stage made me think of the winter of 2014-15, a time which ended up transforming Tommy’s life although we didn’t know it at the time. Tommy had finished his music education and speech pathology degrees in late 2011 but had developed some serious pulmonary issues that knocked him out of being able to do much activity until the spring of 2012. He started looking for a teaching job in elementary music education but, as he was entering the field in his late 40s, he wasn’t having a lot of success competing against 20 somethings so he did what he always did and created his own little niche. He began the children’s music program at our church, he taught at the UAB Arts Extension Program, he worked with private voice students, and he became the go to substitute for a lot of the public school elementary music teachers in town. It kept him busy, but having nothing but piecemeal jobs wasn’t sitting too well with him. He also fell into theatrical wigs and makeup at this time, but that’s another story.
Corey McKern in Opera Birmingham’s Hamlet – 2015. Tommy at far stage right
In the fall of 2014, the long time head of Opera Birmingham, decided to move on and, after a search, Keith Wolfe was hired from Fort Worth Opera to come in and take over the company the following spring after some transition period. The previous office manager had also left so, knowing that he was underemployed, the company asked Tommy if he would come in for some temp work that fall and winter. Tommy started showing up that fall as they were getting ready for the January production of Thomas’s operatic version of Hamlet. In December, all hell broke lose and Tommy found himself as pretty much the only employee on staff with an opera going up in six weeks. Never one to back away from a challenge, Tommy kept the company running, and the pieces fell into place with Corey McKern and Leah Patridge starring under the direction of Dona Vaughn and baton of Craig Kier.
When the dust settled, Tommy found himself permanently employed as the Company Manager of Opera Birmingham. It wasn’t what he was intending, but it was a job that allowed him to use many of the skill sets he had developed over the years in administration, organization and management. Production management fell under his purview, and I was pressed into being his factotum, and the two of us found ourselves sewing table cloths, making cafe tables, or shopping for just the right Lily Pulitzer for a leading lady at all sorts of odd hours in the ensuing years. I can’t say I’ll miss spray painting props in our garage at one in the morning.
Tommy’s memorial was this evening. Everything about the last few weeks was leading up to this. In some ways, I felt like I was producing a musical where the tech rehearsals, dress, and performance were going to happen simultaneously. I worried about technical glitches. I worried about not having people do justice to the material I selected. I worried about no one showing up. I shouldn’t have worried. Or, as a friend said, no one’s wig fell off so Tommy would be pleased.
Now that it’s over, I want nothing more than to be able to go up stairs, take my suit off, put my feet up, and tell Tommy ‘We did it, do we have to get up for something in the morning or can we sleep in?” and then make small talk while an episode of Star Trek plays on the TV and we both fall asleep and recharge to get ready for tomorrow’s list of projects. But that’s not possible and it’s just going to take me time to get used to that cold, hard fact.
Something over three hundred and thirty people gathered this evening. Both of our families. My church family. Opera folks. Music folks. Theater folks. Health care folks. It was topped off by the arrival of a proclamation from the mayor and city council honoring Tommy and his contributions to civic life over the years. It made me recognize just how embedded I have become in the Birmingham area over the last couple of decades and how rich both of our lives had been and how much I have to draw on as I start to move forward in whatever patterns start to make sense as the fog of mourning begins to clear.
Tonight’s story is about another memorial service, the one for Steve that took place in 2001. My loss of Steve was, in some ways similar to my loss of Tommy, and in some ways very different. The major difference was one of time. There was about a two year period between the time Steve fell ill and the time he finally died so we both had a lot of time to get used to the idea and it was no big surprise that death was going to part us. We didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it, we just lived day to day in the ways that we could depending on what his body would let him do.
He had gotten sick less than a year after our relocation from California to Birmingham and we were still reeling from culture shock and all of the issues that we had been coping with stemming from the collapse of the clinical geriatrics program at UC Davis when his health failed so we really didn’t have a lot of friends locally. Our support network was still on the west coast. When he finally did die, his memorial was relatively simple to arrange as it was for our UUCB church family and the very few friends we had managed to make. Creating a social circle when it’s hard to leave the house is not the easiest.
Steve died on a Wednesday morning. We had the memorial the following Sunday afternoon. It was early August in Birmingham which, of course. means hot and humid. It was a very hot day and everyone arrived at the old A-frame church in Mountain Brook in light summer dresses or seer sucker. The sun was beating down and the air conditioner was working over time. At the end of the service, just as the pianist was playing the final hymn, out of a clear blue sky, a thunderhead rolled in over Mountain Brook and the heavens opened and it began to pour. No one had an umbrella. Convertible tops were down in the parking lot. Everyone leaving the church got thoroughly soaked. The assembled congregation, on confronting the deluge, all looked up at the sky together and said ‘Steve’. He would have laughed like crazy at the scene and I can’t help but think that he had given the weather gods a little celestial nudge that day.
I don’t remember much else about the service, but I will never forget that aftermath. Tommy seems to have approved of his memorial. At least there were no sudden cloudbursts…and no one’s wig fell off.
There hasn’t been a lot going on the last few days. I’ve been doing prep for the memorial on Monday and getting the house ready for the descent of family tomorrow but it’s been otherwise uneventful. Except for the evenings. I’ve spent the last two evenings with my Birmingham music/theater family. Last night, Ron and Randi Bourdages invited me to the final dress of the Birmingham Music Club spring production. I had been slated to perform in it, but my life fell apart just as it went into rehearsal so I had to withdraw. Their spring production has become a celebration of operetta, a genre not often performed and I had appeared in previous years in The Desert Song and Die Fledermaus for them. This year, rather than a full show, they opted for an operetta revue with selections from Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg and, of course, Gilbert and Sullivan. The show was great fun, tuneful, and well sung with some of the best voices in town.
Tonight, I went to the opening night of Red Mountain Theater Company’s production of Beauty and the Beast. It was a bit of a bittersweet night as this was the production Tommy was working on when he died. We sat some in his hospital room while he bounced hair and makeup ideas off of me. Holly McClendon, his assistant for the last few years, picked up the ball and the show looked lovely. And nobody’s wig fell off, which is always a plus. Both shows brought up emotions and thoughts so a couple of short stories related to them.
First, operetta. My introduction to the form was through my mother, who was born to British emigres and was therefore steeped in British culture. When I was five, the D’Oyly Carte company made its last North American tour with the original stagings of the Savoy Operettas and I was taken to see HMS Pinafore. I was smitten and remember it vividly. I was, of course, given several LPs of famous G and S songs and knew all the words to I Am A Pirate King by the time I was six or seven. It occurs to me, that if I live into my 80s, I will be one of the last people who can state that they saw the original staging of a Gilbert and Sullivan. I have always been a fan and I am trying to persuade Birmingham Music Club to do a Pinafore or Mikado next year so I can be in the ensemble. My great great aunt, Dolly Meiklejohn, older sister of my great grandmother Lucy, was, according to family lore, ‘a great favorite’ of W. S. Gilbert in 1880s and 90s London. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean and, as I have never seen her mentioned in any of his biographies, I assume the relationship was likely friendly acquaintance and platonic in nature.
Next, Beauty and the Beast. This one hit me on an emotional level that I wasn’t expecting, but I think it’s because the central story of two wounded and alienated people becoming one is very personal. I have always felt like the outsider, looking in the window at the party and wondering why I can’t be part of it. (And this probably explains my life long obsession with Sondheim as almost all of his works are about this sort of alienation). I don’t like emotion, and almost always have my guard up against it, but, twice in my life, there has been someone who has been persistent at finding out who’s hiding behind those castle walls and who have broken in and won my heart. I refer, of course, to Steve and Tommy.
The Disney film of Beauty and the Beast opened in the fall of 1991 and Steve and I went to see it. In general, we didn’t go to Disney films, but the year before, we had made friends with a Disney animator while on the ferry to Santa Catalina and she had told us about the project and that she felt it was going to be something special. We were in San Francisco for the weekend (we generally went down to the city for the weekend every four to six weeks) and went to see it at a cinema someplace on Van Ness and we were both mesmerized, especially when it got to Be Our Guest and to the ballroom sequence where the computer animation allowed for effects which hadn’t been seen in film before. We were both smitten, went back to see it again a couple weeks later and let our animator friend know she was right. I think both of us saw the film as a sort of metaphor for our relationship. We’d been together just over two years at the time and had gone through a number of upheavals and were finally feeling we were hitting some sort of groove.
Tommy and I didn’t have the same sort of relationship with the film. I can’t remember if we ever watched it together although I know it’s in the collection. We did watch the live action remake with each other, but he was busy analyzing hair styles as he knew the show was coming up and he viewed the film as research material, not something to be savored.
I never saw the original Broadway production. It was one of the few long running shows of the 90s that I managed to miss. I have seen it on stage a few times in community and regional productions. It’s fun, but I don’t think the material is quite as perfect as the original animated movie. Susan Egan, the original Broadway Belle, started following me on Twitter a few years ago. She apparently likes my Geriatrics Tips of the Day. I think she’s my only ‘celebrity’ follower. God knows how she ran across my random quips.
Wedding tomorrow afternoon, pride parade tomorrow evening and the family is arriving for the memorial. Looks like it will be a busy weekend.
Andy and Tommy – In costume for Turandot – Opera Birmingham 2009
Been sorting photos today, especially photos of me and Tommy on stage in various productions so tonight the story of how I ended up in the Opera Birmingham chorus.
When Tommy and I first started dabbling in theater in 2003-04, we became heavily involved in the local musical theater scene, especially with CenterStage productions and later with Magic City Actors Theater. This culminated in 2006 when he produced and I directed Kiss Me, Kate at the Virginia Samford Theater. (I thought it was a great show, but no one ever seems to think of me when choosing directors…). That same year, at the age of 41, he decided to go back to school to complete undergraduate degrees at the University of Montevallo. His first year was 2006-07 and the Music Department wasn’t sure what to do with a returning student of his age. He, however, knew what he wanted and within a few months had rediscovered the joys of classical singing. That fall, he was encouraged to audition for the Opera Birmingham chorus as they were always short tenors. He had been involved with the opera in the past, but not for some years and was a bit nervous but he went and sang for Mimi Jackson who was the then chorus master and won the role. His first opera was La Cenerentola in January of 2007 and he had a wonderful time, immediately signing up for every other opera that came along that and the next season. In the meantime, I was busy with musical comedy supporting parts like Lazar Wolf and Mayor Shinn.
In the fall of 2008, he began rehearsing for the January 2009 production of Turandot. The opera had hired a new chorus master after Mimi’s retirement. For various reasons, the chorus was not filled and, when the maestro and principals arrived in early January for staging rehearsals, they found a chorus less than half the size necessary for proper musical balance. The opera administration hunkered down in emergency mode and made a list of local folks who had stage experience and could at least carry a tune and started calling. Jan Hunter, who was the office manager at the time, called me one morning and asked if I could learn three acts of Puccini in Italian in a couple of days. I’d never tried to do anything like that and had seen how much Tommy enjoyed it so I asked him if I should do it. He said, go for it so the next day I marched down the rehearsal hall, got handed a score, and I got a crash course in opera chorus along with about fifteen others who were in the same boat.
Three weeks later, we were all on stage with Roy Cornelius Smith, Lori Phillips and Veronica Chapman-Smith. Staging was minimalized as so many of us were desperately trying to learn the music as we went along, but the end result was successful. (I must admit, however, I never did learn more than the vowel sounds to Act III and most of the time I was listening desperately for Randy Mayo and cueing off his voice). I must have done something right as I was asked back, and asked back, and asked back. I’ve now done ten seasons in the chorus and performed in thirteen operas and look forward to many more. Next up is Tosca next spring.
If you had told me a dozen years ago that I’d spend ten years in an opera chorus, I would have laughed hysterically. Funny how things work out sometimes.
A very drunk Tommy and Andy stumbling back home from Cabaret. Yes, I’m wearing leather pants. No, I can no longer fit into them…
Back at home and working on putting together a memorial service. Not the kind of thing one wants to do but there were plenty of others grieving and everyone was in need of a way to say goodbye and to celebrate everything Tommy was.
Weekend update: I’m staying put at home for the next week and a half or so which means no travelogue until I start up the east coast sometime late next week. The major task for the week is getting everything ready for Tommy’s memorial service on Monday the 11th. The pieces are coming together and if it works the way I want it to, there will be music and laughter and honor paid to all of the different pieces of the unique person he was.
This weekend, I have been digging through boxes and file cabinets and unearthing half forgotten memorabilia looking for pictures for photo montages. You would think this would be relatively easy, but Tommy didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body and didn’t keep pictures and paper ephemera. His mother had given him a box of childhood pictures a few years ago which was a great help and I have a lot from our time together, but the fifteen years between 20 and 35 are something of a cipher. I know the broad outlines of where he was and what he was doing but he didn’t leave a lot of traces, at least not around our house. I have people who knew him then on the look out.
It’s a somewhat melancholy task sorting through all this stuff as every piece has a memory associated with it of some kind. I’m not allowing myself to wallow as I have a task to accomplish but I do continually surprise myself at some of the things that I find. It will probably bring more half forgotten stories to mind over the next week or so. The big issue I am having is trying to digitize things. I found three scanners in the house, but can make none of them speak to a computer. I have a feeling I will own a fourth before all is said and done.
I found pictures of our first vacation together, the free New York cruise. We flew up to NYC three or four days before the boat sailed and checked into the world’s smallest hotel room at the Milford Plaza. (I was cheap…) The bed took up most of the floor space and the suitcases covered what little the bed left uncovered. You had to arrange things just so in order to open the door. We, of course, attended the theater, going to see the Studio 54 Cabaret. It was late in the run and I can’t even remember who the leads were but Mariette Hartley and Tom Bosley were Schneider and Schultz. We had a table right down front where a couple of the Cabaret girls were very flirtatious and we ordered Southern Comfort Manhattans with side cars pre show and again at intermission. We were both quite tiddly by the middle of the second act and neither of us quite remembers the walk back to the hotel (although there is photographic evidence of us imitating Bernadette Peters in her Gypsy pose out there…) The next night we went to Take Me Out which we quite enjoyed, especially Denis O’Hare. The cute boys getting naked was a bonus. I know there was a third show, but I don’t recall what it was.
Tommy and Andy on their first vacation with Shann Carr and Bryan Jamison
It had been a very grey cold spring and early summer in NYC that year and so the cruise did land office last minute business from locals desperate to get some sunshine. We boarded the boat, sailed past the Statue of Liberty and under the Verazzano Narrows Bridge and headed south. The stops were Miami, where we went to visit my old friend Marc who is a law professor at the University of Miami; Key West, where we once again had too much to drink and ended up in the leather shop where we made a number of highly impractical purchases. I still have the chain mail shirt that we thought was too much fun to pass up; and Nassau, which was like every other Caribbean cruise port.
When we got back to Birmingham, we had very definitely taken the first steps towards being the one word TommyandAndy that we became. Most of the guys on the cruise who met us had thought we had been together for years, and we were starting to feel that way too, even though we had only met six months before.
And so home again, home again jiggity jig. The house is still in one piece. Anastasia the cat is letting me know she missed me while her brothers, Archie and Oliver are pointedly ignoring me. 6700 miles in not quite three weeks through 18 states. Did it help? I don’t know. It allowed me to turn my brain off while I got into the zen of distance driving so that was helpful. The memories, reminiscences, and connections helped remind me of who I am so, in general I would count it a success.
Not a very exciting drive today but traffic through Baton Rouge and over the Mississippi was pretty horrible. It kept threatening to storm and I was willing to stop early to stay out of it, but it never did. There was, however, evidence of some serious thundershowers around the house when I got home. Once around Lake Pontchartrain, it was pretty straight shot up 59 with no traffic to speak of until Bessemer. Pulled into the driveway, parked the car, and decided that I’m not doing a thing about unpacking until tomorrow.
Now that this first journey is over, not sure if I am going to write a nightly update. I’ll be here in Birmingham through at least the 13th when another journey (this one to New England) begins. In the meantime, I have a memorial service to get off the ground. (It’s on Monday evening, the 11th and you’re all invited). There’s also a bunch of other business of death to take care of. The death certificate has arrived so I have to make another round to the bank and the lawyer and the like.
Tonight’s story is a short one and has to do with NOLA. When Tommy and I wanted an urban weekend away from Birmingham, New Orleans was our favored destination and we had many long weekends there together over the years. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. The one I am thinking of was at New Years in 2005, I think. Might have been a year later. We went down for New Years Eve and Tommy made reservations for us at his favorite restaurant in town, Bayona on Dauphine. He had a thing for the chef, Susan Spicer. (Her food, not her). It was a special meal, with six courses, each with a wine pairing that took about three and a half hours to eat. It was very Victorian. Needless to say, after six glasses of wine each, by the time we had finished and left the restaurant to look at the fireworks, we were both slightly sloshed. Neither one of us quite remembered how we ended up in the square in front of St Charles Cathedral or why Tommy only had one shoe on, which made for an interesting trip back to the hotel. The next day is the only time I remember him being hung over. He slept most of the day, which was fine with me as I wasn’t in much better condition. I spent the day watching all three Lord of the Rings movies (extended editions) on DVD. We ventured out again on the 2nd as we were finally ready for more food.
Yep, a full day of driving and I’m still in Texas, albeit very close to the border with Louisiana and I could have crossed it before stopping for the night, but I was tired and it’s my trip and I’ll stop when I want to. Hot and dry this morning has been replaced with hot and humid as I’m only a couple of miles from Port Arthur and the gulf.
The most notable thing about the Texas drive was the sudden switch from brown to green, right after passing through a little town called Ozona, microclimates of some sort that lead to more rainfall in the central state than in the western state. Today also involved navigated two huge sprawling metropolitan areas, San Antonio and Houston. Both are about 35 miles across and seem to be full of endlessly repeating national franchises. At least that is what’s visible from the interstate. I have been to Houston before and can’t say I really liked it very much. I gave up on San Antonio when I found out the Alamo tour does not include the basement.
I will be home either tomorrow evening or Saturday lunchtime, depending on whether I stop in NOLA tomorrow. It’s a favorite city but it’s very tied up in memories of Tommy so I don’t know if I’m up for that quite yet.
Tonight’s story is a continuation of last night’s. Becoming a committed couple is more than just meeting. This is particularly true for gay male couples as, until recently, there have been very few social supports for couplehood and, when the going gets rough as it does for everyone, all the energy to maintain and renew has to come from the two of you. You can’t count on all of the things that straight couples take for granted that are built into society. So this is the story of how we went from casually dating to being ‘Tommy and Andy’ (one word).
Throughout the first part of 2003, we continued to date casually. We occasionally went out with others, but always seemed to come back to each other after a date or two. A sequence of events in the spring solidified the bond.
The first was the lead up to the Iraqi invasion under George W Bush. Everyone was aware it was coming and the progressive community was looking for a response. An actress in, I believe, New York, came up with the idea of as many theater companies world wide as possible all doing a reading or production of Lysistrata on the same day (3/3/03) as an antiwar statement. This was picked up in Birmingham by Ellise Mayor and the Birmingham Peace Project. Ellise asked me to be the narrator and provide continuity and Tommy played one of the denied soldiers, complete with balloon phallus. Diane McNaron was also part of the production. It was the first time Ellise, Diane and I worked together and was one of the seeds of Politically Incorrect Cabaret. It was the first time Tommy and I worked on the same theater production. And it was my first time on stage in Birmingham (other than a church fundraising entertainment).
The second was a trip I took to Mexico in late April. I went on an Atlantis Events excursion to the Riviera Maya for a week of fun in the sun. As we were still in the casual dating stage, Tommy did not go with me. While I was there, two things happened. The first was that a friend and I won free cabins on the next cruise, sailing out of New York to the Caribbean in late June, for coming in first in a treasure hunt. I hadn’t planned on that trip but a free vacation is a free vacation. The other happened on the last morning as the group was waiting to board the bus back to the airport. While milling around the lobby, one of the other guests, a guy of about my age (40 at the time) collapsed in sudden cardiac death. It was rural Mexico. There was no defibrillator. There was nothing to do. As I watched him die and his partner collapse in grief, I had an epiphany. I decided I didn’t want to be alone. I quickly called Tommy (no mean feat for rural Mexico prior to ubiquitous smart phones) and asked him what he was doing in late June. ‘What should I be doing in late June?’ was his reply. I told him he was going to NYC with me for a few days and then we were getting on a cruise ship together for a week and, at the end of that time, after being closeted in a small hotel room and a small cabin, we would either be moving towards a more committed relationship or running screaming in opposite directions. I will tell the story of that vacation at another time. Suffice it to say, at the end, we were not antagonistic.
Andy and Tommy at my 41st Birthday Party
The third was my 41st birthday. My 40th had occurred the previous year when I had not yet established much in the way of friendships in Birmingham so I hadn’t had a party. Tommy organized my 41st at the church and, during the festivities, put me in a chair and publicly serenaded me with two songs. ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ and ‘These Foolish Things’. Our courtship was now very public and being encouraged.
He moved in that September.
I’ve been sorting through Tommy’s music this weekend. Trying to decide what I can use and what should go to new homes. I found his sheet music for those two songs from that birthday party. I cried a little.
It’s 90 some degrees at night, the winds are blowing the tumbleweeds across the Texas plains and I am in the middle of nowhere but 650 miles in the drivers seat today was more than enough so I was not going to go any further in search of civilization.
Today was one of those days that reminds you just how big the west really is. 200 miles through eastern Arizona, 200 miles through New Mexico and 250 into Texas with another 700 or so to go. I doubt I will get out of the state tomorrow, even with driving all day. Not a lot of different scenery. The route went over the high desert of Arizona and New Mexico, and then down into the Rio Grande Valley at El Paso, following the river for some time before curving up through the West Texas hills and then hitting the plains that seem to be little besides dry cattle ranches.
Fort Stockton is a wide spot in the road with motels and fast food franchises. It has a Hampton Inn so free wi-fi, free breakfast and more Hilton points towards a free vacation.
There was nothing about today that really brought up any particular memory or story so I’m picking one at random. It’s one that all couples get asked. How did you meet?
Tommy and I met in the fall of 2002 (October 27th to be precise. I know because I went back to a calendar and figured it out later so we could have an anniversary. Weddings were an impossible dream at that point.) I was living in the old house. The one with all the stairs. Steve had picked it out when we moved to Birmingham in 1998 as it reminded him of the houses in Laurel Canyon and the Hollywood Hills where he had been to some amazing parties in the 1960s and 70s. In hindsight, it was a rotten choice. Taking care of him with pulmonary disease in a vertical house was quite the challenge. I had spent most of the latter half of 2001 and 2002 working, travelling, and starting to dip my toes into the gay dating pool of Birmingham at the age of 40. It wasn’t pretty.
The old house… home for 17 years
Tommy lived about three blocks away. We had never met each other. (Actually, he had probably waited on me and Steve at the Eastwood Olive Garden but I have no recollection of this). He was in a relationship that had failed but had not yet been able to put together the resources to move out of the house. It was not a comfortable time for him.
In the week between October 27th and November 3rd, we all of a sudden put together in three different situations. He was working as the chief nursing officer for Birmingham Health Care at the time and was interested in a grant to combine Head Start with Adult Day Care and someone had given him my name and number as being the local expert on such things. He was good friends with several people at the UU church and had visited intermittently so he popped up at Sunday service. And, he was my coffee date after we had met and flirted on line. By the end of the week, we looked at each other and more or less thought ‘The Universe is trying to tell us something’ and went on a second date. And a third… It didn’t take me long to figure out that he was a potential keeper.
And so the trek across the country begins anew. I’m on the southern route this time, coming across I-10 and should arrive back in Birmingham either Friday late or Saturday early. I’m not planning on any other major stops and I have an extra day in my time table in case of an unforseen delay. I decided to come back this way as I-10 is the only major cross country route I haven’t driven and this completes the set. However, as I left the San Gabriel valley and headed into the 110 in the shade of the California desert, I started to question my sanity. At least the car is new and the air conditioning works well.
I slept in some this morning and stopped in Palm Springs to have lunch with Shann Carr, another old friend from Atlantis days. She’s a fixture on the LGBT entertainment circuit and one of the warmest, funniest humans I’ve ever had a pleasure to know. She’s working Palm Springs real estate these days so she doesn’t have to take gigs she doesn’t want to and still working on her plans for an LGBT focused conference/resort/production studio. (If anyone has a spare eight figures lying around the house, I’ll put you in touch).
Then, it was back to I-10 and searing heat and such wonderful towns as Blythe, Quartzite and finally Phoenix where I decided to stop for the night, but on the far east side in Chandler so I can avoid the city traffic when I get underway in the morning.
Story time: Some of you have probably heard this one as it is perhaps my favorite of all the odd things that have happened in my life. It comes to mind due to today’s drive through Palm Springs and the California desert.
When I had just turned 26, I finished medical school and matched for residency in Internal Medicine at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. I had liked the feel of the program when I interviewed there and Vickie Rozell was living there at the time so I knew I would have at least one friend in town so in June, 1988, I pulled into town with my U-Haul and my first apartment in midtown, a block from the old governor’s mansion and two blocks from Music Circus, one of the last of the old fashioned summer stock in a tent companies. My intern year is mainly forgotten due to chronic sleep deprivation, but about nine months into it, I met Steve, who would become my first partner. How to describe Steve? He was a person who provoked strong reactions in other people, both positive and negative. I used to call him a human catalyst because you could put him in any room with others and all sorts of interesting reactions would begin to happen.
About three months after we began dating and were starting to become serious, we went on our first vacation together. Steve was an LA boy who had grown up just outside of Hollywood, and who seemed to know everyone of his generation in the area, having been a property manager in both West Hollywood and Venice Beach. His favorite place was the desert outside of LA and San Diego, especially the Anza Borego area, so we loaded up the truck and headed off to Palm Springs and the desert state parks. I had never spent any time in the desert and the contrast to the lush green of the Pacific Northwest wilderness was somewhat alien to me.
Years later, in 2001, Steve died after several years of serious pulmonary disease. I knew he wanted to be cremated so I decided to do that and to take his ashes to the Anza Borego and scatter them there as he so loved the place. Steve knew he was dying, so he had made pre-need arrangements at the local funeral home. He was on hospice and died at home and the hospice folk called them and they came and took him away that morning.
The next day, I went down to make arrangements for the cremation. “I’m sorry sir, we can’t cremate him” said the unctuous little funeral director behind the desk. “What?” I exclaimed. It turns out I had run into a little quirk in Alabama law. Apparently you cannot authorize your own cremation in the state, it must be done by your legal next of kin. This was many years before gay marriage was even a possibility so I did not count. I looked the gentleman in the eye and said. “His parents are dead, he has no children, he has been estranged from his siblings for decades and I have no contact information for them. What do you want to do about it?” The funeral director hemmed and hawed (and he was an obvious queen so he was sympathetic as to the predicament) and then said “I have an idea”. He got hold of the cut rate crematory in town and arranged for Steve to be transferred there.
So off I went to Cremations-R-Us thinking I was just going to run into the same dilemma. The gentleman there however said “We’ll hold him for three days (wink wink). If no one comes to complain, we’ll cremate him and no one will ask any questions (wink wink).” I was good with that and a few days later, I went down to collect his cremains. As I was going to scatter him, I did not buy the fancy urn and he was in a plastic bin inside of a cardboard box with ‘Cremated Human Remains’ printed on it in large letters.
About a week later, I packed up the car and, rather like I am doing now, headed off on a cross country jaunt to the Anza Borego with Steve resting comfortably in the trunk. I met an old friend of ours from Sacramento in San Diego, and together we went out to the desert where I scattered him so he could dance on the desert wind and be part of the spring bloom. At the last minute, however, I decided to honor his love of genealogy and family by keeping some of him back so that I could take him to the homestead in Eastern Kentucky where the first traceable Spiveys had lived. Back the box went in the trunk, but considerably lighter.
I then headed up the Oregon coast, eventually reaching Seattle where I spent some time with my family. My next planned stop was Alaska. Craig Mollerstuen, my college roommate with a million frequent flyer miles, had given me a ticket to Anchorage so I could come up for a few days. I was due to fly out on September 12, 2001.
Of course, the events of the day before precluded that from happening and, as air travel was uncertain, I decided to head back across country and the ticket was converted to round trip from Chicago. I arrived in Chicago a few days later, left the car at the airport, and had my Alaska interlude. The flight back was a redeye depositing me in Chicago around 6 AM so I collected the car and headed for Detroit as I had made a lunch date with Cindy Naas Nathan and her family in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river.
When I got to the border tunnel, security was on high alert as it was only about a week after 9/11 and they were stopping everyone to check their cars. I pulled into the security line and the nice border guard asked me to please open the trunk. Of course I did it without thinking and the first thing he removes is the box labeled ‘Cremated Human Remains’. Oh boy, do I have to go to the special place where various guards do a major once over on the car. “Why are you importing human remains into Canada?” (I’m not, I’m just passing through). “This box is awfully light. Where’s the rest of them?” (Already scattered). “Where’s the death certificate?” (It hadn’t yet come when I left town). I told my story to several layers of bureaucracy and finally, the head honcho decided I was harmless and let me through.
I was a bit late for lunch after that so I, of course, had to regale Cindy and her family with the reasons why. I had never actually met her before this lunch. We had gotten to know each other over writings at epinions.com and she had been a big fan of the original MNM columns. Lunch was delicious (including Ed Grover’s squash soup) and afterwards I headed towards Toronto which was my next scheduled stop.
As I was heading that direction, I began to worry about Steve in the trunk. If I had had difficulty getting him into Canada, what sort of problems might I have getting him back into the USA where everyone was in a state of collective freak out. Various things occurred to me. I could ditch the original box and put him in a box of Cheez-Its or something, but I had visions of being singled out at the border for a search and some officious type pouring him out by the side of the road. I also discarded disguising him as aquarium gravel. I still hadn’t quite figured it out when I went out to dinner with friends in Toronto. One of them was an antiques dealer and he said “Stop, leave him with me. I’ll handle this”. So Steve remained in Toronto while I continued on my trip.
Several weeks later, after I had returned home, I received a package from Toronto. Steve returned home disguised as an Ebay purchase of a Murano glass fish. The next month, I had one of my usual runs to West Virginia with the mine workers and I took him with me and made a detour to Kentucky and scattered him at the home place.
I found out later that my visit had caused problems for Cindy. One of her young sons, having heard my dining room tale of the border crossing had gone to school the next week and told the teacher. “My mom met this nice man on the internet and he came to our house with a body in the trunk of his car”. She received a very concerned telephone call from school officials and had to explain that she was not, in fact, consorting with axe murderers.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 