Page 39 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 9

magazine, whose trademarked cover line each issue was, “What You’re
Looking for Is Looking for You.” His tongue was incisive. He never took
a broad ax if a rapier would kill. He could murder with his tongue. He
was not a man to leave a scene agonizing over things he wished he had
said. He was, with all the pop import of California astrology, a Gemini
in a City founded in Gemini. He was elusive, mercurial, always thinking
a thousand recombinant thoughts a minute.
“He was a liar,” his first lover Teddy said.
Teddy.
Poor sweet Teddy. With a shelf life from 6/9/69 to 1977.
Teddy had dragged his feet when Ryan told him they were moving
from Chicago to California. “No!” Teddy freaked. “San Francisco’s where
you go to lose a lover.” But Ryan assured Teddy he wanted no more than
to open up their relationship. “Trust me,” he said, and Teddy had trusted
him. Teddy entertained a strange belief that he had a special sexual hold
on Ryan as long as they stayed in the Midwest. He never realized, through
all their eight years together, that nobody could ever quite capture Ryan
who was Orion, one of those men who is the hunter not the hunted. He
was the one who had hit on Teddy during one July Fourth weekend at
Chuck Renslow’s original Gold Coast bar in Chicago. Ryan had been
out less than a year and he wanted to be in-love. Teddy, freckled and red
haired, seemed a fair choice. He was the boy next door. He was sexy and
Ryan was certain that sex could turn to love. That is perhaps the most
romantic of fatal notions. Only fools fall in-love, pledging their infinite
love forever in a finite world where all is change and nothing lasts, and
still you buy furniture and silverware together. So they made love and a
life together, too innocent then to know that love’s inevitable failure is the
main reason why a person finishes life with a sense of panic at being torn
away from the tangled bedclothes of sexuality and self-deception.
For four years Ryan had taught at Loyola University in Chicago and
Teddy joked about his status as faculty wife. Ryan had corrected him.
“You’re no wife. You’re a man. You’re my partner.” Teddy had said, “I was
only joking.” Ryan was not laughing. California was on his mind. They
packed their household into a U-Haul truck and drove westward across
the mountains, sleeping naked outdoors at night, servicing truckers at
rest stops along Interstate 80. Ryan bought the Noe Valley Victorian at
25th and Douglass the day they arrived in San Francisco. Real estate was
rolling like Monopoly. Life was a cabaret. During the first three years in
the City, Ryan and Teddy clung together, fought, reconciled, entertained
the troops, and fought. Loud words gave way to long silences, and Teddy

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