“So I gathered,” said Ben.
“He was sort of a popular freak show for us kids,” I said. “He had this long string of drool—”
“Ugh,” said Ben.
“I know,” said Mama, looking slyly at my husband. “You could never buy a blessed thing out of a wrapper.”
It took him a moment to recognize her humor, but he finally smiled. “You’re a pistol, aren’t you, Alice?”
He could not have pleased her more. She smiled at him faintly, then turned back to me. “How did you ever meet…ssss…such a gentleman?”
I was feeling so comfortable by then that I almost brought up the website, but I thought better of it. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“I was lucky, too,” Ben told her.
Mama caught the look that passed between us. “Is that so?” she asked him.
He returned her gaze. “Yes, ma’am. It is.”
Their eyes stayed locked for a while before she turned back to me. “Why don’t you…ssss…go out and play?”
“What?”
“You heard me,” she said, shooing me with a plump pastel hand.
I spent the time in something called the Prayer Gazebo, which was just what it sounds like: a gazebo in the form of a miniature chapel. It wouldn’t function well as either, it seemed to me, but there were nice cushions that kept me comfortable while I was killing time. I was still killing it, by the way, when Lenore came back to pick us up.
“What happened to Ben?” she called.
“He’s inside with Mama.” I rose and walked toward her out of the gazebo.
I caught the raw scent of new-mown grass and felt suddenly, curiously buoyant.
“What are they talking about?” Lenore asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Oh…now.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “I’m clueless.”
Lenore pursed her lips. “Mikey, listen, I don’t know what y’all are up to, and I don’t wanna sound like some rhymes-with-witch, but Mama Tolliver can’t take any stress right now…and just because y’all’s political agenda means tellin’ the whole blessed—”
“It was her idea, Lenore!”
Lenore looked satisfyingly blank.
“Mama asked to be alone with Ben.”
“She did?”
“Yes. And lay off that agenda crap, Lenore. I hear a lot more about your agenda than you ever hear about mine.”
“Oh, hush,” she said. “We need to figure this out.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s up to somethin’…”
I just shrugged. “I think it’s kinda sweet.”
“Listen, if you think for one minute that she’s in there givin’ him her blessing on your…let’s just say it, Mikey…cradle robbin’—”
“Oh, please,” I said. “We’re not asking for her approval. Or yours, for that matter.”
Lenore’s faced clouded with thought. “What is it, then? She just met him, didn’t she? Doesn’t that make you a little nervous?”
“I’d be more nervous, frankly, if it were Irwin.”
Lenore frowned. “Irwin and Mama Tolliver?”
“No. Irwin and Ben.”
I gave her a grin to let her know that I wasn’t serious, but it didn’t seem to help. “What are you talking about?” she asked, her frown growing deeper.
“Ben thinks he’s hot.”
“Hot?” She drew the word out to at least three syllables. “Irwin?”
“I know,” I said. “There’s no accountin’, is there?”
Lenore was dumbstruck, somewhere just short of laughing or screaming.
“It was just a remark,” I added. “He’s not trying to bag him. Don’t worry.”
“Well…” She started to say something but stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. You made me forget. You always do that.” She turned and started striding toward the building. “C’mon, I gotta be at Curves by two.”
11
The War at Home
While they’d never been close, Mama and Lenore had been confidantes for decades—a paradox that’s not uncommon among Southern women. Lenore had been Mama’s wailing wall in the matter of her gay son—and later, of course, her dying gay son—and they had borne those crosses together like good Christians. So I couldn’t imagine what could possibly have driven Mama to find her daughter-in-law too “Jesusy” these days. I had a feeling Ben might know already, but I didn’t dare pump him until Lenore had dropped us off down the block from our B&B and rounded the corner out of sight.
“So what did your girlfriend want?”
Ben’s smile was more careful than I expected. “Just to talk.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.”
He took my arm sweetly, naturally, and walked us to Inn Among the Flowers. I’ve lived too long not to fret about displays of male tenderness when they happen in…oh, say…the South, so I took note of the trio of baggy-panted teens slouching toward us down the palm-lined sidewalk. They passed without comment, though, causing me to wonder if this was actual progress—or if they’d just seen a guy being nice to his dad.
“So what’s going on?” I asked Ben, returning to the mystery at hand.
He hesitated. “She needs your help with something.”
“And she couldn’t ask me herself?”
Arriving at our room, he slipped the key into the door. “She thought you’d be more likely to listen to me.” He pushed open the door, turning to me with a crooked smile. “Plus she thinks I’m a gentleman, remember?”
(That’s another thing that annoys me about Southern women: they always work through the spouse.)
“Don’t get too grand about it,” I said, following him into the room. “That was her backhanded way of saying that I’m not a gentleman.”
We sat on the edge of the bed and, almost simultaneously, tore at the Velcro of our Tevas. Ben turned and gazed at me soberly, then sighed and took the leap. “Here’s the deal, sweetie: she wants to give you durable power of attorney.”
I blinked at him for a moment, totally uncomprehending. “What do you mean? For a will or something? There can’t be much of an estate.”
Ben shook his head. “For health care.”
“But Irwin and Lenore have always—”
“I know…but she wants you to handle it now…and to sign something to that effect.”
“But…why?”
Ben hesitated, assembling his words. “Her lungs are pretty much shot. They won’t get any better. She could last for another few months, but…”
He didn’t finish, but none of this was news to me. I couldn’t understand why he was still treading so lightly.
“Once her lungs go,” Ben went on, “they could put her on a respirator indefinitely, but…she doesn’t want to be around at any cost. And she’s afraid that…left to their own devices…your brother and Lenore…”
I finished the thought for him: “…wouldn’t let her die.”
He nodded slowly. “Yep.”
“Jesus,” I murmured.
“Pretty much,” he said.
A long leaden silence.
“Has she told them that?” I asked. “What she wants, I mean.”
“No.”
“Why not? It’s worth a shot. You never know if—”
“She’s sure they wouldn’t go for it. Especially Lenore.”
“She asked her specifically, then?”
Ben shook his head. “They used to watch Terri Schiavo together.”
“Motherfucker,” I said. “Of course.”
You must remember Terri Schiavo, the woman in the “persistent vegetative state” whose parents were fighting to keep her that way. Her husband had petitioned to have her feeding tube removed, and fundamentalists everywhere were outraged, Governor Jeb Bush among them. When permission was finally granted, the faithful gathered around their sets for a protracted deathwatch, a sideshow that proved so popular that the network trie
d it again several days later with the pope. But an old man shuffling into oblivion, however cute he might be, lacked the sheer gladiatorial drama of a good plug-pulling.
“Lenore would bring lunch to the Gospel Palms,” Ben explained, “and her and your mom would watch Fox-TV every afternoon. It was sorta their soap opera. Lenore would get so worked up she’d talk back to the set. She said that letting someone die like that was worse than abortion. Even if they want to die. Even if they requested it.”
I could feel my face burning. “And how does she feel about slaughtering children for oil? Does that offend her Christian principles?”
Ben was waiting indulgently for me to return to the war at home.
“So all I have to do is sign something?”
He nodded. “She had a lawyer draw it up. She asked me to be one of the witnesses. She wants you to sign before Irwin and Lenore get wise.”
“This doesn’t mean…” I just couldn’t find the right way to put it. “I mean…she’ll be comfortable, won’t she?”
Another nod. “They can make it that way.” He reached over and held my arm. “Nothing different will be happening, sweetie. Things will just…take their course naturally. She just doesn’t want the respirator.”
“Gotcha.”
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I guess I should call her.”
He shook his head. “I told her you’d do it. We’re gonna sign the papers on Thursday.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?”
He leaned closer and kissed me on the cheek. “Just beside you.”
I smiled at him. “This could get sticky, you know.”
“You think?”
“Well…they’ll put up a fight if they get wind of it. I’m sure of that.”
“Maybe,” said Ben, “but there’s nothing they can do about it. Once your mom’s made her wishes known.”
“I suppose.” I had a sudden, macabre image of Lenore brandishing her puppets at the Gospel Palms while Mama breathed her last natural breaths. I could hear those loathsome Little Witnesses accusing me, pointing their little felt arms at the sinner from Sodom-by-the-Bay as the righteous assembled at Mama’s bedside to sing hymns of devotion.
“She must hate it,” I said, “that she has to turn to me.”
“She doesn’t have to,” said Ben. “She wants to.”
No, I thought, she has to. Everyone else has drunk the Kool-Aid.
12
Camouflage
Orlando’s oldest gay bar, the Full Moon Saloon, was a few blocks from our B&B down Orange Blossom Trail. The place had been a hunting lodge when I was a kid, but now it catered largely to bears—specifically the Bears of Central Florida—whose headquarters (and hindquarters) could be found there. On certain nights of the week patrons were encouraged to wear leather, latex, or uniforms. This particular night was a Wednesday, so men in camouflage could buy domestic beers for $2.25.
In my youth, and many years thereafter, camouflage would have meant the jungle-green Vietnam variety, but most of these guys were decked out in the muted buffs and grays of the troops in Iraq. One of them, a solid-looking black bear nearing fifty, was sporting that new computer-generated camouflage on which random pixilated shapes have replaced the old swirly shrubbery patterns.
“He might be real,” I said to Ben.
“A real what?”
“Soldier. I don’t think that pattern has hit the thrift shops yet.”
Ben gave me a dubious look. “Why would he wear it here? I don’t think that outfit is much of a fantasy for people who have to wear it for real.”
“I guess not.” I smiled at him, appreciating his practical wisdom. “I’ll get the drinks. What’ll you have?”
Ben, as you know, is alarmingly moderate when it comes to substances, so “What’ll you have?” is always a challenge. “How ’bout a Lemon Drop?” he said.
“Is that what our brave men are drinking now?”
He goosed me. “You can skip the pansy-ass glass.”
“Yes sir.” I gave him a smart salute. “No pansy-ass glass, sir.”
I wriggled my way to the bar, where a chunky bartender in a camouflage tank top obliged by serving the cocktails in whiskey glasses rimmed with sugar. “There ya go,” he said, setting them down. “Two butch Lemon Drops for the general.”
He was just teasing, or maybe even flirting, but, proud old queer that I am, I didn’t want him to think that I had masculinity issues about glassware—especially in a room full of faux soldiers. “The short ones are easier to handle,” I said. “In a crowd.”
“Gotcha,” said the bartender. “You from around here?”
“No,” I replied. “Well…yes…but not lately.”
“You sounded like you might be.”
“I grew up out on Abbot Springs Road. My family had some orange groves out there.”
The bartender shook his head. “Don’t think I know it.”
I gave him a crooked smile. “Don’t think I do, either.”
“Say what?”
“Nothing.” I left him a ten-dollar bill, then lifted the Lemon Drop glasses in a double toast. “Keep the troops happy,” I told him ruefully.
Two drinks later, the Full Moon was jammed, and, as usual, I was feeling both claustrophobic and disconnected. You wouldn’t think those two would go together, but they do for me, especially in a bar, where it’s all too easy to feel suffocated by nothingness. I was never a bar person, even as a young man; I preferred the wide-open spaces of the bathhouses, where willing members and stoned cuddling and a seven-grain sandwich with sprouts were never that far away. A noisy bar, on the other hand, is all posing and chaos; sooner or later I reach my limit and have to make a break for it, find some stars, breathe some clean night air, get Christina Fucking Aguilera out of my head.
So Ben and I retreated to a bench under a big live oak that must have been there when I was a boy and the place was exclusively dedicated to the joy of killing animals. From this distance the pounding music in the Full Moon sounded almost bittersweet, like an orchestra heard across a lake. The actual moon was far from full—just a little nail paring caught in the branches—but it was lovely. My body was starting to remember the precise feel of a balmy Florida night—that easy, velvety containment.
Ben slid closer, tucking a palm between my thighs. “This is better,” he said.
“Ain’t it?”
“Are you okay?”
I didn’t speak right away. “You know what gets me?”
“What?”
I searched for the best way to frame it, the best way not to sound like a monster. “People always say, ‘Of course you love her, you have to, she’s your mother,’ but that kind of love can die as easily as any of the others. It has to be fed by something.”
“She loves you, Michael.”
“Not enough to question her preachers.”
“Well—”
“You know they hauled her to the polls…oxygen tank and all…so she could vote for Bush one more time? The guy who wants to protect marriage from you and me. And they expect us to act like everything’s fine, like they’re not really waging a holy war against us. And what do I do? I make it easy for them. I’m a good boy and joke about speedboats and alligators and Mr. Grady with the drool rag.”
Ben smiled benignly, letting me vent.
“I’ve had thirty years of forgiveness,” I said. “I’m fucking over it.”
Ben nodded. “I’m sure.”
“She’s spent all that time trying not to know who I am, and now she’s entrusting me with her death. I should feel touched or something, but I don’t. I don’t feel much of anything. I let her go a long time ago. I’ve done my mourning already.”
Ben kept his eyes on the moon. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I mean it,” I said. “I wish I didn’t, but I do. “
Ben just shrugged and smiled. “There is no fifth destination.”
This t
akes some explaining. Last year I bought a Prius, one of those cute, high-butted hybrids that are multiplying like rabbits in the streets of San Francisco. As you might imagine, I love how it saves on gas and cuts pollution. I also love its eerie silence at stoplights and its wacky rearview camera and that disembodied voice—female, elegant, and a little bossy—who can somehow lead us back to Noe Hill (beguilingly labeled HOME) from anywhere in the country. During our trip through the Southwest, Ben and I grew so familiar with that voice that we named her Carlotta—well, all right, I did—after “the mad Carlotta” from Vertigo, because our own lady of mystery can sound downright loony sometimes.
One night, for instance, when we were driving home from a trip to Tahoe, there was a serious chill in the air, so Ben poked the little face on the steering wheel to call Carlotta.
“After the beep,” she said, “please say a command.”
So Ben said: “Seventy-two degrees.”
And Carlotta replied: “There is no fifth destination.”
“What did she say?” asked Ben.
“She said there is no fifth destination.”
He chuckled. “Well, that’s real helpful.”
“I don’t think you waited long enough after the beep.”
“Well, okay,” said Ben, “but why was that in there in the first place. There is no fifth destination? If that’s the answer, what’s the question?”
Intrigued by this conundrum, I told him to push the button again. He did so, reluctantly, and Carlotta returned. “After the beep,” she said, “please say a command.”
I leaned toward the steering wheel. “Go fuck yourself,” I said.
“Pardon?” she replied.
“I said, eat a big one!”
Her voice, I swear, grew starchy: “System is showing beauty-shop icons.”
Ben hooted. “I think she just called you a queen.”
“I think she did, too…the tart.”
“Well, talk nice to her, then.”
“Push it again.”
“No, Michael. That’s enough.”
“C’mon. I wanna see how freaky she gets…”
“Honey, you can’t just sit here harassing machinery.”