“And it’s my club. Besides, we’re not just talking about the Quarter. We’re talking about the country, Rae. Middle America. White-bread heterosexuals. Two talent agents and a scout for Arista Records are coming to hear you on Friday night. You’re going national, and I’d bet my ass you’re going to be big. This is your chance. I suggest you think long and hard about whether you really want a future as a singer.”
“SO,” NOEL SAID over dinner that night, “the bottom line is, your boss wants you to hide who you are. Who we are.”
Vividly Rae recalled—though it had been ten years ago—the scene on the quad at college, when furious protesters had carried signs reading God Hates Dikes and Fagots and chanted, “Fire the queers, fire the queers.” She would never forget her last conversation with Dr. Gottlieb, who had been both mentor and father to her. The angry words they had exchanged still burned in her memory, the expression on his face when he told her “You do not understand the ways of the world.”
Perhaps he was right. For a long time—five years before Noel, and five incredible years with her—Rae Dawn had lived in the insular bubble of the French Quarter, a universe unto itself where the unusual was commonplace. Even during the Civil Rights Movement, when people were being attacked by police dogs and set on with fire hoses, interracial couples in the Quarter barely merited the lift of an eyebrow. Gay Mardi Gras krewes had been taking part in the Carnival celebrations since the late fifties and early sixties. New Orleans was a progressive Mecca surrounded on all sides by the battlements of conservatism.
Now Rae Dawn’s career was about to break out, but apparently that meant catering to a less liberal fan base. As Chase had put it, nobody wanted to be confronted with the truth that their favorite sexy torch singer was “belting out love songs to another woman.”
Still, there were always compromises to be made. For anyone in the entertainment business, a larger public meant less privacy. It was part of the price you paid for success.
Rae just hoped the price wouldn’t be too high.
Noel reached out and took her hand. “Is this what you want?” she asked. “Record deals, tours, national exposure?”
Exposure. The word sliced across Rae’s nerves like a scalpel. The truth was, she was afraid of failure but equally terrified of success. What if she took the risk and couldn’t make it in the big leagues? What if she did make it, and it changed her life forever?
“I don’t know what I want,” Rae said. “This is the chance I’ve worked for all my life, but—”
“Then let’s just take it one step at a time,” Noel said. “Meet the agents. Sing for the scout. We’ll see what happens from there.”
WHAT HAPPENED FROM THERE Rae Dawn didn’t like to think about.
An agent by the name of William Tyce. A contract from Arista Records. An album, entitled simply Dawn, with a corresponding name change to Dawn DuChante and a sultry close-up of Rae’s “new look.” Interminable months on the road in a tour bus, opening for Aretha Franklin and other stars of the Arista firmament.
The first year Rae thought she’d go crazy. She missed home, missed Noel. Static, furtive conversations on the telephone didn’t begin to make up for long talks on a rainy afternoon or cuddling on the couch on Saturday morning.
And the worst of it, in Rae Dawn’s mind, was the fact that she couldn’t tell anyone. All the musicians on the tour complained openly about the difficulty of separation. They filled the empty hours with conversations about their husbands and wives and lovers. They all raced for the telephones whenever the bus stopped and never gave a second thought to being overheard saying “I love you.”
Everyone had left someone behind to chase the dream; it was the common bond that held them together. All of them except Rae Dawn.
“You’re lucky, girl,” one of Aretha’s backup singers once told her. “It’s easier when you’re single with nobody to worry ’bout but yourself.” And always the assumption, always the assurance: “Focus on the music, baby. Time enough for love later on. You’ll have your pick of men.”
They all called her Dawn. They didn’t even know her name.
The second year, two days before Christmas, Rae came home and fell exhausted and weeping into Noel’s arms, ready to give it all up.
The third year, a call came from her agent, Will Tyce.
“The album’s finally making its way up the charts,” Tyce told her excitedly, as if presenting her with some magnificent gift. “Slowly, but it’s getting enough attention that Arista wants another one as soon as you can get to New York to record it. We’re going to book concerts all across the country to promote it. And we’re sending down a photographer for some new publicity shots. This is it, Dawn. You’re an overnight success.”
An “overnight success” that took years to achieve.
And so it continued—another two years of painful separation and silence. Concert audiences loved her. For a while the album sales held their peak, and money poured in like water. But money couldn’t stop the drift. Money couldn’t fill the awkward pauses during those late-night calls when both of them were too exhausted to talk. Money couldn’t buy back what they seemed to be losing.
On the telephone from Boston, Rae negotiated a deal with
Chase Coulter to buy out Maison Dauphine, which included the large apartment upstairs. On the telephone from Minneapolis, she and Noel decided what furniture to take to the new place and what they should buy. On the telephone from Seattle, she listened helplessly while Noel cried. On the telephone from Dallas, Rae cried while Noel listened.
And then the final straw: a Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. “Okay, here’s the plan,” Will Tyce said, taking charge as usual. “We’ll get you a fabulous dress— black sequins, low cut in front. A great diamond necklace, the works. I’ll take care of everything. February 26, in L.A. And you’ll be going with—”
“Hold it,” Rae Dawn said. “I’m taking Noel.”
“No, you’re not.”
Rae’s breath came in shallow gasps. “Will, this is what I’ve worked for, what Noel and I have both sacrificed for. She deserves to be there.”
“Right. I’ll get her a seat in the balcony. But you will not appear in public with her. Understood?”
Rae Dawn caved. Noel stayed home. And then, on the red carpet going in for the awards show, the unthinkable happened. Rae’s escort—Arista’s newest discovery, a handsome, arrogant jerk by the name of Brian Hearn—pulled her into a hip-crushing embrace, french-kissed her, and announced their engagement to the crowd. Brian, almost ten years younger than Rae, was a flaming queen who put on a macho act for the fans. Now he swaggered at her side, half-drunk already, and leered at her while one hand groped her butt.
Rae didn’t win the Grammy, but the pictures, predictably, made the next day’s papers. The tongue-thrust, the ass-fondling, all of it. National television. Entertainment Tonight. Front page of the tabloids.
The flight from Los Angeles to New Orleans was the longest of Rae Dawn’s life. When she arrived, Noel was already packed.
“I can’t take this anymore,” she said, choking back tears. “The travel, the separation, the deception.” She threw one of the tabloids down on the coffee table and pointed at the photo of Rae being groped by Brian Hearn. “You kissed him!”
“I didn’t kiss him. He kissed me.” Rae Dawn knew, even as she said it, that it sounded like a blatant rationalization. “Besides, we both know he’s gay.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Noel said. “All of this makes me feel—” She groped for words. “Cheap. Invalidated. Either I’m your partner, or I’m not. I didn’t sign on for a part-time marriage. Or a secret one.”
Noel let her gaze drift around the spacious apartment above the club, and Rae’s eyes followed. The place was beautiful, but it didn’t feel like home. Rae Dawn hadn’t been here often enough to make it home.
They should have stood together on the balcony looking out toward the cathedral, watching the morning m
ist rise off the river. They should have eaten breakfast on the terrace overlooking the back garden. They should have built a fire and made popcorn and snuggled up to watch old movies on a rainy winter’s night. They should have had a dog.
“I’ll quit,” Rae said as desperation and misery welled up in her. “I’ll quit it all—the touring, the appearances, the record deals. We’ve still got Maison Dauphine.”
“You’ve got Maison Dauphine,” Noel corrected. “I’ve got a job waiting back at the hospital in Picayune.”
“Please,” Rae said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Noel whispered. “I’ll always love you.”
Then she was gone. A week before Carnival. A week before their tenth anniversary.
NEW Orleans
SEPTEMBER 1994
Rae got up from the piano and went to the front balcony. Through the windows of Mrs. B’s apartment, she could see that the old woman had fallen asleep, her chair rocking a little and her head lolling to one side. Dreaming, no doubt, of her Robert, of the half-century of love they had shared together. Of the children she had borne and lost—one to a car wreck and one to breast cancer.
How sad it is, Rae thought, to outlive everyone you’ve loved….
Her mind lurched from Mrs. B’s life to her own, to the people she had loved and lost. Her mother, whom she’d never really had the chance to know before the heart attack took her. Dr. Gottlieb, who had been both mentor and surrogate father until the issue of her sexual orientation had divided them. And Noel Ridley, not dead, but vanished from her life for nearly ten years.
She had friends, she supposed. Nate the bartender, Chuck Coulter the general manager of Maison Dauphine. Some of the younger musicians who took the stage and sang to the crowds downstairs, and then moved on as their careers shifted into high gear or fizzled out from lack of talent. But they all had families—or, in the case of the performers, an obsession for success that obscured everything else. They cared about Rae, they liked her, but with none of them did she really belong.
All she had now was the club. The insane schedule of tours and concerts and recording contracts was long since behind her. There had been no third album, no more tours or Grammy nominations. The few people who remembered Dawn DuChante thought of her as something of a legend, which in the music business translated to has-been.
But Rae Dawn didn’t really care. Other artists now performed her songs, making her a quiet, behind-the-scenes success. Money would never be an issue—the profits from Maison Dauphine and residuals from her own albums and copyrights would be sufficient to keep Rae and a small country afloat for decades to come. What mattered to her—what depressed her whenever she allowed herself to think about it—was that she was forty-seven years old and alone.
Even after all these years, precious few artists took the risk to come out. A handful of singers. A few actors here and there. Most, Rae Dawn suspected, got shoved into the mold, coerced into masquerading as straight or losing all hope of a career.
She wandered over to the stereo and picked out an album by a little known but magnificently talented young blues singer, Suede, then loaded the disc and sank down on the sofa.
Suede was singing “No Regrets,” but Rae had plenty of them. She regretted not having the backbone to stand up to her agent, her studio, to the music industry itself. She regretted the pretense, the deception, the tidal wave of expectation that had swept her and Noel apart. But most of all, she regretted her own lapse of character. She should have been stronger, more determined, more honest.
She had started out that way, with Gottlieb, anyway. She had tried to explain to him that being gay was not a choice, any more than you choose to be blue-eyed or left-handed. You could learn to walk in heels; you could wear contacts; you could train yourself to be ambidextrous, but you couldn’t alter what you were born with.
All you could do was accept it and live into it with integrity.
It was a commendable theory. But it had taken Rae Dawn a long time to get there.
And the turning point, oddly enough, had come through Gottlieb himself.
Rae Dawn walked back to the baby grand piano in the front window and touched its yellowed ivory keys. Dr. Gottlieb s piano, that familiar, battered old instrument with the glorious voice. He had willed it to her when he died. One sunny September afternoon in 1988 it had arrived in a truck, accompanied by two moving men and a sealed letter from the executor of his will.
With shaking hands she opened a small carved box to one side of the piano, smoothed out the letter, and read it for the hundredth time:
Dear Rae Dawn,
This letter comes too late, even though I have written it a thousand times already in my mind. I always hoped that, before I died, I would have the opportunity to see you again and ask your forgiveness face to face. But that is not to be. I have waited too long.
Over the years I have followed your musical career with the pride of a father whose gifts have been handed down to his daughter. Still, I have let my stubbornness and arrogance get in the way of accepting you and loving you for who you are. Forgive me if you can. I wanted you to be different. I wanted you to be like me.
Now, too late I fear, I see that you are exactly like me. You refuse to give in, refuse to be broken. Refuse to give heed to the voices of prejudice and bigotry—even mine.
When I told you that I would fling myself before the Nazi rifles or go to the ovens to protect you, I imagined myself to be noble and self-sacrificing. I did not want to believe myself to be like my captors, those evil, arrogant men who sought to purge the world of diversity. But the end of one’s life brings a terrible clarity of vision, a merciless mirror that forces us to see ourselves as we are, not as we wish to be.
I thought I had learned the lessons of captivity, the stripping away of all that is unimportant to bring us to the essential truths of life. But one essen-tial truth I never faced: Love comes to us as a gift and must be honored and received with grace.
I trust that by now you have found someone to share your life with. Love her, and keep on loving. Let nothing come between you. Honor her above all else. And be true to yourself, no matter the cost.
Your father, your friend—
Manfred Gottlieb
The irony pierced Rae’s soul like a blade.
She had, finally, thrown off the disguises imposed upon her by others, had at last looked the music world in the eye and said “This is who I am—take it or leave it.” A few gigs were canceled, a few fans wrote nasty letters expressing their outrage and disappointment. But for the most part the world kept spinning and the royalties kept coming and other singers kept asking to record her original songs.
The world kept spinning. But it was a world without the woman she loved.
PART 4
SHAME AND BLAME
Caught in the silver web,
we flail and thrash,
but struggle brings no liberty,
only a tighter cord around the heart,
a binding of the soul
that cuts off light and air,
hope, and the promise
of tomorrow.
Be still.
Let go.
Stop fighting.
For the way out
is not out
but through.
TWENTY-ONE
THE THINKING POOL
DURHAM, NORTH Carolina
JUNE 1969
There was no church wedding, no father walking her down the aisle. No flowers or reception or twin sister as her maid of honor. Just a hurried civil ceremony before Irving Neazle, Justice of the Peace.
“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the decrepit old judge yelled.
“I do,” Trip murmured.
“Eh? What’s that?” The old man put his hand to his ear.
“I do, ”Trip repeated, a little louder.
The judge narrowed his eyes at Trip. “Speak up, young man! Do you want to marry this girl, or don’t y
ou?”
“I DO!” Trip shouted.
Finally satisfied, Judge Neazle nodded beneficently and turned to Lauren. “Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do.”
The judge continued to stare at her, waiting.
“I DO!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
“Well, that’s better,” the withered old justice said, patting Lauren on the arm. “I like to see a girl who’s enthusiastic about getting married.” He turned toward Trip. “You could take a lesson or two from her, young fella.”
It would have been funny… if either of them had been happy about the wedding. But Lauren felt shame wash over her as she was forced to shout aloud what she had held in secret for so long.
As soon as the deed was accomplished, they fled the judge’s office, ducking the barrage of good wishes and marital advice the old man flung after them at the top of his lungs. They dashed down the steps and hurled themselves into Trip’s Corvair.
“Now what?” Lauren panted.
Trip shrugged. “I don’t know. What do most couples do?”
Lauren leveled a glance at him. “The honeymoon.”
“Oh yeah. Seems sort of… anticlimactic,” Trip said.
In the end they drove around Durham for a while, picked up a bucket of chicken and a six-pack of beer, and found a cheap motel. After a few minutes of perfunctory sex, they lay in separate beds and stared at the television until they fell asleep. The next morning they bought coffee and doughnuts and a newspaper, and by noon they had rented a small furnished apartment in the basement of a widow’s house a few blocks from Duke University.
The decor was horrible, and the stench was even worse. Cat urine and mouse droppings and mildew. The smattering of sunlight filtering in through high dirty windows did little to make the apartment less dingy. Still, it was affordable, and Lauren, who had never done any more housework than was absolutely necessary, found herself looking forward to making the place their home. The work would be her payback, penance for her betrayal of Lacy.
Delta Belles Page 16
