Wednesday, May 20, 2015

The Ghost of the Davenport House

Rock Island, July 1977

11th grade was so crowded with new friends and boyfriends - - the preacher's son who liked nude horseplay, the rabbi's son who didn't know he was gay, the boy I slept with at music camp, plus others I haven't posted on -- that you may think I dropped Darry, my best friend in junior high.

But he was there every day, by my side through all of the events at Rocky High, steadfast in his loyalty and affection. He accepted my interest in boys without question, though he often tried to push me toward girls as well.

One night in the summer of 1977, shortly after I returned from Switzerland, Darry took me to a stand-up comedy show at Augustana College.  Afterwards we drove onto Arsenal Island, to the Davenport House, where Colonel Davenport, the first European settler in the Quad Cities, was murdered on July 4, 1845.

"What are we doing here?" I asked. "The Davenport House is closed at night."
“I work here, remember?” Darry said. He had a part-time job as a docent.

It was a two-story clapboard facing north to-ward the dark-flowing Mississippi, with green-shuttered windows and chimneys on each end. From the front porch I could see the lights of downtown Davenport, with the Centennial Bridge spanning the river.

When we climbed onto the porch, Darry pulled out a flashlight.
“I’ve been here before,” I protested. “Lots of times."
“Have you ever seen the room where Colonel Davenport died?”
“No – that’s always closed to the public.”
“Closed to the public, maybe. Not to us.”

Darry led me through the parlor, now a museum, past the gift shop and the dining room to the kitchen, which had mostly modern furnishing, including a new refrigerator and stove. An old servants’ stairway led up to the second floor, to a narrow hallway.  The banister staircase on the other end led down to the parlor.

Darry  pointed his flashlight beam down the hall. “They found him in his wife’s sitting room, there by the banister, and carried him to his bedroom, here, where he died.” He opened the door on the east end. It was sparsely furnished, with an old four-poster bed, a wash basin with an old-fashioned pitcher, a dresser, and two round red-upholstered chairs. One window looked north, onto the dark yard with the Mississippi beyond, 

Darry walked over to the dresser, creaked open a bottom drawer, and retrieved a pile of magazines. He climbed onto the bed -- not the one Col. Davenport died on, I hoped -- and sat propped up against the pillows. I climbed up next to him. The bedspread smelled of must and lavender room deodorizer. He began leafing through one of the magazines  –Playboy, I realized, shocked.
“Hey, that’s porn!”

“On the contrary, it’s the noble quest after the Eternal Feminine,” Darry said. “But I can’t keep them at home. Mom and Dad go through everything.”

He held open a page featuring a naked girl, smiling open-mouthed, with shiny hair and pale pendulous breasts. It was disgusting. But Darry obviously found it stunning, so wonderful that he sequestered them at the Davenport House and risked being fired just for the joy of gazing at a few centerfolds once in a while.

I had a place at home where I invited boys to have sex...and watch.  Was this Darry's place?

“I don’t like pictures of naked ladies,” I said softly. “Could we go home now?”

“There’s nobody here but us, so you can stop the Herr Holy-Pants attitude. Tell me you don't like this one!" Darry held up the issue. A girl who looked something like Gloria, the daughter on All in the Family, holding a telephone between her breasts.

“It’s gross!” I jumped off the bed, felt my way for the door, and pulled it open. The hallway was completely dark, except for thin pale lines of door frames bathed in moonlight. I wanted to run away, but if I left Darry, how could I get home again? The island would be nearly deserted at night.

Maybe if I tried, if I looked very closely, I would see what Darry saw. Maybe I would know what the fuss was all about. Maybe I would finally bow to the tripods.

Darry slid off the bed and walked toward me.  "If you don't like blondes.." he began.  Then he trailed off.

The door at the end of the hall, by the banister staircase, was invisible except for a thin line of pale light. But the line was getting bigger. The door was slowly swinging open!

Later I could recall the inside of the wife’s sitting room: a small table with a lace tablecloth and a tea service, a low bookcase, two overstuffed chairs from the Victorian era, a window framed with lace curtains. But at that moment I saw only a shadow at the half-opened door: the outline of a man! No facial features or clothing, just a head and torso, and an arm  propped lazily against the lintel, as if someone was investigating the noise.

We clattered down the servants’ stairway, through the kitchen door, and into Darry’s car. We zoomed down Rodman Boulevard, slowing only when we reached the Government Bridge.  

The ghost – if it was a ghost -- was too thin to be Colonel Davenport. Maybe it was one of the murderers, returning to check on his handiwork. Or Colonel Davenport’s son,  George L’Oste. Or a draft creaking the door open. Or a prank.

Darry swore that he wasn’t playing a prank. In fact, he was too scared to go back to the Davenport House.  The next day he called to quit his job.

I've always wondered why the ghost appeared at the exact moment Darry started looking at Playboys.  Maybe it was a gay ghost who resented the intrusion of heterosexism.

See also: The Naked Ghost of Hylton Castle.; Boys with Baseball Bats in my Attic Sanctuary

Monday, May 18, 2015

My Kentucky Kinfolk Grow Up

Maysville, Kentucky, January 2004

My mother's family moved to Indiana when she was seven years old.  She was born in Magoffin County, Kentucky, in the Appalachians, where the Hatfields and McCoys feuded, where ultra-fundamentalist churches handle snakes, where everyone goes barefoot and listens to Country-Western music and rides around in red pickup trucks.

Really?

My Uncle El was old enough to stay behind, working on the farm, then for the gas company, marrying, and having a huge number of children -- 12 in all.  Three were my age or a little older, El, Graydon, and Dayton.

We met in Indiana, at my Uncle Paul's wedding, where we saw the Naked Man in the Peat Bog.

 During the summer after 7th grade, my parents and I drove down to visit.  I liked hanging out with them so much that for years I thought of Kentucky as a "good place," where same-sex desire was open and free.


I didn't see them again.  When I was a kid, we always went to Indiana to visit our other relatives instead, and when I was living in West Hollywood and New York, I flew back to Illinois twice a year to see my parents and brother and sister. There was no time for Kentucky.  And the years passed and passed and passed.

I got my Ph.D.  I moved to Florida.  I hadn't seen them for 30 years.

At Christmastime in 2004, I was back in Rock Island for the holidays, when the phone rang.  My Uncle El had died on January 1st, his birthday. Did I want to drive down for the funeral?

I had only met him twice, but I wanted to go.  I wanted to see Kentucky again.

Uncle El had 12 children, 31 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren, plus brothers and sisters, cousins and second-cousins, and third cousins, and some friends who weren't even relatives, all filling up the Maysville Baptist Church, the Howard Family Cemetery, and then the white frame house on a mountaintop that I remembered from 30 years before (except now it had running water, an indoor bathroom, internet access, and cable tv).

Was Kentucky still a "good place"?  Not hardly.



It was heterosexuality as far as the eye could see.  There were Howards, Shepherds, Praters, Gearhearts, and Handshoes, all reuniting over casseroles and pies and cakes, all introducing boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives and kids,

Graydon, now 43, was working for the power company in Michigan.  Dayton, 45, and El, 47, ran an auto repair place in Mayville, Kentucky.  They were all married with children, and some grandchildren.

My parents cautioned me to not "talk about guys"  (their code for "gay topics"), lest the Bible Baptists lynch me, so when I was asked "Where's your wife?" and "Did you leave your wife back in Florida?", I replied with a vague "Oh, I'm not married."

When I was asked "How old are your kids?", I replied with a vague "Oh, I don't have any kids."

When men gave me an inclusive nudge and exclaimed "You know how women are!" or "You know how wives are!", I responded with a noncommittal shrug.

Was there even a glimmer of gay potential in this paeon to heterosexual marriage and reproduction?

Maybe a glimmer.

1. Cousin Graydon and his wife were big fans of Will and Grace.  "That Jack always cracks me up!"

2. I told Cousin El about Angels in America,  the HBO miniseries about gay people that aired a couple of weeks ago, and he smiled politely.

3. Cousin Dayton introduced me to his 15-year old son,  Joel, "a real lady's man!"

"Dad, that's lame!" Joel protested.

"But it's true!  He's always hanging around with girls.  He even joined the drama club at school, just so he'd have his pick of the girls."

"Dad!  I joined drama club because I want to be an actor!"

Wants to be an actor?  Always hanging around with girls?  

"I lived in West Hollywood for 13 years," I said.  "I know quite a bit about the movie business. When I get home, I'll send you some of my old books."

"That'd be cool," Joel said noncommittally, anxious to be rid of the oldsters.

When I got back to Florida, I sent Joel a box of books: a history of Hollywood,  my old textbook from acting class, some Shakespeare and Ibsen, and "accidentally," Geography Club by Brent Hartlinger, about a teen who starts an undercover gay club at his high school.

He sent me a nice card, thanking me, but not mentioning Geography Club.

Some glimmers of gay potential.

L

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