"And you can be sure that if you're feelin' right, a daydream will last a-long into the night. Tomorrow at breakfast you may prick up your ears, or you may be daydreamin' for a thousand years...What a day for a daydream, custom made for a daydreamin' boy."
--The Lovin' Spoonful
I made a promise to several, and I'm a man of my word. It's something that I've been diligently working with for the past several years: saying what I mean, meaning what I say, standing by the statements I make, and attempting never to over-obligate myself. Sometimes I'm successful. Sometimes I struggle with success. Sometimes I just have to go into a bathroom and catch my breath and cry, but that's only when I realize that I've promised a million different things to a million different people and they're all expecting me to fulfill those things for which I've obligated myself. Those rigidly stiff moments of somber humility when I realize that it's impossible ("it's all right now, I've learned my lesson well; you can't please everyone, but you've got to please yourself") are the most painful periods of growth. I've had a few recently. Too many, it seems. I'm exhausted, but I'm glad I reached this point of exhaustion and dis-enthusiasm because I see that I am, in fact, a human being. I'm not a robot. I'm not a soldier. I'm not a human doing (thanks, Chopra). All that being written, having voiced my dissatisfaction with the week that's slowly ebbing into the past, I'm ready to give the people what they want ("make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait!"--attributed to Wilkie Collins and Thomas Hardy depending on your citation; both were masters of all three).
In telling this story, I realize that it may be impossible for me to compile every detail into one post. I have yet to decide if I'll include everything in this terribly true tale in a few short posts tonite or if I'll get the events out slowly but surely. Without further adieu...
Going back.
Going way back.
1993.
Caddo Parish Magnet High School.
1601 Viking Drive.
(Sometime after lunch). The year before, I'd been in an audience at Caddo Middle Magnet that was recruited to attend a special program called Fair Park Medical Careers Magnet. They saw me coming. I began my freshman year with Algebra, Medical Terminology/First Aid, and Biology as the first three classes of the day at Fair Park, then took the bus to Magnet for the GT (gifted/talented) block of English and Civics/Free Enterprise. My day ended en francais avec Madame Harris.
We were working on a project during the two hour block of time devoted to gifted and talented students using the new Macs, conducting interviews, compiling research, and concocting an innovate, computer-generated presentation on a year in the 20th century. I was 1929, a very good year, according to wine aficionados (any odd year, if I remember correctly), but that was also an end to a lot of things: the roaring twenties, profitable speculation, the flappers, big oil. The stock market crashed in October, and the world was plunged into a major depression. Sounds familiar now that I'm writing this out.
Students were encouraged to consult books, roll through old newspapers (I'm pretty sure this was before I'd ever even heard of the Internet), and use the myriad other sources of the Shreve Memorial Library system to create something like 20 or so pages of material that we would later present on the Macs to the combo class just before the big holiday break. Of course, we still had a mountain of other work to complete during this time. We were reading Great Expectations, but supplementing our leisure time with a selection of books that were supposed to encourage to rise and conquer. One of the books on the list was a slim volume called Jonathan Livingston Seagull (I may have liked it had I not been forced to read it), which I asked one of the teachers if she had a copy for me to use.
One of my classmates overheard and sang out that she had a copy that she'd let me borrow. I'd never noticed her before, probably because when regular classes were running and we weren't completing a project of this magnitude, she was in English when I was in Civics and vice versa. Smart-looking. Red hair. Casually pretty (not that that descriptive phrase registered at the time, but I'm recalling this with the memory of a thirty-year-old looking back sixteen years).
She went across the boardwalk to Sledge's English class while I went to another area to get something, I forget what. When I returned, I ran into her. "I put it on your notebook where you were working," she said, then introduced herself: Whitney Burke. And then, "I can't believe you've got a quote from Lace on your notebook." I fell in love.
Allow me to explain. In the late seventies and early eighties, cable television was really just starting out. For the most part, the majority of American viewers still only had the three major channels to get their nightly viewing pleasures. Naturally there were several regular television series from which everything that we now have on tv today was based. Additionally, networks competed with each other through the release of a great concept: the miniseries. Rather than having to commit oneself to a lifetime of television viewing, people could begin a story on a Monday night and see it through to its completion by the end of the month. Most of the best were based on novels that had been extremely successful. There was Roots, of course (I've heard it said that when it was on, that was the nicest that white people ever were), and there was Rich Man/Poor Man, and Herman Wouk's great epics The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. These were sweeping, lengthy, well acted, and extremely expensive to put on television.
Of course, by the 1980's, the wants and needs of the American public were really changing. Dallas was a huge hit, and it seemed that every network was ready to launch its own version to compete with the CBS superstar. Following suit, the miniseries that aired changed from the socially conscious and well drawn historical novels for television to the filming of the works from bestselling authors such as Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz. Some were good. Some were bad. Some were awful. But there is only one that will ever reign as the all-time greatest. The queen. The one that I could probably still drop absolutely everything to watch when I see its airing soon. Shirley Conran's Lace. The worldwide, decade-spanning five or six hours worth of pure escapist entertainment that gave us Phoebe Cates with a really bad accent, conniving girls at a boarding school in the Swiss Alps, Angela Lansbury as their benefactor, and the answer to one of the greatest lines in television history. It's that line that I'd written across my English notebook with a sharpie, the line that Whitney had read, smiled over, and led to our friendship:
"...and perhaps I will have nothing more to do with Maxine's son...perhaps. And maybe I will stand by every word I told Judy, and maybe not. And Pagan's noble cause might benefit from my film's premier, or some other worthy charity will. I haven't made up my mind yet. Incidentally... which one of you bitches is my mother?"
Pure cinematic excellence.
Whitney Burke and I became great friends. One year later, we took a trip to France with the school... a month long excursion to have a taste of the idea of foreign exchange for a year. We opted to remain in the states. Probably a good thing because the two of us were always in trouble. The first time I got drunk... really drunk... I was with her family at Ernest's Orleans Restaurant. I was sixteen, I think.
The thing that always stands out to me about Whitney is her great love of books and movies and art and quotations and ideas. Whitney also loves people, she always has. As a lover of people, and an advocate for human rights and equality and activism and expression, it should come as no great shock that she would be the first that I'd tell the big secret (not such a secret, but it was a big freakin' deal to me at the time). Even less of a shock that Whitney tell me I was not her first gay boyfriend, but that the first gay boyfriend was a guy she'd grown up with named Jeremy, who had come to Magnet the same year as her, but moved away shortly after. In fact, for the remainder of our symbiotic (oft-parasitic/tempestuous) friendship, I would hear the name of this ex-gay boyfriend on and off. She'd hear from him, she'd bring him up, along with the fact that he still hadn't come out to tell her his own truth, but she was convinced it was only a matter of time. Whitney was/is a good person. I have to imagine that anyone she'd hold in such high regard would be as well.
Junior year waned. Whitney helped me to fight my battles and further the cause. Other shows came and went. Assignments popped up. Books were assigned. Trips were taken. We did the National Merit Scholar stuff. And the one-act play stuff. And the student-produced soap opera stuff. And we fought. And we made up. And we learned to smoke cigarettes. And we walked away from Magnet High School in May of 1997, dressed in red and gold and totally unprepared for the wild, wonderful, horrifying world that was waiting.
To Be Continued....
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