We roll the windows down in June.
My uncle has come to visit from Atlanta, and such occurrences are rare. Which is why I want to make the best of our time here.
It’s the summer of 2016, and we are on our way to the Eat Street Social. I picked it because he likes to eat at fancy places. I checked the reviews. Tried to get it all just right. But here, I let my guard down. Familiar tall, white apartments rise up over Loring Park. Beyond them, the skyscrapers of Minneapolis. As I see it all, I wonder what it felt like when he was my age.
In 1983, he would have been what I am now: thirty-five. This town would have felt much different. I want him to tell me about that.
And we have the time. Our reservation is not until 8:30, so we head to the Gay 90s—that big building lined with old carpet and wood paneling. Upstairs: a drag show starts. In front of us: a long room with an empty dance floor. To our left: a quaint rectangular bar. We pull up stools. I order a Maker’s on the rocks. He a Rum and Coke.
“Keep it open?” the bartender asks.
“Why not,” I say.
He takes his first sip. Turns to me. Then says, “I would come here. It’s like it hasn’t changed a bit.”
“I always sensed there was more of a history here,” I say.
Then he pauses. Takes another drink. Continues.
“You know, one time I was home, and my mother kept asking me why I had to leave. She kept asking. Finally, I said, I’m going out.”
“I know that feeling,” I tell him.
And I really do. But I also want to imagine what it was like after he left his mother. How this bar felt. The aroma of leather and cigarettes. Men with hairy chests and blue jeans. Men more natural. More carnal. He could tell me about all that. Maybe he will.
“There was a letter,” he goes on. “A letter my dad—your grandfather—wrote me. It told me how much he and my mother had come to love William. I should show it to you. I was in love with a man for forty years.”
Of course, I know that he and William met at Fort Gordon in Georgia for basic training. But tonight, he fills in the gaps.
“We met there,” he says. “Many others did, too. It was like a mecca of gay men—some had sex for the first time. Before heading off to Vietnam. There were just so many. We kept in touch after we came back, and I wanted to stay in Georgia. Really, if it weren’t for William, I’d be dead in those later years. We didn’t know about HIV or AIDS. We didn’t know any of that.”
We grab the check.
—
Back in his car, he turns on show tunes and takes the long way to dinner. Down into Loring, we go. We pass Rainbow Road, that old gift shop that still stands, an active relic of sorts. Then it’s “The 19,” and the park and pond with all its windy paths and bridges. Next it’s up over Lowry Hill, around lake Harriet full of men at sunset, shirts off. You hold on to summer here. Then we are back on Nicollet. Parked at the Social.
Inside, it’s even fancier than I could tell online. And though the staff tries to play off a relaxed, hipster-ish vibe, the place is anything but cheap. And I feel underdressed.
“Would you fellas prefer inside or out?”
“Outside?” I ask my uncle, seeking his permission.
“Sounds great,” he replies.
Outside, we pull up to a smallish two-topper, there on a quaint patio surrounded by other similarly small tables with plants and flower boxes. In the middle of us, the server places a single candle holder with translucent sides that glow dark yellow. A couple sits nearby.
We haven’t been this close in years. A freshness lingers in the air, as if we are getting to know each other for the first time—like we are back in my grandmother’s living room, in the early 90s. It was Christmas time. On an old orange couch, he gave me two things: a cassette tape of Disney’s The Lion King and paper with a bunch of lines on it for writing sheet music. I lacked, back then, the ability to grasp the meaning of the gift—the way it gave a nine-year- old boy permission.
Even still, that moment stays with me. Here on this patio, my uncle intensifies it in the way he talks about Elton John and Atlanta.
“When Elton moved into his penthouse condo,” he says, “he held out a single pink rose to the designer. Make it beautiful, he said. That was all he needed to say.”
“What a life,” I reply, shaking my head.
“You got that right.”
Then my uncle says something about the social scene in Atlanta in the late 70s and early 80s. And I want to hear all about these years, because I’m making up for lost time. I want him to guide me. Help me understand that time. Or the 90s. I sense he must have much to say. Such visceral memories. Or so I imagine. The parks they’d cruise. The handkerchief codes. Light blue for oral, or grey for bondage.
I need it: the smell of it. And I get it, in a way.
Right now, he brings me back there.
“They’d throw the best parties,” he says. “Our friends Greg and David. They lived in a bigger, modern home north of Atlanta, in Dunwoody”
“I bet it was nice,” I say.
“Oh, it was. Tall ceilings. Trays full of crystal. Leather couches and glass end tables. Anyway, it was a festive party around the holidays. There were a number of people there, but it was intimate. Our core group, you know?”
I only nod. Yet, if I could go back, I’d tell him that the way he describes this party means something to me. That it enables me to see his world that shapes my world.
—
But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I let him finish what he started. Perhaps, that’s for the best. Because when I do, I’m there with him at Greg and David’s party. Can see him and all their friends in this ornate house. It’s early evening, and we are together in the dining room, me watching from the outside. Them dancing. Maybe singing Elton:
Hold me closer, tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
As they do, Greg slips out. Heads to kitchen. Dinner ended not too long ago, so he’s probably doing dishes. But no one can say for certain. And we are all too busy in this moment. But then again, the early 90s means something different to gay men. Means you cannot take these moments lightly.
Lay me down in sheets of linen
You had a busy day today
The music continues. My uncle and William hold one another. Until a sound: the loudest shot you want to hear because it’s just a room away. A shot that brings me back to this moment, to the here and now. To my uncle finishing his scallops, gently. Carefully.
Until he raises his head to me, with a look that tells me I will need to figure this out on my own. Not just me, but all of us. He projects a world that I’m obligated not only to feel, but to understand. The obligation to answer a question not only for Greg, but for me:
“Why did he have to do it like that?”
