Patrick Gale - Armistead Maupin

Contents

Jane, Teddy and Tony, as posed by Armistead Sr, on the battlefield in Antietam, Virginia, where their great, great grandfather fell in 1862. One of the many phallic symbols they were called upon to worship.

Introduction

This wont be a traditional biography. If youre after what Nancy Reagan, referring in a rare moment of wit to Ms Kellys infamous hatchet job, called Kitty Litter, youll just have to wait. I think it was the biographer Brenda Maddox who said that the trouble with homosexual biography is that it tends to fall into overlapping narratives rather than an easily assimilated line. Where even a philandering straight subject will tend to have a succession of mistresses or a succession of wives, gay lives, especially gay lives before the mid-1970s, tend to be lived several at a time. Official lovers, rough lovers, family, non family, those who know, those who dont; the mere fact of the subjects alternative sexuality causes narrative fractures. Of course, one of the most liberating aspects of a gay life, the aspect which Armistead Maupin has repeatedly made available to straight readers, is the way in which, as he says of his character, Mouse, You can be a cute little clone in the San Francisco Gay Chorus and yet spin into Rock Hudsons orbit.

So. No straight lines here but a succession of overlapping tales. Its a form, too, which reflects the books friendly, conversational source. I stopped off in San Francisco on my way home from a gruelling Australian book tour and we spent hours of the next ten days lolling on sofas gossiping about everything from why Armistead understood precisely why Monica would have enjoyed sex with the President, to which gay novelists we were wary of and why. We discussed why so many gay affairs subside into friendship, whether cranberry Newtons are superior to fig ones and just which stars were ripe to follow the Heche-Degeneresses out of the well-appointed Hollywood closet. Occasionally we would fall silent to watch Todd, the ludicrously sexy gay gardener, getting muddy among the tree ferns and occasionally we would remember that we were there to discuss Armisteads life, work and loves. There was even a Los Angeles interlude, to see how Armistead Maupins More Tales of the City fared at the Emmy Awards and to celebrate David Hockneys unveiling of his vast Grand Canyon landscape. It was enormous fun, hideously revealing for both of us even though Armistead is a pass-master at ducking issues I found myself as merciless as a dentist in pursuing them - and apparently the process helped him to wrestle with the more painful autobiographical elements in The Night Listener, his novel-in-progress.

Unless I say otherwise, therefore, everything in quotation marks is Armistead speaking, lifted from the hours and hours of tapes I ended up having to transcribe.

I was asked to write a book that was as much about our friendship as it was about the man himself, but I suspect there is enough evidence of our friendship in the stories I have winkled out and the tone in which I tell them. Besides, in the immortal words of Roseanne, This is so not about you, Jackie! Neither have I written in any critical detail about the novels on which Armisteads gay icon status rests. The chances are that if youre reading this book its because you already know the work and would like a closer encounter with the man. If not, then put this down immediately, go to the M shelf of the fiction section and buy the things. They will do the job of explaining their quirky appeal far better than I could.

We met back in 1988 when we were both deeply in love, each with men who would change our lives, to whom we would dedicate several novels and with whom we would move to remote rustic corners. We had loved each others books and had said so in print always a good start and he and his lover, Terry Anderson, invited me and the other Patrick (Pender) to an extraordinary party in Hockneys Kensington studio where we took turns in trying on a collection of famous spectacles and I only just dissuaded a drunken girlfriend from making off with a stash of unsigned phone-pad doodles. Since then it has been, perforce, a friendship of late-night phone calls hes a hopeless correspondent and precious holiday visits which invariably end with me wanting to move to San Francisco and him encouraging me and me being far too cowardly to go through with it.

We have a running joke that there is a Maupin curse that dooms my relationship with any lover I take to visit him. Twice I have subjected him to tense encounters because the lover I booked a trip with had transmuted into a friend by the time we arrived. This time I was travelling alone, albeit with the bittersweet pleasure of sustaining a fresh romance by e-mail, and I made the most of it, doing no sightseeing whatsoever and only venturing out to eat or to walk Sophie, his newly acquired and utterly harebrained Australian Shepherd mix.

Arriving chez Maupin from rural Cornwall is like landing on the moon and in quite the wrong clothes. It always takes some time to adjust. Its not just the jet lag. For the first day I invariably feel like some wide-eyed provincial drawn, dazzled, into Mrs Madrigals orbit. However hard I try not to let my parental conditioning show, I come across about as hip as Cleveland in February. Theres the pot. My drug of choice is chocolate but Armisteads place is a fat-free zone so he offers liberal quantities of pot as soon as work is done. And yes, I inhale and yes, it makes me impossibly giggly. Then theres the hot tub in the garden. Where I come from we bathe frequently farms are dirty places but we do it indoors and we do it unaccompanied. Then there are all those little things to trap the uncool unwary. In 1981 two gay San Franciscans were caught up in a hijacked aeroplane drama in Beirut and Armistead had to lead the party of local celebrities who welcomed the unlikely heroes back to the Castro with a brass band. His mind wasnt on the job because he was late for a circle jerk up the hill. He had to run all the way there and barely tore his clothes off in time. And that was where he met Jose, who has been his housekeeper ever since. On my planet housekeepers are usually female, come with reputable references, and arent half so much fun. They certainly dont discuss their latest tattoo or the revolutionary effect of Viagra on the Glory Holes with a newly arrived house guest

Before you read the result of ten days self-indulgence, lets get one thing clear. The name. It is not pronounced with a French accent, so as to rhyme with Gaugin. Think Somerset Maugham. Better yet, imitate Vivien Leigh describing what Butterfly MacQueen might to do the kitchen floor and youll be nearer the mark.

Portrait by Robert Skemp of Armistead Sr in hunting garb.

Big Armistead and Diana

Armistead Jones Maupin Jr sprang upon an unsuspecting world at Doctors Hospital in Washington DC. The year being 1944, his father was a skipper on a minesweeper at the time, so gathered the news by semaphore and didnt actually see his son for almost two years. Armistead has always loved the idea of his arrival being announced, South Pacific style, by a hunky young sailor waving white flags and has seized on the image as the perfect metaphor for the difficulty this particular father and son would always have in communicating directly. Its like Im waving! Do you read me? Basic emotion! Basic emotion!