The Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA Choruses) held its
fifth international festival, GALA V, this summer in Tampa, Florida.
As I had expected, it was an emotional roller
coaster. GALA itself can be overwhelming, but bookending it with
visits with my Mother, who was living in Tampa at the time, produced a
double whammy.
The opening visit with my Mother was full of the usual tidal forces.
I'm nearly 46 years old, and she can still embarrass me with her sexual
innuendos. We're driving in from the airport just after my arrival and
she points out the cummulo- nimbus clouds and says, "I like those tall
thin white ones that shoot straight up." I know how to play this game,
so I say, "Yes. When you see one of those, you know someone's going to
get wet."
And, no, I'm neither exaggerating nor reading too much into it. It's
like that all the time. It's one of the reasons why a former therapist
of mine said he could make his reputation publishing my case history as
a classic Oedipal complex. So the first few days with Mom were a bit
tense and defensive.
The festival itself was fabulous, though I was nervous and distracted
the first day. I was the GALA representative for my chorus, and I was
doing my best to make sure everything was arranged before they
arrived: the right hotels booked under the right names, delegate
badges for all our delegates--a process the Festival organizers made
needlessly complex by requiring names, addresses, and hotel
accomodations months before the event itself, making changes,
cancellations, and substitutions inevitable.
At first, I was looking forward to using my hotel room as a get-away
from the pressure. I had booked a room by myself. But as the festival
drew closer, two friends, Lawrence and Steve, both needed cheap
accomodations, so I let them use my room (Steve was only staying for
the first three days anyway). There were drawbacks to this
arrangement, chief of which would be the loss of my sanctuary. But in
truth, I am strongly attracted to both of these guys, and the idea of
sharing a hotel room with them seemed to present certain advantages.
Perhaps proximity would breed opportunity.
I met Lawrence as he came in on the bus from the airport. By chance, I
was outside a hotel next to the festival hall when the bus pulled up.
He recognized me before I recognized him and came bounding off the bus
to greet me. We hugged and kissed and then trekked over to the Windham
where our room was. Steve was already checked in when we got there.
Lawrence got phone calls almost hourly from his friends. He seems to
attract good-looking men who want to take care of him like honey draws
bees. I finally got so exasperated I started answering the phone with,
"This is Lawrence's answering service. How can we help you?"
There was a bear swim party Sunday night that was great fun. Steve had
an especially good time since bears are his type (though he himself is
more of an otter--which is my type). The swim party became an almost
nightly event at the hotel where it started. Around the second or
third night, the management finally caught on and kept the bar open
past midnight.
Monday morning, Steve and I spend some time cuddling together. This
was great fun because Steve is very good at it.
The first two days of singing were initially disappointing to me. Not
that the singing was bad (that came later), but it almost approached
some kind of orthodoxy: a certain limited set of subjects, a certain
range of musical styles, a dash of "choral-ography," and one "fun"
piece per set. I was beginning to think GALA had lost its musical
magic.
Then came Wednesday. Our chorus sang at around noon, and we did pretty
well. My mother came to hear us and listened to both performances, as
well as attending our walk-through rehearsal the day before.
Unfortunately, I had caught a cold (probably from dashing in and out of
air-conditioned buildings into the tropical Tampa heat), and in the
second hall, I felt the beginnings of a coughing fit just as we
started. I had to struggle to keep it from bursting forth--I was right
next to a mike!--and the effort made my body rigid, which is not
conducive to expressive singing. I've seen video of that performance
and I look like I'm made of wood. Brian, a friend of mine, said I
looked frightened. I probably was.
Unfortunately, Steve left Wednesday morning, so he didn't get to hear
us sing. The chorus received several compliments, though, so we didn't
embarrass ourselves.
Which is more than can be said for Golden Gate Men's Chorus. People
fled, actually fled the hall after their first number. It was
embarrassing in one respect, but, frankly, they deserved it. They were
simply not ready to sing the music they chose to sing, and should have
known it.
To move from the pathetic to the sublime, there were two Colorado
choruses that absolutely blew me away. The music was fresh, the
arrangements amazing, and the words witty, sometimes wry, sometimes
political, and, for one song, not words at all, but sounds. After
Wednesday, I had no more troubling thoughts about "orthodoxy."
My mother attended some of these concerts with me. After one of them,
she turned to me and said, "Now I know what I am. I'm a gay man." I
can't remember if I said anything in response. I hope not.
I attended a music workshop with Ysaye Barnwell on Thursday that was
quite wonderful. I sat next to a wonderful man named Ned who is a
Unitarian Universalist minister. He is the kind of person I
immediately feel at home with. It was pleasant to chat with him as a
stranger and yet feel the potential for a friendship.
Thursday night was Gay and Lesbian night at Busch Gardens, but I had
decided not to go. Busch Gardens had always represented a kind of
family failure to me. One of the wonderful things we were supposed to
do when visiting my grandparents in Tampa was go to Busch Gardens. It
was supposed to be a wonderful and exotic destination, something we
would marvel at and remember always. Instead, it turned out to be
ordinary, disappointing, and more than a little dismal. Metaphorically,
it was my family in a nutshell. So I didn't go. Steve was gone and
Lawrence had a date, so I had the room to myself, much as I had planned
when I first booked the room. I even ordered a chocolate sundae from
room service to "set the mood."
But it didn't feel right. Instead, I was feeling pretty low--lonely
and unsatisfied. I kept telling myself that I had chosen to be
alone this evening, but those old feelings of having been left out of the
party (or left off the basketball team, or left behind for the
picnic--fill in your favorite childhood horror here) still came
pounding down on me. Perhaps the emotionality of the music brought
those feelings closer to the surface. When Lawrence came home with yet
another handsome, well-built man with a beard, I actually felt
relieved. At least there was someone to talk to briefly before we all
fell asleep.
Friday was the GALA premier of two very powerful works, "Prayers for
Bobby" by Jay Kawarski and "NakedMan" by Robert Seeley. My mother and
I saw "Bobby" together, and both of us cried. Ned was sitting next to
us and was sobbing openly through most of it. My mother left for home
after the "Bobby" concert set, saying nothing could top it.
However, my reaction to
"NakedMan" in the afternoon session was even more powerful. "Bobby"
had emotional authenticity in the story it told, but the "NakedMan"
song cycle had that plus a musical and poetic intensity that made the
hair on the
back of my neck stand up. (It still has that effect when I listen to
the CD.).
Later Friday afternoon, I flirted shamelessly with a handsome man from
San Francisco named Aurelio. I told him he had beautiful eyes (which
he does) and he seemed very pleased to hear it. We exchanged hotel
room numbers and he said, "I'll call you tonight." Having
heard this twice already that week, I was astonished when he actually
did call. We were in the same hotel, so I went up to his room. We
spent some time talking about life and music, some time playing with
the music notation program on his laptop computer (it's very similar to
mine), and then dropped all pretense and fucked like crazed weasels.
Needless to say, my mood was much improved for the rest of the
festival. The next day, I sent a flower to his room.
Saturday was also the last day of the festival, and I was feeling a
sense of accomplishment. I had gotten my chorus to Tampa and we had
sung well. I had met old friends and made some new ones. And GALA had
done its musical magic, opening my ears to new sounds and ideas, and
forging a bond by giving us all a common emotional experience.
Sunday morning, I went down to the lobby while Lawrence and his date
were still asleep to say good bye to Aurelio as he checked out. He
gave me the flower I had sent to his room the day before. Oddly, he
didn't thank me for it. He simply said he thought it would get crushed
if he took it with him on the plane.
When I got back to the room, Lawrence was awake and sitting up in his
bed, looking pensive. His Saturday night date had left, an we were
alone in the room for the first time. We cuddled a little, I petted
him a lot, and eventually I indulged the both of us by giving him some
very slow, very deep fallatio. It was something I had wanted to do
ever since I met him several years ago. It didn't lead to orgasm for
either of us, but was somehow comforting and relaxing--sex as massage,
I guess. Afterwards, while we were getting ready to take a shower, he
broke down crying in my arms, saying he was truly blessed to have so
many good friends.
We went downstairs where my mother joined us for brunch. I gave her
the flower Aurelio had returned to me, but didn't tell her it was
second-hand. The waitress was charmed that I would give my mother
a flower and gave us special attention.
After brunch, the three of us went to the Salvador Dali museum in St.
Petersburg. What a twisted mind he had. A genius and incredibly
gifted, but the gifts were spent on such an unhappy vision of life.
However, I got to see the "Christopher Columbus" full-sized. That
alone was worth the trip.
Then we took Lawrence to the airport, where he and I hugged and he
sobbed some more. Then Mother and I went back to her house, completing
my bookend visit. The next day, we visited my grandfather's grave
before I went to the airport. Grampa passed away last February at the
age of 94. I was in Hawaii when he died and could not be reached. I
found out about it when I got back. He had had his funeral and was
buried before I even knew he was dead. He was the only person in my
family I had not come out to, so I came out to him at his grave. My
mother left some flowers. I left a condom in a bright red wrapper.
Dali had no corner on the surreal.
On the way back from the cemetary, Mother and I got to talking about
sex. Again. Only this time, it was more direct. She even went so far
as to ask what sexual practices I engaged in, and I told her that was
something I would probably never talk to her about. She told me that
she rarely had orgasm with men, but that she engaged in sex because she
liked the foreplay and the cuddling afterward. "I like to get them so
excited beforehand," she said, "that the actual event is over as
quickly as possible, so we can cuddle." Interesting.
The flight home was uneventful, except for thunderstorms around
Denver. No one commented on the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus
sweatshirt I wore, although it is the most stunning shade of periwinkle
and studded with rhinestones.
That night, my own bed in my own apartment felt wonderfully
intimate, and the solitude seemed a luxury.