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16 Romantic Codes D epty’s vulnerablity could be startling, especially when it ran so at odds with his freewheeling views. By the time we met, he’d had his share of one-night stands, but where true love was concerned, he adhered to a strict code, a conservative blueprint for how lovers should be. One of its guiding principles was that they not mention previous loves to each other. I was not fully aware of this when I blundered onto the subject of Kay. Kay was a charismatic actress with black Mediterranean eyes and honeygold hair, another theater student from college. For several months after graduation, she and I had acted together in an avant-garde North Carolina stage company called The Poor Theater. Based on the work of Polish minimalist Jerzy Grotowski, it would have, among other things, a fatal name for a theater. One afternoon, during the company’s doomed run, Kay came to my apartment and announced with trepidation that she was attracted to me. Secretly, I was thrilled. I’d fallen in love with her four years before, the moment I laid eyes on her in fact. She was the most expressive person I’d ever seen, passionate about theater, determined to make it professionally. All through college Kay had been the golden girl of the stage; now, suddenly, she was drawn to me. Even as a kid, I’d sensed that women could be attracted to other women, especially if they were nice. Though I’d never actively pursued a woman, I had practiced kissing on all my girl-friends in high school. It was probably just a question of time till one pursued me and I responded. When the final curtain fell on The Poor Theater, Kay and I got hired to act at The Olde West Dinner Theater in Johnson City, Tennessee. Local patrons of the arts referred to The Olde West as the diner the-ayter. The acting ensemble lived in paper-thin cubicles tacked onto the back of the restaurant’s kitchen, a detail of provincial stage life that always irked Kay. 67 68 | Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley “People who work at Woolworth’s don’t have to live at Woolworth’s,” she’d point out regularly. In the spring of ’73, The Olde West season required more actors than the theater building could accommodate, so Kay and I were sent to live in a trailer by a lake some miles away. The move gave us the privacy and freedom to carry on our hidden affair. The fact that Kay was married seemed a distant obstacle. Her husband was off acting in a dinner theater in North Carolina. It was a first for us both. Tennessee springs are cloaked in magenta redbuds. That spring we mirrored the landscape, blossoming with sensation. Before Kay, I’d had only two lovers, both young men from college. Sex was terrifying but irresistible, pleasure locked away behind a fear of losing myself. Kay coaxed me out of hiding. Through a looking glass, I discovered my body on hers, learned its rhythms and responses by reflection. She and I taught each other many things that spring. I grew a little stronger , absorbing her resilience as if by intimate osmosis. When she went back to her husband at the beginning of the summer, it was painful, but I told myself it was a natural ending. I was skittish about commitment, it didn’t matter with whom. I’d tortured my college boyfriends with my ambivalence. With Kay it was easier to make excuses: what I wanted was to be as alive with a man as I’d been with her. Two years later, when I fell for Depty Dawg, the fullness of that Tennessee springtime came to bear. I wanted to be with him, it was that simple, and his tenderness and loyalty overrode my fears. So it seemed obvious—to me anyway—that these two people should meet and know each other. In taking up with Depty Dawg, I had entered his world, though it was seamlessly becoming mine. Still, I had come from somewhere, and I wanted him to know it for himself. Dep was fragile when I told him about Kay, hurt and confused. Awkwardly I tried to reassure him: it was because I loved him so that I wanted them to meet, wanted her to know him too. I convinced him to go to North Carolina...

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