My Friend Teresa

 retro 2000

                        “My Friend Teresa”
 
                                                
 
 
“If I could forget to breathe
It's happened down through history
And surely I could lose my head
Some night I could drink too much
And take it off and just forget
And I will learn all languages
I will speak in every tongue
From highnesses to savages
And to all beneath the sun
 
Someday I will paint the sky
I will build a ladder, make a roller
That could reach that high
 
And nothing that I do will pass
Everything I will and make and feel
And dream and know will last
 
I will rid the world of sorrow
Stop all wars and pain
I will tell you of tomorrow
As I rule the wind and rain
 
I can do it all it's true
But only when I've done all that
Oh will I turn away from you
Only when I've done all that
Oh will I turn away from you
 
“If I Could Forget to Breath” by John Gorka
 

     The last time I saw my friend Teresa I went home and piled up my photo

 albums and I took a trip through the past thirteen years. That was the short,

 happy stretch of years in which I made the acquaintance and then achieved the

  lasting friendship of this rare and wonderful woman. There she is at the

 circulation desk in her pink triangle t-shirt. There loveseat lounging at my

 Christmas party.  There at a long-ago birthday in rainy Pasadena.  There

 dancing a graceful meringue with Beatriz.  There tearing into a Dodger dog at

 the Opening day of the baseball season.  There hugging my little daughter. There she is; forever young, forever beautiful, forever full of life. It is no coincidence that she seems to be at the center, in the middle and

 always, always lighting up the frame with her resplendent smile. It wasn’t

 because someone had just said “say cheese!,” she just loved being around her friends. Hers wasn’t just a smile, it was a

 supernova! She had a joy , a robust, positive attitude that was a tonic for

 everyone around her. When I say “my friend Teresa” I do so with a pride and

 love that is unbounded by mere words. When I say “my friend Teresa” I feel

 the joy of her presence in my life again, a presence that has enriched me and

 my family immeasurably over these past thirteen years. Teresa wasn’t just a

 person you got to know and forgot, if you knew her, truly knew her, you would

 love her and never want to let her go.

      It seems like yesterday when I went to visit her and her partner Eva and we fed Mr. Bunny milano cookies together. It seems like yesterday that we traveled to Chicago for a Wrigley field holiday. She was fearless, she brought adventure to my days, she took me places I never would have been: like next to Vin Scully in the most precious photo in my collection or amongst 300 sweaty, dancing women in Chi-town’s biggest gay bar. Even when we had standing room tickets to a Cubs game she exhibited that uncanny charisma and “gaydar” as she spotted a “sister” who then seated us in the midst of forty-plus members of a gay tennis club. It wasn’t so bad that I was the only heterosexual but it was that I was a Dodger fan. That night I saw my dear Teresa on the dance floor celebrating another Cub loss in her real natural habitat: in the middle of the action, dancing joyfully, gracefully, admired and desired. To tell the truth, she was ham but a very delicious one who didn’t shrink from the spotlight or shy away from a soapbox.   After all it was the call of fame and fortune that brought her out to California to be movie star when she was the nineteen year old “Terry Manning.”  Who can forget her brilliant turn as a sultry garment worker in the cult classic “Dead Women in Lingerie.”  It also seems like yesterday that I looked across the dusty softball diamond  at my teammate Teresa; pitching, hitting and holding our team together. She was as good an athlete as she was a person, in softball parlance she was “nails”. Playing with her was so much fun it truly made winning totally unimportant.

      My friend Teresa was without airs, she was simple and good-natured, most

 definitely childlike in her gentility and wonder at the world. She took

 delight in things like “Cantinflas,” or Garfield the  cartoon cat and she used to laugh with me as

 we repeated dialogue from her favorite movie “E.T.”  She would point at her

 forehead and imitate the little alien and say “I’ll Be Right here,” or

 “telefono a casa.” I think that is why I loved being around Teresa,   because

 she was so playful and honest. She had a big appetite for life. She had a big

 appetite for food too but mainly she was never afraid to throw back her head

 and laugh or take to the dance floor and break a sweat. She took chances, she

 stood up for what she believed and she was unafraid of ignorance and

 dishonesty.  I don’t know anybody in my twenty years at LAPL that made more true friends than she did in the relatively short time she had with us. All you had to do was hear her laugh and you were ready to join the club.  Mostly  it was just cool to hang out with her.  When the word got out that Teresa was ailing people lined up to see her and give her best wishes. Some friends stood particularly tall like Henry Garland or the wonderful Eva Cox whose boundless big heart was Teresa’s rock through the best and worst of times. I write the words here but they traveled the hard road with Teresa.

     While she was an unbelievably hard worker in the library she never let the job get in the way of fun.  Unbeknownst to our supervisor at West

 LA branch we used to play old fashioned “burnout” in the workroom on busy

 Saturdays when the patron’s were driving us crazy. Burnout, for those who

 didn’t grow up on a playground is throwing a baseball as hard as you can back

 and forth from about thirty-feet until one players hand gives out. Just as it was to the very end of

 her life, Teresa never quit. It was my hand that gave out first.

            We knew her mostly in the library where she was prompt,  loyal and hard-working, almost to a fault. She could be a tough boss who expected as much as she gave which wasn’t always easy for most of us. When we were shelving books after the move to Spring street I found out that if you wanted to keep up with Teresa you had to have a hearty breakfast and lots of coffee. If you didn’t do the job, she told you so and more than once she corrected my attitude. There was something in her directness that made it ok and spurred you on. Yet, I bless  the library because it is where I met Teresa, first at West LA where my confidence was shaken by my best flirtation gaining no effect. Later, as we put Federico Garcia Lorca  on the Literature shelves  pre-Spring street,  she “came out” to me, much to my relief. Actually Teresa and I turned out to have some things in common: a love of cats, baseball, music, and latin women. It was about that time that we took in the new girl named Linda DeLaPena to our circle and an unholy triumvirate was formed. For almost ten years the three of us took breaks, lunches and  occasional “civilian” moments together,  We made an unlikely team of an old white boy, a Puerto Rican lesbian and a tattooed Chicana. It wasn’t all like an episode of “Friends” either, as we got so close we fought like a family; broke up, refused to speak to one another, exchanged  hurt letters but always made up in the end and were better friends for it. When Teresa and I stood up as godparents for Linda’s daughter Alicia it was almost as if we were blood. We, all three, ditched work one crisp February day and climbed to the top of Will Rogers park where we carved our initials into an old bench and gazed out across the coastline toward Catalina. I stood looking out and thinking how lucky I was to have friends like these. Yes, indeed.  Once I was called into my supervisor’s office and was told that I should “cool” my “romance” with Teresa and I was forced to explain to him what that “Peppermint Patty” meant on her T-shirt.  I could literally go on for days about how much fun I had with Teresa and I will eventually, in installments. As long as I have breath I’ll continue singing the praises and telling the tale of the too short life of my dear friend .

            Yet, there was another Teresa, beyond my little world, there was a powerful woman, a role model, a leader and a brave soul. As Billie Connor said to me “Teresa was a very important person for all of us.” When she came out she came out smoking and met homophobia head on. She helped form the library’s  first gay and lesbian organization (GLUE)  and stood tall in the fight against the bigotry endorsed by library administration in the Langston Hughes controversy. She wrote an essay of such power and conviction for the Communicator that it was later chosen for inclusion into an anthology of library literature. Eventually, through the efforts of Teresa and other strong gay  workers, the library actually adopted Gay and Lesbian month, the first such accomplishment in city history. She was at every gay pride parade, at demonstrations shaking her finger at Pete Wilson and chanting “shame, shame, shame! She was there, under the rainbow flag offering support to her fellow Latina Lesbians and providing young women an inspirational model of pride and dignity. She even had me marching one day down Broadway beneath a banner that read “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It!” Wherever and whenever there was a battle to be fought against homophobia she was there to put down her comfortably-shoed size 10. Eventually she allowed me to see that the “lifestyle” was not something strange and mysterious but a life that was completely fulfilling and as normal as a Norman Rockwell painting.  Teresa  showed us on a day to day basis what true love was all about with her relationship with Beatriz. This was a true love story, an honest to goodness fairy tale that had no knight on a white horse but a Puerta Ricana in a gray pickup truck. Certainly, one of the most precious gifts from Teresa was the introduction to her wonderful life partner. They were a perfect match, Beatriz, the adorable and intelligent counterpoint to Teresa’s exhuberant and earthy charm. They had a magic together that will last forever. Thanks to Teresa and her friends,  my daughter will never suffer from the terrible disease of homophobia, it just could never occur to her to think ill of someone like Teresa. She was the kind of woman I want my daughter to grow up to be like. I can think of no higher compliment

 

 

I hope that wherever Teresa’s spirit is right now she is happy and free

 of the corporeal burden of the last year. I hope it is a place where she can

 dance to hot salsa music, play catch with her brother Jose, listen to

 Streisand records, stretch out with a cat like Big George and most

 importantly I hope it is a place where they have WGN and the Cubs win every

 single game. Wherever she goes it will be a better place for her coming and I

 am also sure that within a week she will be bossing the angels around and

 organizing a softball game. To say I will miss Teresa is the greatest

 understatement  of all time.  Going forward without her will leave a great

 void of love, joy and friendship approximately the size of the grand canyon

 in my heart.  How sweet, how passing sweet were these past lucky thirteen years.

 I am going to hold on tight to those photographs and keep these memories close. The pictures in my album of

 that lithesome, beautiful  forever young woman with the luxurious curls and

 dark joyful eyes will never fade and neither will my love for my dear friend.

 Again I’ll say to my dear Teresa, like her favorite little alien E.T. as

 I point at my heart “you’ll be right here.”

 

     What I find impossible to say but can only type is  her last words to me

 on earth.  As they put her in the car to take her home that last Saturday

 night. I had whispered in her ear as I kissed her cheek and she said "I love

 you too."  How could I ask for more. It was all too short but it was very

 sweet.

 

 

                                            

2003 LA MAG GALA

 Retro stuff   2003

She Said I am the glamorous type. I said “SO WHAT!”

     -Stanley Kowalski in  A Streetcar Named Desire

 

    I thought I knew what it was like to be invisible when I last visited a college campus. A Middle-Aged man strolling past co-eds apparently does not register on the girl radar. The Oji-san smell (Japanese term for men over 45) and bland autumn colored wardrobe sort of make the man like shrubbery for recognizability. Anyway, the point here is that I fielded a question from Los Angeles Magazine bounced my way a month or two ago about an unsung, great book about Los Angeles. Being a map guy, I immediately thought of W.W. Robinson’s Maps of Los Angeles. As I told the editor at LA Yupazine this amazing little book of maps does more to trace the early physical development of the city than all the words in 979.41 l881 section. Somehow, because of a lack of time and other resources or someone at the magazine who actually read books they chose my selection. Thus, after layers of administrators demurred  attending a “gala reception” at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Beverly Hills I was chosen to represent the library.

     Imagine arriving at a true palace of automobile art in a 1992 Toyota Corolla with no side mirrors, 233,000 miles on the odometer and more dents than Charles Bukowki’s face. I knew I was in for it when I saw the parking valets were perky babes in hot pants, neckerchiefs and hairdos. They, known as “the Valet of the Dolls” bounced around the Beemers, Escalades, Range Rovers, Maseratis and such while my tired ride sputtered to a noisy stop out on Fairfax. Approaching the “welcome table” I saw yet three more products of the beauticians arts. Unfortunately, neither my name nor institution could be found on the guest list while I stood sweating like a gate crasher at Studio 54. Finally, they did find something under Richard Riordan Library. I squelched the desire to inform them of our nickname for that phony moniker: “the Big Dick” and humbly accepted a blank label because they didn’t seem to have the printed one. Like the official printed one that every single other person in the building was wearing. It was also at this time that I noticed that everyone else appeared to have paid some designer to dress him or her in the latest Sex and the City designer clothes. That might mean a many thousand-dollar Armani suit or some really sweat producing poly blend disco shirt over toreador pants. Most of the women had exposed tiny waists and hair on men’s heads was definitely out of style. Since when did baldness become the dominant gene? I also saw a resurrection of the little boys coiffures of my 1950’s youth. For gay men, the current beau monde of hair is this grown out crew cut with some kind of butch wax holding the hedge up in front. I think this came from Will and Grace but I have never seen Will and Grace except on a stalled airplane in the Pittsburgh airport.

     I digress.  After being handed a blank nametag and not being able to see well in the muted light I pressed forward with a hand-lettered ID that read LA Public Libr (the label ended and the border began without a line of demarcation.)

I confess that the cars were spectacular and as I strolled I made obligatory eye contact and nodded several times to no response to the other “revelers.” After all, not all of these people were glitterati and some were even shopkeepers, bakers, ice cream scoopers or (shudder) even a library administrator from Cerritos PL.   Being a rather inept icebreaker but decent schmoozer I looked for an opening to attach myself to anybody willing to listen to the desperate ramblings of a liberrian. There were no takers. I found no eye contact, no shared pleasantries, no winks or come-hither looks. In short, I was HG Wells’ invisible dude except I was wearing a short sleeve shirt instead of wrapped gauze. By the time we were herded up to the reception area I had bounced my goofy smile off at least twenty stony-faced people. As I stood drooling at a shiny Cord automobile my stammered “to think I came here in a 92 Corolla!” whizzed over the head of a big-haired beauty whose nametag screamed “best club booker.” Considering this woman was a trendoid twenty-something who spent her hours arranging all-night wing dings at places like Spaceland the pairing with a 50-something librarian seemed perfect but her response was something like “yeah, fabulous cars!”

     The coup d’ grace took place after I migrated with the herd to a large hall filled with the golden 101 where small cocktail lounge tables dotted the floor. I took to one and set down my complimentary magazine and a glass of two buck Chuck (Charles Shaw Cab $1.99 at Trader Joes). There I read of gay rodeos, posh handbags, deejay Jun, perfumes, reptiles and my dignified, scholarly book astoundingly described as “Barns and opium joints pepper W.W. Robinson’s Maps of LA…bla bla bla. Just as I reeled from this dissing of dear Mr. Robinson’s life work I spied a trio of glitties heading my way. The man in the suit that cost way more than my car asked if they might join me and I accepted them as my own. I searched in panic for a nice “best” but I saw the words Neiman Marcus. That was enough for a man whose wardrobe hails mostly from Value Village and Territory Ahead sample sales. It was the NEIMAN MARCUS SHOE DEPARTMENT!!! Since I am a little weak on my Flower-painted Badgley Mischka mules or bejeweled Dolce Gabbiana boots with grommets I merely brought up the corners of my grimace while they chatted about cash business and marvelous sense of style. The trio was lead by an unctious Britisher who rang like a cash register when he saw money. The young porcelain doll-faced woman of the three looked at my crudely lettered badge, saw the word library (no doubt) and I was then treated as if I was dusted with Anthrax powder. They spoke not to the form across from them, chatted vacuously about almost exclusively business, sales, marketing, high style and fashion. Only brightening  when the two owners of the most fabulous gay bar (not that there is anything wrong with that) in town floated toward our ghetto of library Oji-san. The owners of  the Abbey squealed with delight at seeing these queens of footwear and I instantly became as welcome as a turd in the punchbowl. When they returned from the champagne fount they gazed at me with rolling eyes and said “ooh , there just doesn’t seem to be any room!” I bolted with uncharacteristic quickness away from this cabal of stylishness and wandered, dazed into the bullring of bull ca ca. It felt something like a scene from a Fellini movie with me as the wounded, bleeding animal. I set down my wine glass, turned heel and took off for the exit like I was being chased by a pack of Canary Island cattle dogs. When I reached my miserable Corolla and jumped inside to the smell of loamy floorboard flotsam and dirty sweat socks it met my nostrils like a perfume of Sarah Horowitz-Thran’s custom “best” parfumerie. I needed TV, I needed baseball, I needed real people. I needed to get the hell out of LA Magazine.