Finally!
“So?” Barry asks, sipping his protein shake. “What did she do?”
“Well, Mary put her hands on her bony hips, cocked her body at a ninety-degree angle and asked me if I knew Chappell Roan?” I manage to take my first small sip of champagne of the day with a shaky hand. It was a very long night, and I need it to steel myself for the conclusion of this story. “I looked at her and said, ‘Of course I do! It’s a church in Barcelona.’”
Everyone stares at me, not understanding.
We are old.
Too old to get the joke anymore.
But old enough to be the punch line.
“Chappell Roan is a pop superstar,” I explain. “The Cher of 2026. I didn’t know just like all of you don’t know. The server made sure to school me in front of the entire restaurant. And then he laughed at me—Me! Teddy!—and said my drink was on the house as if I were some sort offossil, some poorpariah.”
“Well, she got one thing right,” Barry says. “You are a fossil, you are poor and you are a pariah.”
He says “thing” as “thang.” Barry’s Southern accent comes and goes as quickly as a rainstorm in the desert. He tries so hard to forget his past, but every now and then, the guitar twangs and molasses show up even after decades on the West Coast.
“Shut up and flex, Barry,” I say.
He does.
I take a breath and continue. “The only thing I wanted to do was turn back time when I was the young one turning heads, but the only thing I could do was order three more cocktails and leave the restaurant with as much dignity as I could muster.” I stare at each of them. “We are old.”
“We are mature,” Ron amends. “Blessedly late middle-age.”
“You expect to live to a hundred and forty?” I ask.
“Speak for yourself,” Barry says. “I’m not old.”
“You’re wearing a Nehru jacket in your Grindr profile picture,” I reply.
“I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do,” Barry says, trying to be funny.
“And you’re quoting Phyllis Diller, so point proven.”
I take another sip of champagne with a trembling hand.
“So that’s why you’re so shaky this morning,” Ron says, ever the mother. “I’ll make you my special hangover tonic later.”
“And to think I thought you were detoxing for once by the look of your hands,” Barry says. He stretches toward the sun. His skin does not crepe. I always look like I’m wearing chiffon.
“I’m still shaking from simmering rage,” I say, my head high. “Which is directed at all of you right now for being so disrespectful.”
“You know you love us,” Barry says with a wink. “You really do care somewhere underneath that cold, dead exterior.”
I tip my bonnet adorned with bouncing hearts in agreement with his assessment.
Welcome, dear parishioners, to “The Church of Mary.”
For the last decade, God and gays have gathered around the pool at our mid-century marvel—the former, and still very pink, home of Zsa Zsa Gabor—to take communion and build community by breaking bread, drinking wine and spilling tea after a weekend of debauchery in the desert.
It’s our way of seeking forgiveness.
Which we rarely receive from one another.
The name of our church is a sincere but sarcastic nod to Mary, the only virgin we know—besides maybe Sid—as well as all the “Marys” in our lives. It’s also an homage to the conflict of growing up gay and Christian. If you do not know, gay men often call one another “Mary” when we see each other. Historically, it was a slur that we reclaimed as a term of affection. Believe me, Marys have always had their doubters.
