The Art of Aging

Part I

The air over Highland Park carried the heavy, humid promise of the summer solstice, but inside the concrete expanse of the 1969 high-rise, the temperature was a crisp, civilized sixty-eight degrees. Julian stood before the mirror, adjusting the collar of a crisp white linen button-down. He reached for a silk scarf—a muted geometric print—and tied it neatly into his open collar. He had considered an ascot for a fleeting moment, then caught his own eye in the glass and smiled. No, he thought, one must never cross the line from curated elegance into costume. An ascot in Alabama is not fashion; it is a cry for help.

He slipped on a tailored, unlined cream linen blazer. The look was precise: well-dressed, intellectual, and entirely deliberate.

"He wasn't a family snob or a money snob, but he was a snob alright. He was a snob about loveliness and elegance in things - about personal charm and physical grace in people."

— Tennessee Williams

Julian appreciated the irony of his home. The building had been erected at the tail end of the sixties, a brutalist monument of raw concrete designed to lure the wealthy, empty-nesting elite out of their sprawling Forest Park and Mountain Brook estates and into the sky. It was a structure of efficient luxury—massive, sweeping apartments hidden behind a facade that looked like a fortress. It even had its quirks of a bygone era of entertaining: a separate service entrance for caterers, and an elegant Olympic-sized pool that felt delightfully theatrical.

Again, Julian faced the heavy, gilded full-length mirror that anchored the entryway. A true dandy never leaves his appearance to chance; it’s an absolute necessity, the final editing bay where one must gaze to confirm that the outward projection matches the inward intent. He stepped back, evaluating the cream linen blazer and the geometric scarf with a cool, critical eye. The goal was effortless precision. After all, the worst social tragedy an older gay man could suffer was to have someone look at him later in the evening and whisper to a friend, “Dear God, when he looked in the mirror before he left home, just what was he thinking?”

Satisfied that his intent was clear, he walked to the massive row of windows of his living room, an espresso martini in hand, and looked out over the neighborhood. Highland Park was a beautiful anomaly—a little blue dot floating defiantly in a vast, crimson sea of Christian Nationalist orthodoxy. There, below him, the historic streets were lined with old oaks and local parks, a neighborhood that welcomed the eccentrics, the artists, and the misfits.

But Julian knew exactly what lay just beyond the perimeter of this leafy haven. Right outside this sanctuary was a region that demanded absolute, unblinking conformity—a world where imagination was viewed with suspicion and intellect was treated as a subversive act.

Part II

A sharp knock broke the quiet of the apartment; it struck as base and primitive compared to the melodic chime at the front door. Julian rolled his eyes and walked through the kitchen to the service entrance. Originally engineered so the caterers could slip in with platters of aspics and oysters without disturbing the intended flow of a salon, it now served a far more elegant purpose: smuggling close friends directly into the heart of every party, the kitchen.

Julian cracked open the small service entrance to find his long-time friend and confidant Charles Collins standing in the corridor, smelling faintly of turpentine, linseed oil, and sweat from the humid Alabama evening. Julian's portraitist stood, balanced on one foot, using his knee to steady a leather field bag and two adjustable gallery spotlights.

Julian flung the door wide. "Charles! Come on in.” Turning slightly toward the corridor, he called out, “Francis, please take Charles’s bag and bring those lights into the living room—then pour him something exceptionally cold.” Julian, his anxiety replaced by an electric excitement, waved his arm toward the interior, ushering the painter inside. "Move quickly, Charles. The velvet drape is already on the easel."

Together, they moved into the living room, working with the fluid efficiency of stagehands before an opening night. They positioned the spotlights, angling the beams so they would wash perfectly across the midnight-blue drape without catching the glare of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Charles stepped back, crossing his arms as he looked at the draped monument in the corner.

"I have to confess, Julian," Charles said, swirling his drink, his eyes narrowing as he studied the silhouette of his own work. "In fifty-odd years of painting portraits, I have fixed cracked teeth, erased double chins, and resurrected hairlines. I have never—not once—had anyone make a request like this."

Julian smiled, taking a slow sip of his espresso martini. He looked toward the covered canvas, feeling that faint, internal pull no one else could sense.

“How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.”

— Coco Chanel

"That, my dear Charles, is because people our age are terrified of the script—especially our gay friends," Julian said, his voice dropping into a tone of smooth, cold certainty. "They spent their youth trying to be something—a job title, a bank account, an acceptable standard of Southern masculinity. Or worse, they frantically sculpted the body-perfect, as if a strong physique could somehow cheat the calendar. But when that youth inevitably leaves them, they are left with nothing but an empty temple and a desperate desire to recreate a fleeting past—fixating so entirely on keeping the structural facade unblemished that they fail to notice the internal putrefaction. They age and decay inside and out, Charles. The mind goes stagnant, the spirit sours, and they become walking relics, terrified of the very light that exposes them."

“It is an exhausting performance to watch, don’t you think?”

Julian walked slowly to the massive glass windows toward the fading pink and orange reflection of the sunset against the mountain, looking out over the darkening park below like a general surveying a hostile territory.

"In a place like this," he said, his voice quiet but carrying clearly across the room, "where you are assigned a pre-packaged identity the moment you are born, choosing to be someone is a dangerous, exquisite pursuit. It requires a ruthless curation of the soul. The boy I was forty years ago was an accident of biology and geography. But through our work here, we have bound that past. The portrait will be my northern star, Charles. A mandate ensuring I never succumb to that stagnation. Mary Shelley had it wrong, you know. Victor Frankenstein’s true failure wasn't playing God; it was that he lacked the stomach for his own artistry. He looked upon his creation, panicked and fled in horror. But we? We haven't fled. We’ve mixed alchemy, intellect, elegance, and time to create something far more resilient: the art of aging."

Charles stared at Julian for a long moment, then looked back at the velvet drape. He let out a low, slow breath and set his glass down on the counter, his fingers trembling just enough to make the ice clink.

“God help me, Julian," Charles murmured, a quiet mix of professional awe and genuine hesitation in his eyes. He set his glass down on the counter and continued, "When I was sitting at the easel painting those lines onto your forehead—lines that aren't even there yet—I felt like a madman. It wasn't just an exercise in imagination, Julian. The brush felt heavy, almost pulled by something else. I kept waiting for my better judgment to kick in, to tell me to pick up a palette knife and scrape it all away before the paint dried into a trap. It felt almost... unholy. Like I was sealing a room you could never step out of again."

He paused, looking back up at Julian with a sharp, sudden grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "But looking at it today under the lights? I’ve never done a finer piece of work in my life. You aren't just defying convention. You've made me a co-conspirator in divining the future."

Julian let his gaze linger on the drape, a slow, almost wicked smile curling the edge of his mouth. It was a look of immense, quiet satisfaction—the expression of a man who had not only envisioned a rebellion but had successfully bound a master craftsman to his decree.

"The best art is always a little dangerous, Charles," Julian said, checking his watch as the melodic front chime finally rang through the apartment. He turned his eyes back to the painter, the sharp grin sliding behind his mask of cool detachment. "The guests are arriving. Let’s see how many of them can look at what’s to come without flinching."

Part III

The apartment filled not in a slow trickle, but in a sudden, theatrical swell of laughter, the heavy scent of expensive colognes, and the sharp, rhythmic clinking of Francis’s cocktail shaker. The brutalist fortress had come to life. Within an hour, thirty people occupied the massive living room. As the pink sunset dissolved into a deep, velvety Southern night, the dark glass windows transitioned from a lens to the mountainside, into an inescapable, wall-sized mirror. The guests became a shifting tapestry of shadows and silver, their frantic, glittering silhouettes moving against their own sharp reflections in the glass.

Julian moved through the crowd with effortless grace, his white linen shirt crisp, his geometric scarf perfectly placed. He smiled slyly as a girlfriend across the room, talking to her companion, glanced at him, raised her glass, and said aloud, “I know! He strikes such a handsome figure.” Julian was entirely in his element—the erudite host, delivering sharp observations and warm embraces in equal measure. His core circle of gay friends mixed effortlessly with fierce, free-thinking allies who had brought the bohemian spirit of Highland Park into the high-rise. A cluster of older socialites stood near the grand piano working their martini glasses like acrobats, their gestures high-arc and dramatic, but careful to never waste a single drop.

This was his chosen collective—a meticulously assembled salon of brilliant misfits, artists, and confidants who had weathered the decades together. In a hostile city like Birmingham, these people had not merely gathered by chance. They were the visible blooms of a vast, subterranean architecture. Like the invisible mycelial networks that run beneath a forest floor, threading through the dark to connect disparate roots and sustain the canopy above, the long-standing gay and lesbian whisper networks of Highland Park had quietly pulsed for generations. It was this hidden, resilient system of shared glances, coded language, and safe houses that passed life along beneath the surface, linking the otherwise disconnected. They had forged a sanctuary, bound by a quiet, fierce pact to live exquisitely, standing in elegant defiance of the oppressive orthodoxy just outside the gates.

"We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself."

— Gore Vidal

Julian paused, a fresh martini in hand, watching the room with a quiet, immense pride.

"Julian, darling, the suspense is positively medieval," a voice purred, shattering his reverie. It was Marcus, a prominent local designer, drifting over with a fresh drink. He stopped, his eyes squinting slightly as he calculated the angle of the gallery beams, before gesturing with his black cocktail straw toward the corner of the room where the midnight-blue velvet drape hung heavy over the massive easel. "You’ve spent six months hiding away in Charles’s studio, and now you drag us all to Highland Park only to make us stare at a drape. It's cruel."

The circle quickly expanded as a few guests drifted over, their shiny garments and silver jewelry catching the edge of the gallery beam.

"I heard Charles used a completely different technique for you," whispered David, an archivist from the university. He adjusted his tortoise-shell spectacles, his posture leaning forward with the quiet, intense focus of a researcher. He raised his hands, fingers flat, tracing a sharp, empty square in the air to frame Julian’s face against the empty room. "No background, no traditional bookcase, wingback chair or anything. Just Julian."

Julian caught Charles’s eye from across the room, offering a slow, barely perceptible nod of pure gratification. The painter was leaning against the kitchen counter, a knowing, slightly anxious smile playing on his lips as he watched the glittering assembly crowd toward the easel. Julian, however, was quietly drinking it in—reveling in their collective suspense.

"One must always maintain a sense of theater, Marcus," Julian replied, his delivery perfectly flat, dry, and commanding. "To unveil a portrait too early in the evening is like serving the digestif with the appetizers. One must allow the imagination of the audience to do half the work first. If I give you the ending now, what will we talk about for the next hour?"

"But what exactly are we imagining?" asked a sleek young man, a companion of Marcus’s who had spent the last ten minutes hovering over the grand piano, entirely captivated by his own reflection in the dark, pool-like depth of its polished lacquer. He tore his gaze away from the gloss just long enough to look at Julian. "Is it you as a young man in New Orleans? A tribute to the good old days of your youth?"

Julian took a slow, deliberate sip of his drink, his eyes fixing on the young man with the cool detachment of a critic reviewing an amateur performance.

"The past is a finished book, my dear boy," Julian said softly, his voice carrying a sudden, chilling weight. "I have never understood our community's collective obsession with looking backward. It is a form of cultural nostalgia that borders on the pathetic. Tonight, we aren't celebrating who I used to be. We are looking unflinchingly at reality—though I suspect, it may be a departure from your reality that some of you find entirely shocking."

As if on cue, a sudden burst of frantic laughter erupted from the bar, where a group was shifting their conversation toward the terrifying prospect of growing older—setting the stage for the evening's grand debate.

Part IV

With the echo of Julian’s chilling observation still hanging over Marcus’s circle, the focus shifted to a group at the bar. Francis was deftly mixing and refilling glasses, but the real theater was happening among a cluster of younger guests huddled over their drinks, speaking in the hushed, frantic tones of a tragedy still in rehearsals.

"We talked about aging with grace, and Elsie, who's seventy-four, said 'A - it's a question of being sincere; and B - if you're supple, you've nothing to fear.' Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier: I couldn't have liked it more."

— Noel Coward from “I Went to a Marvelous Party”

"I’m just saying, the moment you hit forty-five in this city, unless you have work done, you become invisible, or worse, you’re cast off," a remarkably smooth-skinned thirty-something named Brandon was sighing, staring into his gin as if it were a crystal ball showing his own demise. "It's all downhill from there. The wrinkles, the loss of relevance... it’s a slow death by daylight."

"Oh, do pour some more sadness into your glass, Brandon, it’ll better match your tie," a voice boomed from the leather wingback chair just behind them.

It was Evelyn—seventy-six years of pure, unadulterated Highland Park history, draped in architectural black silk and silver jewelry that clanked like armor. She had survived three marriages, the worst of the Birmingham city council meetings of the 1980s, and forty years of local socialite gossip. She looked at the huddled youth with the amused contempt of an apex predator watching a flock of sheep scatter before it even enters the field.

"You boys spend so much time and fortune trying to freeze how you look at twenty-seven that you’ve completely forgotten how to be interesting," Evelyn remarked, taking a slow, performative sip of her vintage Dubonnet. "A smooth forehead is a fine thing on a statue, dear, but on a man, it usually just signals a total lack of experience or a very expensive dermatologist. An exquisite insincerity and a fluid mind are our only real armor against the dreadful tragedy of growing stable. If you are supple enough to bend the decades to your own vanity, time becomes entirely irrelevant.”

A brief, stunned silence rippled outward from her chair, the younger men at the edge of the circle shifting uncomfortably under her gaze.

"I understand what you’re saying, Evelyn," Brandon protested, flushing slightly, "but the gay community doesn't look at older men the same way. Our market value plummets..."

Evelyn let out a sharp laugh that silenced the entire bar area. "Market value? Darling, you are a human being, not a used luxury sedan. Look at Julian. Does he look like a man mourning his expiration date? He treats time like a personal assistant he hasn't bothered to fire yet. If you treat aging as a defeat, society will treat you as a casualty. But if you treat it as an upgrade in performance style..." She gestured grandly toward the draped easel in the corner. "...well, you might just give them a reason to look twice."

Julian, standing just a few feet away, caught Evelyn’s eye and raised his empty martini glass in a silent benediction. The stage was perfectly set. The crowd was now thoroughly divided between the frantic desperation of the young, and the magnificent, unyielding confidence of the seasoned.

Part V

Julian stepped smoothly into the center of the living room, the ice in his fresh tall vodka clinking softly against the glass. The room fell into an expectant, theatrical hush. His guests all pivoted toward the mahogany easel where the midnight-blue velvet drape hung heavy under the dramatic gallery spotlights.

Julian stood beside the hidden canvas, his gaze sweeping over the crowd with the cool amusement of a critic about to deliver a closing notice to a very generic theater company.

"Pretty isn't beautiful, Mother. Pretty is what changes. What the eye arranges is what is beautiful!"

— Stephen Sondheim

"Before I reveal my portrait," Julian began, his delivery flat, dry, and completely commanding, "I want to explain exactly what you are about to see, if only to save myself from an hour of tedious, redundant questions afterward. I have been listening to the frantic elegies being sung at my bar this evening regarding the horror of birthdays. You speak of time as if it were a thief, and of maturity as if it were a social eviction notice. It is an exhausting, deeply uninspired performance."

He paused, letting his eyes fix on Brandon, the smooth-skinned thirty-something who had been agonizing over his market value.

"You have confused 'pretty' with 'beautiful.' Pretty is an accident of birth. It is a biological default that changes with the weather, a cheap commodity available to anyone with a passing youth. But beautiful? Beautiful is a work of high alchemy. It is a deliberate, ruthless extraction of intellect, style, and survival. It does not fade; it accumulates. Tonight, I am not unveiling a figment of my past. I have no interest in the ghosts of who I was. Charles and I have spent the last six months inside a different kind of crucible, performing an intentional act of creation. We have transmutated a transient life into an immutable masterpiece—simply fixing the canvas before nature has the audacity to ruin it."

With a swift, dramatic snap of his wrist, Julian pulled the midnight-blue velvet away. The drape pooled onto the parquet floor.

The room went entirely, breathlessly silent.

Under the sharp gallery spotlights, the portrait looked back at them. It was undeniably Julian, but it was a departure from his present appearance that left the guests entirely disoriented. The slightly receded hairline and magnificent silver hair on the canvas were pronounced, yet every strand was swept back with immaculate precision. The lines around his eyes and forehead—lines that Julian did not yet possess—were etched deep and dark, carrying a fierce, weathered intellect and experience, but his jawline remained strong and deliberate. The posture was relaxed, comfortable, and absolutely powerful. It was the portrait of an older man who had conquered time rather than outrun it—an elegant, manicured monument to the art of endurance.

The reaction among his loving chosen family was immediate, intense, and deeply fractured.

Evelyn let out a low, throaty cascade of laughter from her wingback chair, raising her glass of Dubonnet. "Bravo, Julian! It’s a masterpiece of arrogance. I love it!"

Nearby, David, the university archivist, nodded slowly, an academic appreciation lighting up his face. "It’s brilliant, Julian. It’s not just a portrait; you’ve curated and cataloged your own legacy."

But at the bar, the reaction was vastly different. Brandon stepped back, his face visibly pale, looking between the canvas and Julian with genuine discomfort. "Julian... this is morbid," he whispered, sounding genuinely disturbed. "Why would you want to look at that every day? It looks like... it looks like a memento mori. It's like you're inviting the end."

Marcus, chewing on his black cocktail straw, his brow furrowed in utter confusion, asked, "Is this some sick joke, Julian? You’re a handsome man now—why on earth would you pay Charles to make you look like this?"

"Because it’s unnatural," Marcus's sleek young companion murmured, finally tearing his eyes away from the piano's reflection, his voice carrying a sudden, nervous tremor. "It feels like bad luck. Like you’re mocking the natural order of things. You can't just trick time with paint and canvas, Julian. The universe always collects its debts."

"I told you... I told you all," Julian said smoothly to the room, turning back toward the windows. "The future is a destination that requires a bit of stomach. Now, Francis—more drinks. The future has arrived, and it is terribly thirsty."

Part VI

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." 

— Ernest Hemingway

Five Junes had come and gone over Highland Park since the night of the unveiling. Inside the concrete high-rise, the air remained a crisp, civilized sixty-eight degrees, but in Julian's apartments the frantic chatter, the clinking of glasses, and the theatrical flare of that evening had long since faded. The rooms were quiet now, filled only by the muted, melancholic trumpet of Chet Baker Sings playing softly, along with the rhythmic hum of the building’s central air, and the solitary, satisfied ring of a spoon in a porcelain teacup.

The troubling times had marched on outside the fortress, but inside, things had moved exactly according to plan. This was Julian's becoming day—the quiet culmination of a five-year mandate timed to the exact turn of the sun. He had spent the sixty months following the unveiling not merely watching the calendar turn, but actively shedding the dross of his former self to inhabit the formidable architecture of the man on that canvas.

Julian stood before the gilded full-length mirror in the entryway, performing his final, daily edit. He adjusted the collar of his button-down, donning his familiar silk cravat. He stepped back, evaluating his reflection with a cool, critical eye.

The slightly receded hairline and magnificent silver in the glass were pronounced, yet every strand was swept back with immaculate precision. The lines around his eyes and forehead were etched deep and dark, carrying the precise, weathered intellect of a man who had refused to let a hostile environment dictate his soul. Yet, his jawline remained strong and deliberate. His posture was relaxed, comfortable, and entirely powerful. Julian had not merely aged; he had arrived.

The melodic chime rang from the front door. Julian opened it to find Thomas, a young corporate attorney who had recently moved into a penthouse down the hall, holding a bottle of wine.

"Julian, good evening," Thomas said, maintaining a deliberate, respectful distance in the hallway with a slight bow. "Forgive the unannounced intrusion, but I wanted to introduce myself and drop off this vintage as a thank you for the kind welcome note you left on my hallway table last week."

He held the bottle forward, making no move toward the threshold.

"Entirely civilized of you, Thomas. Do come in," Julian said—his delivery flat, dry, and commanding as he gestured the young man forward, effectively pulling him into the living room.

Thomas stepped into the sweeping space, his eyes naturally drifting past the collections of art meticulously placed throughout, drawn instantly to the mahogany easel that still anchored the corner of the room. The portrait of Julian stood perfectly lit under the gallery spotlights.

Thomas stopped dead in his tracks. He blinked, staring at the canvas, then turned his head to look directly at Julian, before snapping his gaze back to the canvas—a look of profound, eerie disorientation settling over his face.

"Julian..." Thomas murmured, his voice dropping into a tone of quiet awe. "Did you have this portrait done recently? I thought Charles Collins retired to the coast a few years ago."

"Indeed he did," Julian replied softly, taking a slow sip of his Earl Grey. “Charles finished his final sittings with me exactly five years ago tonight, on the longest day of the year, just before he closed his studio.”

Thomas shook his head, completely mystified. "But... It's uncanny. It’s the exact image of you. The slightly receded hairline, the silver in your hair, the lines by your eyes, the way your jawline is sculpted... it is precisely who you are standing right here in front of me today. How on earth could he see you with such terrifying accuracy five years before it actually happened? It’s less a portrait than a prophecy."

Julian looked at the canvas, feeling that deep, magnetic pull finally settling into a perfect, quiet equilibrium. The great work was complete; the future had been fully inhabited. He turned to his new neighbor, his eyes gleaming, and smiled his sly, razor-sharp smile.

"My dear Thomas," Julian said smoothly, his voice carrying the absolute certainty of a man who had won his quiet revolution. "Charles did not paint who I was, nor did he paint a young ghost for me to mourn. He performed an act of high alchemy. He portrayed the ultimate realization of my character, my strength, and my survival. He painted the best man I could become, and I have simply spent the last five years growing into the masterpiece you see."

Like the Birds to Capistrano: Part I

Georgiana Starlington

In the twentieth century, we were a tribe of nomads searching for coordinates that didn’t exist on any respectable map. Long before the internet or the casual safety of a neon bar sign, our geography was built entirely on a secret telegraph of whispers—a trusted acquaintance who knew a guy, who knew another guy, who passed along a location like a coded dispatch to the front lines. If you wanted to find men like yourself, you learned to navigate this shadow network, decoding the subtle cues: a lingering glance in a flickering movie house, or the “Friend of Dorothy” shorthand dropped into a polite conversation like a velvet passport.

And then, of course, there were the tea rooms—those damp, silent cathedrals of the desperate and the brave that men only dared mention in conspiratorial undertones. A widening of the stance, a rhythmic tap of a loafer, and a symphony of unspoken intent played out in a public stall, while the rest of the world washed its hands and checked its tie in the mirror, blissfully unaware of the revolution happening six feet away.

By the mid-eighties, I was a starving student at UAB, living on a diet of academic nerves and a gas credit card tethered to my parents’ bank account. I had a car, a tiny apartment and I was always up for travel and adventure.

Just after my Spring semester finals, I ran into Billy at The Rage.

He was the kind of beautiful that made you ache to look at. A golden-blond creature with a grin that could charm the scales off a snake. He was the architect of our “Caring Brotherhood”—the man who could organize an AIDS fundraiser with the same military precision most people reserve for a small invasion. He didn’t just meet people; he recruited them into a lifelong commitment to serve.

“It’s Memorial Day Weekend,” he declared, hovering over his drink like a bird of prey. “And there’s a little strip of Pensacola Beach I can hear calling my name. Let’s all road-trip down tomorrow. Sun, fun, and the kind of trouble our mothers always prayed we would never find.”

“Fauché, Billy. I’m poor,” I protested. “I barely have money for food, rent, and my bar tab.”

“Oh bother…” he mocked “Come on, John. Live a little! You can sleep on our floor. There are only four of us in the room. It’ll be fun, like a little gay submarine…only with better outfits. Just contribute some to the gas.”

He paused and took a drink of his vodka tonic “I mean, if you’re gonna starve and go thirsty anyway—why not do it on a beach where the scenery is better.”

I said yes.

I mean, why wouldn’t I? I had a gas card, a free floor to sleep on, and the protection of my own glittering praetorian guard. Even though I was still a bit pulled-up, I was definitely hungry to immerse myself and learn about this secret world of the gay.

“Six A.M. sharp tomorrow,” he barked. “We have to arrive by PTH.”

I blinked. “Is that the Pensacola airport code?”

“Prime Tanning Hours—10 a.m. to 2 p.m., you silly man!” He paused, then reached out, grabbed my cheeks and squeezed. “You have so much to learn, and we’re gonna take you to finishing school!”

The next morning, I arrived ten minutes late to find Billy’s 1983 Toyota Corolla humming with the energy of four grown men packed inside and another outside trying to stuff his bags into the trunk. Billy had clearly done some midnight recruiting.

“Just throw your bag in and jump on someone’s lap!” Billy chirped from the window.

My heart sank.

“I think I’m gonna pass,” I said, backing away from the crowded sedan. I definitely wasn’t cut out for a five-hour drive in another man’s lap.

Billy leaned further out the window, looking at the hesitation on my face. “Well, would you want to drive, too?”

“That sounds more like it,” hardly giving it a thought, “I’ll just follow you,” I said, pointing back toward ‘Inga,’ my road-worthy 1976 Volvo station wagon.

After a flurry of theatrical negotiation, we split the troops. I inherited Sonny and Mark, while Billy, Stan, and Randy remained in the Corolla. Sonny raised his voice above the fray of the re-do: “I brought a cooler of Barley Pop!”

Randy, the muscly little number already settled into the back of the Corolla, looked at my Volvo like it was a garbage scow. “If they’re following us in that, can we at least make sure Mark doesn’t try to bring every wig in his collection?” he shouted. “We’re going to Pensacola for the weekend, not New York for a Broadway residency! I only packed a toothbrush and a bikini—in a fanny pack!”

Mark didn’t even look up from the cooler he was trying to wedge into my way-back. “It’s called ‘packing for options,’ Randy. Something you clearly gave up on when you picked out that same old ratty tank top.”

With the troops officially split and the Corolla’s taillights receding into the distance, a strange, quiet peace settled over the Volvo. The chaos stayed with Billy, leaving us with nothing but the open road and a cooler of beer.

Sonny was asleep before we hit the highway, so I turned to Mark. “Are you from Birmingham, Mark?”

“Missy,” he corrected instantly, checking his reflection in the passenger-side vanity mirror. “Everyone just calls me ‘Missy.’ ‘Mark’ sounds too much like my mother—or worse, one of the nuns from my school.”

I paused to take that all in. “So, are you from here, ‘Missy’?”

“Jonesboro, Georgia, just below Atlanta.”

“Nuns? Was it a Catholic school?”

“Yes, unfortunately. My mom and dad are almost broke paying for all of us.”

“‘All of us’?” I questioned.

“There are thirteen of us.” He rattled them off like a grocery list he’d been forced to memorize under duress—no breaths, no commas, just a rhythmic purge of a past life:

“Maria-Joseph-Lucy-Anthony-Rosa-Domenic-Francis-Peter-Elena-Vincent-Sofia…and the baby Paulie.” He added with a dry punctuation: “And then of course, me. The Martinos. Tah dah!”

“Are you all close?”

“No,” he sighed, picking at the label of a beer he was already hugging. “We all just lose touch once we leave home. We talk, I guess, but we don’t really say anything. It’s all ‘How’s your job?’ and ‘Did you go to Mass?’ Out here...” he gestured to Billy’s Corolla swerving ahead of us, where I could see Randy and Billy mid-argument through the back window, “...out here, Randy can tell me I’m an over dramatic queen, and I can tell him he’s a boring gym-rat, and ten minutes later we’re sharing a vodker drink. In a way, it feels a lot more honest than Sunday dinner at home ever did.”

That honesty was tested an hour later at a Stuckey’s near Montgomery. Randy jumped out of the Corolla before it even fully stopped, marching over to my window.

“Missy, if you tell John to motion for us to slow down one more time, I’m going to unpack that boa of yours, shut it in the car door, and drag it along I-65,” Randy snapped.

Mark didn’t blink or even look up. As we all shuffled into the air-conditioned hum of the shop to check out the pecan rolls, Mark said out loud, as if to no one in particular, “And if ya’ll don’t stop driving like escaping criminals, Randy, I will be too nauseous to even sit upright when we get to the beach. Some of us have constitutions that aren’t made of iron and spite.”

They stood, staring each other down for a beat—the pragmatist and the drama queen—before Randy rolled his eyes, snatched up a bag of pecans, and tossed a pack of cigarettes to her. “Fine,” he muttered. “But hurry up. We’re losing PTH.”

I just watched—fascinated.

I had become more and more distant from my own family—everyone except my mother, of course. But Mark had a point— there we all were—like boys from the land of misfit toys—off on a mis-adventure together. Little did I know that Mark, Randy —all of us would become brothers—a chosen family in which we would hold each other together years later when we began losing one other, and the world seemed to be falling apart.

We tore down I-65 like we were being chased by vice. Just past Montgomery, Billy’s blinker signaled near Exit 114, as he frantically gestured out the window toward the roadside emergency lane. I pulled over, expecting a mechanical disaster or an urgent potty stop, but Sonny and Mark’s heads popped up in my mirror like jacks-in-the-box and they were out the door before the tires stopped spinning.

“Georgiana Starlington!” Mark shrieked, racing toward the highway sign.

“Who in the hell is Georgiana Starlington?” I yelled over the roar of passing semis.

“It’s the name, John! Look at the sign!” Billy beamed, striking a pose that would have made a Ziegfeld girl weep. “Georgiana Starlington. It’s only the best Southern Belle drag name EVER!”

“Imagine her,” he said, gesturing like a director framing a shot—”All dolled up on aisle 3 at the Piggly Wiggly—a legend in marabou and sequins. What a hoot!”

“She wouldn’t wear marabou at the Pig, Billy, honestly,” Mark scoffed, adjusting his sunglasses. “Georgiana is strictly daytime sequins and a sensible pump. She has standards.”

“Standards…” Randy muttered exhaustedly, leaning against the Corolla with his arms crossed. “Can we just take the picture and get this show on the road? I’m getting tan lines on my tan lines.”

After we took a few pictures, Billy turned, and walking back toward the cars he said aloud, “This is tradition, boys. We never pass this sign without a picture.” He looked lovingly at Stan, “Stan and I have a gallery of these on the mantle—they’re our family vacation photos.”

After a couple of quick stops for gas and caffeine, we finally hit Pensacola around 10:15 A.M., vibrating from Vivarin, Diet Coke, and the sheer, jagged adrenaline of the high-speed chase.

The hotel room wasn’t ready. But Billy wasn’t about to let a little thing like room availability derail our dash for PTH. He flirted with the hotel desk clerk, leaning against the counter and posing. After negotiating a noon check-in, a room with a better view, and a late check-out for Monday, he flashed that devilish, high-noon grin, pointed to the horizon and chirped, “Let’s make like a baby and head out!”

We scurried into the lobby bathroom like the Rockettes on a quick-change between sets. I stood back and watched the frantic, semi-coordinated circus—two and three grown men to a stall, a chorus of giggles echoing off the tile. It was a tangled, theatrical choreography of peeling off denim and shimmying into Speedos, short-shorts, and tank tops, all while performing a mid-air ballet to avoid touching the questionable graffiti’d walls.

The tiny room echoed with the sound of zippers and frantic maneuvering. “Randy, move your elbow, you’re poking me in the kidney!” Stan yelled from behind a metal door.

“If you didn’t have to bring half a pharmacy in that massive toiletry bag, we’d have room to breathe!” Randy fired back.

From the next stall, Billy’s voice rose above the din, serene and authoritative: “Now Boys! Beauty means sacrifice…and sometimes pain.”

I hung back, my butt against the cool porcelain of the sinks, feeling decidedly out of place. I was the conservative gay who wasn’t yet comfortable with the constant girl-ing around or the casual ease with which they traded female names. I was still clinging to my polo shirts and my dignity, watching this explosion of camp with a mixture of awe and skepticism.

Randy stepped out of his stall, already half-changed, and caught my eye in the mirror. No one in the group knew that Randy and I had already had an encounter or two back in Birmingham. In the hierarchy of the car trip, he was the muscly pragmatist and I was the academic “good boy,” but in the reflection of that bathroom mirror, there was a heavy, unspoken history.

“You okay, John?” he asked, his voice lower than the theatrical chirping happening in the stalls.

“Yeah,” I muttered, moving toward the only empty stall left. “Just trying to figure out how I can put on my swim trunks without touching anything.”

“Good luck with that,” he chuckled, as he slipped into the cramped space behind me.

We changed together in that small, pressurized square of tile and metal. There was a brief, charged moment where our shoulders brushed—a reminder of those nights in Birmingham—then we both looked away, focused on the task of becoming beach ready.

Ten minutes later, we emerged together, walking back out to the parking lot where Billy’s car was already revving. Billy leaned out the window of the Corolla, his sunglasses slid down to the tip of his nose, with a grin wide enough to catch flies. He looked at me, then at Randy, then back at me.

“What took you boys so long?” he asked, his voice trailing off with a knowing lilt that made my stomach do a slow roll. He didn’t say anything else, but the glance and nod he gave Stan in the passenger seat was a silent headline.

“I checked your bag with ours, John. Let’s make for the beach!”

I jumped into Inga and turned to find Sonny and Mark already installed in the back, smelling of coconut oil, cheap beer, and impending mischief. “Let’s roll down these windows and drink in this Florida air.”

As we drove away, I heard Mark quip to Sonny, “Did Pam cut your hair?”

“Yes”

“Well honey you need to do something different next time. You look like Friar Tuck.”

Sonny snapped back, “It’s called a Caesar cut!”

Mark replied, already cracking open a fresh beer for the road, “Well, honey, you need to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s—and tell Pam you want your money back.”

Our Own Gay Kingdom

We crossed the bridge into the Gulf Breeze speed trap—a town so dry and conservative they probably banned sex for fear people might think they’re dancing—and we kept on driving... Over the Sound—paid our tolls—two miles, 5 miles, and then, before we knew it, the condos vanished and there was nothing but sugar-white sand and the blue waters of the Gulf to our right, and dunes, sea grass and the shimmering Santa Rosa Sound to our left.

We finally pulled into a gravel lot by a lonely cinderblock bathhouse. It was Opal Beach near Navarre.

The beach was beautiful, quiet and pristine like a nature preserve, the sand so white and fine. After we all walked to the cool wetness of the tide line, the water licking our feet, the waves breaking with a soft, shushing sound, without speaking a word, we all sat down just taking it all in.

Then Billy popped up and shouted “Let’s unload these wagons!”

Billy’s car was a magic trick of high-camp luxury. Like a magician working a Vegas matinee, out came chairs, umbrellas, a round card table and two telescoping twenty-foot poles to fly our rainbow flags. A linen tablecloth followed, topped with a spread fit for a coronation, washed down with champagne and “barley pop.” Tucked behind a spare tire, Billy unearthed a relic from the previous October—Mark’s glitter-encrusted plastic wand topped with a star, left over from his turn as Glinda the Good Witch.

“Is that my wand?! Mark squealed. “I wondered where that went.”

“A better question is ‘why’s it behind the tire in my trunk’” Billy said, continuing to unpack.

Randy snatched it up and ran. “Hey!!” Mark yelled, but Randy ran off - down to the water’s edge to set up his perch, waving the wand around over the backdrop of the sea and sky.

With the camp set up, Mark walked out into the surf to cool down, diving into the waves and surfacing like a playful seal. All the sudden, Randy let out a theatrical shriek, ‘Oh, for god’s sake, Mark, bless your heart, come out of the water. You look like a drowned rat!’ and playfully hurled the wand.

Mark dove into the seventh wave and the wand hit the water right on top of him. Mark emerged and grabbed it “My wand!” he screamed, “You f*ckin’ little garden gnome! Why would you throw it in the water?!” as he walked out from the foam toward Randy, spluttering and indignant.

Billy, ever the peace-maker interrupted “Ok kids. Don’t make me have to pull over this car!” They both looked up at him startled, then everyone laughed. Mark trudged back to the sand and, with a mock-solemn bow, handed the wand to Billy as he passed by to set the table.

Billy didn’t skip a beat. He accepted the wand with the gravity of a monarch receiving a scepter. ‘Thank you, honey,’ Billy chirped, standing up and waving the glittered wand toward the horizon. ‘The Lady of the Lake has spoken. Consider this beach officially consecrated.’

After we got things set up, Mark wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, turned up his empty solo cup, and shook it with a flourish. ‘Honestly, Billy,’ he chirped, ‘who’s a girl gotta f*ck to get a drink around here!?’ Billy didn’t skip a beat. He popped a cork with a theatrical bang and handed Mark and the rest of us a plastic flute of bubbles.

We had a feast: chilled shrimp that Billy had somehow kept frozen in a nest of dry ice, wedges of Brie that were sweating in the Florida heat, trays of fresh cut fruit, and enough beer and champagne to float a boat.

It turns out, this was a long standing meeting place. Men who had sex with men from all over the region, from Pensacola to Navarre had heard the whispers and were drawn here to this remote, small cinderblock bathhouse in the middle of nowhere to enjoy nature and the Gulf of Mexico in the buff—and encounter other like-minded men. On this day, nude bronzed and statuesque male bodies were scattered here and there across the beach and the dunes.

“Is this legal?” I asked Billy. But he obviously thought it was a rhetorical question, quietly staring off into the horizon.

I was shy, intimidated by the sheer ‘outness’ of it all. I don’t think I ever even took off my t-shirt—and I definitely avoided the public men’s room, preferring to wade waist-deep into the emerald water to ‘smile’ in private.

I sat there on the edge of the blanket, clutching my plastic flute of champagne like a shield. I was quietly watching them flit around and taking in the “unseemliness” of it all with a mixture of awe and a cold, tight knot of embarrassment in my gut. I thought to myself ‘Why are they so hell bent on pretending to be something they aren’t?’

And like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere, I heard “Why do you seem so uptight, John?” Randy asked, his voice losing its playful lilt and sharpening into a razor. “You’re so quiet. Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

Mark stepped in, his face tight. “He’s embarrassed, Randy. Look at him. He’s sitting there in a fetal position, fully clothed in the middle of a sunny day on a neked gay beach. We’re in the middle of nowhere and he’s still afraid somebody’s gonna see him and report him to the UAB dean’s office - or worse yet - tell his mother.” He turned his gaze on me, cold and direct. “You think you’re better than us, don’t you? You think because you can pass for ‘straight’ you’re better. You look at me, and you see some queen that calls himself ‘Missy’ - a sissy little fag boy with a girl’s name prancing around in the sand with pumps on - and you think I’m the weakest link.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I stammered, but of course I knew - and he had hit a nerve. Why did I feel so threatened by it all? And why did I have to judge?

“Is that why you haven’t gone to dinner with me?” Randy snapped. “You’re ashamed? You’re so busy trying to act ‘straight’, you forget that your own sense of ‘straightness’ is a lie. You’re a fag, John. Just like the rest of us. You’re no different. No better. And let me tell you—your ‘Mary’ is just as big as any of ours, and you’re scared to death of her.”

“Just loosen up a little…” he said, softening up a little and cracking a half-smile. “You’re just like Eeyore—so miserably serious all the time.”

Mark leaned down, his shadow falling over me. “You seem so afraid someone will see who you really are—and they’ll hate you for it. The thing is, John, you seem to hate yourself.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. The waves crashed, but no one moved—no one spoke. I felt small. I just wanted to dig a deep hole in the sand and crawl in.

Then, Billy popped another cork, the bang shattered the tension like a glass brick.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Billy shrieked, throwing his hands up. “Someone get this man a fainting couch and a string of pearls to clutch! Mark, you’re being so dramatic—save the soliloquy for the stage. And Randy, put that wand down before you poke someone’s eye out.”

Sonny chimed in from the cooler, not even looking up. “Anybody want another beer?”

“Nope,” Missy said, “pass me the bubbles. This undisputed champion has another game of ‘Toss the Pump’ to win. You’re up, Sheila!”

I felt the air rush back into my lungs. It had all ended as quickly as it had started—I was still shy, still mousy, still clutching my champagne—but the boundary had been broken. I realized then that they weren’t angry with me—they were just saying what they saw—and what they saw was that I was the only person on that beach who was pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

The quiet types along the beach - those who had come for a private afternoon - gave our loud and flamboyant circus a wide berth, retreating down the shore as Billy straightened up the laundry basket and produced another pair of pumps.

‘Time for another round of Toss the Pump!’ he announced.

Billy walked back and sat next to me quietly for a few seconds, then leaned in, his voice a consoling but conspiratorial whisper. “You’re ok, John. You’ll come to it in your own time.”

After we sat quietly for a few minutes, he turned and asked “What do you think of our little spot? It’s our own gay Kingdom. ‘Is it legal?’, you asked. Who cares? Either way, it’s ours.’

‘It’s so beautiful,’ I replied.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said with quiet contentment. Then he bolted up, snatched a size 12 stiletto from the sand, and barked, “Now—are you gonna sit there all day, or are you gonna show these girls how a gentleman handles a heel?’”

Little did I know how prophetic Billy was that day. This was a mere seed of the miracle it would become. In future years, our cars would multiply into a seemingly endless line stretching for miles down both sides of Hwy 399 as the word spread through caring brotherhoods across the South.

Soon, the Boys of Atlanta (BOA) would arrive with their own marquees; the New Orleans Boys (NOB) would bring the Mardi Gras spirit to the dunes; and the Men of Memphis (MOM) would stake their claim in the sand. But on that day, it was just us—the Men of Birmingham (MOB)—the self-appointed arbiters, jesters and knights of a court that was only just forming.

By mid-afternoon, the sun had done its work. We packed up our rainbow flags and retreated to the hotel, leaving the beach beautiful, quiet and pristine, exactly as we’d found it. It was my first pilgrimage with the Men of Birmingham. But it certainly wouldn’t be my last.

And Here’s to Billy

Billy R. Cox was a force of nature—the gay Pied Piper of the Deep South. He’d play a tune, start a rhythmic march through the streets of Birmingham, New Orleans and any other city in the South, and before you knew it, we were all falling in line behind him.

I became his disciple and his friend. I watched him. I studied the way he spoke to people as if they were the only person in the room; the way he deployed a smile like a tactical weapon; and the way he organized…well, everything—but especially the fierce precision with which he led us through Pride Parades and AIDS fundraisers, showing a marrow-deep commitment to our community when few others seemed to care.

He was in many ways the architect of the world we still inhabit in Birmingham. He helped form BAO, birthed the fundraisers that saved lives, and traveled the South teaching other men how to turn their own grief into a revolution. He was named grand marshal of the Alabama AIDS Walk, and, in the final months of his life, opened up for a series of stories in The Birmingham News that documented his fight with the disease that would rob him of his life at 37.

Billy’s health began to decline and he died on November 25th, 1994.

But the music didn’t stop—it just changed keys. Because of him, we all learned how to strap on our own armor of smiles and charm to do the work that had to be done. I learned to find my own light, my own rhythm, and eventually, I looked back and realized people had begun following me, too.

He showed me the way out of the shadows. He taught a shy boy from Birmingham that you don’t have to wait for an invitation to be fabulous—you just have to plant your flag and wait for the rest of the world to catch up.

And he was right, of course. By 1994, CNN would report a million of us swarming the shores of Pensacola Beach on Memorial Day Weekend—a great gathering of the tribes, all together under a single sun.