Los Angeles: Trip and Tina (An Excerpt from Ryan Wildstar's Memoir)
A passage from The Cephalopodic Reveries of an Epicurean Vagabond
[Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from Ryan Wildstar’s memoir, The Cephalapodic Reveries of an Epicurean Vagabond. This memoir is written as a roman-à-clef, so some of the names and details have been changed.]
I was 14 years-old when I first met my uncle Trip (so nicknamed because he was the third person born with the unfortunate name of Mahlon Conover Gaumer, making him Mahlon Conover Gaumer III - hence the “triple”) on my summer vacation break to Los Angeles to visit my dad. And he certainly lived up to his name. He was worth the trip, in every sense of the word. Meeting him changed the course of my life forever. He was an out, proud, gay man and a professor of English at California State University Northridge since 1969, a Fulbright Scholar, an aesthete, a gentleman and a pioneer of gay rights. He was also perhaps the most intelligent, insightful and decorous person I’ve ever known.
At the end of 1984, my dad had moved to Los Angeles to accept a teaching position at an elementary school in Huntington Park. I flew down a year and a half later to visit him and spend two weeks during my summer vacation. My uncle, who knew I was a thespian and interested in the arts, had arranged quite an amazing tour of the city for me.
I shall never forget the first day I met him. My father and I drove across town to his Studio City apartment, which he’d been living in since the late 60s. It looked like the 70s had never ended. A series of beige bungalows (which looked like they’d been lifted from a classic TV sitcom) surrounded a tiled, oval swimming pool at the center of the palm tree-lined courtyard. I thought Mrs. Roper might turn up at any moment in her silky floral kaftan with a few highballs of Tanqueray and tonic.
That night, he’d reserved us dinner at Le Chalet Gourmet, one of his favorite French restaurants just down the street from his apartment, and I had what was undoubtedly the best meal I’d ever eaten up to that point in my life. I lost my virginity to escargot, Châteaubriand and Châteauneuf-du-Pape all on the same night.
The next night, my uncle had reserved us front row tickets at the Los Angeles Theater Center to see a performance of Moliere’s Tartuffe, starring none other than the husband-and-wife duo Jessica Walters and Ron Liebman, alongside Madge Sinclair and Jennifer Tilly. It was absolutely sublime and my mind was utterly blown. Trip knew everything about the play, about the actors, about the theater. I was captivated and intimidated and enthralled with my gay uncle and he seemed keenly aware of my admiration and perhaps saw something in me of himself.
Day three of my vacation was a visit to the extraordinary Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Trip gave us a guided tour of the museum (where I had the immense pleasure of seeing The Blue Boy for the first time) followed by a stroll through the remarkably pristine gardens beneath the hot sun of southern California in August.
That night we went to the legendary Doolittle Theater to see a performance of Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which her wife Jane Wagner had written especially for her. I was gobsmacked. My uncle certainly seemed to understand me and he had perfectly curated my time in Los Angeles.
Most notably was the way my father deferred to him, not just as a younger brother but as someone whom he admired. Their relationship fascinated me because I felt that my father treated me rather like he treated his professorial brother, which was odd. But the more time I spent with Trip, the more I understood how we were not only kin but kindred spirits.
The finale of my visit that year is a story for the ages and one that I have recounted at many a dinner party with much regalia. It followed a day trip to UCLA, which I was considering as a prospective university. My uncle, though himself a professor at Cal State Northridge, was nonetheless very keen to give me a guided tour of the prestigious school.