Adios, Charlie Brown

 

 

“Dear, there were glory-holes in the basement bathrooms of every courthouse in Texas.”

I was twenty-two, and I didn’t even know what a glory-hole was until I met Charlie Brown, and the idea of Texas courthouses had always evoked images of comb-overs, cheap brown suits and expensive cowboy boots. Sex was stolen blowjobs at the cockfights in Oklahoma when both of us were drunk enough to pass it off later, or late night trips to the Eighth Day on Fitzhugh Ave in east Dallas to pick up whoever smiled at me near closing time. I couldn’t juxtapose any of that with this stammering lavender man in poodle curls.

Sexuality was activity, not identity. Charlie never really challenged that notion with me in almost twenty-five years. What he did teach me to do was divorce sex from sin and from love and to embrace the fun of it. He also showed me a world of adult wonders that was all around me largely unobserved. I was sheltered, to say the least, wandering thirsty in a sexual desert until this little powdered sage showed me how to draw water from the rocks at my feet.

He’d been to Parson’s in New York during World War II. He told stories of living at the Y and taking servicemen to Sammy’s Bowery Follies and then back to their room, of the colonel who kissed him on the lips at the Tiffany corner when he was seventeen and how he never had to pay for a drink. He grew up in Dallas in a respected family with roots in the countryside south of town. His escapades as a child mirrored my own, and his candor about them shed lights in some of my darker corners. My nervous laughter dissipated daily.

He never had much money, but he lived such that everyone suspected there was family money lurking somewhere nearby. There was none. Charlie could dress up penury like a prince, however. He was the terror of store clerks and waiters everywhere. At the grocery store down the street they would dash for the back when he entered. When he tired of talking on the phone, with anyone, he would simply say, “Okay, dear,” and hang up. He did it all for free and for fun.

He also got more action than anyone I ever met. As he went about his day, as easy as dropping a pen he was in and out of brief encounters, random liaisons in public places, guided by hieroglyphs of a secret language known only to a few and intuited by the random others, who by the alchemy of the moment are suddenly initiates into these mysteries and then once again left outside the cave with no working knowledge of its rituals. Charlie taught me that language. I can still speak it, but I have no use for it. Others fumble at it. They end their political careers in airport bathrooms and their religious careers in motel rooms. And they end their lives tied to fences in the high plains.

There were so many other things he taught me – little things mostly. Charlie Brown gave me the nuts and bolts of how to be happy and functional, and most of all authentic. A set of wisdom sayings. My Q document from which perhaps some new gospel may some day be written.

The capacity of the human mind for self-deception is limitless.

Anyone can choose not only how they want to feel, but what they want to think.

What you think about and how you feel is your own responsibility.

No one will ever love you or care for you exactly the way you want them to. It’s not humanly possible, and besides, it’s your job anyway. My corollary to that would be: If you’re not willing to do it, anyone who says they want to is likely suspect.

There is no Mr. Right. There are fifteen hundred of them. If you stand still long enough, one of them will run over you.

Divorce your parents.

Never deny. Never explain. In no time you’ll be notorious.

There is almost no limit to the power of permission, forgiveness and acceptance.

Pay yourself first.

Spend less than you make and save the difference.

Who loves you more than your mommy and your daddy loved you? Charlie Brown does.

All of these, of course, delivered as dialogue between the suffering servant and the anonymous author.

I came to Charlie repeatedly over the years after one or another of my various watershed moments. He was the midwife of several rebirths, and he did it with the lightest of touches. He never financed my schemes or bailed me out of a disaster, but he offered me his unqualified support in just about anything I ventured. He assured me many times that I was one of those people who are more interesting to watch than they are socially profitable to know. He doted on me, however. He enjoyed my company because I was well read for my circumstances and usually willing to join him, day or night, in just about any excursion. He was Auntie Mame, Yoda and the perfect counterpoint to the rhythm I grew up with. I was his partner in crime, and he was a true and loyal friend to me.

He had polio as a child and stammered a bit as a result of that. His laugh was jarring but sincere and deep. He fidgeted, and he could be moody and overbearing to those close to him; but he responded quickly to a rebuke. He was slightly crooked, operating on the principle that there is an importance difference between what is illegal and what is criminal. He would drink iced coffee and stay up all night doing office work and waiting on what we referred to as “doorbell trade”. He was heavily dependent upon a routine, a rhythm dictated by his own metronome, but supporting an elaborate physical and behavioral structure created not only to sustain but to entertain.

Charlie was born the same year as my father when Coolidge was President. I met him when he was in his late fifties. He was never robust, but his decline was gradual enough to make it easier for everyone to adapt. No one adapted more easily than Charlie. Post-Polio Syndrome eventually deprived him of the ability to swallow food, and he had a tube installed in his side and simply adjusted to the change. He spent his time on the sofa in his pajamas, eating pain pills, watching Mad Money squirting coffee into his feeding tube and, well, still waiting on the occasional doorbell trade.

He had in the past been a member of the Hemlock Society. I told him that he had to let me know when it was time, so I could come by and borrow a bunch of money the week before; but he had outlived the lawyer and doctor who had tacit understandings with him in that regard. So he lingered and faded and experienced intermittent days of good feeling and activity in this period long past any Indian summer of his life. No more doorbell trade or caffeine, and he had to sneak cigarettes at the assisted living center. He called every few days over the last few weeks, usually to tell me that we needed to sit down and talk about money. He was tired of us both being broke all the time, and he had an idea. I assumed he wanted me to sell pain pills or something along those lines that would amount to no profit on my end. I said I’d come by. I made excuses. I ignored calls. It’s the sort of thing I’ve done with him for years. And then I got a text from a mutual acquaintance saying that Charlie had just died.

I drove over to his place, and he was there on the floor where he’d died. He had donated his body to the University, and they were slow in arriving. There was nothing particularly dramatic or even sad about the scene. I’m certainly sad, and I feel the loss. His entrance into my life marked the beginning of a structural shift in my entire thinking. His passing was so gradual as to be almost unnoticed by most. Most of those who would feel his absence most acutely already passed long ago. I wept a bit, gathered a few pictures and shut the door.

 

I love you, Charlie.