I have a story. Starts one place and ends in another, the way stories do. If it isn't quite a Christmas story -- meaning it hasn't much of a moral and neither Santa Claus nor the baby Jesus makes an appearance hereafter -- at least there's Christmas in it.
I noticed him because he looked very like me. Not so interesting as you might think. Lots of people look like me now, or rather, I look like a whole lot o' people now because -- older: white beard, close cropped hair, glasses, wider than high. After a certain age it takes real effort to stand out in a crowd, effort that requires energy, which requires effort, which require energy, which most of us aren't willing to waste on things like audacious new looks or putting in the real work at the weight-bench. Kudos to them what do. Nothing I personally like better than ropey gym daddies and eccentric centenarian fashion plates like Iris Apfel! Bless 'em. Most of us in the range of sixty settle for statement frames for our bifocals and the occasional bold plaid. I can't remember the last time I looked at my footwear and thought I needed to step up my game. There are a lot more of us than not, which is what makes the exceptions notable. So we all play a role, don't we?
This uniformity of age isn't about sex or gender either. I've known a lot of professional men in their fifties who look a lot like famous female basketball coaches; boxy suits, gray crop, dark turtlenecks, thin necklace. I've known a lot of women in their sixties who look just like me without the beard, particularly in winter gear -- which is designed to do three things well: retain heat, make it hard to find one's keys, and neutralize secondary sex characteristics. Even the distinction in summer resort wear tends to relax after a certain age, at least if you still run with the right crowd. I've know just as many women who swim in T-shirts and boxers as I have men who host deck-side cocktail hours in kaftans and diaphanous wraps. Gendered clothing is bullshit. The young people taught me that. All good, so far as I'm concerned. Better in fact, as anything that undermines patriarchy and allows me to wear a loose-fitting cotton and a wide-brimmed sunhat is a personal plus as well as a blow against hetero-normative conformity.
So the man -- and yes, it was a man -- who looked like me was only noticeable because he didn't look like me now but rather looked very like me when I was about nineteen years old. That's what struck. Back then I had oodles of auburn hair, a bright orange beard, and a twenty-eight inch waist. I wore corduroys so tight a dime couldn't fall out of my pocket and collared sports shirts in colors not associated with any professional club. Not a combination you saw every day back then and certainly not someone I've seen much of since.
He was in a crosswalk half a block in front of me so I can't speak to specifics like eye-color or the full extent of his beard, but at less than fifty yards away it really did suggest time travel, or one of those television visitations so popular now in the final season of an hour drama when the past drifts into a wide shot. I didn't run up on him because I don't run. Also, it's worth mentioning that I wasn't attracted to him. Would that have been creepy? Yes, I think it would have been. I just kept walking and so did he and we walked in different directions. We didn't make eye contact or anything like that. He was there. I noticed him, was struck by the similarity, and then I lost him. He didn't evaporate or anything, I suppose he just turned a corner. End of doppelgänger moment. End of story.
What I wish is that I'd been close enough and quick enough to snap a picture of him for my beloved husband, A. That was the boy he met, pretty much the one he took home. T-shirt rather than a pink and green Izod, tight jeans instead of tight cords, and I'm going to say sneakers rather than canvas flats but I really didn't look at his feet. I wish the beloved husband had had that glimpse of me then in the crosswalk now. Hasn't seen that kid in years.
It takes a certain cast of mind to mistake the living for the dead, to see previous incarnations passing in the street and I don't think I have whatever that is that allows for this. Based on this brief experience I think it must be wonderful. I was surprised and pleased as long as it lasted. I've known people who saw lost lovers in subway stations, long-gone friends at the foot of the bed, or their dead mother at the foot of the stair, telling them that they will be alright. When my best friend Peter died I believe I actually looked for him in crowds, not as he was at the end which was heartbreaking and awful, but as he had been when I met him and when he was still going out dancing. I've scanned more than one dance floor in more than one club looking for someone who moved like him. Never saw him again.
Some people dance naturally, as if utilizing a second language. Seems they've always known how, unsuspected until required. Block-parties, weddings, bars, there are usually at least a few people who hear music and move with it. My paternal grandma knew how to dance, my dad did too. Didn't pass on to my generation. We three inherited our mother's shy feet. I've also known a few professional dancers and I noticed that in social settings, whatever the music and whatever the state of their sobriety, they use their bodies like instruments, the way they've been tuned and practiced, the way a classical violinist might play a reel or an opera singer might sing jazz. (One of my all time favorites things, by the way, divas who swing.) Once a real dancer, always a real dancer. All the world's a stage, and every club has an otherwise unseen proscenium arch. The training will out one way and another. However free and easy the mood or the music, there will always be bits of remembered choreography in their muscle, just how far they will kick a foot and no further, what they do with their hands. When I was young I went out with little knots of theatrical kids, musical theater types, ballet and modern dancers, and they all uniformly, unselfconsciously did this. Always dazzled the locals. (I learned to take off my glasses when I went out dancing with dancers. If I was going to have any fun at all, I couldn't hear the music and watch them at the same time. Always an audience, me. If I was stood too close to that kind of talent and let myself look too long I'd just stop stock-still and watch.)
Peter danced a little the day I met him, right up the aisle of our freshman orientation at college. (We went to that theater school you went to when you didn't get into the good one.) Peter danced the same way the rest of his life. He took class, danced in musicals, dated dancers and his dance teacher and he loved going out. He was good. He had the steps. He used his whole body. He was a beautiful dancer, sexy, but he did not change. If he had the music he wanted he was on the floor. Didn't need a partner but he could lead or follow as the need arose. But if the song was wrong, or the floor was too crowded, or he wanted to drink he would walk right off the floor without a moment's hesitation until something he like pulled him back. If he couldn't dance to it, it wasn't worth trying. He knew what he liked and he knew what he could do, and do to anyone watching, and he did not much vary from the first time we went out to the last.
He's been dead a long time now. Never saw middle-age or a white hair. On the infrequent occasion when I see gay men of our generation out dancing nowadays, I remember a night a quarter of a century ago when we were still young. I went to a party hosted by an older gentleman, very much of the Castro clone type from his brush mustache to his Disco boots. Really he was of the generation just previous to ours culturally if not chronologically, but already in those endangered days he was a bird increasingly rare. At some point rather late in the evening he took command of the music and put some early Sylvester or something like that on the turntable. The man turned it out! Snake hips, big, gestural arms, pony-kicks, it was like a tutorial on how nobody danced anymore. The little ones scattered. We all stood and watched. I wonder had he lived long enough Peter would have been just such a figure. Cameo, or Kool and the Gang, Whitney, and Pete would rise up and show the children how it was done in the day!
He always started the same way: right hand on his chest, elbow out, left hand in the air, head down, back arched and relaxed, arched and relaxed, and kicking, kicking, kicking. It was tight. At some point that long S would start in his neck and work its way down his spine and back up. His legs were incredibly strong but not long and he kept everything centered in his chest. He would drop forward from his waist and let his legs keep his balance, knees bent while he rolled his torso. He'd let his ass drop onto his heels and pull up with his hands still flat on the floor. To be honest, it was always about that ass. That was always when the sailors in San Diego really noticed him, when a big man would bump up against his backside in the after-hours club in Pittsburgh, when the guy he'd been flirting with at the bar held up a fresh drink. That ass was everything.
I watched him dance in at least six cities, in every kind of club, parties, my living room. Same dance, just as good the last time as the first. Best he ever was? We were freshmen in college and for our make-up final -- theatre majors, remember? -- we had to do a full character: make-up, hair, costume, and then go to our instructor's Halloween party. Our host was there to greet us, dressed in a perfectly tailored half man/half woman number. Exquisite human. We got our final grade from him at the door. Fun. Not for everybody though. I can still remember the poor soul ahead of us who came as Raggedy Ann. Failed. (That may have been the first time I heard the word "basic" used as a withering put-down.) I was The Mad Woman of Chaillot. Picture hat, shawls, boas, Edwardian dress and button shoes all borrowed from the stock room. To hide my beard, I'd made a sort of turtleneck/snood. Worked. Grade? "A bit operatic, but then you're near-sighted, right? Next time have a friend blend you. B+." Peter went as Oberon. People didn't actually wear glitter going out much then. Peter sparkled. He was naturally handsome in a rather Mephistophelian way; sharp nose, sharp chin, wide mouth. He'd done his make-up in browns, umbers, and forest greens. Stunning. He got an A at the door. The fact that he was only wearing green tights and little collapsed leather boots didn't hurt. I remember his teeth chattered when he took his parka off to be judged. We didn't stay long at the party. Then we went OUT!
We went to the club. We got in easy. Nobody checked our IDs, ever. The place was understandably packed. We danced. At some point on the dancefloor, we were joined by a whole troupe of actual, professional dancers. (Here's where the Christmas comes in!) There was a Canadian company in town already touring the Tap Nutcracker. One very handsome if far from tall fellow dressed as a Valentino sheik gave me a whirl. At some point he leaned right into my ear and asked if I was a "real" woman. Back then people still asked that sort of question. We knew no better, kids. To answer him I pulled down my Kate Hepburn turtleneck and out sprang my long, red beard. He seemed to like me all the better for it. Around Peter's Oberon the fairies circled worshipfully. He was golden then; actual glitter, broad shoulders, muscles everywhere, tiny waist, the aforementioned big booty -- in tights. By the time I retired from the dancefloor dripping with greasepaint and sweat, Peter had picked a fairy queen. Big guy, no costume but a cute leather harness the same color as his perfect skin so that the buckles and studs looked like they occurred naturally on his magnificent frame. Those two danced hard. People moved back to watch. It was magical, truly.
I'm not being coy when I say that I don't remember how the night ended. I honestly don't. I can imagine. My sheik was too drunk to offer rides on his stallion, so to say. Oberon went off with his tap-dancer-leather-daddy. Saw myself home in a cab. It was still magic. I can still see the two of them dancing, and the glitter Peter shed on that magnificent man's chest.
The problem with doppelgangers and time travelers and that whole lot is that one never sees the person one looks for. All I saw was me. Me as I remember me, but what of it? My past is not a place I go to in search of myself. Found me ages ago and grew into him. Didn't do a bad job of it, though I might have paid more attention to keeping the vehicle oiled and in good trim. Non, je ne regrette rein.
Nobody I've ever known loved Christmas more than Pete. Literally, actually, altogether loved Christmas, did our Pete. I say "ours" because he was never mine, never just mine. Instead we were best friends so we fought like old married people and we laughed more together than was either rational or necessary. I made terrible fun of him, in part because he would never have sex with me and because he loved me like a brother, but also because he was vain, and dizzy, and reckless, and maddeningly sweet. And he knew just how to kick me right in the ass too. Trained dancer, remember. He used fewer words than me, but then he didn't need them the way I did, do. Christmas was his absolute jam. Wherever he lived, whatever the state of him, he had a beautiful tree -- up too soon, down shockingly late -- plus decorations, records, Santa hats, reindeer horns, punch-bowl, Christmas cards taped up on the wall.
After college he always had tiny studio apartments. Just where he slept after all, mostly. Peter was a going out guy. And in each and every one of his tiny studio apartments he had Christmas parties. All of his Christmas parties, all of his parties were dreadful in the same wonderful way; too many disparate people, in too small a space, never enough food, too much booze, noise, and mayhem, and the tree knocked over. Every time. Peter knew everyone and invited them all: neighbors, cooks, club owners, dancers, drinkers, landlords, tricks, the prostitute from 3B and the fireman from when the building almost burned down and the doctor from the clinic and the sweet Polish couple that managed the building. ("Dammit, Piotr, too many peoples!") And when it was finally breaking up, out came that damned Carpenters album he loved above all things. At least everyone knew when it was over, except Peter, bless 'im.
He also loved shopping in malls and fancy shops and for cards and perfect wrapping paper. He sang along to carols on the escalators and wished a Merry Christmas to the girls at the perfume counter. Out was where he always wanted to be, where he lived. Out into snow or sunshine, out to eat, out to drink, out to cruise. Peter didn't come out so much as stay. (And yet I never met anyone better suited to live alone, as happened even when he briefly had boyfriends, with one of whom at least he lived for awhile.) He liked having things just so and as he preferred them when and if he came home. He liked having his own room, possibly because he came from a large family. He liked seeing other people's Christmas trees and decorations, but he judged them rather harshly. That was not where one put the candlesticks, bitch. He could be particularly harsh about other people's creches.
It sounds an exaggeration but everywhere he went he danced; down aisles, and up streets, and around what he didn't want to discuss.
I can't talk about our last Christmas. That was horrible. My fault mostly, but also there was so much wrong by then anyway. He stopped speaking to me. Then his mother died and he had to. Then he was back in his old apartment on Polk again and I was at the other end of California. Horrible. The worst part of being present at the end is that the end is what one remembers. Always thereafter have to get around the end to see past it and that is very hard to do. It's been twenty years and I still have to make myself not go to the one memory of all my memories I least want when I think of Peter. Bitter but so.
Of all my dead he is still who I would most like to see, even if only in passing on the street. Peter as he was in his glory; Oberon in green tights, Peter in a wide-necked sweater and a swimsuit, sat smoking on a pier in San Diego in November, Peter in a Christmas sweater and chandelier-drop earrings that weighed more than they were worth, Peter dancing. Peter dancing. Peter dancing.
When Christmas comes again I will make the effort again. Dickens made Christmas, among many things, an occasion for ghosts and visitations. I will sit in my quiet house in Seattle where my friend never was and I will look at the photo I keep of sweet Pete in a tin reliquary from Mexico, shaped like a heart, and I will try very hard to see Peter dancing, Peter Dancing, Peter dancing. How his eyes still dance in that picture and oh, how lovely he was.
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