Ron’s
Road Journal:
A Visit With 1 Giant Leap & 2sides2everything
by Ron Hudson
(photo by Jody Kuchar)
Tuesday, 18 Jan 2005, Durham, North Carolina
to New Orleans, Louisiana
I finished packing
for my trip to New Orleans to meet Jody and Ken Kuchar and the
crew of 1 Giant Leap and 2sides2everything. At
9:30 a.m. local time, I put food and water into my dog’s cages
and coaxed Goose, Greta and Zelda into their places with cheese so
that I could leave the house. I was traveling with a large
suitcase and a Target bag loaded down with about 25 pounds of pound
cakes….one for India Rose (milk chocolate and toffee) and one
for Jess (lemon) and one very heavy pumpkin flavored one that was
for general consumption. As I looked at the Target bag,
I noticed their red circle logo with the red dot in the center and
thought that it would make a great international symbol for Pound
Cake. All freaking 25 pounds of them….
Once on the road, I drove to
Chapel Hill to pick up my friend Ben Kudler who had agreed to house-
and dog-sit for
me in my absence. He is working for the University of North
Carolina (Go Heels!) AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, so I was to pick
him up there for my escort to the RDU airport. On arriving
at the UNC ACTU, I went inside to find Ben and immediately noticed
red ribbons everywhere. Oh man! I realized that I had left home
without my red ribbon! How can an AIDS activist travel without
his red ribbon??? As it turned out, Ben was able to obtain
a package of embroidered stick-on red ribbons from a good man named
Melvin. I put one on my jacket, and put the rest in
my bag. Finally with ribbons, Ben and I went to the airport. When
we arrived, Ben dropped me off and drove back to a week of hell
where Greta tried to prove to him quite successfully that SHE is
the alpha dog in my home, dammit! (Thank you so much Ben
for putting up with my bossy girl!)
My flight through to Charlotte,
NC, was uneventful, but there was a delay on the next leg of the
flight to New Orleans. Unable
to find a pay phone, I could not call Jody and Ken to tell them
that I would be delayed. The Luddite that I have become refuses
to own a cell phone, so I, of course, learned their usefulness
the hard way. Despite that, our flight eventually arrived
at the airport in New Orleans and I then found the shuttle into
town. This was about the time that my life and world went
surreal…
The shuttle was late…very late, in arriving. Eventually,
about 9 of us were crammed together into a van. As it happened,
I was seated in the most inaccessible corner of the back seat of
the van. I had turned my suitcase over to the van driver,
but I still had the 25 pounds of cake which at this point were
beginning to cause the circulation in my fingers to cease! I
clumsily tried to navigate into the seat with a tower of 3 cakes
preceding me and finally got settled in. I shared the back
seat with a male nurse who was in town for rest-and-recreation
from working on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and also
with a nephrologist-to-be from Missouri who had come to NOLA for
a conference. I heard them discussing medical technology,
and with my background in pharmaceuticals, I joined in the conversation. Both
of the men were wearing yellow plastic bracelets, and I thought
that they were some kind of signal to the shuttle driver that they
had tickets. I had no idea that these bracelets might come
up again later in a way that is quite significant. Remember
this theme: synchronicity….it will come into play quite
frequently over the next week.
So just as I start to feel a
vibe that maybe the male nurse is a fellow traveler (he said something
about a place
on our route that looked like it might be a good “cruising” spot),
we arrive at the Renaissance Père Marquette. Everyone
in the van had pretty much to bail out of the van to let me out
with those cakes and when my foot hit the ground, I saw Ken and
Jody standing there to greet me. I got my bag hoping that
maybe I would run into the nurse later in a bar somewhere. In
fact, at that point, he said to me that maybe we would see each
other again with a bit of a wink.
Jody and Ken had been waiting
for a couple of hours and had begun to worry that there had been
a mishap, so I had to
explain that I couldn’t find a phone to call them. As
I was checking in, I asked if they had heard from Jamie or Duncan. Jody
said that Jamie had called to say that we were to meet them at
their hotel for dinner that night. As it was around 6:30
local time, we decided that I should go to my room and freshen
up a bit, then meet them in their room where we would make contact
with Jamie.
A quick side note: I met Jody and Ken through
the 1 Giant Leap bulletin board. They live in
Wisconsin. For some reason, there have been a disproportionate
number of people from Wisconsin coming into my life lately. I
dated a guy from there for a while. Then I met Jody and Ken. I
sold a puppy to a civil rights lawyer from Wisconsin. So, it has
become a bit of a joke that when I meet someone new, that they
will be from Wisconsin.
Upon getting to Jody and Ken’s room, we called
the Ramada Hotel on Gravier Street to find out if Jamie and the
crew had yet checked in. The receptionist said that they
had not yet arrived. At that point, Jody and Ken said that
Jamie had called earlier in the day from the airport as they were
arriving and that they were about to rent a car as soon as they
cleared Customs. Figuring that getting through Customs would
be an ordeal with all the equipment, we began to wonder if there
had been some kind of glitch. Finally, we decided to go to
the Ramada to see if they had yet arrived and, if not, to go find
a place for dinner. Meanwhile, I was still lugging around
those pound cakes. It had become a joke by now how heavy
they were. I looked into the bag and remembered the red ribbons,
so I took out a couple and gave them to Jody and Ken. They
put them on immediately, and from that point forward, every time
we greeted, I was honored to see them sporting the red ribbons.
When we arrived at the Ramada,
we asked for Jamie Catto or Duncan Bridgeman, and learned that
someone had just called
to cancel their reservations at the Ramada. Fearing that
we had missed a connection somewhere, we decided that perhaps
we should return to our hotel to make sure that there had not been
a message of some kind left by the crew to tell us where they were. Off
to the Renaissance we returned to find that there were no messages. By
this time, it was going on 8pm locally which was for me 9pm EST. I
needed to eat and take my meds, so we opted to eat in the Bistro
downstairs in the hotel. It turned out to be a fairly traditional
Bistro, although when Jody ordered Steak Fries, they offered her
mayonnaise for her French Fries….hmmm, was this a Belgian
bistro? I had to ask. The Mâitresse d’Hôtel
looked at me a bit like I had snubbed her and then said that it
was an Bistro d’Alsace…close enough…..Ketchup
for the US, mustard for France and mayonnaise for Belgium, if you
ever wonder. Unless you are in an Alsatian Bistro in New Orleans,
Louisiana, or course…but you can ask and they will provide
all three and you can mix it up if you want.
After dinner, we decided to
call Jamie on his UK cell number and find out where everyone else
was staying. I
dialed the number and found him right away…asleep! I
felt terrible to have awakened him and probably sounded a bit like
my mother when I said “WHERE ARE YOU???!!!!!!!”. “I
am just crashing a little bit,” Jamie replied….OK,
so I ruined his nap…great!! I hate it when that happens
to me, so I felt awful and decided to keep it short and sweet for
the moment. . He told me where they were staying and we made arrangements
to meet for breakfast the next morning at the Trolley Stop Café on
St. Charles Avenue in the Garden District.
Worries over, Jody, Ken and
I were able to relax a bit and catch up with each other, not having
seen each other
since November when they passed through Durham and stayed at my
home. After an hour or so, I went back to my room and did
a little crashing of my own until the next morning.
Wednesday, 19 January 2005 New Orleans, LA
After a quick cup of Joe and
a hot shower, I met Ken and Jody downstairs at the Renaissance,
still carrying those
25 pounds of cake, to make the journey over to the Trolley Stop
Café. Our driver dropped us off at the hotel
where Jamie and the crew were staying and we looked into the lobby
to see if we saw anyone we might recognize. Not a soul… so
we started down to the Trolley Stop, a fairly typical southern
greasy spoon. Just as we arrived, the door of the restaurant
opened and out strode Jamie Catto, looking just as one would imagine
from the films, only with his head down, focused, heading to pick
up a few items for Lola Mae. He looked up and I could see
the glint of recognition in his eyes, and soon hugs were being
shared around as we introduced ourselves to one another. Jamie
suggested we join Jess, Indie and Lola Mae inside and that he would
return in just a moment.
We went inside to find Jess,
Indie, and Lola Mae at a long table. Once we had made our introductions and had
been seated, Jamie came to join us. We had breakfast together
and soon Duncan, Josh and Ben joined us. Greeting so many
new friends at once tested my ability to recall names, and that
was going to become an issue later in the day. For the moment,
though, we began to eat and engage one another in conversation. I
also finally was able to deliver the pound cakes to Jess, Indie
and Jamie! Yes!!! Jody had brought along a bag of art supplies
for Indie and handed that over as well, which proved to be an instant
source of joy for Indie. She started drawing our portraits
as we ate and talked. I have a thank you note from her for
the cakes which I intend to frame at some point and hang upon one
of the walls of my home.
I also pulled out the red ribbons
that I had brought and started to distribute them when Indie asked
me what they were. I
told her that Jody had said that they look a lot like symbols for
red fishes if you turn them sideways, but that they are the international
symbol for the remembrance of friends who have died from AIDS. I
then told her how I have at times seen how the ribbon looks like
a symbol for infinity and that I imagine the bottom of the symbol
having been cut out to indicate that we are striving to end the
AIDS crisis before an infinity of us dies from the disease. Within
minutes, everyone at the table was wearing a red ribbon. Ben
took a ribbon and placed it on one of his cameras. It felt
so cool to see my new friends shamelessly expressing their solidarity
for the AIDS crisis.
We sat and got to know one another. I chatted
with Jess and Jamie about how I had once met Joan Armatrading at
a concert in Durham at the Carolina Theatre and that I had given
her a pound cake too. We talked about how her shows are so
personable and that she is so approachable on stage, but that in
person she is very shy. Jamie said that she has been approached
to participate in 2s2e and I was really happy to hear that. I
hope that she will accept.
After we got to know each other
better, Jamie asked me if I would like to accompany him, Duncan,
Josh, and Ben on an
excursion that day. I told Ken and Jody that I would call
them when I got back into the hotel and we could meet up then. Jamie,
Jess, Indie and Lola Mae and I went off to Walgreens to do some
shopping, followed by a stop at a phone store to investigate the
usefulness of a computer modem card that would allow wireless internet
access. Afterwards, we went back to Jamie’s room at
the hotel, and I sat with Jess, Indie and Lola Mae and chilled
while the guys had a brief meeting to decide what was next on the
agenda. Jess and Indie decided it was time to sample some
of the cakes, and to explore more fully what was in the bag of
art supplies. Meanwhile, Indie made me a Mardi Gras mask
from a kit that Jody had given her. We left it for the glue
to dry and I never did get it from her. I want her to know
that I intended to accept her gift, but that events just didn’t
allow me to get it from her.
Before very long, a local guy
showed up named Brian. It
turned out that Brian was going to be our driver for the day and
that we were heading out to Slidell, Louisiana, to record a session
with Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, known affectionately
to his family and friends as “Gate”. We loaded
up the equipment and headed out.
Along the way, we were told
that Gate is fighting lung cancer, the same illness that killed
my dad in 1994. Gate
is sometimes able and sometimes not able to perform or interact,
so that we would have to take it as it came to us. Through
a couple of phone calls, we learned that he was very intent on
participating in the interview, but that he was “laying down” as
we say down South and would get up when we got there. Just
as we cleared Lake Ponchartrain and arrived in Slidell, Jamie realized
that he needed to eat again because he was getting lightheaded,
so we found a restaurant that promised a quick turnaround on some
cream of spinach soup and a couple of Louisiana crab-cakes with
pasta on the side for each of us. We wolfed down the food
and then started looking for Gate’s place.
As it turned out, we were probably
directly across the street from his home when we were in the restaurant,
or, “purt-near” there
anyway. We found the house on the main road. It was
built over the canal beside the road overlooking a bayou. We parked
along the roadside and started in with our gear.
The first thing that I noticed
was a mail-box that was labeled “The Man” with insignia of a guitar, then
a Black Cadillac parked under a carport with “The Man” Decals
in the landau windows and across the rear window. We wound
our way up to the front entrance and huddled there while someone
knocked on the door. In just a few seconds, a lady came to
the door and walked out on to the porch where she announced very
solemnly that Gate was resting and that she needed to look into
each of our eyes before she would allow us into the house because
they had seen some bad people pass through their house before and
she wasn’t going to let that happen. She came to each
of us and looked us squarely in the eye, me being the last one,
and then said, “Alright, y’all can go in now. I
trust you.” She introduced herself as Barbara.
We got into the house, a humble
place, maybe no more than one bedroom, and a tiny den with a huge
mechanical massage
chair, and a living room/kitchen/dining room combination. The
place was somewhat dark inside, with wooden paneled walls. There
were many, many model ships lined along the entrance, and portraits
of Gate along with his awards and his collectibles on display all
through the house. In addition, there were tons and tons
of political cartoons/satire which made me feel right at home. Gate
or someone in his family definitely leans left of the slight majority
who voted for Bush in our country.
Barbara proceeded to introduce
us to a couple of friends of theirs. A tall, lanky man named John “Fish” Fisher
whose wife is expecting a baby on June 4th was there
as was a man with a very handsome face, whose name I can’t
recall at present. He was dressed as a modern day Texan might
dress, in cowboy boots and jeans and a button down shirt. On
his arm was a yellow plastic bracelet, just like the ones I had
seen in the Airport Shuttle the night before. I asked John
Fish about the bracelet and learned that Lance Armstrong has been
selling these things for $1 each to raise money for cancer research
and that they have become a kind of fashion statement in larger
cities in the US. It suddenly made sense that the long-term
cancer survivor, the male nurse, the nephrologist, and Gate’s
friends had a link through a desire to cure cancer and it was signaled
through the yellow bracelet.
Once
we got settled in, Barbara began to entertain us. She was
such a wonderful soul while we were there. She explained
that Gate was resting and that we should make ourselves at home
while he gathered his strength. About that time, she started
telling us about the wife of Gate’s doctor-slash-trombone
player who had been injured in an accident and who had come over
to their house the night before. Somehow, she had labeled
all of the cabinets in the kitchen with indelible ink, using a
very surreal font of her own design….definitely a signature
of her presence. I never did understand how the lady was
able to label the entire kitchen before anyone could stop her,
but she had managed. She couldn’t spell for shit, but
she had a definite style of her own!
There was a feel to that home
that was very familiar to me. Having watched my dad fight cancer and having watched
my friends fight AIDS, I recognized the energy of this house. It
was the hope that one gathers around when facing death, the company
of old friends, the love of those that matter. And here we
were like family in their home. I felt an overwhelming closeness
to these people. They were love. As we waited for Gate
to join us, more friends came along to join us. André Bouvier
and his wife arrived as did Gate’s manager (sorry, I can’t
remember his name), and Gate’s daughter and boyfriend. It
has been about a week since I met them all, and the names of most
are slipping by now. So much has happened since. Please
forgive me for not remembering your names. I remember your
souls and your smiling faces very well.
Barbara told us stories while
we waited for Gate to gather his strength. She was cooking up some shrimp étoufée
to feed an army and very politely asked us to stay for dinner. At
one point, she took some scraps from the kitchen to feed the “gators” in
the canal. As she opened the door, she said, “Some
people stay here and say, ‘Aw, listen to the frogs!,’ but
they AIN’T frogs!!!!!!!” She also told how once
she had introduced former Texas Governor Ann Richards at an event
and that they had an exchange. Governor Richards, one of
my heroines, said to her “Girl, you must be from Texas! You
got big hair!” Barbara said, “I try to keep it
down, but the closer to the equator you live, the bigger your hair
gets.”
At one point in the afternoon,
Jamie had to return to the city and had Brian drive him in. The rest of us stayed
and “visited”. Around about 4:30, I guess, Gate
appeared in the door of the living room. He was a thin older
black man, with skinny little legs sunk into a pair of huge Spongebob
Squarepants bedroom slippers. He came out to the table and
sat down and began to interact with us. Ben on first camera
and Josh on second camera had already filmed some background material
on the house, and Duncan began to explain the process of 1 Giant
Leap to Gate so that he would know what everyone hoped to see happen. For
a while, Duncan and Gate had a fairly general conversation in which
Gate talked about the concerts he had given in the past and the
CDs he had recorded and the songs that he had covered.
Suddenly, Barbara interrupted
us briefly to tell us that there is a network of 6 million people
who, from 5:30 PM
until 6:00 PM local time, visualize sending white light to shower
over or to pour from the hearts of the people fighting disease
who need to be healed. This light can either be seen to bathe
the person in white light from the outside in, or to emanate from
the person’s heart and to flow out through their extremities
and their hair and to flush the elements of disease from their
bodies. She asked us all to take 30 minutes a day to visualize
healing. Each of you can figure out when that time of day
fits into your time zone and join us in healing visualizations.
For a while after that, there
was a rather interesting kind of exchange where Duncan would play
a track from the new album
to see if Gate would bite on it and then Gate would say “Hey,
put in ‘Unchained Melody’ over there on that box” or
something similar and we would listen to his work for a few minutes. It
felt a bit like, excuse the expression, a pissing contest, to see
if one could out-do the other! I made the mistake of asking
Gate it he was referring to the Righteous Brother’s song “Unchained
Melody”. He jumped on me…”That ain’t
their song! They didn’t write it!”
For the longest time, there
was a kind of dancing around the issue of “will he” or “won’t
he” play along to a track for us when Duncan started pretty
skillfully asking to see Gate’s guitars, violins and other
instruments. Eventually, a very nice guitar (not a musician
here, I can’t tell you why it was special, but count on it)
ended up in Gate’s hands and Duncan got the right track going
on the laptop at the same time and all of a sudden, Gate just started
improvising along. The magic happened!!! It was short,
sweet and perfect. One take and only about 2-3 minutes, and
when he had done all he could, Gate kind of slumped forward and announced that
he had done all he could.
Duncan then began to interview
him with some pretty skillful questioning. At this point I began to really see
the new themes from 2s2e emerge. I won’t spoil the
dish by telling what it will taste like, but I know that Gate’s
answers will really touch you. There was one that really
hit home to me and it involved whether or not one should allow
oneself to get angry. Gate said that yeah, you can get angry
but you also have to know how to forgive. It was almost like watching
the David Allen Grier blues character that always says “I
wrote a song about it. It goes like this.” The
refrain of the song is “We can disagree, but please don’t
hold a grudge.”
After the interview, Duncan
and Gate’s manager
had a conversation in the other room while Ben, Josh and I started
gathering the gear to leave. Brian had returned with the
van by this time and we started to load it up. We were invited
to share the home-cooked meal, but we had to be at a place called “The
Chop House” that evening and had to decline. We said
our good-byes and headed into New Orleans to meet up with Jamie,
Jess, Ken and Jody. When we got back to the hotel, I found
that Ken and Jody had spent the day with India Rose at the New
Orleans Aquarium and that they were waiting with Jess and Jamie
for us to join them and go to Tipitina’s at the corner of
Napoléon and Tchoupitoulas (http://www.tipitinas.com/default.asp).
We soon arrived at Tipitina’s and went into
the Chop House where Adam Shipley was awaiting us with dinner. There
was a pan of trout, some barbequed pork ribs, a big pan of pasta
and cheese and other items that are escaping my memory now. I
also can’t recall the name of the lady who cooked it for
us, but we did meet her on my last evening in New Orleans. We
ate and soon Jheleeza, a beautiful lady from Mississippi who will
likely participate on 2s2e, joined us.
At one point, Ben and I were
seated next to each other at a bar, eating dinner. I was taking a bite of food
and shoving in a few pills at a time for my evening dose. He
asked me to explain what I was taking and what they were for. I
showed the 3 antiviral pills that I take and then the remaining
pills that I take to cancel out the side-effects of my antivirals. About
that time, Adam walked up and asked me what I was doing there with
a North Carolina accent. I decided to be truthful and told
him that I was being interviewed for the film and that I have been
living with HIV for 20 years and that I helped develop AZT.
Each time I dump that information
on people, they have some rather predictable reactions. Adam tried to act
nonplused, but I could tell that my response took him a bit aback
at first. I was reminded of the scene in “masks” in
1GL where the lady speaks of how when we remove our masks and show
our true selves, it scares people. Adam was cool, though.
After dinner, we went from the
Chop House to Tipitina’s
club for an evening of dancing, but being a bit tired from my journey
and day, I suggested that Ken, Jody and I return to our hotel after
we had been at the club a few hours. Back at our hotel, we
talked for a while, exchanging thoughts about our day. After
an hour or so, I wandered back to my room to crash.
Thursday, 20 January 2005 New Orleans, LA
The following morning, Jody,
Ken and I met for breakfast and contacted Jamie to find out when
my interview might take place. He
told me that we would be meeting Speech and his wife Yolanda at
Tipitina’s in the afternoon to write lyrics. He suggested
that I come to Tipitina’s between 2 and 3 to do my interview,
figuring that by then, he and Speech would be ready for a break
from song writing. So, Ken, Jody and I set out for
the French Quarter to do the tourist thing.
We arrived at Jackson Square
and saw all the tarot card readers and the palmists there. One gay palmist offered
to read my future, but I declined, telling him that some things
are better left unknown. We continued around the Square until
we came to Decatur Street and a huge demonstration called the Funeral
for Democracy to commemorate the inauguration of George W.
Bush for his second term as US President. Jody took a ton
of excellent photographs and I collected protest dollars….slightly
larger than a US $1 bill, they offered the bearer “ONE DECEPTION”.
After beignets and café au lait at Café du
Monde, we continued looking around the city. At one point,
we tried to contact Jamie again by calling Tipitina’s but
that meant finding a phone book and we ended up on the 11th floor
of the Wyndham Hotel where the hotel lobby overlooks a huge bend
in the Mississippi River. We were not able to find Jamie,
but the view was spectacular.
Because I had seen plans change
rather rapidly and significantly, I was hesitant to take a cab
out to Tipitina’s
by myself in case I would find the place locked up, and I wasn’t
sure I would be able to get a cab back. I no longer remember
where we ate lunch that day, but eventually, I reached Jamie and
learned that they were indeed at Tipitina’s. I took
a cab over and knocked on the door.
The door was open, so I walked
inside to see Jamie, Duncan and Ben and on the couch writing lyrics
on his laptop was
Speech seated next to his wife Yolanda. I had already stepped
up to introduce myself before I actually realized whom I was greeting! For
the next hour or so, I watched as Duncan, Jamie and Speech worked
out the lyrics to a song about “Gloss” Culture. I
remember that it was about the conflict of being the breadwinner
in a family who rarely sees his family and the difference between
the material things in life and the time that one would like to
spend with their spouse and kids. There was one line in particular
that was problematic and I got the courage to suggest the use of
the words “role that you play” and the guys took it
and played it around. I don’t remember if it made it
in the final cut or not, but it was really cool to feel like part
of the song writing team.
After the lyrics were polished
up, Ben had set up the camera in front of a fireplace for Speech
to do his recordings. The
shot was framed with Speech in the left third quadrant and his
wife in the background on the right….perfect for the lyrics
that were just written. At this point, it got really interesting
for me. I was needed to hold the laptop computer just beside
the microphone and camera so that Speech could read his lyrics
and perform the song. One by one, I watched him do his takes,
some perfect from go, some with errors that he then would retake
and get right. I was so unbelievably astonished to be so
close that I could almost claim to have done a dental exam on the
man! It is so very cool to be there in a recording session
and see the process. One track for the basic melody is then augmented
with a couple or more tracks of harmony or the same melody in different
keys. Then there is the punching up of certain words to add
emphasis…..I tell you folks, there will be excellent singles
coming off the new CD. And I can attest to the infectious
smile that Speech wears while he sings. He obviously loves
what he does and is very good at it.
Meanwhile, I was still wondering
when I might do my interview and was hoping to get it out of the
way because the
more I thought about it the more the anxiety of being on camera
built up in me. It didn’t happen that day, but the
experience of watching the process of the magic with a vocalist
was fantastic.
At some point, I learned that
Josh had gone to the airport to pick up some folks. I heard
Jamie say something about having kept this secret since December
10th and
asked him what he was up to. He then told me that he had
been planning a surprise for Jess’ birthday and had arranged
to fly in 4 of her best friends from London. When we finished
up the session, Josh arrived from the airport with Monique, Karen,
Soph, Antonia (Antski Doodle) and Adriana, Duncan’s friend
from Brazil who now lives in London. We all piled into the
van and started toward the hotel where Jess was waiting for us
to go to dinner. We had met very briefly and I didn’t
really realize that Antski was Antski until someone called her
by that name…and so I said “So you are Antski Doodle” and
she said “Yes” at which point someone realized that
I was Ron Hudson and said “Oh wow, you are THE Ron”. J It made me laugh out loud to be “THE” anything.
When we arrive at the hotel,
Jamie distracted Jess for a minute and whisked the girls upstairs
to a room before taking
Jess in for a reunion with her friends. I decided then that
it would be a good time for me to take my leave and spend some
time with Jody and Ken on their last night in the city. We
were all checking out of the Renaissance in the morning and they
were returning to Wisconsin. So, I took a cab back across
town to my hotel and had dinner alone in the Bistro before meeting
Jody and Ken downstairs in the bar for after-dinner coffee and
dessert. Once again, I told them all about what had happened
that day and how surreal it had been for me.
Friday, 21 January 2005
I met Ken and Jody for breakfast
in the Renaissance Hotel lobby and we had a nice breakfast in the
bistro. Afterwards, we
sat down and talked about their having paid for my hotel rooms
for the past 3 nights. Their generosity helped finance my
expenses for this trip and I am so very grateful to them. I
don’t know why they love me, but they do! At that point,
we said our good-byes and I went up to get my suitcase to
make a switch to the Burgundy Bed and Breakfast that I had picked
for the last few days in the city. I had expected my interview
to have been completed by Friday and planned to spend the weekend
down in the “gay” quarters of town. Unfortunately,
this location was further away from the hotel and even further
from Tipitina’s, which I was learning was the base for most
of the crew activities. The night before, when we arrived
back at the hotel, Jamie had asked me where I staying and suggested
I cancel my reservations at the B&B so that I could move to
the hotel where the crew was staying. I called and found
that I would have to pay out the first night anyway because it
was within the 24-hour cancellation period of the B&B’s
policy. I mentioned this to Jamie and misunderstood our conversation,
thinking that he suggested I just go ahead and stay there that
first night and that I should cancel the second night. So,
I had called on Thursday to tell the owner that I would only be
able to stay in his B&B on the first night of my reserved time. He
sounded a little disappointed, but agreed.
I took a cab over to the Burgundy
and checked in, where I met Carl Smith, one of the owners. He checked me
into my room and we sat down to talk about why I was in town. I
explained 1 Giant Leap and 2s2e and how I was there to be interviewed
about my experiences as a gay man and a long-term survivor of HIV. He
and I had a very good conversation about being gay and HIV+ in
the US and how he had recently returned from a stay of about 20
years in Germany with his partner and where he left 2 very good
friends who are also long-term survivors of HIV. We talked
about the resurgence of the Christian Right in this country and
their fights against gay marriage. As we are from the same
community, I didn’t need to explain to Carl how difficult
it can be for multiple-nationality gay couples to immigrate to
the US. At the end of a nice discussion of the state of our
world, I told Carl that I was not sure when I would be interviewed
or what I might get into in the next 24 hours. I was
going to call Jamie to find out where I was to meet them and then
I would join the crew for the day. I warned him that I might
be very late returning so that he would be aware it would be me
coming in if he heard noise in his home.
After that, I got my cases settled
into my room and took what I would need for the day. I also called to check
in with Jamie. He told me to join Duncan and Speech at Tipitina’s
in the afternoon. I took about half an hour to check my email
and then set out on foot to walk from the Marigny district through
the French Quarter to find some lunch. I walked up a couple
of blocks to Dauphine Street and then crossed west over to Frenchman
Street. There, I turned south until I reached Decatur
Street and started west again toward the French Quarter.
Somewhere along the way, I came upon a movie that was being filmed
in the street. There was a crowd gathered outside a place
called “Flakes” and they were acting a scene where
they were being told that there would not be enough cereal to go
around for everyone, but that they were going to get their
share of some other food. At that they all cheered, the director
yelled cut and I was able to proceed down the street. Maybe
the talk on not having enough food to go around sunk in or maybe
I was just hungry. Either way, I decided that lunch
would be a nice thing to do about that time, so I began to look
for a nice diner or restaurant.
The sun had come out and the
weather was warm and nice. With the change in weather, there was an accompanying
change in atmosphere. People were out in droves in the French
Quarter and the people watching was superb! I found a place
to eat called the Corner Café, just off Jackson Square. I
was greeted by a very happy, very cute waiter who cleared a table
for me by the window facing Decatur Street and then proceeded to
ask me what I wanted to drink, “Baby”. Hmm…..A
few minutes later, he came back and placed his hand on my back
and asked me if I had decided on what I wanted to eat yet, “Sugar”. OK,
so I was getting the idea here….when he came back a few minutes
later and tugged on my shirt under my right arm he said “I’m
not trying to feel you up, Sweetie, but you had a string hanging
off your shirt,” at which point he went to the table right
across from me and leaned over it to take the order of the ladies
sitting there, thrusting his rear into the air directly in my line
of sight. Hmmm….I tell you, we had already discussed
the fact that wait people in the US are poorly paid and work for
the tips that they get from their customers. I reminded myself
of this and that he could be trying to pick me up or pick my pocket
in a clever way, and decided just to enjoy any eye candy that was
offered and to eat my crawfish salad in peace. The waiter
was very attentive throughout my meal, and when he brought my check,
I paid and looked around at least to acknowledge him but he was
no where to be found at that time, so I left the restaurant and
a slightly more than modest tip.
I had a desire to ride a streetcar,
this being New Orleans and all. I decided to walk from Decatur up to Canal
Street and then over to St. Charles Street to take a streetcar
out to the Hotel where the gang was staying,. When I got
to St. Charles, I was tired and couldn’t find the trolley
stops, so I took a cab instead and just had the driver take me
straight, I mean, gaily forward, to Tipitina’s.
On arriving at Tip’s, I found that the side
door was open and went inside to find Ben and Duncan set up with
Speech on the club’s stage and his wife Yolanda watching
as they cut tracks. As the lyrics were worked out, I was
again called upon to hold the laptop for Speech while he rapped
and performed a beautiful song whose lyrics are about the love
that we all want and need. It is a beautiful song and it
has a way of sticking with you…..a real earworm at work! J So I had a grueling day listening to
fantastic music while holding a small computer for each take that
was recorded. What a way to spend your time, eh? How
lucky can you be?? In down time, I learned that Speech was
born in, where else, Wisconsin!
I also learned that Jamie was
going to be traveling to Texas the next morning with Indie and
Josh and I realized that
we hadn’t done my interview yet. I began to think that
perhaps the interview was not going to happen. Jamie was
planning to take Jess and the girls for dinner that night to celebrate
Jess’ birthday and I figured that was much more important. At
some point, Jamie asked me if I would join them for Jess’ big
celebration. I said to him that they should have some private
time just for them and that I should just go back to my B&B. He
then looked at me as if I had said something pretty stupid…..and
replied “Don’t be silly. Jess wants you there. The
more the better.”
After the session was over,
we were on the way back to hotel and Jamie told me that we were
going to the hotel and
that I could go up to my room, freshen up and then meet them in
the lobby for dinner. That is when I realized that I had
misunderstood something. I told him that I was staying at
the B&B across town. He looked really surprised, but
took it in stride. He had some errands to run, so I suggested
I go fetch my suitcase from the B&B and come back to the hotel
before dinner. That was the plan, so I checked into the hotel
there on St. Charles, went to my room and left a few things and
took time to call Carl to tell him that I would not actually be
staying at his home that night after all and that I was coming
to get my bag.
I had an entertaining ride over
to get my bag with a cabbie who had a heavy New Orleans accent
and a strong dislike
for George W. Bush. He told me he thought that my former
Senator, John Edwards and Senator Hillary Clinton should have been
the Democratic ticket! I pondered that for a second and agreed
that anything would be better than the hawks we have now. When
we arrived at the B&B, he waited outside while I went inside
to pay for my unused room, and then he took me back to St. Charles
Avenue.
At 8:45, we met for a quick
drive to dinner
at Maximo’s (http://new.orleans.diningguide.net/data/d100514.htm)
. Jamie and Jess led the way, followed by Karen, Soph, Monique,
Antski and myself. When we arrived, we were taken upstairs
to a nice table overlooking the street and enjoyed a wonderful
meal. After we finished up, Josh, Ben, Duncan and Adriana
came to join us. Soon, we were off to do a bit of bar hopping. We
found DBA on Frenchman Street and stayed there for about an hour
before a few of us decided to head back to the hotel and call it
a night.
Saturday, 22 January 2005
Bright and early on Saturday
morning, we met for breakfast. Speech and Yolanda were there and we joined them
before heading over to Tip’s to finish off his tracks. We
spent the rest of the morning observing his artistry, as he laid
down tracks to yet anther message of beautiful ideas and melodies. He
and Yolanda had plans to get back on the road to home around noon,
so when we wrapped up, we said our good-byes. I told him
that if he ever comes to Durham that he should get my number from
Duncan and give me a call. He said he would, and then took
my number and programmed it into his cell phone! Wow…then
I realized, well, hey, why not? I am a nice guy. Thanks
so much, Speech. Your messages are so powerful and so positive
and so non-threatening….I look forward to seeing them climb
the charts.
Adam Shipley had been arranging
a jazz funeral for us…a concept that I had heard of…the typical New Orleans
brass band marching in front of a coffin playing a dirge. By
arranging, I don’t mean that he knocked someone off and paid
for their funeral, but he did find a brass band that was playing
a funeral, and it turned out to be that someone in the band knew
the family or was part of the family of a lady named Inez who had
passed away. The funeral was set for 2pm, so we broke for
lunch. Adriana, Duncan and I went off in search of Poboys,
a New Orleans-style hoagie/grinder/submarine sandwich nearby. When
we were just finishing up lunch, we got a call that the funeral
was happening and so Ben, Adriana and I hopped into the van and
headed off in search of the procession. We had gone just
about a mile when I could hear music playing in the distance and
we followed the sound to find a huge crowd gathered outside a community
recreation building.
Among the crowd was the Rebirth
Brass Band. They
were rocking! The crowd was rocking. I let Ben and Adriana
out of the van just in front of the building and took the van down
the street to park. When I came back, the crowd was still
filing into the building, so it took a few minutes for me to get
into the hall where the party was taking place. I was in
no way prepared for what I experienced at this time. The
most raucous party I have ever witnessed was taking place inside. People
were drinking alcohol, the band was at the end of the hall playing
up a storm and there was a huge crowd, the elders seated at tables
moving to the beat in their chairs and the younger ones on the
dance floor. There were pots full of local food and
some people were eating. I had a sensation of watching a
film that was recorded by spinning the camera around and capturing
a magical moment in 360 degrees of activity. There was a
young woman dressed in pink stiletto heels, a pink and black camouflage
pattern mini-skirt and a pink hat with a pink veil. She was
very dark-skinned and the contrast was striking. More striking,
however, was the butt-dance from hell that she was performing. She
was slightly bent at the knees, and was waving her fanny around
in circles and up and down as if she were making very fast-paced
love, as I dare not use the f-word, though that is more what it
looked like. Had there been a man underneath her, he would
have been no doubt amazed! A moment later, I looked to my
left to find a man in his 40’s tap dancing right by me and
a small boy of about 5 right beside him doing his best version
of the same dance.
About that time, I realized
that like most people there, I was grinning from ear to ear and
could not stop myself. Ben
came up and said, “OK, that’s enough. Let’s
go.” I just looked at him, probably like I thought
he was nuts and said “I don’t want to leave! This
is too much fun!!!!” I looked across the room and saw
Adriana filming different people on the dance floor and she was
smiling too. Then Ben started filming again and he found
a woman on the floor, on her knees, with one hand raised into the
air as if praising God but waving her fanny around like the other
lady we has seen earlier. Everyone was grinning and it continued
to feel like we had been blown into the room by a strong wind. When
we left less than 5 minutes later, it was like being dropped by
a tornado back on our feet into the sunny street where we walked
to the van, got in and closed the door on that chapter of
our lives that took every bit of 10 minutes, yet that touched me
so very deeply in the knowing that I want to go just like this
when it is my time. Thank you Inez, whoever you were!
A couple of hours afterward,
the Rebirth Brass Band came in for a session. I was surprised to see the name. Those
who know me well know that I am a big fan of a local artist, Stephanie
Robinson, and her print “Seasons of the Soul” which
presents 11 figures representing states of mind that we experience
in our lives. I have the symbol for “Rebirth” tattooed
on my upper right arm and “Harmony” on my upper left
arm. I thought that with the name of the band, this was a
good omen!
Unfortunately, there was a vibe
that went wrong along the way somehow. I am not entirely sure what happened, but
I don’t think that the guys in the brass band had an idea
of the scope of 2s2e and the potential that it could bring to them. For
whatever reason, the session was difficult and a couple of the
band members refused to wear the headphones that would have piped
them the rhythm of the beautiful track that they needed to play. It
was truly a sad moment for me, because I think they were a talented
bunch of people and I saw how a person’s attitude can prevent
them from achieving their fullest potential play out right in front
of me. I really wanted them to be able to share in this same
dream that we all seem to share. Another one of life’s
subtle lessons. It reminded me of the saying from an unknown
source, “One teaches best that which one needs to learn.” I
wonder what I need to learn. I also wonder if others every
really know what they need to learn before they hit the wall of
insight.
I could see a bad vibe developing
and could see that Duncan was getting frustrated. It felt to me that there was
a cultural difference in play as well. We often think that
we are speaking the same language because we all speak English,
but there are cultural cues that are different from country to
country, from class to class, from race to race, from gender to
gender, from sexuality to sexuality and from region to region. Somewhere,
there was a lack of communication and I was feeling it, but couldn’t
place a finger on the errant pulse. I finally suggested to
Duncan that he call out the leader and talk to him. Duncan
observed that the guys were not being very disciplined as a group
and the leader was just letting it go. I could tell that
some of the guys probably felt badly that things weren’t
going well, but they couldn’t do it without the help of the
others. I was hoping that their group leader could remedy
the situation. As Ben, Duncan and the tuba player disappeared
outside the building, I heard Duncan ask “Where have I gone
wrong?” I thought how that was such a totally skillful
way of handling the situation. It took the accusatory nature
of a scolding away and yet let the man know that things were not
going well.
Back to the session, though. There were a couple
of observations that I want to make. First, watching an eight
or nine person brass band learn a riff together was unbelievably
cool. It was a little bit like hearing a pod of whales sing
to one another. As these guys practiced the melody that Duncan
had selected for them, they would look at one another and the notes
from their respective instruments were sometimes discordant but
most often in harmony. Sometimes the whole riff would come
from all instruments, sometimes one would lead off and others would
join in on certain notes or to complete a bar. One of the
trumpeters took the role of “showing” the others how
to hit the notes. When they got it wrong, he would stand
right in front of them and blow his trumpet with this expression
on his face that seemed to say “See that? That is what
you have to play.” All of his expression came from
his eyebrows and the intensity of his eyes.
The sax player had a really
cool vibe. He was
a light-skinned man with dreads and a beautiful smile and beautiful
eyes. He reminded me a lot of Bob Marley and he was really
cool and even tempered. I was amazed when he lit up a cigarette
and continued to play his sax while smoking away . Another
of the trumpeters had the misfortune to turn into a frog when he
blew his trumpet. Not only did his cheeks blow out like Dizzie
Gillespie’s did, but so did part of his neck all the way
down to the back of his shoulders and all the way up to his eye
sockets. It was obviously painful for him as he sometimes
would place his finger over his cheek when he blew. Another
trumpeter played out of the corner of his mouth rather than straight-on. It
was so interesting to watch all the different personalities interplay
with their physical and personality differences.
After the discussion outside,
a new attempt was made to bring the band together for the session
and they almost had
it. I didn’t have headphones that day because there
were so many of them in the band, and I could only hear them playing. It
sounded great to me, but then, it wasn’t coming in through
a headset with the pre-recorded track and I wasn’t hearing
the differences between the two. Ultimately, we had to just
can the session and send the guys off to the Mardi Gras parade
that they were playing at 7pm.
Around that time, Matt Dillon,
a young man from New Orleans showed up to meet Duncan. We discussed our evening
plans and it was decided that we would go to DBA again where we
would watch the first parade of this year’s Mardi Gras. As
we were packing up, I said something to the effect of “Is
this ours?” I caught myself and laughed that I was
taking ownership of the equipment by this time. Duncan heard
me and said that after that session I had just witnessed, I had
a right to claim membership.
We packed up the van with the
equipment and I found out that Matt was going to lead us in his
car and I was going to
drive the van into the French Quarter of New Orleans during a Mardi
Gras Parade….think about that, folks. I come from a
relatively small town and traffic is not an issue here. Rarely
do our streets have thousands of people lining them as you drive
around! Nonetheless, off we went across town, then swooped
down off I-10 into the area where the parade was to take place
and Matt led us directly to DBA. Since I was driving and
since Adriana had an injured foot, it only made sense to drop the
folks off and for me to go looking for parking. With all
the equipment in the van, I needed to find valet parking, but the
ones that we had seen when coming into the area were full when
I circled back around. That sent me on about a half an hour
mission to find a parking space in a safe place that was legal
for a large van. Part of the challenge was to avoid running
over people who were spilling into the streets with intoxication.
I eventually located a corner at Rampart and Touro that was not
taken, not marked for no parking and across from a public place
where it could be seen if someone were to try to break into the
van. I jumped out and hoofed it back to DBA as quickly as
I could.
By the time I got back around,
the parade had begun to pass by DBA and I immediately found Ben
because he was standing
on the bumper of an SUV filming the parade as it came down the
street Once I got within distance to see the people on the
street, I saw Adriana, Duncan and Matt standing there smiling and
laughing at the silliness of the floats and costumes in the parade. Most
of the themes in the parade had to do with sex or religion or war. The
one that stands out to me at the moment was something about “Jieuws
for Cheesus”…..with all kinds of play on words such
as “The Garden of Edam” and “A Grater Power”. Eventually,
the famous Mardi Gras beads came into play as they were not so
much thrown as slung into the crowd with great velocity. I
saw Adriana get hit with a wad of beads before we realized what
was happening. After that, we learned that we had to watch
for the beads and try to catch them for good luck. I got
a good string out of the air, but landed on a poor stranger’s
foot when I came down from the catch. When I got a new string
of beads, I placed them around her neck for the pain I probably
caused her foot. I never did see the Rebirth Band go by again,
and the following day’s planned session with them was canceled.
Once the parade had passed by,
we decided to eat dinner at Maximo’s again, so Ben and I retrieved the van
and moved it to a more secure and closer parking space before joining
Duncan, Adriana, and Matt at Maximo’s. Since we didn’t
have a reservation we were seated at the counter downstairs across
from the open-plan kitchen. We got to watch the food being
prepared. At one point, I went upstairs to the men’s
room and saw the waiter who had taken care of us the night before. He
told me that Jude Law and Sean Penn were eating upstairs. We
were supposed to have had a table upstairs, but it didn’t
work out and we never did get to see those two. When they
left the restaurant, the place went up in applause and shouts,
but I couldn’t see what the fuss was about from where I was
seated.
In the meantime, Jheleeza joined
us as well. A
beautiful woman who was born in Mississippi and who lived in the
UK for 15 years, she said she had moved back to the States to see
the nervous breakdown of America. When I asked her where
she had been born, I told her that I was from North Carolina and
that we were the birthplace of Nina Simone. I suggested she
do a cover of “Mississippi Goddam” and she said that
she had already done a tribute to Nina Simone and that she had
done a hard-driving rap version of the song. Way cool…When
I last saw her, I understand that she was quite happy to collaborate
with 2s2e, so listen for her vocals.
Sunday, 23 January 2005
I woke up on Sunday thinking, “Ah! I
have a free morning!” Duncan, Adriana and Ben were
planning to go to church and I haven’t done church since
I was a teenager except to attend funerals. I especially have been
turned off to church since the outcome of the US election and how
it seems to have spun ‘round on us because of a Republican
collusion with the Evangelical Right. So I made coffee
in my room and ate leftover croissants from the recording sessions
on Saturday and started thinking what I might do until 2pm or so
when the guys would be back to do my interview.
Each morning, I have to eat to take my meds,
so I thought I was set with a couple of croissants and went about
taking my 25 or so morning pills. About half an hour
later, Duncan called me up to ask me if I wanted to meet them for
breakfast. Since I had seen so many things change so quickly
in the past week, I decided to meet them in order to figure
out what our day might be like.
When I got there, we ordered
our food and started to plan the day. As breakfast went on, there was more
and more talk about the music in the church and the ministry of
the church and I have to admit that I began to warm up to the idea,
but then Duncan said, “Yeah, come on….go to church
with us.” How could I refuse, eh? THEY FORCED
ME TO GO!
We finished up
breakfast and did a Mapquest search to find the location of the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church ( http://www.paulmorton.org/links.htm
) We found the church and headed out. When
we arrived, I walked in with great trepidation because I had just
recently written to my own childhood Baptist church since
the election and asked them to remove my name from their rolls. It
was an emotional thing for me to go into this church thinking about
how the church had sided against me and all people like me in the
world. The evangelical movement was instrumental in voting
in bans on gay marriage in 11 states during the last US election
and I was going into the Lion’s den, so to speak. The
experience also had the potential to unleash emotions from my last
times in church when I was an adolescent.
As we arrived, we walked through the foyer
and asked if there might be a service starting soon. We were told that the Bishop
Paul Morton would be preaching that day in half an hour and that
the sermon was a good one. The four of us walked into the
church and took seats in a pew about half way up to the pulpit. I
had chosen to sit on the outside so that I could flee if the emotions
got the best of me. Mistake….mistake, mistake…The
sanctuary was filled with small groups of people who were conducting
Sunday school lessons in breakout sessions. I looked around
the church and the first thing that caught my attention was a portrait
of Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. Both
of them were depicted fairly much as I would see Ethiopians today. Light yet
definitely black skin, long wavy hair and almond shaped eyes. At
least that is what I think I remember. I have seen some unbelievably
beautiful Ethiopians in my life and this felt familiar.
As the Sunday School sessions finished up,
people would come up to the front of the church and take a microphone
to make announcements. They
were taking an accounting of the number of members in the individual
classes and the announcements took a rather passive aggressive
turn. A lady took the microphone and would say things along
the lines of “Sustah Payne and Sustah Moore. It is
good to see you here. I remember way back when you both told
us that you had to give up your work for God and leading your Sunday
school sessions because you just couldn’t keep up anymore. We
know you have been feeling poorly and haven’t been here much
AT ALL LATELY, BUT WE ARE GLAD TO SEE YOU HERE TODAY. And
where is Sustah Moore? Sustah Moore? I am so glad to
see you, it has been soooooooooo long since we last saw your face
here!” I knew that kind of behavior from the church
in my small town. If you weren’t in church on Sunday,
someone would corner you in the street and send you into a guilt
trip about not having attended. At least we weren’t
called out in front of the whole congregation.
After that bit of business, we were on to the “intercessional
prayer time”. A woman took the microphone, raised her
head up and began to recite shortly phrased entreaties to God while
her head was held up to the heavens with her eyes closed. She
was accompanied by quiet, entrancing music. It must have
gone on for about 15 minutes or so. “Thank you Jesus
for the air we breath. For the Sunshine, For the Cold, And
the Heat. Thank you Lord for the food we ate this morning
and for the food we ate yesterday. Etc….” I rationalized
this as a good thing…being thankful is a good thing and it
has no real connection to religion per se, so I was cool with that
aspect. What worried me was my natural tendency to go into
trance under certain circumstances and I could feel myself going
in. I basically used the time after that to meditate, but
throughout, I heard the words Jesus and God hundreds of times. I
could feel it penetrating into my subconscious.
Eventually that prayer ended, thank you Jesus, and we got
to the good stuff. We had music…full gospel music. There
was a band sitting way up in the choir perch and a choir of about
20 people present along with a backup group of four singers, of
whom one was a gorgeous petite woman in a sun-dress and one a guy
who looked a lot like Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert character or
one of Eddie Murphy’s Klump family members. These people
started singing and soon we were all rocking along in church. It
was nice.
Next the Bishop’s wife came out to take care of some items
of business. She presented an introduction to the Gospel
News Network, GNN, that was fashioned after CNN and presented news
about the ministry run by the Bishop Morton. It seemed like
a parody of CNN and when they went to commercial, they actually
ran a commercial for a gospel album by the Bishop’s son PJ
Morton. Imagine a slick ad for an R&B collection with
voice-over stating “Hear his elegant vocals and instrumentals
on such songs as ‘Blah Blah Blah’ and ‘Jibberish’. At
that point, we all began to look at one another thinking that it
was a full on joke, but NO! PJ was indeed selling his album
with 2 songs called “Blah Blah Blah” and “Jibberish”.
The
next half an hour of the service was devoted almost entirely to
the collection
of money. There was a surrealism about the names of the organizations
that the church operated or with which it worked. You could
attend a Wednesday night service and get a massage, manicure and
pedicure from SpaNobia. Or you could join the Women of Excellence
or “WOE” Women (Poor Baptist women probably have a
lot of woe to discuss at their meetings.) Or you could contribute
to the Tsunami relief fund which had met $13K of its $20K goal
already….”You all have done good…..do some more
good, now and help us reach that goal.” Or you could
just put money in an envelope for this or that cause, and there
were many, many causes along the way that morning. The
ushers were rushing around collecting envelopes of money. Suddenly, there
would be a rousing number from the band and choir to work us all
up to the next level. They were paying to see the Bishop
do his thing, and as they paid their dues, the more they paid,
the closer his time on stage came. If you hadn’t been
able to attend last week, you could always just fork out some more
money to buy the tapes or DVDs of the sermon. The moneychangers
had come back to the temple.
There
was a part of the service where visitors were recognized. I was really
surprised when the names of two people were called out and it was
announced that they had come all the way from Durham, North Carolina! Of
all the churches I never expected to be in on a Sunday morning
in New Orleans, we had walked into one where there were people
from my own town! Next those of us who were first time visitors
to the ministry were asked to stand. Duncan, Adriana, Ben
and I stood up and people started coming up to us with huge smiles
on their faces, hands extended for handshakes and kind words of
welcome for us. It all felt so very sincere. I can
remember wondering if they would have been smiling so broadly to
know that a gay white male was in their midst and especially one
who is living with AIDS.
Envelopes
were distributed for tithing, the traditional Baptist tradition
of giving
of 10% of your income to the church. We watched as a stack
of pre-printed envelopes were passed hand to hand down the pew
and I saw Duncan reach for his wallet and pull out a large bill. He
stuffed it into his envelope and handed the empties and the one
he had filled to Ben who handed them to me. The usher took
them all and then handed the filled envelope back to me. Somehow,
I didn’t know why, but I didn’t like the turn this
was suddenly taking. After the envelopes had been distributed
throughout the church, people started streaming to the front of
the church to place their envelopes in plastic baskets. I
looked at Ben and Duncan and realized that, being at the end of
the pew, I had to be the one to take this offering up to the front
of the church. I reluctantly got up and walked up to drop
the envelope in the basket. When I turned around to walk
back to our pew, I saw that Ben was grinning and filming me and
I broke out in what must have been the silliest sheepish grin on
Earth that day. I was busted…had been caught in the
act of giving money, nay!…aiding and abetting my enemies! I
turned to Ben and said “You would have to film
me now, eh?”
We
were asked to join in prayer on several occasions. There was a lot of
holding up of hands to Jesus. The words of fixed prayers
were telecast onto the big screen in the corner and everyone in
the church seemed to know the prayers by heart. The services
began to take a familiar Baptist turn…more song (only really
good music, unlike the wailing I heard in my childhood church)
and then there appeared this man in a long white robe with huge
purple sashes sewn onto the sleeves and across his back. I
didn’t see him come on stage…it was almost as if he
just popped up out of nowhere, and then I realized that this was
the Bishop himself, Paul Morton, Sr.
When
the music calmed, the Bishop began to talk…still carrying on about
the business of his ministry. Where did it get to be a little bit
too much for me?…when we were told that the Reverend Paul
Morton, Jr., who was stranded in snow in New York City and couldn’t
personally be with us that day, would be giving his concert the
next week in New Orleans and that it was not sold out yet. Such
and such church across town, not even his OWN church, had bought
more tickets than the people here in his own church…and “I
know you don’t want to do that to my own son . Come
on now, who here has $7 and wants a ticket. We just got to
get this thing done, people. Sometimes, you just can’t
wait till next week to take care of your business. Help us
finish this up people. Who needs some tickets?”
When
we finally got the business out of the way, and I mean FINALLY,
the Bishop
began to discuss the theme of his sermon that day: “carnality.” I
turned to Ben and whispered “Uh oh!” Fortunately,
the sermon was not as difficult to take as I expected it might
be. He never spoke of damnation, nor of hell nor of fire
and brimstone. Rather, he gave a good, common-sense talk
about how to live one’s life. The man was an entertainer.
He would sing, he would make jokes, he would talk directly to people. He
is good. He said, on the subject of carnality that the Devil
never tempts us with things that we don’t like. “The
Devil ain’t never in my life tempted me with broccoli!” he
said. At times, he would work up the congregation with the
typical call and response format that is still alive in American
music and Baptist sermons after having crossed over the Atlantic
from Africa during the years of slavery. Toward the
end of the sermon, he started using the metaphor of “Changing
Lanes”. If you are waking up depressed in the morning
when you are filled with spirit of the Lord, then you better listen
to his messages and “CHANGE LANES”. If you find
yourself following the Zulus down the street at Mardi Gras instead
of looking for a virtuous woman, then you better “CHANGE
LANES”, etc. Toward the end, the music swelled
again and there was a call to God. Those in the church who wished
to dedicate themselves to Christ could then come forward and renew
their lives in Christ. As about a dozen people walked up,
they would get moved up to the altar and ushers would extend their
arms to form a physical barrier between those new lambs and the
rest of the flock out in the general congregation.
About
that point of the service, I started to get a little bit overwhelmed. I
flashed back to my time of being a 12 year old barefooted kid in
the countryside of eastern North Carolina and how 2 of my friends
and I had conspired to “join the church” at Revival
one night. We had told the minister before the service, but
when the time came to go up and actually do the deed, none of us
could move. Finally one of us went and one by one we were
accepted to be Baptists. When the service ended, the congregation
came to greet us and we all 3 bawled like babies for no apparent
reason. I was told later that it was the spirit of the Lord
that made us cry. I have now learned that it is all about
belonging. If you are excluded by a society in which you
live and the only way to find peace is to conform, you are weeping
for the loss of self and for the relief of being accepted, finally.
As
these services were wrapping up, a little, frail old lady in the
second pew caught
my attention. She was so filled with the spirit at that moment
that she was squirming in place, almost tap dancing on the spot
while her frail little voice was screeching out “Thank ya,
Jesus. Thank ya , Lord” It swept through
me that despite the obvious contradiction of this ministry’s
focus on money, it was working to help some people there get their
closeness with God. I know that she would not have cared
if she went without food if it meant that she could buy some eternity
with the God she so honestly seeks. I can respect and honor
that and I started to well up with tears. I had to fight
not to break out in sobs again and risk getting caught on
film sobbing in a Baptist church!
Next
thing I know, Duncan caught my attention and said, and “We are going.” We
got up and walked out of the church to the van were we all were
sharing our amazement at what we had just witnessed and where I
beat Duncan and Ben about the legs with my Human Rights Campaign
cap for filming me donating Duncan’s money to an Evangelical
church.
We
went back to the hotel for lunch. While sitting in the restaurant,
Duncan found the Bishop Morton’s website and brought his
laptop up to me to hold up the screen that you can see for yourself
here: (http://www.paulmorton.org/order-dvd.htm). When
we saw the very first item for sale on the list, it caused a lively
discussion of how the church has taken its war
to gay people and that the issue of gay marriage is the battle
being fought. By denying gay marriage, the United States
are making gays second-class citizens. There are over 1130
rights that are conveyed automatically to heterosexuals who marry
in the country, including visitation rights, immigration rights,
inheritance rights, and survival rights. Gay people have
to hire lawyers to get those items put down in writing if they
want to try to ensure that their wishes are granted and even having
their wishes in writing is no guarantee that someone might not
contest them and tie up the decision in the court system.
Our
food arrived. We
had a great laugh that the devil had put huge trees of broccoli
on our plates.
Anyway,
that was a good discussion and it got me worked up a bit for my
interview
that was to be held right after lunch. Because I had been
expecting the interview to happen at any time all week, I had built
up a bit of anxiety over the actual filming of the interview. I
knew and implicitly trusted the whole crew by now and had no concern
that they would put me on the spot in a way to make me uncomfortable,
but I do have a bit of an irrational fear of being interviewed
on film. This fear had grown a bit by the end of the week. As
we finished up lunch, I asked if I should change from my dark shirt
to a lighter color for the black background against we would be
filming and then went to my room to get the broccoli out of my
teeth and to change shirts.
I
walked into Ben’s room for the interview much as I walk into my dentist’s
office. I know it has to be done, but I dread it and my heart
races in anticipation of the metal of anxiety scraping over a raw
nerve that I don’t know is there. Ben put me in a chair
in the corner and told me he was going to make me all pretty with
soft light and a nice tan through the miracle of modern filming.
Adriana, who had said that she wanted to take a nap joined us as
well and I was touched by her gesture of support. I knew
that she was tired and needed a nap, but felt that her presence
would make me feel more at home. We had developed a nice
vibe with one another by this point and I liked having her around I
was glad she came to join us. And so, the interview began.
Ben
conducted the interview. At first, I was very nervous and could feel
my pulse quickening and my breathing becoming shallow. Then
I started to hear a bit of a stumble in my voice as I experienced
high level adrenaline rushes through my body. Nothing that
anyone was doing caused this, but my body runs on high adrenaline
anyway. It seemed forever before I finally was able to relax
enough to get caught up in the questions and the answers and conveying
to the world who I am and why I have to say the things that I have
to say. After I loosened up, I could tell immediately when
I had said something that fit the desired format from Ben’s
expression or smile. He was a good coach, encouraging me
to keep my answers short despite my storyteller style of expression,
and encouraging me with his kindness. Meanwhile, I had put
poor tired Duncan to sleep on a nearby bed!
On
one question, I was talking about my dad, and I got choked up and
began to cry. After
we took a bit of a break, I was very touched by Adriana, who with
her bad foot, got up and came across the room to give me a kiss
on the cheek. I can’t say what will make it in to the
films, but that was a very special moment for me. It is times
like that that I understand that people see me differently
than I see myself, but I don’t quite get why they
do. So we finished up
the interview and I was done! When I got up from the chair,
I was hit immediately with chills and my body started trembling
unbelievably. I took my leave of Adriana, Ben and Duncan,
telling them that it was my last night in NOLA and that I wanted
to go be with “my people”. I ended up going back
to my room for a 15 minute hot shower just to stop the chills from
wracking my body.
After
I dressed, I went outside and took a cab down to the French Quarter. It
was cold with a strong wind blowing and I wandered around the streets
looking for the local gay bars. I found one, but it was populated
by transvestite prostitutes and was not at all what I was looking
for. I kept walking in the cold and my ears and nose
went numb. Eventually, I decided that I had to find some
dinner so that I could take my evening meds and warm up a bit. I
found a Mediterranean restaurant where the waitress completely
got my order wrong, but I was too tired and cold to complain. At
one point, a Joe Dassin song started playing on the speakers in
the restaurant from the 1970’s when I lived in Menton,
France, for a month. I was astonished to hear “Et
Si Tu N’existais Pas” and it put me in a good frame
of mind to sing along in French to a song from my teen years.
Fortified,
I walked from the restaurant down to Harrah’s casino. It
was far too cold to be out walking the streets trying to find a
gay bar on a Sunday night, so I decided to go check out the casino. I
walked around for a few minutes before deciding that I would risk
$100 on a few hands of blackjack or “twenty-one”. I
then set about selecting myself a table. It took me a while
to find one where I could be in the first position off the dealer’s
left. Annie, the dealer, said to me, “I saw you come
by earlier with your hat snapped onto your shoulder like that!” (I
had snapped my hat into the epaulette on my leather biker jacket
so that I wouldn’t have to carry the hat around in my hands.) I
told her that I had been looking for a table with a good vibe and
I knew I had found it now. So I put down $100 and got 20 red chips.
I
started playing and started winning. The longer I played, the more I talked
with Annie and the more I liked her. She was a good soul. She
had problems with her shoes. They came off and she couldn’t
get them back on. I told that I had been traveling with a
friend earlier in the week (Jody) whose shoes came off every time
we got out of a car. That just cracked her up. Then
she had problems with her bra and she would just announce, “I
got an itch under my bra strap and I can’t get to it!” The
guys there were being really crude, offering to help her scratch
her itch. I just looked at her and said something to the
effect that I found that rude. Annie soon had to go
on break and she was replaced a lady named Remmielou who also was
a good soul. When she dealt out an ace or face card on the
first pass, she would really punch down the next card, hoping to
punch you down a blackjack. Both dealers had wonderful energy
and they made me feel at home in my skin, in the casino and in
the universe. Suddenly, the cards just started falling for
me.
I
started talking to the lady beside me who was not having very good
luck We
were all trying to support each other and were wishing each other
victory. Not paying a lot of direct attention, I didn’t
notice when some of my fiver chips got cashed up to a twenty-fivers
and I continued betting, not knowing that my stakes had increased. Suddenly,
I decided that I needed to organize my chips to see how I was doing. I
started stacking them out and realized that green ones were worth
$25 and I looked down to see that I had $400 on the table! Where
the heck??? How the heck??? Wha?
Annie
came back after Remmielou’s shift was over and continued to bring me
good luck.. Sometimes I would win,. Sometimes I would
lose and sometimes, I would just push….but pushing is as
good as winning. You get to keep your money. About
this time, a brash, overweight man who was too drunk to be playing
cards sat down and started playing. After he has lost a few
hands, he looked up and started talking to Annie: “I
don’t like you. You are bad luck. I am going
to kick your ass, Annie!” It offended me. I was
upset that he put upon her all his negative energy and blamed her
for his stupid play. Annie, though, took it in stride and
proceeded to win him over, little by little by dishing it back
out to him. On the next hand, he had a 20 and she hit a 21. She
looked up with a smile and said “Look like Annie done kicked
some ass of her own!” I just cracked up laughing. She
then turned to me and said loudly, “You better watch that
man over there and tell him when to bet and when not too. He
gonna mess you all up if you don’t.”
I continued
playing until about 1 a.m. and left the casino with about $435
more than I walked in with. The universe had managed to pay
for my trip to New Orleans and my participation in 2s2e and my
time with the family of 1GL.. As I got up to leave the table,
I was begged to stay and continue playing by four middle aged white
guys who were shit-faced drunk and who thought that their good
luck was dependent on me. One of them had been playing at
my table for about two hours and I had come to know him a bit. Since
you are permitted to talk to each other about how to play your
hands in this casino, I was able to help the inebriated among the
crowd recognize when they were making an error in betting….something
that helped me too, because that prevents them from wasting the
good cards that I would need for myself. I began to really
understand that if you give out to the universe, it comes back
to you.
I left the casino to take a
cab back to my hotel. The
cabbie was a Pakistani man. When I asked him where he was
from and he told me, I said to him “Welcome to America” and
he said belligerently, “Yeah, welcome yourself.” Somehow
I ended up talking to him about 1GL and I mentioned Michael Stipe
and Asha Bhosle and when he heard her name, he started talking
to me. Suddenly he was not sullen and angry and by the time
I arrived at my hotel, I had created another 1GL convert who wrote
down the name and promised to find a copy of the DVD.
Before bed, I packed my bag for my trip home to North
Carolina.
Monday 24 January 2005
The following morning, I called
Ben and woke him for breakfast at 8am. He and I met at the Trolley Stop Café where
we chatted about what we had done the night before. Ben had
had a nice relaxing time at the hotel and I was please to hear
that he had been able to relax somewhat. We talked of Jody
and Ken, about the whole week and then said our good-byes as Ben
was heading out to town to do some shooting for 2s2e.
I called Duncan to wish him
safe journeys and to pass along a message to him from Ben about
when they would meet
up later that day for the next round of adventures. I started
down to the desk with my suitcase in tow, but thank goodness, no
pound cakes in my hands, and ran into Monique who told me that
all of the girls except Adriana were flying out that day as well…and
that our flights were to leave around the same time, so we decided
to share a cab to the airport.
I went back up to Jess’ room where Jess, Lola
Mae, Antski and Soph were waiting and sat with them until we were
ready to leave. Poor Lola Mae was feeling ill and had a bad
case of grumpiness from not being able to keep her food down. She
was a sad little one that morning, but Jess was really cool. I
thought about the fact that there might soon be a tearful goodbye
for the girls, so excused myself and went outside to wait in a
lounge in the hallway.
At 10 or so, we all piled into
a cab: Soph
and I were packed into the front seat and Karen, Monique, and Antski
were in the back. Soon we arrived at the terminal, and I
said goodbye to the girls and went to check in for my flight home. After
clearing the security checkpoint, I walked into the men’s
room and walk squarely into the guy from the night before who had
been playing blackjack with me at the Casino. We high-fived
each other and he said he got too drunk and accidentally bet his
$500 chip and lost it after I had left, but because his bet was
for $505 and the table maximum was $500, the pit boss came over
and gave it back to him. After that, he left the casino. He
then told me that his flight home had been overbooked and he was
headed back to the casino with a free airline ticket in his hand
and dreams of hitting it big again.
I boarded my flight and took
off my jacket to reveal Jody’s “The Same Sun Shines on Us All” T-shirt
underneath. When the flight attendant came along, she looked
at me, then at the mantra on the shirt and then did a double take. “I
really like that,” she said. Once again, I told her
about 1 Giant Leap and how it has caused all kinds of creative
collaborations and how she could find both the T-shirt and the
DVD.
My friend Ben arrived at Raleigh-Durham
International Airport not long after I did and we went to pick
up take-out Chinese
food before going to my house to greet Greta, Goose and Zelda. When
I walked in and opened their cages, the dogs went hysterical. Greta
was whining and they were jumping all over me and eventually one
of them swiped me across the face and split open my lip. I
guess love comes in all guises, but I know I am loved. And
it is unconditional love….the best kind.
Thursday 27 January 2005
I have been home now since Monday. My emotions
have been very close to the surface, but, I have come to understand
that there is just such a great sense of belonging and fitting
in and being unconditionally loved that comes from hanging out
with the 1GL family and with the collaborators who wish to participate,
that when I walked away from that, I was filled with joy, with
the knowledge of love, with happiness, with new found purpose and
with sadness to be leaving it all behind. What a special,
special week. What special people. What a special project. I
love you all.
Ron
Hudson was born in Sampson County, North Carolina in 1959. He
studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where
he received degrees in French and Chemistry and at L’Institut
des Étudiants Étrangers, Université Paul
Valéry, Montpellier III in Montpellier, France, where
he received a Diplôme Supérieur d’Etudes Françaises,
3ème Degré. Mr. Hudson is also teaching himself
to read Spanish through translating Latin American.
For
14 years, he supported the drug development process in the pharmaceutical
industry by providing programming, systems/business analysis
and people management support. While helping develop the
first drug to treat AIDS in the US, he was diagnosed with HIV
infection in December of 1985. Into his 20th known
year of HIV infection, he continues to live in Durham, NC, where
he endeavors to educate people about HIV/AIDS in the US and the
world through individual contact and internet interactions.
An
amateur writer, Mr. Hudson has written a number of poems that
explore
the love, loss, fear, anguish and hope that surround him in his
encounters with others. His professional work has been
published in “The Drug Information Association Journal”,
and his poetry has been published online in “Other Voices
International Project”. He has always held
an interest in writing, but lost his voice when he faced death. Thanks
to many good friends, including Roger Humes and the family of
1 Giant Leap, Mr. Hudson has rediscovered his voice.
He may be contacted at ron.hudson@verizon.net
Read the Interview
with 1 Giant Leap's Jamie Cotto in the Literati
Winter 2005.
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