Left Bank on the Bayou - New Year's Eve!

A Queer Houston Story of the 1930s

(Note: This post continues the sequel to my novella The Song of the Amorous Frogs: A Story of Paris in the 1920s. Click the title to catch up on that earlier story. It is now 1937. Our Narrator has returned to Houston, after his youthful Paris years and loves, followed by 10 years, and undoubtedly more loves, in New York City. And so his story continues … You can catch up on Left Bank Parts already published by clicking the LEFT BANK tab on my cover page navigation bar.)

Sometimes the future looks to be clear and happy sailing in smooth sunny seas all the way to the horizon, as though all the disparate, even dissonant, elements have come together in a harmony that will go on for ever. And then, in an instant, not.

I returned from Santa Fe in the fall of 1937 full of plans; returned after a delightful summer of hot dry days and cool dry evenings, and, thanks in no small part to Russell, hot delightful nights; returned to an empty house which, in my plan, would soon no longer be so empty. It had not yet been fully resolved that he would take up residence with me in my family house in Quality Hill. Not resolved between the two of us, that is, though in my mind there remained nothing needing resolving. Though it might still be months before he finished in Santa Fe and came to join me in filling what I now saw as “our” house, the plans were made – in my mind, at least.

When I thought of Russell I felt giddy and foolish – like a schoolboy in the scarlet heat of first love. Except that I was not a schoolboy and this was not first love – or fifth or fiftieth – so foolish indeed to give myself to it so fully as I did, or let myself be captured by it. By now I knew the chances were that heartache lay ahead. I knew that I’d be wiser to escape this captivity of love early, as I had not escaped others and lived to cry for it.  

To cry for it, but not to regret it, which made the crying, and fond remembering, worth the pain. Might this be the love that would not dissolve in tears? Even if the chance were slim, any chance at all seemed worth the risk. Unlike the schoolboy, by now I knew I wouldn't die from love lost - and so I'd be foolish (indeed) to turn away from the possibility of love gained.

That, though, was for the future. For now, what I needed was that ship that would take me to the clear horizon. How would I be able to get through the months to the joy I anticipated – or at least hoped for?

At such euphoric stages, one sometimes feels the urge to devote one’s self to higher things – and almost as often fails in doing so.  I made a pledge to find some higher thing to further, something that would both hold my interest and edify my soul as I sacrificed for a greater good – and awaited Russell. Finding such a combination, of the interesting and the edifying, did not prove easy. By nature I found maintaining interest in anything for long (and perhaps also anyone, I sometimes feared) a challenge. I might be, I sometimes feared, a dilettante of both action and affection.

Working for the betterment of the poor might seem the obvious choice of a “good work.” Not that I was rich myself, but, being far from poor, surely I could do something. Or mentoring the young. Didn’t I have valuable things to teach? Or visiting the old and sick, at least. And yet I knew that I would do none of those things – knew, because I knew myself so well after so many resolutions made and broken, so many instances of “walking by on the other side.” Not from heartlessness or indifference; I felt the pain of others, empathized, at least, felt the urge to help. But from fear – fear of ties and specters and expectations. Fears that made no rational sense – but then fears don’t have to.  

If it would not be “good works,” then there was my writing, of course. Now that I had agreed to write a play for Margo and her Community Players, I had that promise and that goal to keep me centered there. And there were the theater, dance, music programs of a new fall season. Ted Shawn and his men would even be returning in December. And, while the weather held (which, thank goodness, in Houston it did till far into the winter months) there was the lure of strolls on Main Street and through Sam Houston Park to help fill the solitary evenings. These I would need until Russell came. (Though any new friends I might make there would only be in passing, with him in the center of my plan.)

But how seldom life acquiesces to  our plans. The wonder is that we keep making them, especially the more mature among us, even in the face of experience and evidence.

Perhaps it was because my heart longed so for Russell, and that the longing would be going on for months unfulfilled, that another found a way into my affection, even as stars for the other sparkled so bright, that I didn’t notice his entry until it was too late to fight against it.

On New Year’s Eve, Wilma called to invite me to one of her spontaneous parties.

“We’ve got a quart of likker – lousy bourbon whiskey, but who’s complaining? The play’s closed and it’s New Years Eve, so some of the boys and I are bidding both the play and the year goodbye around my radio for the countdown – and drinking lots of toasts to the new year and to new plays. Come over and join us. It will be fun. Even old guys like you need to drink toasts on New Year’s Eve. I’ve got mistletoe left from Christmas, and that dream walking, Carden Bailey, will be here. Fair game for kissing, I’d say. At least I’m hoping to kiss him – and maybe you can too.”

Though I protested at her use of the description “old,” I thanked her for the invitation, and said I’d get to her place as soon as I could – not to drink all the likker or do all the kissing before I arrived.

Wilma lived just far enough away, and it was already late enough that I’d need to take a taxi, and who knew how long it would take to find one on New Year’s Eve. If I even could. The thought of the journey, even short as it was, and the drinking and the late night made me a little wary, but I knew that it would be lively at Wilma’s and I didn’t want to sit alone on this particular night – and then too there was the temptation of those “dreams walking” – plural because I had an idea of one or two more likely to be there, in addition to Cardy.

But that night all my plans went topsy-turvy. It was that night, at that party, that I met Lorin – for me not just a dream walking – but a dream walking in paradise – for a while, anyway.