Left Bank On the Bayou – Alone
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.)
So many of my evenings ended with me alone that I sometimes wondered if I wanted them to end any other way. I told myself I did, that I wanted someone beside me when the last light of the night went out. But that was not such an unattainable goal – having someone beside me – if that was what I really wanted. Compromise, tolerance, even (I blush to say it) money could see to that. So I had to admit, even to myself, that saying so I might be fooling myself (trying to anyway).
I had come to enjoy, even if I wouldn’t admit that I prized, the serenity of solitude. Or if not serenity, the simplicity of it; some might say, the selfishness of it. My mother had been heard to say that such selfishness almost certainly meant she would have no grandchildren. As though grandchildren were the birthright of all mothers who give life to sons.
She’d been right, of course: she had no grandchildren. Not by the time she died, though she’d have been right even had she lived to a ripe old age, instead of dying at a mere 70. I felt a twinge of guilt that I’d been selfish in that way. Surely she knew the reason why, though we never talked about it. Surely mothers who give life to sons must know a thing like that, whether they choose to speak it or leave it silent.
I suppose there might have been ways for me to give her the bundles of joy she so desired, even as the sort of man I was – had always been. I knew others who’d managed it for their mothers. And I suppose the mothers were pleased, though so often the men themselves, and the wives necessary to the accomplishment of the task, were not. How many of those men I knew, and the wives, even in Houston. It made me weep, almost, to think about the frustration and pain – and fear of discovery, of acknowledgement – they bore so that the mothers could dandle their bundles.
I thought of one son (and one wife) in particular as I ruminated on my selfishness in that regard. I’d known him since we’d been schoolboys together in the first decade of the century. Then we’d been best friends, so close some made comments about “the perfect couple, two bodies, one boy.” I knew to dislike the comments even though I then had no understanding why.
Our intimacy continued – grew closer, grew more intense – as we grew older. I lay awake (or half awake) night after night, tortured by a cruel agony of yearning for him, reveling in the anguish of longings unfulfilled, made bearable only by the certainty that one day exquisite fulfillment would come. I had come to expect that it would be the foundation of my future, as dreaming of it had been the foundation of my past, and was of my present.
Until, one day he told me he would be marrying.
That he would one day marry, or that I would, had not occurred to me. It seemed impossible. What could he mean? It was not so much that I was jealous, or fearful at impending loss (loss, of him, was impossible – had to be), as that I could not comprehend the words he spoke – a Greek that sounded like English, but made no more sense than the Greek I struggled to decipher in my lessons – and failed at.
And then he was gone from my life, and I knew for the first time (but not the last, of course) that the world is cruel.
I thought of him, with his curly red hair and freckled nose, and his smile that made my heart leap and then long and then ache. I thought of the “two boys, one body,” and the thought roused me even after decades. I’d heard, from my mother, that the bundles of joy had come along – eventually – one, two, three – and then had stopped coming, but three was enough to satisfy his mother. More than might have been expected.
I’d heard that news about him from Mother for years, the telling a reproach and a hope that telling it often enough might prompt me, eventually, to take his example. I hadn’t seen him in all those years, and now I hoped I never would, because the image I had of him, in those more perfect days, still showed perfect, for me, in memory. Perfect except for the end.
But best not to dwell on disappointments of the heart, of the past. Everyone has had them – everyone whose hearts were alive, at least – and no one ever died from them. And others seldom care to hear of the heartaches, or suffer the tears, of others. Even for those who shed them, the tears seem almost foolish, for sure futile, later on. I’d shed my share – for him and others – and I knew they’d stop, and they’d never change the outcome. So why shed them? A waste of time and energy. (Hardened hearts are easy to muster between times of loves and heartaches.)
To no one’s surprise, though still to our dismay, this year as every year, the Houston summer started early, and ran long and hot and humid. Those who could, escaped. I went myself to Santa Fe for some weeks, where other Houstonians – Grace Spaulding John, Beulah Ayars, Billy Larkin – gave me a readymade circle of acquaintance, if not real friendship. I’d had a small fling with Billy as soon as I moved back from New York – nothing serious; both of us knew that from the beginning, though it had been nice, and I could have seen it going on until one or the other of us found the fling that would be serious.
But Billy had other ideas – other, and younger, ideas. And so we’d kissed a lackluster goodbye kiss one morning at my kitchen table, after coffee – and it had been the last kiss, whether of hello, of passion, or of goodbye, we’d kissed. C’est la vie, as I found myself saying more and more often as the years passed. But, even though we’d kissed our last goodbye, so we thought, it might be fun (in many ways) spending time with him again, in the high altitude of Santa Fe, where the thin air sometimes leads to light heads (sometimes even as light as the heels), and then … who knew what might happen?
It certainly would be fun spending time with Grace, who was a woman in charge, a woman who knew her mind, and made sure those around her bent to it. Husbands (and lovers?) included. She had married young and badly, and then older and well (to a descendant of Sam Houston the second time), and now reigned over one wing of the Houston art world. She did not let husband and children interfere with her art and her travel – and they only seemed to adore her the more for it. She went to Europe, to New York (where she studied at Laurelton Hall, the Tiffany estate – hence the lush richness of her paintings), and to Mexico. There she made regular visits (again, in search of lush richness) and even proposed a book describing her travels and illustrated with her “quaint” but delightful linocuts and sketches. “Formidable” was a term that could be used to describe several of the women of Houston art, and certainly Grace earned that honorific as completely as any.