On The Walk Home Tonight

I remembered a walk home years ago. I once worked on the Plaza at Saks Fifth Avenue as a visual merchandiser. I lived in and managed (for free rent!) a small apartment complex (12 units) about a mile north and a couple blocks east of Main Street–the main drag I walked down to the Plaza and back every day. I remembered one evening, cold, after Thanksgiving. The Plaza Lights were on. We were well into the season of “good cheer.” It was dusk, nearly dark.

I was wearing my prized camel-hair Christian Dior coat–wide lapels, back-belted, double-breasted, the skirt of the coat hit me below my calves. I am tallish. It was a long coat. I was also wearing a black beret and black calf-skin gloves. Because it was slushy (we’d had a snow the week before that had not yet melted away) I was also wearing waterproof workboots, my pant-cuffs stuffed into the tops, “buck” in color, long-since scuffed and dirty. I’d been carrying these boots around, move-to-move with me since my days in college where they’d seen lots of wear in my stint working for the Physical Plant at Arkansas State University some years before. I couldn’t let them go, thinking I might need them again. In my walks at that time, they’d been resurrected. I carried my “day-shoes” in a “gift-with-purchase” Adolfo gym bag. Oh how I wander-on–so much, too much–about attire.

I crossed the Plaza, that evening, from the west, where Saks once sat, east to Main Street, then walked up the long, steep hill coming up from the Plaza (47th Street) north to 43rd street. There I turned the corner for the jog east to my street. As I turned north again on Magee, an old van (vintage: mid-sixties?) was stopped on the corner, the passenger side window, half rolled down. I rounded the corner as the van started on down the street from the stop. I distinctly heard a deep voice say “Faggot.” Not loud. Not threatening. A conversational tone. I did not look up from my walk, intent as I was on just completing the last two blocks of my walk to my “safe” apartment where I could divest myself of my attire and still be warm.

I like to think I’m nearly invisible in such situations. When I’m alone on my walk, as I was this evening, coming home from work, I like to think no one really sees me. God knows, when I’m on such a walk, my head is not about “what could happen?” I am lost in thought. Thoughts.

When I am noticed, as I was that evening, I realize I am not invisible. The possibility of happening onto danger lurks all around. But I want no part of it and I walk and live as if it isn’t there.

 

August 7, 1995

I’ve tried to post something like the following many times, but never found the will to complete it or edit it or post it. But this evening I’ll try again. I intended to post this on the date.

On the morning of August 7, 1995, around 5:00 am, the phone rang. On the other end, Danny. “Den died just a little while ago,” he said. “They just picked up his body to take to the funeral home.” We exchanged some transactional comments…”Are you doing OK?” “Yeah.” I love you,” I said. I said, “Is Jules there?” “Yeah.” “I’ll be up this afternoon.” He said, “You know what to do? “Yeah,” I said. Then we said other things I don’t really remember before we hung up. My head full of events of the past few weeks, the past few years.

Danny had just been home that weekend to celebrate our eighth anniversary, me taking him that Sunday night, the night before, to catch a flight back to Minneapolis to continue to take care of Den, our good friend, my mentor at Saks Fifth Avenue, the person to whom I would attribute a large part (most maybe?) of what I can now articulate about fashion, art, architecture…an appreciation for beauty, sometimes in its most unseemly appearances.

I had a list of folks to call to let them know what happened. Before I did that, I went into the TV room of our apartment, I lit a cigarette, somewhere along about the sixth or seventh puff, I caught myself saying aloud, “Oh, Den,” over and over.

A couple weeks before, Danny had called, he missed me, asked if I would come up and maybe stay with Den for a couple of nights over the weekend so he could have a break and so we could see each other. He got me a cheap flight. When Danny picked me up at the airport, as we were walking the concourse toward baggage claim, Danny suddenly gasped and bent over, “Oh, sweetie! You want to sit down?” I said. “I’m OK.” he said. He straightenend up. A few minutes later, I was sitting in Den’s living room with Den and Danny. The evening sun slanting in the windows. Danny had made me a pallet in the floor of the spare room (Den’s “dressing room.”) A Hospice Aide that had been coming in for overnight arrived and Danny left to stay a few blocks away at our friend Jules’.

Den was much frailer than last I’d seen him. He’d started his morphine drip a week or so before. We sat up until midnight or 1:00 catching up, reminiscing about Saks, him telling me about shows he’d watched on The History Channel, one of his favorites. The Aide sat quietly at the table, reading, but would interrupt if it were time for a pill. When Den started to fade for the evening, I excused myself to my pallet. As I fell asleep, feeling like a little kid, my head on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, I heard the Aide, help Den go to the bathroom in the commode chair by his bed.

A couple hours later I woke up, he and the Aide were having a quiet conversation. I got up just to see if everything was alright, it was. I asked Den if he needed anything and he said, “You know what would be good right now? A good cup of coffee.”

And the rest of the weekend went sort of like that, doze a couple hours, get up, talk. Danny came back on Saturday morning, took me to breakfast.

The second night a different Aide. In the midst of a conversation, Den “went” somewhere. He looked up at the door to the living room, said, “Oh, Zshovanca! So nice of you to drop in. Here! Come sit by me, tell me everything!” He skootched over on his bed to make room. The aide said, “You know you’re talking to no one don’t you?” “No,” I interjected, “He doesn’t.” Dennis shot me a look that was half confusion and half rage. A sort of “Shut the fuck up, who are you?”

That night Den had many visitors, he talked for hours. I watched, fascinated. In memory, I believe he really had visits with all those folks that night. I imagine them in their homes asleep, visiting Den in their dreams, each one after the other, coming to say Goodbye.

Sunday came and time for me to say my own Goodbye. Den skootched over on the bed to make room for me. For all my internal rehearsals of that moment, I said little of what I meant to say. I said, “When I get to heaven, you’ll have to take me all around, show me the architecture.” He nodded, “I’ll be waiting,” he said. I touched his face. “You’re my person.” I said, “I’ll miss you.” He nodded.

Then a quick hug and I got up and felt my way into the sunlight outside the front door. Danny took my elbow, walked me the rest of the way to the car.

 

Cold

I was just outside smoking a cig on the patio, and this came to me. Background: We lived in Minneapolis nearly 5 years, 1989 to 1994.

I remember winter nights there like the night tonight here in KC. Single digits, a breezy wind from the North. Largely, I remember it being dark when I went to work, dark when I came home at night. In the coldest part of winter, in my office (between two of the display windows at street level) at Saks, I could see my breath. If it was above zero, I would just tie on my hood, grab my mittens and walk about a mile (10 minutes? 15?) to work. If below zero, I’d ride the bus and it actually took longer than walking.

I remember how my feet never really got warm in restaurants when we’d go out to eat.

I remember how the first warmish day of Spring, 40 degrees or so, boys and girls alike would peel off many layers and go running or walking around the lakes in the city.

Summer there, even if only 30 minutes long, was a celebration of survival.

 

Music Remembery

My first memory of Carol of the Bells? North Park Elementary, North Park, IL. 1961. One afternoon, just before Christmas Break, my teacher opened our classroom door. A few minutes later, the “ensemble” from Harlem High School a few blocks away, wandered down our hallway singing it. I have no words to describe what I heard, except it was magical. Years later, I sang it myself, in various incarnations of choirs I belonged to. Guilford High School, Southern Baptist College, Heartland Men’s Choir (Kansas City). I still love it. It isn’t Christmas without it.

 

‘Twas the Night Before…

My sister was born. It was February 1, 1964.  My brother and I stayed with Grandmother and GrandDad Neece in their mobile-home, in Morristown, a trailer park on the far south-end of Rockford, in New Muilford. They made a bed for us on the fold-down couch in the living room. Along about 9:00 that evening, my brother and I were “in bed,” Grandmother was already asleep, my brother asleep, too. GrandDad was still sitting up, watching The Outer Limits. I was listening, hearing a story of a bee-queen in human form. I was nine. I’d had “unpleasant” experiences after “scary” shows. Bad dreams and what-not. I lay awake listening. At the end, I raised my head in the blue light to see a woman with her nose in a flower. The image morphed into a bee’s face drinking nectar from the flower.  You know? That show? Not so scary. My survival of the image that evening gave me strength to look at scarier things later. Some scary things that, at that time, you wouldn’t think you’d ever find yourself looking at on television, or in magazines, some years later, and think that that isn’t so scary, either.