Two Birds, One Feather: The Lives and Times of Lorewyn & Rhianyn in America

by C. J. Pearson

  “I think it’s something we should definitely keep thinking and talking about,” Rhianyn said. “But yes, I do think it’s something that we will need to do at some point.”

  “We’ll do it together,” Lorewyn added, taking her wife’s hand. “When we’re both ready.” And they focused their attention on enjoying the concert… which Lorewyn admitted afterward was quite amazing indeed!

  ***

  President Richard Nixon resigned office on August 9, 1974. It was a Friday. The following Monday afternoon, Rhianyn was called in for a meeting with the KBRD station executives and a few of the other personnel.

  “We’re selling the station,” the general manager explained. “Financially, things haven’t been going well the past couple years, and the Top 40 market is changing. We’re just not prepared to make the kind of changes necessary to stay competitive. Our buyer has stated that they want to make KBRD a news and talk radio format. Most of our DJ’s and staff are being let go. However, Julia, they’ve also made it clear that they want to keep you here at the station. You are strongly identified with KBRD, and they recognize that. They see an advantage in letting you stay.”

  “And… what would they like me to do?” Rhianyn asked, having seen this coming for a while. “Read the news? Host a talk show?”

  “No, they have their own personalities lined up for that,” the manager replied. “They’re offering you a promotion… Director of Programming. It’s a step up in the radio business for sure, and a raise in salary. The change-over happens August 31st. You’ve got your show here until Friday the 30th. The new management will want to meet with you before then and speak with you, I’m sure.”

  Rhianyn talked with Lorewyn about it that night. “It’s a salary jump,” she stated. “And a step up the ladder for sure. I don’t know… directing news and talk show programming. What do you think, Yellowfeather? A lot of the rock DJ’s are moving to the FM stations now. I could try to get a job on one of those perhaps.”

  “It doesn’t sound like programming in news format is something you’re really interested in,” Lorewyn observed.

  “I’m not,” Rhianyn admitted. “It would likely just be a job… a paycheck. Not something my heart is into. I could do that, I guess, but…”

  Lorewyn moved in closer, putting her arms around her wife. “Do you remember when I lost my job at the Graphic in New York, but started helping at the Mission? Do you remember what you said?”

  Rhianyn smiled, accepting her embrace. “Of course I remember. How could I forget? I said that you were glowing.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Lorewyn affirmed. “And now it’s my turn to say the same thing to you. You glowed as the Rockin’ Raven. You loved it. You got to put your heart and soul into it… you got to put you into it. These past eight years with you being on KBRD doing what you love have been some of the happiest for me, because I’ve been able to see you happy. I know, we’ve talked about this before, how what we do for work doesn’t necessarily define who we are… but who we are can most definitely affect our work and our happiness in what we do!”

  Rhianyn’s brow furrowed for a moment, unraveling Lorewyn’s last sentence. She finally offered a laugh and kissed her.

  “You know what I’d say if Tristyn Caelbryn were here right now?”

  Lorewyn laughed in return. “Probably something along the lines of… does she always talk like that?”

  “Eh… I’ll get used to it,” Rhianyn smiled in reply.

  Rhianyn delivered her last show as the Rockin’ Raven at KBRD on Friday, August 30, 1974, wrapping up her tenure with the song Beach Baby by First Class. At twelve noon, she said farewell to her listeners, the station personnel and management, and left the building. She did not accept the promotion under new ownership.

  The very next day, Alan Madison retired. Lorewyn and Reggie threw a farewell party for him. Rhianyn attended, of course, as well as Alan’s daughter Nancy and her husband Ken. Nancy was pregnant.

  “So… what are your plans now… Daddy-O?” Lorewyn asked with a grin.

  “Palm Springs,” Alan replied. “I’ve got a place ready there. Nancy and Ken live close by. I’m going to be a grandad. Days playing golf. Time spent by the pool. Who knows? I might run into Nancy Kovack.”

  “Or Nancy Sinatra!” Lorewyn added, laughing.

  “Maybe both… if I’m lucky.” He offered her a wink. Alan motioned her over to the other side of the room. He pointed to her desk. “I got you something… something to remember me by, before I leave.”

  Lorewyn looked over at her desk but saw nothing unusual. Alan gestured further. “On the other side… you’ll see.”

  She walked over behind her desk. On the floor, sitting by her chair, was a large box, wrapped with colorful paper and tied with ribbons and bows. Lorewyn just let out a laugh at first, then nearly choked with emotion at its significance.

  There was a sudden flash. On cue, Reggie had snapped a photo of Lorewyn picking up the box and setting it on her desk.

  “No expectation of privacy, remember?” Alan stated, handing her the polaroid as it was coming into focus. Lorewyn was wiping a tear from her eye.

  “Well, you better open it!” Rhianyn exclaimed.

  Lorewyn just chuckled a bit. “Wait, Alan, this is supposed to be your retirement party. Why am I getting presents?”

  “Consider it my final act on behalf of this firm,” Alan said.

  “And a passing of the baton to the new senior partner,” Reggie added.

  Lorewyn accepted those responses and went to work opening the present. Inside the box was a plush animal toy, fairly good-sized, and obviously custom-made.

  It was a shark standing on a surfboard.

  With the plush toy was a card. It read: “Keep surfin’ through every case, just like you’ve done since day one. I’ll miss you! Alan.”

  Lorewyn just held the “surfing shark” for a moment in silence, then put it down on the desk, hugging Alan a moment later. She still had tears in her eyes.

  “I’ll miss you too, Old Man,” she whispered. Then, she pulled away, seeming to lose the teary-ness some and gave a playful slap on his arm. “At least you finally quit smoking before you retired!”

  “Nancy didn’t give me a choice,” Alan admitted.

  “That’s right,” Nancy broke in. “I said no smoking around the baby when he… or she… is born. Dad quit cold turkey.”

  “Coldest damn turkey in the arctic, let me tell you,” Alan laughed.

  CHAPTER 24

  Lorewyn noticed Rhianyn looking through the job listings in the newspaper one morning not long after Alan’s retirement party. She sat down next to her.

  “I have an idea, Blackbird… if you’re interested.”

  Rhianyn set down the paper and looked at her wife. “Shoot,” she said.

  “Well, with Alan now retired, Reggie and I can use some help,” Lorewyn offered. “The past couple years, Alan wasn’t in the field mostly, instead running the administrative side of things. Reggie and I are now having to pick up that slack, and it’s compromising our time doing the actual investigative work. We were about to post an ad, looking to hire an administrative assistant, publicist, and so on… but…” She gave Rhianyn a suggestive look.

  Rhianyn chuckled lightly. “Uh huh… you want me to be your secretary?”

  Lorewyn just shook her head, handing her the cup of tea she had just made for her. “No… I’m asking you to come work with me. I said it once before… I miss having adventures with you. I miss the day to day life of action with my favorite partner in crime. True, I love being your domestic partner, but… you know what I’m saying, right?”

  Rhianyn smiled, taking the tea. “Of course I do. You’re saying you want me to be your secretary.”

  Lorewyn scoffed amusedly. Rhianyn put the cup down and took Lorewyn’s hands in her own. “You’re saying that you miss us blowing shit up together.”

  “Exactly!” Lorewyn embraced her, laughing. “Seriously… come work for Madiso
n, McKinley, and Moore. Blow shit up with me once in a while!”

  And so, in the Fall of 1974, Julia Bancroft joined the firm, only dealing with the “oh my God, you’re the Rockin’ Raven!” when someone recognized her voice occasionally. In those few cases, Rhianyn would sometimes reply with something like, “I hung up my wings a while ago.”

  There was a question about the firm’s name and sign.

  “With Alan no longer with us,” Reggie asked, “do we drop the ‘Madison’ part? Go with McKinley & Moore? Or add Julia’s name and make it McKinley, Bancroft, and Moore? It’s gonna sound like a law firm no matter what… still.”

  But Lorewyn was adamant. “Alan started all this. None of us would be here if it weren’t for him. The ‘Madison’ stays, no matter what.”

  And stay it did… even after Lorewyn and Rhianyn’s tenure as Theresa McKinley and Julia Bancroft had ended and they had moved on to new lives and identities.

  In 1976, the firm got a case involving LGBT youth who were leaving homes with parents who weren’t supportive of their orientation or identity. It was a commune of sorts, a secret community started by rejected gay and lesbian youth, kicked out of their houses or bullied because of who they were. They reached out to other young people who were experiencing the same thing and gave them a place to come and live. The community was located up around Big Bear Lake. Lorewyn first got wind of the case from a group of parents who seemed to suddenly become concerned about their kids who they rejected when those kids disappeared.

  “I don’t understand that part,” Rhianyn had observed. “If a parent hates their kid, which must be the case if they can’t accept them for who they are, then why are those parents now upset and crying over their kids going missing? Seems like the parents got their wish. They don’t have to worry about them and their ‘sinful’ lifestyle or whatever.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Reggie explained, who by this time was married and had children of his own. “As a parent myself, I get it. I mean, I love my kids, and if one of them was gay, I’d still love them and accept them, because they’re my kids. But I go to church. I know the mindset. These parents don’t look at things like sexual orientation as part of who their kids are. They look at it as a deviant lifestyle, some wrong behavior or choice that needs to be fixed. To them, it’s like their kid was caught shoplifting. They don’t want their kid to go to jail for that or run away from home. They want the shoplifting to stop, for them to not do it again, and to be their ‘good kid’ again. The parents just gotta understand that it’s not like shoplifting… it’s part of who their kids are, and that ain’t gonna change, regardless of your own opinions on being gay.”

  So, Madison, McKinley, and Moore took the case. After about a month of investigating, Lorewyn tracked down the location of the community. For those involved who were 18 and over, college students mostly, there was no legal compulsion to get them to leave… and Lorewyn respected that. For those who were under 18, however, there were the legalities of being runaways. But Lorewyn made a proposal.

  “I was hired as a P.I. to find the community so that your parents could get you back home,” she explained. “That was my initial job here. But I want to help you… and I want to help your parents too. I can go back and report my findings, and you’ll have parents driving up here, probably with the police, to claim you… and you’ll have to make a choice, to return home or run even more. Or… you can let me try to help. Let me arrange a sit down between you and your parents. Let’s get some people, professionals, to talk with you, mediate, help you be heard, help everyone listen. Let’s try to find a way to work this out, to help your parents better understand you.”

  She was able to convince the kids and parents to participate in the sit down. It didn’t solve everything, but it helped with several families, and became a driving force in helping to start the Los Angeles chapter of PFLAG later that year with 30 founding parent members. Both Lorewyn and Rhianyn joined and were involved.

  Two years later, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay elected official in California history when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was assassinated, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, 10 months after taking office. Rhianyn brought up the topic with Lorewyn in late January of 1979.

  “I’m ready, Yellowfeather,” she simply said. “The case involving the kids up at Big Bear a while back, now Milk’s death… you were right… when you talked about coming out a few years ago. This is something we need to do.”

  Lorewyn was ecstatic, but rather than call Reggie on the spot, waited until the following morning in the office when both she and Rhianyn pulled him aside.

  “There’s something we need to talk to you about,” she explained.

  Reggie listened, then just grinned. “Well, it’s about time!”

  “You already knew, didn’t you?” Rhianyn sighed.

  “A lot of people do,” Reggie laughed. “You two are discreet, I’ll admit… in a classy way, for sure… but anyone who spends five minutes around you both can’t help but pick up your vibe. You two radiate as soulmates. I knew it the night we met in Watts, years ago. There was just too much else going on to think about it!”

  “Wait… just how many people know?” Lorewyn asked, surprised.

  “A bunch,” Reggie answered. “I’ve had several clients tell me how they think you two are such a nice couple. Don’t be so surprised! It ain’t the ‘50’s anymore… people are starting to come around, little by little.”

  “I guess the next step is legalizing same-sex marriage,” Rhianyn suggested.

  “That’s probably going to take a few more people coming around!” Lorewyn said.

  Lorewyn and Rhianyn got on the phone later that week to call Alan in Palm Springs to give him their official “coming out” news, although it was clear based on the conversation he had with Lorewyn a few years earlier that he already knew. Still…

  They were surprised when Nancy answered the phone instead. They were further shocked to learn that Alan had just died the day before. Cancer.

  “Dad made me promise not to tell you that he was dying,” Nancy explained, sobbing on the phone. “They found the cancer four years ago, not long after he retired. He had quit smoking, you know, but… he had smoked for so long. He didn’t want you to know. He didn’t want you to worry. He didn’t want you to see him on… on a respirator…” She paused, taking a weeping breath before continuing. “He wanted you to remember him the way he was. I’m so sorry, Theresa… I wanted to tell you.”

  “That was Alan,” Lorewyn whispered, fighting back her own tears.

  She thanked Nancy, then ended the call, finding comfort in Rhianyn’s arms a moment later. Eventually all things come to an end… the words she wrote to Arcadia in a letter ages ago echoing in her mind but offering no solace.

  “Gallindyn…” she spoke softly as Rhianyn held her. “Father… Max… Alan…”

  She paused in her list and looked up at her wife. “Blackbird, please promise me… please promise that no matter how the end comes for us, if it comes like it did for these good men in my life, please don’t keep it from me. Please let me go into the darkness of the sea of eternity with you with my eyes open, knowing the end is near, that the rapids are indeed quickly climaxing into the plunging falls… so that I’ll be able to share my final moments with you in truth, without fear. Please promise me that.”

  ***

  Lorewyn waited as Rhianyn perused over the pamphlet that she had handed her. Rhianyn scanned it, read a couple parts of it again, then handed it back to Lorewyn, a look of uncertainty in her steel grey eyes.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “Is this a case? Did we get a call from them?”

  “Ugh… no, silly,” Lorewyn exclaimed. “Take a closer look. It’s a convention! A Science Fiction convention… right here in Los Angeles, at the Ambassador Hotel! It’s not a case… it’s something we can go to together!”

  Rhianyn was still not fully getting it. �
�I wasn’t aware you were writing again,” she stated. “I thought Beneath the Surface was the last Science Fiction story you…”

  “Blackbird, this isn’t a writer’s convention,” Lorewyn clarified. “Although I’m sure a few people in attendance will be Science Fiction and Fantasy writers. No, this is for anyone… fans! It’s a chance to mingle with other fans, see new and interesting things related to the world of fandom, buy and sell merchandise, meet guest celebrities, hear people talk about their experiences… it’s a fun opportunity!”

  “Okay, but… we’re not really Science Fiction fans, are we?” Rhianyn considered. “I mean, we liked the Star Wars movies, yes. I recall thinking that Logan’s Run was quite good when we saw that a few years ago… You got me watching the Twilight Zone for a while back in the early ‘60’s, remember? But I wouldn’t go so far as to think that we’re a couple of fans.”

  Lorewyn took a seat next to her on the couch. “My love, you’re missing the big picture here.” She pointed to a section of the pamphlet that dealt with cosplay, dressing up, and costume contests. “Think about it… three days at a place, in public, with tons of people around, being able to dress up as aliens, or anything fantastical and otherworldly… and other people around us doing the same… everyone thinking it’s completely normal.” She took her finger and brushed it past one of her ears, points visible being that they were home by themselves, then with the same finger caressed the pointed tip of one of Rhianyn’s ears as well.

  A slow mischievous grin began to spread over Rhianyn’s lips as she saw the light. She took the hand that Lorewyn was using to caress her ear and kissed it.

  “You are truly the most ingenious S’trysthyl imaginable!” she exclaimed, breaking into a laugh and hugging Lorewyn a moment later.

  The convention was scheduled for May 25-27, 1985… only a month away! Lorewyn and Rhianyn got their tickets… and had some research to do.

  “Vulcans or Romulans?” Lorewyn asked. “They both have the ears.”