Barbary Lane Dispatches Podcast

Armistead Maupin

Pull up a chair on the porch of 28 Barbary Lane—tales, truth, and tea from Armistead Maupin. armisteadmaupin.substack.com

  1. 16h ago

    “I Love You, No Boolsheet”

    When I was 24 years old, I joined the Navy. It was during the Vietnam War, so part of the effort was to see that I wasn’t going to be on shore in a combat situation. I went to Officer Candidate School up in Newport, Rhode Island. The very first part of the tour was in Charleston, South Carolina, which was hot as hell and miserable. But then we heard with great excitement that the destroyer tender I was on, the USS Everglades, was going to Naples and Malta. A destroyer tender takes care of other destroyers. That’s why it’s called that. And so it means you’re mostly in port at the time. There was a wonderful opportunity to see Europe, and I jumped at it. I didn’t have much choice because that’s where we were going, but I was very excited about the fact that we were going to be going to these European ports. In Naples, when I first went ashore, it was to Santa Lucia, which is a famous fleshpot. The smell of pizza, charred pizza, was in the air. And sex—for me, I mean, you could sense that there was sex there. I was in the closet. I hadn’t had sex with anybody. So when we went ashore, some guy came up to me and said, “Hey, Joe, you want to buy flying c**k and balls?” I was afraid that he’d clocked me, that he knew that I would love a flying c**k and balls. But it turned out to be this little icon, a little thing you wore around your neck that was a c**k and balls and had wings. The sailors loved them. My fellow sailors loved these things and bought them in great abundance. But I felt like having one around my neck would be like having a scarlet letter around my neck. It was not something I wanted to advertise. There were also guys there at Santa Lucia advertising “exhibeesh,” which was a sexual show, basically, between a man and a woman, sometimes between a woman and a donkey. I never went to see them. I can only imagine what that was like. But again, it was sex all around me, but nothing I could partake in. I heard about them from my men when they returned to the ship late at night, and I could feel the Chianti breeze of their breath on my face as they told me about their exploits. Sometimes somebody would grab my knee for emphasis, and that sent me around the world, really. During that time, I wrote a lot of letters home. I was a pretty well-behaved young man. Everybody in my family got letters, including my grandmother. My mother saved them all, and they’re now in my archives at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley. There’s an excerpt I want to read to you about one night I went ashore. It reveals what I liked to tell my parents and what I liked to hide from my parents. And the reason this is in all caps is that I had recently absconded with the communications typewriter, which types in all caps, so I don’t want you to think I’ve turned into Donald Trump. Cliff has been gone for about five days. The last night we frequented one of the white hat bars for the sheer laughs of it. This particular one was called the Cactus Club (pronounced “Cockatoose Cloob” by the lovelies who hang around the joint, à la Long Branch, to drum up trade). Two of these adorables plopped their pasta-stuffed buttocks in our laps as soon as we sat down. Dialogue: Lovely: Hey Joe, buy me drink. Me: I am very poor. I no can buy drink. Lovely: You reech. You offeece. Buy me drink. Me: They are too expensive. Lovely: Negats, Joe. Buy me drink. Me: Try somebody else. I am very poor. Lovely: Hey, Joe, I love you, no boolsheet! That was sort of the theme of Naples: “I love you, no boolsheet.” I am going to put in for Christmas leave now, so that I’ll have a stronger chance of getting off. I will get either Christmas or New Years off. That is, ten days or so in December or ten days in January. Since most of the officers live in Charleston and can go home every evening anyway, it seems only right and proper that I should get Christmas off. That remains to be seen I guess. I devour all the news from home. I miss you all so much and I love you, no boolsheet. Teddy Sometimes on my day off I would take the ferry to Capri. I would go with my friend Jim, who was really in it for the girls. I just needed the company of somebody, and Jim was a good one. Once, during a Revlon festival of all things, we were on Capri at the Hotel Quisisana, sitting there in the sunlight. And Jim made the observation, “Don’t look now, but that’s Faye f*****g Dunaway over there checking us out.” And it was. The star of Bonnie and Clyde was there, looking very young and pretty. We also spotted George Hamilton and Penelope Tree that day. Jim was very taken with the girls. And I was kind of distracted by the young men I saw in the square with silver-dollar nipples peeking through their mesh T-shirts. That’s where my mind went. That was the first time I’d seen fishnet T-shirts. They hadn’t come to the States yet, as far as I know, and it was a novelty to see them. I went from there to fantasizing about these young men up in their rooms, stripping naked and getting on with it. And I was not getting on with anybody. I felt it. I felt the absence of sex and love in my life. It was a hard time, really. After Naples, we sailed into Malta. I’ll never forget that entrance into the city, into Valletta. Everything was sort of sandstone-colored and all of one piece. It looked like some sort of old lithograph. It was amazing. Malta had all sorts of attractions for me that weren’t sexual, that were just the visual nature of that beautiful place. I was assigned my first-ever cabin mate. I don’t know how it happened, but a Greek ensign was allowed to room with me. His name was Giorgos. I got a lot of teasing in the wardroom from the other officers, who were saying, “Oh, you know about those Greeks, Armistead. You better watch out for them. Don’t drop the soap.” Well, I had some hopes about that. But it was pretty obvious very early on that Giorgos was as straight as they come. But he was also Greek, and he had an adventurous quality to him. When I told him how much I loved Zorba the Greek, the movie, he offered to teach me the sirtaki, the dance that was in Zorba the Greek. We’ve all seen that done. And so I had the opportunity to stand with him, arms against each other’s shoulders, and do this dance. That was probably the closest I got to any tactile relationship with a man at that point. There was a delicious freedom in this, of course, because it was all right, even manly, for men to dance with each other. Alan Bates and Anthony Quinn did the dance in Zorba the Greek. And it was many years later that I discovered that Alan Bates himself was queer. So I was always getting in on the news late. One night in Malta, Jim and I took a taxi to the far end of the island, where we saw in the headlights of the car these old ladies in what looked like mourning garb. It was a haunting scene. It seemed very common for women to be in a perpetual state of mourning, just as I was in a perpetual state of longing. My theme song was this haunting gypsy tune that seemed to be in every alleyway. For a long time I thought it was something local and unheard of. It sounded like something out of Malta. It was only after I left there that I discovered it was “Those Were the Days,” sung by Mary Hopkin, and that it was a worldwide hit. I approached the captain when I was put in charge of the cruise book, which is the equivalent of a high school yearbook, really, and told him that I wanted to name the cruise book Those Were the Days. He was all for it because—well, I left out the part about “Was that lonely woman really me?” and emphasized the line “We’d fight and never lose,” which sounded sufficiently military to please the captain. We dug up a copy of the book not long ago, and there it was. The song was really an anthem for me at the time. There was this wistfulness, and the way in which it spoke to my own longing without really addressing it officially. By the time we got back to Charleston, life settled into rotors on the deck and cheerleaders and water welcomes—the things that I had been doing before—and I felt really kind of empty. I knew that something had to change in my life, and I knew what it was. I knew that I needed to lose my virginity. I’d like to read you a letter that I wrote home at the time. It’s apropos of nothing, but I think it’s kind of funny. And it’s about the beginning of this. About four days ago I shaved off a mustache of two months. It was a magnificent creature which curled up at the ends and was intended as a Christmas surprise for me family. It was light brown, with red overtones, and bore a disquieting resemblance to a dormant centipede. I shaved it off because: * It began to feel like a dormant centipede. * Every night at the wardroom movie the boatswain would yell: “Move over Maupin, your mustache is in the way.” * I developed a nervous habit of twisting it at the ends like a silent film villain, whenever a major crisis arose. All of the ensigns on the ship have tried this little experiment, but there is only one mustache left now. He is being very stubborn about it, but I think he’ll give in any day now. I have only one picture of myself wearing the contraption—one taken of me and Cliff by a street photographer at a sidewalk cafe—but that one was taken when it was only three weeks old. I started to cut it off in one hunk and mail it to you so you could tie a blue ribbon around it or something like my baby locks, but after examining the residue I decided that the idea was somewhat macabre. The next time I talk to you, I’m going to tell you about my second tour of duty, which was in Vietnam—on shore in Vietnam. But thank you for coming along to hear about this, and I do appreciate it. It’s nice spending time with you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/s

  2. Aug 11

    In the Navy: Closeted, Confused and Full of Lust

    Here’s a transcript of the video: When I signed up for Officer Candidate School for the Navy in the late ’60s, it’s a good thing that my mother filled out the form and not me, because it asked if I had had any “homosexual tendencies”. It was on the list of maladies that you needed to recognize before they let you in. So I didn’t have to lie about that, but I knew in my heart what was going on with me, who I was attracted to, all of that. It was a big dark secret that I hadn’t acted on at that point, but I knew what I wanted to act on. And fortunately, the Navy provided more inspiration in that regard, if not actual action on my part. I had been asked to appear on a television show, I think, to talk about the Navy. I don’t remember what. It was something in Charleston. It was my first time on TV, and I made every effort to make sure that I didn’t come off like a big sissy. I’m sure I did when I look back on it, but I put a little swagger in my step in order to pass. It’s hard to think about it now. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted anybody to not know I was gay, but I didn’t at that point. I wrote a number of letters home, which my mother saved religiously. And those letters are now in the Bancroft Library in Berkeley as part of my archives. I’m very pleased that it’s there, by the way. I’d like to read you an excerpt from a letter that I wrote home to my family just a few days after I had reported on board the USS Everglades. I’d already made a joke about the ship being named after a swamp. The letter really captures what my mood was at that time. Here we go. Dear Mummie and Daddy, The last three days have been a real jolt to my system. For a while I felt so depressed and inept and frightened that I was eleven years old and back at Camp Seagull again, wondering what humiliation my uncoordination had in store for me that day. The captain, Tidd (it rhymes with Kidd ) nodded gravely when I told him of my lack of training in crypto and communications procedures and all I could see was Wyatt Taylor filling out a little green card reading… Wyatt Taylor was the big guy at camp. “Needs to improve ability to play various types of ball games.” That’s very much true about me then and now. I have no interest in various types of ball games. I was so awkward at camp, and I felt the same way really on board the Everglades. It was 600 men, and it was just a big factory. It was in the stinky heart of North Charleston. It was pretty miserable, actually. There were mosquitoes, and it was a very hard time for me because I felt like I was not where I belonged at all. I was constantly getting lost. I couldn’t even find my own room sometimes. And it was embarrassing for an officer to ask an enlisted man if he knows the way to his room — especially if you call it a room. It was a cabin. I was just really a fish out of water, and Charleston didn’t make it easier on me. The ship itself was a destroyer tender that held 600 men. Its function was to sit in port and take care of other ships, other destroyers. That only got interesting when you went ashore, which is what we did eventually. But on board the ship, the captain sort of embraced me. I think he knew I was a doofus and wanted to help out. And he let me write the ship’s newsletter, which I named The Tenderloin, as in Destroyer Tender: Choice Cuts on the Chopping Block. I spent way too much time picking on the executive officer, who was very unpopular, a little martinet of a man. And I’m a little ashamed of that now when I think about it. I think he must have needed some friends, and he didn’t have any. I was a communications officer, which meant that I was in charge of the signal flags and the radio and a lot of other things that I had no clue about whatsoever. I soon learned that enlisted men do all the work on one of these big ships, and officers have to pretend that they are, so that’s what I did. I had something called a Cosmic Top Secret clearance, if you can believe that, which meant that I would go ashore once a week and pick up these rotors that had something to do with encryption on board the ship. And I would go ashore and I would bring those rotors in. I remember feeling really nervous that I was going to drop them into the bay. But you can see what my state of mind was. I was always living in fear. Captain Tidd was a tall, affable — very affable — man with protruding ears and a pleasant smile that somehow or other, for me, conjured up Donald O’Connor in those Francis the Talking Mule movies. He was basically a decent chap, and I was really lucky to have him take me under his wing in the way that he did. Later on I would follow him to Vietnam. He demanded professionalism. Even when he was chastising me, he did it in a nice way. I’ll never forget the day he approached me about the fact that I was sunbathing on the deck. And he said, “I don’t mind if you and the men sunbathe on the deck, but if they’re sunbathing on the port side, then I’d like you to be sunbathing on the starboard side.” And I think that was the first clue I had that he had some sense of what a threat I might be if they unleashed that monster. There were a dozen men in my division, and I really liked most of them a great deal. Some were smarter than others. Some were cuter than others. One of them really stood out to me, a 19-year-old Billy Budd of a blond named Spikes. He was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. He was a signalman, which I considered the most romantic of all the Navy jobs. My father learned of my birth when he was in the South Pacific through signal flags. I think it said, “Mother and son doing fine,” something like that. But Spikes, when he worked his flags, every muscle in his body seemed to participate in the procedure, and it was a lovely thing to watch. I still get chills thinking about it today. One of the other officers on the ship told me that he thought that I was spending too much time with Spikes, showing favoritism. I believe that was the way he put it. And I couldn’t imagine what he would have seen in my behavior that would have made him think that, unless it was the time that Spikes was in the hospital having an appendectomy and I went to visit him, which is what naval officers are supposed to do with their enlisted men when they go into the hospital. And Spikes sort of pushed his trousers down — not his trousers, whatever he was wearing in the hospital — so I could see his “war wound,” as he called it. He was a very sweet guy. I still remember him with affection. Nothing, of course, ever happened. I just dreamed of it. As you can tell, I was quite smitten with him. But there was temptation everywhere on board the ship, not just Spikes. During the morning muster, some of the men very proudly wore their morning wood against their thirteen-button flies and made jokes about it. It’s when I realized that something that was very real and powerful for me was just a joke for other guys. They would grab each other’s asses and say, “I’m going to get me some of that,” completely in a joking mood, but it was still homoeroticism. My writing in The Tenderloin caught the attention of Captain Tidd, who could tell that I had a taste for the vivid, and he put me in charge of the welcome-home committees for the ships coming into the harbor. This usually involved tugboats doing a water welcome, which was a huge ejaculation of water to celebrate the arrival of the ships returning home. I worked with some cheerleaders in the Charleston area who participated in some of those welcome-home committees. And then I had the brainstorm of hiring a stripper to be standing on deck and welcoming — doing a little hoochie-cooch on the deck for the men — until the captain said, “Nice try, but this doesn’t happen in the Navy. Civilian women aren’t allowed on board a ship in the Navy.” So we had to come up with another solution. And finally, it happened when the captain said two words: “Get Lurch.” Lurch was a machinist’s mate way down in the hole of the ship who was known for doing all sorts of wild stuff. I knew what he meant, and Lurch immediately volunteered for the job of being in drag, basically, to welcome these ships home. It was an amazing thing to watch. He got into it completely, and I think the guys who were being welcomed home, the ships that were coming in, were more on board than they would have been if we’d had an actual female stripper. Lurch ended up doing the bump and grind to the “Bump and Grind” number from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and ended up in a bright red cocktail dress, tearing it off and shaking his hairy ass at the troops as the ship pulled into the harbor. It was a memorable moment, to say the least. Those first few months on board the ship were a mix of things for me. The terrible awkwardness I felt in my own body and the raging lust that I felt for my shipmates that I knew I had to keep under control. And I did. But it makes those memories so vivid in several different ways. I want to talk to you more about that, and, as a matter of fact, to tell you about my time in Naples, which is coming up, I think. But thank you for coming along today, and I’ll see you soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Jul 31

    Catching Up

    Here’s a transcript of the video: Well, we owe you a bit of an apology, I think, because we haven’t been on here for a while. There are reasons for that, and I’ll explain some of them later, but we had a great time in France. Zeke had a great time in France. We couldn’t take the Eurostar because they have this ridiculous rule about dogs not travelling on the Eurostar. So we took a ferry and had him with us every inch of the way, and he loved it. He loved the stimulation of it. We loved having him around. It was great. It’s amazing when you have a dog and you can take them on adventures with you. It makes all the difference. I know we caught up with you in that wonderful medieval village of Sarlat, maybe our favourite place on the whole trip. Then we went on to Nice and Marseille, but we filmed less and less at that point because it was just so friggin’ hot. It was pretty unbearable. That’s really the reason we didn’t do more shooting, because it was just so f***ing hot. The last day we were in Paris, it was 102. I’ve never heard of such a thing in Paris, and it was unbearable. Anybody who is a Republican who still believes that global warming is a fantasy should talk to us—or anybody who lives in Europe. England is having a heatwave like it’s never seen before. So it was nice to be back, though. We stayed in the house. We kept the windows closed. The other reason that we’ve taken so long to get anything done is that I had cataract surgery. I’d had it before I actually met Chris, 22 years ago. So it must have been 23 or 24 years ago that I had cataract surgery. I was really impressed by what a minor operation it felt like and how well it improved my eyesight. It just gave me 20/20 vision suddenly. So I was expecting such a miracle this time. It’s been pretty great, I have to say. This eye is incredible. I still need surgery done on this eye, but I went to the NHS and, as usual, had a wonderful experience. They had to process a lot of people through there the day I was there, and a lot of them were having cataract surgery, I suppose. They were all sweet folks, and we kind of bonded in the waiting room. Chris was a real champ about all of this because he’s been putting drops in my eyes—I don’t know, what is it, six or seven times a day? Chris: Thirteen times a day. Thirteen times a day. And that’s what must be done until you go back for the next appointment. It has improved my eyesight considerably, even just operating with this eye. It’s amazing. Suddenly, I was seeing clarity that I hadn’t seen for a long time. So that’s a little miracle, and I’m happy for it. And I’m happy we have the NHS. If I had this operation in the States, it would have cost me $13,000, something like that. And it’s free, of course, under the NHS. The attention they pay you is really very gratifying and thorough. So things are looking up for me in that way. I can actually see things now. I’ve noticed details that I haven’t noticed in recent years because it kind of creeps up on you when you have a cataract. It becomes foggier in ways that you can’t really define, and it’s only when that’s lifted that you really feel the difference. So I’m very grateful for that, and I’m so grateful for the NHS once again. I hope that I’m not grateful to them many times more, but they’re there to take care of you when you need it. And that’s made a difference in my life. So anyway, it’s wonderful to be back. We really do enjoy making these videos. We get a lot of fun out of it. And again, I apologise that it’s been so long, because we know that you’d like to keep up on a regular basis, and we’re going to try to do that for you. Next time, we plan to do some stuff on my time in the Navy in Vietnam. We’ve had requests about that, oddly enough, so I’ve got a few stories to tell you about that, and I hope you enjoy them. Anyway, thank you for coming along. Thank you for sticking with us. We’ll be back, and we’ll have plenty to say. So, lots of love. Bye-bye. correction: Armistead meant to say $3,000 for cataract surgery in the States (not $13,000). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Jun 17

    Remembering David Hockney

    Here’s a transcript of the video: My dear old friend David Hockney—we just lost him, and we wanted to find a way to celebrate his life. It seemed that we were already in the perfect place for it: in the South of France, beside a swimming pool. It’s as if his ghost is here. I knew David Hockney for many years because my friend Christopher Isherwood and his partner Don Bachardy introduced me to him. One of the first things they said was, “Oh, you’ve got to meet David.” Part of that was about our shared early queerness, but they also knew that I would like the man he was. He was like a child in many ways. He had a wonderful childlike passion about the world, about art in general, and he loved to share it. Whenever we went over to his house, he had some new stunt, some new gimmick—most of which was lost on me. It was there that I saw him experimenting with all sorts of technology: fax machines and other things I didn’t even understand. But he had this wonderful energy that made him want to share everything with the world. It was also there that he took me on what he called the “Wagner Drive.” It took you through Santa Monica Canyon and out to the Pacific Coast Highway. The entire route was timed to the music of Wagner. Every twist and turn in the road was dictated by Wagner’s music. I was terrified most of the time. He would wheel around one corner and you’d end up—I don’t know where. It was utterly terrifying. But it was thrilling too, of course. Another memorable occasion was going to his house for a Hogmanay celebration—the Scottish New Year. Vincent Price and his wife, Coral Browne, were there. They were dear friends of David’s. Vincent once told David that Coral was out of town for the week and wondered if David had any recommendations for good pornography. David told him, “Catalina is the way to go,” and recommended a particular title he enjoyed called The Young and the Hung. I think I remember that one, actually. That became Vincent’s entertainment while his wife was away. Vincent was gay, by the way. Just listen to his old movies and you’ll hear that voice. He was also one of the sweetest men I’d ever met—so kind. That evening at Hogmanay, I found myself standing next to him, and he reached out and held my hand because he was old and quite feeble and needed someone to steady him while the pipers were going by. So I gladly held the hand of this horror-movie legend as the pipers passed. I don’t know why it spoke to me so deeply at the time, but there was something moving about holding the hand of this very spooky man while the year was changing. I was thrilled. I really enjoyed it. David was an activist in the truest sense of the word. Some things really bugged him, and he spoke out about them. When he was in art school, I believe, he was openly gay and had a photograph of some famous pop star on the wall of his locker. And he continued living openly for the rest of his life. I wasn’t very happy with his stance on smoking, which was that he was all for it. But it wasn’t my place to tell him otherwise. We posed once with a sign that said, “Thank you for pot smoking,” because that was one thing we could both agree on. We both loved weed. David was his own man. He believed what he believed. Sometimes he could hold forth rather angrily about cigarette smoking restrictions, saying that his homosexuality was less of a violation in California than his cigarette smoking. But anyway, I knew David for over four decades, and he was always such a kind person and so much fun. He shared everything with his friends. On one of my first visits to London years ago, he let us stay in his house in West London, where I could walk to Earl’s Court. He didn’t think twice about it. He simply told people we were coming, and that was that. There are many other examples of his generosity I could mention, but those are the ones that stick in my mind most strongly. I loved him as a human being. I don’t want to claim him, because the world wants to claim him. But I was lucky to be in his orbit during part of his life, and it made a difference to me. Among other things, David makes me think of my own mortality. The end may be fairly near for me—I hope not, but it probably will be. And it was wonderful to have the example of his kindness, his talent, and his urge for exploration. David was one of those rare human beings who was always curious about life. He always wanted to know what the next adventure was going to be—whether technological, artistic, or otherwise. He was curious about what would happen next. I wish I had all of that curiosity in my own nature. I don’t think I do. But I was happy to be in the presence of someone who was always stimulating me in that way, someone who knew how to ask questions and how to be fully part of the world. So anyway, thank you for coming along. I hope I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Jun 15

    A Chat on the Road: How We Survived the South

    First, an apology for being a little quiet lately here on Substack. We’re currently on a three-week road trip through the South of France with Zeke, soaking up beautiful villages, good food, and a slower pace of life. Rather than our usual mini-documentary-style videos, we thought it might be nice to bring you along for some informal conversations from the road. In this first chat, we talk about growing up queer in conservative Southern families, finding community, surviving difficult times, and learning to forgive our parents. I won’t be posting the full transcript this time. Because of the conversational nature of this video, with Armistead and me often finishing each other’s thoughts, I think it’s best experienced by watching rather than reading. Love from France,Chris (and Armistead) P.S. Our location in this video is Sarlat-la-Canéda, a beautifully preserved medieval town in France’s Dordogne region. We filmed this conversation in the shadow of a 14th-century church, with swallows circling overhead. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/subscribe

    A Chat on the Road: How We Survived the South

  6. May 20

    My First Boss Became My Mortal Enemy

    Here’s a transcript of the video. Still, we hope you’ll watch the episode if you can — the video version includes more archival images, video clips, music and plenty of humor that doesn’t quite come across in the written version: Today I want to tell you about my first writing job. It was a friend of the family who offered me a position — very generously, I thought at the time. As the years wore on, he became my mortal enemy. And you’ll see how that happened. My father never liked it when I would say that I flunked out of law school, but that’s essentially what happened. While I was at Chapel Hill, I was so bored by all the intricacies of the law that, on any given afternoon, you could find me down at the Carolina Theater watching the latest Fellini matinee. So one day I went in to take my equity exam at the law school, and I realized with a flash of insight that I not only did not want to spend the next two hours answering the question they’d given me, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life concerning myself with it. So I wrote in the blue book something very quaint and ’60s-ish: “My mind just blew.” And then I hitched a ride back to Raleigh on the old highway to tell my father that I wasn’t going to be joining him in the law firm. I dreaded that moment. But he was remarkably big about it. I remember him saying, “It’s all right, son. You know, it bores me too sometimes, and I thought you’d just make it more interesting for me.” I think that’s one of the times he really rose to the occasion in a big way. So, having dropped out of school, I was eligible for the draft. And so I immediately signed up for Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. My father was happy about that because it meant I would be going into the Navy, where he had been. It seems I was always trying to duplicate his career — or he wanted me to duplicate his career — and one by one, the opportunities for that fell away. My father always said that there was a war for every generation, and so lucky me, Vietnam was going to be mine. My mother helped me fill out the application form, which asked about various medical conditions — cancer, epilepsy, you know, the usual lineup — and then at the end of it said: “homosexual tendencies.” I’m glad she filled out the form for me because I didn’t have to lie. Of course I knew very well at that point that I had homosexual tendencies. I ended up getting a job for the summer before I went off to Officer Candidate School with a family friend who ran a TV station in Raleigh. So I got a job at WRAL-TV. The host ran a show called Viewpoint, and he had praised me on the air for my conservative activism in Chapel Hill. I was trying very hard to be my father at that point, and it impressed this man. So the day I reported for work at WRAL, I remember it was oppressively hot, as only the South can get. And I was listening to the radio in my car, to Jim Morrison singing, “Come on baby, light my fire.” I liked a lot of music that was not attached to conservative values. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Beatles — all of them had this strong humanistic message. It took me a few years before I could open up to what they were trying to say to me, and to let my heart make me into a full-fledged human being. So it’s ironic that I was there in the car listening to Jim Morrison when I was on my way to meet this man. So I walked into the studio and my new boss, Jesse Helms, opened the door. It’s always a shock when people hear that — that I worked for this man who was so famously homophobic and racist. But he was doing a kind act for me and for the family by giving me a job. He was a friend of my parents, Mr. Helms. My mother and his wife formed a chapter of the SPCA in Raleigh. His daughter Jane was in several of my classes, and we were friends. We had connections with his family. So when my new boss saw me, he smiled. It wasn’t the best smile, I have to say. His teeth were crooked, and a sort of pearly residue formed in his mouth when he talked. But he welcomed me into the place and said, “We’re glad to have you on board.” He told me that I was the hope of the future. He knew that I was a good writer, and he compared me to James Jackson Kilpatrick, who was a very prominent conservative at the time. I loved hearing it. So I was hired as a reporter in the newsroom. It wasn’t a very glamorous job because I covered flower shows and Kiwanis Club meetings and things that didn’t stimulate me tremendously. But I had a job as a newsman at a television station, and I wrote little pieces describing what was happening. But it wasn’t until I was sent to cover a Klan rally — the Ku Klux Klan, on the edge of town — that I really felt I had something juicy. My father and Jesse both didn’t approve of the Ku Klux Klan because, my father said, “It’s just a bunch of common folks.” But they kind of agreed with them in their racist attitudes. While I was at the rally, I interviewed the Imperial Wizard, who was a kind of a leathery, country-looking gentleman. So I brought up Peggy Rusk, who was very much in the news at the time because she’d been on the cover of Time magazine with her husband, a Black man. And I knew that would set the guy off — and it did. But he sounded kind of reasonable about it. He said he wasn’t surprised by it at all because everyone knew that Dean Rusk was a liberal and that he was a practicing homosexual. Well, I thought I had the scoop of all time because he was the Secretary of State, and I was going back to tell Jesse that Dean Rusk was a practicing homosexual. But when I brought it up with Jesse, he looked horrified. He said, “We can’t say that. He’s a terrible man, but that’s a terrible slander. We cannot say that about him.” He said, “You can’t say that about anybody because… it’s… it’s an a-a-abo-min-ation.” It was hard for him to get that word out of his crooked mouth, but he did. And the message came home very loud and clear to me as to what he thought about gay people. I began to realize that this was deeply personal to him. I couldn’t imagine why it was, but it was deeply personal. He certainly didn’t have any idea about the abomination who was standing right in front of him. He didn’t learn about me until I came out publicly in Newsweek magazine. By then he was serving his first term as a United States Senator, and he was holding forth on the subject in a very loud way. He was the loudest opponent of gay rights anywhere. Excerpts from clips shown in the video of Jesse speaking in the US Senate:“Many homosexuals average sixteen different sex partners every month.”“How can you engage in sadomasochism, homoeroticism…”“In fact, it would authorize the expenditure of funds that would encourage and condone sodomy.” I condemned him publicly on a number of occasions. Several years later, I actually had to go to WRAL-TV on a book tour in Raleigh and got this chirpy female reporter who was talking about my book and nothing else. So I sort of said, “Well, you know, I used to work here.” And she said, “Oh really?” And I said, “Yes. I was a reporter here at WRAL, and I worked here when Jesse Helms was here. Now he’s out running around talking about militant homosexuals, and I’m out running around being one.” The poor thing — she didn’t know what to do with that. But it was my finest hour. I felt like I got to undo so much with that one line. Excerpt from KQED San Francisco interview of Armistead by Randy Shilts in the late 1970s (shown in the video):You know, I’m a North Carolina boy. I grew up thinking that there were three queers in town and they hung out at one end of this crummy little bar. That’s one of the most difficult things about being gay — that you believe all the myths that straight people believe about being gay, even when you’re going through it yourself. And until you meet someone, straight or gay, who can just sort of say, “You’re okay. You’re not insane. This is the way I feel, and I’m going to make it into something beautiful.” In recent years, Jesse has been in my life in other ways, or been a presence in some ways. He showed up at my father’s funeral to pay his respects at the house, and I missed him. I wish I hadn’t, but I did. Chris and I arrived at a later time. Jesse, it turns out, has a lesbian granddaughter. It’s ignorance, really, that causes people to be such bigots. They simply don’t have the information — partially because we stay hidden as queers, partially because other people don’t listen to us. I grew up as a young conservative, so I feel like I understand that mentality better than most people. It wasn’t until I got to San Francisco that I actually opened my mind and my heart to liberal ideas, and that made all the difference to me. That’s why my work is the way it is, because I had finally seen the light. Life is so much easier when you’re open to other people, really. When you agree to accept other ideas that are different than your own. That’s the whole message of Tales of the City, and it’s the thing that I’m so happy to pass along because I’ve actually made the journey from that bigoted, narrow-minded way of thinking to a more illuminating view of the world. Obviously Jesse had no idea when he gave me that writing job all those years ago — my first writing job — that I would go on to write something that was diametrically opposed to what he stood for. That amuses me. It makes me happy. Thank you for coming along. It’s been nice having you here, and we’ll see you the next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/subscribe

  7. May 6

    The Summer of '69

    Here’s a transcript of the video:1969 was a very memorable year for many of us who lived through that time. The main thing, I think, was the moon landing, which had us riveted to our television sets and fascinated by what was happening with Neil Armstrong as he landed on the moon. The whole nature of space exploration was ignited in that moment. There were other things, of course. There was the Stonewall riots in New York City, although it wasn’t widely known at the time—but it happened then, in that year. Woodstock. A lot of things that we think of as culturally significant in America — and in the world, really — happened then. What happened for me was I had sex with a man for the first time. That’s what made it memorable for me. I was living in Charleston. I was in the Navy at the time. I had been on a tour of duty in Naples on a destroyer tender, which just goes somewhere and parks. I came back to Charleston and got a little carriage house on the Battery, down at the tippy end of Charleston. It was an old cottage filled with charm, and it put me next to the Battery, which was where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. So it made sense that that’s where I fired my first shots. I went down to the Battery one evening, the last time I ever did that in all innocence. I was sitting on a bench admiring the moon when a man approached and began chatting me up, for want of a better word. He was a little bit country, a little fae, and rather nervous talking to me. I finally said, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for.” He apologized profusely and beat a quick retreat away from me. I thought about that for a while, sitting there admiring the moon not far from the Confederate monument, and I thought, “You’re crazy. You’re exactly what he’s looking for.” So I went back to find him. He was on another bench chatting up someone else, and I said, “I have to apologize for the way I behaved back there. Can I make it up to you and fix you a drink at my house?” Somewhat baffled by what I was doing, he followed me back to my carriage house, and it was there that we did the deed. I don’t remember it lasting very long or being much of a hit in any direction, but it was significant to me because it was the first time I’d ever had sex with anybody. So that moment of semi-passion in my bedroom was stuck in my head when I came back to the ship the next morning in my little Sunbeam Alpine. “Morning Girl” was playing on the radio. If you’re old enough, you remember that song by the Neon Philharmonic, which is about a young woman, I think, losing her virginity. It was: “You’re several ages older now,so go out and find your manwhere the wild wind blows, Morning Girl.” I didn’t have a sense of camp at the time — well, I must have had it, because it seemed campy to me even then — but I had been waiting. I was not officially gay until that moment, and I had been waiting for a sign that I was. And that was pretty much all I needed… to hear that song. I felt like a freshly minted human being for the first time. I’d finally held another man’s body against mine, and the world had not come to an end. I was full of the joy of that when I boarded the ship. The officer of the deck saluted me, welcoming me aboard, in effect, as we did. I wasn’t an idiot about this. I knew there were consequences for a naval officer to be caught in such a situation as I had been in the night before. I had sat in on a court-martial, as a matter of fact, where a fellow enlisted man was drummed out of the Navy. I remember watching him leave the ship in ignominy. This wasn’t a dishonorable discharge as such. It wasn’t honorable either. It was just a way for the Navy to get it over with as soon as possible without any embarrassment. But the ignominy was there. So I made up my mind to keep sex strictly confined to shore, and that had some consequences that weren’t entirely pleasant. I went home one time with a guy who had an epileptic fit in the middle of going to bed with him. He peed all over himself, and he was hugely embarrassed and humiliated and shooed me away — just got me to leave. The next day I saw him. He was a checker at a local grocery, and he wouldn’t even acknowledge that I was the person he’d been with the night before. On another occasion, a married man was blowing me in my Sunbeam. I can’t say that phrase without laughing. And then a cop car pulled up. He was very drunk, the man that was with me. So I said, “Let me handle this.” I pulled myself together and stepped out of the car to speak to the police officer, and thought I was doing a fine job of seeming innocent. He just said, “Be careful, Ensign,” and went on his way. I looked down and realized that my shirttail was hanging out of the front of my fly like a little cotton penis, and that I hadn’t fooled anybody. It was a hilarious and humiliating moment at the same time. On another occasion, I went home with a guy who had porn magazines scattered all over his house. I’d never seen anything so shameless before. He played me a song from a Broadway show about sodomy and fellatio. Years later, I would realize that it was the soundtrack of Hair, but at the time it was just unimaginable. I figured he was the one who gave me crabs, but I had no idea how to treat them. I was worried that if I went to the ship’s doctor he would know the difference between gay crabs and straight crabs. So I tried Mennen Skin Bracer. Not a good idea. I was screaming in agony the first time I threw that pure alcohol onto my crotch. Next, I tried soaking in a hot bath, hoping that would drown the little f*****s. They just enjoyed that bath. It didn’t do anything at all, so I was finally driven to go to the doctor, who didn’t flinch. He’d seen this all the time. Apparently, the ship was riddled with crabs. So that summer of ’69, I had a grand old time down on the Battery. I wasn’t in any way becoming an evolved gay man. I was just finally enjoying myself with my sexuality. It wouldn’t be until years later that I became really comfortable with being a gay man. San Francisco made that happen. And it’s interesting to look back on that summer of ’69 and think of the moon landing, because I actually had occasion to meet Neil Armstrong years later. Chris and I were invited to a small event in Santa Fe, where we were living at the time, and Neil Armstrong was the guest speaker. We were all just flabbergasted. It felt mythic to meet that man, and he was very kind, very sweet. He had timed his speech in such a way that at the end of it, the moon was rising over the mesa, as if he had summoned it. It was an amazing, extraordinary thing, and kind of a witty comment on his responsibility as far as that orb was concerned. He was very fond of saying that he was just a technician, that he didn’t do that much really — he was just there to perform certain functions technically. But he felt very personally involved in it at that moment, and we loved it. That evening, I got to introduce him to Chris and describe Chris as my husband, and I realized how far I had come from those early days in 1969, when this man landed on the moon, to being a happy, well-adjusted gay man. It felt so good. To have him there as a kind of witness to that fact made it even more special. He was such a kind man, and I’ll always remember that about him. He didn’t flinch when I told him what my relationship with Chris was. We were just overjoyed to be in the presence of this iconic man. So that’s my story of the summer of ’69 and how it changed me — and changed a lot of us in different ways. So thank you for coming along this time, and I hope I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Apr 15

    I Found Freedom at the Baths

    Here’s a transcript of the video:I want to talk to you today about my experience in the bathhouses of San Francisco. To do that, I need to back up a little and talk about the way they first started in San Francisco. The biggest, most famous one was the Sutro bathhouse, which was out at the beach. It was a huge temple, really. It was built in 1896 and burned down in 1966. It was a notorious spot for men to meet each other. It was that simple. Whatever terms they wanted to meet on, they could meet there. It was open to everyone, but apparently there were private changing rooms which were frequented by gay men. There are several letters from that time where a straight man was hosting a gay man who was visiting town and wanted to entertain him, and he was told to go to the Sutro Baths. The ruins of the Sutro Baths are still a popular tourist spot in San Francisco. About the time they burned down in 1966—when I was graduating from college—I suppose that’s when the other bathhouses began to open The one I remember is Dave’s Baths, which was there when I was a young man in San Francisco. The first time I ever went down to it, I’d caught a cab. I was too embarrassed to tell the driver where I wanted to go, so I said, “Just Montgomery Street.” And he said, “The whole street?” And I said, “No, you know.” And he said, “Where do you want to go?” And I finally said, “Dave’s Baths.” And he said, “Oh, why didn’t you tell me so? I take a lot of people there.” He took me there, and I checked in at the desk. You had to sign your name in those days to say who you were. So, with a perverse sense of humor, I suppose, I signed mine Elloughby Branch. My great-great-grandfather was a Confederate general whose name was L.O.B. Branch, and I turned that into Elloughby like a first name, and signed that at the desk. I was given my towel, and I went off basically in search of cock—and found one. I can’t remember which one, appropriately enough, but it was a delightful thing to be able to do what I wanted in that regard, and to be in a place where I felt safe. I hadn’t been out of the closet that long—or even properly out. I can’t officially say I was out at that point, because I was still operating under cover, as it were. It was an amazing thing to be in this place where I knew it was other gay men. It was safe. It was freedom like I’d never experienced before. Dave’s Baths was a wonderland. I never found out who Dave was—never met him—but I have to thank him for creating the environment where my world changed. There was every race in there, all sorts of experiences that I’d never had before—mostly ones that involved being human with fellow human beings. It was extraordinary, really. I might look at it today and not think that at all, I suppose, but it was at the time. I was captivated by the freedom of the place. It drove me on to look for other horizons when I discovered there was a place called the Ritch Street Baths on the other side of town that was even more elaborate. I suppose I imagined it would be people I didn’t know, simply because it was across town. Ritch Street featured what they called a Minoan temple. I still don’t know what that was, but it was a pool at one end of the place with a slightly Grecian motif going on. And at the Ritch Street Baths, you could get a nine-grain sandwich with turkey only steps away from the Minoan Temple, so you could sit there and munch on your sandwich while you were waiting to get your c**k sucked. I was in love with that place, and it opened up such wonders to me that I talked about it with several people that I knew, including my woman friend Jan Fox. She was captivated by the fact that I had such a place. She said, “Oh God, I wish I had something like that that girls could go to.” I tried going home once or twice with guys from there, but I learned that that didn’t work out. It was meant as a temporary pleasure, and I couldn’t go marry someone that I had met at the baths. I became resigned to that. Later, I discovered the Glory Holes on 6th Street, which was very basic. It was just a room with cubicles that had holes in them where dicks would come through… to my great astonishment and pleasure. That became my regular habit. I was working at the Chronicle by then, which conveniently was only two or three blocks away. So I would go over there on my lunch hour, while I was writing Tales of the City, and have fun. It was referred to publicly as the Good Health Club—GH, it said outside—so the joke was that stood for good health. I would go there and then go back and report to work as soon as I was done. One day, the editor of the Chronicle, this very distinguished elderly man named Charlie Thieriot, asked me to come up to his office. I don’t remember what he wanted to talk about, but as I was sitting there talking to him, I looked down and realized there was a big wad of bubble gum stuck to my knee. So I had to subtly move my hand over it so it could not be seen. I’m not sure he ever registered it, but it sure did with me. I was in a panic. I was able to mine my experience of the gay baths in Tales of the City. It’s referred to repeatedly—people saying so-and-so went to the baths. I didn’t get graphic about it. I couldn’t. But I acknowledged that they were a thing. There was also a place called the Sutro Baths—not the original ocean one, but a small place on Valencia Street—that was co-ed, if you can imagine such a thing. For a while they invited men and women to come there. It was mostly gay men, but some women. I don’t know how this worked, because I would run in terror from any woman who came into the place—it wasn’t what I was familiar with. They must have been brave souls. I have to give them credit for that. Or knew where to find the fun—I don’t know. Of course, I knew about the bathhouses in New York, which had their own reputation. It was not exactly like that of San Francisco, which was more raw sex. Bette Midler sang at the Continental Baths to a bunch of men in towels, accompanied by Barry Manilow. I’ll never figure out why people were shocked to discover that he was gay many years later after he had been working in that environment. It was where Bette got her start. For a long time she didn’t like to talk about that, but I think she’s over that now. It’s part of her history really. It’s part of what makes her special to us today. In San Francisco, once the AIDS crisis hit, the city decided to close down the bathhouses. Interestingly, they didn’t close down the sex clubs. I never quite understood the reasoning behind that. I always felt that was wrongheaded, because they could have used those spaces to educate people about AIDS—to have posters up, to inform people. The places that were left open had no communication at all. People wanted to do what was right and didn’t quite know how, as usual. That didn’t stop me from going completely, but what eventually stopped me was that I became too well-known. I didn’t have the joy of anonymity anymore. That came to me in full force when one day I was at the glory holes and some guy came up behind me, put his arms around me, and said, “I really love your work.” Talk about a boner killer. That sent me screaming out of the room. I had to stop and be polite, but it was more than I could handle. I suppose it was time. Sooner or later you have to realize that you’re not that person anymore. That didn’t come to me rapidly, but it came eventually. Your body tells you that, and a certain vanity comes into play because you don’t want to be seen as a ridiculous old man. There was some element of that for me. And I learned to have sex with the person I love. It came late in my life, and I was glad when it did. There’s so much shame attached to sex in our world, especially around gay sex. I realized that I needed to get rid of that, and the baths helped me do that—to eliminate my shame and become matter-of-fact about sex. I’m so glad that I had that experience, and that it occurred at a time before there was a dangerous epidemic to make people stop. It was worth it to me—more than worth it. It’s a fond memory. And while I don’t remember many of the people who were in those dark rooms with me, I do remember what it felt like—the communion you felt with your brothers. It gives me a warm glow even today. I’ll always be grateful for having had that youthful bacchanalia. It made every difference to me. It opened me up creatively, among other things, and made me accept who I am once and for all. I credit that to my time at the bathhouses. I really do. And I wish the same thing for you—not necessarily a bathhouse, but a chance to feel yourself once and for all. So thank you for coming along today and listening to me say lewd things. It was fun, and I hope I’ll see you soon. Correction: Armistead realized after shooting the episode that Dave’s Baths were on Broadway (not Montgomery Street). The wonderful music in this episode is by Michael Hearst.https://www.michaelhearst.com/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit armisteadmaupin.substack.com/subscribe

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Pull up a chair on the porch of 28 Barbary Lane—tales, truth, and tea from Armistead Maupin. armisteadmaupin.substack.com

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