Poles Apart (41 page)

A lot had happened in the preceding few months. About three weeks after I moved to
DC, XY
in Orlando closed. One evening it was open. The next it was shuttered. Dancers, who the previous night had been earning good money in a clean, well-appointed, and safe workplace, were now out on the streets looking for work. According to Shawna, it’s quite possible some of them ended up working the streets until they could catch a gig in some rundown strip club in a rough part of town. Were they as individuals better off after
XY
closed? Arguably, no. Were women in general, as a gender, better off with one fewer
XY
Club on the planet? Arguably, yes. But it’s not always an easy argument to make. It was the old micro versus macro debate that seemed eternally unresolved. The problem was, there wasn’t really one fewer
XY
Club on the planet. You see, the day
XY
Orlando closed,
XY
Seattle and
XY
Houston opened their doors for business, with oversubscribed memberships. One step forward, two steps back.

No one suggested that my Mason Bennington posts on
Eve of Equality
had anything to do with the demise of
XY
Orlando. Rather, it was the local community group’s creative use of webcams that ultimately put the club out of business. On the Internet, you can monitor
LA
freeway traffic patterns, Bay of Fundy tides, and even the progress of the giraffe’s pregnancy at the Washington Zoo, all courtesy of permanently placed webcams. It turns out you can also monitor in
HD
and living colour exactly who is entering the front and even the back doors of
XY
Orlando thanks to these tiny, relatively inexpensive cameras. And many did. It was enough to close the place down.

I happened to be back in Orlando tidying up the apartment and clearing out the last of my possessions when the tear-down below began. The noise brought back memories of when the club was being built. At one point, a contractor just walked right in to my apartment.

“Oh sorry, man, I was told you’d moved out,” he said, backing out of the room.

“No worries. Come on in,” I said, waving him back in. “I actually
have
moved out. Just snagging the last few things I’d left here before closing the door behind me.”

“Do you mind if I remove some hardware from the floor?”

“Not at all.”

I went into the bedroom to grab two pillowcases I’d left in the closet. When I came back, the guy was on his hand and knees with a giant wrench, loosening the big nut. He unscrewed it,
lifted it off the threaded end of the dance pole below, and set it on the table above him.

“Okay, Leo. It’s clear,” he shouted through the floor and banged the pole twice with the wrench.

Almost immediately, the angle of the pole changed and the threaded end slowly disappeared. In seconds, there was a circular five-inch diameter hole in the kitchen floor.

“Okay, my work here is done. Thanks, buddy,” he said.

He stood up, grabbed the big nut off the table, and headed for the door.

“Um, excuse me,” I piped up. “Do you have plans for that big nut?”

“Not so much. I was just going to sell it for scrap. Why? You want it?”

“I’ve kind of grown attached to it. What’s it worth as scrap?”

“Well, what’s it worth to you?”

“Would you take five bucks for it?”

“Ten and it’s yours.”

“Done.”

I pulled a ten from my wallet, and he handed me the big nut in return.

“It’ll be fun explaining this to the always understanding folks at airport security,” I said, slipping the heavy memento into my overnight bag.

When writing posts for the newly constituted
Everett of Equality
blog, I’d missed my hexagonal metallic footrest. It would enjoy
a treasured position, on the floor, directly under my desk in
DC
.

Speaking of the blog, it was still doing just fine. Under its new name,
Everett of Equality
, I shifted the focus to try to build a supportive constituency among progressive men while I hope maintaining at least some appeal to mainstream women feminists. I’d kept up the pace of posts and was happy with the sustained stream of mainly supportive comments to the blog and through Twitter and a few other social media channels.

As expected, I did lose some readers when the “Eve is really Everett” news broke, but the decline wasn’t nearly as significant as I’d feared. No doubt the lion’s share of my readers were still women. But I was convinced the community of men reading the blog would grow. At least that was the plan. This broadening of the blog’s target audience also opened up new online advertising opportunities and, therefore, increased ad revenue potential. Good for me. Good for
NOW
.

I had worried that Random House might not want to proceed with the book when my cover was blown. But they seemed more committed than ever. Who knows why? They asked me to write a long preface that told the story of the
Eve of Equality
blog and how my identity came to be revealed. Now I’d almost finished the manuscript. Megan and Shelley were both very helpful throughout, given that I was an authorial virgin. Random House was happy with the early draft. It was actually going to happen. I pledged half the book royalties, as modest as they were likely to be, to
NOW
.

I still hadn’t heard from Mason Bennington. No comments on the blog. No emails. No phone calls. No threatening Twitter chatter. Nothing. I was just fine with that but still found myself looking over my shoulder.

Thanks to the advertising earning power of my humble blog, I was able to buy a condo in
DC
a week after I accepted the new job at
NOW
. I don’t mean I bought it with cash. I wasn’t earning
that
much from Google Adsense. I have a sizable mortgage. But the new job and the blog ad revenue on the side made it an easy approval at the bank. It’s a one-bedroom in an interesting building on E Street
NW
, just east of the White House. The building used to house the venerable Hecht’s department store. But now there were twenty-nine condo units, including mine on the eighth floor.

I also bought my first brand-new car. Not too flashy. A red Ford Escape. I really wanted the Mazda CX-5, but unfortunately, my father hadn’t spent his entire career working at Mazda. In a two-week span, I found myself with a new job, a new apartment, and a new car. For the first time in my life, I felt like a grown-up.

As soon as I settled in
DC
, Megan and I re-started our relationship, this time with no secrets. It’s now been nearly three months. So far, so good. I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, and by all accounts, so is she. Of course, I remain a little paranoid about how my last few relationships had ended. Well, how
all
of my relationships had ended. I didn’t want history to repeat itself one more time. I’m not sure I could take that. But so far, I’m pleased to report
that the intensity of my feminism is surpassed, just marginally, mind you, by Megan’s. Wooo-hooo! That bodes well. I’d never dated anyone who was more ardent than I on gender equality. I took this as a good sign.

She also helped me understand that being a feminist in principle is easy compared to being a feminist in practice. For men and women, living each day in practical defiance of thousands of years of gender-based streaming is so much harder than walking in marches, running workshops, and writing blog posts. It means questioning everything you do, moment by moment, day by day. It means thinking differently and making dozens of conscious decisions every day that you might have made on auto-pilot before. It’s hard. It’s taxing. It’s tiring. But it’s a little easier when you’re doing it with someone else who’s equally committed. I was doing it with Megan.

Of course, working at the Anacostia Community Legal Aid Clinic provided Megan with a daily dose of the barriers women face. She is fulfilled by her new job at the clinic in a way she never was at Mackenzie Martin. She represents women, mostly, often single mothers. Sometimes, it means appearing at the Office of Administrative Hearings about a rent-control dispute. Sometimes she’s in court on custody hearings and other wrenching aspects of family law. Sometimes she’s coordinating counselling for women on parole. She says it makes her feel like she’s doing something important and helpful for these women, every day. That makes her happy. And that makes me happy.

My reverie was interrupted by my chirping cellphone. I hit the hands-free button.

“Hello?”

“Ever-man, Ever-man, wherefore art thou, Ever-man.”

“You got the job!” I said.

“I got the job!”

“Lewis, that’s great news! Congratulations!” I said, thrilled for him. “New York. Wow!”

“I can’t believe it. It’s part-time to start, but if it all goes right, I could be on full-time by the end of the year,” Lewis said.

“That’s so great, Lewis. Have you told Mr. B?”

“I told him this morning.”

“And?”

“Well, he wasn’t jumping for joy. But he thought I might be better at it than trying to be a tough guy.”

“So it’s done. Congrats.”

“Yeah, well, Ever-man, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t pumped me up so much in that magazine. I can’t thank you enough, man. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“What’s the first production you’re working on?” I asked.

“
The Taming of the Shrew
opens in six weeks.”

“How about you get me tickets for opening night?” I suggested. “Megan and I will hop on a shuttle and see your artistry first-hand. Does that work?”

“That’s an easy one, Ever-man. Consider it done,” he replied. “So, catch me up. Are your parents really back together?”

“Well, they still have separate residences, but as far as I can tell, only one is being used at a time,” I explained. “I don’t know what to think of it all. And I’m not sure who’s having the tougher time. My dad is still getting used to courting a bona fide business superstar. But I’m sure my mom finds it strange when my dad actually cooks something and then cleans up the kitchen. I’m sure they’re both reeling.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, but he was at work at the time and had to get back at it. I was thrilled for Lewis. The profile piece I wrote on him for
Make-Up Artist
magazine had run three weeks before. He had two calls for job interviews on the strength of the article. He landed at the Royal Shakespeare Company America, in New York. They’d been particularly impressed with the photos of Shawna’s make-up in the story. She was in her Marie Antoinette role. Lewis also had landed a few freelance gigs with Manhattan fashion houses and more were promised.

By then, I was about half an hour out of Santa Cruz. Talking to Lewis made me think of Shawna. I still often thought of her. She’d successfully defended her dissertation about a month ago and was now a fully fledged Ph.D. She’d already lined up three interviews for academic postings at various mid-sized colleges. Only one of them was a tenure-tracked position. They were harder and harder to come by. But she was on her way. I was proud of her. Even Chloe had taken to calling her “perfessor Mom.”

I was on my way to Los Angeles. But rather than flying directly to
LA
, I had decided to take the “land in San Francisco, rent a car, and then drive for eight hours” route. Why? Because I had an errand to run on the way.

I didn’t read all the letters in Beverley’s pine box. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Even reading the first dozen or so felt like a supreme invasion of privacy. So I stopped as soon as I’d read enough to get the lay of the land. As she had always said, they were all letters to her son. She just didn’t know where to send them. She didn’t know who he was, where he was, or even if he were still alive. She carried that uncertainty with her for nearly all of her adult life.

The letters were all neatly, painstakingly, filed in chronological order beginning in October 1972. There were just over 2,500 of them, each with the salutation “My son,” and each folded precisely in an unsealed envelope. In the bottom of the pine box, slotted just in front of the first letter, was the key to the mystery. I found a birth certificate and an adoption certificate both dated October 6, 1972, and both issued at a hospital in San Francisco. Paper-clipped to the two certificates was a faded note in Beverley’s hand that simply said:

“Should my son ever come forward, these letters are for him.”

The first few letters described the angst that so often comes with carrying a child for nine months and then, almost overnight, giving him up for adoption. In the fifth letter, written about a month after her son’s birth, Beverley recounts her meeting with
her son’s adoptive parents. She liked them very much. She said that while she was not supposed to know their names, the man had referred to his wife at one point in their meeting as June. Beverley noted that she felt an instant comfort and almost a kinship with them. The rest of the early letters were more about how Beverley was feeling and what she was doing. She was trying to let her son know what her life was like. In fact, this was the pattern she followed until she died.

I’d been moved by what I read and by what she’d endured. The uncertainty of it all, the not knowing if he were alive, or safe, or well, or married. The letters seemed to help her cope. I decided I owed it to Beverley to learn what she never knew.

I decided to find her son. Of course, deciding to find him was easy. Actually finding him was not so easy.

I tried to be systematic and logical in approaching the task. I started by searching online archives for birth/adoption notices in the San Francisco area around October 6, 1972. There was nothing that seemed to match quite right in the month following his birth. I was almost ready to try something else when I found an adoption notice in the
Santa Cruz Sentinel
, dated November 21, 1972, about six weeks after the birth of Beverley’s son. It caught my eye because the notice announced the “arrival of bouncing baby Tanner Wilkinson,” born October 6, 1972, in San Francisco. That seemed like too much of a coincidence. “Tanner” was certainly not a common given name, then or now.