Tappin' the Blues Away

I used to work in Hollywood. Actually, to be geographically accurate, I used to work in West Hollywood. Not quite the same glamour attaches. But then "Hollywood" is more nostalgia than an actual place, nowadays anyway. Some of the landmarks are still there; the studios, though most produce more television shows and tours than movies, the grand movie palaces, but often renamed corporately or converted to snake-handler churches, the famous footprints in cement, tried on for size now by tourists in flip-flops, the street in front worked by sad snapshot-lookalikes, posing for tips. The only stars one is likely to see on the streets of Hollywood nowadays are commemorative, made of brass, and planted in the sidewalk, like just so many markers on narrow, empty tombs.

West Hollywood is actually an independent fief, populated by elderly emigre Russians, retired set-dressers, and porn-extras. If not so magical as the mythic Hollywood of old, it might be said to be glamour adjacent, with all the famous streets and boulevards passing through it, and Beverly Hills just down the way. When I worked there, it was a quaint and liberal little town of charming twenties-era bungalows, cheap motels, dusty parks, expensive gyms, thrift shops and dance bars. The sunshine was still relentless, the sidewalks wide, and the homeless and whores kept well away, for the most part, from the expensive luncheonettes by the gay sheriffs. If Crystal was Queen of the Night, and the dress-code in the night clubs calculated in shaved skin and bronzer, there was certain callow charisma in the daylight cafes occupied by the well-oiled, pumped muscled, monolithically organized queerness of community.

The shop I worked in is now going or gone. Even in those days, a decade ago, times were troubled for A Different Light Bookstore. Money was tight, vendors disinclined to delivery, the stock growing tired, the employees being let go. I had been hired as a store manager at just the moment when the necessity of a community bookstore for queers, and of a literate, left-leaning, grassroots, queer community, seemed to be passing. Evidently, having, some of us, survived AIDS & Reagan, we had negotiated our Liberation so successfully, we now preferred our politics to be global, our community institutionalized in a big, expensive "Center," and our Parades sponsored corporately. At least, it seemed, we no longer felt the need to read anything but personals, buy anything but custom leather goods, drinks and drugs, and were inclined nowadays to meet only socially, leaving such things as culture, spirituality and politics to the professionals. It was not a happy time to be running a funky bookstore, however venerable, in the midst of the Boccaccian block party of new money, new treatments and every old habit but reading.

There were moments, though. The company was operated by a benevolent radical and owned then by a delightful, if increasingly financially overwhelmed queen operating out of a New York City location that was, if anything, in even worse shape than the store I managed. The staff of the West Hollywood bookstore was an extraordinary collection of dedicated, politically and socially aware and committed eccentrics, excellent booksellers and excellent people all who, touchingly, were still as convinced as the owners and I were that we were doing good and necessary work, though to less and less return. Even as they were being let go, my employees were almost invariably kind to me personally, despite my own and the company's utter failure to secure the store's future and their jobs. Before the store was finally sold and my services no longer required, I learned a great deal about personal dignity, resolve and humility, working in that honorable place. I also learned more than I wanted to about debt, indifference, and failure. When I left, I could barely bring myself to look anyone still there in the eye.

But among my happier memories of my time in West Hollywood, one encounter with real Hollywood of old, came very much to mind on the last night of my recent, brief vacation. Again thanks to the good folks at TCM, I was reminded of the nature of real glamour. A few years before she "passed," as they say back home, Ann Miller sat down with TCM host, Robert Osborne for a delightful interview. Born Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier in Chireno in Nacogdoches County in east Texas, in 1923, she was named thus because her father had wanted a boy, though she was called Annie by her intimates all her life. "Ann Miller" was an invention of the movie studio, as was, to some considerable extent, the lady herself. A talent for tap, legs as long as a summer afternoon in east Texas, a dazzling smile, and delightfully innocent charm did the rest. From the thirties through the fifties, Ann Miller danced like a firecracker. Later, on television and Broadway, her belting and buck-and-wing kept her star, if never quite so bright again, still dazzling.

Osborne's interview was a full hour of movie-clips and anecdotes, delightful fun, with more than a few surprises -- "I guess you could say I invented pantyhose, sorry fellas!" -- said Annie, and the kind of campy joy too little experienced, even on Turner Classic Movies these days. I sat up watching the show, eating cookies and smiling so much I must have dropped nearly as many crumbs as made it to my mouth.

I met Ann Miller once. One weekday morning, all but alone in the increasingly understaffed bookstore, a long rented car pulled up out front. The driver held the door and out stepped a little lady on impossibly long legs. Her hair was in a sleek chignon, black as coal, as were her penciled brows and long false lashes. She was made up for a premiere, though only out for a little shopping. In a navy blue blazer, tailored white trousers and white heels, with a huge gardenia pinned to her lapel and a blaze of jewelry, Ann Miller sailed into A Different Light Bookstore, pushed her giant round sunglasses up past the spit-curl on her forehead, called me "Honey" and asked for a new book of photographs on the late Studio 54. "I'm supposed to be in it," she explained.

She examined the book and bought it. She'd done a cast album of a revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies," for charity as I recall, some time before, and she was happy to autograph the few copies we had of the CD. She was all graciousness and glamour to the few of us lucky enough to be there that morning. We queens stood before her, in the presence of real, if supporting Hollywood royalty, and just basked. One of the store's surviving buyers had the where-with-all, as I recall, to make actual conversation. I just stared and burbled pleasantly.

As she left, she said something like, "Thanks, boys" and so we all were at that moment, as we watched her sail out the door, into her car and away up the boulevard.

Seeing her interview on TCM again, I was reminded of that unusual morning in West Hollywood, of my good coworkers, of the good bookstore that is now as gone as old Hollywood, Ann Miller, my youth and Gay bookstores, and I was happy. There's nothing like a movie star to brighten up even the darkest night, no?