That fall term of 2010, we were in rehearsals for what Richard called “the fall Shakespeare.” We would be performing Romeo and Juliet in that most edgy time—the brief bit of school that remains between the Thanksgiving break and Christmas vacation.
As a teacher, I can tell you that’s a terrible time: The kids are woefully distracted, they have exams, they have papers due—and, to make it worse, the fall sports have been replaced by the winter ones. There is much that’s new, but a lot that’s old; everyone has a cough, and tempers are short.
The Drama Club at Favorite River had last put on Romeo and Juliet in the winter of ’85, which was twenty-five years ago. I still remembered what Larry had said to Richard about casting a boy as Juliet. (Larry thought Shakespeare would have loved the idea!) But Richard had asked, “Where do I find a boy with the balls to play Juliet?” Not even Lawrence Upton could find an answer for that.
Now I knew a boy with the balls to play Juliet. I had Gee, and—as a girl—Gee was just about perfect. At seventeen, Gee still actually had balls, too. She’d begun the extensive psychological examinations—the counseling and psychotherapy—necessary for young people who are serious about gender reassignment. I don’t believe that her beard had yet been removed by the process of electrolysis; Gee may not have been old enough for electrolysis, but I don’t really know. I do know that, with her parents’ and her doctor’s approval, Gee was receiving injections of female hormones; if she stayed committed to her sex change, she would have to continue to take those hormones for the rest of her life. (I had no doubt that Gee, soon to be Georgia, Montgomery would stay committed.)
What was it Elaine once said, about the possibility of Kittredge playing Juliet? It wouldn’t have worked, we agreed. “Juliet is nothing if she’s not sincere,” Elaine had said.
Boy, did I ever have a Juliet who was sincere! Gee had always had balls, but now she had breasts—small but very pretty ones—and her hair had acquired a new luster. My, how her eyelashes had grown! Gee’s skin had become softer, and the acne was altogether gone; her hips had spread, though she’d actually lost weight since her freshman year—her hips were already womanly, if not yet curvaceous.
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 Señor Bovary, Billy?” Uncle Bob asked me, when I was driving him back to the Facility from Gerry’s wedding.
“Señor 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—Cómo está? 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:
Señor 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.