Friday the 13th Birthday
Well, I got through my week with Brandon Gonzalez, the kid I mentor. (See picture below of me along with Brandon and my friend, Michael Rourke, a television honcho who has now created a trifecta of court shows - Judge Hatchett, Judge Lopez, and the upcoming first gay jurist in the genre, Judge David Young.) Yesterday, Friday, Brandon turned 13. It was the last day of his visit. I gave him an early birthday party on Wednesday and had a few people over. He ended up getting lots of loot and cash - which I have to be careful about since I don’t want him to see me as an ATM machine or his visits here to Ptown as a kind of mercenary mission. We’ve known each other for six years now so I don’t think he harbors those kinds of attitudes about me anymore, but I always have to be vigilant not to spoil him. When I was first getting to know him, he could push all my buttons - he is a bit of a street kid with a very complicated family history and his mode of survival is one of emotional manipulation, I can’t blame him for that - but he no longer is able to target my buttons with such acuity. Others aren’t so highly attuned to his methods, however, so I do have a kind of bemused resentment toward him when I watch him launch one of his charm offenses with a group of my friends when we’re on the beach or in town or at someone else’s house.
Two summers ago, photographer and artist, Jack Pierson, took a lovely series of portraits of Brandon, then ten years old, on the wharf we shared at Poor Richard’s Landing here in town. Jack has promised since then to give Brandon and me copies of a couple of the portraits. Brandon, when he discovered after Googling him, that Jack was famous and that one of his “word sculptures” had fetched $140,000 at auction, kept saying he was going to sell his on Ebay when he got back to Brooklyn. I told him it was a gift and he couldn’t do that, that it would be rude. Jack has said that his art is about “the disaster inherent in the search for glamour.” I kept thinking about that description as we all watched the Carnival parade floats and their costumed denizens here in Ptown on Thursday. After the parade - which we watched with Jack and Michael and some of my other friends from the porch of the great old captain’s house in the East End that Manhattan interiors maven John Derian bought this summer in Ptown (if you’re here be sure to check out John’s wonderful boutique version of his Manhattan store in the back of the house off Commercial Street) - Jack offered to give Brandon a ride back in his boat to the West End of town where I now live. He even let him steer the thing and Brandon arrived all hopped up from his maiden nautical advernture. “Driving a boat was the best 13th birthday present I could have ever got!” he exclaimed. “I ain’t never done nothing like that before. I didn’t even ax him if I could. He just let me. And he gave me these pictures. I ain’t gonna sell mine on Ebay. You didn’t tell me, dude, they were big pictures like this,” he said, showing me the two giant portraits Jack had given him on the ride back to my cottage. Brandon had chosen the more pensive pose and told me I could have the one of him grinning and looking more like a little boy. “He don’t take little pictures. I thought they were gonna be little like out of a Kodak. I ain’t selling this. Look how good I look.”
As you can tell from that exchange, the one thing I have no patience for is the atrocious state of the kid’s grammar; it has worsened since I’ve known him. There has been such a digression in that regard. I know he became bored and frustrated by my constantly correcting him this past week. But no amount of correction seemed to work. His sentences were filled with “ain’t” and double negatives and wrong verb tenses and “ax” and “axed” instead of “ask” and “asked.” As someone who makes his living from the use of language, I was maddened by it. All I can hope is my schoolmarmish voice remains in his head and we can slowly wean him from such woeful use of English. The exhaustion I felt at the end of his visit - the constant correcting of his language and cleaning up after him and feeling of low-grade stress as I worried about his safety and telling him to flush every time I walked into the bathroom after one of his visits and having to see what he left behind in the toilet - was made worse by the fact that Archie, my dog, came down with a virulent strain of Kennel Cough after boarding him at the Dickensian kennel we have here in Ptown when I went down to Manhattan last week to pick up Brandon and bring him back. The morning I took him to the vet after I realized he was sick with it - the Wednesday of the birthday party when I was baking my first cake and getting my place ready for our guests and running errands for supplies and decorations, etc. - and was told I would have to bring him back at the exact hour that the party was scheduled to start … well, all the pressure and exhaustion of the week came crashing down around my bald head. On the walk home - with Archie hacking and wheezing at the end of his leash- I had a good five-minute cry.
All of that said, yesterday after I took Brandon on the ferry to Boston and put him on the Acela train back to New York, I felt a twinge of sadness and emptiness when I walked down the platform at the station without him by my side. It happens every year when he comes up here. I can’t wait for him to leave and yet when he leaves there are several days of having to get used to his not being here. I feel a bit lost in the quiet and solitude, though I do agree with Jodi Foster who, in an interview published this month in More, said, when asked what she missed about her life pre-motherhood: “I miss being alone.” Mentoring is a far five-minute cry from motherhood, yet I knew exactly what she meant. On that solitary walk yesterday down the Amtrak platform, however, I remembered one of the first afternoons I spent with Brandon. We had gone to a matinee of The Lion King and during the overly crowded intermission, as we went to the bathroom, I told him to meet me at a specific spot in the downstairs lobby. I couldn’t find him for a few minutes when I emerged from the stall and finally found him in a corner. He was frightened and his face was a fist of tears. Still only seven at the time, he thought I had walked off and left him and he was all alone in a very strange environment for it was his first time experiencing a Broadway musical. I grabbed him and put my arms around him and led him up the big winding staircase to the orchestra section and, as I maneuvered us both back through the crowd, said to him, the words escaping from my mouth before I knew what I was saying, “I will never abandon you.” Those were the five words that I, orphaned at age seven myself, had spent my whole life searching for. I had always assumed that they would be spoken to me once I found them. I had no idea that when I finally heard them that they would be coming out of my mouth and spoken to someone else. It was in that instant that I knew Brandon’s presence in my life was a gift. A kind of healing had begun. And no amount of exhaustion or bewilderment at his behavior or language skills would ever alter that in my now less lonely life.
August 18th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
write me a poem
August 19th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Kevin:
Thank you for sharing the story of Brandon’s visit. It was a joy to read. When I first read that you had taken this responsibility, I thought to myself, “Why would Kevin voluntarily pin himself down like that?” Oh, I also felt appreciation for your altruism, and thought, “Better Kevin than I.”
After reading today’s blog, I understood, and with a rush of emotion realized the beauty of your pledge not ever to abandon him. Truly “destiny shapes our ends.” And our beginnings, too.
Here came the goose bumps again, with the double treat: your words and the picture of three handsome men.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
this entry was a gift.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Kevin,
I consider myself fortunate to have you in my world….I cried when I read
this post as I was put up for adoption right after my birth…I have had
abandonment issues forever….I try not to dwell but at times it still hurts.
This a beautiful posting and you are one special mentor…Jeana
August 20th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Yay! a picture! I love when I get a visual and a great story! You are such a bright light!
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 am
Hmmm, what a thing of beauty you turned out to be.
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Kevin, I kept thinking about this entry after I first read it. Even more rewarding after a few days.
And it’s nice to have a face on Brandon.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:11 am
just finished your book and loved it. any chance your heading to nola for sd? if so (based on above picture) hope to see you there. would be great to grab some chicory and beignets at cafe du monde and regale each other with stories of growing up southern. if not, hit me up next time you visit the capital of the new south.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:12 am
I continue to enjoy reading your blog and am happy to hear about the fullness of your life.
With fondness and best wishes,
your friend,
Jeff
September 6th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Kevin: I’ve so enjoyed reading your blog ever since I found “Mississippi Sissy.” (By the way I am anxiously awaiting the next book as well.)
Have you ever thought about doing a Q & A type thing like Rosie O’Donnell does on her blog? She scrolls through and chooses which questions to answer and posts all the questions/answers on her blog. She also does “talky blogs” where she answers questions on little movies. I would LOVE to see you do something like that.
Lora
September 9th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I don’t know where else to post this message - I just finished reading “Mississippi Sissy” - a book I could barely put down. Thank you for writing it! A true masterpiece.
I grew up on a farm in Manitoba’s beautiful parkland region - I considered that to be a rather conservative environment, but after reading your story I realize that I grew up in a very liberal environment. I find it difficult to believe that people could have been so uncaring as to cheer at the deaths of the public figures like President Kennedy, RFK and Martin Luther King Jr. but I guess they saw those people threatening their very way of life.
I, like your friend Frank, was extremely angry when that “pillar of the church” was abusing you, stealing your first sexual experience from you, and leaving such horrid memories. How horrid.
Anyways, I must not go on - I hope the rest of your life has been more positive.
September 16th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Kevin - I just discovered your background and book on James Wolcott’s blog. I cannot wait to read your book! I can almost anticipate what you wrote, but look forward to reading your experience of it!
I was born in Jackson, but reared in Forest. To discover another person who survived Mississippi, and especially Forest, is like visiting an old time reunion without flies and dust landing on the fried chicken and homemade ice cream! I wonder if you attended Forest High. It is hard for me to remember names from there; events seemed to catch my attention and there were many back then. I am trying to remember you and visualize where you lived.
I was an outcast in Forest. My friends were restricted and chosen for me. I was not allowed to read Emerson because he had been a friend of Pound. And TN Wms? Ha! He exposed things that should have been kept quiet in proper circles! I have often wondered how many of us breathed in and out, counting the minutes, til we could leave and experience the real world on The Outside, everything that frightened the grownups around us. We must have scattered like wildflower seeds on the wind when we left! However, my first stop was Belhaven in Jackson where I watched Miss Eudora plant bulbs across the street instead of paying attention in Latin class. That is where I became a covert activist and also experienced my first demonstration where I protested the use of my SS# as an ID rather than my name! Later, I was “strict campused” for subversive acts like urging folks register to vote after the poll tax was rescinded and protesting Nam Lies. The administration shut the campus newspaper down, but forgot to check the annual, The Clan Call, that year. It had a bright red cover and caused a bright red reaction! : ) I have not been back to MS except 3 times, mostly funerals. I seem to pick up the dialect of wherever I live, however, I still have our maid’s pronunciation of “get” as “git”, even after speech therapy during my FHS years! I learned what love, the real thing, meant through “the maid”. She was my rock until she “ran off” to Chicago to join her children who had made a better life for her. I miss her and am thankful for her love to this day. This is probably not the place for this type of chit-chat. Guess I got excited because I deeply understand from where you came and admire what you have so well done since. I look forward to reading your book. Salut!
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:06 am
was great to meet you this summer in ptown….this was a great story - very touching. please say hi to michael
September 24th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
As an African-american, I didn’t expect to get much out of “Mississippi Sissy” but I needed a 4th book to complete my reading list during 2 weeks’ vacation in Europe.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
As an African-American and a homosexual — but never really a sissy — I didn’t expect to get much out of “Mississippi Sissy” but just needed a 4th book to complete my reading list during 2 weeks’ vacation in Europe.
Suffice to say, I loved it. I started it somewhere over the Atlantic, and continued it (with intermissions) during a cannabis-filled 3 day tour of Amsterdam. But, somewhere after Paris, and before Lisbon, Tangier and Barcelona, I began to pray that it would never end.
Thank you for airing your story in beautiful prose. I haven’t felt this way about an autobiography since Paul Monette’s “Becoming A Man” which I’ve read 3 times in about 5 years.
Fortunately for me, and unlike Mr. Monette, you’re alive so that I could express my sentiments.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Kevin,
Thanks for a great summer read. I also grew up in Mississippi and now live and teach high school there. I know that growing up in Mississippi is a challenge to say the least, but to grow up gay there means that God either has a wicked sense of humor or truely does test those he loves. I tend to believe the latter.
I called and spoke to you shortly after reading your book. I thank you for being so kind and polite to someone who you have never met. I suppose the southern hospitality does exist or maybe your just “good people.”
If ever you come back to Mississippi for book signings or for whatever reason ( You did tell me that you had just left and I missed you in Oxford and Jackson) feel free to email me and I’ll be glad to introduce you to a great Mississppi welcome.
Again, I thank you for writing Mississsippi Sissy.