"Milk' and gay reality

It is a long and winding road that connects the Oscar-winning Milk with my old address, 2104 Brandywine Street, in the Spring Garden section of Philadelphia. I'm years gone from that wee rowhouse I loved but I could still find my way from the top deck to the basement in the dark. Ah, memory.

Oscars or not, Milk is not a perfect film because it depicts gay men's lives in those Stonewall days as more about reckless sex than loneliness and terror. I went to see it because I knew very slightly the San Francisco newspaper reporter Randy Shilts who covered the 1978 assassinations of Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. Although Brandywine Street was 3,000 miles away and I not a gay man or even a gay woman (although I have occasionally found the idea appealing), I felt the effect of Milk's death.

Let's see. A long time ago Charlie Blockson, the famous black bibliophile whose Afro-American Collection is housed at Temple University, suggested I write about an obscure painting, a portrait of "Crazy Nora," hanging at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Nora was not what my mother would call "a fortunate woman." Ragged and angry, she peddled stuff on the streets in mid-19th-Century Philadelphia and lived to a ripe old 78. God knows who painted her. She's buried three or four bodies deep in a local cemetery. I'd be more specific, but the documents are in my attic and it's dark up there now.

One thing led to another

Believing I had (have) a lovely voice, I volunteered to read for the Radio Institute for the Blind, then branched off into interviews and programs for them. This was such fun that I went on to write and broadcast commentary for WHYY, Philadelphia's NPR affiliate, while writing articles for various publications. The radio work led to the idea of making the Crazy Nora story into a radio drama.

When I applied for a local Pennsylvania Humanities Council grant, I realized I needed a proper scriptwriter. You know, chance really does favor the prepared mind. Riding back on the bus from a local history symposium at Penn—I'm still living on Brandywine Street here— I met just the right fellow: Bob Barnett.

Bob was a Yale drama grad and actual playwright looking for a project. I hired him on the spot for what turned out to be a grant-sized pittance. Together we wrote and I produced—and NPR Theater bought—the original one-hour radio drama, The Story of Crazy Nora. (Not found online since Gore hadn't yet invented the Internet. Darn.)

Bob was a first-rate scriptwriter and fun to work with. And the first gay man I knew well. Boy, did I learn about The Life, the Baths, Screwing Like Bunnies and so on— whee! AIDS was just on the horizon. I also learned how lonely and alienating the gay life was and still is, for many. Hence my criticism of the well-intentioned Milk.

When Shilts came to Philadelphia

Crazy Nora aired nationally and disappeared. Activist Bob then hooked me up with the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force, which needed an experienced radio producer who could interview and write. Because Harvey Milk's death was of utmost importance to the gay community the Task Force sent me to San Francisco to interview Randy Shilts. All by my little straight self I found my way into the San Francisco Chronicle—truly awesome for this freelancer—got the goods and came back home to Philly.

When Shilts came to Philadelphia to talk to the gay community, he stayed at my Brandywine Street house, much to the irritation of the gay locals. I think Randy needed a rest from being a Famous Gay Man and I had a real guestroom he wouldn't have to share.

Wait, there's more.

Moving on, with two exceptions

Bob eventually moved back to Los Angeles to look after his elderly mother. I left Philadelphia for Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1988. When Bob heard I was house hunting, he suggested I contact the son of his mother's best friend who was in the Santa Fe real estate business. I did, and bought the house I write about in my new book—shameless plug here—Santa Fe Dreamhouse: Encounters in the Land of Enchantment.

Now I'm here in northern California, Shilts's old territory. I still have the silk bathrobe I loaned him when he stayed with me. Randy died of AIDS shortly after I knew him, but Bob Barnett is writing and producing his own plays in L.A. Charlie Blockson has retired. Cynthia Little, who supervised the Crazy Nora Project grant, is now the Atwater Kent Museum's historian. Buck Scott, who contributed to the Crazy Nora Project, still plays tennis at the Merion Cricket Club where I danced with my first fiancé many, many years even before Crazy Nora.

Some of us survive life's reverses and move on. Harvey Milk and Randy Shilts didn't. The only reason they didn't, as far as I can tell, is that they were gay. That's not their fault, of course. So why should it have been a life-or-death matter?



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