Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father (9 page)

PART III

Borrowed Mothers

Lincoln, 1978

I don’t get it. Alysia and I are really cool.

Why can’t we find someone cool to help us on our trip?

—STEVE ABBOTT

8.

S
HE WANTED
to save the children. In the spring of 1977, a Florida orange juice promoter named Anita Bryant rose to national prominence rallying opposition to a civil rights ordinance that would have banned discrimination against gay men and women in Miami–Dade County. Similar rights bills had been passing across the country, but Miami was the first Southern city to pass such a bill, and Anita Bryant, an evangelical Christian and mother of four, would have none of it. In her TV ads, which compared the wholesomeness of the Rose Parade with the semi-naked dancing at San Francisco’s Gay Pride parade, Bryant argued that advances in the gay community were eroding American values and threatening children. In her press materials she explained her position: “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that there is an acceptable alternate way of life . . . I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before.”

She called her campaign Save the Children, and it was, at first, very successful. On June 7, 1977, Miami–Dade County residents voted overwhelmingly to repeal the gay rights ordinance. The victory, which came to be known in the press as Orange Tuesday, would inspire Bryant to mobilize the first national anti-gay movement, leading to rollbacks of rights legislation in Minnesota, Kansas, and Oregon. She was the telegenic face of the campaign, showing up at rallies in her hair-sprayed auburn coif, singing teary renditions of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

But as successful as she was, Bryant didn’t anticipate how much her fight against gay rights would actually help the gay rights movement, both by bringing the topic into living rooms—that June of 1977,
Newsweek
emblazoned its cover with “Anita Bryant vs. The Homosexuals”—and by galvanizing the community. Gay men and gay women, who’d previously divided along gender lines, now had a common threat. After Bryant’s win, they marched side by side in five days of angry street demonstrations in San Francisco and across the country that numbered in the thousands.

A generation of gay men and women, many of whom had moved to San Francisco to enjoy the discos or simply to seek sanctuary, were for the first time politicized. By 1977, over thirty gay political organizations had formed in the city, from the Black Gay Caucus to the Tavern Guild (which succeeded in “gaycotting” Florida orange juice in its bars) to the Lesbian Mothers Union (which fought legal battles to protect custody rights for lesbian moms) to the Coalition to Defend Gays in the Military.

With gay residents now accounting for approximately one out of every five votes in San Francisco, they could not be ignored by city government. Mayor George Moscone, elected in 1975, became one of the first American mayors to appoint openly gay men and women to government positions. And on August 2, 1977, after several unsuccessful campaigns, the first openly gay man was elected to public office in California: Supervisor Harvey Milk.

Dad was a vocal Milk supporter and addressed the political urgency of gay rights in the best way he knew: through art. He wrote a poem about Anita Bryant, which he turned into a cartoon broadside and then, that May, read it live on the community radio station, KPOO:

. . . O Humanity! When will we ever learn the lessons of history?

If our children need to be saved from anything

It’s witch hunters with their pink stars and gas ovens.

Never again! This time we will resist.

For the cover of his second book of poems,
Wrecked Hearts
(1978), he drew a picture of Jesus being gunned down in a gay bar by a thug bearing a shoulder tattoo reading “Anita Forever.” Jesus utters “Not again!” as the bullet rips through his heart. The inside title page shows Jesus posed with his open chest—sacred heart imagery my father knew intimately from growing up a devout Catholic in Lincoln, Nebraska. Next to this, Jesus issues a call to action: “What we sissies need is a good revolution.”

Six going on seven at the time, I was too young to understand exactly why we’d switched from orange juice to apple juice in the mornings, but I did absorb a sense of persecution: They don’t want us. They want to do away with us.

In fact, gay bashing sharply increased after Bryant’s win. Gays in the city started wearing police whistles and organizing street patrols. On a late June night, a city gardener named Robert Hillsborough, called Mr. Greenjeans by kids at the playground where he worked, was jumped by four teenagers when he and his boyfriend emerged from their car. One of them stabbed Hillsborough in the chest with a fishing knife, repeatedly shouting “Faggot!” until he died.

I didn’t notice the flowers that collected for Hillsborough at that year’s Gay Pride parade, only days after his murder, and my dad didn’t point them out. Holding his hand, I delighted in the crowd’s defiantly jubilant energy, the loud and proud marching. The newspapers estimated between 200,000 and 375,000 turned out for that year’s parade. Colorful national flags waved in the air as bare-chested men danced with one another. Everyone cheered when a contingent of Straights for Gay Rights passed. I saw bright yellow balloons and the disco diva Sylvester singing from a glittery float. And everywhere we saw handmade signs: “We Are Your Children.”

But even as I felt among friends at Gay Pride, I felt strange at school and at my grandparents’ house. I knew what families were supposed to look like, and I knew ours was different. Though I deeply loved Dad, I really wanted a mother. I started writing stories that resolved the problem of motherlessness—stories in which orphaned animals reunited with their mothers or found new mothers, or created families with other orphaned animals. These stories earned me praise from my teachers and from Dad. In the summer of 1977, he considered my desires for family and weighed them against his own:

July 26, 1977: I find, at present, that my only deep, real and satisfying commitment is with Alysia. For a while, I had a fantasy (especially living with Ed) that I could find a man I loved to live with and that this would also be a good life with Alysia. But Alysia – the more as she gets older – protests against this. She is not getting what she wants and this, in turn, affects me. Whether because of TV or school or grandparent role modeling/conditioning OR because she is simply the honest child saying the emperor has no clothes, she does not want two daddies and with two men, one of them can’t be the mommy.

So what are my options?

1) Continue as I am – namely with roommates with whom there is no firm commitment. A drifting life.

2) To more actively seek a man (boy) poet who will share my life with Alysia. This would be ideal but I wonder if it is not based on a fantasy, magical thinking, and thus not a real option.

3) To attempt to overcome my homosexuality and to seek a full time heterosexual commitment.

4) To seek a woman who would accept the homosexual part of me but who would have more than a friendship commitment to me (and me with her) and who would also take a mothering role towards Alysia.

Option 4 seems the most realistic to me at present. The question now is: how to go about achieving this?

A few months later, Dad ran an advertisement in the San Francisco
Bay Guardian
: “Looking for someone creative, especially interested in poetry who would also help with my young daughter Alysia.” In December a single mother named Lynda Peel answered the ad. The previous year, she and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Krista, had driven out from their small New Hampshire town to build a new life in San Francisco. Lynda’s boyfriend came along and helped them settle in, but when he suddenly left she needed someone to share her rented house in Noe Valley. We arranged a meeting.

Dad and Lynda hit it off immediately. Lynda was a feminist photographer, sympathetic toward gay issues, and intrigued by Dad’s writing circle. More importantly, as a divorcee, she could relate to the challenge of pursuing a creative life as a single parent. Lynda said she could help with child care and the details of keeping house that Dad struggled with on his own. Dad would help with rent and groceries and projects around the house, as needed.

I was excited by the prospect of moving in with another kid. We’d already lived with roommates, but few took interest in me and I usually played by myself. Krista was different. She was a kid but something of an adult too. She wore skintight blue jeans and lots and lots of eye shadow. She smelled of perfume and hair spray and would later remind me of the sassy teens from movies like
Little Foxes
and rock bands like the Runaways. I hoped she’d teach me how to wear makeup, or at least play dress-up.

In January 1978, we packed our things and moved into Lynda’s place. Hers was a real house, with two floors and a backyard. Far from any street life, it was quiet, which made Dad happy. Our first week, I hoped that I could play with Krista after school, but it seemed she was never around. Then one afternoon a police car pulled up and she emerged with eyes down, her face twisted in a scowl. She’d run away from home. There was lots of talking behind closed doors. My dad tried to smile it all away. “Family stuff,” he said. “We don’t need to get involved.”

The next evening, after Lynda left for her Spanish class, Krista asked my dad if she could take me out to see her boyfriend. She promised that she’d have me back for my 8:30 bedtime. Dad was working on a new poem and, delighted by the prospect of extended quiet, agreed. He helped me with my coat and sneakers, then waved goodbye. The boyfriend, a skinny guy in jeans and whiskers, drove us down 25th Street in his rusted-out car.

Some hours later, I found myself sitting in the front seat alone while Krista and her boyfriend smooched in the back. I didn’t know what time it was, but it was dark and I knew I was supposed to be in bed. I had school the next day. At first it was exciting to be there without my dad. The street was lit by flashing red neon. The radio played stories of longing and survival, stories told with thrilling and triumphant orchestration: “If I can’t have you . . .” But after a while, I was uncomfortable. I tired of opening and closing the glove compartment. A damp draft blew in through a hole in the door.

“I want to go home, Krista.”

No answer.

Bored and cold, I started to worry. Who are these people in the backseat talking to each other? What are they saying? Who are the people walking by the car speaking languages I don’t understand? Where are we and how long will we be here? Other children must be in bed, I thought to myself. I imagined them under blankets holding their stuffed animals close.

“I want to go home, Krista. I’m cold!”

“Don’t be such a baby.”

I nuzzled into the cracked upholstery and tried to lose myself in the songs on the radio. The music sounded like the night—exotic and grown-up, dark and endless. I listened until I fell asleep.

January 19, 1978: Krista was out till midnight w/Alysia. Gary (Lynda’s ex-roommate, lover) picked her up at 22nd & Mission. Lynda was very angry at me too. After taking A-R to school I have long talk w/Lynda. I get into some deep emotional feelings & weep (about parental rejection partly). Very open, deep conversation but very draining . . . Lynda reviewed her hassles with Krista. (Who tried to burn down their house last summer, gave booze to neighbor kids, etc.) I feel somewhat exhausted by it all & bad that Alysia doesn’t have sister figure here. But house is quiet and peaceful.

Determined to make this alternative family work, Dad tried to adapt us to our new home. Many nights, he and Lynda cooked elaborate vegetarian meals, which were followed by long “rap” sessions where they drained bottles of wine. Dad retreated to his room periodically to smoke since Lynda had a rule against smoking in the kitchen. She had lots of rules.

My father enjoyed Lynda and still hoped that she’d be the household partner he’d imagined in his journal the previous July. When he went out dancing, he’d leave me at home with her and the two of them would make dinner together. But Lynda was an intimidating surrogate mother. Broad and muscular in painter pants and a Mexican peasant shirt, she moved brusquely through the rooms of the house setting up her photo sessions, during which she wanted no interruptions. My playing in the kitchen was enough to prompt her to lumber down the stairs, eyes flashing. She was often angry and she and Krista fought constantly. Slamming doors. Yelling in the halls. It scared me.

Dad knew I was upset and, after putting me to bed one night, resolved to talk with Lynda as they were cleaning up from dinner, a conversation he recounted in his journal:

I expressed a couple of Alysia’s feelings (i.e. that we not talk in her room, that Lynda not come in her room all the time, some fear of Lynda). Lynda said she wanted to deal with AR directly on these things, that I was “rescuing” by acting as a go between. She went “there’s a psychological term for that, do you know what it is?” & then went on to tell me I was transferring my feelings onto Alysia. I replied that I resented being put in a category & explained situations when I had to stand up for Alysia before (when people had eaten her food, bothered her at school, etc. – that if parents don’t do this, the species couldn’t survive. It’s survival).

I feel Lynda’s trying to have it 2 ways . . . When she’s expressing a need, it’s “being open with her feelings.” When I do it’s “bitching at her.” Despite this, I do like her, her strength & buoyant spirit, her dealing with the underneath of interactions. I can see living here being a character building experience for me.

Away from home, Dad continued to focus on poetry. Having established himself at the Cloud House, he now became a regular presence at open readings around town: City Lights in North Beach; a folkie café in the inner Sunset called the Owl and Monkey; and the Rose and Thistle, a straight bar on the corner of California and Polk. But though Dad enjoyed these evenings, he sensed within straight and even mixed audiences a discomfort toward his overtly gay poems. He began reaching out to writers he admired in the pages of
Fag Rag
and
Gay Sunshine
. The papers, both started in the 1970s, published poetry, fiction, and interviews with older writers such as Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal, along with the work of emerging writers, including Dad and the San Francisco poet Aaron Shurin. In a letter to Shurin, Dad wrestled with questions of identity and writing: