The Prospective Present: A Manifesto for Aging on Your Own Terms

A Rope Thrown Forward onto the Shore

Big Pine Key’s morning air is thick with salt and the faint, sweet decay of mangroves. I pour a cup of coffee and step out onto the deck, watching the Gulf waters catch the first, sharp light of the morning before it hits the western sky.

Today I turn seventy.

I look back at the man who sat at his desk at sixty-three, worrying that the ink drying on the page would turn his mind into stone. He believed Socrates’ warning—that once a thought is written down, it becomes fixed, like a portrait, mute and unmoving, incapable of growth.

As he sat and meditated on his discussions with friends about aging with intent, an idea took hold: he would not write more dead text; he would write a summons. In doing so, he was throwing a rope forward into the fog, binding himself to the man he intended to become.

I am that man.

I am standing on the shore he pulled toward, having spent the last seven years planning the ascent so that I could finally be liberated to live.

And yet, the morning is heavy. I am still reeling from the news of the drowning, caught in the conflict of whether I could have intervened, whether a hand extended at the right moment might have changed the tide.

We wrote about it—we mapped out the dark logic in our essay back then. But writing about the storm in the abstract is never the same as watching the ship go down. We simply didn’t have the information. We had no details, no timeline, no name. How could we have known? What alchemy could have allowed us to see through seven years of fog to the specific life that would be lost?

So instead, we focused on the variables we thought we could govern.

I think back to those years when my friends and I became consumed with how to bring a lifelong career in for a soft landing—how to divine the future, calculate the risks, and execute the most critical transition of our lives—but above all, how to design healthy, joyful aging. We obsessed over navigating the shift from employer-sponsored insurance to Medicare, calculating Social Security timelines, and mapping out retirement drawdowns, always circling the same terrifying question: How long can I afford to live?

We talked, we counseled one another, but at the end of the day, no two paths were identical. We each brought our own distinct fears and ambitions to the table. I watched my friends take wildly different roads in those years. I took my own.

The screen door slaps shut with a sudden crack. Startled, I am pulled instantly out of the fog and returned to the physical reality of the morning—to right now.

It’s nice to have him here with me. We don’t name him, because how could we know? He is both a deeply intimate, specific presence and an anonymous ghost—a silent partner, and the most significant of others in this long dialogue across decades.

He sets his mug down on the weathered railing next to mine, his gaze drifting out toward the open water. “Seventy, huh?” he says with a slight smirk, his voice cutting through the steady hum of the tide. “How’s that sittin’ with ya?”

I turn, squint and offer him a quiet one-finger salute, then turn back toward the western horizon.

The levity helps break through the agonizing loop of the morning’s news and pulls me back to the wooden planks of the deck. I look at him, then back at the horizon, caught in the quiet, existential angst of this becoming day—feeling the weight of the friend we lost, the friends we are holding, and the long, winding road that brought us to Big Pine Key.

Back in Birmingham

I think of home—of being back in the warm, familiar bosom of Birmingham, caring for my ninety-three-year-old mother, and re-weaving myself into the fabric of a community I love.

But I also think of my friends there and in Atlanta—people I’ve known and loved for five decades who seem to have quietly agreed to walk in place. Many of them spent their early years fashioning a comfortable, lovely bubble, only to settle inside and steep in it.

They are the ones who remain genuinely concerned when I travel abroad alone or shutter my place to take a faraway house like this for months on end, perpetually fearful of the unknown—who I will encounter, or what terrible thing might happen out here.

They seem to think I’m being reckless, or at least daring, when I travel to unfamiliar places. But I thrive on it, precisely because of my tested and true protocol.

“People think I plan my trips so nothing goes wrong,” I said aloud, turning suddenly to face him.

“Wait. Who are we talking about?”

“My friends. They always think it’s about caution.”

“What’s about caution?”

“The planning,” I said, slightly annoyed. “They think it’s all about strict itineraries, insurance, layover buffers, and cautious logistics. They think it’s about control. But it’s the exact opposite. Before I set out on any of my solo explorations, I sit down and do what most people are afraid to do: I chart the exact boundaries of my current capabilities and every conceivable mishap. I acknowledge the forgetfulness, the missed connections, the wrong turns, the reality that shit happens. I create a plausible Plan A and Plan B for every bad scenario I can imagine, and then I make peace with it. I just leave it where Jesus flung it.”

I put a foot up on the railing, leaned back, and paused, feeling the breeze pick up and letting the salt wind wash over me.

“I didn’t build contingency plans so I could stay safe in the coop,” I insisted. “I built them so once the bad scenarios were considered, my mind was at ease and I could run for the fence. I never planned so I could survive my adventures—I planned so I would be liberated to live in them.”

“Aren’t you mixing your metaphors there?”

“Travel is learning, learning is growing, and growing is life,” I insisted. “It’s the necessary disturbance of the peace that keeps the blood from turning to sludge.”

Chin down, he turned his gaze toward me as he listened, slowly tracing the rim of his mug.

“And are you gonna tell me about the math again, Daddy?” he quipped, sarcastically.

“Well, it’s my seventieth birthday, so I think I will,” I replied. “Like I always say, it’s all just actuarial gambling. We all do this effing back-of-the-napkin analysis with our Medicare options, Social Security timelines, and retirement balances, and then we roll the dice taking our chances that it’ll be enough.”

“Do you think that’s why he did it?” he asked softly.

“What?” I turned. “You mean...”

“Yes. Him.”

“Surely not,” I said, though the words felt hollow on my tongue.

He and I were always alike in our thoughts on aging—or what we’d come to call aging with radical intent. We had always managed this chapter of life the exact same way I manage travel: thoughtfully considering assets, capabilities, goals, and shortcomings, setting a course for healthy aging with joy, and then enjoying the journey with the lightest possible touch on the helm—because we believed that beyond that, what will be will be.

“But at our age,” I continued, “it can consume you so that you freeze in place. You know how it annoys me to no end the way some of our friends let the math turn them into museum curators of their own savings. They freeze. But for many of us who came of age in the 1980s, this season of life carries darker and familiar echoes, so we make different choices.”

He was never a victim of sudden despair; he was a master of calculations. He always said he had lived three or four times the life most poor schmucks ever get to live. He had squeezed every drop of flavor out of the world. But in his late seventies, he ran the numbers again, looked at his remaining runway, saw the funds dwindling and his body beginning to fray.

But did he—would he—make that deliberate choice? Living with intent, pushed to its dark, absolute edge? All we know is that his body washed ashore on the beach near his family’s old place. We’d heard whispers of those esoteric philosophical debates—ideas he’d recently updated to ‘radical autonomy’ and pushed at parties and salons... but surely not.

I looked out toward the water.

“Remember the old dark joke?” I said quietly. “’I want my last check to bounce.’ If that was his plan, it’s not so funny today, is it?”

We lived through an era where friends dropped out of the frame week after week. And now, in our late sixties and seventies, the roll call has started again. Memorials, sudden diagnoses, empty chairs where laughter sat six months ago. It feels like the eighties and nineties all over again.

Men cashing out their accounts to dance on the edge of the world before the lights go down—it has started again. Except now, the dance floor is just the quiet routine of getting older, and the choices people make to escape the decay are sometimes terrifyingly literal.

We stand in silence on the deck, holding space for the drowning, for the friend we lost, for the names we knew and the names we couldn’t have known.

A Time for Caring

We’d spent recent years in what people call our caring phase—spending our time with our mother and our aging friends. We planned “date nights,” bought tickets for the ballet, and sat in living rooms with friends who had retreated behind closed doors after 2020, offering them full attention, unconditional love, acceptance, and the patience of a tube of toothpaste—always a little left if you just squeeze a little harder.

And it’s been an honor, spiritually uplifting in ways I didn’t expect. But because we have always presented ourself as the self-reliant man—the one who built his entire identity on being the pillar—the quiet question inevitably occurs to us: When the time comes, who holds space for the holder of space?

Those friends in Birmingham and Atlanta—the ones who walk in place—have the comfort of community built right around them. They’ve cultivated a chosen family and a sanctuary where everyone can be who they are, holding each other up through every storm.

But I’ve always tried to keep one foot in each canoe: cherishing that loving chosen family on one side, while fiercely insisting on my independence, self-reliance, and distance on the other.

Where will that ultimately leave me, and who will be there when my time comes? Not for a temporary fix or situational help, but for that long, steady devotion—like the years of loving support we gave our mother?

“So what’s the vow for your seventies?” he asks, snapping me back into the moment.

I pause to think and reply, “Subtraction,” setting my empty mug on the rail. “They say the sixties are Go-Go, the seventies are Slow-Go, and the eighties are No-Go. But ‘Slow-Go’ doesn’t mean surrender. It means narrowing the beam. It means subtraction. I will work less at the pharmacy, travel less with more intent, and refuse to commit to another single project or campaign.”

“Good luck with that,” he cynically replies.

I look out over the water and smile faintly. “Ya know, years ago, whenever plans would go sideways, Mom would always look at me and say, ‘John Kelly, things always work out for the best.’”

“To which my response—whether kept in thought or spoken aloud—was always: ‘Mother, how do you know that? Do you have a secret crystal ball that shows the myriad other ways it could have worked out?’”

“But maybe she was on to something,” I continue softly. “Remember when you would get anxious before a big trip—worrying about missed connections or delayed departures—and I would always calm you by taking your hand and saying, ‘I’ve traveled for years, and one thing I’ve learned is that there’s always another train. There’s always the next plane. It’ll all be okay.’”

“And in travel, that’s true. But the terrifying thing about life is that there isn’t always another train. This line ends at the exact same stop for every single one of us. He reached his station earlier than we expected.”

I take a slow breath of the salt air. “All I can do is all I can do. I map the possibilities, settle the score in advance, and then... what will be, will be.”

The Gathering at Twilight

The western sky burns down from gold to deep indigo as dusk settles over Big Pine Key. The salt breeze cools, and the quiet deck transforms. Tubs of ice are set out, glasses clink on the long wooden table, and the fire pit in the center of the patio catches, throwing amber sparks up into the night.

Then the cars begin pulling up the gravel drive. Doors slam, footsteps crunch, and the house fills with the sound of the living.

They arrive in clusters—friends spanning fifty years, carrying their own invisible baggage onto the deck. There are long, tight hugs, deep laughs, and the immediate comfort of familiar voices.

As the drinks are poured and everyone settles around the fire, the conversation shifts naturally from old stories to current realities. Someone takes a sip of wine, looks around the circle, and speaks the unspoken truth out loud:

“It’s so absurd, isn’t it? When we were young, it was all about parties, cute boys, new jobs, and pay raises. Now it’s hearing aids, Medicare plans, A-fib, colonoscopies—and else who just died.”

A burst of sudden, cathartic laughter ripples through the group. Because it’s true. But in naming the absurdity, the heavy air lifts.

We don’t pretend the ocean behind us isn’t dark, or that an empty chair isn’t sitting where he should be, or that the roll call hasn’t started again. We pour a quiet splash of scotch onto the wooden deck for the ghosts, speaking their names into the tropical night so they are held in the light with us.

I look out past the edge of the deck, where the black water of the Gulf meets the dark horizon.

When I sat at my desk at sixty-three, throwing that rope forward into the fog, I thought I was only anchoring myself. I didn’t realize I was throwing a line out into the open water for all of us. I pulled myself up onto this shore, step by step, year by year. But standing here tonight, looking out at the tide, the quiet agony remains: he was out in that same dark ocean. Was the rope there for him to catch? Did he reach for it in the blind fog and miss it? Or did he see the line stretched across the water and decide to let go anyway?

There are no answers out in the dark. Only the line that held, and the ones who made it to the porch.

I shiver, step back into the warmth of the firelight, and look at the faces reflecting the flames. I raise my glass into the night—for the friend in the water, for the line that pulled us here, and for the miracle of standing on the shore, alive today.

The Telegram at Ur

There lived an older man of quiet habits, whose world was bounded by the four walls of his home and the gentle presence of his beloved cat. So deeply attached was he to the animal that he rarely traveled beyond the town’s edge. Yet, after months of painstaking preparation, he resolved to join an archaeological excavation near the ancient city of Ur. Leaving the cat in the care of his older brother, he set out across the sea.

Not many days into the dig, a messenger rode out from the nearest city and handed the younger brother a brief, solitary telegram:

CAT WENT MISSING STOP SOUND ON ROOF STOP FELL TO HER DEATH STOP

Heartbroken, the younger brother left the camp at once and rode with a caravan to the city to place a phone call to his older brother. When the line connected, he cried out in anguish, "How could this happen? And how could you break such news so crudely?"

"What do you mean?" the older brother asked.

"You ought to have prepared me!" said the younger brother. "First, you send a telegram saying: Cat escaped, searching now. Then a second: Still searching, doubling efforts. A third: Found on the roof, update soon. And only then the fourth: Fell from the roof, died instantly without suffering. A man needs time to bend before the blow!"

Overwhelmed, the younger brother hung up. He pondered returning home immediately, but choosing to honor his commitment, he returned to the desert and threw himself into the hard, silent work of the soil.

Several weeks passed. The dust settled over his grief, and the rhythm of the excavation brought a fragile peace. Then, one hot afternoon, the expedition superintendent walked toward him across the trenches, holding a second piece of paper.

The younger brother smoothed the paper, where a fresh message had been transcribed:

DEAREST BROTHER STOP MOTHER WENT MISSING STOP FOUND ON THE ROOF STOP UPDATE SOON STOP

Two Old Men Brunch

A Table in the Window

The light through the front window fell across our little marble table, cutting through the warm, butter-heavy air at Juniper. Around us, dark wood and old gilded frames held portraits of flowers and forgotten French aristocrats—men and women whose painted complexions remained forever porcelain, unbothered by the century that had quietly slipped past them.

My friend Richard and I sat watching the street. We are, by any honest metric, old men now. We’ve reached that quiet threshold in life where our past naturally outweighs whatever runway remains in front of us.

He leaned back, swirling his coffee, his brow furrowing as he looked down at his hands—hands that bore the brown sunspots and raised veins of a life fully lived.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” he said, his voice dropping into that reflective register that only comes with a second glass of wine or an unhurried Sunday. “In here”—he tapped his chest—”I’m still twenty-five. I’m still running up the steps, still ready for whatever the night wants to offer. But then I catch my reflection in a storefront window, or I try to stand up too quickly after an hour in this chair, and the frame betrays me. It’s like waking up after a long sleep to find someone swapped out the machinery while I wasn’t looking.”

He was describing the classic human grievance: a young soul trapped inside a crumbling house, a disorienting, Rip-Van-Winkle awakening to one’s own mortality.

I nodded, listening, but I couldn’t entirely relate.

“I think I have the opposite problem,” I told him.

He looked up, amused. “Meaning what? Your body feels like the body of a teenager?”

“No… meaning I think I spent my twenties and thirties feeling about fifty,” I said, looking over at one of the dark oil paintings on the wall—a nobleman frozen in perpetual mid-life gravity. “When I was young, my internal operating system always felt older, heavier, quieter than the body I was carrying around. I felt out of step with my own youth.”

I took a sip of my bloody mary and looked out toward the oak-lined avenue. “So as my hair grays and my joints start to complain, I don’t feel betrayed. I feel a strange, quiet sympatico. The container is finally catching up to the contents. My outer self is finally settling into alignment with who I’ve been on the inside all along.”

He chuckled softly, a quiet, amused shake of his head as his eyes stayed on his coffee cup.

So I’m fighting from the outside in,” he said, turning the concept over in his mind, “and you’ve been living from the inside out.” He looked up, a wry smile catching the edge of his mouth. “Must be nice to finally have the container catch up to the contents. Most people spend their whole lives treating the body like an enemy territory they have to defend.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t you say that happens most often when the echoing judgments of the crowd drown out the quiet authority of our own reflection?” I replied.

He nodded slowly, and for a few moments, the space between us filled with the comfortable silence that only old friends share. Looking at Richard across the marble table, I realized how varied our private ceasefires with time truly are. Some of us grieve the loss of a vessel that once carried us so effortlessly through the world; others feel a strange, belated relief as the physical form finally drops its youthful pretense and settles into the quieter cadence we’ve carried inside all along. There is no single formula for making peace with the mirror—only the gradual, highly personal art of learning how to inhabit the skin we are given.

On the Need to Be Noticed

Twenty years ago, long before I learned to take comfort in the steady march of time, I dated a contestant from Project Runway.

He was, at best, a middling designer—talented enough to secure his fifteen minutes on national television, but possessed of an ego that had been wildly inflated by the cadre of sycophants who tend to swarm around even the smallest flame of celebrity. On the screen and in life, he moved through the world as if an unseen camera crew were trailing just two steps behind his left shoulder.

We had spent a long, blinding Saturday on 12th Street Beach in South Beach. It was the kind of Miami day that bakes itself into you—hours of relentless sun, the steady rhythm of crashing surf, salt crusting on skin, and the low hum of thousands of gleaming, bronzed bodies parading along the sand. By the time we retreated to my apartment, I was bone-weary in that deeply satisfying way only a beach day can produce. I was ready for a cool shower, a quiet dark room, and an early sleep.

I collapsed onto the bed, letting the AC wash over me. Jack lay down beside me, but he couldn’t stay still. He tossed. He turned. He shifted from his back to his stomach and back again, his feet kicking at the sheets like a restless child.

After a few minutes of this agitation, he rolled over to face me. He looked genuinely distressed, his mouth pulled into a petulant pout.

“Can we go to the mall?” he whined.

I opened one eye, utterly baffled. My body felt like lead. “Yeah... I suppose so,” I stammered, trying to make sense of the request. “What do you need from the mall?”

His answer came without a hint of irony or self-awareness.

“I need to be noticed.”

It wasn’t just about walking through a crowd; he wanted to wade into a sea of shoppers where someone—anyone—might spot him, gasp, and ask for an autograph. The words hung in the quiet, air-conditioned bedroom like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. It was my first true peek behind the velvet curtain of the reality-TV machine. The request wasn’t about buying a shirt or running an errand; it was a pure, unadulterated withdrawal symptom. The sun had set, the crowds on 12th Street had dispersed, and without the gaze of strangers confirming his celebrity, he was evaporating. He needed a concourse of admirers just to feel solid again.

In the years that followed, I watched Jack spend an agonizing amount of energy trying to extend, revive, and recreate that fleeting window of fame. He fought the fading light with every tool at his disposal, unable to accept that the world had simply moved on to the next season, the next line, the next pretty face.

He was far from alone in that desperation. Over the years, I’ve watched friends do the exact same thing with their bodies, spending hours every day in the gym throughout their twenties and thirties—sometimes even into their forties and fifties—feeding on the intoxicating currency of turning heads on the street. As the years wore on and the glances grew fewer, their effort didn’t always soften into health; for some it escalated into a frantic, doomed campaign against the clock.

Watching this over the years, I’ve often mourned the quiet tragedy of that bottomless, unmet need inside—a hollow core that no amount of praise, no number of turning heads, and no fleeting swell of applause can ever truly fill. It must be a terrifying way to live: endlessly pouring external validation into a vessel with a cracked foundation.

If a life is lived with its worth anchored to the adoration of others, isn’t there always the risk of becoming unmoored the moment they look away?

Salad Days

Jack’s afternoon panic at South Beach felt like a bizarre fringe case at the time—a quirky artifact of early 2000s reality television. But two decades later, that frantic need for an audience has been democratized. It’s no longer confined to studio soundstages or Miami beaches; it’s the ambient hum of modern life.

Are we, in effect, chumming a vast sea of want?

Now, as I scroll through my feeds, I see a relentless stream of influencers, thirst-trappers, and digital micro-celebrities, all striking carefully calibrated poses for the camera. What was once the tragic affliction of a few who caught a fleeting glimpse of the big screen has become the default setting for millions. They spend their twenties and thirties trading in the high-yield currency of raw physical perfection and hyper-visibility, building entire lives inside a little glowing rectangle, feeding on the instant gratification of likes, comments, and the illusion of intimacy with tens of thousands of strangers.

And whenever I scroll past them, I find myself thinking of Jack lying on that bed in Miami. I wonder if the void inside is the same for a micro-influencer as it was for a reality star. And how will they all fare when the noise quietens down. What will their lives be like in ten years? In twenty?

What happens to them when the algorithm shifts, or the camera moves on, or the mirror inevitably stops lying?

When that currency loses its purchasing power, I can only think of two paths forward:

The first is a slow, agonizing disintegration. It’s the path of those who refuse the tide—spending the second half of their lives frantically haunting the first. They become living ghosts of their own youth, escalating the interventions, chasing a demographic that has long since outgrown them, trapped in a doomed effort to dance in mid-air just one last time. They live like silent-screen sirens trapped in houses of mirrors, demanding that a world which has moved on to talkies keep looking at them.

The second path is integration. It’s the quiet realization that the persona was only ever a coat worn for a season, not the skin you live in. The people who survive aging with their humanity intact are the ones who use their youth to build a substructure—relationships, curiosity, an internal ecosystem that doesn’t rely on the applause of a crowd. They gracefully transition from being an object of adoration, to a subject simply living a life.

The Broad Horizon

Perhaps the real tragedy of an identity built on attention isn’t that youth or notoriety fades, but that it can trick people into believing that being adored is the same thing as being known and loved.

But is love enough for a soul that has trained itself on the applause of strangers? Or is true love simply too intimate—too dangerously exposing—for those who have spent a lifetime hiding behind a performance? Adoration offers a comfortable distance; it demands nothing more than a polished surface and a stage. Love, by contrast, demands that you step into the light without your makeup on, risking the terror of being truly seen. And so, many choose the safe perimeter of adoration. But where does that preference leave a person at sixty-five, when the gallery has emptied, the spotlight has dimmed, and there is no audience left to maintain the illusion?

Looking back across the decades now, I’m rarely bothered by my graying hair or the changing frame. I suppose I never quite saw in myself what others claimed to see; in the mirror, I was always just the mousy-haired, skinny kid. The attention from those two-hour gym sessions with friends always felt like the wrong currency. Being seen was nice, but somehow I knew it had an expiration date. What I was really searching for wasn’t the fleeting gaze of strangers, but the quiet permanence of loving and being loved in return.

We live in a culture obsessed with preserving the portrait—stitching and smoothing the canvas to chase ephemeral clicks from minds that can barely hold a focus for three seconds. We hide the wear and tear in dark attics, terrified of what happens when the paint begins to crack. I wonder if too often we exhaust ourselves trying to keep the image aligned with the crowd’s expectations, instead of aligning the image with our own truth.

In the evening after my time with Richard, my mind drifted back to the warm glow of Juniper, watching the afternoon light fade across those old oil paintings on the wall while my friend finished his coffee.

It’s easy to look at our hyper-connected world and assume this is a modern paradox, born of cameras and screens. But sitting under the quiet gazes of those old painted aristocrats, I realized it isn't. A commissioned oil painting was simply the 18th-century equivalent of posting for likes—a polished, porcelain bid to freeze one's prime and demand the room keep looking. Our anxieties are not uniquely modern—whether in our struggles with the mirror, love and adoration, or the passage of time. We are hardly the first to stand on the shore, raging against the tide of time and the quiet, reshaping wave of change. Century after century, generation after generation, men and women have sat in quiet galleries, looked at their aging hands, and waged the same internal war against an advancing clock.

On the largest scale, we are only stars in an infinite sky, or grains of sand shifted by an ocean we cannot control. Our thoughts, our fears, and our fleeting moments of vanity may feel profoundly personal and unprecedented, but they are merely the ancient, familiar tide sweeping through us, just as it swept through our forefathers who fought the same currents. If we could only step outside the noise inside our own heads, we might see it all as only the quiet, natural shifting of the season.

As Lampedusa famously observed in The Leopard, “everything must change so that everything can stay the same.”

Attention Must Be Paid

The territory is quiet now, the listings set aside, The advocate who held the floor, who walked the blocks with pride. He built his name on solid earth, where roofs and hearths are made, A leader in the neighborhood, where deep foundations laid. They say a man in his domain must ride the shifting blue, With words of law and deeds of trust, and dreams he pulled us through. But lines were drawn, the courts were cleared, a sudden, quiet closing, Less than two moons to pack the ledger, leaving us supposing. He was a man who carved a space within the city’s heart, A neighbor standing at the gate, who gracefully departs. The gavel rests, the keys are turned, the final deal is made— But to this life, this noble life, attention must be paid. In Remembrance of Scott Wells Ford

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: apartments with separate service entrances 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. The 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.” His anxiety replaced by an electric excitement, he 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 looked down at his empty hands, then back up as he 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.""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.