On the days I didn’t see her, Blouse and I communicated through notes we left each other in my room. Hers were punctuated everywhere with “Smile” in quotes and parentheses, sometimes both. And when I got them, I did.
But on the majority of Wednesdays and Fridays, I came home, made myself a snack, and stuck to Blouse like glue. I would join her in the part of our basement that was unfinished, next to the garage, with my snack and something for her, too. The radio would be blaring KMOX and she would be ironing and interrupting herself to maneuver clothes in and out of the laundry machines. I didn’t lift a finger and didn’t stop running my mouth. What did a twelve-year-old Jewish kid and a thirty-nine-year-old African American cleaning woman talk about for hours on end!? A lot. But mainly:
1. Soaps. (She was a CBS devotee, so it was a stretch for both of us to meet in the middle, but we made do.)
2. Diana Ross. (She wasn’t a fan and I was—so it was a debate. She was on Team Gladys.)
3. The family. (She worked for my aunt and uncle, too, and told me every damn thing that went on at my cousins’ houseful of chaos and dogs and cats and a real ice cream parlor, all gossip that I would report to my family at dinner.)
4. The mailman. (What on earth could we have said about Mr. Collins? No clue, but I know he was a major subject.)
From the basement, I would follow her upstairs, room by room, as she put my family’s clothes away. Occasionally I would carry the laundry basket up the stairs for her. I did try to keep her entertained, so that was something.
Though I rarely lifted a finger to help Blouse with her housework, I wasn’t a totally spoiled kid. Every summer, my parents sent us to work at the family company, Allen Foods. While Emily and my cousin Jodi thrived and later went on to work there, I was terrible at every task I was given, from driving a forklift to, in my schlemiel, schlemazel moment, working on the assembly line screwing bottle tops. One summer I made deliveries and most notably delivered cheese to a hospital and forgot the cheese. Still, it was fun being around my whole family, all of whom paged each other over the loudspeaker incessantly. My dad was always a relief to the eyes, strolling around the manufacturing plant making gentle conversation with ungentle forklift ladies—Large Marge types—looking to me like a model in a Ralph Lauren ad. No matter what the job, we always went to lunch at Steak ’n Shake with my uncle and Grandpa, who would completely tear the waiters apart. For about twenty-five years straight, Gramp ordered a small salad in a large bowl at Steak ’n Shake. As soon as it came, Evelyn’s father would bark, “YOU CALL THIS A SALAD!?” He was out the door and back at his desk in thirty minutes, ever more respectful of being on the clock than I. The family business was always a tremendous source of pride, but what I did there never felt like a real job because I knew that I couldn’t get fired and that I wasn’t going to spend my life in the food industry.
* * *
To be clear, I’ve been gay since the day I was born, but even though I knew it somewhere in my head, I didn’t want to face the facts of what that meant. Biltmore Drive wasn’t exactly Christopher Street, and I didn’t know anyone who was gay, unless you count the waiters at a few St. Louis restaurants. My mom always doted on such men—she called them “cheerful.” But I didn’t have any faith that her love of cheerful waiters would translate to her son if I ever admitted that I, too, was … cheerful.
Things weren’t much better on TV. This was pre–Real World and Will and Grace and Bravo, so basically you had Paul Lynde being a mean queen in the center square and Charles Nelson Reilly kibitzing with Brett Somers on Match Game—hardly role models for a kid. So, like many a young gayling, I gravitated toward strong, outsized female personalities—on-screen and off.
As I got older, more and more of my close friends were women. I got involved in their friendship falling-outs and
