Not all good poets are good readers, the way Thom was. Before him, the only poets I’d heard read were Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas. Frost was very old and very dry; Dylan Thomas was sober, I think. Since then, I’ve heard many poets read and Thom was the best. Not that he was an actor; in fact, he didn’t like actors reading poetry, too much feeling. What made him so good was his sense of urgency. He needed you to listen and understand what he was saying.
One of the first things I did at Cambridge, when I arrived there in September 1952, was read a poem by Thom. I’d never heard of him, of course, but in Varsity, the student newspaper, there was a profile of him, written by Karl Miller, and with it, his picture and his latest poem, “The Beach Head.” I read it all the way through even though I hadn’t finished unpacking; I hadn’t met my supervisor and I didn’t know what classes I’d be taking. I hadn’t even begun to think of myself as gay.
I had no idea that “The Beach Head” was about Tony White, who was playing Cyrano in the first production of the season at the ADC (a club that I would shortly join), but I recognized the feeling and as it turned out, it was a gay feeling, from a man about another man. Was it that that watered the seed?
I was twenty-one when Thom and I met, he was twenty-three. He knew he was gay, I was finally acknowledging it. Neither of us had been in love before, certainly not with a man. We felt lucky, grateful to have found each other. It was a very intense, profound, life-changing, wonderful time. I vaguely remembered Plato’s split soul theory, man is destined to search for his other half, and I knew I’d found mine. On one of the three Fantasy pamphlets Thom gave me was the inscription, “Mike, all I ever wanted.”
That we were very different people never occurred to us. Thom was a brilliant student. He’d gotten a First, the highest grade Cambridge awarded. He’d already written some of the poems that would be printed in the Fantasy pamphlet and later in Fighting Terms. He wanted to be a poet and he was a poet. I, on the other hand, was clueless. If you’d asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I probably would have said, “Successful, something in the arts, maybe.” I wasn’t a brilliant student. I’d never thought about going to graduate school. I was surprised when the English Department at Rutgers nominated me for a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, intended to help students get an advanced degree so they could teach at a university; even more surprised when I got one.
Suddenly, graduate school didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Cambridge? Travel abroad? Paris? The Leaning Tower of Pisa? Yes, please, when do I leave? I’d been in ROTC, so I needed a deferment from the Air Force, and as soon as it arrived, I whooped and hollered and made myself a nice cup of tea.
Thom always gave or sent me a copy of his latest poem, and because he knew I wasn’t an insightful reader of poetry (I asked him once if I was the only ignorant educated person he knew), he would add notes explaining what he thought I’d need explained.
The first time I saw Thom address an audience (twelve, thirteen people?) was at a meeting of the Cambridge English club; he was the president. Apart from introducing the guest, Angus Wilson, Thom didn’t say much. He seemed awkward and I was charmed. In fact, for all the years we were together, whenever I heard Thom read, that was my experience: he would seem awkward and I would be charmed. I used to think it was because he had to dress up for the occasion and that made him uncomfortable, but this was at Cambridge, where he was still a student. Besides, he wasn’t reading, he was presiding, and he was wearing what he wore every day. Later, when he was a famous poet, except for adding a sport jacket, he also wore what he wore every day: Levi’s (the only pants he owned), boots (he never took them off), a nice shirt (probably one I gave him for Christmas), and one of the two sport jackets we bought in a vintage clothes shop on Haight Street. Maybe “awkward” isn’t the right word. Maybe what I witnessed was just the way he was on stage, the center of attention. Maybe that’s the way he was in a classroom. All I know is that I never saw the “awkwardness” in any other context.
Thom’s biographers never fail to point out that when, two years later, I left England and returned to America, Thom “followed” me. If and when he did, he would have found out that I wasn’t home. I had already started my service in the Air Force in San Antonio, Texas. Thom went to California, to Stanford, to study with Yvor Winters, and shortly after I was discharged, on August 8, 1956, I “followed” him to Stanford, where I decided, finally, that what I wanted to do was direct plays. I got a job at a small theater in Palo Alto and happily grew accustomed to applause. In 1958 Thom moved to Oakland to begin teaching at Berkeley, and I went to New York hoping to get lucky again and get a job directing on Broadway or off-Broadway or even in Brooklyn on weekends. What I got was nowhere and hepatitis, a disease you get when you need a time-out and I did. I was depressed about my health, my future, my life. Thom and I were no longer sexual partners. We’d agreed that that chapter had ended. We were so young when we met, too young to get married. We weren’t literally “married,” of course, this was 1961, but to the extent that we were, we were a very odd couple. Thom wanted an “open” marriage, wide open, too open for me. He wanted to be free. He liked the gay life, the bars, the hunt, the variety; I didn’t. I didn’t want to resume our sex life but I liked being “married,” I liked the limitation.
Feeling better but troubled, I returned to California, where Thom had already found and rented an apartment in San Francisco, 975 Filbert Street. This would be the first time we would live together in San Francisco, and the first place we thought might be permanent. Problems or no problems, it felt good to be together. We liked the apartment; we liked our landlord, Mr. Wong; we liked exploring North Beach, still very Italian in those days. We liked hanging out at the Old Spaghetti Factory, not a factory but a big funky restaurant where the spaghetti was just okay but the steam beer a nice surprise. I needed a desk so I bought a big old table for a dollar at the Salvation Army, and I still have it.
From the way we dealt with problems, or didn’t, I was reminded of something I knew about Thom but had forgotten. I wanted to talk about our problems, try to understand and resolve them. Thom didn’t recognize their right to exist. I don’t remember when he first told me about his mother’s suicide, maybe not till we were on Filbert Street, but once he did, I understood why his theme song was “Forget your troubles, c’mon get happy.” I understood but it didn’t make my life any easier.
Maybe the biggest difference between us was that he didn’t like to talk about himself, and sometimes I think that’s all I talk about.
So, I had an affair. A friend said, “You’re not in love, you’re in lust.” That may be, but what’s the difference? We went to Greece, we were happy. I felt guilty but not very. Thom was disappointed in my choice of a lover. Once, when Christopher Isherwood was scheduled to speak at Berkeley, my new friend for some reason drove us there, giving him an opportunity to ask dumb questions. Thom cringed; so did I. No matter, I broke it off. I couldn’t imagine my life without Thom. All he said when I came back was “Let’s not have any more of this nonsense.” Nonsense? Why was it nonsense? He did his thing, why couldn’t I do mine? Because Thom’s shenanigans didn’t mean anything and mine did? Anyway, time heals, and it passed, and things seemed to return to what they were.
What was remarkable was that, no matter how distant we were, when we traveled—Venice, New York, Barcelo-na, Prague, Chicago—we went back in time. Suddenly we were close, happy to be together, and then, just as suddenly, as soon as we got home, distant again.
What brought Thom and me closer was drugs, man, illegal drugs. Thom was way ahead of me in that department. He was out there before there was a there there. We were both busy smoking marijuana before I went to New York to work for PBS, and in the year that followed, he dropped LSD, and when I returned to San Francisco, I wanted some, please, and hurry. This surprised us both. I was not one to try new things. A new brand of marmalade, perhaps, but that was about it. An adventure, to me, was going downtown without a tie. I was, I confess, a square. If I had to choose between Bob Dylan and David Bowie, I would have chosen Frank Sinatra. I’ve never been a joiner and I didn’t have enough hair to wear it long, the way Thom did, but I was pleased and proud to be called a hippie, an old hippie, if you will. I didn’t just meet Thom in the middle, I did all the traveling.
Skeptics may make faces and rude sounds, but LSD changed my DNA. I became less judgmental, more open, more positive. I hadn’t become a big Broadway director but that was okay; there was more to life. One of my favorite memories was strolling down Haight Street with Thom, unable to decide which of the many head shops to go into so he could buy me a pair of rust-colored leather bell-bottoms. Me, Mr. Brooks Brothers.
“Our grand passion” may have “become familial,” as he said in “The Hug,” but the Sixties were a good time for us. The drugs helped. My friend Sheilah gave us our first television set, a teeny tiny Sony, and we watched TV together. We were fans of Steven Bochco. We liked Hill Street Blues and even Cop Rock. Some days we’d have a puff or two and walk down to Washington Square, sit in the sun and chat with friends. We even went to a bar together, The Stud. It welcomed queer hippies, leather folks, gender non-conformists, and gays high on LSD or grass or whatever. It was a community center. Sometimes they’d rent a bus and the regulars would be driven to Marin, to someone’s uncle’s ranch, let’s say, and we’d get high and join Mother Nature for a “trip” in the sun. The Stud became the center of our social life.
One day Thom invited his oldest friend, Don Doody, who was the manager of The Stud, and his newest friend, Bill Schuessler, to dinner. Bill was a young would-be artist from Milwaukee, who had met Thom in a leather bar a few years back, and when Thom advised him to return to Milwaukee, finish college, and get his degree, he did. Now, he was back, and despite or maybe because of our age difference (Bill was twenty-four, I was almost forty), we clicked. He invited me to the studio he’d rented in order to paint my portrait, and we started seeing each other. So far, so okay, right? But then, a very odd, unexpected, dramatic turn of events. Before you knew it, or more to the point, before I knew it, Thom invited Bill to move in with us; not hang out, not spend the night, move in! Thom didn’t ask me; Thom didn’t tell me. I decided to take it as a gift. Thom was a generous man and I thought and think that’s how he meant it. He was giving me permission, no, his blessing, to have another affair, only this time it was closer to home—no, it was home—with someone he approved of and could relate to, a friend of his. It worked out pretty well. Bill and I were together for more than six years and we went to over a hundred rock concerts, at the Fillmore, Winterland, etc. Some bands, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, the Stones, we saw three times or more. The routine was simple: 1. Buy tickets 2. Take acid 3. Boogie till you puke.
Thom didn’t dance, but he sometimes came with us. He liked Bruce Springsteen, the Pretenders, the Stones. He even had a boyfriend for a while, a short while. Bill and I never knew his name, we called him “Blondie,” and we double-dated to see Paul McCart-ney with Wings. Thom was crazy about the Beatles, and he and Tony Tanner, who was at Berkeley in those days, would devour each new record, looking for clues.
One Sunday, Thom was going to see Elizabeth Bishop and he invited Bill and me to go along. She and her girlfriend, Roxanne, had rented an apartment very near the old, original Tower Records, close to where we lived. We were introduced and soon got to talking about the City and Haight Ashbury and long hair and pot or grass or weed and rock concerts and I said how much dancing, thanks to rock and roll, had changed, how there used to be steps, 1-2-3-close, 1-2-3-close, and now there weren’t; now, you just danced what felt good. Just then, the doorbell rings, Robert Duncan arrives, the conversation resumes, and Robert asks for a demonstration. What could we do, Bill and I, but oblige? (Were we showing off or making a case?)
There were now three of us living on Filbert Street, and Thom thought maybe it was time for us to move; we needed more room. In 1971 he received a Gug-genheim award and used the money to buy a house in the upper Haight or Ashbury Heights, as it was sometimes called, or (since about 1980) Cole Valley. Bill had started collecting Fill-more and Avalon rock posters, and one large wall at 1216 Cole Street was soon covered with them. I collected antique advertising: signs, trays, door pushes, figures (the Lone Ranger, Superman, Mussolini). On the four walls of the dining room I displayed my collection of tin bottle-shaped soda pop signs, Pepsi, Hires, Orange Crush, etc. The bottom half of the KIST bottle sign was eight feet tall, and when photographers came to take pictures of Thom, that’s where they posed him, in front of it. Thom didn’t collect anything, except books and awards, eventually including the MacArthur. The walls of his room were bare, but upstairs, in his office, he made a very large collage of pictures torn from magazines and actual photographs of significant others—his mother, his brother, me, Bill, Robert Duncan, Isherwood, Keanu Reeves, and so on. The oddest “collection” was a group of pictures of the back of mens’ heads, like a barber might have. It was much admired, the collage. It’s now at the Bancroft Library.
The relationship between Bill and me began to show wear, round about now, and it wasn’t long before we split up. Amicably, he didn’t move out of the house, just into the front room where he stayed until he met Jim Lay, who became his lover. Together, the two of them moved upstairs into 1214 and became our upstairs neighbors. Like everyone else we knew, Jim was surprised to learn that although we lived separate lives, we always ate dinner together. (“The family that dines together, whines together?”) Jim didn’t cook, so our schedule remained the same: Bill and I each cooked twice a week, Thom, three times, the third being Sundays when he made scrambled eggs, frozen fries, and peas, our only simple meal. All other times, Thom surprised us with his delicious Bengali curry or Irish stew or risotto. I made Spaghetti Bolognese, roast chicken, minestrone. Thom was the more ambitious cook: he made things from Julia Child; me, Jane Brody. When he roasted the Thanksgiving turkey, Julia led the way, but not all the way; her stuffing, Farce à la tapenade, was “not as good as it sounds, corn bread is better,” he wrote in the margin of the cookbook.
Two dates stand out in my memory, 1976 and 1999. I remember 1976 because that was the year my father died from Alzheimer’s at the unripe, young age of 72, and that was the year I met Bob Bair, who is now my domestic partner. I wasn’t looking for another boyfriend, and even if I had been, Bob was an unlikely candidate. Two years younger than Bill, he worked at the Oakland Zoo, had a big, black, lovable dog named Spitfire, and was also an artist, a painter, but a very different, abstract, splashy kind of painter. He liked to get drunk, and it troubled me that he liked to get drunk and keep talking, but he was fun and creative and we enjoyed each other and before long, I began to wonder how Bob and Thom would get along. I knew if I asked Thom, he would say yes even if he meant no. So, it was up to me. Next thing we knew, Bob was cooking on Saturdays.
I have a photograph of all of us—Jim Lay, Bill, me, Thom, Martin Rosen (a dear friend), my niece Amy, Bob, and Don Doody, enjoying a July 4th holiday dinner. We’re all seated around the table, except for Thom, who’s standing next to me, bending down, hand on my shoulder, pretending to put food in my ear. Very Thom.
The year 1999 comes to mind because that was when Thom turned seventy and retired from teaching at Berkeley. A momentous occasion, I would have thought, but apparently no one at Berkeley did. The formal ceremony took place in an ordinary classroom with maybe eighteen people present. Robert Hass presided. I was surprised at how casual and low-key it was, considering what a huge deal it was for Thom. Retired! No more commute, no more students; after forty years, no more Berkeley.
After Thom retired, he didn’t clown around any more. He kept saying how happy he was, but he wasn’t. He’d stopped teaching; he’d stopped working in the garden; and, worst of all, he couldn’t write. He was bored. “I’m old, I’m old,” he’d moan. What was there to do except take drugs and look for sex and get drunk? He was drunk most of the time, cheap red jug wine, and when he wasn’t drunk, he was strung out on drugs, zombie-like, trying to make pasta without water in the pot.
No one seemed to notice what a hard time Thom was having. In the “Symposium on Thom Gunn” that appeared in The Threepenny Review in the summer of 2005, the year after Thom died, Oliver Sacks thought Thom was “getting ready for another book” with “no thought of yielding to death.” Other contributors spoke about his brilliance, what he’d taught them, how he’d inspired them, amused them, who he was, but not how he was during the five years after he’d stopped writing. Thom taught one of Robert Glück’s classes at San Francisco State about three weeks before he died, and when I asked Robert how he’d done, he said something like “as brilliant as usual.” Really? Thom must have left his troubles at home. Those years were difficult not only for him but for me too, and certainly for Bob. Bob’s room was at the front of the house, and he could hear the doorbell ring, which it did, at midnight, 1:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., whenever. Thom would go down and let his gentleman-caller in; they would talk as they went up the stairs, and Bob would try to go back to sleep. In the last months of his life, Thom forgot he didn’t live alone.
Thom’s friend Wendy Lesser, the editor of The Threepenny Review, doesn’t think Thom’s death was deliberate. I don’t either, but not all accidents are accidental. The autopsy report lists the cause of death as “acute polysubstance abuse”; one of the substances was heroin. When I mentioned this to Louis Bryan, one of Thom’s leather friends, and how surprised I was, he seemed even more surprised and said, “You didn’t know he was using heroin?” No, I didn’t, but I can’t believe that it never occurred to Thom, a hip, informed, highly intelligent man, that whatever drugs he was taking plus the alcohol he consumed daily, was, at the very least, risky. Thom’s brother, Ander, couldn’t understand why Thom died so young, since mostly their family was long-lived. “Because he didn’t want to live,” I told him, and I haven’t changed my mind. What was there to live for? A crowd of gerontophiles who for some reason thought he was a hunk? Thom didn’t want to know the reason. Thom didn’t want to get old.
Thom and I almost never argued, but about two weeks before he died we did. I was angry because his “tricks” were using my towel. Thom was angry because he knew they weren’t, they were too polite. I showed him proof. That didn’t help. Bob was angry because Thom was inconsiderately strung out all the time. Things were tense. I asked Thom, “What do you want from me?” His answer surprised me. “I thought you’d be more understanding,” he said.
Would I have preferred for Thom to have a lover, or lovers, the way I did—serial monogamy? I didn’t appreciate his wholesale promiscuity, as fierce at the age of sixty-five as it was at thirty-five. Incidentally, or not so incidentally, that was not, in my opinion, a function of Thom’s libido; something else was going on. (What, I’m not sure.) In any case, this modest, good, generous man who wrote the poems, who inspired his students, who called me his lover, not his ex, who was so loved and admired, also liked to talk dirty (“Thom Talk,” we called it), watch porn, wear leather everything, and “make out” whenever and wherever he could. (Early on, I said to him, “Nothing is more important to you than a trick,” and he didn’t argue.) This man was who he was and I loved him. I don’t know for certain, but I think Thom was in love only twice, with me and with Charlie Hinkle, the “dead graduate student.” What would have happened if Charlie hadn’t died? Would Thom have asked him to move in? (There’d be the Gunn wing and the Kitay wing.) I doubt it; the house isn’t big enough.
Just after I finished writing the above paragraph, I had a remarkable experience you may find hard to believe. I saw an angel. Yes! And the angel said, “If you could ask Thom one quick question, what would it be? You have ten seconds.” The question I would ask is: Who changed more, you or me?
Mike Kitay lives in San Francisco. His previous piece for Threepenny was a Table Talk about tinnitus.
