Sid
“Aunt Sophia!”
Esther’s great-grandchildren rush me as I enter the Palm Springs Public Library, calling me by both my given name and my stage
name.
I bend down and wrap Jack and June in my arms.
“Did you bring them?” they yell.
“Don’t I always bring some?”
I open my pocketbook and retrieve two pieces of butterscotch candy.
The kids squeal in delight—earning a sssssh! from Mrs. Marquez at the circulation desk—and then hug me again before bolting toward the library’s reading room.
“Sorry about the sugar,” I say to Esther.
“Their parents tell me sugar is forbidden when they visit me and then send me pictures of them sucking down Unicorn Frappuccinos
when they get home,” Esther says. She stops and eyes me dressed as Sophia. “You really are a grandma. You make me look bad.
All I ever give them are reasons to see a therapist in the future.”
She eyes my pocketbook and holds out her hand. I place a hard candy in her open palm. She unwraps the candy and pops it in her mouth.
“My bubbe used to keep these in a candy jar,” Esther says. “They’d melt and congeal together into one giant piece. No wonder
I have issues.”
“I bet her couch was covered in plastic, too.”
“We owned dry cleaners,” Esther says with a chuckle. “No bare skin could touch fabric.”
I start to walk, but she grabs my arm. “Have you heard from Hot Jew?”
I laugh. “After what I said?”
“Why don’t you text him and recommend a dermatologist?” she asks. “I mean, can’t love blossom over a suspicious mole?”
“Stop it,” I say. “That ship has sailed.”
“You mean you drove that ship right into an iceberg.”
Esther takes my arm and escorts me to the library’s reading room. Every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., I host Drag Queen Reading
Hour, a program for children aged three to eight that is meant to raise awareness of diversity, promote self-acceptance, build
empathy and foster an early love of reading.
When I enter, I am greeted by familiar faces.
“Grandma Golden!”
“Mr. Sid!”
“Mrs. P!”
I read to the children dressed as my character, Sophia Petrillo. They have no idea who she is, but their parents and grandparents
do. To the kids—dressed in my floral print dress, brooch, dusty-rose sweater with a lace collar, reading glasses dangling
from a chain, short silver-white curls and ever-present pocketbook in the crook of my arm—I am their grandmother, great-aunt,
babysitter, neighbor, reading buddy, but most of all, friend.
The reading room is decorated like a living room. I take a seat in a rocking chair.
“Who’s ready for a story?” I ask.
The kids yell and, just as quickly, quiet.
I pick up one of my favorite books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I read it to my own children when they were young. It is a book that has aged beautifully, and whose message
seems even more necessary today in our society. The book, as Carle once said, is a “literary cocoon” for children as they
approach kindergarten and for all little kids preparing to leave the warmth and safety of home for school.
I look out at the families gathered today. I nod at Esther, who has my phone, and she FaceTimes Rebecca and our great-grandchildren,
Noah, Naomi and Aviva. Every Wednesday, they join us from Chicago.
I wave at them, and the four of them wave back.
Rebecca smiles. She is an old woman now, but in her eyes I still see the young girl I knew so long ago. The eyes of my great-grands
are filled with nothing but innocence and love. When I look at them, I see what they see: hope and love.
That is why I am here, to build a connection to a future that will not physically include me but one I pray includes my history.
Because it is in the eyes of our elders—me, Rebecca, my friends, the ones we rarely look deeply into because we are frightened
by what we see reflected in the dim pupils—where the stories lie.
A few years after Rebecca and I divorced, she remarried a mutual friend named David who was also an attorney from my firm.
I let that go, and am glad I did, because I was able to see her experience true love for the first time in her life, a love
with no secrets. Slowly, her anger began to soften. In return, my children’s wrath diminished as well.
I sacrificed everything for years so my family would feel “normal.” I traveled back to Chicago for every big birthday, ball
game, every moment of my children’s and grandchildren’s lives. For years, I was in Chicago nearly as much as I was in Palm
Springs. I traveled so much and purchased so many gifts to buy my family’s love, I had to un-retire and handle estate planning
for my and Esther’s friends.
When I finally looked up, I was well into my seventies, and my children were grown and married with growing children.
And me?
Still single.
Not only had I missed out on love and romance in my youth, I had missed my window of opportunity in the gay dating world,
that sliver of time when widowers were looking to recouple, younger men sought stability with a successful, older man, and
being gray was considered hot.
Now?
I look into the eyes of my great-grands.
Would I do the same thing all over again? Of course I would. I love my blood family as much as I do my chosen one. But I also
must be brutally honest: I sacrificed my own happiness for theirs. I felt I was not worthy of loving a man because it was
wrong. I felt—and still do—overwhelming guilt.
The trysts, the one-night stands, the things I did when I was married, I still feel guilt about because I did not have the
strength to be honest with myself, my wife, my family, my friends, my religion, my community, this world.
But I learned I am not a one-night stand type of guy either. I am a romantic. I want what I never had, what I see in books
and movies, the flutter of the heart, the dizziness of a first kiss, being held so tightly at night that the world and all
its ugliness disappear.
I want that.
But I do not believe I deserve that.
And so I fill my days with distractions.
I begin to read:
“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf.”
When I finish, I ask the children what they think the story of the hungry caterpillar is all about. Their answers are as beautiful
as the story.
When they finish, I say, “I once took my own children to hear from the man who wrote and drew this beautiful book. He explained what it was about. Do you know what he said?”
“No!” the kids yell.
“He said that this is a book of hope. That children like you need hope. That we all need hope. The author said, ‘You, little insignificant caterpillar, can grow up into a beautiful butterfly and fly into the
world with your talent. You’ll think, “Will I ever be able to do that?” Yes, you will.’”
Parents and grandparents lead the children in applause.
I say this little message every time because kids need to hear it.
I need to hear it.
I pick up my next book off the floor and read it before I give hugs and candy and pose for pictures with all the kids who
have gathered.
Esther and her grandkids escort me out after the Reading Hour. She takes a photo of us with my phone and then hands it back
to me. I say goodbye in the parking lot, watching them drive away. I drop my cell into my pocketbook and then fish my keys
out of it.
The temperature has soared since I entered the library, and I open my door, pull off my wig and toss it on the passenger seat.
“Groomer!”
In the reflection of my car window, I see a woman charging toward me. I turn. The woman spits. I lift my pocketbook in front
of my face just in time, and her saliva slides off my patent leather clutch and onto my shoe.
I recognize her face. She was just inside listening to me. She looks to be in her sixties, plump, dyed black hair, her arms
out to the sides protecting her two grandchildren as if I were the one who just prompted this attack.
“Ma’am?” I ask in a sweet voice, trying to de-escalate the situation. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay, you disgusting pedophile!”
Her words ricochet off my body. I take a step back, mind and heart racing.
This is Palm Springs. Roughly half of the residents are part of the LGBTQ+ community. We are the majority here.
She edges closer.
I take another step back until I’m pressed up against my car. The hot steel burns my legs.
“You show up here and try to make children believe that all of this is okay?” She waves her hands at my body. “What is wrong
with you? What is wrong with our society?”
The woman is red-faced, simultaneously weeping and laughing. The little ones behind her are whimpering in terror.
“I’m scared, Grandma,” a little girl with curly red hair says.
“You should be,” she says, leaning toward me. “Everyone should be scared of this sick, twisted . . . thing.”
“Ma’am,” I say. “Please.”
“A man in makeup,” she sneers. “Acting like a woman. You are going to burn in hell.”
I press my body even tighter against the car. My skin singes.
I wince. I certainly know what that will feel like.
Suddenly, the woman reaches into her purse.
The world becomes a slow blur.
I shove my hand inside my still-open pocketbook. I pull out a handful of candy and throw it as hard as I can at the woman.
Hard butterscotch ricochets off her soft face. As she lifts her hands to cover it, I pull open the car door, jump inside and
lock the doors. By the time she has recovered, I have started my car.
The woman reaches back into her purse and pulls out a Bible. She thumps it on my car, screaming, “I will ban you and your
kind from this library, so help me God!”
I screech out of the parking lot. I do not even check traffic as I pull onto Baristo and then yank my car onto Sunrise.
When I finally slam on my brakes at a stoplight, I see myself in the rearview mirror.
My mascara is running. My lipstick is smeared. My hair is matted. My lace collar is askew.
I am an old man in a dress.
I glance over at the car next to me. A group of kids—shoving french fries down their throats—obviously on lunch break from
the local high school barely react to my appearance.
So much has changed.
So much hasn’t.
My legs are shaking. My right foot is pressed so tightly on the brake pedal I feel my ankle might shatter. I look down. That’s
when I realize I am barefoot. I literally ran out of my shoes.
I lean on the steering wheel and stare at my foot.
One step forward.
Two steps back.
I suddenly picture my grandfather’s foot. He lost toes to diabetes and yet he could still feel them, would swear he was wiggling
them.
“The pain is excruciating,” he’d tell me when I would visit him.
My grandmother would sit on a footstool and pretend to massage them, even though they were not there.
“Ghost pain,” she would say.
For the first time, I begin to cry, my old wounds reopened.
No matter how much time has passed and scar tissue has built, it only takes a word, a look, a confrontation, hate to tear
it wide open again.
The ghost pain never goes away.
Cars honk.
I head my car toward Dorian Gay to tell Teddy about what happened. I need a protector. As I drive, my cell begins to buzz.
Why didn’t I think to call the police?
I retrieve my phone from the pocket of my sweater.
Texts from Rebecca and my daughter, Leah.
Esther said you met someone.
Mom said you met a man.
Esther’s gossip travels faster than a migrating hummingbird.
I laugh suddenly. And then, just as quickly, I veer into the left lane and do a U-turn.
I drive back to the library.
The digital sign and calendar of events out front of the mid-century building flashes the message:
BANNED BOOKS TO READ THIS WEEK!
I will not be banned.
I park my car and scan the lot for the woman. She is gone.
But my shoes are right where I left them, lined up in the parking lot as if they were by my bedside and I’d just slipped out
of them for the night.
I step out of my car and put them back on.
“This old lady is fucking tired of running,” I say.