by Brad Fraser
One of those nights I ended up at the Romans II spa, a multi-floored deluxe bathhouse on Bay Street south of College. I’d been wandering the halls in a towel long enough to have sobered up somewhat when I passed an elderly gentleman speaking quietly to a Black twink. It was clear from the gentleman’s tone that he was urgently begging the twink for sex.
The twink, who was obviously tempted, said, “I don’t think so. There’s something going around.”
The gentleman said, “What’s going around?”
The twink said, “A flu that causes cancer or something.”
I missed the rest of their conversation as I moved past them, but again I got that chill, that sense there was something huge, unfathomable and terrible lurking on the edge of our existence.
I left without tricking that night.
* * *
—
The Tarragon Playwrights Unit experience culminated with readings of some of our plays. Chainsaw Love had a public presentation. Urjo directed it. Reaction was definitely mixed. The whole zombie/cannibal thing really flew, but my overly sexualized philosophical themes didn’t. And again there was no real ending.
But when I applied to the Banff Playwrights Colony to work on the script, Urjo wrote me a letter of recommendation.
I was also finding it increasingly harder to work in a house that constantly had guests and other people circulating through it. I often came home to find food I’d bought the day before gone. I explained my predicament to Paul Reynolds and he offered me his bachelor apartment on Church Street. The unspoken agreement was that I would fuck him on those weekends he was in town from the Shaw Festival. He also gave me some cash from time to time. He wasn’t keeping me; we weren’t boyfriends—we were friends helping one another out with what each of us needed.
One of the rare guys I allowed to fuck me at that time gave me venereal warts. Treatment at the Hassle Free Clinic was uncomfortable and intrusive. I had to go once a week for three months, and from that point on any kind of receptive butt sex was mostly off the table as the inside of my anus was painted with a caustic wart remover.
Stories were appearing in The Body Politic about something called GRID—gay-related immune deficiency. Something was happening, and the community could feel it, but information was hard to come by, particularly in the mainstream press, where news about gay people tended to either belittle or condemn us. Canada banned poppers despite there being no proven connection.
I met with various artistic directors about town—and had a brief creative flirtation with Richard Rose and the Necessary Angel Theatre that ultimately went nowhere—and came away with the feeling that overtly sexual or queer material really wasn’t their thing. Only Clarke expressed genuine interest in my work, but none of his promises had come to fruition. I did obtain a short-term Canada Council grant for a rewrite of Chainsaw Love, so felt a bit more secure knowing that money would arrive in a few weeks.
Chainsaw Love caused consternation and delight at Banff. There were some great actors there and a number of exciting playwrights and directors, but all of them, and whatever work I did on the play, were secondary to finally meeting John Moffat.
John was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever met. He was of medium height and build, with dark hair and dark eyes that sparkled from across the room. His nose ended in an enticing ball and his smile was like that of someone who understood all your jokes. I was disappointed to discover he was there with his lover Larry Lillo, one of Canada’s most respected directors and a truly fascinating guy.
Day after day we worked and socialized together. John and I made frequent eye contact across the room, across the table. We played shuffleboard, drank, joked and got to know one another. I ached to feel his naked body next to mine.
At the end of the first week two of the older gay directors in the group announced they had to go to Calgary to see the openings of that week’s new movies and invited anyone who wanted to come along. I needed a distraction from my thwarted desire and counted myself in. John and Larry were considering it before Larry announced he couldn’t go. I prayed John would come anyway, but he declined.
Gloomily I got onto the bus with the directors, who sat together in front of me. As people boarded I glanced out the window and saw John standing in the line. He smiled at me. My heart fairly burst out of my chest as he came down the aisle and sat next to me.
I said, “I thought you weren’t coming.”
He said, “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”
“Where’s Larry?” I asked.
“Working with his playwright this weekend.”
The two older directors in front of us shared a knowing glance. I was filled with a kind of complete gladness as John and I chatted quietly, trading intimacies from our past, our knees touching lightly.
After checking into our hotel, John and me in one room, the directors in the other, we had dinner at a steak house and saw a forgettable movie. Later at the local gay bar, I shared two hits of acid I happened to have on me with John, and a few hours later we were flying high and sucking back beers, amusing one another no end. We didn’t notice when the directors left.
After the bar closed we staggered back to the hotel room, undressed in a dim light and slipped into our respective beds a bit uncomfortably. I was praying this wouldn’t be one of those situations where preamble never leads to a payoff. Then, just when I was certain that’s what it was, John pushed his covers away, pulled off his underwear and jumped into bed with me.
I can still feel the silkiness of his hair, smell his skin, his breath, our tongues exploring one another’s mouths, his cock pressed up against mine. Time stopped, space expanded, I eventually manoeuvred myself on top of him. He spread his legs and smiled up at me with that disarmingly open look in his eyes. “You like it on top?” I nodded. He spit into his thumb and three fingers and rubbed it on his asshole as I did the same to my dick. It was like having sex again for the first time. Everything was revelatory, important and pleasurable beyond understanding. We never really slept, we never really woke, and we never really separated that night. I lost count of the number of times we came.
The remainder of my stay was heightened by intense desire and frustration. I craved him every moment of every day but barely got to see him alone. We snatched an afternoon quickie one day when he was supposed to have been at the gym, so brief it was frustrating.
The final night there was a huge party at the house a bunch of people were staying in, and John and I got stupid drunk, necking and carrying on in the kitchen, scandalizing everyone present as Larry was drinking with friends in the next room. The entire thing culminated with me fucking him standing up in the middle of Tunnel Mountain Road under a black sky full of powdered stars.
I returned to Toronto broke and “deeply” in love with John, certain our lives would bring us together soon.
The fiscal situation was a nightmare. My old waiting job was no longer open. I hit the streets, dropping off resumés and filling out applications after trudging around downtown Toronto in punishing heat and humidity. I applied at all the gay bars and the better restaurants and got nothing. In Toronto, there were plenty of people with nicer teeth for these positions.
Money was rationed for food and transit. I had nothing for the bars or beer. I spent my time drawing an audition story for Marvel Comics, further developing Chainsaw Love and making notes and doing research for a play that combined Arthurian legend with video game conventions and eventually became Young Art. I was always at my most productive when I was broke. I made phone calls to Clarke, Urjo and everyone else I knew looking for ways to make money. Paul Reynolds, who was usually good for a loan, was at his busiest at the festival and unavailable. I hocked my prized Smith-Corona electric typewriter for fifteen dollars, which got me through another week. When I called the Canada Council to see what had happened to my grant I was informed there’d been
an administrative snafu and it would be arriving in a few more weeks.
Through all of this I’d been cleaving desperately to my dream of a life with John Moffat. Everything I wrote somehow related to him. I sent him mix tapes with me speaking between songs and called him long-distance late at night when I was drunk. He was amused, then civil, then leaving town for a while and wouldn’t be available.
A few weeks later Paul Reynolds came to town and took me to dinner. He seemed oddly subdued. As we got into bed he said, “I met your John Moffat.”
I was instantly wary, and I could tell Paul wanted me to be. As he turned his back on me, something he never did, he said, “At the Stratford opening. He’s very friendly.”
In that moment he made it clear that he’d fucked John and that I must understand he was not telling me from any kind of malice. He knew I’d been running my mouth about my and John’s great love and he wanted me to know the truth. Although I hated him intensely for a long moment I knew he was right. My heart was shattered. I was grateful Paul didn’t try to touch me that night.
He was very gentle with me in the morning and left me enough money for food and smokes before leaving for Niagara-on-the-Lake.
When the misdirected Canada Council money finally arrived, I already owed half of it to people who’d helped me out. But at least now a couple of beers and some music in a bar were within my reach.
In late August, Clarke called me to say Passe Muraille had managed to get a residency grant for me for the upcoming six months and that they’d be doing Wolfboy in the spring. It was amazing news—the residency money wouldn’t entirely support me but it would really help, and there was a small guarantee for the production as well. I found a waiter job that was a step up from the pizza place. My friend Leslie, whom I’d known since PA and who’d moved to Toronto around the same time, decided we should be roommates and we were looking at apartments. Paul Reynolds had found himself a boyfriend so I knew my time was limited at his place. Things were looking up.
* * *
—
New Year’s Eve I went to a party. It was a total theatre crowd and decidedly unsexy, so I had a couple of drinks then ghosted, arriving at Chaps, which was the hot new bar, shortly before midnight.
As the countdown to midnight started I ducked into the bathroom to avoid being grabbed, groped and kissed by people I didn’t know, which always happened at midnight on New Year’s Eve in gay bars. The count hit one; there was a loud horn and the sound of strangers kissing one another. As I looked at my reflection in the mirror one of the stall doors behind me opened and a vision walked out.
Uncharacteristically, I smiled at him. He smiled back. I said, “Were you hiding from the countdown?”
He nodded, his smile growing wider, revealing slightly irregular but gleaming white teeth. He had determinedly moussed brown hair, a heavy brow, a prominent jaw and beard line. He was a good six inches shorter than me but immensely muscular, with shoulders and a chest that seemed to fill the room. He said, “I don’t like strangers grabbing me.”
I nodded in recognition and offered to buy him a beer. He accepted. We introduced ourselves. His name was Daniel. I had seen him around before and never for a moment thought he’d be attracted to me. Turns out I was wrong. 1984 was beginning in a very promising manner.
After five dates over two weeks we were in love.
Daniel was hot. He was also weird. He had thick, curly hair that he hated—and would spend hours slicking it down with a ton of product until it was as stiff as cardboard—but was reluctant to have it cut. He told me he was estranged from his wealthy Jewish parents (not an unusual scenario in the queer world), and he lived with a roommate I never met, even though I’d been to the one-bedroom apartment they shared (also not unusual). Daniel slept on a pullout couch in the living room.
Daniel was vague about what he did and didn’t seem to work much, and when we went out I always paid—which he got away with for about a month before I finally got tired of it and demanded to know what was going on. He had a part-time job helping out some designer friends, but not a lot of money. He claimed he’d be just as happy if we stayed home and spent no money, and so we started to do a lot of that.
Meanwhile, we were auditioning actors for the upcoming Wolfboy production. Clarke had hired John Palmer, who had once been something of an early bad boy on the scene; gay, out, tortured, John had written a number of interesting plays and talked a good talk but seemed indecisive to me.
Every hot up-and-coming actor in Toronto was vying to play Bernie or David. They included Scott Thompson, who would go on to fame with the brilliant sketch-comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, and Kiefer Sutherland, whose reading I barely remember but whose mother, Shirley Douglas (daughter of the father of Canadian universal healthcare, Tommy Douglas), played Dr. Sherrot in the character’s final appearance, as she would be excised in the published version.
I hung around to express my opinion on the auditions but in the end left the decisions to John. It was his production, and I felt it was important for me to stay as far away as possible so I didn’t start trying to take control. The play was going on as written; there’d be no revisions.
In the end Keanu Reeves and Carl Marotte were cast as Bernie and David respectively. Joanne Vannicola, an intense young actress whose audition had blown both Clarke and me away, was cast as Annie; Beverley Cooper, who’d been in Rude Noises, was cast as Cherry; and Bob Collins, from the very first reading two years earlier, returned as the father.
With the new boyfriend, the waitering shifts and the press I was doing for the show, I had plenty to keep me busy. Leslie and I found a tiny two-bedroom condo in a high-rise on Homewood Avenue.
I was growing disturbed by Daniel’s controlling and manipulative behaviour. Although he rarely slept over, we were together nearly every night and he was constantly questioning me about what was going on in rehearsal, even though he knew nothing about the process. “You know this could make you famous, right?” he’d say. “What if someone wants to make it into a movie? That could mean a lot of money.” I’d shake my head and tell him it didn’t really work like that. He wanted to know how much I’d made in tips each night, and berated me for the money I spent on cigarettes, comic books and beer. I came to feel that he resented the attention I was getting on the rare nights we went out, now that my picture was appearing in the papers here and there. I wasn’t stupid enough to give him any of my money, and I’d grown up with two controlling, manipulative personalities working me so I wasn’t unaware of that either, but he was so fucking hot and I so wanted the relationship to work that I let these things slide, blinded by his continent-sized chest and distracted by everything I was juggling.
In addition to all of this I was writing a story for The Body Politic about the history of gays in comics. This meant trips to the main reference library, which yielded very little, as most people at that time could barely summon a glimmer of interest for either gays or comics, and working my way through my own collection, which I’d dedicatedly carried around with me. Gerald Hannon, the gay writer, historian, rebel, curator, archivist, teacher and sex worker who has been an inspiration to me for forty years now, was my editor and patiently worked his way through my overwritten draft.
Writing this story was important to me. Growing up, I’d felt like the only gay comic fan in the world. I’d been picking up issues of Gay Comix, an anthology of queer work that was published sporadically in those days, and through it learned there were many other gay fans out there. The story I wrote for TBP was my reaching out to them.
Two days before Leslie and I were to move into our new apartment, Daniel announced he would like to move in with us. I was torn, as I had no idea how Leslie would react, and a bit thrilled because I’d never lived with a boyfriend before. Daniel said his relationship with his roommate had become unbearable, that they’d had a huge fight and he had been given his walking papers. I sa
id we could do it if he found a job. He promised he would. Leslie balked, but I bullied her into agreeing, and two days later we were picking up Daniel’s things in a van and adding them to ours before we all moved into our new home.
The move had been long and exhausting. Leslie and I were surprised and frankly a bit thrilled by the quality of the furnishings and decorations that had come with Daniel. They were all far better than the stuff we could afford.
The last of the boxes had been dragged up to the apartment and we’d just ordered pizza when the intercom rang from the lobby. The voice on the other end announced that it was the Toronto police and they were looking for a Daniel Grable and demanded to be let in. Moments later two cops, one male, one female, arrived at the door with a “friend” of Daniel’s I’d met briefly a couple of times.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The male cop said, “We have a complaint that Daniel has stolen a number of items from his partner.” I stared at Daniel in shock.
Daniel said, “I only took what was mine.”
The briefly-met friend said, “Blaine sent me to get his stuff.”
The female cop said, “We can return the disputed items to the last apartment or we can charge you with theft. You choose.”
Daniel’s face turned red and he looked like he could kill. Then he said, “I’ll take everything down to the truck and return it to the apartment.” Leslie and I helped him carry most of what he’d brought back to the elevator, but we didn’t descend with him to transfer it back to the rental truck. We were both freaked out. What had we just been party to?
Daniel was apologetic and charming the next morning. Unfortunately the tale he spun about a misunderstanding between him and his “roommate” about the furniture they’d bought together was unconvincing. I let it drop, though, because he’d finally gotten a job, as a busboy at Katrina’s, and promised me he was trying to change his life, and because I was thinking with my dick and wanted a committed, monogamous relationship.
