Ron
When you’re alone and life is making you lonely . . .
I lie in bed, listening to the lyrics, coming awake along with the desert.
Everything at dawn is but a soft silhouette right now: my body under the covers, the slumbering mountain, resting boulders,
dreaming palms.
The silhouette of the San Jacintos is sporting a purple shrug.
Zsa Zsa, as we call our dream home, is tucked directly into a canyon.
The former estate of infamous Hungarian actress and socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor sits upon a hill in the Little Tuscany neighborhood,
with a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the mountains and the city of Palm Springs.
It is a rare jewel, as breathtaking as any of the real Zsa Zsa’s diamonds.
I sit up in bed.
“Good morning, dahlink!” I whisper.
This is the home I not only manifested as a child but also made possible as an adult through blood, sweat and a whole bunch
of Tammy Faye tears.
“And good morning to all of you, too!”
Silhouettes of what look like human heads—a chorus of singers to back up Ms. Clark—begin to take shape in the burgeoning light.
My bedroom also serves as the wig room for our show, and I am, as a designer, the main hair stylist. It takes one man—me—a
dozen hours to style four women’s wigs each month. We put them on so carefully, but we rip them off as girls might do a Barbie
head.
You must know one thing about a mid-century home: There is no room to spare. There is no basement to store your junk, no attic
to hide holiday décor, no root cellar to keep food cool in the summer heat, no massive closets to store a dozen wigs.
These homes were built when we had less, when things were tinier.
Now, every square foot—at roughly a thousand dollars a square foot—is precious real estate.
Just like an older gay man’s head of hair.
I have brought more homes—and wigs—back to life than any other designer in the desert. That is my calling. Teddy does our
costuming. Barry is writer, director and producer, while Sid—with a very unsteady hand from Esther—does our makeup. Sid used
to do his wife’s makeup when they were married.
Your husband does your makeup? Wake up and the smell the Maybelline, honey!
I have rescued as many Wexler, Cody, Lautner, and Palmer and Krisel homes from peel-and-stick linoleum, Z-Brick walls, floor-to-ceiling
floral drapes and La-Z-Boy recliners as Teddy and I have rescued estate sale wigs that have been fried by curling irons, drowned
by little girls, and discarded by performers and women trying do a walk of shame at three in the morning with a broken heel
and one false eyelash.
“A little powder, a little paint . . .”
The sun begins to illuminate the mountains, and my own head casts a shadow on the terrazzo tile in my bedroom. I touch the
peak of my hair as Petula croons.
My fascination with home and hair all started in downtown Raymore, Alabama.
My best friend growing up was Jolene Perkins. My parents hated not only that my best friend was a girl—I was a pariah among
the BB gun, football playin’, catfish catchin’ crew of boys who made my life a living hell—but also that she was named for
a Dolly Parton song about a loose, cheating woman.
It also didn’t help matters that her mother, Dotty, was a divorcée (you must, by the way, draw that word out slowly and with
disgust as we did in the South—day-vor-sée!) who owned a beauty parlor named The Curl Up & Dye in downtown Raymore.
All the women in town went there to get their hair did, even my mama, a secret my daddy never knew. They went despite Dotty’s
history, because no one could back-comb a head of hair like Dotty Perkins.
“Higher the hair, closer to God,” she’d always say. “And most of us need all the help—and height—we can get.”
One day, my daddy caught me playing makeup with a Barbie doll Jolene had given me. I was applying a coat of Bonne Bell Root
Beer Lip Smacker I’d stolen from Jolene’s purse to both of our lips. My daddy, a pastor, whooped me until his hand and my
head went numb, before praying over my body and begging the Lord to take my sin.
I never cried when my daddy hit me. I just stared past him, searching the heavens, trying to understand why God would make
me like this if he didn’t want me to be like this.
That day, after my daddy left, I took off running, ready to hightail it out of town. In came a thunderstorm as I ran—a colossal
boomer as loud and angry as his preaching voice—and I took cover in The Curl Up & Dye.
Not a customer was in there that day.
When Dotty saw me, she fell to the black-and-white-checkered floor and opened her arms. I ran into them, and she held me forever.
“You didn’t cry when he hit you, did you, angel?” she whispered.
“No, ma’am.”
“Good boy. I never did either. Strength in the face of hate. That’s what’ll help us survive.” She kissed my cheek. It hurt.
Dotty helped me into her big styling chair, angling me away from the mirror.
“You sit, my sweet, little boy, and I’ll make you as pretty as sunshine again.”
She had an old stereo console in The Curl Up & Dye that played albums and 45s.
That day, she put on “Downtown” by Petula Clark, and she sang to me as she styled my hair and dabbed foundation under my eyes.
And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you . . . Someone who is just like you . . . So go downtown . . .
Dotty never let me see my own face until she was done.
My bruises were gone. My bouffant looked like a white cloud of cotton candy.
“It’s reaching heaven!” I said, touching her wondrous work.
“’Cause you’re an angel, and don’t you ever forget that.”
When I left, the sun had done come out, and I walked back home with my head held high.
Today I get out of bed and stare at a new day of a new life in a different time brightened by the exact same sun.
Candy-colored rays splay toward heaven.
I have retained my faith and sunny optimism despite the thunderstorms in my life.
What option do we have? Curl up and die?
I still cannot experience a sunrise without hearing my father’s voice from the pulpit.
“And God promises that with each morning sunrise, He offers mercies anew and love unfailing.”
I grab my robe from the footboard bench at the end of my bed. I pull it tightly around my body to ward off the cool desert morning and the memories.
I stare at the colors in the distance, which mirror my own life.
The black and blue of the desert floor and bruises of my youth.
The gold of the cross over my father’s head and color of Barbie’s hair.
The Technicolor light through the stained glass windows of the church and the old Hollywood movies I watched to experience
a world that was not endlessly gray and drab but gloriously bright.
And then I see it, peeking over the mountains, the color that still takes my breath away.
Pink!
The color of the Barbie Dreamhouse I wanted more than the BB guns and fishing poles I was given every birthday and Christmas
to make me normal like the other boys. The color of the Polo shirt I saved up to buy that my father ripped off my back and
whipped me with to teach me about weakness and sin. The color of the welts that remained on my skin for weeks, the pink of
his hand striking me over and over even as I prayed for forgiveness under the beating hand of God.
But more than anything, pink was the color of the Golden Girls’ house in Florida, the place that—for thirty minutes every
Saturday—not only let me escape to a home filled with love, acceptance and friendship but also let me know there might one
day be a home like that for me, one in which I would feel safe, one I could happily enter instead of flinching every time
I opened the door.
If there were one thing that I prayed to God for, it was a pink home like that.
And that prayer came true.
Thanks to me.
So many people have wishes, but few have dreams. What’s the difference?
Dolly Parton taught me that a wish is just something you hope might happen one day, but you never put any blood, sweat and tears into making it a reality. A dream is something you work toward every single day of your life with great intention until, one day, it has become a reality.
Everyone else may wish, but I always dream.
Big!
I tiptoe to the kitchen from the principal suite—yes, I earned one big perk for finding us Zsa Zsa and putting down the lion’s
share of the down payment—careful not to turn on lights. I do not wish to wake the Sleeping Beauties on this magical Monday
morning. Believe me, they need their beauty sleep—and aspirin—considering the three of them went out to Hunters’ happy hour
after Church of Mary. They may range in age from their mid-sixties to early eighties, but they still act like college boys.
I step on a pair of still-wet swim trunks in the middle of the narrow hallway and stifle a scream.
Barry’s briefs glow on the white tile, a tiny mankini decorated with bright yellow bananas.
He’s so predictable.
I pick them up as if they were radioactive—which they might be, considering they’re Barry’s—and start to set them on his doorknob,
but there is already a ball cap with an Arizona State University Sun Devils logo hanging from it.
Let me repeat: Barry is so predictable.
I place his suit atop the hat and can’t help but wonder how Mr. ASU College Kid will react waking up next to his dream daddy
attached to a sleep apnea machine.
I stifle a laugh and pad through our living room. Glorious views greet me in every direction.
I click on the lights and groan when I see the nightmare in my dream kitchen.
Pizza boxes and wineglasses line the countertops. Chips are ground into the floor. Every cabinet door is wide open.
I refuse to clean up their mess this time, I say to myself.
I have my hands full already being the mother of this group. Hell, I’m mother, father, babysitter, cook, mailman, and lawn and pool company. My Golden Gays see any task that requires a little manual labor as beneath them.
I head to an open cabinet and pull out my espresso roast whole coffee beans. I place them in the coffee grinder and silently