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May 13, 1944– Armistead Maupin
“We’ve always pined for the old days, & people now do it about the 1960s & 1970s. I don’t do it. I really don’t.”
Maybe Maupin doesn’t, but I do. His Tales Of The City books are the very essence of my halcyon days of young gaydom.
A summer day in 2007, I was lying naked at the beach on Sauvie Island, just outside of Portland. Because I am, or rather was, a redhead, I need to be in part-shade or dappled sunlight. I was surrounded by dozens of hot gay men, gathered at their little setups in the full sun on the beach, alone & in groups. I didn’t want to be doing it. I was embarrassed. I wanted to appear hot, yet cool. But, there in the shade, I had burst into tears while reading Armistead Maupin’s new installment of the Tales Of The City series- Michael Tolliver Lives. I was shedding tears for the reunion with some of my favorite characters in literature, but also for my own loss of innocence & the glance at my own mortality. But mostly, I was crying for the beauty of the writing, & the pleasure of having the main character Michael Tolliver still be alive after a presumed early death from HIV.
I read the original Tales Of The City in the serial installments from the San Francisco Chronicle, alerted to them from friend Nancy Bleiweiss who lived in the city. I savored each one. Maupin revived the Dickensian serial novel, which makes you laugh, makes you cry, & makes you anticipate the next episode. I had a real romance with San Francisco in the 1970s & I spent as much time there as I could afford. I was living in LA when PSA Airlines (now long gone) had a “Midnight Flyer”, a no reservations, stand in line, $20 flight from LAX to SFO. I liked to take advantage of the deal. The Midnight Flyer was my introduction to the Mile High Club. Only in the 1970s, could a young man travel to the City By The Bay to get laid, & then have it happen on the flight there. I didn’t even need to touch ground.
As each new book in the Tales Of The City series was released, I would get myself to the Different Drummer Bookstore (in the 1970s & 1980s there were actual Gay bookstores) on Capitol Hill, Seattle & I would purchase the latest installment. I wouldn’t read it though. I would go back to book #1 & start at the very beginning. It was 18 years between Sure Of You & Michael Tolliver Lives, quite the wait. It was good, but emotional, to be back with my friends from Barbary Lane.
Maupin is a Southern Gentleman born to a conservative, Christian family , raised in North Carolina . He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the start of his career Maupin worked at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, a station then managed by future U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Helms nominated Maupin for a patriotic award, which he won. Maupin says he was a typical conservative & even a segregationist during this era & that he admired Helms. He later condemned Helms at a gay pride parade on the steps of the North Carolina State Capitol. Maupin is a veteran of the US Navy; he served several tours of duty including one in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Maupin claims he was gay since childhood but didn’t have sex until he was 26 years old & only decided to come out of the closet in 1974.
Maupin was in a relationship of 12 years with Terry Anderson, a remarkable journalist & gay rights activist. Ian McKellen is one of his best friends & a former lover. Christopher Isherwood was a mentor, friend, & influence as a writer. He was once a fuck buddy of Rock Hudson:
‘I’m the age now that Rock was when he picked me up, so I can understand how he felt, how his fame limited his freedom. You get kinder as you go along.”
I was born across the bay in Oakland & I have spent a lot of time in San Francisco, including most of the summer of 1972. What a great year to be young & hung & in SF. When I mention this to other gay men of a certain age, a dreamy faraway look will come over their faces & they talk about how much Maupin’s Tales meant to them. I knew of someone that had asked to be buried with his copies of the books. Maupin’s writing continues to take me by surprise, amuse, & touch me.
Maupin has the gift of gently noting how much we have in common, gay or straight, liberal or conservative. Everyone craves a little love, we all want to be treated with a touch of kindness, & we’re all just trying to enjoy our time until the end. In summer of 2011, I savored Mary Ann In Autumn, the next in the series. It had me so engaged that I had to force myself to read just a short chapter a day, to draw out the experience of being back with my beloved characters once more.
Last year, while enjoying my many months of luxurious chemotherapy, I took on the last on the series, The Days Of Anna Madrigal, a cathartic but satisfying end of the journey, for the Tales Of The City books, not me. Spoiler alert: Michael Tolliver & I both live.
Maupin is married to yummy Christopher Turner whom he saw on a special website & then chased him down saying: “didn’t I see you on Daddyhunt.com?” The Maupin/Turners were married in Vancouver, BC in 2007, though Maupin says that they had called each other “husband” for a long time. It was a big deal when the couple bailed on San Francisco & moved to in Santa Fe with their labradoodle. I truly felt it was the end of an era. But now the couple is back in the city & this news makes me feel as if I need one more visit to that magic place before I kick the bucket.
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