My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

Aurora de Albornoz (1926): T

85 Aurora de Albornoz Tía Divina Scott Hightower In the first grade, when my central Texas public school teacher asked what I “wanted to be” when I grew up, about the only professional (not a preacher, teacher, or rancher) that I could conjure up was . . . a Lottie Moon missionary. That did not come from a fervent religiosity, but from the notion that missionaries traveled to foreign countries and took photographs of their travels. They stood with other people in the world as witnesses to other places. At that time, that was about as “sophisticated” a version of an international, cosmopolitan life as my little imagination could muster up. 86 Years later, with my high school Spanish, the reading of my liberal arts education, and one seven-month’s “bachelor’s journey” to India under my belt, I took up a domestic life with a partner in New York City. Such innocent steps toward the unforeseen life ahead. My “unblessed” union brought me onto the unaccepting slopes of a taciturn Republican Spanish family living in Puerto Rico. While all of my beloved’s immediate family had misgivings, I heard stories of his aunt—his mother’s sister. She was reportedly playful and sophisticated. Something of a scholar, poet, and literary figure in Madrid. Someone who had played “Auntie Mame” to my lover’s “Patrick”—a diva who reportedly brought an infectious joie de vivre to the table! Oddly, I don’t recall the exact first moments of our meeting. Though we rather quickly settled into a loving conspiracy of three. When Aurora came to town, she stayed with her close friend, José Olivio Jiménez, a celebrated Cuban American literary critic and professor at City University of New York. The apartment—on West 90th Street—was a large two-bedroom with a long, highceilinged salon. Artifacts from José Olivio’s travels in the Americas peppered the room: that coffee table fashioned out of a wagon wheel and a circle of glass, or the modestly framed, glee-filled, bacchanalia Picasso print. When Aurora came to town, there were parties of writers, academics, and bon vivants much like those I had only experienced somewhere along the way on screen with Holly Golightly. There were mixed drinks and naughty stories. A profound embrace of Freedom swirled around the room like expensive cologne. Tío Olivio’s hybrid “American European sensibility ” set the stage, and Aurora’s extravagantly generous theatrical nature held center. I knew little and understood less. I developed a taste for olives and goat cheese, for sangria and Russian vodka. Aurora’s chestnut hair was bobbed and parted on one side, her cheek touched by one distinct auburn spit curl. She often wore strands of beads that she liked to fidget through her fingers. Part flapper, she could wrap her lovely figure up in her long brown Auror a de Albor noz 87 mink or coat of lynx. Her cigarette was always held at bay from the tangerine or pink gloss of her lips by the dark span of a cigarette holder. Part Grande Dame, she could converse in four languages and muddle along joyfully in several others if put to the task. Part martini-drinking, cosmopolitan sophisticate, she was pro-youth, pro-sex, pro-tolerance. She wore Chanel-inspired suits, and while effusive, she was never vulgar. Quite the contrary. She was stylish. Everyone who knew Aurora knew that she refused to accept quiet desperation and used imagination and style to create a life worth living. One night in Madrid she insisted we take in a screening of Visconti’s rereleased film Gattopardo (The Leopard ). The movie was in Italian and the subtitles were in Spanish . . . but what a classy count Burt Lancaster made—and what a waltz! (Years later, I purchased the DVD. On my own, I would go on to discover The Damned, Death in Venice, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, and I would go on to research the Night of the Long Knives and see parallels to events in the Spanish Civil War.) Another time, we dined at Café Gijón then sipped Calvados with friends at the speakeasy Oliver. And on another one of our days out-and-about, we sipped broth and savored petite sandwiches and toasted croquettes at (one of “our Patrick’s” favorite places) the lovely storefront parlor of Lhardy’s. She bought a small box of candied violets in...