Fashion Faux-pas

Grandmother had a way with malapropisms.  In the 1950s she was clunking around the kitchen in Cuban heels, warbling Please Don't Knead Me When You Squeeze Me Oh So Much.  In the 1960s, she was confusing two hot topics when she consistently used Napalm in a sentence that required Valium.  In the 1970s, Barbra Streisand had great birth control---which evidently was true.  And in the 1980s, she was a willing participant in the laid on look.

Of course, so was I.

I grew up in a world of gay discrimination of a different sort---at least at the familial level.  There was acceptance and a niche for gay men, for apparently they were all florists or beauticians.  I could go along with that, for I loved flowers and certainly had design sense, having drawn in perspective since kindergarten.  As for hair, my interest fell off after Mother would rat hers out and then cackle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Perennially Grandma would pipe: "I love gay men; they're all so sweet."  And invariably Mother or one of my aunts would groan: "Mommmm, that's such a stereotype."  Grandma would get that 1930s ingenue look, brows towards her hairline in wonder of why the world wasn't as she saw it.

The last time Grandma professed her opinion on the subject, she stood her ground.  "They're not macho or anything."

"Mom," Mother and aunt chorused, "Gay men are like all men:  They can be sweet or macho or ineffectual or just plain assholes."

She turned to me, now a young man.  "Is that true?"

"I'm afraid so, Grandma," I sighed.  "And I should know.  I've slept with a few."

Her eyes bugged a bit, but then relaxed into a twinkle as she let out a giggle very much like Toby Wing.

Domesticated Doll

I'm still famous for my meatloaf.  It's about the only thing that has survived the years when my friends used to call me the Happy Housewife.  Oh, I'm still a housewife and I'm still happy, but they don't go together in quite the same dust 'n' douche manner anymore.  The dining table is now covered with artifacts to write about and the dust is thick here at Rancho Notorious---gray in the winter, red in the summer.  Every so often I just have to invite someone over to dinner so I have an incentive to knock down the cobwebs and clean the whole house.  Well, most of it.

I just went to the Frigidaire to see if I had the secret ingredient for my meatloaf but found no half empty and half dessicated bag of frozen mixed vegetables.  Oops.  Well, there you have it: Starchy frozen mixed vegetables, ground down to a coarse crumb, is my secret ingredient.  One of them, anyway.  The ratio is to substitute about two to one, meat to vegetable.  Your fresh ingredients must be minced and your meat can be a combination of anything---and if you can't figure out the rest you don't like to cook so you don't care anyway. You're welcome.

No matter how delicious the meatloaf is sliced hot, it's always twice as good the next day in a sandwich---or, if your at all clever, served on crackers as a suburban pate of sorts to impress your neighbors.  Tell them to bring the wine.

So we're going to have to settle for a bit of broiled and glazed pork if anyone is coming to dine here at Rancho Notorious.  This always amuses our usual guest, since she's nominally Jewish.  Unusually I apologize beforehand for serving pork once again, but once I found some chicken in the interim and she seemed just slightly disappointed to find it on her plate.

My Organ Fantasy

As I finished inking in the man in bed some twenty years ago, I realized he looked a lot like a friend of mine.  I paused to feel out what that meant, and at the time it felt like nothing more than coincidence.  Besides, his spouse was an even more handsome distraction.

The man in bed is gone now.  When someone takes their life, we can either plug our ears or listen with our hearts.  I suppose I was left sitting there, waiting for the concert to begin---reading through a perfunctory program of the past.  And then suddenly I was mad because I realized the symphony had been playing all along and I never heard it.  Tears and snot ran off my chin---and then, slowly, I caught my breath.  Because the music was still playing, now striking my inner chords.  The reverberation was awesome, and it would swell up again and again---whether I was out watering the yard or laying in bed next to my husband.

I could now clearly recall the day we met, his eagerness to be my friend.  I felt more than my gratitude now.  I felt his love and understanding---his subconscious understanding that I would be the one who would hear him after everyone else folded their programs.  I flinched when he could finally show me why he would end his life, but I could take it.  I was prepared even before we met, for his secret was too similar to mine.

Could it be magic?  The man he left behind believed me---he could see me vibrate, but it wasn't something I could gift him.  I was conditioned to try, but in the end the gulf is wide between believing and accepting.  We all carry so much baggage.  I was left holding the gift, and slowly came to realize it was meant for me.  For now, anyway.

Oh yes, there's a backside to this envelope---not as well executed, but showing my propensity to unduly expose myself to the public.  Some things never change, do they?  My butt never looked so good on a bench...

It's his head on a less hirsute body.  I know I never sent this in his direction because he wouldn't know the song Tico Tico or Ethel Smith flying around with her Hammond organ, but I'd like to think he'd be amused by the swaying chenille balls on my hat.

It Runs In The Family

On the 24th of August 1907 my great great Uncle Art bought a penny postcard at a railroad post office to send to his older brother Harry---my great great grandfather.

He didn't bother writing a message.  Instead he amused himself by making a rather detailed ink drawing of a scene that perhaps he saw passing by outside his window.  Or maybe a handsome passenger set the scene in the form of a popular joke of the day.

Note Art's monogram on the base of the display window

Your modern sensibilities will cause you to do one of two things when you study his drawing: tsk over the racist caricature of a Jewish shopkeeper---or your jaw will drop a little over the historic idea of A Big Thing In Men's Pants.

At the turn of the 20th century, 'A Big Thing' was a common slang term for any clearance sale.  It was used regularly in big store newspaper advertisements of the era.  It isn't a huge stretch of the imagination that some unwitting shopkeeper might use the term to get rid of an overstock of men's pants, but I suspect there's more going on here.

For one, this post card survived some twenty years of alienation between the two brothers.  So did a fair amount of Art's art, but none of that cache was remotely suggestive.  He left his early creative output behind when he stepped out of the family home.  Harry was mad that Art could never pay into his third of the family farm in Earlimart, California---a farm that Art was sent from North Dakota to scout out in 1918 or early 1919.  Now it was circa 1926 and their mother was dead---and Art had always been sort of a momma's boy, largely raised apart from his older brothers and sister because their mother had a protracted inheritance to deal with in New York state.

My grandfather pestered Harry for years to reconcile with his brother---so apparently Vern had some very fond memories of his Uncle Art.  Eventually it happened, and the occasion made a strong impression on my nine or ten year old mother.

 Arthur Dwayne Gilbert, circa 1907

"He was still very handsome," she recalled.  "Of course I wouldn't have known it then---I don't think any of us knew it---but looking back, he was gay."

Somehow I don't think Harry was so innocent of the possibility.

Harry Mortimer Gilbert, circa 1897

I asked Art's niece for more information. She gave me some photographs of Art and told me a very pretty story about him being engaged to a beautiful woman, but he had to call it off because he had asthma and couldn't support her.  That was true---he did have asthma, which caused him to be only sporadically employed.

"Yeah, right," my eldest aunt joked.  "Every time she'd lean in for a kiss he'd start coughing!"

I discovered Art's illustrated postcard when I was at the height of mailing out my own illustrated envelopes, so I felt a sudden, startling kinship with my great great Uncle Art.  If I didn't inherit his extraordinary looks, at least I inherited his talent and penchant for things in men's pants.

Long Ago and Far Away

I drew this pic one day.  And now---and now I can't recall what passion was pending.  There are so many, you know.  Simmering.  Waiting for an opportunity from their careless caregiver.  Surely I never wanted to be Myrna Loy to Ramon Novarro's Barbarian, although I suppose that could be fun.  No, the passions are something more at hand---and more durable than orchid blossoms.  Things than can possibly stand public scrutiny, unlike my present day chest.  Passions not so much of my past but of the past.  Strange loves that tell there own story.

Before email and the internet I was a regular, retrograde letter writer.  Eight-ten-twelve page letters  were not out of the norm.  And for some reason lost to time I started sending such letters unfolded, slipped neatly into a white nine by twelve envelope that I illustrated.  Contents and illustration rarely jived, but the receiver more or less knew what they were getting into.  Perhaps I continued the practice because it got more notice than the letters.  Postmasters and postmistresses eagerly awaited my appearance at the counter for the envelope to be weighed and postage affixed, but only after it was handed around for their perusement.  I still believed my artistic talent---drilled into me ever since I could draw a house in perspective in kindergarten---was my greatest talent.

I can still recall my Postmistress of the Dark---yes, it was by mutual decision for that to be her title.  I can still recall her disappointment when my illustrations declined and then disappeared off the envelopes.  She never saw the contents within---but now, in a quiet moment of her retirement, perhaps she will.