"SURPRISE PARTY"
by David Watmough

My lover was out of town so I squired Charlotte.  It  was  a
party  surrounding  a new movie about a friend of ours.  The
film was  a  National  Film  Board  documentary  about Henry
Wishart Osborne,  a  fairly  well  known  novelist  who  had
recently  died  of  AIDS.   And  that's important because it
determined that a large proportion  of the audience was gay.
It included a substantial number of dykes who  were  friends
of Henry as he had spent a goodly portion of the past twenty
years  in  striving  to keep the two homosexual constituents
working together.  He  was  a  bit  of  a crusader where gay
unity was concerned.  Some regarded  him  as  a  gay  saint.
Charlotte seemed to know next to nothing about Henry Osborne
except she may well have assumed he was gay in that I`d told
her  he'd  had  dinner with us from time to time.  I guess I
should explain a little about  Charlotte herself.  She was a
tall,  fashionably  dressed  widow  in  her   sixties   with
aggressively blonde hair in a huge beehive hair-style, and a
dowdy  daughter  in  her late thirties who recently redeemed
herself  in  maternal  eyes  by  making  her  a grandmother.
Arethusa, with her cartload of  jewelry  and  tight  silvery
laugh,  was  a  frequent visitor to our Vancouver home where
she had met a fair number of our gay friends.

That might have been enough to earn her the title of fag-hag
but somehow no-one  said  it  to  her heavily powdered face.
Although utterly at ease with a bunch of unmarried  men  who
chatted  about the exorbitant cost of new drapes, Charlotte,
with true Canadian  mien,  never  heard  or saw anything she
didn't want to.  Brass monkeys were no competition  for  her
Canuck  discretion.   Not  for  a  moment  did I think I was
taking  a  risk  in  inviting  her  to  the  invitation-only
premie're  of  THE  HEALING   PEN   but   I  must  admit  to
twenty-twenty hindsight.  The  chatter  was  shrill  in  the
crowded  foyer.   There  was also the steady chink of drinks
around the no-host  bar.   On  that  warm  March day the low
afternoon sun spilled in from open doors,  washed  boxes  of
flowering  daffodils.   The  primarily  young  crowd were in
short sleeved shirts  and  blouses,  sweaters suspended from
waists  and  giant  sport  shoes  worthy  of  Mickey  Mouse.
Uppermost in my mind was the need to put names to  faces  so
that  I  could present Charlotte to those who would approach
and politely expect to be introduced.  That distraction made
me less attentive to the  stately companion who sailed at my
side than I should have been.

The evidence of that  was  unsettlingly  immediate.   I  was
about  to  introduce  Charlotte  to an importunate decorator
queen who rashly assumed that anyone at my arm was important
and thus potentially  useful.   "This  is Orville," I began,
only to find that Charlotte was not eyeing the slight figure
in a tangerine shirt and tight black pants but two women  at
our  rear.   I  turned  too,  to  see  a stocky woman in her
fifties hungrily licking the  earhole  of her equally bulky,
if slightly younger  companion.   Both  women  seemed  quite
oblivious  of  our presence until the ear-explorer smiled at
my companion and generously invited, in the expansiveness of
Sapphic sharing, my startled friend  to have a nibble of her
lover's nacreous lobe if she so  wished.   Charlotte  didn't
glide  up  to  me  in  her  usual fashion but pranced like a
startled elk  in  my  direction.   Orville  grinned broadly,
revealing his second treasure, a set of niveous white teeth.
(His number one  treasure,  prominently  displayed  via  the
tight pants, was half way between those teeth and his dainty
little   feet.   He,  like  me,  wasn't  wearing  Adidas  or
Roebucks.)

"I`m Orville Daubney.  Have  you  noticed how Vancouver gets
more ose', day by day?  And to think we're  here  to  see  a
movie  about  that  old  closet  queen,  Henry."  He  put  a
manicured  hand  up  to  his mouth.  "Oh, what am I saying?"
Whether  goaded  by  his  flamboyance  I`m  unsure,  but she
certainly seemed to speedily shed her reaction  to  the  now
french-tongueing  women.  "Did you say, Daubney?" she asked,
her voice several notches  higher than usual.  "Any relation
to Kenneth Daubney?"  Orville  curtsied.   "My  father,"  he
admitted  happily." My first lover, as a matter of fact." "I
went to high school  with him,"Charlotte told him hurriedly.
"Prince of Wales?" "The one and only," Orville affirmed."  I
went  there,  too.   Like it`s all in the family - as I said
earlier about darlin` Dad."  I  steered her firmly away from
him.  Sapphic dalliance in public was  one  thing  -  incest
quite  another.   ‘Out  of  the frying pan into the fire' is
just a rather shop-worn saying  for  some people.  For me it
sometimes seems a way of life.  I veered away  from  Orville
to  confront  Norman  Winfield.  Norman was a piss-poor poet
and frustrated politician who vehemently believed I was just
a reactionary blot on the gay radical landscape.  He swiftly
surveyed the glittering bulk  of Charlotte before firing his
first torpedo.

"I`m glad you brought a friend in  drag,  Davey.   Where  on
earth  did  you  find  such magnificence?  My those sequins!
And what a hair-do.  Am  I  imagining  things  or do I see a
white  mouse  peeking  out  from  those  peroxide  strands?"
Desperately I tried a defense.  "I don`t  know  about  mice,
sweetie,  but  I`m  sure looking at a rat.  And if you don`t
mind my mixing metaphors, have you written any more doggerel
lately?" Torpedo number  two.   "  I  beg both your pardons.
Now I can see the resemblance.  "It's your mother,  n`est-ce
pas, Davey?" My hand wasn't gently at her elbow but grabbing
the  fat of her arm as I elected retreat.  I shoved her into
the theater  where  mercifully  the  screening  was about to
begin.  But trouble was not yet done.  As the film reached a
moment of quiet solemnity, an  actor  reading  from  Henry's
last novel, those two amorous ladies from the foyer who were
sitting  right  in  front  of  us,  emboldened by the gloom,
progressed much further with  their  mutual groping with one
head even sinking down out of our sight.  Charlotte suddenly
pinched my thigh  hard  before  creaking  to  her  feet  and
announcing in a hoarse voice I`d never heard before.  "Let's
get the fuck out of here!" We did.  
FINIS


 Mail to David Watmough