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What's more important, the whole community at Favorite River Academy knew who (and what) Gee Montgomery was. Sure, there were still a few jocks who hadn't entirely accepted how sexually diverse a school we were trying to be. There will always be a few troglodytes.
Larry would have been proud of me, I thought. In a word, it might have surprised Larry to see how involved I was. Political activism didn't come naturally to me, but I was at least a little active politically. I'd traveled to some college campuses in our state. I'd spoken to the LGBT groups at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont. I'd supported the same-sex marriage bill, which the Vermont State Senate passed into law--over the veto of our Republican governor, a troglodyte.
Larry would have laughed to see me supporting gay marriage, because Larry knew what I thought of any marriage. "Old Mr. Monogamy," Larry would have teased me. But gay marriage is what the gay and bi kids want, and I support those kids.
"I see a future hero in you!" Grandpa Harry had told me. I wouldn't go that far, but I hope Miss Frost might have approved of me. In my own way, I was protecting someone--I'd protected Gee. I was a worthwhile person in Gee's life. Maybe Miss Frost would have liked me for that.
This was my life at age sixty-eight. I was a part-time English teacher at my old school, Favorite River Academy; I also directed the Drama Club there. I was a writer, and an occasional political activist--on the side of LGBT groups, everywhere. Oh, forgive me; the language, I know, keeps changing.
A very young teacher at Favorite River told me it was no longer appropriate (or inclusive enough) to say LGBT--it was supposed to be LGBTQ.
"What is the fucking Q for?" I asked the teacher. "Quarrelsome, perhaps?"
"No, Bill," the teacher said. "Questioning."
"Oh."
"I remember you at the questioning phase, Billy," Martha Hadley told me. Ah, well--yes, I remember me at that phase, too. I'm okay about saying LGBTQ; at my age, I just have trouble remembering the frigging Q!
Mrs. Hadley lives in the Facility now. She's ninety, and Richard visits her every day. I visit Martha twice a week--at the same time I visit Uncle Bob. At ninety-three, the Racquet Man is doing surprisingly well--that is, physically. Bob's memory isn't all it was, but that's a good fella's failing. Sometimes, Bob even forgets that Gerry and her California girlfriend--the one who's as old as I am--were married in Vermont this year.
It was a June 2010 wedding; we had it at my house on River Street. Both Mrs. Hadley and Uncle Bob were there--Martha in a wheelchair. The Racquet Man was pushing Mrs. Hadley around.
"Are you sure you don't want me to take over pushing the wheelchair, Bob?" Richard and I and Elaine kept asking.
"What makes you think I'm pushing it?" the Racquet Man asked us. "I'm just leaning on it!"
Anyway, when Uncle Bob asks me when Gerry's wedding is, I have to keep reminding him that she's already married.
It was, in part, Bob's forgetfulness that almost caused me to miss one small highlight of my life--a small but truly important highlight, I think.
"What are you going to do about Senor Bovary, Billy?" Uncle Bob asked me, when I was driving him back to the Facility from Gerry's wedding.
"Senor who?" I asked the Racquet Man.
"Shit, Billy--I'm sorry," Uncle Bob said. "I can't remember my Alumni Affairs anymore--as soon as I hear something, I seem to forget it!"
But it wasn't exactly in the category of an announcement for publication in The River Bulletin; it was just a query that came to Bob, in care of the "Cries for Help from the Where-Have-You-Gone? Dept."
Please pass this message along to young William,
the carefully typed letter began.
His father, William Francis Dean, would like to know how his son is--even if the old prima donna himself won't write his son and just ask him. There was an AIDS epidemic, you know; since he's still writing books, we assume that young William survived it. But how's his health? As we say over here--if you would be so kind as to ask young William--Como esta? And please tell young William, if he wants to see us before we die, he ought to pay us a visit!
The carefully typed letter was from my father's longtime lover--the toilet-seat skipper, the reader, the guy who reconnected with my dad on the subway and didn't get off at the next station.
He had typed, not signed, his name:
Senor Bovary
I WENT ONE SUMMER recently, with a somewhat cynical Dutch friend, to the gay-pride parade in Amsterdam; that city is a hopeful experiment, I have long believed, and I loved the parade. There were surging tides of men dancing in the streets--guys in purple and pink leather, boys in Speedos with leopard spots, men in jockstraps, kissing, one woman sleekly covered with wet-looking green feathers and sporting an all-black strap-on cock. I said to my friend that there were many cities where they preached tolerance, but Amsterdam truly practiced it--even flaunted it. As I spoke, a long barge glided by on one of the canals; an all-girls' rock band was playing onboard, and there were women wearing transparent leotards and waving to us onshore. The women were waving dildoes.
But my cynical Dutch friend gave me a tired (and barely tolerant) look; he seemed as indifferent to the gay goings-on as the mostly foreign-born prostitutes in the windows and doorways of de Wallen, Amsterdam's red-light district.
"Amsterdam is so over," my Dutch friend said. "The new scene for gays in Europe is Madrid."
"Madrid," I repeated, the way I do. I was an old bi guy in his sixties, living in Vermont. What did I know about the new scene for gays in Europe? (What did I know about any frigging scene?) IT WAS ON SENOR Bovary's recommendation that I stayed at the Santo Mauro in Madrid; it was a pretty, quiet hotel on the Zurbano--a narrow, tree-lined street (a residential but boring-looking neighborhood) "within walking distance of Chueca." Well, it was a long walk to Chueca, "the gay district of Madrid"--as Senor Bovary described Chueca in his email to me. Bovary's typed letter, which was mailed to Uncle Bob at Favorite River's Office of Alumni Affairs, had not included a return address--just an email address and Senor Bovary's cell-phone number.
