Gay

I, Gloria Grahame. It is certainly with a sense of some guilt that I write that. Or not guilt. Let’s just say that it seems a kind of false freedom, because I am not. I can only be her for a short while, while pen is put to paper, or perhaps I should say more accurately, finger to keyboard — when I am writing whatever this is. (I don’t call it anything, not even a diary or a journal, that would be too presumptuous.) She is certainly not me, and I have no relationship with her other than the fact that I do imagine I am this particular storied Hollywood film noir star, and I write as if I were her occasionally. But no one sees that writing. If you are reading this it is probably because I have been arrested finally or put to death. Good riddance, as they say. But all I do is fantasize that I’m Gloria Grahame. I am not her. I’m a very different person from her, and it’s being completely honest to tell you that.

How do I begin to describe myself?

I have always been not very manly and somewhat invisible. Now that I am of a certain age, I wear hats and scarves, even in summer, and they serve to cover me somewhat, as I do not wish to be noticed. In fact, I wish to disappear; that is, short of dying. Why? It has basically become a little too much trouble to be alive. I think everyone reaches a point where that becomes the case and then they just die, one way or the other. That’s my terribly depressing theory. It isn’t that we outlive our usefulness or that nobody loves us, it’s just that it finally isn’t worth it anymore, the struggle. Anyway, first of all, or perhaps most of all, there is my voice. Have you ever heard Truman Capote’s voice? You might google it, and if you do, you will discover that even for the most dedicated homophile it is just a little too much. I can’t help it; I was born this way, to quote the great Gaga. When I open my mouth I betray myself. And yes, I always sashay a little bit, and there are mannerisms. But it is not a case of choosing to act this way; let me make that perfectly clear. If I had my way I would be someone else, I would be John Wayne, particularly the way he looked when he was young. (Did you know his real name was Marion?) Yes, I would prefer to be effortlessly masculine, which is the way I describe the type of man I am often attracted to. This makes me hopeless in a Quentin Crisp sort of way. I lust after the type of young man who would not be caught dead in public with me, which makes my case tragic, except of course for what you can get up to in private. But I pretty much don’t bother with that anymore, either. So I have become this haunted thing, or rather this thing that would wish to be haunted or hunted, or something, but what I am really is just the type of person who makes people feel uncomfortable and who they would like more than anything to ignore.

Some women like me. Some. (Others, I threaten.) But it’s more as if they take pity on me, and that is perfectly fine, I, Gloria Grahame too, it’s something, anyway, it’s someone actually having an emotion in regards to me, or perhaps I should say having an emotion in my direction or at least in my general vicinity. Which is certainly better than nothing. Or is it? When I was younger I made an effort to hide it, there were the scarves and hats back then, too — which, when you come down to it, accentuated it more than anything — if one adds sunglasses then one has become Greta Garbo, certainly not a very butch self-presentation. But there was also an attempt to monitor the voice and the hands and the hips, that is to not be in any way myself, which I was sometimes successful at doing. Successful in the sense that people didn’t so much not know that I was effeminate, but they quite generally appreciated the fact that I was doing my best to cover it up. It was gracious of them to notice, and gracious of me to try. I was being considerate of their sensibilities, trying not to offend.

And then in those days I did not have tenure. That’s why I fought so hard for it, and now here I am teaching at a small university just outside of town. But I spend a lot of time in the city where I live. I spend a lot of time walking my dog, Poopsie. Yes, she is called Poopsie. Do what you want with that. The truth of the matter is that I would call her Poopsie, anyway, in private, so why not just make it public? It was bound to slip out, anyway. It’s all part of giving up. My last dog was actually named Rex, which was comical in its own way because he was also a miniature poodle. I could carry him around in a canvas bag, which I would do now and then, and even take him to class. The problem was he had cerebral palsy — yes, he did — and when I let him walk around the desk of the seminar room he would fall and quiver, and the students would think he was drunk. It was an interesting gauge of each student’s moral compass. Some would laugh, the boys usually — the effortlessly masculine ones — whereas the girls would punch the boys’ arms and be gushingly sympathetic to my little dog with CP. Anyway, calling this new little miniature poodle Poopsie is all part of giving up, the process of giving up who I am — while paradoxically being more publicly what I am. This is the beginning of a struggle not to exist anymore. Because though people might be able to tolerate a little poodle called Rex (there is, after all, humour in that) they are not about to care very much about one called Poopsie, and the male owner will be forever exiled from their consciousnesses. Out of sight, out of mind.

I hope you will applaud me in this end-of-life project; to fade from view long before I die. After all, it is quite evident that no one wants to see or hear from me anymore. In disappearing, I’m really just complying with the general zeitgeist. I’d ask for your advice — but you are, in fact, not there. I have just made you up in order to calm myself down. There must be someone reading this, even though it will never be read. And as I have imagined this, I also have imagined you, the same way I have imagined Gloria Grahame. You are somewhat sympathetic, but slightly frightened by me, and perhaps a bit confused? Because it seems to me that when I write as Gloria Grahame I am also able to write myself.

What does it mean to write yourself? It means what every writer knows: that they do not exist anywhere else but on paper, in the characters they create. That’s true for me more so than anyone. Even T.S. Eliot — who was apparently nondescript and worked in a bank — was not as nondescript as me. Except for the afflictions that are my face, my body, my age, my fluttering hands. What happens to me is I come home after a hard day at school (it’s two classes a day, twice a week — it must be admitted, I have absolutely nothing to complain about), and I am discouraged by the petty nothingness of my life, at how small even my humiliations are. And then I sit down and write this. I create. And everything that causes me discomfort, everything that causes me pain, is suddenly glorious. Glorious Gloria.

Chapter 3: The Glacier

Seagulls soared overhead in undulating patterns. They would form perfect concentric circles, their outstretched wings frozen in the air, before darting across the sky in every direction. Of all the new things he had seen since leaving Petit Géant two months ago, these birds brought him the most joy.

The sun beat down on Civitavecchia, the clay-coloured port town outside Rome. Heavy beads of sweat made the journey from Sebastien’s forehead to the base of his neck.

The dock was alive with the sights and sounds of the sea. Everyone moved with purpose. Sailors stamped out cigarettes and hurried across the concrete. Merchants sold balls of deepfried dough to hungry travellers armed with suitcases with indestructible shells. Smoke and salt were infused in the air, but he liked the scent.

The hiking backpack he sat on was stuffed with almost everything he owned. An elegant woman in sunglasses dropped a handful of coins in the cap on the ground in front of him. He realized he looked like a beggar. “Signora!” he called out, wanting to return her money. She quickened her pace. He pocketed the change.

Fuelled by rage and a desperation to flee everything he knew, Sebastien had spent the last two months fixated on a plan. He had a purpose now. It brought him to Civitavecchia and, more specifically, to the Glacier.

It wasn’t a real glacier, of course. It was a ship. Towering above him like a steel behemoth, its hull was white like snow. A thousand eyes stared down at him — panels of blue-tinted glass held in place by silver bolts. The ship exhaled a thin plume of smoke from the pyramid-shaped funnel at its summit several decks above him.

“Sebastien?” A woman in a turquoise pantsuit stepped off the gangplank that led to the ship’s crew entrance. A silk scarf decorated with golden anchors was tied around her neck. It was his first time hearing a South African accent. “Sebastien Goo?”

He stood up and waved before slinging the heavy backpack over his shoulder. She smiled brightly as she approached, her heels unsteady on the concrete dock.

“It’s Goh,” he corrected her with a smile. “Like ‘Go home.’ Not Goo.”

She held her palms to her chest with her mouth open, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry!”

Sebastien laughed. “It’s fine. It happens all the time,” he lied.

The woman introduced herself as Claudette, manager of the photography department. She led him up the gangplank into the belly of the ship. Two uniformed men in blue shirts and dark pants stood guard. One of them made small talk with Claudette while the other checked Sebastien’s passport and employment papers. The guard handed back the documents and gave him a decisive nod.

“Thank you, sir,” Sebastien said with an overly enthusiastic smile. The guard jerked his head in the direction of the metal detector beside him. An X-ray machine devoured the backpack before spitting it out on its conveyor-belt tongue.

“Why is this ship called the Glacier?” Sebastien asked, as he followed Claudette through a maze of steel corridors.“Seems like a strange name for a Greek ship sailing the Mediterranean.”

“It used to do the Baltic route. I guess they didn’t bother to rename it.”

She stopped abruptly at a door painted the same ivory colour as the walls. “This is your cabin,” she said as she knocked.

The door opened seconds later to reveal a man in his early thirties, wearing nothing but a pair of orange soccer shorts. A fresh layer of sweat coated the well-defined lines of his torso. His close-cropped hair was the colour of sand.

“And this,” Claudette said, her cheeks blushing, “is your cabinmate.”

“Welcome aboard!” The man took Sebastien’s hand in a crushing grip. “I’m Ilya. Sorry for looking like such a beast. I was just doing a quick workout.” He pivoted to grab a towel, revealing constellations of little round scars across the otherwise smooth skin of his back.

“I’ll let you boys get acquainted,” Claudette said. “Ilya, be a doll and give Sebastien a tour of the ship. Sebastien, I’ll come by in three hours to brief you on your first assignment.”

“My first assignment?”

“The captain’s cocktail party. You’ll be taking photos.”

“Cocktail party?” Sebastien hadn’t known what to expect on joining the staff of a ship, but he didn’t imagine sipping a negroni with the captain.

Claudette let out a pretty laugh and looked at him as if he were a puppy learning to swim for the first time. “This is no oil tanker. This is the Glacier.”

* * *

The Glacier was a 90,000-ton floating hotel that offered guests the same grandeur they’d expect to find in any European capital. “It’s a luxury liner, not a cruise ship,” Ilya explained an hour later as they marched through the winding passageways of the staff quarters. “At least that’s what they want us to call it. Cruise ship is a dirty word here. It’s more or less a cruise ship, though, but with a superiority complex.”

The two men were dressed in identical uniforms the staff members wore while visiting the upper decks of the guest quarters. The gold buttons on the turquoise blazers were embellished with anchors. Their white pants had perfect creases ironed down the fronts. Sebastien tugged at the collar of his shirt. He wasn’t used to being strangled by a necktie.

A gold badge was pinned to the lapel of each jacket. His cabinmate’s badge said:

Ilya Tereshchenko
Fitness Trainer
Ukraine

He glanced down at his own badge.

Sebastien Goh
Photographer
Canada

Ilya strolled through the corridors like he owned the ship, explaining every stop along the tour with the flair of a maestro. He seemed to know everyone they passed, swapping smiles and air kisses.

“We call this Styx,” Ilya explained, sweeping his arms outward as though revealing the grand prize of a game show. The wide passageway was the main artery in the lower decks of the staff quarters, stretching from one end of the ship to the other. “There are seventeen decks on the Glacier. The top fourteen are where paying guests wine, dine, and sun themselves into a stupor. The bottom three are where staff and crew live. These lower decks we call Hades — the underworld. Styx is the river that runs through it. In Greek mythology, the newly dead are ferried down the River Styx but only if you’ve paid the toll.”

The Glacier’s version of the River Styx was a social hub for the ship’s staff and crew. There was the cafeteria (“The food isn’t too bad, if you’re a zoo animal”), the staff bar (“The crew bar on C Deck usually gets wilder”), the staff purser’s office (“Uma will be your favourite person. She’s the one who pays us in cold, hard cash”), the computer lounge (“Since they installed Wi-Fi everywhere, nobody goes here except for the Filipino Mafia”), and the medical clinic (“As many free condoms as you need!”).

Over a thousand people worked aboard the Glacier. They lived on the three lower decks of Hades, ordered by the ship’s strict social hierarchy.

Located just below guest quarters was A Deck, where the ship’s white-suited officers lived. An exclusive wing near the stern was home to the captain and his commanders. If the officers were the upper crust of Glacier society, the commanders would be the aristocracy. “You need a special key card to enter, unless you make friends with one of them,” Ilya said with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Their cabins are much nicer than ours. They don’t have to share with a mate. They have portholes so they can look outside and not feel like they’re rotting inside a coffin. There’s even carpet!”

Directly below the officers was B Deck, home of Styx and all members of staff, including Ilya and Sebastien. This was the realm of the turquoise-suited middle class comprised of people holding titles deemed respectable, such as massage therapist and art auctioneer. They generally came from wealthier countries. “As staff, we get more privileges than crew. We can hang out in the guest areas when we’re off duty as long as we’re dressed appropriately and wearing our name badges. Crew aren’t allowed to do that. We can go to the crew bar, but crew can’t enter the staff bar. Class division is a cruel reality here, I’m afraid. It’s sickening, but I guess we’re the lucky ones.”

Near the bottom of the ship were the crew quarters of C Deck. This was for the lower class of servers, cooks, bartenders, housekeepers, and deck cleaners. Most of them came from countries in Asia and Eastern Europe. “They work longer hours and get paid worse than staff. Plus, guests and officers treat them like servants.” Ilya shook his head in disgust. “Most have families back home. The money here is better than it is there. They deserve more respect.”

“It sounds a lot like the real world,” Sebastien said with a shrug.

“You’re wrong, my friend.” A devilish smile returned to Ilya’s lips. “This is as far from the real world as you can get.”

Some of the papers, I imagined--those that had not been immediately driven to ground by the black, oily rain--fell, in that odd, unhurried way that airborne papers have, drifting past the blazing islands of debris, fluttering to rest in the grass where moisture fixed and darkened the charcoal lines, the sinuous trunk of a jack pine, the slope of a Toronto roof, the curve of a man's hip. Hours later, when the fires burned in on themselves and the snow came with a white, ashy fury, water hardened into barnacled ice, anchoring the papers so that, when fingers pulled at them, they were released with odd, torn patterns.

Others flew, like strange birds--cream manila, cartridge white, rag grey--into the racing currents of air, the giant exhalation, the gasp. These settled, finally, into nests of cracked porcelain, tumbled brick, kindled wood. Or they became lost in debris-strewn alleys, the yards, the shattered rime of the marsh grass along the beach.

In my mind's eye, I could see the leather case falling with curtains and shards of glass, the tiny bottles and dresser-top jars, a tin coffee pot, that small oil painting on a piece of board. How long did it take for fire to travel through the trail of splintered wood that had been Mrs. McTavish's house? Find the shattered washstand where the case had come to rest? The small portfolio was durable, though, and flames only managed to work their way into one corner before its bonfire underpinnings collapsed and it tumbled into the yard. The drawings tucked within barely damaged, seeming only to have been gnawed at in one corner by a rodent with fire in its teeth.

"I kept it all close by me," Aunt Harriet told me. "The case with its journal, sketches and photographs tucked inside, resting on top of a ragged collection of the drawings people found. You should have heard the nurses complaining that it got charcoal and chalk all over the bedding and my clothing.

"Hospital volunteers, or Mrs. McTavish, when she visited, would do their best to describe their sequence. I thought I could remember the order in which the papers lay. On top were the ones from inside the case only burned in one corner, and then there were a few Mrs. McTavish retrieved from her front yard. The rest? Found by people sifting through debris. Added over several days.

"Of course it was only a matter of time until I accidentally knocked everything over. When the papers were gathered up, I had no way of knowing which was which. The loose ones that people found here and there were in with those that had been in the case. One of the hospital aides offered to iron the most crumpled pieces of artwork for me but I said no, I wanted to be able to feel the ridges, the rips and torn edges.

The odd thing was that, in time, I got to know the shapes of the damage as well as I could remember the drawings and paintings themselves. That one, with a kind of spoon-shape torn out--it's the figure of a soldier, isn't it? I suppose there's not much left of the actual charcoal sketch, but I imagine you can see his hands. Yes, I've been told, I think, his hands, and part of his uniform. That one was found half a mile away. Would never have been picked up, I suppose, if it hadn't been for that little article in the newspaper. Church ladies or Mrs. McTavish would come in and read the papers to me, and, of course, there were stories to fill the pages for months on end. This one, with a crescent moon shape near the top--you might wonder what that is, but I think it's a sketch of driftwood washed up on Kitsilano Beach."

Along the jagged opening, the twisted branches reach out, dead wood on sand, sand marked with small stains of--what? Blood? Oil? The liver spots of age?