By Jennifer Coffey
Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer
Edited by Stephanie Chambers, Jane Farrow, Maureen FitzGerald, Ed Jackson, John Lorinc, Tim McCaskell, Rebecka Sheffield, Tatum Taylor and Rahim Thawer
Coach House Books
280 pp; $25.95
Ziggy Stardust is everywhere in the early 1970s, but dressing in drag is still illegal. And yet remnants of the trade are always in evidence. Muddy lipstick, smudged mascara, hollow cheekbones made even more hollow with small pots of creamy rose blush they share for economy.
They – a band of sexual outcasts – roll in from the Parkside and St. Charles taverns, no farther than three blocks from Fran’s at College and Yonge, and take up residence, occupying the carrot-orange leatherette booths in my section from midnight until dawn. The diner is their twenty-four-hour beacon, its garish fluorescence highlighting display-case pies and triple layer cakes, the puddings, and toppling bowls of colourful, whipped-cream Jell-O. The taunting aroma of fresh eggs, bacon, and hickory-smoked ham teases its way through wafts of freshly brewed coffee.
I am nineteen and new to the city, a Port Credit exile who has run from my mother’s sad and intransigent life in the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital. They show me a Polaroid snapshot of themselves. In it, all but one are thin and decked out in boas, fishnet stockings, and the shiny material my mother once loved. Makeshift costumes, provocative and sheer. They lean at longlegged angles in metal chairs and against high-back stools, earnest, fierce, dignified, their painted lips slightly parted. Their wigs remind me of movie stars – Gina Lollobrigida, Candice Bergen, Brigitte Bardot – and they are thrilled when I tell them so. Only one pair of eyes stares back into the camera, her gaze penetrating and sad, a jumble of questions and answers.
They like me, not only because I take care of their immediate needs and don’t complain, but perhaps because they see me as one of their tribe, an outsider living in a rooming house, adrift in a city rife with rejection. They call me ‘Girl’ and, looking past my tired orange-beige uniform and pantyhose, compliment me on my style. My pale face and coal-black hair prompt cries of ‘Morticia’ and ‘Sally Bowles.’
Weaving my way through the cigarette smoke, I worry about how I will pay my rent working the graveyard shift. Tips on toasted Danish and coffee are paltry, and refills are free. In any event, these after-hours diners don’t have much money.
But the girls offer me every other manner of sustenance, their advice wide-ranging and firm. How to stand upright in platform boots. Must-see movies (Blonde Cobra, Flaming Creatures, Funeral Parade of Roses, Something for Everyone, and The Boys in the Band, a sentimental favourite). The simplest and safest technique for unrolling a condom. The tidiest way to hand-roll a cigarette. How to turn on a lover. When to move on.
They tell me about their role model, their matriarch, Michelle DuBarry. In
their voices I hear a protective savagery. I listen to their stories of laneways and parks, the places where they go looking for men, not merely for sex but also for connection. The hot spots where they gather. Spadina Avenue, the Quest, the Manatee, Cherry Beach. They talk about chat, which I later discover is the Community Homophile Association of Toronto. I remember the acronym because I like to talk.
They share other stories, too – stories that cast shadows. I hear about Christmases and Thanksgivings, and sons who, if they are invited home at all, are advised to behave. They tell me about missed funerals of fathers and brothers and beloved grandmothers. About cruel lovers, and loving johns who hold them until dawn.
One night, a willowy young man named Jimmy comes in looking haunted. He has been battered in Queen’s Park. Two cops, he says, thrashed the shit out of him, but you can’t see the marks on account of the hoses. And then he laughs, and doesn’t stop laughing until everyone joins him, his eyes a milky blue, the tears barely visible as they cluster and slide down his face.
Every shift, I watch police on the beat stroll up to the cash to collect free cups of coffee and pastry, a guarantee of protection for the all-night restaurant. Here, the officers pay no mind to my section, either oblivious or intentional, much in the way most customers are blind to the occasional cockroach that scurries up the wall out by the kitchen.
During holiday season, and sometimes for no reason at all, I am bestowed with trinkets and treats – dangly earrings from a Yonge Street kiosk, a carton of Kent cigarettes, a packet of matches, its cover painted with dancing hula girls.
Once, on my birthday, they bought me a heavenly piece of Fran’s mile-high lemon meringue pie. And when they sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ they harmonize, their voices melodic and tender, their serenade followed by hugging and kissing.
I haven’t felt this loved since I last saw my mother.
Many memories endure from those long-ago night shifts. Hands clasped over mouths, aghast or in playful hysteria. Heads huddled together in conspiratorial whisper. Sugar dispensers turned upside down over half-empty coffee cups, contents pouring out at length for comic effect. Voices raised in debate, sometimes in anger or resignation, and always a coming together.
And I wonder – what became of them? Did they stay in the city? Who found love? After I had moved on, did they like the new waitress as much as they had liked me? Do they miss the old days? Who survived? Do they remember me in the way that I remember them?
The very last shift I worked at Fran’s was a cold one, the snow blowing and bereft. I had switched for an earlier time slot, a farewell drink waiting for me at the Demimonde Colonial Tavern, a new life in the offing in Fredericton, New Brunswick. I felt compelled to find relatives who barely knew me, longing to shake off a tumbleweed future. My shift ended well before midnight. As I walked out into the darkness, I heard their siren song call out from the restaurant radio.
‘Ground Control to Major Tom…’
