Searching for Isabella

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

About the Author

Searching for Isabella

Charles Palmatier-Maynard

Copyright © 2024 Charles Palmatier-Maynard

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2024

ISBN 979-8-88982-734-4 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-735-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated in loving memory of my first husband, Wayne G. Wood, as well as my loving second husband, Richard, and all our friends and loved ones (twinsies) no longer with us, whom we lost too soon along this journey.

Chapter 1

Parents?

Did you find your real parents? my grandmother asked from her nursing home bed.

This statement sent me on my quest, if you will, my journey into the past to find out who I really was and if this was true or just the ramblings of my grandmother, my father's mother who was in the early stages of what we now know to be Alzheimer's or dementia. It was 1992. My grandmother had just moved into a nursing home because she had fallen too many times for her to be safe by herself, and apparently, no one in the family could handle her and the fact that my great-aunt, her sister, was also in the same nursing home. They soon became thick as thieves, even though they had not spoken to each other in thirty-some-odd years, and no one really knew why. Maybe that was foreshadowing of things to come and come out in more than one meaning. This was the time I would learn a lot of family secrets, some of which were rather funny looking at it but also kind of scandalous.

Like the fact that my grandfather, whose middle name I got as my first name, was married before he met my grandmother, lived in Pennsylvania, worked as a lumberjack, left his first wife in 1920 or so, moved to New York State, and married my grandmother. He had changed his first name but not his last. So he was a bigamist. Apparently, they had three or four kids together, and I heard she had several more after he left, so I assume she remarried.

My uncle, my father's brother, had been in contact with the family and received some pictures of the stepchildren. I'm guessing they would be my step uncles and step aunts. I had seen the pictures of the stepchildren. One was a dead ringer for my father of the same age. The resemblance was uncanny. And I have been asked on several occasions if I was someone else. I jokingly told people, No, that is my good twin. Their reaction when they saw I was serious. I relayed to some people the story of my grandfather and the fact that we did some family research on my father's side of the family and traced back our ancestry to the Isle of Peel (a form of my grandmother's maiden name) off Australia. I told people we stopped there because we didn't want to find out that we had family relations to Bluebeard since Australia was used as a penal colony back in those days. That was just the beginning of the strange and twisted family history that was beginning to unfold, and this was all before ancestry.com or the Internet. I really wish I had listened more to my great-aunt Mary (And yes, I had a great-aunt Mary. Doesn't every gay man?), my mother's cousin. She was the expert on family genealogy and family trees and how to tell the difference between a cousin and a cousin once or twice removed.

As I was sitting in the parking lot of the nursing home, Madonna's song Vogue came on the radio, and I had to jam along with it. It was a warm June afternoon. The nursing home my grandmother was in was decent enough. It was dimly lit, depressing, and very drably decorated; but the care she received there was phenomenal. It was a stark contrast to what would happen in years to follow. Sometimes the brightest and shiniest of places can hide some very dark and hateful things. The word initially still triggers me. As it turned out, I knew a friend who was the administrator of the facility. I didn't know his alter ego at that time, Fluffy La Rue. Let's call him her, and yes, pronouns are important. There are very few drag queens that go by their drag name in and out of drag. At this point, I was still a baby gay, just learning the lingo and history. Since then, I have met some drag queens who refer to their alter ego as their evil twin sister and keep their drag separate from their male persona. It is kind of the same way in leather community. You never really know what some people are into when you see them in street clothes compared to a leather bar when they are flagging their hankies. I was still searching for my tribe, where I fit into the community; and this statement, question, really shook me as to where I fit in even more. It just echoed. "Did you find your real parents?"

Growing up in the seventies and eighties and knowing I was different from other kids and not really having a word for it and living in a small town where there was one African American family after moving from the suburbs in the city where I had returned to many years later as an adult was difficult. We had moved to the small town on a farm because an African American family had moved next door. That may not have been the real reason but that is what it looked like from my perspective. I am not trying to vilify my parents and make them sound like racist, nor am I going to defend their reasoning. There may have been other factors that played into it. For whatever reason, we moved to a small town, and we began to renovate it to our family needs. It's funny because when I was growing up in that time, we went to visit my mother's side of the family at one of her brothers' house for a family reunion. My father made the statement, "Stay away from your mother's cousin ‘so and so.' He's funny, meaning that he was light in the loafers or fruity," basically meaning he was gay. But those were the terms and phrases used back then. Now telling this to a ten-year-old, I was thinking, Mom's whole family is funny. Ha ha, wise. My uncles always told joke and limericks. Some were quite dirty and off-color. Okay, let's just say just plain racist. I do believe that I inherited my dark and sarcastic sense of humor from my mother's side of the family, just without the racism. It's kind of funny that I became the "funny" one and, in a way, kind of sad that I wasn't there for a cousin who came out after me. It was fortunate that he did have my mother's cousin to help him, though, but I do think that my coming out did hinder his experience. I do regret that. I definitely did get my mother's side of the family's humor. I do remember the biggest fight my parents had was over a funeral because my mother's side was English, German, and Irish. My uncles and other family members were telling jokes and limericks at a funeral. It's what we do.

Like when my current husband and I went to his great-aunt's funeral, I turned to him and said in a whisper, Well, you're guaranteed one thing, no coffin jumpers. They'd break a hip.

He laughed out loud. His stepmother was furious, asking what was so funny. He didn't tell her right away.

It was like the time I was watching a Monty Python movie or show and was laughing hysterically. My father walked in the room and stood there for a few minutes.

He stood there and finally said, I don't get it, in a confused voice.

Dad, if you don't get it, I can't explain it to you. It's British, I told him.

He shrugged his shoulders and walked out. The funny part of this story is that my father loved all those British television shows that were shown on PBS at the time. I mean, yeah, they were cultural and educational and a lot of period stuff; but if you can't understand the humor, you miss out on all the jokes. My father's lineage is French, and he was very stoic and reserved. I guess it was just how he was raised (the period) when he was raised on how men and women should act. I think part of us moving to the country was an attempt to make me more-of-a-man type of thinking since I was a sensitive kid and kind of flamboyant in my walk and demeanor. I do remember my father trying to teach me how to walk like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High. I'm not really a western movie fan, but I loved that movie.

Finding Grandma's room wasn't hard, but I was still upset by the looks of the facility. It was like I had said, very dimly lit and seemed to be decorated very minimally. There was no track lighting. That is a Steel Magnolias reference. Some might get that one. My grandmother and great-aunt were actually roommates and were getting along quite well, which was surprising because for some unknown reason, they had not spoken to each other for many, many years. They had lived previously, my great-aunt with her husband who made sauerkraut in his basement. I still remember the smell. I hated it, and yes, I am German. And they lived not far from each other, my great-uncle having a small farm and old girlie posters from the 1940s, the pinup-type calendars of that period. I guess after my great-uncle passed, my great-aunt was sent to the same nursing home just before my grandmother. I didn't see her as much at that point, but I heard from staff that they became quite close and that my grandmother was inconsolable when my great-aunt passed away.

Grandma was in bed sleeping when I arrived in her room, there were times that I struggled with the idea of kidnapping her and bringing her to live with my husband and I. But there were issues with that, not that my then husband would have said no, but family issues and our work schedules. It almost would be like having a small child in the house and the idea of trying to have sex while she was in another room and if she needed something at the wrong moment. Awkward. And there were his health issues, being newly diagnosed as being HIV positive. Yeah, the hits keep on coming.

My husband decided to get tested because I had mine, and it came back negative.

It was funny because the counselor who gave me the test asked me, Have you ever had sex with an IV drug user? He asked as he was working on paperwork.

Not as far as I know, I said matter-of-factly.

He nearly dropped his pen.

That was the most honest answer I have heard, he stated. Most are like ‘No! Hell no!' he continued.

So my husband decided to get tested by his doctor and then the ice storm hit in March of that year. We were without power for ten days, but our phone was restored in three days. That was when he got the phone call from his doctor's office.

You're HIV positive, he was told by the doctor over the phone.

How do you respond to that news over the phone? Yes, it was 1991 but still. He sat there in a darkened house, with no heat or electricity, probably thinking he wished we didn't have a phone right then.

This was on March 12, 1991, as he called it, "Black Tuesday. I was at work, and I came home to a candlelit home, which really sounds romantic until you realize there is no heat and no lights; but we had a phone line, yeah. Yes, this was before cell phones. This was a landline. The phone was attached to the wall. Google landline."

When I got home, he sat me down in the kitchen, which was a central part of our house and the scene of many a house party with friends. I sat on the counter, where he had used our blender to make mixed drinks for a party one time and left the lid off and hit the button. Up and all over went liquid alcohol and everything straight up to the ceiling.

And all he could say in his drunken state was Oh, look, a fountain, as he looked up in amazement and awe.

Turn it off. Turn it off! I screamed as he stood there in awe.

He sat me down and told me about the phone call from his doctor, and when he finished, he looked at me.

If you want, I will release you from our vows, he said quietly.

We had just had a union ceremony, basically an early form of gay weddings. The priest we went to had been doing them in our city for the past twenty years and made us go through marriage counseling before he would do our ceremony. It was three sessions, my history, his history, and our history together as a couple. The priest said that the counselor had sent him a twelve-page report on us. He told us it was the most extensive report he had every received from him. We had also registered as domestic partners in our city. We were number twenty-seven of couples who registered. I was tempted to ask for a marriage license but knew that would be pushing it. I was more the activist that he was, still am.

I stood there, shocked by his statement. I walked over from the counter from which I was leaning against, went over to where he was sitting, and gave him the biggest hug I could.

Hell no, I said. We promised for better or for worse. I am not going anywhere.

We both cried. I'm crying now, thinking back on it. We were together for fifteen years until his death in 2004. We had twelve wonderful years together. It wasn't always rainbows and unicorns and magical. Yes, we had our share of fights, mostly over money, like any couple. The last three years, he was in a nursing home with AIDS-related dementia. I would visit him there every day. There were a lot of battles back then. Most of them were out of ignorance or lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS. We have come a long way, but there is still more to do.

I mean, it wasn't like when we ordered our cake for our union ceremony, we had three days to go and forgot about the cake, so we called our local major chain supermarket. It was the gayest supermarket in the city, being that you couldn't walk down an aisle without bumping into someone who was gay. It was one of their smaller stores but also one of their busiest ones. This was the time when super stores were becoming a thing.

He called and asked, Do you do wedding cakes? as I sat, nervously waiting for the answer.

No, they do not, he whispered. But they do sheet cakes, he continued.

That would be perfect, he said into the phone. Then he asked me and repeated back to her, What do we want on it?

I just gestured duh, throwing hands up in the air.

Red roses and purple writing, saying, ‘Congratulations,' with our names on it. He gave our names, of course.

He sat there and sat there, dead silence. He waited a few more seconds.

Hello? he asked.

Remember we had asked about wedding cakes and gave two very distinctive male names to be written on the cake. Afterward, we found it funny that the gayest store in the city with the highest population of gays who shop there was shocked by this request. It still is a funny but true story. And usually, the funniest stories are based on fact and real occurrences. This is just one of those. We have many. Those are ones I hold onto.

Grandma's room was nice, very basic and minimal decorations. There were a few trinkets that I remember she had from when I was a kid, little figures and such, but that was it. It really is sad. How do you compact an entire life into a twelve-by-twelve room with only a bed and a dresser and a nightstand. What do you keep, and what do you give to family or friends, if you have any? What happens to the stuff and memories that you have accumulated over a lifetime to fit into a simple and drab twelve-by-twelve room. There was a bedpan sticking out under the bed, which the staff hadn't put away properly. Was it just used? Did they have to attend to someone else's need quickly, or was it just carelessness? This was my first time dealing with a nursing home situation.

The second time was worse (in 2001), being the caregiver/spouse of someone in a nursing home is stressful to say the least. I was beside myself when my first husband went into the nursing home after his short hospitalization. I had come home from work, and he was getting more and more confused. He hadn't eaten, not even the protein shakes that he had in the can. They tasted like total shit, even though they were flavored. I struggled to get him in the shower. Thankfully, we had a shower chair. I shaved his face in the shower, and when I had finished, he looked as if he had some facial droop in his face like he had a stroke. He was like a rag doll. He could barely move, and I was struggling to keep my composure and not completely lose it right there.

Apparently, I had heard from the store owner from the corner store down the block that he had gone to the store to get something, beer, a twelve pack. And by the time he got outside, he had no idea where to go. He was completely lost. We lived barely a block away from the store. How scary is that to hear from someone. I have no idea if he was walked home or got home on his own, if he even left the house unlocked, but apparently, the store owner was able to reorient him at least in the right direction. I never knew he had left the house until that conversation and that terrified me. We, I, didn't even think at that time that we needed any kind of help with him around the house. Looking back, maybe we should have, but you cannot change the past, only learn from it. And sometimes those are painful lessons. And believe me, sometimes those lessons leave scars, deep fester wounds. Some never heal.

My then husband was twenty-three years my senior. That may be a shock to some, and I really don't care. This was someone I loved. He had joked with people that I wasn't even born yet when he graduated high school. Yes, we were a May/December relationship; but we were both consenting adults over eighteen, so if you have a problem with that, it