by Fay Jacobs
We have so many Kenn memories. Opera queen direct from the womb, after one holiday meal he had himself, me, and my sister, ages 11, 10 and 7 respectively, perform the last act of Tosca, including miming its famed acts of torture, murder and suicide. We had no idea what we were doing, but Puccini would have been so proud. Or perhaps nauseas. I have no recollection of the looks on my parents’ faces, but perhaps that’s good.
When Kenn’s funky New York neighborhood started to gentrify, with dozens of upscale boutiques arriving, he announced he was surprised the funeral home didn’t change its name to Death and Things.
And whenever anybody had a birthday, you’d get a call announcing, “This is Ethel Merman calling from the great beyond to wish you a Happy Birthday.” Kenn would then launch into the Happy Birthday song in his very exaggerated Ethel Merman voice. It was a tradition. It might have been what caused the break-up of Bell telephone.
I tell you all this because, one, I’m sad and I wanted you to know a little about my quirky cousin. Things like he once was crossing the street and hit a car. Broadsided it. Crumpled the whole side panel. He was fine. In fact, his mother took him, in her words “to get his head examined and they found nothing.” Laughed over that for years.
In the 70s there was a gay magazine in New York called Michael’s Thing (honest), where he wrote a popular opera column. At first he proudly called himself the only straight writer at Michael’s Thing. One day he just called himself a writer at Michael’s Thing. His having dropped the bomb to the family first gave me the courage to come out.
But I’m writing now to tell you about the very last Kenn experience I had. It was a gift.
I drove up to New York the night before his funeral by myself since, for a combination of good reasons, Bonnie could not join me. I borrowed a friend’s apartment for the night and faced the prospect of a evening alone in Manhattan. What could be bad?
I took a taxi from my digs in Chelsea, just above the Village, up to Times Square, soaking up the frenetic billboards, throngs of people and general mad hysteria of the scene.
As a tribute to Kenn, I took myself to dinner at Juniors, a deli harkening back to its start in 1950s Brooklyn and Miami Beach. As my cousin would have done, I ordered a towering chopped liver sandwich on rye. It recalled the rhetorical question “What am I, chopped liver?” to which the answer, in Kenn’s case, might have been yes, the cholesterol adding to his coronary woes. In his honor I only ate half.
From there, on this clear, comfortable, October night I walked to Sixth Avenue, heading for Bryant Park behind the New York library. From ten blocks away I could see pink lights projected up into the trees and, the closer I got, the more music and cheering I heard. It was an outdoor Shakira concert, which I joined, standing to watch the performer, the videos and the light show. At one point I looked to the right and saw the lit spire of the art deco Chrysler Building and to the left, the pink-lit upper floors of the Empire State Building. Breast Cancer Awareness Month. New York was in the pink.
Traveling south, back towards Chelsea, I passed Herald Square, as in George M. Cohan’s “Give My Regards to Broadway, Remember Me to Herald Square.” There stood Macy’s, the biggest department store in the world, with—here comes the strange—a long lap pool erected in front of the store, where Macy’s was hosting Nyad Swims for Superstorm Sandy Relief.
That baby boomer lesbian dynamo, Diana Nyad, who had just completed the history-making swim from Cuba to Key West, had vowed to swim 40 hours without stopping to raise money for the victims of the devastating storm.
I stepped forward off the street, up two steps of temporary bleachers and leaned over the side of the pool. Diana Nyad, in a pink bathing cap, swam by me so closely I could have reached out and patted her on the back. I wanted to. An inspiration.
Moving on, I was approached by several aggressive panhandlers, homeless I suspect, but I did not stop to fill their coffers. My favorite sign, however, was “Why Lie? Need Beer.” Several blocks later I did spy a woman who appeared to be homeless, camped on the street with her small dog. I handed her a twenty. It just felt right.
By the time I walked the 28 blocks back to my lodging, my spirit was willing to continue but not the soles of my feet. I briefly considered going to the Stonewall Inn or Marie’s Crisis piano bar in the Village, but I came to my senses.
Upstairs I went, and walked out onto the apartment’s balcony, overlooking the still-busy, brightly lit and noisy streets below. It was fun being part of it, New York, New York. I popped the metal tab on a diet Coke and toasted to Cousin Kenn. Thanks, buddy for an amazing night on the town in NYC.
I can’t believe I won’t ever get a Mermangram again.
October 2013
DOWN, NOT OUT IN RESORT HEAVEN
So, we are downsized. Some friends and acquaintances think we are insane for giving up our home on three quarters of an acre in exchange for a partially double-wide, partially single-wide mobile home (trailer) in a community where we don’t own the land.
Hey, they do the lawn here. We’re happy as clams. I saw the first leaf drop the other day and laughed like a hyena. I drove by my old house and saw the tree service juggling tools at the roof line. I guffawed. The notice that it’s time to open up the irrigation system was forwarded to my new address. I crumpled it up and made a three-pointer to the circular file.
I also dropped my gym membership since this community has an exercise room with treadmills, bikes and an elliptical machine. It’s just as easy and a lot cheaper for me not to go here as not to go there.
I admit that there were many things that had to be done in the new house to make it comfortable and attractive. Uninhabited for a year when we purchased it, the place was a true fixer-upper. Since I am not a fixer-upper, the work was mostly tasked to my spouse.
In her quest to guild the turd, Bonnie installed ceiling moldings, all new light fixtures, faucets, switch plates and the like. What a wonderful difference! And she painted every single wall in the house, hiding the 1980s floral and speckled vinyl wall covering favored in that era.
Frankly, getting this place put together was such a job she had to enlist me for physical labor as well.
Clearly, you understand how massive the job had to be for her to resort to the nuclear option.
So she gave me a paintbrush, with instructions to finish painting some unpainted furniture for my office. “Put on paint clothes first,” she cautioned. Like I would have any.
Paint roller in hand I went to work with all the gusto of passengers diving off the Titanic. I obsessed over the top of a shelf unit until I realized nobody would see it unless dinner guests included members of the NBA.
First Law of Semi-Gloss: Only after your hands become covered with dripping paint will your nostril itch. Corollary: and then you have to pee.
Okay, so I’m not a great painter. If I’d been using red paint it would have looked like the St. Valentines Day Massacre. Bring on the splatter expert. Bonnie took one look and relieved me of my duties.
Next, she asked me if I wanted to screw, which sounded great until I discovered it meant installing new kitchen cabinet hardware. Newton’s Law: any screw you drop will immediately roll under the heaviest appliance. I spent quite some time on my hands and knees fetching like a golden retriever.
In one instance I was leaning over the stove, reaching for an errant screw, when my shirt tail caught on a knob, turning on a burner. Luckily it’s an electric stove. If it was my old propane stove I would have immolated myself. Dumbo’s Law of Averages: The chance of being watched while you work is directly proportional to how dumb the thing is you are doing.
At that point Bonnie told me to get down and find her some real lesbians to help.
We’d been in the house 23 days and to Lowes 27 times. Mostly me, searching for the one thing Bonnie forgot to get for the project already in progress. We’re there so often the hot dog man knows us by name and we are welcome to use the employee lounge.
And we’ve made
friends with Ellen from the paint department. Relationships develop quickly when a clerk has to be the arbiter between people arguing over Latte Semi-Gloss vs. Desert Beige Satin.
When our new appliances were delivered, we found that one half inch of counter top obstructed installation of the new fridge. Bonnie promptly revved up her reciprocal saw and, to the amazement of the delivery guys, sliced off the offending formica.
We met our waterloo at the Microwave. Installed with the original cabinetry, it would have hung down so far we could only have cooked flat food in frying pans. Steady diet of flatbread and fritattas, anyone?
For this project we hired pros to tune-up our kitchen. The two gentlemen were great, improvising a cabinet on its side to hang the microwave and figuring out an ingenious method of venting it out. Yes, they were here for days, and we were beginning to think of them like Eldin the painter-in-residence on the old Murphy Brown series, but they did a great job.
For a while of course, Bonnie, who was out and proud from the moment of birth I believe, was a closet case. She spent at least a week in the master bedroom closet installing various closet stretchers, closet helpers and closet do-dads trying to buy us more space.
And by today, deadline day for Letters, we have been in the house exactly 32 days. We are pleased with the progress and pooped at the same time. Somebody on the internet coined a word that describes our condition perfectly. Exhaustipated. Too tired to give a shit.
But we love our new home. Out the corner of my eye I just spied the landscape brigade heading our way. Oy, I feel smug. Don’t exhaustipate yourselves, fellas.
Epilogue
OCTOBER 12, 2013 885 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE…
I follow Suze Orman’s advice. If you are going to spend your money, spend it on people first, experiences second and things third. Words to live by. And we are.
With the sale of our humongous sea of grass with the little house on the prairie on it, and our move to the “manufactured home,” which I am getting used to saying instead of “trailer,” life is good.
Like Susie says, we’re spending on us, and in some cases our friends, first. Experiences, like an upcoming trip to the Galapagos Islands second. And stuff third, although we are trying to wean ourselves off Lowes and Bed, Bath & Beyond.
When the travel folks at 1000 Places to See.com recently came out with a list of the top 100, Bonnie and I had already managed to scratch off 33 sites on the list. Our January cruise to see penguins and Blue-Footed Boobies will get us to 34. If all goes well, and we accomplish our planned 2015 cross country RV adventure, lots of numbers will fall.
Back when my first book was published, and I started to get notes and e-mails from readers from all over the map, I said I hoped that someday we could go cross-country, visiting. That day is approaching. I would love to see how our tribe is doing in various places around the country. I am well aware that life in Rehoboth, or Gayberry RFD as we call it, is unique. Sometimes, when I hear sad tales from other parts of the country I know we are in a diversity bubble, unlike much of the nation. Goodness knows, I never expected Delaware to be in the vanguard like it is. Strange and wonderful things have happened here.
And while this book is putting to pasture the Frying Series (unless I can’t stifle my urge to write a prequel called A Kiss Before Frying), I suspect I have not used up my words yet. As we set out in the RV, or on a plane, train or in the car, I think there will be stories. After all, we’re seriously considering a puppy come spring.
In the meantime, thanks for reading. It means the world to me. I look forward to seeing you on facebook, at book signings, in P-Town, in Rehoboth Beach or anywhere our travels take us.
Most of all, here’s to our ability to laugh rather than moan.
Just last night I opened a fortune cookie that said “you will soon be surrounded by good friends and laughter.”
Who could ask for anything more?
Fall 2013
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thought I was done as a trilogy, but no, many people urged me to keep going. Thanks!
Naturally, thanks, again, to my wife Bonnie (who, this year, is finally, my wife in the eyes of the IRS and other federal agencies) for willing, so often, to be represented in print, despite the remarks or questions publication may produce at Happy Hour.
Thanks once again to Steve Elkins and Murray Archibald, of CAMP Rehoboth, who keep me in ink. They work harder and become more selfless each year as they give back to the community in Rehoboth Beach. They are both so incredibly talented it’s ridiculous. And I love them more every day. Thanks, too, to Terry Plowman and all my new readers at Delaware Beach Life, and Maribeth Fishcher and my friends at the Rehoboth Beach Writer’s Guild — they encourage me.
Gratitude goes to my perceptive and speedy draft readers, Kathy Galloway and Fran Sneider—I can always count on you when it comes to comments large (“You don’t really want to say this in print, do you?”) or small (“you never met a comma you didn’t love.”)
To Eric, the man who permits me to be a Jewish mother, all my thanks and love, always. Diversity are us, kiddo.
And, once again, a very special nod to my dear friend and new neighbor Stefani Deoul for telling me, mostly via international calls, when my tales go awry and being perceptive enough, not to mention willing, to suggest how to fix them.
I really do get by with a little help from my friends.
Lastly, to my Letters from CAMP Rehoboth readers, I love you for still being there even after all these years. We’re closing in on two decades. And 2013 has been a doozey—for me personally and for all of us as a community.
An enormous hug to you all.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fay Jacobs, a native New Yorker, spent 30 years in the Washington, DC area working in journalism, theater, and public relations. Her first book, As I Lay Frying—a Rehoboth Beach Memoir was published in 2004 and is in its third printing. Her second, Fried & True—Tales from Rehoboth Beach was released in 2007. That book won the 2008 Golden Crown Literary Society Award for non-fiction and was recognized by the National Federation of Press Women as 2008 Book of the Year for Humor. For Frying Out Loud—Rehoboth Beach Diaries, released in 2010 won a slew of awards, including the American Library Association Over the Rainbow nomination and National Federation of Press Women Humor Book of the Year. Fay has contributed feature stories and columns to such publications as The Washington Post, The Advocate, OutTraveler, curve magazine, The Baltimore Sun, Chesapeake Bay Magazine, The Washington Blade, The Wilmington News Journal, Delaware Beach Life and more.
Since 1995 she has been a regular columnist for Letters from CAMP Rehoboth, and won the national 1997 Vice Versa Award for excellence.
She and Bonnie, her partner of 30 years and wife of one year, live in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
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