Red Ribbons
I love watching movies, and have probably about 200 DVDs. Tonight, I decided to watch one I haven’t seen for a while, so picked Philadelphia, for which Tom Hanks won an Oscar. If I saw it when it first came out, I’d forgotten it. I’ve seen lots of Hanks’ movies, and can’t think of a single one I didn’t love. About three-quarters of the way through, characters were wearing red ribbons on their chests. I’d forgotten that had been a thing back when AIDS was relatively new at killing people. I don’t recall if I’ve ever worn one.
Before AIDS was named and eventually understood, I’d been the office manager at a Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Atlanta. We employed mostly men, as the clientele were mostly women - “Coca-Cola widows” we called them - society women (Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta) whose wealthy husbands had died, but who had always loved to dance. For some reason, most of the instructors were gay men. Of the instructors, there was one straight couple, and two straight women (hardly any clients were male; thus the gender imbalance on staff).
Studio rules were that there should be no contact outside the studio between instructors and clients, but that was regularly violated. The women loved the attention, and the instructors loved whatever their students lavished upon them (after hours, under the table, of course). Who knows what kind of favors were exchanged?
Two of the instructors were a gay couple, Larry and Danny. Larry - a handsome blonde guy, was older than Danny, who seemed to me rather immature; maybe just inexperienced. Both were nice to work with. Larry came down with something that made him tired a lot, though he pushed himself to keep performing. This would have been in the late seventies. I’d moved on from the dance studio to working at Mercer University before I came to understand that Larry had contracted AIDS. Years later, I saw Danny perform at a ballroom competition, so I guess he somehow escaped the disease.
One of the perks of working at the dance studio was the schedule. The studio opened at noon every day, and we closed for “lunch” at 5pm. Atlanta was booming then; the “Watermelon 500” (I-285) at that point was only 2 lanes each way. So lunch at 5pm for us was happy hour for everybody else. At the restaurant next door, we’d get cheap margaritas and a free buffet. And we were pretty happy campers when we got back to the studio.
There are now probably 30 ribbon colors that denote support for various causes - the pink ribbon for breast cancer possibly the most well-known of those. Back when I was running the Media Literacy Discussion Group - showing documentaries at the Yancey Library in the summer months for two or three years - I showed one called Pink Ribbons, which exposed the lies and corruption behind some aspects of the Pink Ribbon (breast cancer) campaign. One that stood out to me was an oil-drilling company that painted its drills pink to show support - as if petroleum-producing was reducing cancers. “Think Pink” was unfortunately appropriated by the very corporations whose profits ignored their environmental effects on the human body. Ah, well…the price of Progress. It’s worth a watch; hopefully you could stream it. We didn’t have streaming back then…or if we did, nobody told me.
I’ve spent hours the past few days, sorting out old letters sent to me since about 1960. There were older letters - the first one I ever got being a rejection from the Post cereal company for a submission I’d sent when I was ten. I was absolutely thrilled! I EXISTED! Unfortunately, that oldest box was stolen by either my Ex or his daughter, a would-be writer who stayed with us one summer.
As my mother did a few years before she died, I have decided to give back to them all the letters people have sent me over the years. I really don’t know how I managed to save these hundreds of letters, considering that I have moved almost 20 times since I left home in 1970. When I bought the Burnsville house, the letters were all in a Rubbermaid tub in my shed. Then I sorted them by decades, and had them in labeled cardboard boxes, stashed in a cubby-hole above my wash machine. For 20 years! Now those boxes are lined up on tables in a square around my living room, and I’m sorting them by sibling and “Everyone Else”. Sibs who want them are getting theirs back at our upcoming reunion, and others - if they want theirs back - will get them later.
(Speaking of the word “upcoming” - I hope one of you can tell me who it was who said something along the lines of “the next person who uses the word ‘upcoming’ will be outgoing!” I’ve tried to avoid using it because of having heard that, but wish I could remember the source…I sort of think I’d heard it when working at the National Theatre.)
Several old letters I’ve come across were from a good friend in high school, Les Searing. Les was a year younger than me. We were both cast in “The Importance of Being Earnest” - the first play I was in. I was cast as Miss Prism, Les was cast as “Lord Bracknell” - a character referenced by Oscar Wilde, but who was not an onstage presence. Our director put Les as Lord Bracknell onstage in a wheelchair. At the end of the play, everyone who has secretly been in love with another character embraces them. So, Les was directed to leap from his wheelchair to embrace Lady Bracknell. (If you haven’t watched the film with Reese Witherspoon, do it. It’s fabulous.)
Anyway, because Les kissed someone onstage, his mother forbade him to appear in another show. And - bless his heart - he didn’t, BUT he saw a loophole there, and directed a couple of shows, including Funny Girl.
Nobody knew it, so nobody talked about it, but we did have gay guys in high school. Les was one of them. And he was a guy who died of AIDS before we knew it existed.
Today, I came across a letter he’d written to me when he was sick. On the back of the sealed envelope, he’d written, “Licked with contaminated spit!” with an arrow pointing to the flap.
There’s nobody to send that letter back to. I’m putting in the box labeled “Mom,Dad, and me” - the ones I’m keeping.
In other news, I’m naming the new foster beagle “Buffy” - which is No. 22 on the B list of female dog names. Man, she is the sniffingest of all the beagles I’ve had! I’ll definitely be walking more, but probably not getting my heart rate up. (While I was looking for a name - the shelter called her Betty, which means nothing to her - I saw that in the Top 100 female dog names, “Lucy” is No. 4. That does not surprise me.) I hated my name when I was a kid, as all the Lucys I knew were a hundred years old, it seemed. So I tried to get people to call me by my middle name (Meredith), but it didn’t work. Now that I’m a hunnert years old (or feel like it), I’m happy with Lucy. Most of the Lucys I know now ARE DOGS.
The last bit of newsy-ish stuff is that I found an intact black walnut shell with eight holes in it, obviously drilled from the inside out. I washed it, and am hoping to find someone who could maybe sand it smooth. Past that, I’m not sure what I’d do with it, but it’ll be gorgeous.
On that bizarre note, I’m off to bed.
xox
Lucy