Paging Alan Cumming

This post is going to cover a lot of ground so fix yourself a generous pour and a hearty snack and settle in.

For years, I have wanted to meet Alan Cumming. He’s been one of my imaginary friends, much like Madonna and Paul Rudd were in the 90’s. I’ll often say things to myself like, “Oh I bet Alan Cumming would love this or if only Alan Cumming were here.”

I could tell you that he is smart and funny and seemingly down-to-earth and cute as can be. I could say he’s a good writer and he has played some goofy characters and I find that super charming.

I could mention his brogue and his dimples and my years as a Bay City Roller fan — but to really understand this, there’s a lot more that I need to tell you.

I’ll start with when Peter left me.

If you want to know more about the leaving part, I cover some of it in my Datergurl blog. I’m done reliving it, so I’ll tell you all you really need to know to kick this off and that is that I was a sad puppy and I cried constantly for a year straight.

Some things besides gin helped get me through this dreadful year. One thing was the series Queer as Folk. Gale Harold was so beautiful, and the show’s energy was familiar and fun. It felt like home for reasons that are still hard to talk about.

After high school, and before I decided on medicine, I worked in salons. I wanted to be a hairdresser, but I was expected to go to college. So while I dabbled in higher education, I was a shampoo girl and I answered phones and eventually ended up at Joseph Anthony Hair Salon on Union Street in San Francisco.

That’s where I met Philip Plumb.

Philip was from England.

He had once been a scrawny thing (I saw pictures) but he worked out and lifted weights and got huge.

When he cooked for us he’d eat an entire chicken and a plate mounded with mashed potatoes and green beans. I’d never seen a person need two dinner plates to hold their food. When we went out to eat he’d ask the waiter which entree was the biggest. It was great fun watching him eat.

Philip was one hundred percent gay, but we were close and sometimes he would say, “Come here darling and lie down on me.” There was never a hint of anything sexual, but he would massage my shoulders and my neck and I would go limp on that massive chest of his. He was affectionate and I was boyfriendless, so it was nice.

I lived at the end of Army Street and he was on the corner where Market meets Castro. I have no idea who’d call whom or how we made plans back then, but I’d walk over to his flat and we’d play the records of Alison Moyet and Roberta Flack and his favorite – Patti Austin – and we’d smoke cigarettes and sing and pass the hours away.

I rarely had a boyfriend but Philip was always up to something. It didn’t matter who he was seeing though, he always wanted me around.

Sometimes I’d have a crush on a boy and Philip would say, “You know I fucked him.” Philip fucked everyone.

The great thing was that he’d never go into very much detail. That would have been crass. What he’d do instead is he’d throw me a one-liner.

He’d say something like: “That guy asked me to tie my work boots to his balls” and I’d say, “NO!!” and he’d say “Yes, and they were swinging back and forth when we were fucking and it was hilarious.” And then he’d be off talking about some movie or his plans for dinner.

He was a gentleman.

He teased me regularly, and nearly all the time. He called me Sugar Tits in public and once when I showed up to his flat in a red Benetton sweater dress he told everyone that I had come dressed up as a blood clot.

It was hard to be mad at Philip because he was so funny and so sweet. I was a part of his life and he welcomed me any time and we were just great, great friends.

When AIDS hit everything changed.

We literally had no idea what was happening to our friends or how the disease was spreading but our friends would get the purple dots and the diarrhea and start wasting and they would die, in misery.

At the time, the bodies of most gay men in our circle were burly and toned. It was the 80’s. To see them waste away was one of the most tragic things I have ever witnessed.

These men were loud and proud and out and living big. It hadnt been that long since their liberation, since Harvey Milk and since the emergence of gay rights. They were free to be themselves in SanFrancisco. They had a special brand of wicked, playful humor and then all of a sudden fear crept in and things went dark.

There were so many stories circling about. A girl in our circle loved a boy and he loved her. He also loved other boys and she knew that and she also knew he was positive. Still, she wanted his baby. She got pregnant and then miscarried and then she got really sick and she wasted and she died and by the time she died he was with another boy and she was hollow and broken and bitter and sad and alone.

Some mistakes are deadly. Or at least they were back then. That was when love and lust became something that could kill you.

Once the HIV virus was identified, we all needed to get tested.

Unbeknownst to any of us at the time, Philip probably saved my life by warning me off all the men he had slept with. He never wanted to see me hurt so he always told me who to stay clear of. It wasn’t their bisexuality that concerned Philip, or me for that matter. He was warning me more of their particular kind of unavailability. They fucked around but I wanted a boyfriend.

There had been Ilya the bisexual ex-IV drug user. Even with Philip’s guidance there had been risky exposures. Before AIDS, none of us worried. There was medicine for anything we might accidentally pick up. Embarassment aside, STDs weren’t that big of a deal back then. You just called the people you needed to tell and mostly they were very nice about it and a few pills later – good as new.

I was sure I would be positive but I wasn’t.

Dumb luck.

I never asked Philip his status because Philip remained happy and upbeat and if he had wanted to talk about this he would have talked about it.

I left my job at the salon and went back to school when I decided to gun it for a career in medicine. Philip and I drifted apart because I had to study and life is like that.

One of the last times I saw him we were at a bar and he said, “I have something to tell you.”

Once he said that, I knew.

He didn’t have to say the words because I knew.

I’d watched enough people die and I could connect the dots in our circle of friends and it would have been a miracle for him to have escaped this thing.

Philip never talked about his own feelings about having AIDS. He just comforted me because of course I burst into tears and I was distraught. He refused to be distraught and just said – “Oh, honey, I’ve had a great life.” He couldn’t have been older than thirty-three.

At the time there was no hope for someone with AIDS. It was just a matter of time. Philip didn’t ever talk about it again. I had dinner at his flat and he was still buff and handsome. I poured myself into my studies and we drifted further apart.

I don’t know how he died or when he died or where he died. I have made weak attempts to find him and any of the people we knew back then but the trail leads nowhere. I feel as though he might have gone back to England but I just don’t know. I would give anything to know and I don’t know how it’s possible that I don’t know but I think he wanted to keep to himself and die quietly when the time came.

There is one thing I want to show you and it’s a painting. The really weird thing is that Philip is in it. It’s a Renoir and the man in the bottom right corner is Philip. All his friends who saw the painting were stunned by the resemblance and Philip was also a little shook by how identical he looked to the man in the Renoir. He even had the same moustache.

Here is a close- up.

Watching Queer as Folk wasn’t really about the show. It was more about the friends I lost……the life, the music, the friendship, the humor and the fun I’d had with Philip and his friends and the thrill of being with so much benevolent male energy.

After blowing through all the seasons of Queer as Folk, I picked up some books by Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris. I read books that felt like they were written by people I’d want to hang out with even though Augusten Burroughs seems a little scandanavian-tall-and-scary and I get the feeling that David Sedaris is completely inaccessible to people outside his family and his inner circle.

Next I read some Alan Cumming. I didn’t know him very well except for Spy Kids and the clips of Cabaret which were irresistible. He had a little gleam in his eye and and it reminded me of Philip’s energy which was wicked and naughty and pure and lovely. His writing felt like something I had missed for a long time. The elegance and the the-telling-of-truths and the intimacy of trusting his audience helped me feel at home.

Reading helped to heal my heart. It was like hanging out with old friends.

I ran an animal welfare non-profit (that I started). It initially grew from an idea to an organization with a pretty big following. It was first called No Kill Oakland and then became PALS East Bay (People, Animals, Love, Support). My goal was to take the teachings of Nathan Winograd who discovered that it was possible to find homes for the majority of shelter animals. The killing, as it turned out, was driven by a lack of imagination and an acceptance of sheltering dogma and catma that said there were too many dogs and cats and we had no choice but to “put to sleep” millions of animals every year.

It was my baby and it filled my heart. It was also one of the reasons Peter left me. I brought home many many animals and was often distracted with this on top of my pediatric practice. The thrill of saving a life eclipsed everything else.

I brought my nonprofit to work with me. I had many fosters and even had a litter of puppies born and raised in my office. Ten pitbulls. It was fantastic.

I sometimes used celebrities to legitimize what I was doing and I was sneaky about it. This picture was taken at a Farm Sanctuary meet and greet with Joan Jett. I was shameless but it was for a good cause.

I wanted great high profile people to wear our T-shirts. The logo was really cute and everyone who’s decent loves animals. If I could reach the right people, I knew they’d probably wear the T- shirt and send me a pic. For the animals.

I was talking about the non-profit and I said I wanted Alan Cumming to wear the T-shirt (cute dimples, twinkle…I could totally see it) and I wanted to get a picture of him wearing it. It was just a silly idea but I get fixated on things like this. So there I was yacking with Maggie. Maggie is the mother of triplet boys. I have been their pediatrician since birth. Basically she’s nuts. The good kind of nuts.

Maggie laughed her way through the first few years with the boys. I had some experience with multiples because I had my own twins in residency. It was really challenging, and I have no idea how Maggie did it. I asked her every time she came in: “How are you doing this” and she always did her Maggie laugh and said – “I have no idea.”

So when I talked about my non-profit and my marketing idea involving Alan Cumming I almost choked on my stethoscope when she said she knew him.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Well it turns out that her husband has been good friends with Alan’s husband for years. They are the boys’ godparents. One of her sons is named Grant, after Alan’s husband Grant!

I wanted her to send Alan Cumming the T-shirt but we got distracted and I never asked her and then I lost my non-profit in a hostile takeover and that huge loss piled on to all the sadness surrounding my break-up with Peter.

I survived, but barely.

I dated.

My kids left home.

I went through menopause.

Then I finally emerged okay.

Maggie and her kids were at Kaiser for a few years and then the family returned with two more kids – girls this time. More laughter. more cute kids. What else?

I routinely fill out piles of school forms, sports clearances and the like. The start of the school year is a shit show of paperwork.

Maggie texted me after hours one day and said she had somehow missed the memo that her boys needed forms completed by a pediatrician in order to attend their first day of water polo.

Most parents would wring their hands but Maggie stayed in character and ….she laughed. I can’t remember if she laughed via emoji or we talked but she made it clear that her boys would survive if they missed the first practice but it was also kind of a tryout and I am a mom and no way did I want Maggie outed for missing the forms or her boys to be excluded, so I said – let’s get this done.

Practice was at 7a.m. and she needed the forms before then and I needed some information from their charts so I had to go into the office insanely early. I did it though. And then I said – and now you have to tell me when Alan Cumming is visiting and invite me over.

I think I caught her in a weak moment because she said – I promise I will get you two together. And by he way – he drinks Tito and soda.

I told my staff all about how Maggie and my fave celebrity are good friends blah blah and Alan Cumming is so talented blah blah and how much I am a fan (though I am more a spiritual fan, and fan of his writing more than a fan of his acting because I barely have watched his shows. As you know, all I have time for is The Voice)

I don’t need the picture in the T-shirt anymore but Alan Cumming was a voice who spoke to me when I was very down and very lonely and very in need of genuine friendship. I know he has been the place holder of an archetype in my psyche but you could also say that he seems genuine, cheeky and sweet just like my beloved friend Philip. It’s not about stereotypes or projection as much as it is about recognizing traits that resonate.

Not long after I scored a potential meet and greet I was listening to Alan Cumming’s podcast about things on his shelf which is actually just him talking to people. The best episodes are when he talks to friends and they reminisce. They told one story about fans wanting a piece of him – his attention – when he isn’t working.

Uh-oh.

I decided that I can’t meet Alan Cumming when he’s visiting Maggie and Brad after all. After all these years of him being my imaginary friend, meeting him in real life under contrived circumstances would be wrong. Not violating the Hippocratic Oath wrong, but wrong nevertheless.

I can’t meet Alan Cumming but I can remember my friend Philip and I can read Mr. Cumming’s new book and I can laugh with Maggie.

And that is good enough.