City Citi Bang Bang
Larry Kramer was yelling at me and I didn’t even hear him. Not until my third viewing of The Normal Heart. Brought to Arena Stage in D.C. to commemorate the first time the US hosted the International AIDS conference, I found my abnormal obsession with the normal heart turned to Bruce, the Citibank executive who stays closeted, compliant, and laughs at his boss’s homophobic jokes. Upon my first two viewings, I was so in touch with Kramer’s rage against Reagan, the Surgeon General, and the NIH. This time, I looked in the mirror —and it hit me like a ton of bricks. He was yelling at me. And I deserved it.
Because so many of us walked the path Bruce did. Safe. A city life with a corporate job was the ticket. Bang your brains out at night but remain invisible 9 to 5.
If that entailed laughing at a fag joke, so be it. Survival of the straightest. Coming out was too risky. The vast majority of us found a job in the city, ironically in this case at Citi, and at night banged their brains out. City Citi bang bang. So when the monster came to the door of our compartmentalized lives, we had plenty of enemies. Among them, us.
Wikipedia describes Bruce’s character as “cautious, polite, deferential, and closeted.” And Bruce ain’t the only one with CPDC Syndrome. A generation of us need only look in old fashioned encyclopedia (for you kids, that’s the original “pedia”). We found our homosexual condition wasn’t so flattering. The hero was the opposite of CPDC—brave, abrasive, feisty and out. I love and admire his bravery more today than ever.
A year before Stonewall, the legendary Dick Van Dyke starred in the movie about an inventor and his the flying contraption—a kid’s favorite—Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Gay men were inventors too: City Citi Bang Bang—and most of us, by necessity, invented lives. Lives that put the mental in compartmentalized.
Flashback: My “city” was New Orleans. My “Citi” was the Fairmont Hotel and bang bang began with a co-worker named Ike—and continued in nooks and crannies across the Quarter— a cinch in the city that invented decadence. Three piece suits by day. Easy pieces by night. But, alas there were problems. First off, my parents lived just five miles away in a quiet suburb. So the cloud over my ‘hood was dark and scary. What if Mom and Dad took a drive downtown and found me and my friends in front of legendary gay bar, Lafitte’s? “Go cups” full of vodka wouldn’t shock them but go go BOYS sure would. And what about my boss? What if he walked his friends into Sodom and Gomorrah (tourists loved the spectacle of “funny boys”—but my boss wouldn’t be pleased that “one of them” worked for him.)
So my first voyage into drag in 1981 was a dual swan dive and belly flop. Reagan was newly installed in the White House and I was a newly installed drag virgin, sitting on a bar stool at my friend Will’s house in the French Quarter. He’s applying pancake, rouge, lipstick and buckets of mascara on outrageously long falsies. It’s not just another tea dance—it’s the 10th anniversary of a dive gay bar, Petunia’s. My stomach is turning flips because years of conformity tell me this is wrong. (But the fishnets are whispering this is fabulous!) To top that off, tea dances are held at noon in broad daylight. For this big ugly girl, distance and darkness were my two best friends—but instead—after several shots of tequila—we walk six blocks in heels in the blazing sun. At 6’ tall, 200 lbs, and in 6” heels, I’m a rather large Geisha named Gargantua, Will is Donna Summer in a tinsel wig, and our friend Albert is Lady Godiva in waist-length blonde tresses and a flesh colored party frock. Sashaying on the sidewalk with go cups of vodka in hand, we hear the clippity clop of those horse drawn carriages and the “tour guide” is saying “Ladies and gentlemen, New Orleans is known for Mardi Gras and drag queens and on your left would be three lovely ladies!” Great. Now I’m a tourist attraction.
So a geisha, Lady Godiva and Donna Summer walk into a bar and...the short version is that after a few more cocktails, Godiva fell off her bar stool flat on her face, and while Donna and I both stood back laughing at the billowing blonde tresses all over the floor, Godiva yanks her head back and with a Joan Crawford grimace, she holds her hand up and the bird finger is at a 90 degree angle with the rest of her jeweled digits. She’s fallen on her finger and she did get up. So off come my stilettos and I dash the six blocks back to Will’s old jalopy of a Cadillac. I drive (under the influence) back to Petunia’s, pick up Godiva, yank both of our wigs off and drive her to the ER. We get the finger fixed (by an orderly who asked if we’d be at Petunia’s when he got off).
That Monday I went to work at the Fairmont Hotel (my Citi) in a three piece suit, a broken finger fresh on my mind, but I would rather slap myself than talk about it at work. I told my boss and my parents the weekend had been a quiet one.
Will died of AIDS in 1983, and Albert a few years later. Sitting on the porch in Rehoboth, I realize that City Citi bang bang has morphed into country-country nap-nap. As today’s song goes, “We found love in a hopeless place.” Let’s make certain the next generation finds it in a hopeful one. I hear you, Larry. I hear you.
Brent Mundt resides in Washington, DC, but lives in Rehoboth Beach.